As we continue our challenge of confronting the hard issues facing Christians today, we turn from speaking about the so-called ‘right to die,’ as we did last week, to a matter that could seem related: the right to kill. Whether called capital punishment or the Death Penalty, the right to kill is a part of our justice system and our national discourse. The American public strongly favors the Death Penalty, by about a two-thirds majority. Plenty of sincere Christians are numbered among those who support it, and plenty of sincere Christians are opposed, just as non-believers are divided on the issue. Among Christians, both sides have tended to point to the Bible in defense of their viewpoint, and often have lobbed words like conservative and liberal at each other – and even some worse words.

We not here to advance liberalism or conservatism. We address this issue because at this moment, just over 3,300 people are on death row in the US. Some of those are from our Commonwealth, which in number of executions historically has been second only to Texas. Whatever you believe about capital punishment, I doubt many (if any) here believe that God is unaware of what is going on, or that God just doesn’t care that we put to death those who have committed terrible crimes. We believe that God does care. The question, rather, is how we faithfully discern God’s will about the Death Penalty, in the greater context of our life as followers of Jesus. So I invite you to do what I have done – to wrestle with your own feelings and views about this issue, as we look to the Bible, to our Christian tradition, our experience of the Holy Spirit, and to our God-given reason, in consideration of both sides of this debate.

When we turn to the Bible, it does not take long to find evidence of the death penalty in the Old Testament. Boy, is it ever there! In chapters like Genesis 9, it’s crystal clear: God’s Law says that if you commit murder, you should expect to lose your life – usually by stoning. The Law of Moses, like our laws, distinguished between accidental killing and intentional murder. It allowed for a member of the victim’s family, as the “avenger of blood,” to put the murderer to death. Thus was God’s sovereignty defended – that is, since all human life was sacred, the taking of life belonged only to the Lord of Life. For this reason, murder was seen as a deep offense before God.

Of course, when you read on a few more verses, you soon find that such serious offenses included not only murder, but ten other infractions. You could also be stoned to death for disobedience or disrespect to your parents, for sexual activity before and outside marriage, and for failing to honor the Sabbath by working on a Saturday, just to name a few. (Whew! Pretty good news that we’re not under that system, for, say, eighty percent or so of us here!) But in a society with no criminal justice system, no prisons, and no police force, the system of the ancient Hebrews seems to have worked: their observance of the Law held them together as a people.

In the New Testament, we find that the death penalty has continued in Hebrew society, although by the time of Jesus, there is now a police force, there are prisons, as well as overlapping justice systems - Jewish and Roman. In the midst of this, Jesus is calling those who follow him to a rather different way of living, explicitly rejecting the ‘eye-for-an-eye’ system of punishment-as-deterrence found in the Law of Moses. Jesus teaches about absorbing the blow given by those who wish us evil, and turning the other cheek to our attacker as an expression of strength and forgiving grace.

But quite honestly, it’s pretty tough to base a justice system on that, don’t you think? Especially in a society as big and diverse as our own. Now that we’ve looked briefly at the biblical basis for capital punishment, let’s consider the arguments advanced for using it today. First and foremost, in our society capital punishment is reserved for murders of a particularly vicious or shocking nature – such as the murder in 1995 of 168 people in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh. In this sense, as when McVeigh was executed in 2001 for his unspeakable actions, the punishment fits the crime – as an expression of vengeance and societal retribution. This is the strongest reason that a clear majority of Americans favor the Death Penalty: that such a person does not deserve to live and ought to die. Vengeance is, I believe, not an easy argument to pass over, and we will need to return to it later.

Four other arguments are often made to favor our having a Death Penalty. First, deterrence: many argue that the best deterrent for anyone considering murder is the fear that the same may happen to them. Second, community safety: the only sure way a monster like Timothy McVeigh will never harm anyone again is to end his life. Third, economics: housing, feeding, and caring for convicted murderers for all that remains of their natural lives is incredibly expensive, up in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Obviously, execution ends this financial burden and obligation. And lastly, closure: many point out that the end of a murderer’s life has helped grieving families to heal and move on.

Having identified these arguments for capital punishment, we now spend a moment looking at the case against. Concerning deterrence, death penalty opponents tend to point out that violent crime has actually tended to be just as high, in some cases higher, in states that execute criminals, such as here in the South. This may be due to plain, old human stubbornness: most criminals do not think they will get caught, or don’t think about the consequences of their actions. Presumably, if we like China executed far more people each year than just one or two dozen, we might get to find out if it would frighten prospective killers. But at present, say opponents, it doesn’t seem to.

As to community safety, execution does protect us from future offenses, but opponents point out that all 50 states have for those convicted of the worst offenses imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Moreover, the goal of protecting the innocent may actually apply even to a small number of those on death row: recent advances in DNA-related forensics have led to dozens of death row inmates being declared not guilty, and in some cases, even to the arrest of the actual killer. Since 1900, twenty-four persons who were executed were later found to be innocent , and some worry that the number might be much greater, though we will likely never know - in this life. This danger has led some states to suspend or seriously examine their death penalty processes, along with another factor we haven’t the time to explore beyond mere mention: the way Race, that of the killer and that of the victim, has influenced death row convictions. Suffice to say that if you want to be executed,

and if you are black, poor and have killed a white person, then you are well on your way compared with any other group. (The reasons for that are probably as complicated as we are.)

As to economics, because of the lengthy automatic appeals process now used, which typically drags on for many years, the costs of executing prisoners can themselves run into the hundreds of thousands – although as in China, this process could probably be streamlined and sped up to save time and money. My sense, though, is that increasingly the American public is hoping for thorough review of death sentences, rather than less. We also, I think, don’t need to be taking any human rights pointers from China.

Finally, although some have found closure with the end of the life of the person who killed their loved one, others have not. In the case of the Oklahoma City families, many favored McVeigh’s execution, while others spoke out, saying that one more parent was losing one more child, and that McVeigh’s was just one more death associated with that terrible day.

Clearly, the argument over capital punishment has gone on and will go on. Statistics have been offered to support both sides, and sometimes the case to be made for either side of the debate seems to get lost in favor of political posturing and electoral pandering. What can we say with confidence about this matter in the Church, we who do not always agree on the issue? On the front of your bulletin is a verse from Paul’s letter to his young apprentice, Timothy. Paul said, and our Bible records, that here, at least, “we have a saying worthy of trust, and deserving of full acceptance: that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). Paul goes on to say what he believes in the very bottom of his heart: he, Paul, was once the chief of sinners – a blasphemer, a persecutor of the Church, a participant in cold-blooded murder. Paul deserved death, he knew, for his many sins under the very Law he had sought to uphold. It was open and shut, his case closed - with a death sentence.

But Christ came into the world with the authority and the power to forgive sins – and not only the little ones of nice and decent people. As Paul saw it, he himself had been made an example of God’s extravagant forgiveness, as an example to all sinners, for all time, of the new way for those who trust in Christ for salvation from sin, from death, for eternal life.

Also on your bulletin cover, you’ll see Jesus intervening on behalf of someone rightfully convicted of a capital crime. He is asking those intent on executing her if the one who is godly, the one without sin, will cast the first stone. Later, on the Cross, Jesus will speak to another person who has rightly been sentenced to death. He does not rescue that man, but he does forgive his sins, and welcomes him into the rest given to those whose past is past, and whose future belongs to God.

But what of vengeance? Surely those who have committed murder deserve to die? As a pastor, I once sat at the side of a grieving widow in a court room, and stared right into the arrogant eyes of the man who had murdered her husband, my friend. I know, in the depth of my being, that at the moment I looked at this man on trial for his very life, I felt no compassion, and no mercy. Did I believe that he deserved to die? Yes. I did. And I still do. Of course I, too, am convicted, and deserve death. I would be under sentence, and so would be every one of us who falls short of the righteousness of God. We have, each of us, violated the spirit and sometimes the letter of the Law. We have looked on one another without compassion, without an awareness of the image of God in each of us, with murderous eyes, covetous eyes, idolatrous eyes. We are not without sin, fellow Virginians, we who would take up stones. And the wages of our sin is death.

But there’s a word on the wire, that even as we fall short, there is One who has stretched out his arms to catch us. While we were yet sinners, he died for us, was given the death penalty for us, becoming for all time not the avenger of blood, but the atonement of blood, that our sins might be forgiven. So great, so great is the mercy of God, that Jesus Christ has done this for us. Greater love knows no one than this – and because of it, no one – no matter how dark their deeds or heart – no one is beyond his saving grace.

That’s not just good news for 3,300 people on death row this morning. It’s also good news for each of us.

Thanks be to God.

[Note: the messages in this sermon series are my own; however, I draw upon Sections G and H of “The Social Principles” of The Discipline of the United Methodist Church, “The Death Penalty,” and “Criminal and Restorative Justice.” I am also indebted to Rev. Adam Hamilton’s book Confronting the Controversies: Biblical Perspectives on Tough Issues (Abingdon Press, 2005), pp. 57-73. In our Wednesday Bible study series we will make use of both these resources.]