Stoning Your Children and Other Helpful Hints!

Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19

This week, I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be preaching at Temple Beth El in Augusta on Friday and for Rabbi Erica to preach at the Church at 209 on Sunday.  

On Monday afternoon, I finally looked at the Torah portion for tonight (click on the passage above to read it in full).  Rabbi Erica had sent it to me a while ago and told me I didn’t have to preach on it if I didn’t want to.  I could preach the Isaiah text instead.  So, on Monday afternoon I finally read it and immediately sent her a text that said, “Holy stoning your kids to death, Batman!”  She told me again I didn't have to tackle it but after reading it I WANTED to, because so many of us struggle with these sorts of texts and my contention is that whenever a text seems too hard, it means we need to go deeper into it, not around it.  So, let’s dive in!  

So, to recap, tonight’s Torah portion takes on… let’s see…  How to marry someone you’ve captured in a war… turns out it’s quite a process.  How to deal with your two wives and the kids… carefully.  How to get the town folk to stone to death your rebellious kid… three chapters in the Talmud on that one.  What to do with executed bodies… don’t leave them out.  What to do when your neighbor’s livestock gets out… help them with that AND whatever stuff they’ve lost.  Cross dressing… don’t.  Eating baby birds and eggs… you can, but not the mama bird too.  Rooftop safety… build a fence on your roof so friends don’t fall off.  Some farming rules, fabric rules and cloak tassel rules.  

But wait, there’s more!  Lying about your new wife’s virginity… don’t.  Sleeping around… don’t.  Rape… seriously, don’t!  Which male people are allowed in the assembly… depends on how fortunate or unfortunate they’ve been avoiding particularly difficult to talk about accidents with certain body parts.  Ammonites and Moabites… they’re out.  Edomites and Egyptians… they’re in… for a while anyway.  Rules for handling embarrassing night time issues and dealing with poo while you're serving in the army… it's complicated.  How to handle escaped slaves… kindly.  Female prostitution… no.  Male prostitution… also, no.  

Still more!  Who gets charged interest on a loan… Israelites no… gentiles… it’s OK.  Promises… follow through.  Your neighbor’s yard… snacking on their grapes is OK… harvesting their grapes, not OK.  Being cruel to the poor… don’t.  Skin diseases… be careful.  If you didn't get it the first time, REALLY, don’t be mean to the poor… or workers or foreigners.  How to take care of widows, orphans and aliens… don’t let them go hungry.  How to do a trial… quickly AND how to do business… honestly!  

And why all these things?  Well, says the text, because WE were once the slave, the poor, the captured, the orphan, the widow, the swindled, the cheated, the dumped and forgotten and don’t you remember how awful it felt, how much it HURT when WE were wearing those shoes?  SO... remember that hurt!  And don’t perpetuate the pain.  

That’s really the take home lesson from this long portion of Torah.  Don’t perpetuate the pain.  It’s easy to get trapped debating the degree of rebelliousness that a kid needs to display to warrant being stoned to death (three chapters in the Talmud!) and it’s easy to get side tracked and focus on the sexism of another age and cultural strangeness of an ancient land which was a very different place than where we live today in Augusta, Maine, BUT if you can pull back from the gory details of that different time and culture, the overarching truth, and God’s call for us that comes out of that truth is still just as powerful for us today.  

The truth is that hurt people, hurt people.  People who have been hurt by someone in the past, often go on to hurt others, passing the pain on, sometimes "visiting the iniquity of the father on the children to the third and fourth generations."  But, God’s children are called to a much higher calling, BOTH for the benefit of our community but also, as Isaiah says, to fulfill our calling to be “a light to the nations, to bring God’s salvation to the ends of the earth.”  

So, as followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in whichever form that takes, we are called to a higher and admittedly harder path.  We are called to break that cycle of pain and instead of paying forward the pain we’ve received from others, WE, as God’s people, are called to pay forward God’s “Hesed”… God’s steadfast love, instead.  

One of the tricky parts of this calling is that paying forward God’s love doesn’t magically keep others from hurting us and it doesn’t make all the hurts of our past, magically vanish into thin air like a rabbit under a magician’s hat either.  The other tricky part of this calling is that as God’s people, we know that when we look in the mirror, there are times when we see someone with a bit of a stiff neck and a hard heart staring back at us and the temptation to pass on the pain, seems stronger than the calling to pass on God's love.  

That’s why so much of what we read in tonight’s Torah portion was about living together in community.  God knows, it’s hard for us, all by ourselves, to deflect the slings and arrows sent our way each and every day and respond with God’s love instead of resorting to finding a bigger sling to throw harder rocks and an even stronger bow to shoot even larger arrows! 

Alone, assaulted by the pain of the world we will be overwhelmed, but as part of our community of faith we can recognize the hurts as they come our way and TOGETHER deflect them and return God’s love, instead of perpetuating the pain.   May God continue to shower us with the blessing of God’s loving kindness… God’s steadfast love… God’s hesed.  And may we, the people of faith in Augusta, neighbors and Children of God, continue to help one another deflect the pain of the world and return only God’s love until Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled and our light shows the world God’s salvation.  Amen.