February 19, 2011
Matthew 5:38-48
The apostle Paul says it is important what we, who like to think of ourselves as Christians, build on the foundation given us by Christ. For Paul, we are ‘temples’ in which God’s Spirit can dwell – a dwelling place worthy of its foundation. In other words, Jesus’ teachings, including today’s, should be crucial building blocks in the personal makeup of all Christians so they might become more Christ-like and more like God.
In Matthew today, examples of such building blocks are given, when Jesus talks about love being our response to the evildoer and the need to love our enemies. Again this week, it is important for us to realize that what first might appear to be about us is really about God – this is what God does. So if we are to be closer to God, this is what we must try to do. We are to love as God loves.
When faced with an enemy ‘out to get us’ or someone threatening to hurt us, most of us have a natural and understandable reaction: either fight or flight. We’re told by those who should know about these things that it’s the human thing to do. It’s instinctual, an ingrained response to danger.
Either we look for an escape route, a way out, or we fight – hoping to strike the first blow. The goal is to save yourself and those you love. You want to hurt the enemy, to incapacitate the threat against you. You want to put them down and make them bleed. That was the thinking of the people in Jesus’ day as well. Do unto others before they do it to you.
Sometimes in reading today’s text, where Jesus instructs his followers, “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, but I say…” we forget ‘an eye for an eye’ was a more just way of dealing with problems between feuding factions or families than what existed before Moses’ Laws - a tendency toward escalating retribution. Yet Jesus isn’t replacing the law of Moses. Rather, he is restoring it’s true spirit.
Jesus takes this ‘fairer’ application of justice known as proportional retaliation – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, of Mosaic Law and offers a new set of guidelines: “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” (Matthew 5:38-41).
Although the tenet of “an eye for an eye” was to curtail excessive retaliation or punishment in specific legal situations, the religious leaders had extended it to everyday life, which became transactional: Each person was to give back what they were given, or, more precisely, pay back others. There was no (forgiving) love for one’s neighbor.
So, in this ‘tit for tat’ world, Jesus’ instruction is a whole new way of responding to a personal attack. To the natural reactions of fight and flight – payback and avoidance – hate your enemies, Jesus has added a third response: Love.
Over the years, many Christians and non-Christians as well, have found this response to be every bit as effective as a flight to safety or a fight that draws blood, but it requires real bravery and commitment. This love is grounded in a deep determination to respond to danger by acting in a Christ-like way. By responding in this way, we’re challenged to be as courageous as we are vulnerable.
Jesus insists that this third response – love – does not retaliate. He asks his followers to completely reject the idea of retaliation or preemptive violence and instead respond with love. How crazy is that?
Such a response makes no sense at all unless we see it in the context of the kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, enemies are embraced and turned into friends, not rejected and put to death. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” says Jesus — demonstrate that you are a follower of the Prince of Peace (v. 39). “[I]f anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well” — show the world that you find your security in God, not in material possessions (v. 40). “[I]f anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” — reveal your generosity by offering them more than they are demanding of you (v. 41). “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” — make a point of helping others as the Lord has helped you (v. 42).
But what are we to do if it seems impossible to ‘forgive those who trespass against us’ as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer? What do we do, other than pray that someday we can?
And if that is not hard enough, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’” but I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (vv. 43-45). This too is a response to adversity that is connected closely to the kingdom of God. He is challenging us to love our enemies not because they are wonderful people who deserve to be loved but because they are children of God — we are to love them because God loves them. After all, says Jesus, God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (v. 45).
Jesus has raised the bar to what seems like an impossible level. His is not an easy kind of love. Love your enemies – not just those who love you. Pray for those who persecute you – not just your friends. Let love, and no other option, be your response. Some say Abraham Lincoln practiced this and was once criticized by an associate for his attitude toward political enemies. The associate asked, “Why do you always make friends of them? You should destroy them!” Lincoln replied, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make them my friends?”
“Be perfect,” Jesus says, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48). This means to be complete in your love. It means to be wholehearted in your servant love, focusing on the standards of God’s kingdom.
In his book The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner says that:
“The love for equals is a human thing — of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
“The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing — the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
“The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing — to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.
“And then there is the love for the enemy — love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer.
This is God’s love. It conquers the world.
Today, may ours be God’s love.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Love As God Loves
February 13, 2011
1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
Jesus has already labeled those who have come out to hear him – the timid ones, the humble and kindhearted ones, the sad ones, the decent and good ones, the peaceful ones, even the ones taken advantage of – as “blessed.” He has encouraged and challenged his follows to be the “light” and “salt” of the world. And then, in the words found in the Gospel lesson today, he spells out the perfection required of them.
Jesus’ words might strike us deeply by the level of ethical conduct that is expected of his followers. They might cause a sense of guilt in some of us as we reflect on our baptismal vows. Or maybe move us into his way with fear and trembling. Some, hearing in his words a path too steep and a life too hard, turn sadly away. Discipleship is demanding, no question about it.
Yet, the point of all this, I think, is perhaps that a person’s blessedness, or ability to become the light and salt of the world, or a person’s perfection is impossible on our own and can only result from God’s gracious act.
Take the scripture lesson found in Matthew today – it’s all about the law and how a person’s to live – or is it? Remember, Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to ‘clarify’ the law (my words, not his). Jesus is not replacing or watering down the law. Instead he is putting flesh on it, and looking more deeply at it to find the deeper values and vision that the law points to. He takes an abstract idea and applies it to our everyday lives. What he says in Matthew seems to make it even tougher and more exacting. Jesus lists some of the big commandments: You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely – and then he goes farther, “You have heard it said… but I say…” As if God’s commandments are not hard enough, he makes living them all but impossible. And that’s the point! What Jesus is talking about here is not a formula for living – laws to live by – but rather what it takes for us to be perfect, as God is perfect. What it takes then is God. Only then is it possible.
Jesus tells us what the commandments would mean if we were to love as God loves, because the law tells us what is in God’s heart. They show us how we should live with one another – and how we should treat each other. Jesus wants us to go and resolve those conflicts that we have with other people. For Jesus, the first illustration of personal holiness is that we are to live lives of peace. He wants us to find ways to resolve our conflicts with other people. God’s Spirit lives inside of us so that we want to live a right and holy life with everyone around us. Life is important, as is our relationship with others. And, as Jesus’ words point out, the law can point out the difference between our hearts and God’s heart.
Relationships are not to be taken lightly. Although Jesus doesn’t say anything about the commandment to love God and to love others as self here, it is important in reading the text. Empathy, support, and respect come when individuals honor neighbor as self. It is only then that right relationship is realized. Right relationship comes from the heart!
The Rev. Dr. Amy Richter writes, “God listens to our hearts and knows that even if we can keep the commandment not to kill one another or not to commit adultery or keep from swearing falsely, we still hate and despise others… we still disrespect others… and we still manipulate others with our words.” Left to our selves, then, ours is never fully God’s love.
However, in God’s mercy, God gives us God’s law as an example of how we are to live – a life of loving as God loves. Ultimately, it’s God’s law that convicts us, because what it demands of us, we cannot do. Realizing that, our only option then is to accept God’s great mercy. That’s our only hope! St. Augustine put it this way: “The law was given for this purpose: to make you, being great, little; to show that you do not have in yourself the strength to attain righteousness, and for you, thus helpless, unworthy, and destitute, to flee to grace.” The grace of God is there, offered to us. We need only take it.
How many times have we heard today’s text, or one like it, as a ‘how we should live our lives’ and felt bad knowing that you’ve not even come close to it? For me, it’s every time I’ve read it. I’ve felt like a terrible failure, haven’t you? But that’s good. That’s how you should feel. John Donne, 17th century English poet and priest, calls that “a holy sadness, because a sense of our sin is “god’s key to the door of his mercy, put into thy hand.”
Realizing we fail to love as God loves doesn’t mean things are hopeless. It only calls us back to God, the One in whom all things are possible – even our loving more fully and living more perfectly.
We are not God and yet our love is to be God’s love. We are given the law so we might know more fully how to love and when we fail – because we do fail – we are given God’s mercy and God’s great love. This is our comfort and hope. Thanks be to God.
1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
Jesus has already labeled those who have come out to hear him – the timid ones, the humble and kindhearted ones, the sad ones, the decent and good ones, the peaceful ones, even the ones taken advantage of – as “blessed.” He has encouraged and challenged his follows to be the “light” and “salt” of the world. And then, in the words found in the Gospel lesson today, he spells out the perfection required of them.
Jesus’ words might strike us deeply by the level of ethical conduct that is expected of his followers. They might cause a sense of guilt in some of us as we reflect on our baptismal vows. Or maybe move us into his way with fear and trembling. Some, hearing in his words a path too steep and a life too hard, turn sadly away. Discipleship is demanding, no question about it.
Yet, the point of all this, I think, is perhaps that a person’s blessedness, or ability to become the light and salt of the world, or a person’s perfection is impossible on our own and can only result from God’s gracious act.
Take the scripture lesson found in Matthew today – it’s all about the law and how a person’s to live – or is it? Remember, Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to ‘clarify’ the law (my words, not his). Jesus is not replacing or watering down the law. Instead he is putting flesh on it, and looking more deeply at it to find the deeper values and vision that the law points to. He takes an abstract idea and applies it to our everyday lives. What he says in Matthew seems to make it even tougher and more exacting. Jesus lists some of the big commandments: You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely – and then he goes farther, “You have heard it said… but I say…” As if God’s commandments are not hard enough, he makes living them all but impossible. And that’s the point! What Jesus is talking about here is not a formula for living – laws to live by – but rather what it takes for us to be perfect, as God is perfect. What it takes then is God. Only then is it possible.
Jesus tells us what the commandments would mean if we were to love as God loves, because the law tells us what is in God’s heart. They show us how we should live with one another – and how we should treat each other. Jesus wants us to go and resolve those conflicts that we have with other people. For Jesus, the first illustration of personal holiness is that we are to live lives of peace. He wants us to find ways to resolve our conflicts with other people. God’s Spirit lives inside of us so that we want to live a right and holy life with everyone around us. Life is important, as is our relationship with others. And, as Jesus’ words point out, the law can point out the difference between our hearts and God’s heart.
Relationships are not to be taken lightly. Although Jesus doesn’t say anything about the commandment to love God and to love others as self here, it is important in reading the text. Empathy, support, and respect come when individuals honor neighbor as self. It is only then that right relationship is realized. Right relationship comes from the heart!
The Rev. Dr. Amy Richter writes, “God listens to our hearts and knows that even if we can keep the commandment not to kill one another or not to commit adultery or keep from swearing falsely, we still hate and despise others… we still disrespect others… and we still manipulate others with our words.” Left to our selves, then, ours is never fully God’s love.
However, in God’s mercy, God gives us God’s law as an example of how we are to live – a life of loving as God loves. Ultimately, it’s God’s law that convicts us, because what it demands of us, we cannot do. Realizing that, our only option then is to accept God’s great mercy. That’s our only hope! St. Augustine put it this way: “The law was given for this purpose: to make you, being great, little; to show that you do not have in yourself the strength to attain righteousness, and for you, thus helpless, unworthy, and destitute, to flee to grace.” The grace of God is there, offered to us. We need only take it.
How many times have we heard today’s text, or one like it, as a ‘how we should live our lives’ and felt bad knowing that you’ve not even come close to it? For me, it’s every time I’ve read it. I’ve felt like a terrible failure, haven’t you? But that’s good. That’s how you should feel. John Donne, 17th century English poet and priest, calls that “a holy sadness, because a sense of our sin is “god’s key to the door of his mercy, put into thy hand.”
Realizing we fail to love as God loves doesn’t mean things are hopeless. It only calls us back to God, the One in whom all things are possible – even our loving more fully and living more perfectly.
We are not God and yet our love is to be God’s love. We are given the law so we might know more fully how to love and when we fail – because we do fail – we are given God’s mercy and God’s great love. This is our comfort and hope. Thanks be to God.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Salt and Light
February 6, 2011
Matthew 5:13-20
Today’s reading from Matthew is about two things: the impact Jesus’ followers are to have on the world (13-16) and their relationship to “the law” and “the prophets” (their righteousness or right-ness with God) that has preceded his ministry (17-20).
Jesus uses two metaphors to describe his disciples’ intended impact in the world: the image of salt and ‘saltiness’ to convey an attribute for improving the quality of their experience of life. The image of “light” that cannot and must not be hidden emphasizes that the disciples’ purpose (collectively as the church) is to further the awareness about what God is doing in the world through them.
It is important, I think, to understand Jesus’ words not as a repudiation of God’s work in the past through the Law but as a continuation of what God has been doing all along. Jesus challenges his followers that their ‘right-ness’ with God must, in fact, ‘out do’ that of “the scribes and Pharisees.” To exceed the ‘goodness’ of the Pharisees – the best law-keepers in the world – they will have to match the external nature of the Pharisees’ righteousness and add to that an interior righteousness of the heart.
Jesus’ images of salt and light were meant to inspire, encourage, and exhort his followers, not to condemn or make them feel bad. Keep in mind the context in which Jesus spoke. He’s gone up the mountain, and looks out on the crowd that's gathered around him. Aware of their suffering and needs, his heart is filled with compassion. He understands the spiritual hunger and the physical suffering of the world, as he sits down to teach about the reign of God – or god’s kingdom – and he calls them blessed.
The people need help. Israel, is occupied by outsiders; its "land, city, and temple ruled by non-Jews; and the prophetic promises of a messiah never fully realized. The people have different opinions as to why things are as they are, how God could let this happen to them, and how they are to respond. The collaborating Sadducees, the violent Zealots, and the righteous Pharisees – all have their answers. And yet, all hope to preserve their cultural and religious identity as a people called and set apart by God by living in covenantal righteousness… until the coming of God's reign.
Jesus' preaching is one more voice among many, one more answer to the questions that swirled around him. He challenges, as N.T. Wright says, “Israel to be Israel." Jesus encourages his listeners to become part of the ‘in-breaking’ reign of God present in their midst: part of a new thing God is already doing. That new thing continues to unfold in our own time and place, with questions swirling around us, as well, about what it means to be faithful disciples, and about how we are to respond as God’s people to the challenges around us.
Today’s reading bridges the Beatitudes, the lifting up of the most unlikely people, and the difficult instructions that follow. Before Jesus repeatedly raises the standard for his followers ("you have heard it said...but I say to you..."), he uses two common, everyday images to tell his disciples to remember who they are. After lifting up the mostly unlikely people – the poor in spirit, the meek and the merciful, those who mourn and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted – and calling them "blessed," Jesus offers them words of both reassurance and challenge, words that the church needs also to hear today, if it is going to truly be the body of Christ.
Jesus says, we are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” As a church, this is who and what we are. They are metaphors about what we do, how we do it, and the effect we have upon the world – or at least it should. We mustn’t forget what we are to be about. Salt that has lost its saltiness can’t flavor something a lot larger – much like the church, as part of God’s gracious activity, that has forgot its mission cannot become a community of transformation.
Likewise, if we do not let the light of Christ shine through us, as a church, those who feel lost, or miserable, or confused, with no idea of which way to turn will not ever find hope here. We are called to be the Body of Christ in the world today: Jesus tells us to "let our light shine before others," to let the good things that we do, rather than bringing us glory, radiate God's own goodness and love in the world. And yet, the temptation to bury our ability to be ‘a light in the darkness’ under 'the bushel basket' is always there.
Still the text reminds us of who we are and what Jesus calls us to do in the world, no matter the obstacles. Our calling isn't about institutional survival, or about numbers, but something much greater. What a church does matters! People encountering us should feel God’s grace and the possibility of a ‘different world’ – a world of new life, new vitality, new possibility, and new hope.
We have been placed on a hilltop to shine, not as one light but many. May we always faithfully live out our calling to enhance the lives of others, and never lose our ‘saltiness.’ God be gracious unto us and make it so. Amen
Matthew 5:13-20
Today’s reading from Matthew is about two things: the impact Jesus’ followers are to have on the world (13-16) and their relationship to “the law” and “the prophets” (their righteousness or right-ness with God) that has preceded his ministry (17-20).
Jesus uses two metaphors to describe his disciples’ intended impact in the world: the image of salt and ‘saltiness’ to convey an attribute for improving the quality of their experience of life. The image of “light” that cannot and must not be hidden emphasizes that the disciples’ purpose (collectively as the church) is to further the awareness about what God is doing in the world through them.
It is important, I think, to understand Jesus’ words not as a repudiation of God’s work in the past through the Law but as a continuation of what God has been doing all along. Jesus challenges his followers that their ‘right-ness’ with God must, in fact, ‘out do’ that of “the scribes and Pharisees.” To exceed the ‘goodness’ of the Pharisees – the best law-keepers in the world – they will have to match the external nature of the Pharisees’ righteousness and add to that an interior righteousness of the heart.
Jesus’ images of salt and light were meant to inspire, encourage, and exhort his followers, not to condemn or make them feel bad. Keep in mind the context in which Jesus spoke. He’s gone up the mountain, and looks out on the crowd that's gathered around him. Aware of their suffering and needs, his heart is filled with compassion. He understands the spiritual hunger and the physical suffering of the world, as he sits down to teach about the reign of God – or god’s kingdom – and he calls them blessed.
The people need help. Israel, is occupied by outsiders; its "land, city, and temple ruled by non-Jews; and the prophetic promises of a messiah never fully realized. The people have different opinions as to why things are as they are, how God could let this happen to them, and how they are to respond. The collaborating Sadducees, the violent Zealots, and the righteous Pharisees – all have their answers. And yet, all hope to preserve their cultural and religious identity as a people called and set apart by God by living in covenantal righteousness… until the coming of God's reign.
Jesus' preaching is one more voice among many, one more answer to the questions that swirled around him. He challenges, as N.T. Wright says, “Israel to be Israel." Jesus encourages his listeners to become part of the ‘in-breaking’ reign of God present in their midst: part of a new thing God is already doing. That new thing continues to unfold in our own time and place, with questions swirling around us, as well, about what it means to be faithful disciples, and about how we are to respond as God’s people to the challenges around us.
Today’s reading bridges the Beatitudes, the lifting up of the most unlikely people, and the difficult instructions that follow. Before Jesus repeatedly raises the standard for his followers ("you have heard it said...but I say to you..."), he uses two common, everyday images to tell his disciples to remember who they are. After lifting up the mostly unlikely people – the poor in spirit, the meek and the merciful, those who mourn and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted – and calling them "blessed," Jesus offers them words of both reassurance and challenge, words that the church needs also to hear today, if it is going to truly be the body of Christ.
Jesus says, we are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” As a church, this is who and what we are. They are metaphors about what we do, how we do it, and the effect we have upon the world – or at least it should. We mustn’t forget what we are to be about. Salt that has lost its saltiness can’t flavor something a lot larger – much like the church, as part of God’s gracious activity, that has forgot its mission cannot become a community of transformation.
Likewise, if we do not let the light of Christ shine through us, as a church, those who feel lost, or miserable, or confused, with no idea of which way to turn will not ever find hope here. We are called to be the Body of Christ in the world today: Jesus tells us to "let our light shine before others," to let the good things that we do, rather than bringing us glory, radiate God's own goodness and love in the world. And yet, the temptation to bury our ability to be ‘a light in the darkness’ under 'the bushel basket' is always there.
Still the text reminds us of who we are and what Jesus calls us to do in the world, no matter the obstacles. Our calling isn't about institutional survival, or about numbers, but something much greater. What a church does matters! People encountering us should feel God’s grace and the possibility of a ‘different world’ – a world of new life, new vitality, new possibility, and new hope.
We have been placed on a hilltop to shine, not as one light but many. May we always faithfully live out our calling to enhance the lives of others, and never lose our ‘saltiness.’ God be gracious unto us and make it so. Amen
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