No Limits

a Sermon for Proper 19A
Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Where we've been
Ten years ago today, about this time, 4 hijacked airplanes were used as projectile missiles to cause dramatic and traumatic devastation. Three of them reached their targets and one was sent into the countryside. Many, including those aiding the victims of violence, died. Nearly 3,000 in all.

One of our favorite ways to pay homage to this tragedy is to play the “where were you” game. At approximately 10:50, we were no doubt still scrambling for information; still looking to make sense out of what seemed so senseless. I was working in a bookstore. One of our managers sat all morning in his office, coming out onto the book floor to give us updates. I remember the confusion, the fear, the corporate anxiety. We didn’t know anything.

So what did we do? We responded. Actually, we went hunting—to use former President Bush’s language. We went hunting with guns and dogs. We invaded two countries, rounded up and imprisoned thousands. Death tolls at the conservative end count well more than 100,000 Iraqis killed in the last decade.

We changed the way we treat each other, becoming a culture of suspicion. We changed our expectations for air travel, of what we can expect of one another, what we will consent to, even what we expect will bring us security. 

All of this, the past 10 years has been motivated by that moment, that fear, and those accusations. Those suspicions, that willingness to enter into the human desire for revenge.

It's about forgiveness
If you doubt the place of providence—the place of God’s interaction with us—then look at our readings. Look at our gospel. A gospel about forgiveness and torture on this auspicious anniversary. Perfect isn’t it? Notice that Peter’s question of Jesus that kicks off this gospel passage isn’t truly elementary. He isn’t asking whether or not to forgive a transgression—a personal transgression no less—but something more. For those new to faith, this is the starting place. His teaching has gone out elsewhere in this way:

If I’m hurt by someone, do I forgive them or kick them out? Do I retaliate? 

Jesus says

forgive. 

The next question becomes more specific:

Who must I forgive? 

And Jesus elaborates:

Forgive. Not just your friends, but your enemies also. 

So now we get to that graduate level question. The one that is for all followers that get that this is all about forgiveness; that the entire deal of following Christ, of loving God is about forgiveness. Peter asks

"Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" 

Peter’s question may as well be

When is enough enough? Where do we draw the line?

Jesus’s response, a reference to Lamech in Genesis (4:23-24) is to say

Draw it out here—where you will never reach it.

Then he tells Peter this parable about a slave who owes a debt that is impossible to pay off. The slave, looking for some small mercy, hopes to be given an opportunity to give it a shot anyway. Instead, the debt is completely forgiven. Now the slave turns around and abuses another slave indebted to him. The first slave locks him away with no hope of repaying his debt.

At this point, the other slaves sell the first slave out to the lord who turns around and punishes that slave who was once shown incredible mercy, torturing him and putting that impossible debt back onto him.

Forgiveness is not just about GOD.
This gospel is really troubling because Jesus even connects the dots at the end saying

This is what God will do to all of you if you don’t forgive.

Full stop.  Forgive, period.

Remember that this parable deals with Peter’s question: what are the limits of our forgiveness? And Jesus tells him there aren’t any. This whole deal is about forgiveness because the world around us wants retaliation and revenge. Jesus says to forgive without limits.

 Many Christians can connect these dots easily: the lord in the parable forgives an unpayable debt, so the Great Mystery we call God forgives us of our indebtedness through sin. I’m pretty cool with that reading, except Jesus is much more concerned with what we do with that forgiveness. That we don’t indebt others, that we forgive, and that our forgiveness knows no limits. It isn’t just about being forgiven, but also forgiving others. Jesus knows this is hard. He knows that his hearers were raised in a world of retaliation and evil. And He knows that many will hate to hear this because the human mind lusts after revenge.

And yet, the heart loves love.

This message of forgiveness isn’t about a program like paying it forward or random acts of kindness, though these methods are good. It is about recalibrating our hearts to forgiveness. Rejecting our brains’ meticulous revenge fantasies and focusing on our broad, forgiving hearts.

Sharing forgiveness
So here we are on September 11, 2011, ten years later, and we have a gospel message of forgiveness. I’m reminded of the hymn:

There's a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty. 

We’re being called to this radical forgiveness like a conviction. We haven’t been in a forgiving mood. As a country, we haven’t had one day in 10 years in which our operating mood was forgiveness. But anniversaries give us the chance to get rid of all that. To exercise old demons; to let go of our own blood lust and forgive from our hearts.

 Don’t we feel it? That corporate and personal need to forgive? Don’t we feel the need to seek forgiveness? To ask God to forgive us? Hasn’t the last 10 years been Hell? The anger, the infighting, the bitterness. That is the stuff of Hell. But we can be forgiven. If we ask for it, God will forgive us.

 Right now, in this assembly, we can ask God and our neighbors for forgiveness. So are we up to it? We can forgive and be forgiven. We can wipe the slate clean and begin to heal this broken world with our no limits forgiveness.

So in a moment we will pray, confess, and receive God’s absolution. And as we do so, I ask that we offer up all the grudges and evil we carry and ask for our own forgiveness—that the grace of God will make it possible for us to forgive—so that when we share the peace, we do so with the wideness of God’s mercy. We’ll prepare the table eat together as one. Then we will throw open the doors to love everyone and let our forgiveness pour out from this place.

The well of vibrant life

a Sermon for Lent 3A
Text: John 4:5-42

 
Jesus walks
Through the eyes of others, we see our Lord walking
on water, through deserts, in our minds.
We focus on photographs left to time
by those that saw something in Him, something different,
maybe even dangerous. But compelling.
In this picture, a woman stands before Him,
and he sits, relaxed and confident and
when they speak, you can see the magic flowing
between their lips, more intimate than a kiss,
more close than their bodies clutched together.
What we see is love. A dangerous love.

This talk is different. It is a linguistic dance between Jesus and this Samaritan woman. It begins with her self-consciousness; she knows that her people are outcasts and aren’t the right kind of Jews. That they are lesser. But Jesus doesn’t treat her that way. He treats her differently: not like a princess: elevated: but as an equal and participant. That they are the same. And in the end, she is changed. Remember last week’s reading about Nicodemus? Jesus asks if he is willing to undergo a life-long transformation: of being re-created. No. This woman gets the same question and she says yes.

Living Waters
When Jesus says that this living water
gushes up to eternal life, we scratch our heads,
confused: is He talking about heaven?
We focus on the physicality of the water
and permanence of time; but just as John invites us
to see Jesus as offering constant transformation
he offers this woman eternal life—a life

a now
a being
a way

a vibrant life that radiates love
that exemplifies Jesus like a mirror
reflecting life and love onto everything.

The conversation that Jesus and the woman have starts out talking about water, H2O and turns metaphorical, poetic. We often forget that John isn’t writing a biography, but a poetic form that we might today call creative nonfiction. Jesus sees in this well the opportunity to reveal a message about love and about being re-created.

Jacob’s Well
Jacob came across a well with sheep around it.
And a man was there, waiting for more to arrive,
when Rachel comes with her sheep. He refuses
to move the stone from the well, for not all
of the sheep have come. Jacob shoves the rock
so that these sheep may drink now.
This well becomes the people’s well.

Jesus uses Jacob’s well to speak about the power of the Living Water and Eternal Life—this vibrant life of being re-created. That Jesus, like Jacob shoves the rock away. Jesus brings that vibrant spirit to us immediately—we don’t have to wait for everybody to get there. And when this woman hears this, she runs into town to tell everybody.

The Disciples
They don’t get it.
They never do.
Following their master
like puppies, devoted,
always hungry, and
marking their territory.

Jesus gives them this living picture,
our photograph of a woman
transformed into vibrant life
and he tells them
`One sows and another reaps.'
Because she is off to sow and
the bountiful harvest will need reapers.

The woman is filled with the Spirit, and yet the disciples still aren’t sure of their jobs—their place in the story. Jesus has to put the tools in their hands and say “Look! The people will be here soon! Get ready to help them find the vibrant life of being re-created.”

Being Re-Created
I know I’m wrong from time to time.
I know I don’t live the life I should
or follow Jesus’s teachings closely enough
and I certainly don’t pray enough,
so why am I afraid of being re-created?
Why do I fear the vibrant life Jesus promises all of us?
Is it because he promises it to us all?
It certainly isn’t because I think that highly of myself
and this life. But I am. Being re-created means
things have to change and I have to change.
The Pious Young Man was asked to change
and he ran away. Is that what I’m doing?

This is a gospel of transformation. The woman goes from being a nobody and becomes a catalyst for the Kingdom. She isn’t convinced by Jesus’s arguments, nor is she magically given confidence because Jesus is a wizard or a shaman. She is filled with the Spirit because she realizes that she needs it. She realizes that her previous life was not a vibrant life and she was transformed. And was moved to bring others to the well to drink the Living Water offered not just by Jesus, but by his disciples. As Jesus says, we don’t have to drink from His well again—but we must be ready to act, to reap what others sow. May we be so ready and so moved.

Trust in GOD

a Sermon for Lent 1A
Text: Matthew 4:1-11


Matthew 4:1-11

After Jesus was baptized, he was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

But he answered, "It is written,
'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."

Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

This morning we have a different sort of gospel. We get awfully used to coming in to church for a lesson or a teaching from Jesus. A parable or story that can get us to see something in ourselves or the world that we couldn’t see or give us an action that we could do that week. Then we go home and work on it, only to find ourselves coming to church the next week, hoping for a new teaching. It’s a little like shampoo: lather, rinse, repeat. Each week we show up, get our teaching, and go home.

This one is different. The temptation isn’t a teaching—not like that anyway.

The Temptation
Jesus isn’t tempted with chocolate cake or ice cream: he isn’t being pulled to do something simple and relatively harmless. The temptations are all about power: naked power. The tempter gives him three different options:

1. To make a miracle
2. Test GOD’s power
3. Take control of the world

And Jesus rejects all of it. He says no because his is a way without power; a way of humility. We know this because of what comes after this. He calls some humble people to be his disciples. Remember, these aren’t star students, but simple people. Then he climes a mountain with them and preaches a sermon about humility: the Sermon on the Mount.

Our Temptation
It’s a good thing that we weren’t tempted this way. Because we love power. Our real temptation isn’t chocolate cake, either; it’s power. I know it isn’t en vogue to want power, and hasn’t been since the 1980s. So let’s call it what we normally do: influence and control.

Let’s be honest, we love having the ear of the powerful, being sought for advice, or being seen as someone who is smart or wise. We love being praised for our beauty or grace, because we know that it gets us something. We want control over all the people out there on the road: the people who drive too slow and the ones that drive too fast. We know better than all of those people, don’t we? We just want everything to go our way. We love power.

And we know this about ourselves. We know that this is part of who we are—that it is part of the human condition. We even have an old adage about it: “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Jesus Rejects Power
And yet Jesus rejects the power, not with willpower, but with trust in GOD. Jesus doesn’t overcome temptation; he rejects it right out. Let’s look at how the interaction plays out:
Satan:

I know you are hungry. You’ve been out here for 40 days, and you must be starving. I get the feeling that you are waiting for GOD. You are, aren’t you? But it is taking him so very long to feed you. I know you Jesus. I know who you really are. I know that you could just make some food. So just feed yourself. What do you say?

And when Jesus doesn’t go along with it…

OK, I hear you. But I’ve read Scripture too, and I know that GOD has promised to protect you. See, I know who you are to become, and GOD won’t jeopardize that, so why don’t you let GOD protect you. You know that he will; you trust him don’t you?

And when Jesus refuses him again…

Well, Jesus, why should you wait for what GOD has promised? If He is so powerful, why doesn’t he give it to you. I can give it all to you right now! All this can be yours! Even Rome! I know how they hurt your friends. You can fix that. You can make them do what you want today! You can end their suffering. Just bow before me and I can make it happen.

See, Jesus isn’t just rejecting power for humility, he is rejecting the Tempter for what he is asking him to do: to reject GOD. And Jesus won’t have anything to do with that. That is why it doesn’t seem like Jesus is really even tempted by any of this. Not because he is stronger than humans or that he is divinely perfect or anything, but because if Jesus were tempted, it would mean that he could be someone that does reject GOD. And Jesus isn’t about to do that; he doesn't want that. He knows that he is nothing without GOD. That the power all comes from GOD and that it isn’t something for him to possess. Therefore, if he were to engage the Tempter, he would be giving up on his own fundamental principle—that you never reject GOD —under any circumstance.

So we see how Jesus does it: he doesn’t argue with the Tempter, or even use his own words. He simply says “for it is written” and then quotes Deuteronomy: the Word of GOD. This isn’t prooftexting or using Scripture to make your point: this is Jesus demonstrating to the Tempter, that it is GOD that speaks for Jesus, that it is GOD that is provider and liberator, not the other way around.

This image is powerful for us. Take a minute to visualize it with me. There are two men in this Gospel, right? Picture them for a moment:

• One smells of tea tree oil, has a $200 haircut, $600 sunglasses, and a $1000 watch. He is wearing a tailored suit, and his shoes are as shiny as his teeth. He is absolutely gorgeous. That is the devil.
• One just smells. His hair is long and scraggely, matted together. His clothes haven't been changed in 6 weeks, and he is covered in sand and dust. He is absolutely disgusting. That is Jesus.

Trust in GOD
We are given the opportunity in this season of Lent to reject the temptation of power through our own trust in GOD. That GOD is the origin of our sustenance and the bringer of all good things.

For us, Lent isn’t a time to torture ourselves or make ourselves miserable or put ourselves in a position to feel temptation just so we can avoid it. It isn’t a time of misery in which we simply deprive ourselves of a little chocolate cake to prove something to somebody that might want us to be deprived. It is a time to trust GOD, and help bring others to trust GOD.

This is the beauty of our faith—that GOD trusts us enough to trust GOD.

It is remarkable that GOD would trust us! To trust us because of all of our faults and all of our ambitions. But GOD trusts us to trust GOD. And what joy that can bring, even in Lent. That is why I wish each of us, without the least sarcasm, to have a truly happy Lent.

No Retaliation

a Sermon for Epiphany 7A
Text: Matthew 5:38-48

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you give us the tools of great change and the opportunity to make the choice. Help us to see your ways for us as the right choice. Amen.

Retaliation and escalation
Jesus begins the gospel with a familiar phrase: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'” Now, I know that you know where this comes from and what it is about; I am just reminding you. To do that, we’ll have to go back thousands of years, long before Jesus and even the Torah (from where this phrase comes). Long before all of this, there was a different law of the land. A law, unwritten, but understood universally:

If you do something to me, I do something to you.

It is as simple as that. OK, not just as simple as that, because we didn’t just retaliate, we had to do more: we had to teach them a lesson. They had to know that they shouldn’t have done it, and won’t do it again. So if they hit you, you maimed them.

If you do something to me, I do something bigger to you.

Sometimes that lesson wasn’t actually for them, but for other people. So if someone stole your goat from you, you would kill them. You had to show what happens when someone messes with you. If they insulted your wife, you killed them, and their wife. If they went after your kids, you killed them, their wife, and their kids: you wiped the whole family from the face of the earth. That was just what you did.

Besides, they were clearly evil people, anyway.

You can see how this thinking has persisted throughout history. Look at mafia movies:

“Eh! He disrespected me, so I shot him in the head!”

And every week (I guarantee it) there is at least one movie at the theater that encourages over-retaliation. At least one movie that glorifies vengeance. The first one that came to my mind was from a few years ago: Taken with Liam Neeson; a movie in which a man’s daughter is kidnapped, and he proceeds to kill all the people involved in the kidnapping. And we want him to! We watch him get his bloody vengeance and we don’t want to see him show any mercy! He has a movie out this week, Unknown, which appears to have a similar vengeance plot.

Enshrining Evil
There seems to be something in us: something that wants to seek vengeance, to retaliate violently. Something that is in us at a truly base level. Which is why it was so remarkable that GOD would instruct the people with this teaching: “An eye for an eye,” because he tells them not to over-retaliate, to not teach people lessons. If someone steals your goat, you steal it back—you don’t burn his house down or anything else.

But, Jesus recognizes the problem: it actually enshrines violence. It makes retaliation OK, and He isn’t OK with that. Because we love vengeance, so we seek out the most “appropriate” retaliations. If someone messes with us a certain way, we desire to mess with them back—to hurt them in the very way they hurt us.

In the immediately preceding passage, Jesus makes a similar claim about oaths. He says that when you swear an oath, when you pinkie-swear with someone, you are saying that you will be honest and not steal or you will do what you say you will do. At the same time, you also communicate that the rest of the time, you don’t have to be honest. You communicate that it is OK to lie and cheat and steal all the rest of the time. So don’t swear any oath. GOD sees you—even inside your head—and knows when you lie or cheat or steal, so be a person who never lies and cheats and steals and you will never need an oath.

Oaths enshrine evil just as “an eye for an eye” enshrines violence.

Jesus’s way: The Love Revolution
Jesus offers us a different way. But for some reason, we don’t understand it. It has to do with our reptilian brains—the oldest part of our brain—that is hardwired with two options in response to adversity: fight or flight. Either we retaliate, or we run away. This is also the way of the world. The part we’ve inherited from thousands of years ago that yearns for violence. The part that says that the most preferable option is to fight back. That good people fight and cowards run away.

So when we hear Jesus say “But I say to you Do not resist an evildoer,” we hear that as cowardly—as encouraging us to run away. We have to make it fit in that ancient paradigm: it is either one or the other: we have two square pegs and two square holes. And the peg Jesus hands us is round.

To make sense of this, Jesus gives us these three, very visual examples of this third way; and we might mistake them because they are so different from the world:

In the first he says, If somebody hits you on the cheek, offer him the other. Look at this: this is what turning your cheek looks like. You are giving them another shot. That is not running away and that is not retaliating.

Then he says, If somebody sues you for your coat, give them your cloak as well. Imagine the courtroom scene. You are the defendant and the charges are being read and you stand up, and start taking your clothes off. You just take them all off, including your shoes, and you ball them up and walk them to the other desk and you hand them over. Then you walk back and sit down. That is not running away and that is not retaliating.

The third one is awesome—but we screw it up so badly. We misunderstand it. Jesus says, If someone forces you to walk a mile, walk a second one. We hear that phrase, go the extra mile as if it were the ultimate do-gooderism. Good job! You did a little extra! That Protestant Work Ethic thing really suits you! But here is what Jesus is really saying. A Roman soldier would come across a Jewish peasant force him to carry something like 120 pounds of gear. And if the peasant valued his life, he would do it. Now, the image hits home at the important juncture at the end of that mile. Imagine the soldier, chuckling with his buddies about this guy carrying his stuff. He turns to the peasant and says:

“We’re here. I’ll take my stuff back.”

And the peasant responds:

“Actually, I want to keep walking. I’m good.”

This isn’t weak-kneed flubberings and it isn’t work a little harder, either. It is a different kind of option.

Jesus wants us to get that this is a love revolution.

We’ve been reading The Secret Message of Jesus each Sunday, and last week we covered the idea that violent revolution is not revolutionary. That overthrowing a violent regime with a violent revolution is just perpetuating a cycle of violence: it is replacing violence with violence. And more, it enshrines a cycle of violence. Our own revolution enshrined a culture of violence for us. It told us that it is acceptable and there are times to fight fire with fire.

That is the way of the world. Not the way of Jesus.

Jesus encourages us to fight fire with water. To violence, love is the water.

It Begins Here
This whole arc, Matthew 5, the first third of the Sermon on the Mount builds from the Beatitudes to this moment. We learn that we are to be and live a certain way, not act a certain way. We are to love. When Jesus says to love your enemies, I think he really intends to say that when we have a love revolution, there are no enemies. Everyone gets loved.

In the last year, we’ve seen bitterness and anger at St. Paul’s.
That is the way of the world, not the way of Jesus.
Anonymous letters, backbiting, potshots from the peanut gallery, back room conversations about people and their families.
That is the way of the world, not the way of Jesus.
People have even used our youth as weapons.
That is the way of the world, not the way of Jesus.

This ends today.

When St. Paul’s is on track, it is the epicenter of the love revolution. We might track evil in, like mud on our shoes. Just tap your shoe, and knock it off. This is a new place, not of this world. Something new.

Here and now—we love. We are a new creation built on love.

Destroying Dogma

a Sermon for Epiphany 5A
Text: Matthew 5:13-20

GOD of Hope and Wonder, we think we’re doing your will when we create an ethical framework for our lives, for our church, and for our society. Help us to overcome our hubris . Amen.

Liberty and Freedom
This morning’s collect used two words we love deeply: liberty and freedom. There’s something about those words, isn’t there? Liberty. Freedom. Ooh! It’s in our bones—our ethnic heritage, our social groupings, our society at-large. It’s everywhere. Maybe our brains like liberty and hearts like freedom. It does something to us. We’re seeing a living example right now in Egypt and Tunisia. We can only hope and pray that they continue to seek liberty and freedom, and avoid the comfort of authoritarianism.

But the point is that we love these words: liberty and freedom. Let’s say them together. Out loud. If you are reading this in a Barnes & Noble Café, just say it out loud, anyway! Liberty. Freedom. Liberty! Freedom! Liberty!!! Freedom!!!!

Ah! Don’t you feel better?

Our gospel, on the other hand, uses a word that doesn’t excite us the same way: Law. Well, maybe the lawyers in the room (and the Pharisees) are allowed to get excited about the word. It is their vocation, after all.

Law.

It just doesn’t have the same feel, does it? Freedom is, well, freeing…while Law feels more restrictive. In fact, we often talk about it as the opposite of freedom and liberty, but we know, deep-down, that it is essential to liberty. Our country was founded on laws; laws that enshrined and created freedom. And yet, we feel restricted by them anyway.

This gospel has Jesus answer an unspoken question about the Law: “Jesus, why do you hate it?” A more charitable and authentic question might be better phrased “Jesus, why do you keep breaking the Law? Aren’t you supposed to uphold it?” Jesus’s response is actually quite surprising. He says “I don’t hate it: I love it! I love every letter of it.”

The Law
This is an important statement because we need to step back from our 21st Century American understanding of the word "law". The Hebrew word we translate as The Law is Torah. We know this word, because it is also the name of the first five books of the Hebrew Scripture. When Jesus or the Pharisees talk about The Law, they aren’t simply talking about a legal code established centuries earlier, they are talking about these books of the Bible. They are speaking about the story of GOD’s relationship with humanity. Some Hebrew scholars encourage us to speak not of TL: The Law, but of The Way. Sound familiar?

And what Jesus seems to be dealing with are two groupings or understandings of ethical behavior:

1. Torah: The overarching sense of community and connectedness and relationship with GOD. This means the truths found in Scripture, the story, relationship, and agreed upon authority.
2. Pharisaic Law: The ethical framework that expounds on Torah. This is about relating the truth of Torah to the world and present conditions.

• Example: The Torah speaks of keeping the Sabbath day and making it Holy.
• The Pharisees began listing all of the types of things that constituted work on the Sabbath:

The Pharisees know that Jim Bob is kind of an idiot, so they believe he needs things spelled out for him. So they take the teaching and they say we need to make sure Jim Bob doesn’t do anything like “work” on the Sabbath. It talks about not going into the field, but Jim Bob makes stuff, so he shouldn't do that. He also shouldn’t cook or clean or go shopping or sell stuff or…on and on.

Jesus goes and stomps all over the Pharisaic Law, essentially saying “That isn’t Torah, that’s man’s law.”

We have a similar structure today, in the church:

1. Doctrine: The overarching law is called doctrine: This is made up of scriptural-based faith statements and mutually agreed principals.
2. Dogma: The ethical framework that is based on doctrine is called dogma. These are the localized ethics created by humans.

• Example: One doctrine is that Jesus was a human for a prescribed time in history.
• One dogma is the Roman Catholic’s ruling against the use of birth control.

We see Jesus trample on the dogmas of his day, and I think, would encourage us to do the same. But the point isn’t to be obstinate: but to direct our attention to the doctrine, The Law, The Way, Torah.

The Point
By now, you are no doubt wondering what the point is.

You are all very smart and astutely noticed that this is still Matthew 5, and comes immediately after the Beatitudes; that this is still the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Now notice that Jesus is talking about “entering the Kingdom of Heaven” in last verse. This is the fourth mentioning of the Kingdom of Heaven in just 20 verses. Last week we learned that the poor of spirit and the persecuted will possess the kingdom: “Blessed are the poor of spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” And we also learned that the Kingdom is in the present—that the Children of God are blessed peacemakers.

The reason Jesus doesn’t create an ethical framework or subset of laws like the Pharisees, or give us a laundry list of dogma to obey is because we are called to live and be a certain way, not behave a certain way. We are called to love generously and indiscriminately, not prescribe who gets love. We are called to single out who needs our love most and give it to them instead of punishing them further. We are called to live in the Kingdom now, forgiving each other, loving each other.

Jesus names the least in the kingdom: the scribes and the Pharisees. When we obsess about each other's behavior—we are the least. When we demand adherence to laws we’ve made—we are the least. When we hold grudges and insult one another in the name of Jesus—we are the least in the Kingdom.

I don’t know about you, but I refuse to strive for least.

Blessed

a Sermon for Epiphany 4A
Text: Matthew 5:1-12

[Note: the original sermon was preached from sparse notes. What follows is a fleshing out of those notes as best as I can.]

GOD of Hope and Wonder, you gave us Jesus as Messiah and Lord. Open our hearts to love as he loves, our imaginations to dream as he dreams, and our eyes to see the world as he sees it. Amen.

The first five words of the gospel give us an interesting way to see this very familiar gospel of the Beatitudes:

“When Jesus saw the crowds.”

We don’t know what he sees, or what he makes of it, but this symbol is very powerful; Jesus saw them.

Who we are not talking about
Jesus gives us a pretty good description throughout each of the gospels of the people to whom we are to minister. In many places, it is the outsider, such as…

1. People from another tribe—like the Samaritans,
2. Traitors to the tribe—tax collectors were seen as traitors because they were Jews that taxed other Jews on behalf of Rome, and of course,
3. The ritually impure within the tribe—prostitutes and other “sinners” whose very livelihood kept them from being considered one of the “normal” people.

In other places we get a glimpse of those that fall through the cracks: the destitute and the desperate—the poor, the sick, the disabled.

Through all of these stories of Jesus talking to, eating with, advocating for these groups, we start to harmonize them and see any of Jesus’s teachings about others as being about this faceless group of outsiders, condemned by Jewish society. We make the relevant translation to our own world and see the homeless we’ve met or the people we’ve helped in the words of the gospel. But today, let’s not do that. These might be the people Jesus really is talking about in this gospel, but for today, let’s not think about them. Let’s say that this has nothing to do with others. In fact, this has to do with us.


9 that are blessed
The way the Beatitudes are set up is as nine blessings. The first is telling: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. We often jump to the other with this one. We think of the depressed, or the doubter, or the one unhappy in church. If we were Evangelicals, we call these “the unchurched.” Instead, let’s see this as people that look out the window and see the trouble in the world. People that are hurt by the pain they see through that window, and are made sad by destruction and evil.

The next is “Blessed are those who mourn”. This isn’t simply widows, but all of those who grieve what they or others have lost: all people that know loss and are pained by what is gone.

“Blessed are the meek” isn’t just talking about the weak or the timid, but all those who refuse to watch one more person get hurt or abused—and we also refuse to be the one who does it.

These first three are more or less passive, or receptive. What is seen affects their outlook and begins to affect their action. The next three are increasingly active.

The fourth, and I love the way this is described, is “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”. Think about those descriptors: how do we feel hunger, but as the very seizing of our stomachs—a pain that rises from our bellies. Thirst is similar: our throats get itchy and irritated, our tongues and mouths get dry and scratchy; our entire neck and heads scream out for relief. For those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, it is the very body that feels and reflects the pain of injustice—compelling us to relieve that pain.

The fifth, “Blessed are the merciful” are those who reject vengeance and hatred, because there is already too much of that, and instead respond to everything with compassion and love.

The sixth, “Blessed are the pure in heart” are those who do not respond out of intellect or tradition, but out of GOD’s righteousness.

Each of these “blesseds” builds up to the seventh; the crux of the whole thing, and the most active: “blessed are the peacemakers”.

And the last two are what happens in response to how we act, seemingly bringing us back to the receptive beginning:

8. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake
9. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Christ is the Beatitudes
This entire conversation isn’t a list of tasks for Christians. It isn’t simply an ethic.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Action in accord with Christ does not originate in some ethical principle, but in the very person of Jesus Christ.” (Ethics 2005, 231)

Jesus is the center of the Beatitudes.

Notice that the gospel’s description is not simply what would be if we did this, but the future that will be when we are this.

Remember? “Blessed are the meek”—not “you will be blessed when you choose to be meek”.

The Two Most Important Words
This gospel uses two really important words that we should look at.

1. Blessed: We take the word blessed to mean blessings in life—some of you (not me) have been blessed with good looks or wealth or talents. In other words, the stuff we get from GOD. A more ancient and appropriate understanding would be sanctified or consecrated or holy. ‘Holy are the meek’.
2. Peace: The 21st Century American English word is so inadequate to describe Jesus’s intentions for us. All we know about peace is the absence of war or conflict. Jesus meant, and would have used the Hebrew word Shalom. Shalom doesn’t simply mean the absence of war or conflict, but

Safety…
happiness…
justice & truth…
Wholeness, completeness…
The well-being of others.

This is why the seventh Beatitude is so important to the whole gospel: “Holy are the Shalom-makers, for they will be called children of God.” We know that it is our job to bring wholeness and completeness to the world. That we are the ones that transform this gospel about other people into a gospel about us in this world. That these Beatitudes are, in fact, about us.

The Jesus at the center of this gospel, longs for us to make this world complete in the hear and now. He has given us a vision of the Kingdom and about who we are to be. We are invited to be reconciled and to reconcile, to love and to be loved. To share in the sanctified as poor in spirit, mourners, the meek, righteousness seers, mercy bestowers, lovers, and shalommakers.

May we be receptive to the world, moved and inspired by righteousness and love, that we seek mercy instead of vengeance, hope in the face of despair, and justice when we feel pain; and may the world be so transformed that we see one another as blessed. Amen.