Testing, Testing

 February 19 2023

Matthew 7:12-20

         As I get older I continually am looking for thinks I am thankful for. Just this week I got a notice from my insurance company stating just how much they paid for a medication I take and after I had gasped at the cost of it, I gave thanks to God for insurance. That was not all, because what was not covered by insurance was paid by the drug company so, in essence, I got a drug which costs thousands for absolutely nothing. Now you know why I praise God! I also praise God that I am no longer in school. The mind which used to keep facts and figures fairly straight has become a muddled mess. The thought of having to take a test to see just how much I know or how much information I have retained makes me shudder. So, again, I praise God that there is no test taking on the horizon to make my hands sweat and my mind ache.

         I had this idea of test taking on my mind because, as many of us might remember, the last line of the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”. Now upon hearing this you might object, and tell me that there is no mention of testing anywhere in this petition however the word we commonly use, “temptation”, can be translated as being, “testing”, which, if you think about it, is pretty much the same.  When a person is tempted to do something wrong it is fairly clear that at that moment they are being tested to see if they are who they say that they are. I also sense that this petition should be, “And lead us not into hard testing but deliver us from evil.”, because we, as the children of God, are asking our Heavenly Father to take us by the hand and lead us. I think we would all wonder about any father who put their children into a situation where they would be tempted to do something wrong. If we can see how nonsensical it is for us as earthly fathers to do such a thing, I think then it just makes sense that we should not believe our Heavenly Father would think of doing so.

         So, what is being asked for is that our Heavenly Father would take and lead us, and that we might not find ourselves being tested but instead we would find ourselves being delivered from evil. One more aspect of this petition has to be explained and that is just what is meant by this idea of being, “delivered”. To me, delivered conjures up images of letters or packages from Amazon not the transportation of people from some location marked, “Evil”. No, the original Greek word is much more descriptive because it speaks of drawing someone to yourself. Think of a person who is struggling in the water, barely keeping themselves afloat and along comes a boat and an arm reaches out and pulls this drowning person onto the safety of the boat. That is what is meant when we say that we are delivered. It is very important that we have this original meaning in mind because when we think of God drawing us to himself then we must also be reminded of something Jesus said in the tenth chapter of John, the the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth verses, where Jesus says, “I give them eternal life and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”. Can you get this image in your mind of the hands of God clutching you tight, pulling you from danger, drawing you into his loving embrace? This is what is meant by being delivered from evil.

         Yet even though we have such a beautiful promise of deliverance through the hands-on action of God, we must still ask our Heavenly Father that we might not be tested, that we might not come unto a trial, which seems rather odd, doesn’t it?  I mean how can we be tested if the hands of God are holding us? What this can only mean then is that we may be uncertain about which hands we allow to take hold of us. Which hands are we hoping will drag us out of the evil which surrounds us and pull us to safety? One thing that is known about rescuing people who are drowning is that often they thrash about so much that they often put into peril those who are trying to save them. Perhaps, God is only going to grasp and draw to himself those who are no longer thrashing about in their allegiance to him.

         We get this sense of having to be certain that it is God alone who can deliver us, when we look at the images that Matthew gives to us, which depict this testing which must accompany our deliverance. In our scripture for today, Matthew paints for us a picture of two roads. The first road is a wide road, so imagine if you will, the widest road you might think of, perhaps it might be a four lane interstate highway. Then, use you imagination and see a small opening in a fence barely big enough for you to squeeze through and once past this opening you see a very small path, perhaps nothing more than a deer trail, which meanders up the hill into a very steep climb with a lot of rocks and rough patches. Jesus in his teaching to his disciples told them and us that it is this small, narrow, opening in the fence, this is the one we are to choose, this is the narrow way, the way that will be difficult and strenuous yet still, Jesus promises, this is the way which will lead to life. As we go along this upward climb we will have few companions who will stick it out because most people are looking for the easy way out. These are the ones who would rather take that interstate highway, which is wide and the ride is easy. It is this wide and easy highway, that Jesus warns, is the way which leads to destruction. Again, the original Greek word which is rendered, “destruction”, is much more descriptive as it means something that is completely severed from what could or should have been. It is to utterly perish, a most miserable end. When we pause and consider this tragic ending that many have experienced and will continue to experience, we should want to understand just what Jesus is referring to, I mean, after all, who really wants to be cut off from what they should of or could have been apart of? Who really wants to have their life to come to a horrible end?

         To grasp what Jesus is getting at it is obvious that what he is describing in this image of two roads is the very division of humanity. This is rather surprising because as we have said before, the will of God is to unite all humanity in Christ. Yet God also knows that there will be those who for one reason or another, will refuse to be apart of what he is doing. So, to understand this division we must go back to what Jesus has previously been teaching to see if this sense of division has come up before. What we find is that, yes, Jesus has taught about what divides people. In the sixth chapter of Matthew, the nineteenth through the twenty-fourth verses, Jesus teaches about two distinct groups within humanity. There is one group which stores up treasures on earth and there is another group which treasures that which is in heaven which, as those who know the Lord’s Prayer, we know is our Heavenly Father. Jesus further teaches that where our treasure is there our heart is also. So, the longings and love of our heart is either focused on what we treasure here on earth or our heart, with all of its longings and love, is focused on our Heavenly Father. This is a clear division because as Jesus goes on to say, a person cannot serve two masters, which is what our treasures really are to us. If we love our treasures here on earth we will serve them, as strange as that might sound. Since they are treasures we will watch over them with great care and see to it that they remain safe because to suffer a loss of our treasure would be to suffer a loss of our heart, something that would be greatly devastating. So, Jesus concludes that one cannot serve God and what is normally translated as being, “money”. Once again, we must look to the original Greek to discover that what the word actually means is, “the treasure a person trusts in.” So, we can either trust in the treasure we have in heaven, our Heavenly Father, or we can trust in whatever treasure has taken hold of our heart at the moment. 

         One more word must be said about what divides humanity and that is found in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the forty-fifth and forty-sixth verses, where we learn that God’s love which is found in the sun he shines upon the evil and good alike and the rain which falls upon the just and unjust all the same, is a love which loves without any thought of any expectation or concern. This is a holy love. The common, ordinary garden variety of love is a love that comes with expectations. It is the love which asks, what have you done for me lately? In this kind of love, loving our enemies would gain us nothing so there is no real incentive to do so. Now, if we try and love God with common love we do so with expectations. In other words, we come to God and we say, God, I will worship you, serve you and your church faithfully, all I ask is that when I call on you, I expect that you will answer my plea and bless me with whatever I need or desire at the moment. When it is put like that we can begin to sense why it is not a holy love. When we love God like this we are telling him that we are not loving him for who he is rather we are loving God for what he can do for us. What we treasure is really what God can bless us with, and not God in and of himself. It doesn’t really matter if what we ask of God is good or honorable, a better marriage, better finances, or even our own happiness, when we ask for any of these things or those like them, we have made them more important to us than God himself. These things become the treasure that we have placed our trust in instead of placing our trust in God alone.

         So, returning to our image of the two roads, the wide road is the road which is travelled on by those who place their faith and trust in earthly treasures. These are not just those who do not know God; no, it is also those who know God and think of him as someone they can bargain with to get what they desire, they too are those who are riding on the highway to destruction. The narrow road, on the other hand, is for those who treasure only God. God alone is the treasure that they seek and they can willingly suffer the loss of all things for they have found the pearl of great price which is worth giving all one has to obtain it.You see the road is narrow and difficult simply because the wants and desires of this world are so overwhelming. The testing that we face is when we are challenged by life’s difficulties will we turn to God first, allowing his arms to hold us steady as we go through our trials or will we plead with God for something that we believe will be a way out of the difficulty that we are in. How easy it is for us to place our trust in everything but God especially in those times of great pain and hurt when God feels so far from where we are at. How hard it is for us to remember that the arms of God are always stretched out toward us, reaching out to take hold of us to draw us to his side yet trusting these arms alone is the test that we must go through again and again.

         What helps us turn to God and him alone when the storms come and life appears to overwhelm us is two realities. The first is that earthly blessings will always fail us in the end. Jesus tells us in the nineteenth verse of the sixth chapter, that earthly treasures can be destroyed by moth or rust or they can be stolen by thieves. What Jesus is saying is that to put our trust in earthly treasures is to bring upon ourselves unnecessary worry and anxiety which will hopefully, bring those who trust in them to seek the one they can trust who will bring them some lasting peace. The second reality is that we do not have to face our trials and difficulties alone. When Jesus tells us to beware of false prophets he is speaking about something that would occur within the gathering of his church. What Jesus is stating is that even within the church what must be of utmost importance is that we surround ourselves with those who have chosen God alone as the highest treasure. Yet even so, Jesus warns us that even in the midst of his church will come those who by all appearances seem to be good, upstanding, followers of Jesus but who they really are is wolves who are wearing wool coats. They are false prophets, those who appear to speak for God but they are in all reality, not speaking for God at all, in fact what they say is just opposite of what God declares to be the truth. They are also ravenous, which is a word which means one who snatches or grabs at their prey, a word very similar to what we heard in John’s gospel that those held in the arms of God cannot be snatched away. What these wolves desire is to grab ahold of those attempting to walk on the narrow way and drag them with them to walk with them on the wide and easy road. The question, then, becomes, just how are we to know just who are these wolves in disguise? Jesus tells us that if we want to know the real sheep from wolves in disguise all we have to do is to look at their fruit, after all a good tree bears good fruit and a rotten, corrupted tree bears only evil fruit. It is easy to miss the extraordinary nature of what Jesus is teaching us here. He is telling us that it is possible for us to determine good from evil, this is where his teaching has brought us. We now know that good fruit is produced when we love God for who he is and not for what he can do for us, when we treasure God because he has always treasured us and called us his own. Out of our love for God, we will desire only that people will know that the name of God is holy because his love is holy. We do this by loving others with a holy love having no expectations that those whom we lavish our love upon will ever return the favor. Quite naturally then, we will long for the kingdom of our Heavenly Father to come into our world, a kingdom where his holy love creates a new world of peace. We will seek to do our Father’s will seeking only to cherish our relationships with others, leading always with reconciliation. We allow this unity to make us whole so that we become people of integrity, doing exactly what we say that we are going to do. With this understanding that God desires to unite everything in heaven and on earth we welcome people to the table of the righteous, those who place their faith in their Heavenly Father alone and we forgive the debts of others with lavish extravagance because this is how God has first forgiven us. This then is the good fruit which organically flows out of loving God with a holy love the same holy love with which he first loved us.

         Evil on the other hand is in a word, violent. Wolves only seek to kill and devour. When trying to figure out the evil fruit that comes from corrupt trees we should remember the words found in the fourth chapter of James, the first four verses which state, “What causes wars, disputes, battles, strife and quarrels? Is it not this, your longing for your desires? You set your heart upon and covet what you desire yet you do not have, so you murder and kill. You actively seek what you want but you cannot obtain it, so you end up fighting and quarreling, getting into conflicts which escalate into battles and wars. You see, you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your sensual desires. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is to make yourself an enemy of God?” Can you understand how vastly different this life that James describes is from the peacemaking way of life that Jesus expects of those whom God has blessed by his holy presence. So, we must beware of those who want to take hold of us and lead us into this evil way of life. Jesus died on the cross so that those who were his enemies might come to be at peace with God. How very wrong it is then when we spurn this peace and make ourselves once again enemies of God. So, we must continually ask ourselves, just what fruit is my life producing? Let us hope that we are indeed good trees producing good fruit which brings glory to God. Amen!

 

God, Our Heavenly Reward

 February 12 2023

Matthew 5:43, 6:1-8,16-34

         It seems as if this winter we have had a lot more springlike days along with an abundance of rain which means that everywhere I walk the ground squishes under my feet. Personally, I don’t mind the mud but what I do mind is a muddy dog named Mazy. This past while she has set a record on how many baths she has had to take in one week. Normally we give her a bath once a week usually in the evening, but with all the rain and the mud, sometimes bath time is simply anytime the dog comes in the house. It really doesn’t take a genius to figure out when a bath is needed, it’s when you see muddy tracks across the carpet, or when there are dirty streaks across the dogs blanket or it could be the smell of putrid, rotten, muck that has soaked some little dogs coat. When such evidence is found, no matter if its morning, noon or night, somebody is going to get a bath. It usually is not too hard to figure out that the bath was a necessity when the water in the tub begins to look like a cesspool. So, this distinction between a dirty dog and a clean one is a pretty easy one to determine.

         In life there are all kinds of distinctions that we make that are similar to clean dog or dirty dog. Some are easy to figure out whether we are hot or cold, whether the milk is good or expired, or whether the house is too dark and we need to turn a light on. But just how do we know whether something is common or whether something is holy? This distinction is simply not one that most of us can easily make perhaps because most of us just never have to make such a decision. Yet, as followers of Jesus we eventually will end up having to think about just how we can define what it means to be holy, after all, the prayer that Jesus teaches us has us pleading for the name of our Heavenly Father to be holy. To be honest, most of us probably have never considered just what this weird word,“Hallowed”, even means because, you know, we don’t use this word a lot in our everyday conversations. What we are asking for in this petition is simply that we might be people who make the name of our Heavenly Father, holy. Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Yet the minute we begin talking about things being holy we then have to define just what does it mean for something to be holy. Perhaps the easiest way to figure out what it means to be holy is to think about what is not holy, kind of like knowing that the opposite of clean is dirty. So, just what would you say is the opposite of holy? Well, if we think about the Temple as being a holy place then all other places could be considered to be not holy, or better, maybe just plain common or ordinary.

         This idea of what is common or ordinary then can be thought of as just what we find out in the world. So it should come as no surprise that in our teaching for today from the fifth and sixth chapters of Matthew that we hear Jesus speak about the people of the nations, the common ordinary people of the world. I believe he does so in order to describe that which is not holy so that we can better understand just what is holy. We first hear about the people of the nations at the end of the fifth chapter where Jesus speaks about love how if we love those who only love us, what reward do we expect to get? And if we greet only our brothers and sisters what more are we doing than anyone else? Do not the people of the world do the same? So, what Jesus is getting at is that what is common and ordinary is that people love those who they know will love them in return and they really want to love only those who are like they are, their own kin, or family.

         Jesus goes on to explain, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, that when the people of the nations pray they pile on a lot of empty jargon because they think that they need a lot of words in order to be heard. Seems a little odd doesn’t it? Well, the last reference to the people of the nations is found at the end of the sixth chapter, the thirty-second verse, where Jesus tells us that the people of the nations busy themselves seeking after what they are going to eat for dinner, what they will drink with said dinner and just what clothes they will wear when they show up for dinner. I think Jesus has given us three little snippets of the common, ordinary, life in hopes that we will pull them together to see just what exactly is going on. The people of the nations are frantically going about searching for the necessities of life. They live by this maxim that when you love somebody you do so with the expectation that they show a little love in return. So, when they love God they expect that God will do something to show his love for them in return. They pray to him praying a lot of words in order to figure out the formula, the right combination of words that will convince God that they are indeed people who love him but theirs is a love which expects love in return which means that they love God only so that God might bless them with what they desire.

         Now that we have some idea of what is common when it comes to loving others, we turn our attention to just what is meant by being holy. It makes sense that we might look to what the Pharisees were doing since they considered themselves, holy. They believed that they were holy because they had incorporated the practices normally found within the Temple into their everyday life. The Temple was naturally a place of prayer, and it was a place where the offerings for the poor were collected. It was at the Temple that the yearly fast associated with the Day of Atonement could be found to be strictly enforced. So it comes as no surprise that Jesus speaks to these three actions, the giving to those in need, what is also called the giving of alms, the practice of prayer and the practice of fasting. In all three of these actions, Jesus points out a similar problem associated with all of them which was that the Pharisees used these practices to draw attention to themselves. At the beginning of the sixth chapter, Jesus tells his followers, in the second verse of this chapter, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them…”, When the followers of Jesus gave to the poor they were to, “sound no trumpet before them as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, that they may be praised by others.” Further, when Jesus teaches his followers about prayer he first warns them, in the fifth and sixth verses, that they were not to be like the hypocrites who, “…love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others…”. Here again we see a pattern developing when the Pharisees practiced these holy behaviors. We should not be surprised then when Jesus goes on to tell his followers, in the sixteenth verse, that they should, “not look gloomy like the hypocrite, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting might be seen by others.”. We have to wonder just what Jesus is getting at by continually pointing out that the Pharisees loved to draw attention to themselves every time they practiced their holiness. The answer is that far from being holy while doing these actions they were instead being quite common. They felt that by doing these holy practices of giving to the needy, praying and fasting that they were showing love to God and thus they expected that for doing so they could get what they desired which was to be seen as greater and better than everyone else. These Pharisees thought they had worked out the right formula, the doing of holy acts, which would unlock the favor of God so that they could get what they treasured most, an outstanding reputation among their countrymen. In doing so they had taken that which was holy and used it for a common purpose.

         So we are left wondering if these actions in and of themselves are not holy then just what is holy? The answer is that God alone is holy. We look to God and ask, just what does God do that is radically different from the common way of doing things? The answer is that God loves with a holy love. Jesus teaches us that it is God who, “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”. You see unlike the common understanding that when we love somebody we expect that they love us in return otherwise what is the point, here is God who loves those who seek his justice as well as showing love to those who oppose the work of God at every turn. God is the one who does not discriminate on whose land he blesses with rain. He blesses both those who are good, those who bear the image of our good God as well as those who are evil, those who come against the will of God. By simply looking at the sun and the rain we discover that our God is a God who loves with no expectation of receiving anything in return for this love. What Jesus describes here about our Heavenly Father is yet another universal truth. Just like every person in our world is indebted to God for the life that they have and just like everyone knows the basis for the justice and righteousness that God expects is what they would want done to them, here too is another universal truth, that God loves each and every person, no exceptions.

         This then is holiness, this very different love of God, who loves with no expectations in return, a God who loves those who are nothing like him, those who are unjust and evil. So, in order to make so the name or the reputation of God is held to be holy, it is up to us to love others with a holy love. This is how we bear the image of a holy God out to a common, ordinary, world. It is up to us to demonstrate to those around us that there is a radically different way that we are capable of loving and we know this to be true because we have experienced such love ourselves. Jesus tells those who desire to follow him that they are to, “…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”.Here, Jesus connects our holy love of all we encounter to the blessing he spoke of in the fifth chapter of Matthew, the ninth verse where he states, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”.Now, it is a curious thing that in both cases what is at stake is our status as sons of God. We often want to expand this blessing by saying that it applies to the children of God so that our sisters in Christ are not excluded however there may be a good reason as to why the blessing is said to be that we are known as the sons of our Father in heaven, regardless if we are male or female. That reason is that it was the sons who received the inheritance from their Fathers. So, what is implied when we love God by upholding his reputation as being holy by loving others with the same holy love which he first loved us is that we stand to receive an inheritance in the age to come.

         The difference between what is common and what is holy then begins to become very clear. The way of common love is to love God with the expectation that God will return the favor and give us what we desire. In doing so, what we have done is to make God a means to our ends, in essence holding God to be less to us than that which we desire. When the Pharisees practiced their holy actions they did so in order that through their love of God shown by their care of the needy, their prayers and fasting what they hoped is that they could receive what they treasured most, an outstanding reputation among the people of Judaea.The common love is a love which focuses on earthly treasures, treasures which do not necessarily need to be valuables that can be held in ones hand like money or goods, but instead people might treasure being famous, or wise or athletic. When God is merely loved to get what people treasure most it means that what is treasured most is most certainly not God.

         Holy love, on the other hand, concerns itself with the very reputation of God, because to those who love with holy love, they treasure God above all else simply because they are keenly aware that God first treasured them above all else. To love with a holy love is to love God simply for who God is and not for what God does because this is the way that God loves us, loving us because we are his and not for anything we might be able to do. In this way, God speaks to our greatest longing which is that all of us desire to be treasured simply as the people that we find ourselves to be right at this moment. Instead of expecting God to bless us with what we desire in the here and now, we should instead choose to love God for who he is, the God who treasures us. In response to our loving of God in this way, God gives us the promise of an inheritance of glory in the life to come. It is this hope of a future inheritance that marks us out as our being the very sons of God, those found worthy by God to receive future glory all because we shunned earthly treasures in this life. This ties in so well with the way Jesus spoke about us as being blessed people because when he did so in the early verses of the fifth chapter of Matthew, these blessings began when God blessed us with his very self, coming to us in our mourning over the fact that we deserved death because we were too poor in our spirits to accomplish the good that we knew to do. From the start of our life with God then, the blessing has always been God himself who, as Isaiah writes about in the fifty-seventh chapter, the fifteenth verse, “is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.” He is the God who dwells in, “the high and holy place but also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to give new life to the spirit of the lowly, to give new life to the heart of the contrite.”. This is the true blessing of God, the God who while being holy is yet still to be found with us who know our lowly state. Jesus throughout our teaching for today speaks of the way God blesses us, again and again. In the fourth verse of this sixth chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us that our, “Father who sees in secret…”, will reward us when we give so that only our Heavenly Father knows about what we do. This is a promise Jesus gives us over and over, a promise that is ours when we pray in secret to our Heavenly Father and when we fast so that only our Heavenly Father knows that we are doing so. Our Heavenly Father blesses us in his watching but also in his searching of our hearts. Jesus teaches us in the eighth verse that our Heavenly Father , “…knows what we need before we even ask him.”. It is our Heavenly Father who knows what food we might need, that which we need to drink when we are thirsty and the clothes necessary to fill our closets with. God, far from being distant, is intimately connected with every person’s life. The reason God involves himself with the mundane, little details of our lives is none other than he treasures us. Just as we know instinctively that what we find most valuable we watch and guard over with our greatest intent, so too this is the way that Jesus describes how our Heavenly Father, watches over us, searching our hearts and providing all that we need. The reason why we find ourselves anxious and worrisome even if we know this about our Heavenly Father is that we simply do not have a great enough faith in what he is able to do.What I believe Jesus is alluding to here is something he taught about earlier in this chapter, found in the twenty-fourth verse where he teaches us, “No one can serve two masters, for he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”. Now, where this speaks about us not being able to serve God or money, the word here translated as, “money”, is mamonas. This is a word with ties to the word, “Amen”, and it means that thing which we trust in. So, it speaks to anything that we might put our trust in whether that thing is money, or whether it is our own smarts. All these things we put our trust in are earthly devices which means that they are all prone to fail at some point. This of course affects our faith because how can we fully trust something when we know that it is at some point going to give out on us. So what happens is that we approach God with that same apprehension, afraid to fully trust our lives with his goodness. What we have forgotten is that God is like nothing else that we might encounter on earth because he is in heaven. God is not common; no, he alone is holy. His love will not fail us for his love for us is eternal. Therefore, we must not trust with a little faith but instead we can give our whole lives to him knowing that in doing so God will call us his sons and daughters. Through faith in our Heavenly Father we can give our whole lives to him just as Jesus, his only begotten Son, first gave his life for us. Knowing this let us despise the things of this world and be fully devoted to our holy God who loves us always! Amen!

The Kingdom of the Cross

 February 5 2023

Matthew 5:13-16

         When we come to the end of January and the first days of February most of us are pretty much tired of winter. We are tired of the cold and the snow, the driving wind and the gloomy grey skies. What keeps us going through all these days of such gloominess is that every day is just one more day closer to spring. There is even a website solely devoted to this countdown until spring, entitled simply, daysuntilspring.net. If you visit this site, you can see how many days are left until spring arrives down to the very last second. When I am writing this there are fifty-one days until the magical arrival of spring. Now those of us who have lived in Ohio long enough know that just because fifty-one days roll around this does not mean that the weather will instantly be warm and sunny. No, spring comes in gradually, giving us a few warm days to begin with just to keep our hopes alive but then throwing in a few snow storms to also keep us honest. This is just how spring comes, in little moments that continue to gather steam until at last by the end of May we can be relatively certain that winter is indeed over.

         Well, springtime is not the only thing which we are to anticipate because those of us who have prayed the Lord’s Prayer at one time or another, we also anticipate the coming of the kingdom of our Father. I mean, just what are we praying for when we pray, “Your kingdom come.”? Isn’t this much like saying that we just can’t wait for spring to come? Yet I am pretty sure that a lot more people long for spring to come than those who long for their heavenly Father’s kingdom to come. Perhaps the reason for this is that we know what to expect when spring gets here, warm days, sunny skies, blooming flowers and singing birds. But just what are we to expect when this kingdom of our Heavenly Father finally arrives? If we don’t know just what the world will look like when this kingdom is here in all its glory then it’s a no-brainer that we aren’t going to be very excited for it to at last arrive. Perhaps what gives us a clue as to what we will experience when this kingdom gets here is knowing that this petition of the Lord’s Prayer corresponds to the blessing that Jesus promises to us which states, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”. So it’s a pretty safe assumption that this coming kingdom is going to be a place or a time when peace prevails. Whether you and I long for peace to be prevalent like we long for the warmth of spring is something that we only know within our hearts but this is, I believe, what the Lord’s Prayer is expecting us to do.

         Now that we have this idea that the kingdom of our Father is a coming time of peace, we have to wonder just how is this going to come about? The whole assumption behind anticipating that something is going to happen is that it isn’t here yet. Yet it might be that, much like spring, this kingdom is beginning to break through in our world just like those warm days will begin to more and more become the norm. The vision which Matthew associates with this petition is a familiar passage. We have to imagine those followers of Jesus sitting there on the grass high up on a mountainside hearing Jesus directly addressing them, telling them that it was they who, “are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under peoples feet.” We have to wonder just what those early disciples thought when they heard Jesus call them a rather salty bunch. But Jesus was not finished because he went further and again he looked them in the eye and told them,”You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but instead they put that lamp on a stand and it gives light to the whole house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they can see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Upon hearing this those disciples of Jesus had to be scratching their heads at this rather odd description of who they were supposed to be. 

         To be honest, I believe that these sayings take some thinking to reveal their meaning. The first truth that ties the saying about the disciples being the salt of the world with the saying that the disciples are the light of the world is that in both instances something is brought in from the outside and it is brought into the situation in order to make a difference. The pot of stew simmering on the stove will remain rather flat and tasteless right up till some salt is added. The dark room where the legs of the chair and bed wait to wreak havoc on your toes, will remain dark right up until someone throws the light switch on. In both cases, the difference happens because of an intentional decision on someone’s part to change the situation, to make a savory stew or to make a well lit room. Those changes would not have happened on their own no matter how long one might wait.

         Another thought concerning these two scenarios is that when the salt was added and the light switch was thrown, a difference is expected. If you added salt to your stew and you tasted it afterwards and it was just as bland as before you had added the salt I can imagine you would be rather disappointed and confused. If you went and flicked the switch and no light flooded the room, I expect that you would go and try changing the bulb and if that didn’t work you would check out the breakers because when you turn on the light switch you expect a well lit room. Jesus also makes a good point in that when you turn the light on you most certainly would not take the lamp and hide it under the bed; that’s just rather nonsensical. No, when the room is dark you don’t want it to remain dark but instead you want it to be well lit. 

         Now that we have given what Jesus has said a little thought it is time to consider just what does it mean for us to be the salt of the earth? What are the implications for us if we are indeed as Jesus tells us, the very light of the world? Perhaps an earlier version of this saying will help us to figure out what Jesus expects of us. In Mark’s gospel, the ninth chapter, the fiftieth verse we hear Jesus tell us, “Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”. Here again we see that peace is what is the focus of these words of Jesus. If peace is what Jesus is speaking about then what Jesus means by calling his disciples and us, the salt of the earth and the light of the world, then there must be a peaceful difference in the way we live. It is quite obvious that our world is a very violent place and, if we take to heart what Jesus is teaching us, then we must figure that it will remain a violent place until a difference is brought into our world from outside of it just as when we add salt to our stew or flick on the light switch. Left to its own devices our world will remain just as it is. This should make us question any notions we might have about our concepts of progress because stew does not progressively get saltier nor does a dark room get continually lighter without some outside intervention.

         Once we have figured out that what Jesus is speaking to us about is the making of peace, that it is us, his followers, who are to be those who bring peace into a violent world, then consider how sobering are the words of Jesus who tells us, “If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”. Translated into its true meaning what Jesus is saying is that if we are not about the making of peace, if we do not bring peace into our world then we have lost our usefulness, the very purpose that God has for us. If we are not about making peace, if we are just as violent as the rest of the world then what is the point of following Jesus? You see, I say this is a sobering teaching of Jesus because I have witnessed those who have confessed to have placed their faith in Christ who were just as violent, maybe more so, than the people of the world. If we have met Jesus and know the peace he has made with us through the cross and we keep that peace hidden away and instead go about our life hurting and hating others, then we are hiding our light, our peace, under a cover. Jesus clearly states that we cannot be undercover followers of his, this is not fulfilling the purpose of why he has saved us in the first place.

         You see, when we understand just how critical it is that we be about the creation of peace then we had better listen up when Jesus explains just how it is that we are to let the light of our peace shine out into a world filled with the darkness of violence. Jesus teaches us that in order to be the light of the world we must allow our good works to be on display before the world so that we might give glory to our Father who is in heaven. Here again, some thought is required to figure out just what are these good works that we are to be doing, works which will bring glory to God. Perhaps it might be easier to begin with this giving glory to our Heavenly Father because, as we may recall, the reason why we were indebted to God and in need of the forgiveness of this debt is that we had not given God the gratitude and the glory that he rightly deserved. So, God has brought us from a place where we had not given him the glory that he deserved to at last being able to glorify our Heavenly Father as we were supposed to do all along. Yet even so, it is difficult to understand just what does it mean for us to glorify our Heavenly Father. We are helped in our search to know what it means to glorify our Heavenly Father by something Jesus said in his last prayer as found in the seventeenth chapter of the gospel of John, the first verse where we hear Jesus cry out, “Father the hour has come, glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.”. And further in that same chapter, in the fourth verse, Jesus continues saying, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work you gave me to do.”.  So, Jesus through his life, demonstrated that the glorification of our Heavenly Father is a cross-shaped work. In other words, the good works that we are to do before a watching world, are the good works that are witnessed to us at the cross.

         One more thing must also be understood which is just what exactly is meant by this “good”, in those good works which Jesus states that we must be doing. I believe that when Jesus speaks of good works he is in essence speaking about God works. I say this because, if we think about it, God alone is good. This goodness of the works of God focuses on just what works we are to be doing, works that will bring glory to our Heavenly Father. They bring glory to him because they allow the world to witness, in us, the holy otherness of our Heavenly Father. Is it becoming clear why our witness must be cross shaped? Where else has the holy otherworldly goodness of God been made visible to us than there upon the cross in the life and death of Jesus? 

         These good works then are the God works that are made visible in our lives. As we have gone through the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer we have been made aware of just what are these works of God that are to be seen in us. The most obvious is that we are people who forgive the debts of others in the same manner as God has forgiven our debts that stood between us and our communion with God. So, the forgiveness of others is one of the good works of God that we need to be doing. The second work is the actions found in the petition, “Give us this day the adequate substance of bread.” This is a subtle way of stating that God is going to be bringing more and more people to our table as he brings them into newness of life through his Spirit. What is being asked for is that God would take the little we have and make it be enough for all who gather around the table of the righteous. So this work of God is drawing people by his love into a new life with him. This God work becomes our good work when we welcome all of those touched by the love of God to eat with us at the table of the righteous. And then there is the work of Christ which was the fulfillment of the will of the Father to unite all things in him both in heaven and on earth. Christ is our peace, the one who has united us all. As God in Christ has done this work we too join in this work by doing this will of God, seeking unity above all else. This means that we seek reconciliation not retaliation when dealing with others that we are angry with. This means that we enter into our relationships seriously seeking to maintain those relationships above everything else. This means that we must be people who have integrity, a unity between what we say and what we get done so that we reflect the very faithfulness of God.

         What is difficult for us to grasp is just how these works that God calls us to do can be thought of as being cross-shaped. Perhaps what would help us is to look at that One there upon the cross. Go ahead, use your imagination? Can you see him there upon the tree? With his one hand he is reaching out with the hand of forgiveness, seeking reconciliation not retribution against his enemies. Those who came against him he sought to make his friends, just as Paul points out to us in the fifth chapter of Romans, the tenth verse, where he says that, “…while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.”. Then with his other hand he reaches out to draw near those who were far from God just as he promised he would do, as found in the twelfth chapter of John, the thirty-second verse, “…when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” And these two arms extend forth from the body of Christ, the one who allowed himself to be broken so that, “…he might create in himself one new man…making peace, reconciling us to God in one body through the cross…”, as we hear in the second chapter of Ephesians. This he did because he had prayed to our Heavenly Father, “Yet not my will but yours be done.” Here at the cross the world witnessed the works of God in the good works of Jesus. Here upon the cross, our Heavenly Father was most certainly glorified. Here at the cross the world saw One who through his actions refuted violence and instead, created peace. As Jesus was questioned by Pontus Pilate, just before he carried his cross to Calvary, Jesus answered him saying, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting so that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this world.” Here Jesus is saying that his kingdom is not of this world because his is a kingdom that does not do the works of violence. No, his kingdom is a kingdom of peace, a kingdom from outside of our world that must be brought into our world from the realm of heaven. This is what we witness when we see Jesus upon the cross, a peace that comes through reaching out to enemies working to transform them into friends through a lavish display of grace. Jesus, taking upon himself our judgment and in exchange giving us mercy, drawing the world to his bleeding side through his love. In Jesus,  we witnessed how God did not despise being wounded in order to remain faithful to his bride, his own people, who had betrayed him with their unfaithfulness.

         Are we beginning to understand, just a little, how it is that the kingdom of our Heavenly Father comes into our world? This kingdom of peace comes into our world when we mirror the good works of God, those works which he has done for us. The kingdom comes when we forgive the debts of those who are indebted to us, and we do so with lavish grace. The kingdom comes when we welcome others as Jesus first welcomed us to come and sit and eat at the table of the righteous. The kingdom comes when we do the will of God seeking unity at all cost even if that cost means that we are persecuted for righteousness sake. We should gladly suffer for the sake of peace because it is worth it, after all, Christ found us worthy to do whatever it took to be at peace with us. So, may we be those through whom God makes his kingdom come and may our Heavenly Father be glorified, now and forever. Amen!

Eating At The Righteous Table

 January 29 2023

Matthew 5:17-20, 7:1-12

         When you consider the symbols of the Christian faith I believe that the table is second only to the symbol of the cross. I mean, don’t you find it interesting that most churches have some kind of place to eat in addition to their place of worship. I was thinking about this the other day because a friend of mine had posted on Facebook an auction notice for a church. The auctioneer said that the church structure had an attached cafeteria. I thought to myself, that’s odd because I would have called such a space a fellowship hall. I guess you could call these places that so many churches have built a cafeteria but I’m not sure such a word captures what is happening when followers of Jesus get together and eat. I mean, cafeteria just conjures up images of high school lunch hour and trust me there wasn’t a whole lot that was holy about that place.  So, yes, fellowship hall seems to have a better ring, doesn’t it, yet if any of us were pushed to explain just what it means to fellowship one might end up with a lot of different answers. Perhaps the best way to describe it to say that to fellowship with someone else is to share life with them and what better way to share life than to eat together. It is not hard to make the leap then that fellowship is about communing together which helps us to understand that the fellowship hall is really an extension of our worship where we share in communion at the Lord’s table. We might say that it is because we find our life through what Jesus has done for us that we then can have a life with which we can share together. So, yea, calling it a cafeteria is just not going to cut it!

         So, this theme of eating together is kind of a big deal in the church and if you study the scriptures, it always has been. The way our scripture for today connects with eating is through this idea of righteousness. Jesus tells us that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, if we remember who we are, that we are the people who have been blessed by God, then we might recall that Jesus tells us that, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.” Matthew records this in the sixth verse of the fifth chapter of his gospel account. When we listen to what Jesus is saying here it does seem odd, doesn’t it, that Jesus uses this idea of eating and drinking to describe how we are to long for righteousness to prevail in our world. Even the promise, that we are going to be satisfied, is a term used to describe how we feel after we have wiped out the all-you-can-eat buffet. Today we might say that we are stuffed! So, there is an obvious connection that Jesus is making between eating and drinking on one hand and righteousness on the other.

         What causes some confusion on our part when trying to figure out how righteousness and eating might be connected is that we often understand righteousness as an inner moral disposition. While this is true to a point, in Jesus’ day, to state that one was righteous meant that one felt that when the resurrection happened, they would be the ones who would be among the fortunate ones who would be raised to life instead of judgment. This trying and figuring out just who would inherit the age to come was the source of a lot of discussion even before Jesus arrived on the scene. So, it is interesting that the blessing that is coupled with the blessing of the satisfaction of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness is the blessing which states that it is the meek who are blessed for they shall inherit the earth. These two blessings, then, have a very similar focus, with the righteous ones being the very ones who will inherit the earth, living life in the age to come.

         It just makes sense then that it was the Pharisees who felt that it was they who were the righteous ones, the ones who would end up in God’s new graces when the age to come arrived. They marked themselves as being the righteous ones through their strict adherence to the Law and they even went further, as they also adopted the holy practices found in the Temple and incorporated these into their everyday life. Their thinking was that if they would be holy if they shaped their life by the holy ways of the Temple. Can you imagine the shock on these Pharisees faces when this one called Jesus, who had to be at least a prophet of God, spurned the likes of them and instead went and ate and drank with not just sinners but tax collectors as well? Jesus was hanging out with people who were obviously going to face the fierce and dreadful judgment of God when the new age arrived. So through the behavior of the Pharisees we begin to understand this connection between eating and righteousness. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is a longing to be found feasting at the table of the righteous. You see, it is not enough to simply have enough to eat or drink because that would be to do so without any certainty of one’s future. No, what a person really wants is to eat and drink knowing that they do so as an enactment of that banquet spoken of by Isaiah, as found in the twenty-fifth chapter, the sixth through the eighth verses where we hear Isaiah prophesy that, “on this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, a rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And the Lord of Hosts will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all the nations. He will swallow up death forever…”.This follows with what Jesus teaches us about being the blessed people of God, that those who mourn will be comforted, meaning that those who realize their own inevitable death will find the Spirit of God there with them, in that moment, being for them their comfort, giving to them new life. How very similar is what Jesus tells us here to what Paul teaches us in the fourth chapter of the book of Romans, the seventeenth verse, that we share the faith of Abraham, the one who believed that it is God, “…who gives life to the dead, and calls into existence those things which do not exist.” So, it is those who are trusting God to give them a new life, a life where all our past debts have been forgiven and forgotten, these are the ones whom Jesus calls the meek who will inherit the earth just as we are told that Abraham did. 

         Are you beginning to see how very different is the understanding that Jesus had about righteousness than the Pharisees? The Pharisees focused on the outward appearances much to the neglect to what was lurking about on the inside of who they were. Yet lest we get the impression that just because we are claimed to be righteous through faith that there is nothing more for us to do we need to take heed of what Jesus warns that he did not, “come to abolish the Law and the Prophets”, and further Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that, “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”. So, to all those who want to state that they live by faith and not works, Jesus says, think again. The same Law that was strictly adhered to by the Pharisees is the same Law that Jesus tells us cannot be ignored.  If we just take these words of Jesus by themselves we may be rather discouraged at the thought of having to try and live by the some six-hundred different regulations found within the Law and this is why we must see this teaching found in the fifth chapter in Matthew to be one set of bookends with the other being found in the seventh chapter. I believe that these two teachings belong together because both speak of the Law and the Prophets. Here in the seventh chapter we discover that the Law and the Prophets can be summed up as being, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” Once again, just like when Jesus spoke about the forgiveness of our debts and this use of debts was something that could be universally understood, so too, here we have this command of Jesus which can also be universally understood. The standard which the Law and the Prophets is built on is whatever we wish others to do to us. What this is saying is that all of us quite instinctively know how we want to be treated; this is what unifies us as people. This manner of how we desire others to interact with us is something which I believe we treasure in our hearts. It is not a leap then to understand that the Law really is written upon our hearts because the very foundation of the Law is what we treasure within our hearts, this way that we desire others would treat us. This is where the whole basis for justice and righteousness is to be found, right here within all of us, this desire we have of being treated appropriately by others.

         When we begin to grasp that the basis of the Law resides within every human heart then we can also begin to unravel what Jesus meant by stating that,  

“unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of God.”. The Pharisees thought that only their small little group of Law lovers would be the only ones left standing when the Day of the Lord rolled around. But if the foundation of what the Law and the Prophets speaks about is found right there within each person’s heart, then I believe that we are really going to need a bigger table. The exceeding righteousness is the exceeding number who will be accounted righteous when they treat others in the same manner that they themselves wish to be treated. I believe that Jesus captures the essence of this golden rule in his use of the word, “meek”, for those who will inherit the earth. This word we translate as being meek is a Greek word which is to convey a person who is kind, gentle and forgiving. Isn’t this the way that most people desire to be treated? I mean I enjoy when people are kind to me. This word kind is the root of the word kindred, an old word which speaks of family. So when we are kind with each other we treat others as if they were one of our own. And, yes, I am all for people being gentle with me because I need people to go easy with me. And it goes without saying that we all hope that the people we deal with are willing to forgive us because all of us mess up and most of us rarely get it right all of the time. So, yes, forgiveness is another aspect of our relationships that we all desire. Another aspect of this word we translate as being, “meek”, is this sense of strength under control. This is an acknowledgement that all of us are capable of doing something but because of our being transformed by God we have decided to only do those things which we would want done to us. In this way, our strength, what we are capable and able to do is guided and controlled by what we would want done to us.

         When we understand that the standard of our behavior is what we would desire others would do to us, does it not just make sense that passing judgment on people is something that we simply should not do? I mean, does anyone ever say, man, I hope these people I’m meeting up with will criticize me and make me feel totally inadequate. No, no one wants to have somebody else go over their life with a magnifying glass pointing out every fault and miscue. Doesn’t it just make sense that the judgment that we pronounce upon another person’s life is going to be the very same standard that we will have to live up to? Honestly, if we want to do something actually constructive we should just take a self-assessment of our own lives and be honest about the ways that we have failed to treat others like we would want to be treated. You see, if we want to share with someone something that is holy and good it is going to be really impossible if we have judged them to be nothing more than a dog. And if we try and offer our little pearls of wisdom to somebody that we have judged to be not worth more than a pig to you really think they are going to be thrilled at what we have to give to them? The Pharisees thought of themselves as being holy people but who really wanted their lifestyle when they were always looking down on everybody they had contact with.

         Instead of judging the lives of others we should instead be all about doing what the Law is all about, treating others as we would want to be treated. Jesus teaches us that the one who, “does the commandment to love others and teaches others to do the same will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”. You see, we don’t become greater by belittling others. No, we become great in God’s kingdom by loving others and then and only then teaching others to do the same.

         If we stand back and look at our passage of scripture from Matthew for today what we see is a vision of what life is supposed to look like for those who have placed their faith in God, the God who can bring those of us who were dead in our sins into a new life with him. It is a vision which realizes that faith alone is not enough. We must be about fulfilling the Law through our understanding that to do to others as we would want done to us is the entirety of the Law and the Prophets. This means that what we want others to do to us, this is what controls how we use our strength, our power, restraining ourselves from doing anything which we ourselves would not want done to us. So, the image we have is of people who are kind toward one another, always seeking to be gentle in their encounters with every person they meet, people who know just how important it is to be forgiven and to not expect others to always get it right.What we also see is that those who have encountered God in their lowest moment will keep their eyes open toward those around them who are longing for better days, wishing that the world might be at last be set right, and when these searching souls are found they are invited to a meal where their hungering and thirsting for righteousness can be satisfied around the table. Here it can be discovered that the life that seeks the best for others is a life which shares that life with others. This is why this group who has been set right through their faith in God is a fellowship which is ever growing. This group gathered around the table is so unlike the Pharisees who had their small little gathering of people who had judged that only they were the ones who were right with God, the only ones who knew just what was necessary to be holy as their God was holy yet they were also so unaware of who God was that they refused to sit at table with him when he showed up as one of us.

         You see, we have to first understand just what is the vision of what God is bringing about before we can figure out the petition of the Lord’s Prayer which is often spoken, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Now, there are several reasons why this petition is not the right translation of the Greek from which it is translated. The first problem is that this prayer is in the middle of a section which ends with Jesus telling his followers that they were not to worry about what they were going to eat because our Heavenly Father already knows that we need food. So, there is no reason for us to pray about food when we are assured that he already knows that we need it. Yes, Jesus does teach us that we are to, “Ask and it will be given to us; seek, and you will find, knock and it will be opened to us.” If Jesus is not speaking here about what we need for our everyday life then what is he talking about? The answer is found in the thirty-third verse of the sixth chapter of Matthew where Jesus teaches us that instead of searching for food we should instead be searching,“for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” With the kingdom of God and his righteousness in mind then, let us look once again at this petition in the Lord’s Prayer. What we discover is that what is normally translated as being, “daily”, is actually a strange word which is only found here in the Lord’s Prayer. The actual translation is something like the appropriate substance. I think then that what is being asked for is that God take the substance of what we have and make it appropriate to the people who will sit at our table today. In such a request is a subtle acknowledgment that God is going to always be inviting more and more people to our table. We can never be sure how many so we ask God to take what we have and make so that all who cone to eat will have enough. Only in this way can those who hunger and thirst for righteousness be satisfied in a real and concrete way, this is the very reason why we pray this prayer. Only as people experience the abundance of the table which gives us this life will they be willing to yield this life to the one called Jesus whose abundant grace is seen upon the cross. So, yes, the table and the cross they are our symbols not just of this life but the life everlasting. Amen.