Series: The Meaning of Jesus – week 5 (see bobkaylor.com for others in series)
Audio: Listen to it HERE
As many of you know, I am originally from the New Jersey shore. I grew up in the Toms River area, just to the west of Seaside Heights where they film The Jersey Shore – oh,we are so proud. That’s where we went to the beach, played at the arcades, and experienced water slides.
Occasionally we would drive about 20 minutes north to another boardwalk in Asbury Park, which was nice but past its prime. Mostly we just wanted to drive by the Stone Pony, where Bruce Springsteen used to play, and ride the old Merry-Go-Round with the brass rings to grab as you went by. From the Asbury Park boardwalk, if walk south past the last arcade and food vendor, you come to a stretch of boardwalk that is very different. There are no stores, no arcades, no rides. You have entered Ocean Grove. There is just boardwalk, beach, and old houses. It feels like time stopped about 100 years ago.
Ocean Grove is a unique little town, that holds a very dear place in my heart. My youth leaders, Dale and Carol Whilden, live in Ocean Grove where Dale is a dentist, and part-time dental missionary. In his younger days, Dale was daring enough to invite our youth group over to his house for summer lock-ins. I remember campfires on the beach, walks on the boardwalk, nights in his Victorian era house, concerts on the beach, and the open-air amphitheater called The Great Auditorium.
Oddly, in the center of this quaint little town, is an old 6,000-seat concert venue known as The Great Auditorium. This is because Ocean Grove started in the late 1800s as a Methodist Camp Meeting. People from all over would come to camp in tents around the Great Auditorium where many very popular preachers of the day would preach. Today a combination of speakers, concerts, worship services, and festivals are held every summer in The Great Auditorium. I have seen Tony Campolo and Duffy Robbins preach there, participated in the summer Choir Festival, and attended concerts by Petra, Jars of Clay, and Third Day. It is a remarkable place.
At the very first gathering of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in 1869,
Rev. Ellwood Stokes, who would become the first president…, felt compelled to speak. About an hour into the meeting, he said that he felt called upon by God to speak the first four words of the Bible: “In the beginning, God…” After having spoken those words, he said it was as if God had taken hold of the land as His own! (“Brief History of Ocean Grove”).
Today that idea carries on through the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association motto: “God’s square mile at the Jersey shore.”
Being good Methodists, no alcohol is sold anywhere in Ocean Grove and I remember a time when you were not allowed to drive in Ocean Grove on a Sunday. The residents would park just outside of town, mostly in Asbury Park, on Saturday night, if they had someplace to go on a Sunday. I remember the outcry when they decided to repeal that blue law in the late 1970s or early 80s.
God’s time, space, and matter
That concept of God inhabiting a place, is something we don’t talk much about today. We used to. Today many churches call the place where they gather on a Sunday morning the Worship Center. We used to call it the Sanctuary – it was special, sacred space.
We used to do that with time as well. A day was set aside for worship and family. We used to have Sundays to slow down a little. Today, one day runs into another. Work dominates and so we need Sundays for games, practices, shopping, and maybe even for an hour or two in the office.
There was also a time when we saw some things as special. The church used to designate some objects as “relics” – things with special meaning, significance, and the presence of God.
When it comes to space, time, and matter, human nature fills us with the desire to place things on a continuum, similar to what Bob talked about in the first week of this sermon series. On this continuum we have sacred on one end, and secular on the other. Ocean Grove – sacred: my office – secular. Sunday – for God: Tuesday – normal. The communion table here on the platform – holy: my dining room table – ordinary.
This was certainly the thinking of Jesus’ contemporaries. For the Hebrew people of Jesus’ day, the world was neatly divided into the sacred and the secular. I introduced this idea last Sunday when we talked about the Temple. We heard Jesus talking about the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven as a present reality, here and now, which was cause for celebration – the celebrations that Jesus talked about and lived.
I illustrated this thought with two intersecting circles: one representing our space, and one representing God’s space. The point of intersection for the Jewish people of Jesus’ day was the Temple. It was believed that the Temple was the center of the world, the place from which God was to rule and reign the globe. When the people of God went up to Jerusalem, they literally felt that they were entering into the place where Heaven and Earth met. More than just an emotional attachment, as I have with my memories of being with God in Ocean Grove, this was the most sacred of sacred space.
The same is true for time. For the people of Jesus’ day, the sabbath was time that God inhabited in a special way. This was not simply a day to rest and relax, for doing the New York Times Crossword puzzle, or watching some football game. It was for that, but more than that. Each sabbath was also a recollection of God’s promise to once again reign and rule.
You may remember from a previous sermon that Pastor Bob talked about how there is an understanding among the religious of Jesus’ day that the story of creation is, in some sense, the story of God building God’s own Temple. On the first six days of creation, God builds. He forms earth and water, light and dark, sun and moon, animals and fish, and eventually people. Then on the seventh day, God rests. “This doesn’t just mean,” as N. T. Wright pens, “that God took a day off. It means that in the previous six days God was making a world – heaven and earth together – for his own use. Like someone building a home, God finished the job and then went in to take up residence, to enjoy what he had built” (Wright 136).
The people were then waiting for the ultimate Sabbath, the day when God’s work and plans in the world would come to full completion, and God would come again to inhabit his creation – this time even more fully. So that day of the week, set aside as the Sabbath (from root of “to rest”), was the sacred time to reflect on history moving forward toward that time of ultimate completion.
What the Temple was to space, the Sabbath was to time. There was also believed to be sacred stuff, or matter. When you read the Gospels you will pretty quickly get familiar with the concept of clean and unclean. This sounds like hygiene, but it is so much more. In Mark 7, we read about Jesus in a conversation with some religious leaders about him and his disciples eating without washing their hands (Mark 7:1f). Mark, probably writing to a non-Jewish community, includes an explanation:
“For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles” (Mark 7:3-4).
And we think, “good for you scribes and Pharisees, you should wash your hands, plates, utensils, and food before you eat to get the germs off.” But this is not about hygiene. Ritual washing is about making sure everything you put in your body is ritually clean, or holy. Eating something that was unclean would cause the person ingesting it to also become unclean, or unholy, and therefore unable to participate in their faith until they went through another ritual to be made clean.
The Pharisees, remember, expected strict adherence to the Law to be the way to encourage God to return to rule and reign from the Temple. In some sense they were assuming the role the sheriff in an old western movie who has been sent to “clean up this town.” They had good intentions, but they went about it in such a way that the Temple began to become divisive. People were being seen as either clean or unclean.
The poor were not blessed by God with wealth or someone to take care of them, so they must be unclean. People with diseases must have done something wrong, and are not favored by God, so they are unclean. That social status we hear in the Gospels of “tax collectors and sinners” had all done things wrong, so they were unclean. Those born differently-abled were also considered unclean. Maybe their parents had sinned in some way to make them unclean. Not to mention people who weren’t Jewish, they were certainly unclean.
According to the scribes and Pharisees it was fairly difficult to remain clean because any contact with anyone or anything unclean (like unwashed food or utensils) made you unclean. If something clean touched something unclean, the clean object/person would be made unclean. We see this illustrated in the parable Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
A Jewish guy is walking between cities when he is mugged, beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. The first two people to walk up to him are both religious people: a priest and a Levite (a member of the religious class). Both of the religious people avoid the hurt man because blood and a dead person is unclean. Rather than becoming unclean, and thereby make them unable to perform their duties in their synagogue or the Temple, they walk around the hurt man and leave him there. The one who does the right thing is the Samaritan, a non-Jewish and therefore unclean person, who is not concerned about ritual cleanliness and just does what needs to be done.
Jesus does something very different. He reverses the flow.
Jesus heals a leper: Mark 1
Which finally brings me to today’s text. Jesus is approached by a leper who asks Jesus for something. Listen to that text again, in case you missed it the first time.
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40 emphasis added).
Leprosy, as the footnote in your Bible might indicate, was a generic term in Jesus’ day for any kind of skin disease. So we read that, and think the leper is asking Jesus to clean up his complexion. But leprosy was also a disease that made one ritually unclean. So this request is more than just about skin. This is about a man who has been disconnected from God, the Temple (the presence of God on earth), and his family and friends.
Jesus picks up on the leper’s language and reaches out to touch him, which ought to make Jesus now ritually unclean, and says, “I do choose. Be clean!” Mark continues, “Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean” (Mark 1:41).
Jesus is doing something here. For him the flow of cleanliness travels the other way. When something unclean comes into contact with Jesus, Jesus is not made unclean. Rather the unclean becomes clean. That is radical. And that is radically heretical to the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day.
You see, there were rituals and rites that had to be performed at the Temple in order for someone to be declared clean. That is why Jesus sends this man to the Temple authorities so that he can be officially declared clean and give an offering of thanksgiving before moving on.
Then at the end of this story about the leper we read, “Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country” because the leper had blabbed about what Jesus had done for him. This is not just about celebrity. This is about Jesus having to lay low from the religious leaders who see him as a heretic.
By “cleansing” this leper, Jesus has performed what was the role of the Temple. To put it another way, Jesus is usurping the authority of the Temple. And this is not the only time.
Another example – Mark 2
Another telling account is the story of the paralyzed man being lowered down through the ceiling of the home where Jesus was teaching so he could be healed (Mark 2:1-12). Jesus doesn’t at first heal the man. Instead Jesus says to the him, “You sins are forgiven.” After which the man might have said, “That’s really nice and all, but I was really hoping you could make me walk again.”
The scribes watching this start to grumble about Jesus claiming to forgive sins, asking the question that needs to be asked, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” In other words, who does this guy think he is.
Jesus then says, “‘so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ — [then] he said to the paralytic — ‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home’” (Mark 2:10-11).
Jesus and Temple
This is the rub that Jesus has with the scribes and Pharisees and all the religious leaders of the day. Jesus is doing what can only be done by the religious authorities in the Temple. He declares people clean, he forgives sins. Oh, and one other thing, he apparently ignores the Sabbath. There’s a story about Jesus and his disciples picking grain on the sabbath, one about encouraging a man to break sabbath by carrying his mat home after Jesus heals him, and several about Jesus doing healings on the sabbath, all of which bring the ire of the religious authorities.
Again, Jesus is not observing that separate, sacred time. Instead Jesus is celebrating the ultimate Sabbath, that seventh day where God will come and inhabit all of his creation. Jesus is declaring that day has already come in him.
Throughout his ministry Jesus serves as the herald announcing the reign the God here and now. He also acts as the one through whom the reign of God is coming. In other words, what Jesus is doing is replacing the role of the Temple and its leaders with the very presence of God dwelling in him.
Let me try to get at this another way, very briefly. One of the basic tenets of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the incarnation – meaning that somehow Jesus was God and human all at the same time. Or to put it another way, Jesus is the place of intersection between God and humanity. But rather than it being just a part of him (where there is this whole other human part – and whole other God part) these two circles fully intersect. There is not a point of intersection, but rather overlapping. Both are fully contained in the one.
Jesus then has replaced the Temple. He is that intersection of the Kingdom of God and this world. One need no longer go to that spot for a place of intersection. Now each one needs to follow Jesus, to enter into that space, the complete intersection of God’s space and ours.
This is not just about people. Sin has distorted, or broken, the original intent of creation to be the dwelling place of God. But 2 Corinthians 5:19 tells us that, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (emphasis added). In other words, in Christ God is reconciling, repairing, reestablishing the entirety of creation as his dwelling place – his Temple. Jesus tells us there is still a day to come, when the creation will be fully restored in the end.
We read in Revelation 21 that there will be one day a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. Most telling, we are told that there is “no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb [a symbol for Jesus]” (Rev. 21:22). Jesus is the Temple.
No longer sacred v. secular
I think we have the right idea today of not separating the sacred and the secular. I think that is exactly what Jesus is talking about as he goes around throughout his ministry forgiving sins, declaring people clean, and ignoring the sabbath laws. The problem is, I think we have gone the wrong way.
We have made everything – all time, all space, and all matter – ordinary. We have declared that Sunday is a day like all the others, so we might as well just get to work. We have decided that a church building is just like our office building – just bricks and mortar. We have decided that our communion table really is not different from our dining room table. We have declared, in essence, that nothing is special.
That is the opposite of Jesus’ message. What Jesus is saying instead is that your Tuesday, when nothing of any eternal import seems happens, is just as sacred as your Sunday. That your office is as filled with the presence of God, as is the room in which you worship. That the meal you share around your dining room table is as much about sacred community as the meal that will be shared at the communion table in a few minutes.
Jesus is not saying that everything is mundane and ordinary. Rather, Jesus is declaring that God is present in everything. Everything is sacred. Everything is holy. Everything is spiritual. By following Jesus, we begin to have our eyes opened to see the holy in the ordinary.
Thin places
There is this piece of Celtic theology that has made a significant impression on my heart. It is the idea of the “thin place.” The Celts understand what we have been discussing of the Kingdom of God and our world coexisting, as I described it last week as a sphere within a sphere. The image they use to describe what separates one world from the other is a veil – a thin, permeable layer keeping the two worlds apart. The Celts say that there are times and places where the veil gets thin, and we experience in a powerful way the other side, the Kingdom of God. When that happens, one has been in a “thin place.”
The subtle difference, which is far more than semantics, is that when you have that experience, it is not that God has sent his spirit from his realm far away to give you that moment before the spirit returns to God. Rather it is that the spirit has lifted the veil, made it thin enough, for you to see through to the fullness of the Kingdom of God that is here now and is still to come in fullness one day.
That happens, just for a moment, on a mission trip with the youth group, at a rally or retreat, in a class at church, over coffee with a friend, during a Bible study or a worship, or on the beach in Ocean Grove as a teenager with my youth group.
Ocean Grove is a thin place for me. So is the sanctuary in the church where I grew up. So is this platform, and being with the TLUMC youth on a mission trip wherever we are, and the room I use as an office in my house. They are holy ordinary places.
Holy ordinary places. May you and I stop longing for the holy to come to us, and find those holy ordinary places in our holy ordinary living.
Jesus came to tell us that every space, every moment, everything is filled with the glory of God.
Bibliography
“A History Of Ocean Grove.” The Historical Society of Ocean Grove. http://www.oceangrovehistory.org/Histories/OGHistory.htm.
“Brief History of Ocean Grove.” Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. http://www.ogcma.org/
Wright, N. T. Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters. New York: HarperOne, 2011.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Text: Luke 14:15-24
Series: The Meaning of Jesus – Week 4 (see bobkaylor.com for previous sermons)
Audio: Listen to it HERE
I came across this picture several years ago. I think it would be a great cover for a book I haven’t written…yet.
The story behind the picture is this. Around 1903, the people of Waterloo, Iowa were struggling with some fairly regular flooding from the Dry Run Creek. So they engineered and began construction on a massive storm sewer – over 3,000 feet long, 12 feet high, and 12 feet wide – to catch the runoff from heavy rains. When the project was complete the people decided to celebrate this great achievement at their annual League of Iowa Municipalities banquet. And what better way to celebrate that which would make life easier for the people than to have the banquet right there in the sewer.
The New York Times reported the event: Dateline, October 14, 1903. “The city officials and business men of Waterloo this evening gave a banquet to the League of Iowa Municipalities in the ‘Dry Run Sewer’ … A section of the sewer 400 feet in length was set apart for the banquet. A long table was spread to accommodate 350 persons.”
They also report that 2 mayors and the Attorney General of Iowa were among the speakers. All of this is under the headline “Banquet Given in a Sewer” (New York Times). This picture is from a postcard circa 1915 that commemorates the event (sewerhistory.org).
I get what they were going for, but I’m not sure I would have wanted to be there. I would love to see a picture of all of those gentlemen and ladies in their 1900s formal attire enjoying a meal there in the sewer. There is something about the incongruity of the beautiful banquet table with the formal silverware, the napkins neatly folded, the filled wine glasses, and the decorations on the table all set up in a storm sewer that fascinates me. Somehow I think this is a Kingdom of God image.
Jesus known for celebrating
One of the things for which Jesus was fairly well known, or maybe infamous for in his day, was enjoying a good party. In fact, there is this verse we don’t often preach on, found in both Matthew and Luke, where Jesus responds to the accusation of the religious elite that he is a “glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34). How did he gain that reputation? By attending banquets and dinner parties fairly regularly.
His ministry begins, according the Gospel of John, with his first miracle. At a wedding banquet, Jesus turns water into wine. Running out of wine was a sign that the party was over. By making more wing, Jesus keeps the party going. A symbol of his ministry. John, and the rest of the gospels, tell us that Jesus; ministry ended with celebratory meal with his disciples right before the series of events that led to the cross. He starts at a party, ends at a party, and mixed in throughout his ministry in between, there is mention after mention of Jesus eating. Sometimes at dinner with a scribe or Pharisee; sometimes with his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus; sometimes at the house of a tax collector like Zacchaeus or Matthew; sometimes out on the field with 500 friends and a miraculous amount of fish and bread.
It seems that just about everywhere Jesus went, he was ready to celebrate.
Why? Because he knew something no one else did. Jesus knew and proclaimed that “the Kingdom of God has come near.”
You may remember from Pastor Bob’s sermon on “The Perfect Storm” a couple of weeks ago, that the Jewish people were looking for the return of God to Jerusalem to rule, but they differed on how they thought that would happen and how they would participate in it. The sect called the Pharisees believed that God would come back when God’s people paid strict adherence to God’s law. Jesus bumps up against them often. They think Jesus is lax with the law, and is therefore impeding the return of God. Another group, called the Sadducees were expecting their alliance with Rome to pave the way for God’s return. By currying favor and gaining some power, they believed they were living God’s way for God’s people by keeping the Temple fully Jewish and not allowing it to be corrupted by the gods of the Roman Empire, as other empires had done previously. The Zealots took quite the opposite approach. They believed that God would come back to re-inhabit the Temple and rule the world when they were able to drive the Romans out of Jerusalem and come out from under the occupation. Finally, there were the Essenes who felt the Temple was corrupt and when God returned he would judge the Temple and its leaders. So they went out to live in the caves of the Dead Sea, to get away from it all and live “purely.” They are the authors of what we now know as the “Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Jesus comes with a completely different message. He is not talking about what needs to be done in order for God to return. Rather, Jesus announces right at the outset of his public ministry that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:15, Luke 10:9 – and others). God is already here, and already king. There is no denying that this is central to Jesus’ earthly ministry. He has come to announce that people no longer have to wait for God to come as king in Jerusalem and by extension to the rest of the world. Instead, Jesus announces that the Kingdom of God is here now and that is cause for celebration.
Biblical image of the Kingdom of God
I want to reiterate something that Bob introduced over the last several weeks about what Jesus means by the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven (those two phrases are synonymous), as Jesus talked about it, is not a place out there somewhere for us to attain later. In fact, it is not “out there” at all. Jesus always talked about the Kingdom of God as a present reality, but one that we do not always see.
One representation of this phenomenon would be two intersecting circles. One of those circles represents this world. This is “our space” – the world which we experience through our five senses; it is where we live, work, and play every day. The other circle represents the Kingdom of God. Very simply, if the other circle is our space this is “God space” – the place where God dwells fully.
For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, the place where the two circles intersect would be the Temple – where God’s space and our space meet. In other words, the closest one could get to being in the very presence of God was to enter in to Temple.
For me, this two-dimensional drawing is limiting. I would rather it be three-dimensional – like a sphere within a sphere. One sphere representing God space, and the other our space. When we do that, rather than only a single point of intersection, there can be many intersecting points at any time.
You have probably experienced this. When you go on that mission trip, or that retreat, or meet with that friend, or come to worship, and you know that you are in the presence of God – that is one of those intersecting points. In other words, it is not as though the Spirit of God has come to you from someplace else, but that you have spent a moment in God’s space.
The biblical image of this for me is the story of Jacob’s ladder, from which we get the well-known song. In Genesis 28 we read of Jacob lying down to sleep during a journey. While he is there, he has a vision where he sees a ladder between this world and the next with angels ascending and descending, a sign that God is present in the world constantly. When Jacob awakes from this dream he says, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen 28:16-17). Jacob had spent time in that in-between place.
Kingdom of God Parables of Matthew 13
Throughout his ministry, Jesus was proclaiming much the same thing. The kingdom of God has come near, he said. The problem seems to be that we have trouble seeing it.
Take a look with me at the series of parables told in Matthew 13. Turn there, skipping down to verse 31. Listen to this quick succession of parables.
Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it becomes the greatest of shrubs.”
Next one: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast…mixed in with three measures of flour.”
Next one, down in verse 44: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.”
Next one, verse 45: “the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Next one, verse 47: “the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.”
There is a pattern that emerges here – a seed that is planted, yeast mixed in dough, treasure hidden in a field, a pearl that was difficult to find, and fish just below the surface. There is this sense that the kingdom of God is right here, but yet somehow just out of reach.
Jesus is pointing out that if only we had, in another expression he liked to use, “ears to hear” and eyes to see, we would begin to notice the kingdom of God all around us, just waiting to break through. Jesus has come to announce that the kingdom of God is here – not out there somewhere, and that he is the king of that kingdom.
We are going to talk much more about that next week, when we talk about Jesus and the Temple. For now, just try to keep that in mind as we continue to talk about Jesus’ parables and parties. Jesus is announcing and celebrating that the kingdom of God has come near – it is right here, right now!
Keep that in mind as we begin to talk about a couple of Jesus’s parables.
What is a parable? N. T. Wright reminds us that Jesus’ parables “were not, as children are sometimes taught in Sunday school, ‘earthly stories with heavenly meanings,’ … Some, indeed, are [kingdom of God] stories…with decidedly earthly meanings.” Meaning that these are not stories meant to teach us about something about the world we hope to inhabit one day, but are instead stories about that other realm, the God space, that should change the way we live here in our space.
A parable about a banquet – Luke 14
Which leads us to the parable we read this morning, skipping over to Luke 14. If you still have your Bible out, go toward the back of the Bible a few pages, past Mark to Luke 14. If start back up at verse one we get the setting for this parable:
One one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. (Luke 14:1)
Jesus is at dinner with a “leader of the Pharisees.” In the next section he heals someone, and then he makes a comment about humility. Then we come to verse 15 which Michelle/Ruth read for us earlier. So in the midst of what appears to be a dinner party with a Pharisee, Jesus tells a story about a dinner party. The story is told in response to a guest’s comment about eating bread in the Kingdom of God.
In the parable, Jesus revisits the Mission of God that Bob talked about last week. Remember that was to (1) bring good news to the poor, (2) proclaim release to the captives, (3) give recovery of sight to the blind, and (4) to release the oppressed and declare the year of Jubilee when everything is to be forgiven. The kingdom of God casts a much wider net than the people wanted to believe. They wanted to keep God for themselves, and not the others whom they believed were not worthy to be called the children of God.
At this kingdom of God party Jesus describes, the so-called worthy people all have better things to do. Property to inspect, oxen to test drive, a new relationship that is pulling them away. So the host asks that “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” be invited instead. Those who thought they deserved a place at the table are then shut out, because eventually the table is filled. The kingdom of God is for everyone!
No doubt Jesus’ host, a leader of the Pharisees, must have gotten the point of the parable. As a Pharisees he was one that was concerned about other things. And sure enough, Jesus’ story seems to end the dinner party. The next verse has Jesus back on the road, “Now large crowds were traveling with him.”
Soon after leaving the Pharisee’s house, this parable begins to come to life. We read that Jesus has “tax collectors and sinners” coming near to him. This gets some Pharisees grumbling about his choice of dinner guests – the impurity of it all. In response to this accusation, Jesus tells three more stories. The first is about a lost sheep. The shepherd leaves to find the lost one, and when he finds it – he throws a party. The second is about a woman who lost a coin and searches her house and when she finds it – she throws a party. The third is about a son who leaves home with his inheritance. Eventually he comes home, and when he does – his father throws a party.
This party image is not just something that Jesus talked about in his parables. This is a parable he lived. Time and again we find him celebrating with all the “wrong” people. When Matthew, a former tax collector, tells the story of his own call to discipleship, he includes the dinner party that he threw that night with Jesus and his former friends, “tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 9). We could go on and on with example after example.
The point is that one of the centerpieces of Jesus ministry was the announcement that the kingdom of God was here now, and it was to be celebrated.
This is not a celebration that denies the difficulties of life. It is a celebration that brings meaning within the difficulties. The people Jesus is calling to celebrate are living a difficult life. They are not free, many are poor, and there is little hope that is going to change. The message of the banquet is that those who have been cast out, who do not belong, who are told they are unfit, who have no power over their situation, and appear to have little hope for the future in this realm – there is a place for them at the table of the Kingdom of God. The sad part is that there are so many that miss the celebration because, in their words, they have better things to do.
Often in Jesus‘ parables about banquets and parties, and the stories that the Gospel writes tell about the parties Jesus lived, we read about those who refuse to celebrate. The father in the prodigal son story begs the older brother to join the feast, but that son can’t bring himself to celebrate. In the story of Matthew’s dinner party upon becoming a follower of Jesus, we are told that there are Pharisees and scribes on the outside looking in. In this morning’s story we hear about those who very politely turn down the invitation to the banquet because they have other things – land, oxen, marriage – that keeps them from joining. Today I wonder how many stay away from the kingdom of God because they don’t realize that it is supposed to be a party.
Christians in the culture
Have you ever noticed how the culture views Christians? Back in my youth, one of the most recognized Christian characters was “the church lady,” Dana Carvey’s character from Saturday Night Live. She hosted a little show called “Church Chat,” where her primary activity was pointing out where other people were not living the proper Christian life. She took great pride in telling them what they were doing wrong.
Several years later it became Ned Flanders, neighbor of the Simpsons, and his pastor Steven Lovejoy. Two of the most boring, joyless characters ever on television. I don’t know that Rev. Lovejoy has ever smiled on an episode of The Simpsons.
Or how about more recently, and more real, someone like Harold Camping. In the media for his predictions of doom and gloom about the end of the world. So many preachers, encouraging so many Christians to simply shake their heads over the state of the world and thank God they will be evacuated before it gets worse.
Do we think it was much better in Jesus’ day? Many long to go back to a better, simpler time. Oh, if only the world were like it were back in the days of Jesus. Really? The people Jesus preached to were living in a terrible time. They were persecuted and oppressed. They were doing things that had to grieve the heart of God – treating women poorly, casting people out for their disease, telling people they were unfit for the love of God. Yet Jesus didn’t walk around the streets of Galilee all doom and gloom just shaking his head. Instead, he said, “Let’s eat.”
From confrontation to invitation
When I was in Loveland last week I was talking with a young woman, a youth minister, who had recently graduated from college and was serving a church in a different college town. She had such a heart for the college students, and was grieved by what she saw as animosity toward the church. Apparently she witnessed a rally where some students were actively campaigning against the existence of god, and that Christianity was wrong, and things like that. She talked about how there was so much darkness on the campus and very little light. She was concerned for the students who were away from home and who might get sucked into this type of thinking because they were not connected to church and thereby susceptible to this type of reasoning.
By the way, I think this is happening on many campuses across the country. During that time of life it is easy to believe that more knowledge will help us evolve to solve our own problems, and we don’t really need a god to do that. That is what is called humanism.
She said something like, “I just don’t know what to do. I want to go up to those students and confront them, and tell them that they are wrong, and get them to stop. I want to convince them that Jesus is the way.” In a Holy Spirit moment I said something like, “I’m not sure that’s the way to go. I think it might be more effective if you set up an alternative. Those students that are protesting, don’t really know what the church is all about. Don’t fight them, and feed their perceptions. Go show them what the church really is.” Within seconds, she was brainstorming ways to do that. Setting up a coffeehouse in an abandon spot in the middle of campus, gathering people together for study, prayer, and fun. She went from wanting to fight, to trying to figure out ways to invite people to the party.
That sure sounds a lot more like the way Jesus would operate. Sure he called people out and challenged their difficult behavior, because all of that business was keeping them from celebration. Jesus said, you think property, work, and marriage are great – I’ve got something even better for you.
Dry Run Sewer Banquet
Which brings me back to Waterloo, Iowa, 1903. A group of townspeople set up a banquet in a huge storm sewer. That is an awfully odd place to celebrate. The banquet doesn’t belong there. It belongs in a grand hall, with chandeliers and a dance floor. A sewer is no place to celebrate. We should leave the sewer and wait until we get to a beautiful place far away.
But then again, what better place for a party? Let’s get together right there in the presence of that which is going to save our town from future floods, that is going to improve our lives and change the way we live. Why can’t a giant storm drain that brings peace to a community be a place to celebrate? As ordinary as it appears, there is something very special about this place that is worth celebrating.
Jesus came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has come near. This, he said, was something to celebrate. Right here. Right now.
The table is ready! Come! Come join in the kingdom party!
Bibliography
“Banquet Given In a Sewer.” The New York Times. [New York, New York] 15 Oct. 1903. Web. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0C17FB34591B728DDDAC0994D8415B838CF1D3.
“Sewers in our Culture” at SewerHistory.org. Accessed at http://www.sewerhistory.org/grfx/misc/cultur1.htm on January 26, 2012.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
I needed to read this very slowly:
Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center! If only we could find the Silence which is the source of sound!
- Thomas Kelly, twentieth century Quaker
as quoted in Common Prayer : A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, p. 80
(Claiborne, Shane, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro.
Common Prayer: a Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010. )
This one is a little rough. I have not taken the time to make it more readable. Hope you get the gist of it. Enjoy!
Listen to this sermon HERE.
Text: Matthew 1:18-25
Remember what Christmas morning was like when you were a kid? The excitement and anticipation got us out of bed very early.
I knew I wanted to share a song with you this morning, and when I went looking for a video of it, I stumbled across one that reminded me so much of Christmases when I was younger. As you watch the video, try to listen for the words to the song.
Somewhere in my parent’s attic there is an 8mm movie projector, a screen, and a box of movies a lot like those. Trees decorated with tinsel and those huge Christmas lights. Moms with perfectly coiffed hair because they knew the camera would be rolling. Dads not pictured because they were running the camera. Kids in their footie pajamas tearing through paper, hugging dolls, and climbing on new bicycles.
When I was a kid, my brother Ron – 16 months younger than me – and I shared a room with bunk beds. One of my favorite Christmas memories is how the first one awake would rouse the other one with the anticipation of Christmas morning. We always had to ask to get up – mostly so that my dad could get down the hall and set up the movie camera with the blinding light so he could capture the moment we saw the tree, and all of our gifts.
That plea in the song, “You gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up! It’s Christmas morning!” is something we could have said all those years ago. We pled for what seemed an eternity for the yes to finally come that we could get up and get started unwrapping.
Christmas is a time for gifts. It is the gifts that got me up at 0-dark-thirty when I was a child, and get your kids up today. The chorus of Rich Mullins’ captures the anticipation of Christmas morning so well:
Did my sister get a baby doll?
Did my brother get his bike?Did I get that red wagon
the kind that makes you fly?
But then the chorus shifts a little -
Oh I hope there’ll be peace on earth
I know there’s good will toward menOn account of that Baby
born in Bethlehem
The gift of the wagon seems to remind the narrating child of the true gift of Christmas – “that baby born in Bethlehem.”
Gifts of the Wise Men
Whenever children in the church ask me why we get the presents on Christmas Day when it is really Jesus’ birthday, I tell them that it is a way of remembering the gifts that the Wise Men brought to Jesus – and wonder with them if that is why we get presents on our birthdays too. There is something remarkable about those gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh.
Several years ago, back when we were doing the 5pm Sunday night service, I prepared a sermon series on the gifts the Wise Men gave to baby Jesus. You see, I only preached three of the four Sundays of Advent, because the 4th one was usually a music event like we had last Sunday night with our choirs. When I thought three, I thought of the gifts.
I was surprised to find that all three gifts – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – are found in the same chapter of the Old Testament – Exodus 30. Now this is my own exegetical work, and not something I read from some Bible scholar, so it makes me a little nervous to assert it with confidence. It has become though an important part of my understanding of the Wise Men, and a way of understanding what the story of Jesus’ birth is all about.
In this section of Exodus, the people are being given instructions for the building of the tabernacle – the “tent of meeting,” the dwelling place of God. While they are a nomadic nation it is a tent structure that they are to take with them, and will become the template for the designing and building of the Temple later when they settle in the Promised Land of Jerusalem.
Gold – In verses 1-10 of chapter 30, the people are given instruction for building an altar of incense. This is a block structure that is to be made of acacia wood overladen with GOLD. The instructions then continue to say that the altar of incense is to be placed right in front of the place where the ark of the covenant is to be placed – or in other words, right in front of the throne of God.
Myrrh – Later in the chapter, beginning at verse 22, the people receive the recipe for the anointing oil. The primary ingredient of the anointing oil is myrrh:
Take the finest spices: of liquid myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet-smelling cinnamon half as much, that is, two hundred fifty, and two hundred fifty of aromatic cane, and five hundred of cassia—measured by the sanctuary shekel—and a hin of olive oil; and you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil blended as by the perfumer; it shall be a holy anointing oil. With it you shall anoint the tent of meeting and the ark of the covenant, and the table and all its utensils, and the lampstand and its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the basin with its stand; you shall consecrate them, so that they may be most holy; whatever touches them will become holy. You shall anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, in order that they may serve me as priests. (Ex 30:23-30)
Frankincense – Skip down a little farther, to verse 34, and you come across the third gift of the Wise Men.
Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (an equal part of each), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy; and you shall beat some of it into powder, and put part of it before the covenant in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you; it shall be for you most holy. (Ex 30:34-36)
Matthew being a good Jewish writer and presumably writing to a Jewish community, he and his first readers may have been able to call all of this to mind in the few moments it takes him to name the gifts that the Wise Men brought.
Gold used to craft the altar of incense at the doorway to the Holy of Holies, the place where the veil is thinnest and God is most present on earth. Frankincense, the primary ingredient of the incense to be burned on that altar, a sign of the place where God meets with Moses. Myrrh, the primary ingredient of the oil used to anoint the holy things and people of God. All three of these are symbols of God’s willingness to meet with his people as they wandered the wilderness with Moses, and when they settled down in Jerusalem at the Temple.
Not to mention that the words Messiah in Hebrew and Christ in Greek, simply translate to “anointed one” in English. Read through this lens, these gifts symbolize who Jesus is – the presence of God with his people and the messiah.
And note who gives them. A group of outsiders – from another country, another religion. This is a foreshadowing of the faith that we now all know. That Jesus is not just a messiah for the Hebrew people, but he is the very presence of God come to all of his people. The promise to Abraham that he is being blessed to be a blessing is coming to its fulfillment in this moment. All through gifts.
Jesus the gift of God
There is one more gift to talk about here, and that is the gift of the baby in the manger. I have yet to find an effective way to communicate the wonder of the incarnation at this moment. God coming to us in a baby.
When we think babies, we often focus on the cuteness,, but think about what else you know about babies and childbirth. Childbirth is messy and painful. Babies are completely dependent on their parents for food, drink, and clean diapers. Babies cry loudly to get what they want. Newborns cannot sit up or even hold their heads up on their own.
We often picture Mary and Joseph just staring at baby Jesus and cuddling him in their arms. But they had many other, far less fun and glamorous tasks to do as well. Do you have good picture in your mind now of a real baby? Good.
Now think about this: that baby is God in the flesh. We are told that one of his titles is Emmanuel, which translated from Hebrew means “God with us.” God – the all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere-at-once, has-got-the-whole-world-in-his-hands creator of the universe – is the one lying that manger. Cold, vulnerable, helpless, fully dependent on his “parents.” This baby like any other, is also a baby unlike any other.
One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller who wrote Blue Like Jazz, posted a blog the other day that expresses a similar thought. The post is called “Changing God’s Diaper”:
I can’t think of a better way for God to enter the world then as an infant. He became one of His creation, for the sake of His creation. For a period in world history [humans] changed the diapers of God. He nursed at his creation’s breast. How disarming of Him. What a fantastic way to build a bridge between an infinite God and finite [humanity]. He depended on us for food and shelter and even life. He gave up power and control in an effort to love and rescue. Merry Christmas indeed (Miller “Changing God’s Diaper”).
This baby is not a gift from God – we often say that about babies. This baby is the gift of God. God in the flesh. It is hard to comprehend how incredible that is. And the gifts the Wise Men bring remind us that this is the gift of God’s presence freely given to all people. Remarkable.
We often forget that. Sometimes we think we need to find, or even make, our way to God. Sometimes we feel like we need to do certain things in order to please God. The Christmas story tells us though that God comes to us instead. The God we know in Jesus doesn’t wait for us to get our act together, but comes into the messes – like the mess childbirth in a stable. We don’t worship a God who demands obedience from us while he sits on high. Instead we know that God came to us, and still comes to us, to invite us into a relationship with him.
And he was willing to come as a baby to make that happen.
As you enjoy your gifts today, as you eat your Christmas meal and celebrate with family and friends – may you be reminded that today is a day we celebrate that God is with us.
Bibliography
Miller, Donald. Donald Miller’s Blog. “Changing God’s Diaper.” December 23, 2011. Link: http://donmilleris.com/2011/12/23/changing-gods-diaper/ accessed December 24, 2011
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Christmas Eve 2011 at Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church
5:00 pm Family Worship
Text: Isaiah 9:2, 6-7
Listen to this sermon HERE.
Christmas Lights
One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is the Christmas lights. I enjoy driving by the wonderful Christmas light displays in people’s yards.
At my house we have a decorated tree in our yard, a string of lights over the garage, and a lighted Nativity Set on our porch. Our neighbor across the street has outdone us with lights that play some quiet music, and the lights go on and off to the beat. His are way cooler than mine. There is a house that I can see from Baptist Road on my way to and from church that has a large display. I enjoy driving by that every year as the trees in this families back yard are lit so beautifully. There is another I can see from 105 when I look north. The display is very bright and beautiful. When I was growing up, one of our neighbors was known for his lights every Christmas. It was very cool that he turned his flagpole into a Christmas tree of lights. When I was a youth, there was a concert venue near the church I served, that did one of those drive through light displays every Christmas. One Sunday night on the way home from youth group, we would drive through and enjoy the lights.
Some people use a lot of lights; some just a few. Some make them twinkle and flash; some shape them into Christmas trees and wreaths. Then there are displays like this:
Have you ever gone to the one on Windjammer Drive, just off of Lexington in Colorado Springs? It is one of the best you will see anywhere. The lights dance to Trans-Siberian Orchestra music, and last year a reindeer sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” to the Grinch. All done with lights. It is very cool! Christmas lights have come a long way since their origins.
Legend has it that the reformer, Martin Luther, was the first to use Christmas lights in the early 1500s. The story is that one Christmas Eve he went for a walk in the woods near his house. He was struck with the beauty of a group of evergreen trees as they glistened in the ice and snow. He wanted to share the beauty with his family, so he cut down one of the trees and put it in his house, decorating it with candles.
Over the years the tradition caught on and people started bringing in Christmas trees and decorating them with candles – which, by the way, is not the safest way to do things. Along came Thomas Edison in the 1880s with his discover of the lightbulb and to promote it, he decorated a Christmas tree with electric lights. Later came the safety light, that didn’t burn as hot as the old-fashioned ones, then the minis, and eventually the LED. All leading to the rockin’ “Amazing Grace” and Rudolph singing to the Grinch.
One of the reasons that all of this has caught on, is not because of the technology, but because light is such a powerful image of the Christmas story.
Advent
Every Sunday since Thanksgiving, we have set aside part of our worship service to light another candle on our Advent Wreath. For us this year the candles have been to remember the people in the story, who were visited by God’s messengers, and who said “yes” to their role in the coming of the Christ Child.
Tonight, for the first time this season, we lit the large white candle in the center – the candle we use to celebrate the coming of Jesus on this night. Later in our worship we will celebrate with our “Festival of Lights” where at this service we will light glow sticks as we sing “Silent Night” to symbolize the moment when the Gift of God was given to us.
Biblical images of light
The story of light, probably begins all the way back in Genesis 1, the very first chapter of the Bible. We read (Genesis 1:1-4):
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good;
The first thing that God creates is light. The light is the first step of bringing order out of chaos.
We know that story all too well. We put night lights in our children’s rooms, so that when they wake up in the middle of the night they can see and don’t imagine monsters in the closet. And we know how when one of our kids is afraid to go into a room in the house, one of the first things we tell them to do is to turn on the light. Somehow the light seems to dispel the fear.
We still use that image as adults today. When we are unsure about what to do, we might say that we are “in the dark” about our situation. Or when we are going through a difficulty, we might call it a “dark period” in our lives, or we might call an especially trying time our “darkest hour.”
The good news is that when things are getting better, we say that we can see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
In some ways, that is what this Isaiah text is all about. Approximately 700 years before the birth of Jesus, Isaiah is writing to the Hebrew community in Israel that has been conquered by the Assyrians. They are living in fear, hunger, and poverty. At any time, all they have worked for could be taken from them by their conquerors. They are a people living in a land of deep darkness, a land with little or no hope of getting better.
To those people Isaiah shares a word from God. He says it with such certainty that although it has not yet happened he writes it in the past tense as if it already has. He says that they have “seen a great light” and that “on them light has shined.” In the midst of the darkness, even the darkness of having been conquered there is hope – and not hope in the wishful thinking sense of “I sure hope things get better.” Rather it is hope in the sense that things will get better because God is still with us even in our darkest hour.
Isaiah goes on to talk about a day when there will be peace, a peace so great that the very tools of oppression will be “burned as fuel for the fire.” Then he writes these words that touch us so deeply on this special night (Isaiah 9:6-7):
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Isaiah is speaking a word of hope to a people in a hopeless situation, and the hope is not that God will come, but rather that the presence of God is with them even in their darkness. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Isaiah, speaking God’s word to the people is saying that God has not left or abandoned them. The light is there, and a new day is coming!
Seven hundred years later the Hebrew people are no longer living under the oppression of the Assyrian Empire, but now of the Roman Empire. As it was under Assyria, there is little or no hope. They are a small nation that has been conquered by a worldwide superpower, and they are at the mercy of a government under which they have no say. They are overtaxed, oppressed, and occupied. When someone gets the idea that they might have the power to rise up against the Romans, they are publicly crucified to remind them of who holds the power.
Into that world, a child is born, a Son is given. One with ultimate authority who rules in perfect justice and righteousness. One who will lead his people to a new peace. One who is the God in the flesh living among us. He is the One we celebrate tonight – the great light that shone in the darkness of first century Roman oppression.
We are told that to mark his birth a special star appeared in the night sky – a bright light in the midst of darkness. God was making a statement that this is the one who can make a difference in the darkness.
But he is not just for that time and place. He is also for us today.
Fast forward to today. You and I know what darkness can lie around us. Jobs hanging by a thread, or the darkness of unemployment. We know the darkness that can be experienced in grief, and in the diagnosis that we just don’t know how to process. We have been through broken relationships with parents, spouse, children that can put us in the darkness. Some of us have been blindsided by a darkness that seems to have no cause other than a feeling of hopelessness that overwhelms us.
Tonight we do not deny the darkness. On the contrary. We recognize it. But we will not let it overwhelm or overtake us. Tonight we celebrate that a light has come into the world that can dispel the darkness. A Christmas light, if you will, that turns our mourning into dancing; One who brings order out of chaos; One who embodies the presence of God among us right here, right now – even in a rough economy, even with all your problems, even with all of your mistakes. This is not a light for someone else who has it all together. This is a light piercing the darkness of our lives – physical, emotional, and spiritual darkness. That is what we celebrate on this holy night.
With this understanding, listen the way that John, the most poetic of the gospels, describes Jesus’s coming (John 1:1-5, 14):
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The original Christmas light is not the LED, or Edison’s incandescent bulb, or even the candles Luther put on the first Christmas tree. No, the first Christmas light was a baby born to a poor couple. A birth that was testified to by the angels to the shepherds, which led them to a baby lying in a manger. It is a birth signified by a light in the night sky that led the wise men to the child to worship him. It is a light that was promised some 700 years earlier, and a light that continues to shine two-thousand years later.
It is a light for you and for me, and for all of us to celebrate even today!
May you know that the light has come into the darkness and that the darkness has not, will not, and cannot over come it. Jesus has been born for you this day! When we give our lives to him, we find that there is order even in the chaos.
It is a gift freely, graciously offered to you and me who do not deserve it.
With that all in mind, let me share one more Christmas light display.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.”
“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;”
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”
That is the true Christmas light. Given to us who do not deserve it by the Amazing Grace of God. May we let that light shine in and through us.
Merry Christmas! Amen.
Bibliography
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Series: The First Carols: Week 3
Listen to it HERE.
About fifteen years ago Diane accompanied me to a National Youth Workers Convention. I had attended the previous two years with my friend Scott – the first time in Philadelphia and the next time in Cincinnati. Scott had moved to Texas earlier that year and was not going. So Diane graciously agreed to come with me possibly because it was being held in Nashville. I would like to tell you I learned a lot about youth ministry at that conference, but that would not be true.
As he had done the previous two years, Mike Yaconelli, the president of the company that put on the convention, gave the welcoming address. Yaconelli’s speech was the about the same every year which included an invitation to miss session of the conference. He told us that some of us in the audience might need a break, and that taking that break would be the best thing we could do that week for ourselves, our churches, and our families. He reinforced by saying that we should not feel obligated to attend all the sessions of the conference.
Somehow in Philadelphia, a city I had grown up around, and the following year in Cincinnati that invitation did not have the same appeal that it did in Nashville. I quickly grabbed the agenda for the conference and noticed that I had heard most of the speakers before. Challenge accepted! Diane and I took Yaconelli up on his invitation to miss portions of the conference.
Nashville was fantastic. There seemed to be music everywhere. Many genres were represented, but most of it was country which I didn’t mind because I grew up around country music (my Dad, who grew up in the Bronx is a big fan of George Jones, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Roy Clark, and the like). We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, and the Ryman Auditorium.
One afternoon was particularly fun when we decided to walk the strip to find a place to have lunch. We were surprised to find almost every venue hosting live music. After having lunch at one place and hearing some live music, we then spent several hours moving from venue to venue to hear more live music.
I remember one guy in particular, although I don’t remember his name. He was very good, but everyone in Nashville was good. What made memorable was his accent. We didn’t notice it when he was singing, but when he told stories between songs, it was pretty thick. Now a country singer with a southern accent would not have been remarkable, but this country crooner had an Australian accent. I heard him sing country, then speak with an unmistakable Australian accent, and I was confused. As they say on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.” Country singers should sound like Sam Elliot not Crocodile Dundee.
You may have noticed over the past several weeks that the Christmas story has a similar quality to it. Things don’t exactly seem to fit. Two weeks ago, Bob talked about Mary – an ordinary young woman of little note, whom God selects her to be the mother of Jesus. Last week we met a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth from a long religious tradition. They certainly seem like the kind of couple God would use to be the parents of the Messiah, but they are not. They are the parents of John, the one who will be the “voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord” (Luke 3:4).
Like an Australian accent on a country singer, the Son of God is born surrounded by those who do not seem to fit the scene. These are not extraordinary folks of great merit. There are instead very much like you and me. Today’s passage, which includes another angel visitation and another song, reinforces this thought.
The angel’s announcement
When we read this passage, we tend to focus on the angels – the heavenly beings in the sky. But we miss a great deal of what the passage has to say for us if we do not consider the audience to whom the angels appear. It is true that this is a song FOR the whole world, but it is not a song sung TO the whole world. Rather, this announcement and song are addressed to a specific audience – a handful of shepherds and probably a bunch of sheep.
Luke sets the scene when he writes, “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them” (Luke 2:8-9).
I don’t know any shepherds, and I don’t even have a point of reference to understand what a shepherd is. So when I hear shepherds, I often think cowboy. But having grown up in New Jersey, I have never met any real cowboys, So I don’t really think cowboy, I think movie cowboy – someone like Jack Palance in the movie City Slickers.
Palance plays a seasoned, rugged old cowboy with a wealth of wisdom because he has spent his days out on the prairie – unencumbered by the distractions of modern life. He knows the meaning of life, not because he read it in a book or learned it in a classroom, but because he has long pondered it out on the range overseeing the cattle. Ah, the homespun wisdom, philosophy, and theology of the cowboy.
While that is where my 21st century mind goes, that probably would NOT have been the predominant view of a cowboy in the nineteenth century. What I have is a sanitized, Zane Grey, John Wayne, movie version of a cowboy that probably never existed.
The same is true of our common understanding of the shepherd. The shepherd’s contemporaries would not have seen him like a movie cowboy. First century documents paint a different, far less glamorous, picture of the shepherd. They were not respected theologians on the plain with a wealth of untapped wisdom gleaned from the time they had to be in deep thought. Rather they were viewed, if seen at all, as those whom the rest of proper society was more than happy to have living on the hillsides outside of town. One commentator, quoting several ancient sources, puts it this way:
in the First Century … shepherds…had a rather unsavory reputation. … “most of the time they were dishonest and thieving; they led their herds onto other people’s land and pilfered the produce of the land.” … Consequently, the pious were warned not to buy wool, milk, or kids from shepherds on the assumption that it was stolen property. Shepherds were not allowed to fulfill a judicial office or be admitted in court as witnesses. A midrash [a sort of ancient, Hebrew Bible commentary] on Psalm 23:2 reads, “There is no more disreputable occupation than that of a shepherd.” Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher [at the time of Jesus], wrote about looking after sheep and goats, “Such pursuits are held mean and inglorious” (Wilson).
The picture we get from these sources is quite different from the clean-cut boy with the lamb on his shoulders that are included in many of our nativity sets. Rather they are assumed to be dishonest, petty thieves whom people were encouraged not to even do business with. They were considered so unreliable that they were not allowed to testify in court. They are called disreputable and inglorious. They are not exactly the kind of people one who select to make the birth announcement to.
Bethlehem was filled that night with the right kind of people, descendants of David, the great king from whom the messiah was prophesied to be born. This announcement would appear to pertain more to them. In Bethlehem were the good, upstanding, law-abiding, ritually clean, Temple observant Jews. Yet the angel goes out to the fields, to a group of people living out on the hills, outside of respectable society, and considered ritually unclean, to announce this:
I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. (Luke 2:10b-12, emphasis added)
Four times the angel directly addresses the shepherds. The angel says this message, this child, this sign are for you. Then the angel invites them to go and see when he says “you will find.” Often we hear this addressed to us, the church-going, believing Christians. It wasn’t originally. Our first century counterparts were in Bethlehem, the City of David, getting counted for a census and paying their taxes. The angel was instead sent to announce the birth of the Messiah to those discounted by society, the irreligious, the untrustworthy, the rough around the edges.
Then, as the announcement draws to a close, the angel is joined by a whole host (or army) of angels who sing:
Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors! (Luke 2:14)
Which, by the way, is the entire song of the angels that we celebrate so much at Christmas. We know that song so much better than Mary’s which is quite a bit longer, and certainly better than Zechariah’s, which is even longer still. I’m sure we know it better than Simeon’s song which Bob will preach on next week, which though shorter than Mary’s and Zechariah’s, is still about twice as long as the angels.
We know the song well because we sing about it constantly throughout the Christmas season. When I was looking for hymns to sing today, I joked with Pastor Bob about how easy it was – unlike just about every other Sunday in the year. I could have picked just about any Christmas carol in the hymnal and we would sing about the angels. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” “Angels We Have Heard on High” (where we get to sing part of the song in Latin), “The First Noel,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” even “Away in a Manger” has the angels in it.
Each of them is longer than the song of the angels that barely takes up one verse. We like this song and know it well, but we may be missing something when we remove it from its original context. We cannot forget to whom this beautiful song of worship is sung.
The angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” At least that is how the NRSV translates it. If you are my age though, you may remember it differently. When Charlie Brown asks “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” Linus recites these same verses from the King James Version. The passage ends with a slightly different translation of the angels’ song, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
The difference “peace, goodwill toward men” and “peace among those who he favors” is due to a difference in the last word of the song in the Greek texts. In some texts there is an s, a sigma, at the end of the word, and in other texts the s is not there. Is it eudokia or eudokias?
The word eudokia/s has at its root a sense of delight, pleasure, satisfaction. The question about the sigma at the end simply changes its part of speech. With the s, as the NRSV uses, it is about God taking delight in people. Without the s, as the KJV uses, it is about God giving delight to the people.
Scholars write lengthy linguistic and historical debates about the sigma, but I wonder how much it really matters. What seems more important is that we are talking about God taking delight ing or giving delight to the shepherds.
Before we look at that though, let’s eliminate a possible misreading of this text. When the angels sing, “peace among those whom he favors” it may sound as though the angels are dividing the world into two categories: those whom God favors, and those whom he doesn’t. There are several pieces of evidence that won’t allow us to accept that reading.
First, if that is the case we would have to believe that the angels have the wrong address. Certainly lowly shepherds would not be considered “favored ones.” If we read it that way, we would have to believe that God is making an announcement to those for whom it does not apply.
Some might suggest that God is holding out a carrot in front of the shepherds trying to get them to “straighten up and fly right.” In other words (in my best Price is Right voice), “This peace can be yours, if only you will do what it takes to become the favored ones of God.”
I don’t like either of those explanations. Neither sounds like God to me.
Further, we need to remember that the song follows the announcement which, we have already noted, is specifically addressed TO the shepherds – “I am bringing you good news of great joy… to you is born this day… This will be a sign for you: you will find a child…” The announcement is clearly addressed to the shepherds and there is no reason to suspect that the song is any different. Further the angel says that this news is “for ALL the people” – no qualifier there. For these reasons I do not believe that we can read “among those who he favors” as a qualifier.
I believe it is intended as a modifier. Rather than dividing humanity, I believe this statement about God’s delight (eudokia/s) is intentionally directed toward a group of people who have been told all of their life that they don’t matter. The shepherds have lived hearing that they are poor and outcast because God doesn’t like them; that they are somehow unworthy of the love of God; and not welcome in the Temple until they get their act together. The message to the shepherds that night is that God takes great delight in, or gives that delight to, them. Those living outside of town, outside of proper society, outside of the religious elite, are loved. Jesus, the Messiah has been born for them. Yes, even the shepherds. It seems odd that God would choose to send the angels to them, but then again, God has always seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for shepherds.
Shepherds in the Old Testament
Abraham was a herdsman when God appeared to and called him. When Moses noticed the bush that was burning but not consumed, through which God called to him, he was on Mount Horeb tending his father-in-law’s flocks. When Samuel came to the house of Jesse with word that one of his sons was to be anointed to be the next king of Israel, David was presented after all of his older brothers had been rejected because Davie was out in the fields tending sheep at the time. Abraham, Moses, and David were all shepherds.
Additionally, there are several passages in the prophetic books of the Old Testament that talk about a day when God will return to rule his people, and the image used is that of a shepherd. In Psalm 23 “The Lord [YHWH] is my shepherd.” In Jeremiah 31 God says to his people that he will return to them and care for them “as a shepherd a flock.” In Ezekiel 34, God is described as the Great Shepherd coming to guide his sheep, the people of Israel. In his own ministry, Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).
There is a theme throughout the Old Testament and that is picked up right from the start of the story of Jesus – that those often considered the “wrong people” are actually the “right people.”
Shepherds to the manger
Unlike Zechariah who responded to his angel appearance with skepticism – “How will I know that this is so?”; unlike Mary who responded to her angel-visit with a resounding “yes” but then was called to wait nine months; the shepherds are people of action. When the angel chorus finishes, they go. And they go with haste. The text reads,
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste. (Luke 2:15-16a)
There in Bethlehem the shepherds find the scene as the angel described it – Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus lying in a manger. Luke continues,
When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. (Luke 2:17-18)
Those thought to be too unreliable to be witnesses in a court of law are the reliable witnesses of birth of the Messiah.
Luke then concludes the story of the shepherds,
The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (Luke 2:20)
Those who have been sung too, now have a song to sing. Those who had been welcomed, go to invite others. They have heard the good news, experienced it for themselves, and become the first evangelists, sharing the news at the birth of the messiah. Remarkable!
Outsiders
As a boy, my family’s tradition was to put up and decorate our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. It was a great way to celebrate. On that day of great anticipation, my brother and I had something to do. This also meant that throughout December our primary Christmas decoration was the nativity set.
My parents’ nativity set is very cool, not very historically accurate, but cool. There is a Christmas light hidden under the eave of the wooden stable. The bulb was always orange, to give that warm glow to the scene. There is also a music box in the back that plays “Silent Night” when wound. The figurines are beautiful – not ornate like some, but simple and beautiful. I was always a big fan of the nativity set, but there was something I never noticed as a child. Being the weird kid that I was, there were times when I would turn out all of the lights in the house, plug in the bulb, wind the music box, and just take it in.
What I failed to notice back then is how the figurines in the scene are similar to an Australian accent on country singer. They just don’t seem to belong together. The shepherds had a reputation for living on the edge of society. The Wise Men were from a different country and a different religion. Joseph was of the ancestral house of David, but he was hardly regal as a laborer. Mary was from a historically priestly family, but it is her cousin Elizabeth who married a priest, not Mary.
Jesus is born just outside of an inn that is just outside of Jerusalem, to a woman whose cousin is married to a priest, and a man who is of the house of David but works with his hands. He is visited by spiritual people, but they are from another country and a different religion. There are some Jewish people who visit, but they are ritually unclean shepherds. Everything seems to be just a little outside of the upstanding, religious surrounding one might expect.
Jesus continues this theme throughout his ministry. The people he calls to be his disciples are fishermen, tax collectors, and the like. All those who had some education in the Hebrew scriptures, but obviously were not seen as promising enough to become apprentices of a more traditional rabbi. He touches those who were considered untouchable, loves the unlovable, and welcomes everyone to his table – even those with questionable pasts. Throughout his ministry, starting right here at his birth, and even predating his birth through the likes of Abraham, Moses, and David, we are introduced to a God who is no respecter of status, but loves us all. Yes, even you.
Jesus loves you
One of the primary messages of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it is for you. Not your potential you if you worked really hard and got your act together – but you. The gift of the messiah, of peace and joy, is not just for the got-it-all-together, calm, responsible people. It is also given to the harried, the over-worked, and the underpaid. It is for the rich, the unemployed, and those with embarrassing debt. It is for the overwhelmed, the short-tempered, and the frazzled. It is extended to the active church member, the Christmas-Eve-only attendee, and those angry at the church. It is for the picketers, the picketed, and those caught in the crossfire. It is for those who have made a big mistake, those who have made a bunch of little mistakes, and those who make habitual mistakes. The love of God is for all – who please him – the priest, the Wise Man, the shepherd. The love of God is for you.
Some of you may think, “Well, that is nice for everyone else, but it doesn’t apply to me. You wouldn’t say that if you knew my secret sin, my addiction, my pain.” No, but God does. And he makes the offer anyway. That barrier is not God’s. It is yours. The angels announced to the shepherds that Jesus was for ALL people. Even them. Even you.
The angel’s announcement to the shepherds reminds us also that Jesus comes to the shepherds among us today. Those who have been pushed to the margins of our society, and outside of the church. They are all around us everyday – angry, frustrated, confused, struggling. They wonder if God, or anyone else could love them. They wonder if they can ever be forgiven for that thing that they have done, and in some cases continue to do. You probably know some. Who are those “shepherds” you come into contact with? The message is for them as well.
The song of the angels is an invitation to those who think they do not belong.
After meeting the baby Jesus, Luke tells us “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” Those who had been sung to are now singing. We need to follow their lead – no longer separating the religious from the irreligious, the insider from the outsider, but instead extending an invitation to those on the outside – where Jesus was born, ministered, and continues to dwell.
May we hear the angels’ song inviting us, the outsiders, to the manger. May we then go as the shepherds did, into our world singing the song we have heard, inviting others into this relationship that changes everything.
Bibliography
Wilson, Ralph F. “Shepherds in Bethlehem” at JesusWalk.com. Accessed at http://www.jesuswalk.com/lessons/2_8-20.htm on 08Dec2011.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
I launched a new blog today called AssociatePastor.org to serve those who serve on ministry staffs. I hope you will share this with anyone you know in a ministry position (even if they are not the “associate” they may know others to pass it on to.
Regular readers of joeiovino.com will enjoy the first post where I give the rationale for the new site using the movie Bull Durham.
Sorry for the last several months of neglect to this site. I will be return to 3-day per week blogging here soon.
Perfection
In 1989 Toyota entered the luxury car market with the Lexus line of vehicles. When advertising began for the new line, the slogan was simple: “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” Over the years it has been modified, appearing as “The passionate pursuit of perfection,” and most recently, “the pursuit of perfection.”
Perfection is a great goal for designing and manufacturing of vehicles, but is not a great way to measure success in ourselves. I read a quote this week that says, “The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time” (Hansel). I know that feeling – all too well.
No too long ago, I learned in a counseling session that I struggle with perfectionism. When my counselor suggested this, I argued. Anyone who has seen the clutter in my office would not expect to find a perfectionist. Most who have worked under my leadership would not see me as a perfectionist. I don’t have the markers of traditional perfectionism. The reason is that I only expect perfection from one person – me.
What I learned is that I am not very forgiving of myself and my mistakes. I think, deep down, that I should be able to be perfect, especially in my relationship with God. But I know how far from perfect I am. My counselor suggested that I “lighten up” on myself.
So when I bump up against the words Jesus uses to conclude this section of the Sermon on the Mount, I struggle. “Be perfect, therefore,” Jesus says, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Perfect. Great. And not just perfect compared to others, but as perfect as God. Jesus appears to be encouraging this side of me that I find frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time.
As we learned last week though, pulling a verse out of its context can lead us to a mistaken understanding that does not reflect the intent of the entire passage. Which is true in this case as well. Jesus isn’t calling us to be perfect in our performance, but rather calling us to a new kind of perfection.
This morning I will begin by making some comments about what we have read this morning. Then take some time to find out what Jesus is really saying about perfection.
Recapturing the Context
To get started, we need to review a little. If you were with us last week, you may remember that I gave four techniques for Bible reading that help us get a clearer understanding of the intended meaning of a text. They are:
- Immediate Context, meaning we need to read the verses around this verse;
- Author Context where we look for what else this author has written about this topic that might shed light on the current verse;
- Historical Context that looks at what we can learn from what we know about the time and culture to which these words were originally spoken and/or written; and
- Biblical Context where we look at the entire narrative of scripture for a fuller message than just one quote.
Today’s scripture is a continuation of the section of the Sermon on the Mount we read last week, so nothing has changed in regards to the immediate context. In this portion of the sermon, Jesus is addressing laws using a repeated pattern. He begins each one by saying something like, “You have heard it said…” and brings up a Law – usually one of the Ten Commandments. He then follows that up by saying, “but I say to you…” and offers something else.
Not to abolish but to fulfill
This section begins back in verse 17 with a few verses of “prologue” where Jesus makes a clear statement about what he is going to say. We need to keep those words in mind to understand these verses properly. Jesus says,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 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. (Matthew 5:17-19)
Very clearly Jesus states that he is not replacing the law, nor is he giving something new. Rather, Jesus says that this section is somehow a fulfillment of the Law that Moses given on Mount Sinai. You may also remember from the first sermon in this series that Pastor Bob reminded us that Jesus doesn’t say that “his teaching” is the fulfillment of the Law, but rather that HE himself is.
Jesus’s prologue ends with a puzzling sentence. “For I tell you,” Jesus says, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
Throughout the gospels we find Jesus criticizing the scribes and Pharisees for their meticulous attention to the Law. This verse seems to contradict that as he tells his followers to “exceed” the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. When we apply our techniques number 2 and 4, the author context and biblical context, we know that this cannot be what Jesus is saying. So we look for clues elsewhere.
I find a clue to what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 23:23. It serves as key to understanding what he meant by “exceeding” the scribes and Pharisees. We read:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
Do you hear the “exceeding” part? Don’t neglect the law, Jesus says, which the scribes and Pharisees would have certainly agreed with. But as you do, Jesus continues, do not neglect the weightier matters of the law which he names as justice and mercy and faith. Reading today’s passage through this lens, will not allow us to view Jesus’s “but I say to you…” statements as stricter law for law’s sake. Instead we begin to hear the law as it was originally intended – to be practiced with justice and mercy and faith.
So then when we read that Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’… But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22) we hear not simply a law to obey regarding anger, but a call to treat even those who make us angry with justice and mercy and faith.
When he talks about adultery and lust, we hear more than a law that should cause us to want to pluck our eye out, but rather a call to look at the people around us with justice, mercy & faith.
When Jesus confronts a law that allows for divorce for any reason if you do it legally, we hear Jesus calling us to recognize that it is not just about right and wrong. Instead it is about treating our spouses with justice and mercy and faith.
Then when Jesus addresses the command about oaths and not “swearing to God” he is calling us away from the temptation to look for loopholes that allow us to take advantage of the people around us, and instead treat the people with whom we have business dealings with justice and mercy and faith.
Eye for an eye
In today’s text, which immediate follows the one we dealt with last week, Jesus gives two more “you have heard it said… but I say” saying. Both of the ones for today deal with people with whom we are in conflict.
“You have heard that it was said,” Jesus begins, “‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’” (Matthew 5:38). Here Jesus is talking about a law that is not one of the Ten Commandments, but appears three different times – once in each of three books of the law - Exodus (21:22–25), Leviticus (24:19–21), and Deuteronomy (19:16-21). The intent of this law was to ensure that the punishment fits the crime. It was originally intended for one to receive restitution for when wronged while not allowing for revenge.
By the time of Jesus this limit had become more of a goal. When one was wronged, he/she felt all but required to exact justice by “getting them back in kind.”
Some things never change. Every parent knows that all children think it is a viable defense for violence against a sibling to say, “buy he/she hit me first.” Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, slap for slap, punch for punch. She hit me. I get to hit her. After all, what’s fair is fair.
Jesus calls us away from vengeance and toward justice and mercy and faith. “But I say to you…” Jesus continues, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matthew 5:38-39). A little study into the historical context reveals that it was commonly understood by Jesus’s first listeners, that being hit on the right cheek was the greatest insult one could receive from another. So when Jesus says to “turn the other cheek,” he is saying that when someone does to you the most insulting thing you could imagine, take it and do not retaliate.
He then applies this same principle to legal issues. “If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat,” he goes on to say, “give your cloak as well” – give them the shirt off of your back. Opting for justice and mercy and faith even toward them.
Finally he applies this “turn the other cheek” thinking in a far more radical way. Immediately upon hearing the next piece, “if anyone forces you to go one mile,” the people in the audience would have known that Jesus was talking about a particular issue of the day. Under Roman law a Roman soldier could require any civilian in an occupied land to carry their pack for one mile. Imagine the feelings of disdain that must have filled the Hebrew people listening when Jesus raises this image. They must have thought Jesus would offer a clever way of resisting the hated Romans, or maybe a way of making the soldiers look foolish. No. He tells them instead to go above and beyond what was mandated and go a second mile. Justice and mercy and faith even extends to the Roman soldier. Wow.
Love
Then Jesus takes it even farther with his next saying. “You have heard that it was said,” Jesus says following the pattern, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’” (Matthew 5:43). The “love your neighbor” part of that saying is found In Leviticus 19:18 where we read, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” But the “hate your enemy” part must have been a common application in that day.
The people had found a loophole. They could still hate their enemies and technically be obeying the law. Jesus answers this by calling his followers to love like God loves. God doesn’t discriminate. He sends the sun to everyone regardless of whether they are good or not, and the rain (which was considered a blessing by this agricultural society) whether they are righteous or not.
I wonder how many people walked out during this part of the sermon. When Jesus talks about loving and praying for your enemies and persecutors, he is saying something that is exactly opposite of common messianic thought. As you have probably heard many times before, the Hebrew people were looking for a messiah that would lead them in conquering their enemies, namely the ruling forces of the Roman Empire; and punish their persecutors. Like Moses had led the people to freedom from slavery in Egypt, the messiah was expected to free them from Roman oppression. As Joshua had led the Israelites in a battle to take the Promised Land, they believed the messiah would lead them in a battle against the Romans to take it back.
Jesus is not interested in just the restoration of Israel. Jesus is interested in ushering in the restoration of the entire world, a new creation, the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus’s ministry is calling for his people to be agents of the future kingdom in the here and now. So again Jesus calls his followers to go beyond their own people, and extend justice and mercy and faith to everyone, even the enemy.
Then Jesus concludes this thought of loving the way God does with that annoying little line that is often misunderstood. He says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).
Teleios
Last week I introduced four techniques that help us understand scripture more fully: immediate context, author context, historical context, and biblical context. Today I want to add a fifth. At times it is helpful to look at linguistics. We want to be sure that we understand any nuance from the original language that may not be fully understood in the word-choice of the translators.
Today we need to look at the word “perfect” that occurs twice in this verse. Both occurrences are translations of the Greek word teleios. For us, to be perfect would be that we never make a mistake, that we are flawless, that we match an ideal, or for that we follow God without error.
Teleios has a bit of a different sense of perfection. In fact, when you look up the word teleios in a Greek dictionary the first definition is not “perfect” but rather “having reached its end, finished, complete” (Strong).
A form of this word was used to tell when fruit was ripe – ready, complete, finished, perfect.
Because no language translates exactly into another, Bible translators have to make choices about how to best convey the meaning of a word, which is why most Bibles are translated by a large committee. This is true of the word teleios. Some occurrences of teleios in the New Testament are translated as “perfect” in the NRSV, while other times it is translated “complete.”
In his version of the Bible called The Message, Eugene Peterson translates differently than most. Rather than trying to go word for word, Peterson attempts to give the gist of what the sentence means. For example when he reads the Greek that the NRSV translators render, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” he writes this:
In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you (Matthew 5:48 Msg).
I like this rendering because of the way it deals with teleios.
One author talks about this understanding of perfection by remembering how there was a time that as a parent he had said that he had a “perfect four-year-old.” He asserts that he was right, at the time. Their child was developmentally exactly where they ought to be at the age of four (Harper 88). If that child is still acting the same way at 44 – well, that’s not perfect. So perfection in this sense is not an “achievement,” but rather still calls for further development as we progress.
Remember that we have said that throughout this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not talking about obedience to the law. We know from the prologue that Jesus is calling his disciples to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees which we understand as living the Law out with justice and mercy and faith. Put in its proper context, we hear Jesus calling us away from a measuring stick of perfect performance toward something else.
Therefore, a good way to understand is verse about perfection is to think of it this way: be perfect, therefore, not as the scribes and Pharisees are perfect, but as your heavenly Father is perfect. That gets to the heart of this fundamental, paradigmatic shift to which Jesus is calling his followers.
As I said last week, the Pharisees were very good at the me-and-God business, could not have cared less about the me-and-everyone-else stuff. They were concerned with obedience that would lead to their own salvation, and took it upon themselves to point out where others falling short of that obedience, thus elevating their own status. This seems to be true of some Christians today who have become the new Pharisees – not of the Ten Commandments, but of this section of the Sermon on the Mount. They seem to see themselves as the example of perfect obedience and annoyingly try to hold others to that standard as well.
Jesus is calling us, his disciples, away from that Pharisaic thinking to a new understanding of performing the weightier matters of the law – justice and mercy and faith. Jesus is calls his disciples not to be perfect in obedience to the letter of the law, but to be complete (teleios) in obedience to those weightier matters of justice and mercy and faith.
Let me illustrate this in a weird way. I’m a bit of a sucker for a good (and sometimes not-so-good) sports movie. If I’m flipping channels and Rudy is on, I will stay with it until someone in the room begs me to change the channel. I own Remember the Titans, one of my favorites, and recently bought the 20th anniversary edition of Bull Durham, with the excuse that I want to use part of it in a project I’m working on.
So when in my research on perfection I stumbled across a reference to the half-time speech in the movie Friday Night Lights, I went to the DVD shelf in my basement and pulled down my copy of the movie and re-watched that scene. Permian High School is in the championship game with another school that has also not lost a game all season. One team will walk away champions with a “perfect” season. The other will end the season with just one loss. At halftime the coach gives a speech. Here is a clip:
I think Coach understands teleios. Perfection is not about the scoreboard, the record, or even execution on the field. Perfection for the coach is about playing not just for yourself, but for your teammates. Coach says that perfection “is about you and your relationship to yourself and your family and your friends… To know you didn’t let them down… That you did everything that you could. If you can live with love and joy in your heart then you are perfect.”
I think Coach is using the word “perfect” in a similar sense to the way Jesus uses it here. It is not about doing it all perfectly, but rather it is about giving it your all in pursuit of justice and mercy and faith.
As an aside: I don’t know if the writers, directors, or producers know this, but I find it interesting that after this speech redefining perfection, Coach has one of the players lead the team in the Lord’s Prayer. That is exactly what happens in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’s next section is on our spiritual disciplines and includes the Lord’s Prayer. Quite a coincidence.
Coach says something in his speech that I find interesting: “forever is about to happen here in just a few minutes.” I know he is talking about the second half of this championship football game which these guys, most of whom will never play football again, will remember for the rest of their lives. But that quote brings me to another nuance of the word teleios.
Notice that the word teleios begins with the prefix tele – another Greek word which means “far off.” If you think of the words television, telephone, and telescope you get this sense of bringing something that is far off into your presence. So it is with this word translated in the NRSV in these verses as “perfect,” but here in the sense of time. Teleios is about the fullness of the future coming into the present. It hints at bringing the completed future into the here-and-now. It is as if Jesus is saying, “forever is about to happen here in just a few minutes.” He is calling us to be future people now. In a very real sense that is what Jesus is talking about when he preached that “the Kingdom of God [the fully complete perfect future] is at hand.”
N. T. Wright in his fantastic book Simply Christian says it this way,
“One key element of living as a Christian is learning to live with the life, and by the rules, of God’s future world, even as we are continuing to live within the present one” (Wright 124).
He Loves Us
Maybe there is no one other than me that needs to hear this sermon, but I confess there are times when I can get caught up in this “relentless pursuit of perfection” in the wrong sense. I have trouble accepting that I cannot perform perfectly for God, and that can become quite a barrier in our relationship. Left on my own for too long, I would base my entire Christian walk on performance – with the only acceptable goal being perfect. As that quote said though, this leads to an expectation that “is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time.”
When I get to feeling that God is not happy with me, and may have withdrawn his love from me, I sing. I sing a song I first learned from the David Crowder*Band but was written by John Mark McMillan called “How He Loves.” Someone once said this song is “Jesus Loves Me” for adults. I think they are right.
McMillan wrote the song at a time when he was deeply questioning and doubting God. In his struggle he began to wonder if God would continue to put up with his faithlessness and anger. As a reminder that God loves even the messy parts of our lives, he wrote this chorus, “he loves us, oh how he loves us.” Oh, how I need to hear that.
My guess is that many of you need to hear that as well. You hear these words of Jesus, “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” or you meet other Christians who make you feel bad about the mistakes in your life, or you hear what is said of Christianity in our culture, and you think, “well, that counts me out.”
Remember this is not about perfect performance. It is about being filled with the perfect – the Holy Spirit – that allows you to live the kingdom life of the future in the present. It’s about perfect love. It’s about being perfect, not in obedience to a set of rules like the scribes and Pharisees are perfect, but rather in having that law fulfilled in you in justice and mercy and faith.
May we exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees of the first century and the 21st century. May we be found in the relentless pursuit of teleios. Amen.
Bibliography
Hansel, Tim. Eating Problems for Breakfast. Word Publishing, 1988, p. 39 as quoted and annotated at http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/p/perfection.htm.
Harper, Steve. The Way to Heaven: the Gospel According to John Wesley. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003.
Peterson, Eugene H. The Message: the Bible in Contemporary Language. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002. Accessed online at http://biblegateway.org.
Strong’s Greek Lexicon online at http://studybible.info/strongs/G5046.
Wright, N. T. Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Week 7 in our Rule of Life series
Listen to it HERE.
Opening illustration
Loopholes: The ability to feel good about technically obeying the rules, without actually doing anything that would cost you anything.
Some people are very good at finding loopholes, especially children. Tell your son or daughter that they are not allowed to have the cookies in the cabinet after school, and they will find cookies someplace else and consume them. “You didn’t say I could not have cookies,” your little sweetheart will say, “you just said I could not have the ones in the cabinet.” You say, “You know what I meant. Next time…” Yes, you have been bested.
When a youth group member comes to me and asks to go to the bathroom, I sometimes need to say, “Yes, you may go to bathroom here on the lower level, right down that hall and when you are done you must come right back.” If not, I may be giving them permission to go to the upstairs bathroom where they might decide to interrupt the children’s ministry.
At times, we try to find loopholes in our life of faith as well. We look for ways we can be obedient that will not require much of us. Jesus does not let us get away with tacit obedience to a handful of rules. He calls us instead to reorient our lives.
The need for context
Welcome to week 7 of our series called The Rule of Life where we are looking at Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount.” I want to reiterate what I said a couple of weeks ago. One of the great challenges for Bob and I as we do this series is to not take the Sermon on the Mount apart. It is tempting to take this as a series of proverb-like statements and stories that we can then expound upon out of context. This, like any time one takes a piece while ignoring the whole, is dangerous work. Whenever we take quotes out of scripture without looking at the entirety, we may come up with something that is quite the opposite of what was originally intended.. When we do that, we run the danger of supporting something we do not intend.
So when we come to these verses, specifically about divorce, we hear something that doesn’t seem to fit what we know about Jesus in the rest of the New Testament, and we have heard these verses used to manipulate and hurt people. So what do we do with these verses?
Someone once said, “A text without context is just a pretext for whatever we want it to say.” So we need some context. Throughout this morning’s sermon, I will share several techniques for reading scripture that may be helpful.
Technique 1: Immediate context
The first helpful technique is to look at the context the author gives in the verses around this one and ask how this fits into the rest of the story that surrounds it. To do that we need to pull back to wider shot of this section.
In our passage for this morning we need to look at the whole Sermon on the Mount. When we do, we find at the beginning of this section a group of verses that serve as a type of prologue to this passage – Matthew 5:17-20. Jesus begins this prologue by saying:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 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. (Matthew 5:17-18).
Jesus clearly states he is not putting forth a new set of laws. These are not be understood, as the Sermon on the Mount is sometimes referred to, as the Christian Ten Commandments. I believe Jesus would have been offended by that implication. The Law in what we call the Old Testament, was perfectly given by God on Mount Sinai and recorded in Exodus 20. Jesus is not correcting the “old law” as thought it were inadequate, nor is he imposing a new law. Jesus clearly says in this passage that he is not abolishing but fulfilling the law.
So what is he doing here? At the end of this prologue, verse 20, Jesus says what it is about in a sentence that strikes my ears as a bit odd:
“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
Throughout the gospels the scribes and the Pharisees are criticized by Jesus for their sense of “self-righteousness.” How could our righteousness exceed that of these legal gurus? Does Jesus really want us to out-do the Pharisees and scribes at their own game? If not, what in the world does Jesus mean?
Technique 2 – Author context
That brings me to Bible-reading technique two. We need some clues to understand this statement. To do that we look elsewhere in the book we are reading for clues about what this could mean.
Because I want to be true to not only what Jesus is saying, but also to what Matthew is trying to communicate, I want to stay in Matthew. Remember that originally Matthew was not part of a bound collection of biographies of Jesus, but stood alone. So our best clues will come from within the book we are looking at (or others by this same author if that applies), and not something from somewhere else in the Bible at this stage.
If we turn to a passage much later in Matthew’s story, Matthew 23, we get a clue as to what Jesus means by a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. In Matthew 23 we hear Jesus ripping the religion of the scribes and Pharisees in a passage that is sometimes called the “Seven Woes.”
They are called the “Seven Woes” because seven times Jesus uses the word “woe” before giving a scathing remark. Six begin with Jesus saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites [which should probably would be better translated “actors”]!” The other one begins with “woe to you blind guides” but the implication is certainly that it is also directed at the scribes and Pharisees, as in the other woes he sometimes calls them blind guides.
In verses 23 and following, we get a clue that informs today’s passage when Jesus says:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!” (Matthew 5:23f)
I don’t know if you picked up on it, but that is supposed to be funny. Jesus uses humorous images to make his point. First, he paints a picture of the scribes and Pharisees going through their spice rack at the end of the week to grab 10% of each spice to give. Second, he pictures them straining out a gnat – commonly considered the smallest animal by Jesus’s contemporaries – but swallowing a camel – commonly understood as the largest animal. It is similar to us saying, “you pick off ants but swallow an elephant.” He is accusing the scribes and Pharisees of missing the forest for the trees.
Between those images we find our clue about what he means back in 5:20 that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees to enter the kingdom of heaven. He says that these religious leaders have “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.” There is the exceeding – exercising justice, mercy, and faith as one keeps the Law.
Justice and mercy take me back to the Beatitudes, the “preamble” (as Pastor Bob has called it), of the Sermon on the Mount. There Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” which is better translated “justice”; and “blessed are the merciful.” A picture is starting to emerge. This morning’s passage is talk about exceeding the law with justice, mercy, and faith as hinted at in the Beatitudes.
Like Calvin, we sometimes look for loopholes – ways to obey the letter of the law and justify ourselves without requiring much change or investment from us. We want to obey God without being inconvenienced. What is the least I can do. Justice, mercy, and faith, on the other hand, require something from us – a change of heart, a change of attitude, a change of focus.
So let’s dig into the specifics of this passage with new eyes that understand that Jesus is pushing his hearers from minimal obedience to the law, toward living the law with justice, mercy, and faith.
It has been said… But I say…
Following the prologue in Matthew 5:17-20 is a section of the Sermon on the Mount that follows a pattern Bob introduced in his sermon on last week’s passage. The pattern continues through this week’s passage, and will conclude in next week’s passage at the end of chapter 5.
The pattern starts with says something like, “You have heard that it was said…” and then shares a point in the Law, usually one of the 10 Commandments. He follows that up with something like, “But I say to you…” and gives what many people hear as a stricter interpretation of that Law. But don’t go there. That is not what Jesus is doing here. Remember, he is not offering a new law. As we just showed, each of these is instead an illustration of righteousness EXCEEDING that of the scribes and Pharisees – through justice and mercy and faith.
To get started let’s take a quick look at the passage Bob preached on last week. Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:21-22). Jesus takes the commandment about murder, and turns it to talk about anger.
It is as if Jesus is saying, “Hey, do you think you are OK with God because you haven’t killed anyone? Well, don’t be so smug. If you have been angry and lashed out at another (which I would imagine we all have done), you have sinned because that is not an act of justice or mercy or faith.” He takes a Law we can follow without a whole lot of effort, change, or investment on our part, and reminds us that is not enough. We have often broken this law by not obeying the justice and mercy behind it.
Adultery and Lust
Next Jesus follows the pattern to address adultery: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’” (Matthew 5:27) – one of the ten commandments. Most can feel pretty confident they have been obedient. Then Jesus clarifies using the measuring stick of justice and mercy. He says, in my words, “Hey, if you think you are OK in the eyes of God because you haven’t committed the physical act of adultery, look out. Without the act, you have broken the intent of God’s law every time you have looked lustfully at a woman.”
It does specifically say “woman” – I looked it up. The Greek word is a form of gune, the root of our word gynecology. This is directed at the guys. Not to say that women don’t have an issue with lust, but for the guys it is far more prevalent.
I have read statistics that say as many as 50% of males over age 18 have an issue with pornography. In fact, most listings of the top addictions in our country will have an addiction to porn or sex as the number 2 addiction after alcohol. I want to encourage any of the guys here who have that secret account on their laptop that streams those movies, or whose greatest embarrassment would be to have us put their web-browsing history up on the screen, to find a way to cut that out of their lives. That’s what I think Jesus is talking about when he says to pluck out your eye or cut off your hand. Get that out of your life. Find an accountability partner. Get that software that sends your browsing history to someone you trust. Get this addiction out of the dark and into the light. Do not continue to allow this addiction to control you. If you need help with that, please email me and I will put you in touch with the right people to help with that. OK?
For those who don’t have that issue, let’s get back to understanding this in the broader context of what Jesus is saying. Lust objectifies and dehumanizes the other. The one being lusted after ceases to be a person in our eyes, and become a collection of body parts. The justice and mercy issue is to see every person as a sister or brother in Christ – a full human being. When we see people with justice and mercy we treat them better, we look out for their needs, or to put it quite simply – we care about what happens to them.
Divorce
Jesus then goes on to talk about divorce and says,
“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:31-32).
Technique 3: Historical context
This is the biggie today that people have questions about. Here is another Bible reading technique that you should employ – historical context. Here is some of what we know about divorce in Jesus’ day.
According to the Law of Moses in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, it was acceptable for a man to divorce his wife, as long as he gave her a certificate of divorce. This was intended to be a protection for the women, but in the time of Jesus was being interpreted as you could divorce for any reason, so long as you gave the certificate of divorce. By that understanding a husband (and it was only the husbands) could decide one morning he wanted to divorce his wife because she burned the toast for breakfast. That was considered by many to be acceptable if he gave her a “certificate of divorce.” He had obeyed the law and was “good” in the eyes of the Temple and, by extension, God.
Divorce, as you can probably imagine, was devastating to women in the first century. They could not, for the most part, honorably support themselves on their own. In the patriarchal culture of the day, women needed a man in their lives to support them financially. A divorce was almost certainly a life-sentence of crushing poverty for the woman.
So Jesus says to the men (again, my words), “Don’t think it is OK to devastate a woman in your life because you do it in the “right way.” Your action of divorce isn’t just about you, but is also about her. Think about the consequences to her, not to mention the children, extended family, and everyone else involved.” I’m sure you hear the justice and mercy in this statement.
Jesus goes on to say a couple of things that in my opinion have been misused for a very long time. One, he says that the only reason to get divorced is infidelity/adultery. Then, secondly, he says anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Matthew 5:32). What do we do with these verses?
For a detailed understanding of this passage and its parallel in Matthew 19 (which I do not have time to work through today), I have had placed in your bulletin an article from John Ortberg that gives a different way of looking at this passage that I think is valuable. Jesus may be addressing a much larger conversation in the culture of his day than this scripture gives us insight into, and I offer the handout especially to those who struggle with the fact of their divorce and/or remarriage.
But there are a couple of things I can say here:
First, recognize that in the previous section Jesus used a literary technique known as hyperbole to make his point. No sane person reads Jesus’s words of self-mutilation – plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand if they cause you to sin – literally. All can agree this is hyperbole.
Knowing that, we must at least consider that Jesus is using the same technique in the passage about divorce. When he says the ONLY acceptable reason for divorce is infidelity, that might also be hyperbole. And when he says that marriage to a divorced person constitutes adultery, that too may be hyperbole.
Based on the evidence I see in this congregation alone, I have to lean that way. There are many whose second marriage after a divorce is an incredible blessing. Their first marriage was a mess, but the second one is godly and they are growing together in Christ. All the evidence seems to point to the fact that God is blessing this 2nd marriage and doesn’t see it as something outside of his will. We need to take that evidence seriously.
Remember this is an issue of adding justice, mercy, and faith to the law. So, by extension, let me say this as clearly as I can:
If you are being hurt in your marriage, it is not a sin for you to get out. If you are being physically or emotionally harmed, it is not the “right thing to do” to allow another to treat you that way. Protect yourself. Get out.
I was talking to a counselor this week who said this verse is sometimes used by husbands to keep their wives in the home and prevent them from filing for divorce. While they continue to inflict abuse, they quote this verse saying that they have not committed adultery. Do not let that happen to you. Jesus does not what you to subject yourself to physical or psychological violence. That is not what this verse is about.
But don’t take this as an excuse for an “any reason” divorce. If Jesus is using hyperbole here, he is also saying that we need to take our marriages seriously. If your marriage is going through a rough spot, it is not OK to bail. It may be legal, but it is not right. We need to exhaust every possible means of reconciliation (short of getting hurt) before we walk away.
It appears that some today do not work hard enough to save their marriage. They get bored, or life gets rough, or they think they can do better, or they find someone who makes them feel good in the moment – and they are quick to dissolve a commitment they made “until death do us part.” We need to take our marriage commitments must more seriously, which includes the lust bit in the first part above.
Finally, I think it is also implied in all this passage that when divorce happens, we need to treat our ex-spouse with justice and mercy and faith. I am surprised to hear stories about men and women who after a divorce want nothing to do with their former partner. Men who don’t pay the alimony and child support until the courts get involved, that is wrong. Women who withhold visitation with the children until they are forced to do so, that is wrong. Even in divorce we need to continue to treat one another with justice and mercy and faith.
Oaths
Finally for today, Jesus turns his attention to oaths and I need to be very brief here.
Jesus follows the patters, “Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord’” (Matthew 5:33f). The interpretation of this became that if you “swore to God” you would do something, you had better do it, but if you swore by something else, you could break the oath. So people created a loophole by swearing by other things – Jesus mentions heaven, earth, or your own head. It appears that was the equivalent of crossing your fingers behind your back on the grade school playground.
Jesus says, “Really? You think this makes a difference?” His exact words were, “But I say to you, Do not swear at all” (Matthew 5:33f). “Let your words be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’” (Matthew 5:37). He calls us to exceed the letter of the law by being people of our word. Doing what we say we will do, and saying No to that which we will not do.
Again it comes down to respect – or Jesus might say justice and mercy and faith. Don’t take advantage of the other, or try to pull something over on them by crossing your fingers when you make a promise. Take the promise seriously. Put yourself in their shoes. Honor your oath by doing what you are expected to do.
These three passages are related. They all deal with our selfishness.
Lust and adultery are selfish. When we look at another as simply an object of desire, whether or not we go through with the act, we are thinking only about ourselves and not about the other as a person of God.
Divorce for a bad reason is selfish. You hear these kinds of things all the time when it comes to divorce. “I am just not in love anymore”; “things aren’t what they used to be for me”; or “I feel like we have grown apart.” There are spouses, kids, parents, friends, and lots of other people involved in a marriage and you need to work hard to keep that oath and not be selfish.
Breaking an oath is selfish. We just don’t want to do it anymore and so we look for a loophole to walk away. Follow through. The other is counting on you.
Don’t be selfish. Treat others with justice and mercy and faith.
Redeemable
I need to offer one last piece. Maybe you hear these verses and you think, “Man, I have messed up pretty bad.” Maybe you have had an affair, struggle with pornography, have used loopholes to get out of business contracts, or maybe you walked away from a marriage without really trying.
Technique 4: Biblical context
I want to offer you a story – one of my favorites. It comes from John 4 – based on the techniques I have been telling you about, not the best text because it is outside of Matthew, but I think is extremely relevant.
It is noon and Jesus and his disciples stop in a little town named Sychar. The disciples go off to buy lunch while Jesus, exhausted from the journey, decides to take some alone time. He sits down by a well that had been dug by Jacob, one of the people by whom God identifies himself in the Old Testament – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
A woman comes to draw water. Odd that she would come at noon, the heat of the day. Most of the women came nearer to sunrise in the morning and sunset in the evening, enjoying the shade of their homes in the brightest part of the day. She probably does this to avoid the rest of the women in town.
We learn later that she is divorced. In fact, she has been married five times and is currently living with a guy who is not her husband. Sounds like she has a history of divorce, and lust, and maybe even breaking oaths.
Head down, I imagine, she goes about her business of drawing water from the well. Jesus doesn’t avoid her. Rather, he strikes up a conversation with her, probably for the sole purpose of drawing her out. In the process he offers her “living water,” what we might call “salvation” or “a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ.”
Then something remarkable happens that is often missed (John 4:25-26):
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming”…”When he comes he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.
This is the first and clearest statement Jesus makes in the Gospel of John declaring himself to be the messiah. He fully reveals himself to her.
I just want those of you who feel so out of it to recognize that you are not outside of the love of Jesus because of mistakes that you have made. He is still here for you. Ready to show you who he is, and to welcome you into the fold.
As we go forth from this place, may we not be just “keepers of the law,” looking for loopholes that make it easy to obey. May we instead go above and beyond the letter of the law, exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees by being people of justice and mercy and faith with our family, our friends, our classmates and coworkers, and anyone else we share the world with.
Bibliography
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Sunday morning the DJ on one of our local Christian radio stations made one of those statements that makes Christians look silly. He was making small talk about the Broncos on their bye week. He said he would miss not seeing them play that afternoon, but that they would be back the following Sunday with Tim Tebow as their new starting quarterback which, he said, was an answer to prayer. Really?
I don’t know enough about football to evaluate talent, but I like Tebow. He is a “blue-collar” player, as those like him are sometimes called. Apparently he is not gifted with extraordinary physical ability but through sheer will and determination is able to do extraordinary things. I have little doubt that he will be good for the Broncos, at least for a little while.
But I do not believe that God parted the sea to get Tebow the starting job. In fact I think it is condescending to suggest so.
People pray everyday for a job, for their children to get better, for the bombs to stop falling, for their marriage to be restored, for peace to reign around the globe, for the hungry to be fed, for an end to poverty, and so much more. To suggest that God put all of that aside and concentrated his efforts instead on someone getting a starting quarterback job because they play for the right team (not the Broncos but the Christians), makes light of those other prayers.
This train of thought is only possible when we have a narrow definition of prayer. When we were young we were taught to pray similar to the way we wrote letters to Santa Claus. We would ask, and after checking his list twice to see if we were naughty or nice, God would decide to grant our wishes if we passed. As adults we need to grow in our relationship with God and our praying.
Prayer is not a list of wants and needs. Rather prayer is placing oneself in the presence of God and being available for God’s purposes. Prayer is the conversation that keeps the most important relationship in one’s life vital. In other words, it is OK to talk to God about nothing – to chat as you would with a friend about what is on your heart and mind; what is worrying you and what is exciting you; what lifted your spirits and what brought you down. It is even OK to not say anything in prayer, and to just rest in the presence of God.
When my prayer life is in order like that, I begin to notice God in the world around me, to hear his voice in my daily interactions, to feel his gentle nudge toward places where I can make a difference.
May Tebow capitalize on the opportunity he is being given, not just as a football player but also as a citizen of the Kingdom of God. May you and I do the same in our work, our school, our families, and wherever else we feel God leading. May we get ourselves ready for that work with some time with God in prayer.
