We Are Not There Yet Matthew 5:21-37 Richard Lischer Epiphany VI

Transcription

1 "'. We Are Not There Yet Matthew 5:21-37 Richard Lischer Epiphany VI The great theologian Karl Barth once advised preachers to preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. He meant by that that God's word must always address the real situations of life and not straw people in a makebelieve world. Of course, not every bible passage has an obvious relation to the world. For example, you will read the newspaper a long time before coming across an article on a virgin conception or a man walking on the water. These stories are in the Bible, we believe them, and we know that they say something important about God, but we have difficulty connecting them to our lives. But when we get to the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, all that changes. For suddenly Jesus is talking not only about the things we read in the newspaper or hear about on talk shows, which we generally think of as 'other people's problems,' but he is addressing our own inner contradictions. He's describing dark clouds that hang over Christian homes, churches, and the Christian soul: If you call a brother or sister a "fool" you are liable to judgment. If you look on another person with lust, 1

2 '. it corresponds to adultery. When you divorce, it is a sin. These are not other peoples' probems: hate, anger, mean talk, adultery, lust, divorce, lying, and swearing. He's talking about the father who when his fourth-grader gets a C in Arithmetic spews out instinctively, "How can you be so stupid! " He's talking about people who can break bread together in sacred places but who cannot break thr ough the walls that separate them in secular places.. He's talking about Christians for whom sex is a game or contest who have figured out how to isolate their sex lives from their spiritual lives and live with the contradiction. He's talking about millions of marriages cut loose from their moorings in God's covenant. He's talking about churches awash in heterosexual sins who scapegoat homosexuals to cover for them. He's talking about a culture in which a person's word is only as good as his lawyer's word. He's talking about Christians who when they feel angry, threatened, edgy, or miffed--reach for their guns. The gap between the Bible and the listener has suddenly narrowed. This Sermon is speaking to us. I realize that for everyone here today the word "sermon" or "preach," for that matter, does not have a positive connotation. Don't preach at me, we say, by which we mean, 'Don't lecture me on morality from some physically or socially protected position.' Even Webster's Dictionary gives as the second defintion of "sermon": "an annoying harrangue,." 2

3 and "preach": "to give religious advice, especially in a tiresome manner." But this Sermon on the Mount is unlike any sermon you've ever heard. First, it's not advice about how to become a successful well-adjusted person and, second, it's not given by some pampered, protected parson who has never put his life behind his message. It's given by one who came out from behind the pulpt and punctuated his word with his blood. Some years ago I used to give a guest seminar in the Psychiatry Department to third-year residents entitled "What Psychiatrists Should Know about the Religious Beliefs of their Patients" (or something equally catchy). For whatever reason, many in the seminar were former Christians, people who had grown up in the faith but had moved away. During the course of my little presentation I would say something like, The gospel means "good news" of deliverance by a loving God and is celebrated by a new community. As the residents responded, often, critically, to my presentation, I began to realize that when I said 'Christianity,' what they heard was 'Sermon on the Mount.' One after another would respond, in effect, "I grew up in a Christian home... and I never heard anything about 'God's deliverance' or the 'new cormnunity' _ but only Don't do this, and don't do that." Christianity is a list of rules. And the Sermon on the Mount is just more and harder rules. They weren't concerned that Christianity was true or false in some metaphysical sense, but that it's bad for a person's mental health: "I have a 3

4 . patient who actually believes--get this--that God knows what she is thinking. Can you imagine that?.. Don't be angry, don't lust, don't swear, don't be anxious. Keep all that repressed inside you, the Sermon seems to say. Who can go through life without being angry, anxious, or occasionally lustful, and why should you? To a point, the psychiatrists are right. If you tear Matthew 5 out of the New Testament and and try to live it isolated it from the one who gives it and from a community of people who are trying to live a new way of life in a difficult world, it's impossible. Why should I care about insulting someone except that it may be bad for business? Why should I care about anger except for medical reasons? you repress too much of it,--that's bad for the psyche; if If you vent too much of it--that's bad for your blood pressure. Socrates was a better psychiatrist than Jesus: He said, Moderation is best! However, the Sermon on the Mount is not a prescription for mental and physcial well-being, the criteria for which change, of course, from year to year--(anybody want to buy some oatbran?). No, not prescriptions for a well balanced life, but a charter for a whole new, daring ~ of life in the presence of God. The Sermon begins with a list of blessings spoken on our heads. They tell us who we are: the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers. 'You are my people,' the Sermon says. 11 Blessed are you... 4

5 Early in my ministry I was meeting with a father and teenage-son who, to say the least, didn't get along. They were at loggerheads on everything. There they sat in my office--a classic study in opposites: the father, a military man, ramrod straight in his chair and in his life. There was the son, sitting, or I should say, slouching, lank hair, sullenly resentful of his father's authority. I made the mistake of asking the father, "George, do you want from your Tim?" and as soon as I'd asked it I wished I hadn't because I knew what the answer would be: get a job, get a haircut, get some new friends, get rid of the earring, keep the curfew, forget the motorcycle, and straighten up. A laundry list of improvements. But instead he surprised me, and looked at the young man deeply and said, "I want him to be my son." I don't remember if they solved their problems, but in the awkwardness of that afternoon they had found the only basis on which they had a chance. This is where wholeness of life begins for each of us who have fallen short of some standard, in the law, a job, or a relationship--when God looks at you and me and says, 'You are my sons and daughters, that is who I want you to be. Blessed are you.' Then that changes everything. Then we discover that we really don't want secret sectors of our lives that are free of Christ. we don't want little ghettos in our lives over which Christ has no authority, whether it's our sex lives or business lives or our very thoughts. If Christ is the Lord, then let him be Lord of all; and if he 5

6 J - died for us, let it be for all of us. Isn't that why baptism signals total immersion into Christ? Isn't that why in the Eucharist we receive Jesus into our very being? Recently, a National Council of Churches study showed that Chrsitian clergy get divorced at about the same rate as the rest of the population. A spokesperson for the organization hailed the study as "good news" because, as she put it, it's perceived that the clergy divorce rate is higher than that of the general population. In fact, it is not good news. We do not rejoice when our failures fall within a statistical norm or our morality reflects the national average. What is good news is that God has created, redeemed, and forgiven us to be so much more than we are. In the Sermon Jesus says, "Let your light so shine before all that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." The Sermon on the Mount is a part of a story called Epiphany, the season of the star. It begins with the journey of the Magi as they follow the pin-prick of light to the place where the Christ is; it will end next Sunday in an explosion of light in the Transfiguration. Jesus will have moved from one mountain on which he preaches authoritatively to another mountain where, standing n~xt to Moses and Elijah, he will illustrate our text for today: "You have heard it was said of old, but l. say to you..." There's a line in Paul in which the apostle says that ~ Christians are being transfigured from one degree of glory 6

7 into another. Those of us who are young and those of us who are old are all on the way toward the fulness of life intended by God. It's natural to wonder what that life looks like. Well, there is no blueprint. You can't devise a law comprehensive enough to cover every detail. The Sermon provides a few snapshots of our destination. When our kids were young we decided to take them to the World's Fair. So we packed them into the Pinto and set out. It was a ~ drive. Because they were such good kids they only asked every twenty minutes or so, "Are we there yet?" "No, we are not there yet. This is Burlington. It's nice but it's not the World's Fair." But they believed that we knew what a fair is and that we were on the right road. Our destination was like magnet drawing us forward. Somewhere the Apostle John writes, "Beloved, it does not yet appear what we shall be." We have crafted anti-hate laws that protect us from violence; we have passed no-fault legislation that civilizes our divorces; we have designed new laws to protect the weaker parties; we have developed strict rules of evidence to insure justice. we have come a long way from the moral stone age. But Jesus says to us, his people, 'You aren't there yet. There is a fullness of life that transcends the law. It is found in me and only me.' We are on a journey from observing laws to fulfilling them in Christ Jesus. We aren't there yet, but if you would like an inkling of God's kingdom--a little something to keep 7

8 .... you going on this difficult trip--glimpses of it are available--in faithful husbands and wives. in people who have quit hating other people. in believers who always tell the truth... and Christians who refuse to kill. These may not be well-adjusted people as the world measures mental health; in fact, they may be like characters in a Flannery O'Connor novel about whom someone said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you- -Qdd." What they are, for sure, is signs of the kingdom. Such people follow Jesus who himself finished the journey on another little mountain called Golgotha. It's a long journey we make, and we're not to the Fair yet. As Martin Luther said, This life is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, Not health but healing, Not being but becoming, Not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not gleam in glory, but all is being purified. 8