Sermon for April 3

Intensity

A Baptist pastor was walking down the street in town one day when he notices a very small boy trying to press a doorbell on a house across the street. The boy was very small and the doorbell was too high for him to reach, so after watching the boy try his best for a while, the pastor crosses the street, walks up behind the child and placing his hand kindly on his shoulder, leans over and gives the doorbell a solid ring.

Crouching down to the boy’s level, the pastor smiled caringly and asks, "And now what do we do?" To which the boy replies, “And now we run!"


Have you ever been scammed? Like having someone tell you something on April Fool’s Day you bought hook, line, and sinker, only to find out it was an intentional set up? Have you ever believed something so deeply, were so sure that it was true, that when you found it wasn’t you just felt crushed?

Tell me then, what do you do when you find out? Get mad, act confused, try to explain it away, somehow save face, pretend it never happened?

Listen then to this:

You know that our ancestors were told, "Do not murder" and "A murderer must be brought to trial." 22But I promise you that if you are angry with someone, you will have to stand trial. If you call someone a fool, you will be taken to court. And if you say that someone is worthless, you will be in danger of the fires of hell.

What are the chances that some of you have called someone you know an idiot…today…here at church…during this sermon?

And here all this time I thought, I was led to believe, I was told probably by that guy at the pulpit talking right now that Jesus loved me, and here he is tell me that I am going to straight to hell for calling that moron of a brother-in-law of mine a first class jerk!

And don’t get me started on the next thing on the list of six things Jesus needs you to know that ensures that you are nothing but a fry baby. I have not had sex with that woman! Though I might have perhaps once in my lifetime joined old Jimmy Carter by lusting in my heart! Maybe more than once, okay when I was 16 every three minutes, but how can it be that being normal means I lose it all.

How can it be fair that lust after the fairer sex is sin and calling my friends and neighbors morons, especially my fellow believers dopes can mean that I lose my relationship with God forever. How can my day to day behavior and attitudes and choices ruin my future!

It’s not fair and not right. I feel scammed. Why is my relationship with God dependent on my relationship with God…’s children?

So wait a minute, you aren’t suggesting that my relationship with God in the ultimate sense is somehow predicated upon, built on, nurtured by, my relationship with God now are you? This isn’t like one of Sam Tucker’s lessons where if you want big muscles then you have to exercise regularly now is it?

If the Holy Spirit is in me and the Holy Spirit is in you, then the way I treat you is the way I am treating God because God lives in you. And the way you treat me is in fact your preparation to live with God in eternity because what we are learning now is how to live in the Kingdom of God. So when I treat a woman as just a sexual thing and don’t recognize her as God present here and now I end up treating God poorly. And when I call my best friend a jackass, I am for all intents and purposes calling God a jackass, because God lives in him.

Hell fire is sounding just about hot enough!

But I thought that Jesus came to save us?

But Jesus can only save those who finally understand that… they – need – saving.

The greatest plight of humanity and it’s greatest folly is that sin makes us believers of the idea that we are not in need of saving, that we are not great sinners, that we are blameless before the law, that we, the greatest generation of Pharisees ever born are willing to apply the law to others, but not to ourselves.

Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount makes the Law intensely more difficult, making failure inevitable and absolute, thereby leading finally to confession, brokenness, meekness, humility, and all the of the conditions the Beatitudes require. And by the same stroke then also makes an apprentice - who filled with the spirit and motivated by the law of love - unable to do the minimum the law requires, but always out to live with the intensity and willingness and constant preparation to do the most love centered and love inspired thing possible to care for God’s kingdom and it’s people!

Whereas the Law of Moses, as embodied in Pharisaic minimalism and sophistry allows the keeping of the law at the bottom-most level, the Law of Love motives us, even compels us to Christ-like levels of caring and compassion!
If you understand the person sitting next to you in the pew as Christ present with you, how you treat him or her reveals just how much you love God!

Women, whom the Mosaic law saw as property, become beloved sisters for whom every man in the church is motivated to treat as Christ present!

Brothers and sisters who do things that make us crazy, become Christ present to us, forcing us to look deeper and care more, especially when we are exasperated with them, because we have to ask ourselves what it is that God wants us to understand in this relationship that stands us at the edge!

Scammed!

Thinking we can sin with impunity is the scam! It turns out instead that every sin slows down and even impedes our growth as believers! It clouds our relationship with God! It makes the waters muddier so that we can’t see the Kingdom of God that is already here! If only the fog we keep making by living lives not completely full of the Holy Spirit’s presence, could be transformed by Jesus at the very center of all we do and say and think!

Intensity!

Jesus intensifying the Law so that we can see clearly what is behind the Law: God at working on our behalf to make us more like Jesus! Amen!