Proper 08, Year C | Galatians 5:1, 13-25
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
June 26, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“…the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” – Galatians 5:14[1]
This morning I’m afraid we need to address a topic I honestly hoped we’d never have to discuss: abortion. Simply in hearing the word walls and defenses and political arguments and a variety of other things rush into our minds, activating our centers of fight-or-flight and preventing us from having any substantive conversations around the topic. It’s one of the difficulties clergy face nearly every day now: navigating a divided world where well-meaning people who claim to follow Christ find themselves on extreme ends of social situations that have become religious causes and moral crusades that have irreparably bound themselves to political ideologies. A few years ago during the George Floyd protests, a conservative parishioner at my previous congregation warned me against speaking about political causes, like Black Lives Matter, while days later a progressive one contacted me demanding that I preach on social and moral issues, like Black Lives Matter. It’s pretty hard to provide care of souls to an entire congregation with that kind of division inside it, but my vows hold me to that.
So this morning, I ask that we all do our best to calm our minds no matter which triggers the topic may set off. I am not trying to force anyone here to embrace my personal viewpoint. You don’t have to agree with me now, and you still don’t when I’m done speaking. We can continue to worship together and serve one another without forcing one another into a false conformity.
As we all know by now, this week the Supreme Court radically changed the legal status of something that has been a right for all women in the United States since before I was born. The movement to repeal the legality was largely driven—or at least fronted—by religious entities and institutions. They claim a Biblical mandate to eradicate abortion as an offense before God. That’s what I was taught the entirety of my life up into my thirties. That’s what many people who have grown up in churches for the past few generations have heard and how we’ve been trained. Abortion is against the Bible; therefore, we have to eliminate it from society.
But calling this endeavor “biblical” is simply untrue. As a matter of governance and legality, abortion is certainly a political issue. Since it involves decisions surrounding someone’s life, it is also an ethical or moral issue, and ethical/moral issues often carry a religious component to them. But to call it “biblical” in any way is to betray our own ignorance of what the Bible actually says.
That’s because the Bible never even mentions abortion. Not once. That means, in no uncertain terms, abortion is NOT a biblical issue. “God is love” is biblical, as the Epistles directly tell us that.[2] “You shall not kill” is biblical, as it appears clearly within Moses’ Ten Commandments.[3] “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is biblical, appearing not only in Jesus’ teachings but in today’s text from Galatians.[4] Abortion, however, is not among the topics the Bible ever addresses, meaning there is no truly “biblical” statement or position regarding it.
We know that abortion has existed throughout human history. Ancient writings mention it, and it isn’t hard to figure out that people in desperate circumstances always have and always will find a way to eliminate a pregnancy. Despite this, the Bible doesn’t even allude to abortion a single time—not in the Mosaic Law,[5] not in the condemnations of the prophets, not even in the then-popular vice lists found throughout the New Testament, like the one Paul quotes for us today.[6] So when any of us try to claim Biblical authority for our positions, we are completely wrong. We’re lying both to ourselves and our neighbors, and we’re lying before and in the name of our God, because it simply isn’t there.
That isn’t to say you might not have heard a variety of arguments about abortion that have quoted from the Bible. And you can make claims one way and another using a variety of verses. But that doesn’t give what any of us are saying “biblical” authority. What we’ve actually done is tried to build theological authority to support our moral/ethical/political stances.
What I mean by “theology” is any conclusion we come to by putting various parts of an canonical religious text together in an attempt to understand a different issue. It’s a matter of logic and association, almost like mathematical theorems but using moral/religious concepts rather than numbers. Theology is not a bad thing. It’s a natural thing—a very human thing. Any time theology helps you to love and serve your neighbor, it’s a good and God-honoring thing. But theology is, at its core, simply philosophy built on agreed-upon religious foundations. As such, it frequently references things the Bible says, and may appear to have the authority of scripture. However, by combining things the Bible says, our conclusions have automatically become subject to human logic in all its wonder, accuracy, and error.
A fantastic example is from the opening of Jeremiah, which we’ll be reading later this summer.[7] In chapter 1 verse 5, the prophet tells us that the Lord said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you…” This is one of the main texts used to support the claim of full human life at conception—or fertilization, which seems to have risen to preferred use recently. It does look pretty straightforward when people spell it out: “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” indicates that God was fully familiar with the individual while still in utero :: God knows the embryo as a full human person :: human life begins at conception/fertilization. Secondly, if human life begins at fertilization, and God has commanded us that “you shall not kill,” then, as abortion is killing a full human person, abortion is against what the Bible says. We break it down into a pretty simple equation: A + B = C. Simple and straightforward, right? But the theology we’ve done is actually a lot more complicated than we assume: we’ve been skipping steps in our mind. If you break down our math more fully, what we have looks more like A ≈ D ≈ E ≈ F + B = G ≈ C.
So it seems we have a theological equation that involves not one simple act of addition but several steps, assertions, and approximations. And even then, we haven’t really paid close enough attention to our original A statement, which contains two sections within it: A′ says, “before I formed you in the womb I knew you” and A″ says, “before you were born I consecrated you.” In reality, what we’ve been working with as our initial variable is a conflation of those two statements, and we haven’t even been fully considering what either one is saying. Looking more closely, each of those prime statements also contains two parts: the “before” section and then God’s action. Spelled out more thoroughly, our equation is no longer A + B = C but much more like A″a + A′b = A ≈ D ≈ E ≈ F + B = G ≈ C. If you accurately follow the logic all the way through, what you finally come up with would be an argument not about human life beginning at fertilization but the preexistence of human life: the idea of human life having begun before any sort of physical engagement whatsoever. And that would lead us into an entirely different argument and struggle than the one facing our society today.
All arguments on both sides of the abortion issue—as well as many other political/social/ethical issues—are like this: theological concepts and analogies falsely bearing the claim of Biblical authority. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have an opinion one way or the other or strongly support a position. God has given you a mind and a moral compass and expects you to use both. What it does mean that we need to hold our positions with open hands, carefully approaching one another in love and mercy rather than biting or devouring or consuming each other.
The Bible is meant to guide us, not to impose new rules and laws upon us. It provides a scale against which we can measure ourselves and our local Christian community. Any attempt to use it as a weapon against one another or those outside the Church is abuse both of our neighbor and of the text itself.
Take the Galatian vice list from this morning. Paul is writing to people within a Christian congregation, not to the general populace or regional government. And, frankly, we keep using outdated terminology to protect ourselves from what the passage actually says. Translated into more modern language, Paul tells us, “carnality’s actions are obvious: it’s prostitution,[8] pollution,[9] molestation,[10] idolatry, substance abuse,[11] hatreds, strife, rivalry,[12] hot tempers,[13] conspiracies,[14] discord,[15] factionalisms,[16] envies,[17] perpetual drunkenness,[18] carousing, and things similar to these. Which I predict among you—just as I predicted before—that those practicing such kinds of things cannot inherit a godly realm.”[19]
Paul isn’t telling us how to judge outsiders to the Christian community. He’s offering us a way to evaluate ourselves—to recognize our own faults so we can seek help from one another and amend our ways.
I’ve spoken a lot recently about Empire versus God’s Kingdom, how to recognize one or the other, and that knowledge is becoming more and more important by the day. As a reminder, Empire always seeks to divide, to destroy, and to tear down. It demands uniformity of thought and action and sows fear of the other—of our neighbors—so it can continue to dominate society and bend us to its will. It cares for nothing but its own power and will use any means to maintain command. Empire exists at every level of human society, from relationships within a single family all the way up to international politics. All of us are prone to take up the power of Empire and use it for our advantage. And all of us are bound, at one time or another, to fall beneath its sway.
The Reign of the Heavens, the Realm of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, does not and cannot function like Empire—it’s a complete alternative. Where Empire relies on the threat of Famine to grasp resources for itself, Christ’s people give freely, trusting that God’s Kingdom will provide not necessarily excess but enough for all. Where Empire relies on War to instill fear of our neighbor and define its own oppressive definition of loyalty, Christ’s people are called to love their enemies through action and pray for those who oppose them. Where Empire uses Death to frighten us into enslaving ourselves to it with the entirety of our being, Christ offers us an entirely new and boundless kind of vitality—what the Bible calls “eternal life.” And where Empire employs Domination to enforce its will and maintain uniformity, Christ’s people work for unity within our difference and diversity, for reconciliation with the other, and for a world of true peace.
Empire will—and does—use anything it can to corrupt and poison not only society in general but the Kingdom of God as well: moral causes, social issues, governmental policy, theological arguments—even the words of the Bible itself. And it uses those same tools to deceive us into thinking we’re doing God’s work while actively causing harm to the very neighbors we see Christ calling us to serve. With so much manipulation and distortion taking place around us, it’s important that we make the effort to watch ourselves carefully these next few months and years and to take the time necessary to discern before judging or condemning our neighbors. Are we responding to any given situation as those subjugated to Empire, or are we choosing “to do justice, and…love kindness, and…walk humbly”[20]—to behave and respond as the children of God that we already are?
“…each law has been fulfilled in one statement: ‘you will act in your neighbor’s best interest[21] the same as for yourself.’”[22]
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] I John 4:8, 16
[3] Exodus 20:13
[4] Leviticus 19:18 | Matthew 5:43, 19:19, 22:39 | Mark 12:31 | Romans 13:9 | Galatians 5:14 | James 2:8
[5] The passage referencing someone causing a miscarriage isn’t about abortion: it’s about assault and/or a husband’s property rights.
[6] Galatians 5:19-21a
[7] Drawing doctrine or definitive teaching from any poetic passage is a dangerous game, as the factual nature of the logic involved is rarely able to take into consideration the inherent flexibility of a poet’s tools—things like understatement, hyperbole, and images that can reflect multiple realities or possibilities.
[8] Or “fornication”
[9] Or “impurity”
[10] Or “lechery”
[11] Literally “drug usage” which, by implication & association, could also mean “sorcery”
[12] Or “extravagance” or “fierceness”
[13] Or “desire” or “wrath”
[14] Or “factions” or “intrigues” or “partisanship”
[15] Or “dissensions” or “divisions”
[16] Or “sects” or “heresies”
[17] Or “grudges”
[18] “Drunkenness” is plural, which suggests the “perpetual” aspect. “Perpetual” might also be appropriate for other plural items on Paul’s list.
[19] Galatians 5:19-21 | my translation | Italicized words are not found directly in the text but are supplied to help clarify implied meanings.
[20] Micah 6:8b
[21] Or “act with devotion [toward your neighbor]” | The term is the verb form of agape.
[22] Galatians 5:14 | my translation