"You have heard it said do not murder," Jesus preached.
Yep. Got that. Haven't killed anyone yet. Good for me….
“But I say - do not be angry”….Uh-oh.
“You have heard it said do not commit adultery," Jesus exhorted.
Haven't done that either. I am a faithful sort, so I am totally clean in this regard. Yay, me!…..
"But I say - do not look with lust" …Uh-oh.
Look at these verses, will you! Did you really listen to this third in three weeks excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount that we just read? Murder, anger, lust, adultery, swearing - all lumped together in one scriptural passage!
This is hardly easy material for any pastor or congregation to really delve into on a Sunday morning. Were you expecting to feel so uncomfortable when you walked in the door today?
You might never have been divorced – and maybe you have never experienced lust – and maybe you have never said a swear word – out loud, at least – but surely all of us have experienced anger at one time or another. No, this passage is a very difficult, almost downright scary, one on which to preach – or about which to be preached to.
What is Jesus thinking – laying out these exacting demands which, over the millennia since he spoke them, have formed if not official church policy then surely informal church culture. Are they meant to be taken literally? Are they even really meant to be taken seriously?
There are a couple of notions we must be aware of from the outset as we try to make sense of these verses for our own lives. First, the Gospel writer of Matthew starts with what is known – and that is the Jewish law. You might recall the final verse of Scripture that we read last week. As Jesus finished up talking about salt and light, he said that he had come not to abolish the law but rather to fulfill it.
Though Jesus does not specifically mention the Ten Commandments, he indirectly refers to them and, in doing so, shows the utmost respect for those ten holy phrases. In other words, let’s remember that Jesus’ role was not to replace or belittle or water down the Ten Commandments – the core of Jewish discipline.
Five years ago, when I was called to be pastor of this church and many of you were on the tail end of some pretty destructive theological conflicts, the rumor “out there” was that here at RVCC we did not believe in the Ten Commandments. Now how silly is that?
I like to think that we intuitively understood that living in the footsteps of Jesus involved a moral and ethical code that is not less than the Ten Commandments but significantly more. As Presbyterian pastor Susan Andrews writes, “Jesus is embodying the law, putting flesh on the law, and digging underneath the law in order to find God's deeper values and vision which the law points to….
Then Jesus….makes it concrete, giving…examples of how the (law, the) word becomes flesh in…our everyday lives. And as usual Jesus is neither polite nor politic. He takes on murder, adultery, divorce, lust.” Jesus is not throwing out the Jewish law, but rather he is looking above and below, in and around the ancient words, in order to tease out their deeper meaning about how God wants us to live.
The second thing to be aware of is the historical context in which Jesus spoke these words about anger and lust and divorce. We need to understand a bit about the culture in which Jesus’ listeners lived and to which the Ten Commandments had originally been given.
According to social scientist and theology professor, Bruce Mallina, Jewish society was an “honor-shame” society. It was conflict-driven and centered on a person’s honor, which was to be defended at all costs. Revenge was commonplace and expected.
Individual and family honor could suffer for many reasons - the dissolution of a marriage, adulterous behavior, or even debt leading to loss of land. These discords often led to war-like conflicts.
In fact, Bruce Mallina would say that the historical purpose of the Ten Commandments was to prevent inbred feuding because such community dissension could actually lead to annihilation of that community – not a good thing to have happen to God’s chosen people.
What Jesus offers in these verses from the Sermon on the Mount is a way out of the honor-shame impasses that had long dogged his people – and I would submit to a greater or lesser extent still characterize our world. Jesus suggests a new way of living, one grounded not in retaliation, but rather in reconciliation and restored relationships.
In these highly charged verses, Jesus is speaking to the difficulties of living within a community and to the rigors of maintaining healthy relationships. He does so through the lens of God’s personal code of morality. Without a doubt, it is a radicalized ethic.
As Eugene Petersen writes in his Biblical translation called “The Message,” “Trivialize even the smallest item in God's Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom.”
Without a doubt, then, these verses surely are meant to be taken seriously. But are they meant to be taken literally? Poking out your eye and cutting off your right hand when you do something wrong seems a bit out of line. Let’s look for a moment at what a couple of these admonitions might have meant to Jesus’ listeners – and what they might mean for us?
First and foremost, Jesus is not in punishment mode. Rather, he is seeking a way to restore relationships. When Jesus uses that common pattern of “You have heard that it was said . . ." contrasted with "But I say to you . . . ." he is focusing our attention, not on the act itself, but instead on the intention behind the act.
In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is grappling with motivation – the reason why someone would commit murder, be adulterous, insist upon divorce or even take oaths. Jesus is focusing our attention on what lies beyond the act itself – and what lies beyond is our relationships and ultimately how we treat one another.
And so, for example, Jesus looks beyond the act of murder to the reason behind it, which, in the end, is anger gone wild - not the occasional burst of ire, but rather the long term brooding outrage that eats away at us like a cancer. Such dark insidious anger is a barrier to restoring relationships. Such fury destroys rather than build ups our bonds with one another.
As UCC pastor, Patricia de Jong reminds us, “Our relationships with each other are crucial elements of our spiritual life. We cannot seek to know and understand God apart from our activity and our actions in human community.” We come to know God and God’s love through knowing and loving one another.
And so Jesus calls us to the radical ethic of reconciliation. He even puts this commitment to healing what is broken before the required temple offerings – and that is huge.
Now, Leigh, our new treasurer, might not be so keen on this – so I will say just imagine not putting your offering in the plate this morning but rather carrying it around with you for this next week, reminding you to consciously seek out peace and reconciliation in your life. Would you be different next Sunday?
Jesus lifts up divorce in the same way, perhaps because it is a most graphic example of a broken relationship. Divorce is a pain-filled acknowledgement that a particular human connection was not as God intended and did not reflect the covenant grounded in love that each one of us has with our Creator.
Divorce is an anguished example of what happens when reconciliation does not work or is not attempted. As Patricia de Jong reminds us, “Jesus is not trying to enhance the pain of divorce, but rather, he is upholding God's intentions for the marriage…covenant, a covenant of love which reflects the covenant between God and God's own people.”
In a way, Jesus shifts our attention from the actions we must avoid to the attitudes we must cultivate within ourselves. And at the root of those attitudes is love, not the Valentine’s Day kind of love that might be born out of in chemistry or mood, but rather the love that goes beyond what seems right according to the letter of the law and enters into the Spirit of what God wants for us, the love that heals and restores others, the love that values others.
When he speaks those difficult verses we read this morning, Jesus is announcing a new ethic. He is challenging us to create human relationships in a cutting edge, state of the art way by striving to express in those relationships the kind of love God has for us – that love which has such patience, such mercy, and such concern for what is best for the other. Jesus sets before us not the prohibitions of the law, but rather the beautiful vision of what is possible – and what will surely be – when we begin to doing our part to usher in God’s kingdom.
by Rev. Nancy Foran
Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Friday, February 18, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Matthew 5:1-12 "The Way Life Should Be"
When Jesus called his twelve disciples, they had no clue what they were in for. We found that out last week when we heard the story of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, the fishermen who dropped everything – nets, fathers, homes – to follow this itinerant preacher whom they had met during a casual encounter on the lakeshore of Galilee one warm summer morning. The four strapping twentysomethings left all they had ever known - on a wing and a prayer – and not much in the way of concrete information.
Put yourself in their sandals for a moment. Imagine how shell-shocked you would have been as the early days of your newfound life stretched into weeks away from home. Picture yourself as they were - on the sidelines, watching Jesus, the man they hardly knew, not only heal the sick and the lame (which was impressive in and of itself), but also empower those who were at the end of their ropes, comfort the ones who had lost everything, and embrace the moments when he encouraged cooperation and brought peace to strained relationships along the way. Imagine the disciples asking one another: What is this man all about anyway?
Perhaps Jesus sensed their bewilderment because, according to the Gospel writer of Matthew, he did not leave the four fishermen and their compatriots in the dark for too long. You see, we find out in the very next chapter of the Gospel of Matthew that one day, though crowds of people followed him, Jesus took his disciples off, “up a hill,” we are told. And there he gathered together Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the others and enlightened them. How fortunate we are – through the Gospel of Matthew - to be eavesdroppers on these ancient teachable moments!
What gist of what he taught them is what we call “The Sermon on the Mount.” These three chapters in our gospel narrative are really a collection of short pithy sayings and insights about life, love, morality, and God.
Most likely, Jesus did not speak all of them at one time or in one place. However, the Gospel writer of Matthew chose to present them to us all neatly compiled – much as the Lucan gospel writer does. However, all that really does not matter because the setting in which Jesus might have actually spoken these timeless words hardly detracts from their beauty and truth.
Jesus begins by teaching his twelve followers about what constitutes true happiness, true joy, and what makes a life truly worth living. We call these first teachings the Beatitudes, and I can not help but wonder whether the disciples were as thunderstruck by what must have seemed like overwhelming demands as we ought to be when we read the plain language of this text.
A few years ago, a Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper published an article entitled: "How Do You Measure Up As A Man?” It was based on a research study that explored the criteria we in our society use to judge the successful – and therefore presumably the happiest, most joy-filled male – the one who knows how to truly live. Here are the top eight criteria:
1. His ability to make and conserve money.
2. The cost, style, and age of his car.
3. How much hair he has.
4. His strength and size.
5. The job he holds and how successful he is at it.
6. What sports he likes
7. How many clubs he belongs to.
8. His aggressiveness and reliability.
Frankly, I find those criteria dreadfully shallow. However, I do think people have used them – or ones similar – going all the way back to Jesus’ time…1. Hs ability to make and conserve shekels, 2. The number of sheep he owns, 3. His place in the temple hierarchy – you get the picture.
Knowing how un-self-reflective people can be at times, we should not be surprised then to read that the core curriculum Jesus outlined for his disciples turned these shallow criteria topsy turvy and instead outlined a completely different way to experience happiness, joy, and a life worth living.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are poor in spirit, Jesus said, who are not full of themselves and their ability to make and conserve money, but rather have room for God – a lot of room for God – who rely upon the Holy One for direction rather than the values of their culture.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who lament and let go of all that is dead and dying in their own lives – all the ephemeral things – their strength and size, not to mention the people and relationships who sap their energy, and, of course, the old ways of doing things - who also weep over the grief and pain they witness in the world around them.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are meek – but not in our usual sense of the word, not the weak, the milquetoasts, the mousy, the wimpy – but rather the ones who possess a silent strength deeply rooted in a faith in God, trusting that in the end good will prevail over any evil the world can create, meek like Jesus in the judgment hall before Pilate.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who long for, who ache and agonize for things to be as God would have them be, who will do whatever lies within their power to bring healing where there is hurt, justice where there is injustice, equality where there is inequality, right where there is wrong, who will not simply look the other way.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who have hearts overflowing with compassion, whose souls are moved by pain and suffering, who have the innate capacity to walk in another’s shoes and to understand intuitively that the one who suffers could just as easily be themselves.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who love God more than they love themselves and their possessions, who have the clarity of vision to see that loving God – and allowing themselves to be loved by God - is enough to transform their lives and their world and is more than any amount of money can buy.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who understand that God calls them to bring peace to the world and to their own lives and relationships, but not just the absence of war or conflict. In the end, this peace is the one that passes all our understanding, for it is shalom, healing, wholeness, prosperity, reconciliation, and ultimately communion or oneness with God.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are willing to pay the price for following Jesus - because there is a price - who commit themselves to honesty, integrity, justice, and healing, understanding that the world will not take to them kindly – but in the end it will all be worthwhile.
“Yikes!” we might say. “I can’t live up to this stuff. These Beatitudes are way over the top. I am out of here.”
But wait! If that is what you think about the Beatitudes, that you better hustle off because you can not live up to them, then you are reading them all wrong. You have not really heard them.
It is like the scene in the Monty Python movie, “Life of Brian.” What did he say?
I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
Really listen to the words here. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is clear that the Beatitudes are not standards that we are required to reach. They are not conditions or terms. They are simply blessings, statements of fact about what will bring happiness, what will bring joy, what will make life truly worth living.
The Beatitudes are a vision, a beautiful vision of the world with God at the center and God at every turn along the way, urging and challenging us to step deeper into the waters of faith, deeper into the Divine Presence that is all around us. As UCC pastor Susan Blain writes, Jesus is “not demanding of us extravagant sacrifice or liturgical purity… God is calling us to follow Christ into the world to engage in a lifetime of faithful, creative, courageous, community-building love.”
Those of us who are into good grammar might already have noticed that, as seminary professor Mary Hinkle Shore, points out, the Beatitudes are in the indicative. They are statements of fact. They are not demands. They are not conditions. They are not “if you do this or that, then you are blessed.
The Beatitudes are merely a statement of the way things are, “a statement of the world turned upside down, where those who mourn are comforted rather than abandoned or merely pitied, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied, not ignored or shouted down, where the meek inherit the earth rather than being ground into the dust.
"Right," someone will say. Or "Get real." (Life is not like that.
But, wait, suspend disbelief for a moment, and ask yourself this question:) What if Jesus is describing the real world, and we go around all day thinking the other world – the world as we know it - is the (ultimate) truth about us and our neighbors?” What if all along we have been living a lie? What if Jesus really is right?
“The meek, the mourning, the persecuted, the merciful: are they blessed in the present and given a trustworthy promise concerning the shape of the future? Or are they just weak, foolish, and out of touch with reality?...
(I think) the Sermon on the Mount (and most particularly for us this morning, the Beatitudes) is Jesus' Dream Speech of a better way, a better home, and his sketch of what the place will look like when we (finally) arrive.” The Beatitudes are not pie in the sky. They outline the way life should be.
So do not ignore the Beatitudes because you know that you can not live up to them. Do not disregard the Beatitudes because you think they are conditions for God’s blessings.
Rather cherish them – keep them safe in your hearts – so when given a choice – a choice to be:
Full of yourself or full of God
Lamenting the death of the old or embracing the new
Being silently strong or crumbling beneath some cultural expectation
Making even a small thing right or looking the other way
Walking in another shoes or standing on the sidelines in your own shoes
Loving God more than loving yourself
Striving for peace rather than ignoring or inciting conflict
Being willing to pay the price of the Gospel message or deciding it is not worth the cost
When you are given those choices, you can, first, recognize that you have a choice, and, second, you can make an informed decision.
Cherish the Beatitudes, so you can remember just what in the long run brings happiness, brings joy, what makes a life truly worth living, a life which God blesses.
Put yourself in their sandals for a moment. Imagine how shell-shocked you would have been as the early days of your newfound life stretched into weeks away from home. Picture yourself as they were - on the sidelines, watching Jesus, the man they hardly knew, not only heal the sick and the lame (which was impressive in and of itself), but also empower those who were at the end of their ropes, comfort the ones who had lost everything, and embrace the moments when he encouraged cooperation and brought peace to strained relationships along the way. Imagine the disciples asking one another: What is this man all about anyway?
Perhaps Jesus sensed their bewilderment because, according to the Gospel writer of Matthew, he did not leave the four fishermen and their compatriots in the dark for too long. You see, we find out in the very next chapter of the Gospel of Matthew that one day, though crowds of people followed him, Jesus took his disciples off, “up a hill,” we are told. And there he gathered together Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the others and enlightened them. How fortunate we are – through the Gospel of Matthew - to be eavesdroppers on these ancient teachable moments!
What gist of what he taught them is what we call “The Sermon on the Mount.” These three chapters in our gospel narrative are really a collection of short pithy sayings and insights about life, love, morality, and God.
Most likely, Jesus did not speak all of them at one time or in one place. However, the Gospel writer of Matthew chose to present them to us all neatly compiled – much as the Lucan gospel writer does. However, all that really does not matter because the setting in which Jesus might have actually spoken these timeless words hardly detracts from their beauty and truth.
Jesus begins by teaching his twelve followers about what constitutes true happiness, true joy, and what makes a life truly worth living. We call these first teachings the Beatitudes, and I can not help but wonder whether the disciples were as thunderstruck by what must have seemed like overwhelming demands as we ought to be when we read the plain language of this text.
A few years ago, a Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper published an article entitled: "How Do You Measure Up As A Man?” It was based on a research study that explored the criteria we in our society use to judge the successful – and therefore presumably the happiest, most joy-filled male – the one who knows how to truly live. Here are the top eight criteria:
1. His ability to make and conserve money.
2. The cost, style, and age of his car.
3. How much hair he has.
4. His strength and size.
5. The job he holds and how successful he is at it.
6. What sports he likes
7. How many clubs he belongs to.
8. His aggressiveness and reliability.
Frankly, I find those criteria dreadfully shallow. However, I do think people have used them – or ones similar – going all the way back to Jesus’ time…1. Hs ability to make and conserve shekels, 2. The number of sheep he owns, 3. His place in the temple hierarchy – you get the picture.
Knowing how un-self-reflective people can be at times, we should not be surprised then to read that the core curriculum Jesus outlined for his disciples turned these shallow criteria topsy turvy and instead outlined a completely different way to experience happiness, joy, and a life worth living.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are poor in spirit, Jesus said, who are not full of themselves and their ability to make and conserve money, but rather have room for God – a lot of room for God – who rely upon the Holy One for direction rather than the values of their culture.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who lament and let go of all that is dead and dying in their own lives – all the ephemeral things – their strength and size, not to mention the people and relationships who sap their energy, and, of course, the old ways of doing things - who also weep over the grief and pain they witness in the world around them.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are meek – but not in our usual sense of the word, not the weak, the milquetoasts, the mousy, the wimpy – but rather the ones who possess a silent strength deeply rooted in a faith in God, trusting that in the end good will prevail over any evil the world can create, meek like Jesus in the judgment hall before Pilate.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who long for, who ache and agonize for things to be as God would have them be, who will do whatever lies within their power to bring healing where there is hurt, justice where there is injustice, equality where there is inequality, right where there is wrong, who will not simply look the other way.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who have hearts overflowing with compassion, whose souls are moved by pain and suffering, who have the innate capacity to walk in another’s shoes and to understand intuitively that the one who suffers could just as easily be themselves.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who love God more than they love themselves and their possessions, who have the clarity of vision to see that loving God – and allowing themselves to be loved by God - is enough to transform their lives and their world and is more than any amount of money can buy.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who understand that God calls them to bring peace to the world and to their own lives and relationships, but not just the absence of war or conflict. In the end, this peace is the one that passes all our understanding, for it is shalom, healing, wholeness, prosperity, reconciliation, and ultimately communion or oneness with God.
Joyful and blessed by God are those who are willing to pay the price for following Jesus - because there is a price - who commit themselves to honesty, integrity, justice, and healing, understanding that the world will not take to them kindly – but in the end it will all be worthwhile.
“Yikes!” we might say. “I can’t live up to this stuff. These Beatitudes are way over the top. I am out of here.”
But wait! If that is what you think about the Beatitudes, that you better hustle off because you can not live up to them, then you are reading them all wrong. You have not really heard them.
It is like the scene in the Monty Python movie, “Life of Brian.” What did he say?
I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
Really listen to the words here. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is clear that the Beatitudes are not standards that we are required to reach. They are not conditions or terms. They are simply blessings, statements of fact about what will bring happiness, what will bring joy, what will make life truly worth living.
The Beatitudes are a vision, a beautiful vision of the world with God at the center and God at every turn along the way, urging and challenging us to step deeper into the waters of faith, deeper into the Divine Presence that is all around us. As UCC pastor Susan Blain writes, Jesus is “not demanding of us extravagant sacrifice or liturgical purity… God is calling us to follow Christ into the world to engage in a lifetime of faithful, creative, courageous, community-building love.”
Those of us who are into good grammar might already have noticed that, as seminary professor Mary Hinkle Shore, points out, the Beatitudes are in the indicative. They are statements of fact. They are not demands. They are not conditions. They are not “if you do this or that, then you are blessed.
The Beatitudes are merely a statement of the way things are, “a statement of the world turned upside down, where those who mourn are comforted rather than abandoned or merely pitied, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied, not ignored or shouted down, where the meek inherit the earth rather than being ground into the dust.
"Right," someone will say. Or "Get real." (Life is not like that.
But, wait, suspend disbelief for a moment, and ask yourself this question:) What if Jesus is describing the real world, and we go around all day thinking the other world – the world as we know it - is the (ultimate) truth about us and our neighbors?” What if all along we have been living a lie? What if Jesus really is right?
“The meek, the mourning, the persecuted, the merciful: are they blessed in the present and given a trustworthy promise concerning the shape of the future? Or are they just weak, foolish, and out of touch with reality?...
(I think) the Sermon on the Mount (and most particularly for us this morning, the Beatitudes) is Jesus' Dream Speech of a better way, a better home, and his sketch of what the place will look like when we (finally) arrive.” The Beatitudes are not pie in the sky. They outline the way life should be.
So do not ignore the Beatitudes because you know that you can not live up to them. Do not disregard the Beatitudes because you think they are conditions for God’s blessings.
Rather cherish them – keep them safe in your hearts – so when given a choice – a choice to be:
Full of yourself or full of God
Lamenting the death of the old or embracing the new
Being silently strong or crumbling beneath some cultural expectation
Making even a small thing right or looking the other way
Walking in another shoes or standing on the sidelines in your own shoes
Loving God more than loving yourself
Striving for peace rather than ignoring or inciting conflict
Being willing to pay the price of the Gospel message or deciding it is not worth the cost
When you are given those choices, you can, first, recognize that you have a choice, and, second, you can make an informed decision.
Cherish the Beatitudes, so you can remember just what in the long run brings happiness, brings joy, what makes a life truly worth living, a life which God blesses.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)