Sunday's Sermon: The Importance of Reconciliation as Resistance to Empire

My pastor asked me if I would preach yesterday, so I said yes.  We're using the Women's Lectionary by Wil Gafney, and these were the readings:

2 Samuel 11:2-15
Psalm 32: 1-7
2 Peter 3: 1-4
Matthew 5: 21-26

I knew that I would talk about the ways we go astray and the need for redemption.  I did not anticipate that I would utilize the information I got in my seminary class about the Tower of Babel.

That Gospel reading has Jesus saying that if we need to make amends with someone we have wronged, we should go and do it right now.  Even if we're making an offering in the Temple, God can wait--go and make things right with your brother or sister.

I began by asking if anyone needs to leave to go make amends.  I tried to imagine a scenario with the same kind of seriousness:  "You've clocked in at work and remember that you've had a falling out.  You don't wait until after work, you don't clock out, but you leave right away, even if it's a firing offense."

I said that the need for reconciliation is one that Jesus gives us again and again.  And in fact, we see it centuries before Jesus.  Then I said I wanted to bring some information from my seminary class.

I gave the standard interpretation of the Tower of Babel:  humans build a high tower, God feels threatened, God destroys the tower and scatters the people.  But is God really that upset over a tower that's too high?  If they had stopped at 4 stories, would that have been O.K.?

I presented information from my seminary class in the Hebrew Bible.  My professor Denise Dombkowski Hopkins says that the title of this story should really be "The Fortified City."  In her lecture, she talked about the Tower of Babel as one of the signs of empire--people build a tower so that they can see who is coming.  There's an out group and an in group.  God destroys the tower because it lets people create an exclusive society, and God is about inclusivity.

It's also got an anti-empire message.  The stories were compiled by Israelites during the Babylonian Exile, people who had a close up look at the dangers of empire--that only certain people are protected, while others lose everything they love including their homeland.  It's the same lesson of empire that Jesus knew under the Romans, and that we know today.

I tied all of it back to the Gospel by saying that Jesus is always showing us ways to resist these powers of empire, and reconciliation is one of the ways he advocates again and again.  And it's not just reconciliation with like-minded folks.  In a highly polarized era like the one we live in now, in 2021, we need to be reconciling with everyone, even the folks we think of as the ones with crazy, dangerous ideas.  I said, "You know the ones I mean," knowing it might be different for everyone.

I talked, as I usually do, about the inbreaking kingdom of God, the one that we're creating now, not just for when we die.  And reconciliation is one of the primary ways we'll create God's kingdom, right here, right now.