Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017 (Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part five of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13:20, Baptismal Covenant Question #1
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)
Today’s scripture readings raise questions about what it means to keep tradition. Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount about not coming to abolish the law but to fulfill it may sound surprising to some Christians, who tend to think the Jewish law is irrelevant for us. The early church decided that Gentile converts to the faith did not have to keep the entirety of the Jewish law, and many Reformation-era theologians wrote volumes on how the law was a prison from which Jesus released us, drawing mostly on Paul’s thought. But Jesus himself kept the Jewish law and observed Jewish traditions. He criticized those who focused on the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit behind the law; those who were so concerned about not breaking a commandment that they wouldn’t help someone in need because doing work was forbidden on the Sabbath, for instance. But he never advocated for entirely throwing out the traditions and law of his religion.
“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,” he says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today also speaks to the question of what it means to keep tradition. The people are questioning why God is not responding to their fasting:
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isaiah 58:3a)
And God’s answer, coming through the prophet Isaiah, is that the people may be keeping the letter of the law, going through the motions of the correct rituals, but their behavior is not in line with God’s ethical commandments:
"Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high…
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:3b-4, 6)
Now, God has previously commanded them to do just the things they were doing: to “lie in sackcloth and ashes” and to humble themselves. So when he dismisses their actions, saying that is not the fast he chooses, that the fast he chooses is to “loose the bonds of injustice,” he’s not saying that he doesn’t want them to ever observe ritual fasting. He’s not saying lying in sackcloth and ashes and humbling oneself is a BAD thing – he’s just saying that without the ethical behavior it is intended to bring about, it’s worthless. If ALL you do is lie in sackcloth and ashes and don’t help your brothers and sisters in need, your fasting is worthless and God’s not going to take your piety seriously – because you’ve shown by your actions that you don’t really get it.
As we enter week five of this preaching series on baptism, these themes in our readings today invite us to consider the first question of our Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”
At its core, this question is about keeping tradition, about “following the law,” to the extent that Christians have a concept of religious law. Will you keep teaching what the apostles taught, keep meeting together as the apostles met, keep breaking bread together in the holy meal of the Eucharist as the apostles did, and keep praying as the apostles prayed?
This vow actually comes directly from Scripture – the Book of Acts tells us that after the Gentiles received the Spirit of God at Pentecost and Peter preached to them explaining the significance of all they had heard and seen, about three thousand people were baptized. Acts 2:42 says of these new converts, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
It is significant that this call to keep tradition comes directly from the description of what the earliest converts to Christianity did right after they were baptized. Even the words used to ask this question are part of church tradition!
So what is it exactly that we’re being asked to keep and pass along? What is “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers?”
The “apostles teaching” refers to the message about Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection that we talked about a few weeks ago, that “good news of God in Christ” that we are called to proclaim: that Jesus is raised from the dead and has defeated death. It is summarized in the Creeds, and the church has continued to expand upon these foundational beliefs through its doctrine and teaching throughout the centuries. When we vow to “continue in the apostles’ teaching,” we are vowing to study the church’s teaching, both what it has taught historically and the way that is taking shape in our own day, and to pass that teaching on to a new generation. When you come to Bible study, when you instruct children in the faith, when you read scripture or books about Christian history or theology, you are “continuing in the apostles’ teaching.”
What about the “apostles’ fellowship”? The church has always been clear that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. Fellowship, community, connection with other Christians is of utmost importance. The apostles came together on a regular basis to encourage one another in their faith and to worship together, and Christians have continued to do that throughout the ages. Even monastics who choose a cloistered life, away from “the world,” have shared the community of other monks or nuns, with only very few choosing a life of solitary hermitage, and even those who did choose that life were connected in some way to a larger praying community. Fellowship is critical. We cannot do this faith thing alone. We need each other.
“The breaking of the bread” is the celebration of the Eucharist – the ceremonial meal that Jesus commanded us to continue “in remembrance of him” until he comes again. It is the central act of worship of the church, and when we are baptized we make a vow to continue in that tradition, to regularly attend and receive Eucharist.
And finally, “the prayers” are the prayers the church has taught us – the Lord’s Prayer, the various litanies and liturgies that the church has passed down to us – as well as individual, personal prayers offered up to God spontaneously from our hearts. We vow to maintain an active prayer life as part of our commitment at our baptism.
This vow – to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers – this vow to preserve and pass on the rituals and traditions of the Christian faith – is foundational to what we vow to do when we are baptized. It is the first question we are asked after we recite the Creed. But it does not stand alone. It is grouped with the other four baptismal vows to show that observing ritual and “maintaining tradition” alone are not enough. This affirms the message of Jesus and the prophets: that ritual observance without proper ethical behavior is meaningless. We can teach the doctrines of the church and come to Eucharist all day long and say all the right prayers, but if we’re not also “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves,” and “striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being,” then we’ve entirely missed the point.
Unfortunately, much of our society has seen too much of the ritual observance and too little of the ethical behavior from the church and has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the only important thing is the ethical behavior piece. “What has ritual behavior done for anyone except make them hypocrites? Just ‘strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being’ and you’ve pretty much got it covered.”
But from the church’s perspective, it’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and. It’s not ritual observance OR ethical behavior, it’s ritual observance AND ethical behavior. We can do ethical behavior without ritual observance, sure, but it’s a lot more likely to lead to burnout if we do. Because the ritual observances of the church are there to feed us, to guide us, to sustain us as we do that ethical behavior we’re called to do. We come to Eucharist not just for the sake of coming to Eucharist, not just to blindly obey a rule of the church, but to be renewed and recharged for the work God calls us to do in the world. We read the scripture and church theology not because the church gave us a homework assignment, but because the teachings of the church inspire and motivate us to work for justice and peace, and connect us with the saints who have gone before us, who have walked this path before, who know something about standing up against injustice. In our current day, the voices of Christians who have stood up against injustice in the past: from the earliest apostles who said to the Roman courts, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29) to the modern-day prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1930s Germany, who challenged his church’s complicity in the Nazis’ rise to power, can inform our own struggles in this new era of American history, providing us with a sense that we are not alone in this work.
We gather in community with other Christians, we receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and we study the teachings of Christians who have gone before us to support and facilitate the hard work of ethical living and advocating for justice that God calls us to in our own day. Because if ALL we do is come to church and receive Eucharist and study scripture and we don’t offer sanctuary to refugees or feed the hungry or advocate for just governance in our land, our tradition is worthless and God’s not going to take our piety seriously – because we will have shown by our actions that we don’t really get it.
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