And so to the Psalm the point is simply made Blessed are those whose way is pure and who walk in law of the Lord.

Transcription

1 1 Difficult passage from the Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5 If you scan through all of the readings appointed for today it is hard to find much comfort. From Deuteronomy a reminder about the Ten Commandments. And the reminder is that only by observing God s laws will the people of Israel prosper and enter into the Promised Land. If they do not follow God s laws, they will not cross the Jordan, they will perish. But what has that got to with us? This was written thousands of years ago for a people long gone. But here we are still reading this. Our Christian Faith comes out of these times, out of this distant land and its people, who showed themselves to be pretty stiff necked and stubborn and consistently failed to follow God s laws. Not one of the people who God had led out of slavery in Egypt crossed the river Jordan. Not even Moses who witnessed the Ten Plagues, who crossed Red Sea when the waters were parted and stood like walls to give safe passage to them. God had rescued them from the might of Egypt but only the generation that came after them entered into the land that God set apart for them. And yet, God does not demand anything difficult. God says Choose life so that your descendants may live hold fast to Him. But they couldn t do it and people today still do not do it. And yet God always come out as the bad guy. So move on and scan through Ecclesiasticus. Again God gives his people a choice a choice between life and death. And through history people choose death. It doesn t make sense. And so people make up excuses for their sinfulness, even blame God you made me like this, I can t help how I am. But God has not commanded anyone to be wicked and has not given anyone permission to sin. And so to the Psalm the point is simply made Blessed are those whose way is pure and who walk in law of the Lord. But we live in a world that is far from pure. We inhabit a world that delights in exploitation, where the sex trade is worth billions,

2 2 where the world economies would collapse without the sale of weapons; a world that thrives on dishonesty; that seeks its own interests above the needs of others. And we wonder why there is not peace in the world. We live in a world where those who would strive to live by the Ten Commandments are more likely to be ridiculed than applauded and yet there is not one that I would strike from the list. But what about worshipping God, not everyone believes in God, not everyone believes in the same God and then people will say that religion is behind most of the trouble in the world anyway. But God says: I have not given anyone permission anyone to sin Ecc 15v20. But who is this God? John the Evangelist, writes in a letter that God is this: God is love and those who live in love, live in God and God lives in them. Wherever there is trouble in the world, in the community, in the church, in the home: it is because of the absence of love. Love is easily usurped by our own insistence on having our own way. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians this very thing: love does not insist on its own way. And so when you look at the reading appointed for today, from that same letter, Paul is speaking to that church and telling them straight: For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, ARE you not of the flesh in other words not of God behaving according to human inclinations? And so the church in Paul s day feels so much like the church of our day: split into factions. Those who follow Paul are at odds with those who follow Apollos and Paul says it is all nonsense. What would Paul make of all our different denominations today? Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Free Methodist, Gospel Churches, Pentecostals The church of the holier than thou and The chapel of the We are better than you. All are human constructions and all are the result of human sinfulness and the absence of love.

3 3 And then in our Gospel reading we have the sermon on the Mount. There is huge symbolism going on here, because thousands of years earlier God gave the law to Moses on a Mount and the people consistently failed to follow it. Was it because the law was at fault? Absolutely not! When rules don t work for people we tend to change the rules. We say they are unworkable; the goal posts shifts, the benchmark changes, we turn a blind eye: but God does not change the rules. There is a tendency to think of God s rules as the enemy but God s rules are really about our health and safety. God s health and safety policy that guarantees peace Rather than tone down the rules for being unworkable, Jesus ramps them up. To be angry with a brother or sister is to commit murder in the heart; to be rude and insulting will drag you before the courts of the Lord, to put one another down by ridicule is to court the fires of hell. So important is this that Jesus says forget about your religious duty, don t even think about offering your gifts at the altar unless you first reconcile yourself with your neighbour. It s not new, but Jesus restates this point. The only thing God desires of us is expressed by King David in Ps51 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. Or in Hosea 6v6 I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. God hates the hypocrisy of religion and accuses his people of making idolatry out of worship. And as we enter into the New Testament this does not change. St Paul picks it up in his letter to the dysfunctional church of Corinth: For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord s death until He comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Each one must examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. 1 Cor 11v27.

4 4 And then Jesus tackles that thorny of issues of adultery: even to look lustfully at another man or woman is to commit adultery - so that pretty well covers everybody. I can hear Private Fraser even now.. We re doomed. Surely Jesus can t mean this, surely this is too hard: pluck out your right eye or cut off your right hand if it causes you to sin. And then he comes back to adultery and Divorce. By God s standards more than half of people today are living a permanent state of adultery because they have divorced and remarried. It is a point taken very seriously by the Catholic Church divorcees who re-marry are barred from taking communion the very nourishment of the soul in preparation for entering into Eternal Life. I don t agree with this view and thankfully it is changing. But, given that all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory God how can anyone be saved? How may anyone enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Jesus hasn t singled out divorcees, his list makes it clear that none is worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. All have sinned, says Paul, and all have fallen short of the glory of God. But it remains that the more colourful aspects are of our sinfulness get the most attention: we even immortalise and celebrate these things in film. Whilst some lifestyle magazines will tell you to have an affair to spice up your marriage. Adultery and divorce are wrong there is no way of getting it around it but there is more to understand about this troubling part of the Sermon of the Mount and it is related to injustice, oppression and the worst sin of all human pride and arrogance. There will always be those who will pass over their own sinfulness and focus on the sinfulness of others: they think they are better than others, and in focussing on the shortcomings of others it distracts attention away from their own sins. Sue and I caught a glimpse of the film Now you see me. It is a brilliant expose of the magician s art, the art of distraction, but it is in the end an illusion and the most deluded are those point the finger at others the gossipers, the anonymous critics, the ones who write poison pen letters these are the evildoers that God most hates because when they do such things they set up themselves as judge, they set themselves up in the place of God, and this is the worst kind of idolatry.

5 5 And so a woman was brought to Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery. In the very act now unless she was on her own and looking lustfully at another, then there was a man somewhere. But in Jewish law only a woman could be guilty of adultery and only a man could divorce his wife, not the other way round. Yet this woman under Jewish law should be stoned and here is the challenge that the self-righteous upholders of the law brought to Jesus. They wanted Jesus to condemn himself by saying that the law was wrong and that would be blasphemy. But Jesus does not contradict the law, he upholds it and he ramps it up. All sin in God s eyes is punishable by death and so he says let him who has never sinned cast the first stone and one by one each of the accusers puts down their stone and walks away, a walk of shame but a walk of confession. St John the Evangelist writes: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and his truth is not in us. 1 John 1v8-10 These religious people were guilty of the terrible thing that so many do the sin of duplicity: to say one thing but do another: happy to point out the fault of others but not prepared to address their own failings. The writer of the Proverbs, probably King Solomon, said this: The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity. Proverbs 11v3 God s laws of justice and freedom, his health and safety policy for the world had been re-written to favour the strong over the weak and in this man s world the woman had no power and once stripped of everything, the only thing left for her was prostitution for which she could be stoned whilst the man engaged in the very act with her would walk free.

6 6 You may have read in the papers about the anonymous hate letters written to the Revd Chris Newlands, Vicar of Lancaster Priory and Patron to St Peter s Scorton. He received hate letters because he lives in a same sex civil partnership: under the law. These anonymous letters, purportedly by Bible believing Christians, were full of hatred by these invisible cowards who must think that they are somehow without sin but here is the truth we all live in sin. God s judgement will fall heavily on those who think that they better than others. It is to those people whom Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount where even to harbour an angry thought is murder and simply to cast a lustful eye toward another is adultery. But in this understanding of the law. Who then can be saved? The answer is noone because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But there is hope and St Paul in his letter to the Romans puts it like this: But now, irrespective of law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, (no distinction) since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; [And here is the Good News] they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. That does not mean that we can forget about the law, we must still strive to follow God s ways even though it is hard but it is the way that makes for peace. We can only stand alongside one another in our sinfulness, no one can stand higher than anybody else. Only by grace can we stand and we can only take hold of the gift of grace by letting go of whatever we would hold on to for ourselves. All we can say to God in the end is Yes, Yes Yes or reject him and say No No No. So today, in heart and mind, let us say Yes to God and journey with him to the Promised Land.