(Scriptures: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
I Corinthians 3:10-23 Matthew 5:38-48)
You may remember the movie trilogy Lord of the Rings, based on the books by J R R Tolkien. Sauron, the evil one, forged the One Ring, which gave great power over others to anyone who wore it. However, with the power of the ring came corruption and domination by Sauron – it was Sauron’s “one ring to rule them all.” Those who hoped to use the powers of the ring for good, even those with the purest of intentions, even those who may have wanted to use the power of the ring to overthrow the evil Sauron, found themselves irresistibly drawn to acts of domination, violence, the ways of death. The only way to break the power of the ring, and ultimately to defeat Sauron, was to destroy the ring, to throw it into the fire so it could be melted and never be restored.
Tolkien’s stories – and JRR Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic – could almost be taken as allegories to illustrate Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, which form our Gospel reading for today. In our reading today, Jesus continues to draw a contrast between the former ways of doing things and the new life within the Realm or Reign of God. We have a series of contrasts between the way life has always been – “You have heard it said of old, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; you have heard it said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” These former ways are drawn from Torah – mostly, anyway; the “hate your enemy” part is not – but mostly from the Bible of Jesus' day. And they had a place: allowing the people eye for eye, tooth for tooth would restrain them from taking the eyes and teeth, not only of the offender, but of his whole family – after all, an eye for an eye is better than ten eyes for an eye, ten teeth for a tooth.”
But Jesus is calling his hearers to a standard of conduct that goes far beyond keeping a running tally of all the people who have offended against us, far beyond having some people on our “good” list and others on our “bad” list.
Researchers studying the mind have compared our brains to those of other animals. While human brains are much more developed than those of animals, there are some parts of our brains that are said to be very similar to those of lizards and other reptiles. This part of the brain is said to control much of our automatic or instinctual behavior – making sure we breathe and eat, but also controlling our ability to monitor our environment for potential danger, or to take advantage of something or someone else’s weaknesses, our impulse to fight or flee when we’re threatened, our desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain, our desire for safety and security – in a word, our survival instincts. Behavioral researchers sometimes say that people who behave in a selfish, angry way, as if they were being attacked or their survival was otherwise being threatened, that these people are thinking with their lizard brains. And those lizard brains, or survival instincts, are there for a reason. They’re really good at keeping us alive. The problem is, they’re really, really bad at telling us how to live peaceably with other people, how to share, how to cooperate, how to be friends, how to love, how to live in community. If we act as if our existence is a tooth and claw fight for survival with everyone around us, people will not line up to be friends with us. We’ll survive, but our life will be a lonely lifelong running battle with everyone and everything around us, until we moment we draw our final breath.
Much of the behavior that Jesus classifies under “you have heard it said” is behavior that appeals to our lizard brains. Examples: If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you back. You take my parking spot; I'll key your car. After all, we tell ourselves, that’s only fair. But, as it has also been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth produces nothing but eyeless, toothless people. The new life Christ offers can’t be built on that petty “tit for tat” sense of “fairness”, can’t be built on “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Jesus is asking his listeners to rise above their basic survival instincts, their lizard brains, to behave in ways that show that Christ is in us, that we are living the new life of those who are part of the Realm of God. It’s a life in which we act with love toward those who treat us with contempt. It’s a life in which we do not respond to evil with more evil, but, as Paul says, to overcome evil with good. We cannot use violent words or actions and then say that the ends justify the means, that we can use violent, hateful methods to coerce people into behaving as we wish. To build on the Lord of the Rings analogy with which I started, those who sought to use the power of the One Ring, even with the best of intentions, were inevitably corrupted and enslaved by the power of the ring. In the same way, when we act in death-dealing ways, even with what seem like noble intentions, both our actions and ourselves will be corrupted in the process. Or as the rather troubling saying goes, when we gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into us.
We can overcome hate, not be returning the hate, but by acting in love. Or as Edwin Markham wrote, ‘He drew a circle that shut me out – heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win; we drew a circle that took him in. In the same way, if someone compels us to go one mile with them, one response would be to kick and scream and drag our feet all the way. Another response would be to make the choice – a free choice now, not coerced, of going a second mile with them.
Overcoming hate with love is not a quick process. Nor is it free of pain. It can be quite costly. In an age that loves instant fixes, this is not one of them. It’s not like a sledgehammer smashing the walls of hatred and injustice. It's more like a bush sprouting near a wall, whose roots and branches eventually crack and break through the wall. In the same way, love can overcome hate, not by answering violence with violence, but by slowly and steadily sprouting and growing and undermining and ultimately overwhelming it.
When we hear Jesus say, "Love your enemies," we likely want to start making a list of exceptions: surely Jesus didn't mean (Muslims, gays, immigrants, fill in the blank....) But that is part of the “love your neighbor but hate your enemy” way of thinking that Jesus explicitly rejected and wanted his followers to get past. Any determinations about who is outside the circle of God’s love are God’s alone to make, emphatically not ours, and it is deeply, even profoundly sinful to exalt ourselves to the point where we attempt to take on prerogatives that are God’s alone – indeed, that’s the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount does not give us permission to hate anyone. We are to treat everyone as a beloved child of God. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan cast as a neighbor a despised foreigner who would have been considered an enemy by Jesus’ listeners. So even our enemy is our neighbor. Even those with whom we have profound and bitter disagreements, even those who have hurt us badly, even those we consider great sinners before the Almighty – we are to love and even to go before God in prayer for them. No exceptions.
What does it look like? We might remember Gandhi’s nonviolent leadership of India’s independence movement, or the black civil rights struggle in our own country. Those protesting the status quo were very effective at making their views known. But they did so non-violently, and they did so in a way intended to appeal to the best in others, even in those whose views were most steadfastly prejudiced. Now, this is not a soft, sappy, warm and fuzzy, romantic kind of love that would pretend that our enemies haven’t hurt us. Indeed, it’s not about us and our feelings at all. Rather, it’s about willing ourselves to demonstrate a durable love that keeps on going despite the hurt. These methods do not promise instant success, and our culture is much more enamored of solving problems quickly by shooting people and blowing things up. This kind of love is costly – of those who worked for India’s independence and of those who marched for civil rights in our country, many were injured; some were killed. But many have found that nonviolence witness, however costly, is the way to social change, not to demolish an enemy, but to overcome the enemy with good. Sometimes what seems like the long way ‘round may be the short way home.
A word to those in abusive relationships: it must be said that Jesus’ words have been misused by those who abuse spouses and partners and children, to keep those they abuse in their place. These are difficult, incredibly painful situations. Sometimes the sins of others have hurt us so badly that for our own survival, we need to leave the situation. I do not believe Jesus calls us as Christians to be punching bags for the amusement of others or doormats for abusive people to wipe their feet on. Even so – even though we may need to get ourselves out of these situations, may need to get some emotional or even physical distance from an abusive relationship or break it off for a time – maybe for a very long time – we should do so in a way that does not leave us seething for the rest of our lives in anger and bitterness toward that person. Even at a distance, we can pray for those who have hurt us, that God will heal the situation and change their hearts. There may be times when that’s all we can do – but these costly prayers can be powerful when brought before the throne of Grace. Where we cannot for our own health and safety be with an abusive family member, our prayers can go the distance.
Jesus concludes this section of his sermon by saying, “Be perfect.” (To which I'm apt to snark, "sure, I'll get right on it....") He’s not using the word in the sense of saying “don’t make any mistakes ever,” but rather, the sense of being complete, wholehearted, not doing things halfway. Luke’s version of the text – in Luke 6: 36 quotes Jesus as saying, “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” And in Jesus’ parable of the rich young ruler, after the young man had told Jesus that he had kept all the commandments, Jesus says, “If you would be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and come, follow me.” Jesus’ words “be perfect” are about being merciful, generous, abounding in love even for those who are utterly unloveable. It looks impossible – and from a human standpoint, it is impossible. We cannot do any of this work on our own. It is only by God’s grace that we are given the new life in Christ that enables us to live in accordance with the words of Jesus. And, yes, sometimes our lizard brains will take over, and we’ll behave in ways that are selfish, greedy, vengeful. Fortunately, God likewise does not take eye for eye, tooth for tooth, return sin with sin. We are called to take our sins to the Lord in prayer, to take our sin to the throne of grace and leave it there.
I’ll close with a poem by Kent Keith, called “Anyway,” which was adopted by Mother Teresa and put on the wall of her children’s home in Calcutta. Some of you have heard it before. For this morning, I’d like us to think of it as a dialogue between our self-centered, fearful survival oriented lizard brains and the Spirit of Christ within us.
"People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway."
Amen.
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Emanuel United Church of Christ welcomes you to worship with us at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings. We're on Fillmore St (
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Heart of the Matter
(Scriptures: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
I Corinthians 3:1-9 Matthew 5:21-37)
Are there any fans of the TV show “Law and Order” in the house this morning? Every episode begins with a standard introduction: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” This introduction pretty much sets the agenda for the show – for the first half of the show, more or less, we watch the police investigation, and for the second half, the criminal trial plays out. Both sections of the show have their twists and turns, but the unfolding of the trial can often be infuriating, as decisions about the inclusion or exclusion of evidence often turn on technicalities. Often both the district attorney and the defense lawyer know perfectly well that the defendant is guilty – at least of something – but the whether the jury gets to see various pieces of evidence depends on the manner in which the evidence was obtained, how a witness was interrogated, that sort of thing. These rules of evidence are in place for good reasons – we don’t want police breaking down the doors of random citizens at 4 in the morning, we don’t want false confessions extracted under torture or people locked away for life on false evidence planted by police. But lawyers on both sides of the trial are experts at exploiting loopholes in the wording of statutes or case law to include or exclude pieces of information from a trial.
This morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew is a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The ministry of Jesus represents the reign of God breaking into a world corrupted by sin. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is an extended description of life within the Kingdom or Reign of God. As Christians, we live in a time of transition, when God’s reign is already present, but not fully – we’re caught in the tension between God ruling now, but not yet fully. Because of this tension, Jesus’ description of life under the Reign of God will likely make us rather uneasy….we recognize the utter righteousness of what Jesus says, and yet it is far beyond our tendency to want to settle, not for what is best, but for what is “good enough to get by”.
Jesus teachings on murder and adultery begin with the basics, both for his original listeners and for us. The Ten Commandments, which most of us learned as children, include the words “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Even those with little or no religious training know that killing and adultery are wrong. But here’s where our inner lawyer wants to argue us into settling for obeying the letter of the law….for example, I don’t think anyone here has murdered anyone in cold blood, I hope not anyway, so we can claim obedience to that commandment against killing. Mission accomplished! But Jesus goes beyond the mere letter of the law, to speak of the intent of the law, the spirit of the law, we might say. Murder destroys our relationship with the one killed; once we’ve killed someone, it’s obviously not possible to relate to that person again. There’s no putting the pieces back together again, no turning back the clock. But Jesus says that anger and insults break relationship in the same way that murder does. Perhaps there’s some family member from whom we’re alienated, with whom we’ve stopped speaking, and if someone asks about that person, we respond, in words from the HBO series the Sopranos, “he’s dead to me.” That’s a bit of a cliché, but let’s let those words sink in…..“He’s dead….to me.” Any relationship I had with that person is dead, and as far as I’m concerned, the person himself may as well be six feet under. Anger and insults are the first steps on a slippery slope that, if followed to its conclusion, leads to murder. So for Jesus, staying in relationship, even with a difficult person, is key: “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go, be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” This is why our order of worship places the confession of sin and assurance of pardon so early in the service: before we can be open to truly hearing God’s word and responding with praise and offerings, we need to restore our relationship with God and neighbor by confessing our sin, not just in private to God, but publicly, as the gathered body of Christ.
In the same way, Jesus starts out with the familiar words of the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Again, our inner lawyer wants to get into technicalities about whether this act or that act constitutes sex or adultery, into technicalities about what the meaning of “is” is. But Jesus goes beyond the letter of the law, to the intent of preserving relationship. Jesus recognized that fantasizing about someone other than our spouse or partner, has the potential to go from thoughts to actions, to breaking up a family or household. Fantasies are about pictures, about surfaces, about what’s on the outside; they have nothing to do with really knowing another person, their hopes and dreams, what makes the other person tick. A lasting relationship can’t be built on the shifting sand of fantasy. And again, Jesus is all maintaining relationship. We might also remember that, in Jesus day, there was little safety net for an unmarried woman, so for a man to divorce his wife – and that’s generally the way things worked back then – would be to condemn her to poverty and misery for the remainder of her life. So Jesus’ prohibition of divorce was also about social justice for wives. He wouldn’t give his listeners – and won’t give us - an easy out to divorce a spouse just because, “the old grey mare just ain’t what she, or he, used to be, many long years ago….” We'd like to think that in the church, things would be different - but recent headlines show that church folk can be among the worst offenders.
In our Epistle reading, Paul saw the squabbles of the Corinthian church as a symptom that they were still spiritually immature, in need of milk and pablum rather than solid food. It’s about helping us mature in our faith, growing to the point where, in Paul’s words, we can stomach solid food rather than milk, meat rather than pablum. Our reading from Deuteronomy offers us a stark choice: life and prosperity, or death and adversity. God calls us to choose life, to speak and live in ways that are lifegiving, that build up rather than tear down, that keep us in relationship rather than separating us into warring camps.
The bottom line of Jesus’ sermon is the two great commandments: love of God, love of neighbor. It’s about preserving our relationships with God and neighbor, forthright relationships in which we say what we mean and mean what we say, where “yes” means “yes” and “no” means “no”, relationships transformed by the saving, lifegiving love of Jesus Christ. As Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote, “the holiest object presented to your senses, next to the blessed sacrament itself, is your neighbor.” And so Jesus’ sermon is, ultimately, about recognizing the sacred presence of God, not only within the walls of the church, but in our neighbor, our coworker, our children, our spouse – the sacred presence of God in each of us, a sacred presence not to be leered at or sneered at or dismissed. And this sacred presence of God is also within our neighbors, here in Bridesburg, and wherever God may lead us. May we honor God’s presence in all with whom we come in contact. Amen.
***********
Come join us for worship at 10 am at Emanuel UCC. We're on Fillmore St (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
I Corinthians 3:1-9 Matthew 5:21-37)
Are there any fans of the TV show “Law and Order” in the house this morning? Every episode begins with a standard introduction: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” This introduction pretty much sets the agenda for the show – for the first half of the show, more or less, we watch the police investigation, and for the second half, the criminal trial plays out. Both sections of the show have their twists and turns, but the unfolding of the trial can often be infuriating, as decisions about the inclusion or exclusion of evidence often turn on technicalities. Often both the district attorney and the defense lawyer know perfectly well that the defendant is guilty – at least of something – but the whether the jury gets to see various pieces of evidence depends on the manner in which the evidence was obtained, how a witness was interrogated, that sort of thing. These rules of evidence are in place for good reasons – we don’t want police breaking down the doors of random citizens at 4 in the morning, we don’t want false confessions extracted under torture or people locked away for life on false evidence planted by police. But lawyers on both sides of the trial are experts at exploiting loopholes in the wording of statutes or case law to include or exclude pieces of information from a trial.
This morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew is a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The ministry of Jesus represents the reign of God breaking into a world corrupted by sin. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is an extended description of life within the Kingdom or Reign of God. As Christians, we live in a time of transition, when God’s reign is already present, but not fully – we’re caught in the tension between God ruling now, but not yet fully. Because of this tension, Jesus’ description of life under the Reign of God will likely make us rather uneasy….we recognize the utter righteousness of what Jesus says, and yet it is far beyond our tendency to want to settle, not for what is best, but for what is “good enough to get by”.
Jesus teachings on murder and adultery begin with the basics, both for his original listeners and for us. The Ten Commandments, which most of us learned as children, include the words “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Even those with little or no religious training know that killing and adultery are wrong. But here’s where our inner lawyer wants to argue us into settling for obeying the letter of the law….for example, I don’t think anyone here has murdered anyone in cold blood, I hope not anyway, so we can claim obedience to that commandment against killing. Mission accomplished! But Jesus goes beyond the mere letter of the law, to speak of the intent of the law, the spirit of the law, we might say. Murder destroys our relationship with the one killed; once we’ve killed someone, it’s obviously not possible to relate to that person again. There’s no putting the pieces back together again, no turning back the clock. But Jesus says that anger and insults break relationship in the same way that murder does. Perhaps there’s some family member from whom we’re alienated, with whom we’ve stopped speaking, and if someone asks about that person, we respond, in words from the HBO series the Sopranos, “he’s dead to me.” That’s a bit of a cliché, but let’s let those words sink in…..“He’s dead….to me.” Any relationship I had with that person is dead, and as far as I’m concerned, the person himself may as well be six feet under. Anger and insults are the first steps on a slippery slope that, if followed to its conclusion, leads to murder. So for Jesus, staying in relationship, even with a difficult person, is key: “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go, be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” This is why our order of worship places the confession of sin and assurance of pardon so early in the service: before we can be open to truly hearing God’s word and responding with praise and offerings, we need to restore our relationship with God and neighbor by confessing our sin, not just in private to God, but publicly, as the gathered body of Christ.
In the same way, Jesus starts out with the familiar words of the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Again, our inner lawyer wants to get into technicalities about whether this act or that act constitutes sex or adultery, into technicalities about what the meaning of “is” is. But Jesus goes beyond the letter of the law, to the intent of preserving relationship. Jesus recognized that fantasizing about someone other than our spouse or partner, has the potential to go from thoughts to actions, to breaking up a family or household. Fantasies are about pictures, about surfaces, about what’s on the outside; they have nothing to do with really knowing another person, their hopes and dreams, what makes the other person tick. A lasting relationship can’t be built on the shifting sand of fantasy. And again, Jesus is all maintaining relationship. We might also remember that, in Jesus day, there was little safety net for an unmarried woman, so for a man to divorce his wife – and that’s generally the way things worked back then – would be to condemn her to poverty and misery for the remainder of her life. So Jesus’ prohibition of divorce was also about social justice for wives. He wouldn’t give his listeners – and won’t give us - an easy out to divorce a spouse just because, “the old grey mare just ain’t what she, or he, used to be, many long years ago….” We'd like to think that in the church, things would be different - but recent headlines show that church folk can be among the worst offenders.
In our Epistle reading, Paul saw the squabbles of the Corinthian church as a symptom that they were still spiritually immature, in need of milk and pablum rather than solid food. It’s about helping us mature in our faith, growing to the point where, in Paul’s words, we can stomach solid food rather than milk, meat rather than pablum. Our reading from Deuteronomy offers us a stark choice: life and prosperity, or death and adversity. God calls us to choose life, to speak and live in ways that are lifegiving, that build up rather than tear down, that keep us in relationship rather than separating us into warring camps.
The bottom line of Jesus’ sermon is the two great commandments: love of God, love of neighbor. It’s about preserving our relationships with God and neighbor, forthright relationships in which we say what we mean and mean what we say, where “yes” means “yes” and “no” means “no”, relationships transformed by the saving, lifegiving love of Jesus Christ. As Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote, “the holiest object presented to your senses, next to the blessed sacrament itself, is your neighbor.” And so Jesus’ sermon is, ultimately, about recognizing the sacred presence of God, not only within the walls of the church, but in our neighbor, our coworker, our children, our spouse – the sacred presence of God in each of us, a sacred presence not to be leered at or sneered at or dismissed. And this sacred presence of God is also within our neighbors, here in Bridesburg, and wherever God may lead us. May we honor God’s presence in all with whom we come in contact. Amen.
***********
Come join us for worship at 10 am at Emanuel UCC. We're on Fillmore St (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Blessed
(Scriptures: Micah 6:1-8 Isaiah 58:1-12
I Corinthians 1:18-31 Matthew 5:1-20)
One of my challenges growing up was my eyesight – as long as I can remember, I’ve been very nearsighted, blind as a bat nearsighted. When I was very young, anything more than a foot or so away from me was a blur. Peoples’ eyes and mouths looked like empty sockets. When I threw a ball or a frisbee, it went out of focus so quickly that I thought it just disappeared, vanished into another dimension. Of course, if someone threw the ball back, the ball would magically appear out of nowhere about a foot away from me, usually far too late for me to catch – in fact, the ball would usually bonk me on the head. Which may explain a few things about me. It wasn’t until I was in grade school and realized that the other kids saw things on the blackboard that I couldn’t see, that I got fitted with my first set of coke-bottle thick glasses. And all of a sudden, with glasses on, I could see so much more. Peoples’ faces were so much more pleasant to look at, with different eye colors and bright shiny teeth. I could see all the way from one end of the playground to the other. In a way, that was both a gift and a challenge – on one hand, it was like a whole new world opening up before my eyes; on the other, I no longer had my lousy eyesight as an excuse for why I couldn’t catch a ball.
This morning’s gospel reading begins a series of readings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today’s reading, of course, is from the Beatitudes, that familiar part of the sermon on the mount that begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and goes through a series of “blessed” statements – blessed are those who mourn, the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers, the pure of heart, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and so forth. It’s one of those passages of Scripture that, because it is familiar, is easy to overlook when we read it – “move along, nothing to see here”. Or we might smile a bit if we remember one of the Monty Python movies from a few years back, which depicted some folks seated at the edge of the crowd straining to hear Jesus’ words, as they thought they heard Jesus dispensing such pearls of spiritual wisdom as “Blessed are the cheesemakers, blessed are the Greek…..”
I would caution us to resist the temptation to dismiss the beatitudes as “old hat – been there, done that” – and to listen to them with fresh ears, as if hearing them for the first time. For they point us toward a new way of living as a disciple of Jesus, a new way of living that turns the wisdom of the world upside-down.
You don’t need me to tell you that the ways of the world don’t bear much resemblance to the way of life advocated in the Beatitudes. While the Beatitudes may resemble something we might tell small children – play nice, share your toys, don’t boast, you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why…. – by the time we’re through childhood, we realize the world has a very different set of beatitudes – “blessed are the strong, for they shall crush the weak; blessed are the merciless, for they shall get their way…..blessed are the litigious, for they shall win big settlements; blessed are the aggressive, for they will push their way to the front of the line – on television and radio, certainly, blessed are those who stir up public anger, fear, and distrust, for their audience will grow and multiply.” The wisdom of our society says to look out for number one - that once you’ve got your share of the pie, or maybe even more than your share, the rest of the world can go to perdition. In fact, the Beatitudes are a direct challenge to the ways of the world, a series of reversals of everything the world tells us.
If we think about what it would mean to live our lives by the Beatitudes, we may come to the conclusion that to be a follower of Jesus means to be a sap, to be a doormat. And we’d be wrong. Jesus has no need of doormats. In fact, the last thing Jesus wants is for us to cave in to the world’s way of doing things. Jesus wanted – and Jesus wants – his followers to model a different way of living from that of the world – to be counter-cultural. In the words of our Gospel today, we are to be salt and light, driving out the forces of decay and darkness. But we can’t be salt and light if our lives are indistinguishable from those of our neighbors.
It would be wonderful if the church could model the beatitudes, provide a demonstration of what a society based on the beatitudes would look like – but often there’s little to distinguish the church from the rest of society. The theological conviction that our salvation depends on God’s grace alone, that we cannot add anything to God’s grace or do anything to help earn our salvation – a true statement in itself - for all too many Christians is distorted into a license to ignore Jesus’ teachings on how we should live, Jesus’ call for our lives to contrast with those of our neighbors. For many, even salvation itself becomes a matter of selfishness – I’ve prayed a little prayer for forgiveness and have gotten my free pass into heaven – my ticket to paradise has been punched - and so I can abuse those around me all I want. It was to these that Gandhi was reported to have said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Both of our Old Testament readings – Micah 6 and Isaiah 58 – speak to this issue. In both of these readings, the chosen people are complaining that, though they’ve been so “faithful”, so “devoted” in their religious observance, God does not respond.
“Day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" God, can’t you see how religious, how very faithful we are? But God responds that their “religious devotion” is selfish: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.” Sounds like many “good Christians” who go to church on Sundays and make everyone around them miserable from Monday to Saturday. Micah tells what God wants: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” And Isaiah gives many vivid images of what God wants;
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”
As hard as I may try to tell myself that my relationship to Christ is a private matter, between Jesus and me, Micah and Isaiah tell me – tell us - that we cannot be in right relationship with God if our relationship with our neighbor is broken. God doesn’t want God’s people to live in compartments, loving God on Sunday and abusing neighbor Monday through Saturday. Rather, we are to live with integrity, being the same person every day of the week, letting our faith direct our actions every day, not just on Sunday. Love of God and love of neighbor – the two great commandments – are inseparable.
Our reading from I Corinthians reminds us the wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of the world. In a sense, because of the power of sin in the world, we see life as if in a funhouse mirror – our priorities distorted out of shape – sort of like the blurry, distorted world I saw before I got glasses. Passing things like power and possessions are magnified all out of proportion, and eternal qualities such as justice, mercy, and hospitality shrink to almost nothing. We’ve lived in that distorted, funhouse world all our lives. If we’ve based our lives on that funhouse mirror image that the world gives us, when Jesus holds up the Beatitudes as a mirror to show how twisted up our lives really are, and how much better they could be and should be, the picture Jesus shows us may look out of shape, ominous, threatening. But if we are one of those Paul describes in I Corinthians – one of those perhaps not well-schooled in the wisdom of the world, not a mover and shaker in society, not coming from a prominent family, not apt to be profiled on “Wealth TV” or “Lifestyles of the rich and famous” – we are those most open to hearing God’s call. The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.
The last verses of Matthew’s Gospel may give us pause: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." This sounds like an invitation to try to work our way into heaven, to earn our salvation, but that’s not where Jesus is coming from. The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, can only be a gift from God, not something of our own creation, the gift of God’s spirit described by Paul: "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him"— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” On the other end, when God gives us a gift, we’re expected to make use of it.
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” May we here at Emanuel not use our many challenges as an excuse to hide our light under a bushel, but boldly be a lampstand from which God’s light can shine in this beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg in which God has set us. Amen.
******************
Please join us on Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (just off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
I Corinthians 1:18-31 Matthew 5:1-20)
One of my challenges growing up was my eyesight – as long as I can remember, I’ve been very nearsighted, blind as a bat nearsighted. When I was very young, anything more than a foot or so away from me was a blur. Peoples’ eyes and mouths looked like empty sockets. When I threw a ball or a frisbee, it went out of focus so quickly that I thought it just disappeared, vanished into another dimension. Of course, if someone threw the ball back, the ball would magically appear out of nowhere about a foot away from me, usually far too late for me to catch – in fact, the ball would usually bonk me on the head. Which may explain a few things about me. It wasn’t until I was in grade school and realized that the other kids saw things on the blackboard that I couldn’t see, that I got fitted with my first set of coke-bottle thick glasses. And all of a sudden, with glasses on, I could see so much more. Peoples’ faces were so much more pleasant to look at, with different eye colors and bright shiny teeth. I could see all the way from one end of the playground to the other. In a way, that was both a gift and a challenge – on one hand, it was like a whole new world opening up before my eyes; on the other, I no longer had my lousy eyesight as an excuse for why I couldn’t catch a ball.
This morning’s gospel reading begins a series of readings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today’s reading, of course, is from the Beatitudes, that familiar part of the sermon on the mount that begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and goes through a series of “blessed” statements – blessed are those who mourn, the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers, the pure of heart, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and so forth. It’s one of those passages of Scripture that, because it is familiar, is easy to overlook when we read it – “move along, nothing to see here”. Or we might smile a bit if we remember one of the Monty Python movies from a few years back, which depicted some folks seated at the edge of the crowd straining to hear Jesus’ words, as they thought they heard Jesus dispensing such pearls of spiritual wisdom as “Blessed are the cheesemakers, blessed are the Greek…..”
I would caution us to resist the temptation to dismiss the beatitudes as “old hat – been there, done that” – and to listen to them with fresh ears, as if hearing them for the first time. For they point us toward a new way of living as a disciple of Jesus, a new way of living that turns the wisdom of the world upside-down.
You don’t need me to tell you that the ways of the world don’t bear much resemblance to the way of life advocated in the Beatitudes. While the Beatitudes may resemble something we might tell small children – play nice, share your toys, don’t boast, you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why…. – by the time we’re through childhood, we realize the world has a very different set of beatitudes – “blessed are the strong, for they shall crush the weak; blessed are the merciless, for they shall get their way…..blessed are the litigious, for they shall win big settlements; blessed are the aggressive, for they will push their way to the front of the line – on television and radio, certainly, blessed are those who stir up public anger, fear, and distrust, for their audience will grow and multiply.” The wisdom of our society says to look out for number one - that once you’ve got your share of the pie, or maybe even more than your share, the rest of the world can go to perdition. In fact, the Beatitudes are a direct challenge to the ways of the world, a series of reversals of everything the world tells us.
If we think about what it would mean to live our lives by the Beatitudes, we may come to the conclusion that to be a follower of Jesus means to be a sap, to be a doormat. And we’d be wrong. Jesus has no need of doormats. In fact, the last thing Jesus wants is for us to cave in to the world’s way of doing things. Jesus wanted – and Jesus wants – his followers to model a different way of living from that of the world – to be counter-cultural. In the words of our Gospel today, we are to be salt and light, driving out the forces of decay and darkness. But we can’t be salt and light if our lives are indistinguishable from those of our neighbors.
It would be wonderful if the church could model the beatitudes, provide a demonstration of what a society based on the beatitudes would look like – but often there’s little to distinguish the church from the rest of society. The theological conviction that our salvation depends on God’s grace alone, that we cannot add anything to God’s grace or do anything to help earn our salvation – a true statement in itself - for all too many Christians is distorted into a license to ignore Jesus’ teachings on how we should live, Jesus’ call for our lives to contrast with those of our neighbors. For many, even salvation itself becomes a matter of selfishness – I’ve prayed a little prayer for forgiveness and have gotten my free pass into heaven – my ticket to paradise has been punched - and so I can abuse those around me all I want. It was to these that Gandhi was reported to have said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Both of our Old Testament readings – Micah 6 and Isaiah 58 – speak to this issue. In both of these readings, the chosen people are complaining that, though they’ve been so “faithful”, so “devoted” in their religious observance, God does not respond.
“Day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" God, can’t you see how religious, how very faithful we are? But God responds that their “religious devotion” is selfish: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.” Sounds like many “good Christians” who go to church on Sundays and make everyone around them miserable from Monday to Saturday. Micah tells what God wants: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” And Isaiah gives many vivid images of what God wants;
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”
As hard as I may try to tell myself that my relationship to Christ is a private matter, between Jesus and me, Micah and Isaiah tell me – tell us - that we cannot be in right relationship with God if our relationship with our neighbor is broken. God doesn’t want God’s people to live in compartments, loving God on Sunday and abusing neighbor Monday through Saturday. Rather, we are to live with integrity, being the same person every day of the week, letting our faith direct our actions every day, not just on Sunday. Love of God and love of neighbor – the two great commandments – are inseparable.
Our reading from I Corinthians reminds us the wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of the world. In a sense, because of the power of sin in the world, we see life as if in a funhouse mirror – our priorities distorted out of shape – sort of like the blurry, distorted world I saw before I got glasses. Passing things like power and possessions are magnified all out of proportion, and eternal qualities such as justice, mercy, and hospitality shrink to almost nothing. We’ve lived in that distorted, funhouse world all our lives. If we’ve based our lives on that funhouse mirror image that the world gives us, when Jesus holds up the Beatitudes as a mirror to show how twisted up our lives really are, and how much better they could be and should be, the picture Jesus shows us may look out of shape, ominous, threatening. But if we are one of those Paul describes in I Corinthians – one of those perhaps not well-schooled in the wisdom of the world, not a mover and shaker in society, not coming from a prominent family, not apt to be profiled on “Wealth TV” or “Lifestyles of the rich and famous” – we are those most open to hearing God’s call. The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.
The last verses of Matthew’s Gospel may give us pause: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." This sounds like an invitation to try to work our way into heaven, to earn our salvation, but that’s not where Jesus is coming from. The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, can only be a gift from God, not something of our own creation, the gift of God’s spirit described by Paul: "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him"— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” On the other end, when God gives us a gift, we’re expected to make use of it.
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” May we here at Emanuel not use our many challenges as an excuse to hide our light under a bushel, but boldly be a lampstand from which God’s light can shine in this beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg in which God has set us. Amen.
******************
Please join us on Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (just off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
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