Epiphany 5A

Fifth Sunday of Epiphany, Year A

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

As I look at the world around us today, I can’t tell you how many times I just shake my head in disbelief. I’m coming up on the 10th anniversary of my retirement from military service, and I can’t believe I’m living in the same country as the one I knew 10 years ago. To listen to the news, to read posts on social media, and to watch what our celebrities are supporting, and how they conduct themselves is simply stunning.

Clearly our role as Christians in this society is to stand - unmovable - to Biblical principles. The teachings of God were intended to protect us from ourselves, particularly when our sinful selves start to take us down a path of self-destruction. God’s teachings - if we follow them - are meant to protect us from that. And so we turn to one of those teachings today.

Our epistle lesson today comes from St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. Something has worked its way into this new family of Christ’s disciples, and it’s destroying the unity and love between them, the foundation in Christ that Paul left with them once they were grounded in the Christian faith. He spends this letter and at least one more addressing these problems that have cropped up. What he has to say in these letters still offer us wisdom even today.

In particular today, I want to look at verse 11 in today’s reading: “11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” It’s only recently I noticed the modern problem here, but the more I think about it, the more I think it’s something all Christians should be aware of. Here’s what I mean.

It used to be that when someone did something noteworthy or unusual - either good or bad - we would ask them what their motivation was. We’d talk to them and get them to explain. If it was something good, we would lift that up for everyone to see what a good thing was motivated by, and use it as an example to be followed. If it was something bad, we might have to resort to interrogation to get that kind of information, but the result would be similar: we would lift up this bad thing, and what the motivation was, using it as an example of what *not* to follow.

Recently, I’ve become disturbed to notice that folks on the national stage have taken it upon themselves to decide what motivates people. When someone does something that goes against the political narrative, well they’re just evil. They’re just trying to get people killed. Oh, the other political party is trying to cut the budget on _____? They just want us all to die. Whether that’s something involving climate, or taxes, or pandemic. They automatically *KNOW* what’s in the hearts of the people who think differently from them. WRONG. The only way to know what someone is thinking is if they open up and tell you. Otherwise, you can’t know. That’s Paul’s point.

It’s easy to talk about it on a national scale. Let’s bring it closer to home. Has someone done something to you or a friend recently that was unpleasant? Think about that situation. Now, did you assume that you knew what motivated the person to do that unpleasant thing? Or did you say “Well, I can’t know what’s in their heart” and approach them yourself, to find out why they would do such a thing?

This is happening on such a grand scale, with so much frequency, it’s easy to get caught up in this practice. Here it is, in God’s very Word - we are NOT to think we can look into someone else’s heart.

With that in mind, I’d like to look at what Luther had to say about the 8th Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Listen to his point here: “God will not have our neighbor deprived of his reputation, honor, and character any more than of his money and possessions; he would have every man maintain his self-respect before his wife, children, servants, and neighbors.” [Tappert, 399.] Luther explains that there are several ways to apply this commandment in our lives. This is a great example of how harsh Luther could be in his writings. Listen to this:

“…[T]his commandment … forbids all sins of the tongue by which we may injure or offend our neighbor. False witness is clearly a work of the tongue. Whatever is done with the tongue against a neighbor, then, is forbidden by God. … It is a common vice of human nature that everyone would rather hear evil than good about his neighbor. Evil though we are, we cannot tolerate having evil spoken of us; we want the golden compliments of the whole world. Yet we cannot bear to hear the best spoken of others.” In other words, Luther acknowledges that this is not a new problem. Our sinful human nature is more drawn to hearing bad things about neighbors than good things. And of course, we’re also hypocrites - we wouldn’t tolerate this being done to us. We have to work to resist this temptation!

“To avoid this vice, therefore, we should note that nobody has the right to judge and reprove his neighbor publicly, even when he has seen a sin committed, unless he has been authorized to judge and reprove. There is a great difference between judging sin and having knowledge of sin. Knowledge of sin does not entail the right to judge it.” Judging someone’s action is claiming to know their heart. “Why did you steal from that store?” “I was hungry and hadn’t eaten in 4 days” is a very different answer from “I was bored and wanted to see if I could get away with it.” But we can’t know which answer it is without the accused telling us.

Now here’s where Luther gets brutal: “Those are called backbiters who are not content just to know but rush ahead and judge. Learning a bit of gossip about someone else, they spread it into every corner, relishing and delighting in it like pigs that roll in the mud and root around in it with their snouts. This is nothing else than usurping the judgment and office of God...Therefore God forbids you to speak evil about another even though, to your certain knowledge, he is guilty.”

To make such a judgment about someone is not only ungrateful, it’s repulsive conduct, likened to the behavior of pigs. It’s also arrogant and puts us in the place of God. This is not good.

“So you see that we are absolutely forbidden to speak evil of our neighbor. … But if you gossip about someone in every corner and root around in the filth, nobody will be reformed. ... If you were acting for your neighbor’s improvement or from the love of truth, you would not sneak about in secret, shunning the light of day.

“Now we have the sum and substance of this commandment: No one shall harm his neighbor, whether friend or foe, with his tongue. No one shall speak evil of him, whether truly or falsely, unless it is done with proper authority or for his improvement. A person should use his tongue to speak only good of everyone, to cover his neighbor’s sins and infirmities, to overlook them, and to cloak and veil them with his own honor.

“Our chief reason for doing so should be the one which Christ indicates in the Gospel, and in which he means to embrace all the commandments concerning our neighbor, ‘Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.’” [Tappert, 400-404]

That goes well beyond just not saying false things about someone in court. Whenever we talk about someone, it goes back to the golden rule: talk about them the way we’d want them to talk about us, or better. Luther summarizes it by saying we should always put the best possible construction on whatever we say about our neighbor… giving them the benefit of the doubt, building up their reputation and their honor…their public image. Unless, and only on the absolutely certain condition that what they’ve done is 100% provable and unquestionably evil. Otherwise, we are to make our neighbor look good.

We can’t know our neighbor’s heart unless they tell us, so it’s going to be hard to prove that the motivation was either evil or not.

As you watch the news in the days ahead, I invite you to watch for this happening on the national stage. But even more importantly, I would suggest that all of us make a point of not following the world’s example here. When someone does something we don’t like, don’t assume we know why they did it. We must either bite our tongue or go straight to the person and confront them. This is the Biblical approach, commanded by Christ in Matthew 18. It gets right to the root of the problem.

The other problem that arises from this is the temptation to gossip. When we’re confronted with an unpleasant act, and we don’t go straight to the culprit, but talk about them behind their back, we’ve now entered the realm of gossip. I don’t have to tell you how divisive and destructive that can be. And it gets out of hand very quickly.

These were some of the issues challenging the early churches that Paul worked to start, and they threatened to destroy their unity even back then. These problems still plague our sinful society today, and can have devastating effects on our modern church family.

Paul tells his church family that they do not have to fall prey to these problems. His advice to them is just as relevant to us as it was to them 2,000 years ago: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”

The things freely given us by God. We believe and confess this every week. My calling is to remind all of us (myself included) of just how magnificent God’s free gift truly is. His Son’s death for our redemption, to pay the price for our sins. To reconcile us to God. To set us free from our captivity to the ways of the world. To rip off the shackles that keep us doing things the world’s way - the way that leads to destruction, separation from God, and death... so that we can do things God’s way - the way that leads to peace, blessing, and eternal life.

Like the early Christians, we are called to be *in* the world. We don’t retreat into our homes and our church and pretend that we’re not part of everything going on around us. But we don’t have to do things the way the world does them. We are not called to be *of* the world. We are of Christ, and that means we conduct ourselves not in a worldly way, but in a Christ-like way. A “love your neighbor as yourself” kind of way.

To live as Christ would have us live is to follow God’s commands so that we can enjoy creation the way God intended, and to live in peace and harmony with each other. If we can do that, God is then free to bless us in the here and now. This was Jesus’ message, and it was Paul’s message too. Let’s not follow the ways of the world. Let’s not get caught up in this practice of thinking we know anyone else’s heart. Let’s not claim to know why anyone else does what they do. Let’s follow Paul’s wisdom and heed the wisdom of Christ.

As we do that, and build and nurture harmony in our own community, let that be an example to the world around us, and let the Holy Spirit work through us to build up our neighbors. Won’t that be a welcome change from the division and conflict out there!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.