I would likely have preached this same sermon (mostly on Matthew 22:1-14 and Isaiah 25:1-9) whether or not today was World Day Against the Death Penalty (observed every October 10th). But because this is a day to reconsider our death-dealing ways, and in light of this week’s news headlines, here is an extract from tomorrow’s sermon. I’ll post the whole tomorrow:
When we get stuck on narratives of vengeance and violence, when we get stuck on who is deserving to attend the feast to which God, not we, issues the invitation, well, then we get stuck.
And here we are, reduced to a nation threatening to stream its gun violence, state-sanctioned and sanitized as justice, to the world.
In a statement quoted by the Religion News Service, our Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe said,
“The Episcopal Church has long formally opposed the death penalty, and more recently we have called for an immediate moratorium on its use … The idea of live-streaming a firing squad execution is reprehensible in the extreme and will cause moral injury to everyone involved.”
When we get stuck in the narratives of vengeance and violence, we risk doing ourselves a moral injury.
The prophet does not gloss over the pain that has occurred, the tears that need to be wiped away, the disgrace that welcomes dignity. He does not deny that there are things that need to be wiped clean before the table can be set. But those things are in God’s purview.
A friend, Beth Kissileff, whose husband led one of the congregations that met at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh wrote thoughtfully about the consideration of the death penalty in that case, where guilt was not in doubt, nor the harm caused. She cited the rabbinic tradition that states that, since biblical times, the death penalty should be decided only by God, not by human courts. She cited the conflict between belief in the sanctity of life and the order to kill. She cited secular research that undermines any inkling that the death penalty does more good than evil. She looked toward the life to come, and the chance, however small, that given time, given a chance, given the grace that he did not offer his victims, the person who killed her friends might repent.
As the prophet writes elsewhere,
Let the wicked forsake their ways and the evil ones their thoughts;
And let them turn to the Lord, and he will have compassion, and to our God, for he will richly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the Lord. (Isaiah 55:7-8)
God’s ways are not yet our ways, nor our thoughts God’s thoughts.
The point of the parable that Jesus tells to the chief priests and the Pharisees is not the spectacle of death, but the promise of life. The evidence is offered by Jesus in the garden two days later, when he refuses to call down legions of angels to rescue him, and on the cross three days later, when he does not call on the angels to avenge him, but instead asks God to forgive them; to forgive us (Matthew 26:53; Luke 23:34).
When we get stuck in the narrative of vengeance and of violence, we mistake the justice of God, which is mercy, for our own self-righteous myths, and we might just miss the invitation to the wedding feast ourselves.
