Sermon for February 24 from Matthew 5:27-32

So…

Oh boy, here goes Jesus again intensifying the law.

It’s not just don’t murder folks!

Don’t maim them with your anger either!

Don’t just not commit adultery!

Don’t cheat on your partner, don’t even consider divorce, and by the way don’t covet your neighbors, men, women, boys, girls, anyone other than your spouse, period!

This Sermon on the Mount was offered by Jesus as a way for his disciples, his followers, the Pharisees and the Scribes to get a handle on how God saw those Big Ten, commandments that is.

They were to be understood not as rules in the typical Pharisaic sense, but rather as the normative way the Kingdom of God functions.

In the Kingdom, relationships are everything, especially our relationship with God and with each other.

Now I know the one we freak out about is Jesus teaching on divorce, but you have to see it as a Kingdom value. In the Kingdom, marriage is a mirror of our intimate relationship with God.

And who in their right mind would cheat on God?

Stop it! Just stop it!

The point is, who cheats on God? Who wants to divorce God? Don’t all of us really want an amazing relationship with God that is nurturing and challenging and fulfilling?

So, why not build an amazing relationship with the person filled with the Holy Spirit that is already in your life: your spouse, your girl/boyfriend, your family, your friends, even your enemies!

And that’s the point! Make it real now, because get this – God’s presence lives in the one you married and all the rest too knucklehead!
So, one of the things to note here is that this teaching is not separate from the ones before. The 

Kingdom of God is like a marriage, you can’t just walk out on the people you have made a commitment to. You need to deal!

You get angry, you talk it out! You get sidetracked, you stop turn around and fix it. You get interested in distractions and you need to refocus, and right away and rather abruptly, now! Because this matters!

Because the kingdom is worth the effort and the sacrifice.

Just like marriage is.

It’s relational, this Kingdom. It is not land. It is not money. It is not things; including people.

It’s about caring for and living for others as they care for and live for you. So, focus people!

And if you are finding yourself off track, or others are telling you that you are off track, remember who and whose you are.

If you are a fitness person (and we all should be) what do the experts tell us about diet and exercise? That when you fall off the plan, don’t quit, start again!

Look at your goals! Look at what you have accomplished!

Give yourself a pep talk and get back at it!

Often your fall is not unfixable, unless of course you have hurt others in the process, like when you are angry with them without resolving the anger, or are unfaithful to them, without ending the unfaithfulness and doing all you can to heal the relationship.

Unfortunately, some relationships can’t be healed.

When we cheat on the ones we say we love, when we treat as inhuman or somehow less than human those we are specifically told to love, including folks that may be very different than us, we damage the very fabric of the Kingdom!

The reason the church holds racism, sexism, gender-ism, and ageism as sin, is because in each case it diminishes the value of another one of God’s children.

Think of Jesus audience!

Men thinking less of women, because they weren’t men. Pharisees thinking less of the disciples, because they weren’t Pharisees. Adults thinking less of children, because they weren’t adults.

Jews thinking less of Samaritans and Gentiles, because they weren’t Jews. The wealthy thinking less of the poor and even the Middle Class because they weren’t rich.

The healthy thinking less of those who were ill, handicapped, suffering with diseases, mental illness, birthmarks, and congenital conditions, because they weren’t healthy, or even perfect, whatever that means.

And we could add lists and lists of other astonishing ways God’s people have thought less of folks, who are God’s beloved children. Those who are a different color, or who came from a certain part of the world, or whose hair is wavy or kinky or red.

Jesus is not suggesting we don’t be aware of those who would harm us. Rather he is pointing out that the Kingdom of God is full of folks we may be dismissing, sidelining, and even mistreating, whom God loves and values, and whom God has sent to enrich the Kingdom!

We are to value them as much as a husband is to love his wife, and a wife is to love her husband. As much as a father or mother loves a child, even a child who is stinky, naughty, and even difficult. Just saying!

Because we are all of great value to God. All of us have been fearfully and wonderfully made.

And all of us have been redeemed by the blood of the lamb, and it is only at our own peril that we reject or mistreat even the littlest one of God’s children.

As Jesus reminds us it would better to have a millstone hung around our neck and be tossed into an ocean than to mistreat one of God’s children, and we are all God’s children.

So, what have we learned? Look around. Each one here is beloved by God.

As a Kingdom person, we are to love them too. Amen.

Sermon from February 17 Matthew 5:21-26

So…

What are you angry about?

It seems like everyone I know is angry about something!

Whether it is politics, your tax return or lack thereof, your medical issues, or your pain-in-the-butt family, everyone has a beef about something.

Well, at least online.

I’ve noted an interesting phenomenon; many of the folks who seem to be raging a lot about all kinds of stuff online, are people who are wonderfully pleasant, even joyous, in day to day life. Weird.

But here is where it gets weirder.

Jesus, who is preaching to the folks lined up on the hillside in Matthew’s gospel are being told by Jesus that anger is bad! Not just uncomfortable. Not just dangerous. It is bad. As in you are in danger of the fires of hell, bad!

So, how are you feeling about your anger now?

And I know what I am going to hear from some of you: my anger is justified. Changing the words of Haley Joel Osmet in that movie with Bruce Willis, “I see dead people”, I hear you saying, “I see stupid people.”

But in light of Jesus’ words, we have to think about whether being angry worth it.

That is exactly what Jesus is asking us to calculate.

Here he is with the disciples, his followers, the Pharisees and Scribes and he is asking people, is being angry worth it?

Does it get you what you want, or does it just get in the way of lots of things, including relationships, including your relationship with God?

We all know that anger is an emotional state, a physical reaction to stimuli. Anger in itself is not necessarily destructive, rather is it a warning signal from the autonomic brain to the body that there is a dangerous situation ahead, kind of like “Lost in Space’s, “danger Will Robinson”!

Where were you people in 1965?

Anyway, whenever we experience certain situations, when we are afraid, jealous, hurt, disappointed, frustrated, embarrassed, our body reacts with one of three possible autonomic responses: we freeze, we flee, or we prepare to fight.

The reactions take place instantaneously, without thought. They are automatic responses to dangerous stimuli with the intention of enabling us to save ourselves in dangerous situations, like that Mountain Lion in Colorado that tried to take down a trail runner.

The runner fought and the lion lost.

Because our response is not cognitive but automatic, it is not a strategy. It is not a thought out plan. It is rather just huge warning system that lets our lagging behind conscious brains get to work figuring out what to do.

Our hearts start to pound, our fists ball up, our breathing gets shallower, readying us to make a move to run like a deer spooked by a puma, or fight with flying fists, or in some cases freeze, letting our camouflage hide us, like when your wife sees you ate the last piece of Valentine’s Day cheesecake!

The feelings that we describe as anger need to be dealt with, but how we deal with them can reveal whether we are Kingdom of God people or not.

As the scriptures remind us, we are to be angry, but not sin.

In fact, the Apostle Paul In Ephesians, chapter 4 says, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. ‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, ²⁷ and do not give the devil a foothold.

Anger is a problem when it causes sin. And Jesus jumps right in telling us that sin happens, when it separates us from the others around us that God loves.

The CEV that we read here in this congregation has Jesus saying, “But 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.”

I actually like the NIV here better when it says, “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

“Raca”, in the language Jesus would have spoken, was a kind of street Semitic - Hebrew mishmash. In it “Raca” would have been a term of contempt.

You can freely supply the equivalent and probably have driving here on the way to worship. Just saying.

So, here’s the take away: the Kingdom of God is made up of people who are not angry.

Well, it isn’t that Kingdom people don’t get mad at injustice, unfairness, and a whole host of others things that make us want to flee, freeze or fight. But it’s what we then do about those feelings that define us as part of the Kingdom or not.

And if those feelings and our subsequent actions are separating us from others God loves and counts as his children, well then, Jesus has made it clear to all those on the hill, disciples and Pharisees, followers and scribes, that God is not pleased, he even suggests that you may be tonight’s BBQ.

And its not just folks on the hill! It’s also you and I.

So, as Jesus reminds us, if you are on your way to worship and remember that someone is angry with you, leave your pew and go and make peace with that person, then come back and offer yourself as a gift to God.

We live in angry times, my friends!

Remember who you are!

And always let love, not anger be your guide.

Amen.

  

Sermon from Matthew 5:17-20 for February 10

So…

Do you ever think of yourself as a hypocrite?

How about someone you know?

It’s alright. A little side-eye at the folks in the pew with you works!

Hypocrites are people who, according to Miriam Webster dictionary put on a false appearance of virtue or religion, or a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.

Being hypocritical is bad.

We know that because of experience. Having someone say they love you and then betray you is an experience many of us understand very well, and it makes us angry because it is the epitome of hypocrisy.

But we also know that hypocrisy is bad because Jesus said so.

He regularly criticized the Pharisees because of their hypocrisy, holding up God’s Law as absolute, but then themselves not keeping the laws or making creative ways to get around them, or criticizing folks for not being as Holy as them.

So being a hypocrite is bad! We all get that. We don’t want to be hypocrites!

Yet, one of the accusations leveled at the church, especially by those who don’t participate in it is that the people who attend churches are hypocrites.

In study after study, one of the reasons people, and in particular, young people, don’t think much of the church, is because they believe that a significant portion, if not most of church leaders and attenders, set up rules that they promote as standards for ethical behavior, but then violate them at will, almost as if the rules are for outsiders but not for the insiders.

It’s pretty harsh stuff and painful for many of us on the inside, one, because we don’t perceive ourselves that way, and two, because we really do want to be the kind of loving, graceful, accepting, merciful, and joyous people Jesus claims as disciples.

We know we don’t get it right all the time, but we are trying and really hope the larger community sees that.

But it seems they don’t.

And if we the church are being perceived as hypocrites by people we would love to be part of this band of disciples, then we need to fix that.

But how?

One of the comments about the early churchwas was that they were a community of love.

So, how did we get from being a church that is characterized by the outside community as one that is loving, to one that is perceived by outsiders as full of hypocrites?

And then, what do we do about standards for ethical behavior? We know they exist. We want to be ethical!

And what do we do with the Mosaic Law?

Interestingly, Jesus didn’t believe that the Law was somehow faulty.

He points out that not a dotted “i” or a crossed “t” needed to be changed. But he did think its interpretation and application was a real hindrance to God’s people, especially as understood by the Pharisees and Sadducee s of his day.

He even goes so far as to say that we, his disciples, must obey them better than the Scribes and Pharisees.

Yipes; how is that even possible?

Well, you have to see the Law through Jesus eyes. After all, the law is not being interpreted by some faulty human teacher, but by God incarnate!

I saw a meme the other day that I have seen several times before. I had wanted to add it as a graphic up on the screens today but, of course, then went back and couldn’t find it anywhere.

It showed a picture of Jesus facing a group of what looked like religious leaders that said something like “they want to judge love by the law” and Jesus “wants to judge the law by love”.

It’s very close to what Jesus said to the Pharisees about the Sabbath law, that humans were not made for the Sabbath, but rather, the Sabbath was made for humans.

It was intended not to be a drudgery, but rather intended to make life full, a whole day devoted to celebrating God’s love and grace and blessing, including family, and friends, and the whole worshiping community.

Jesus even goes so far as to suggest that if you are helping others who are in need on the Sabbath, with their donkey stuck in a hole or whatever the need was, that the helping should not be understood as work! The law interpreted by love! Helping others is a great Sabbath experience. It’s a joyous extension of worship, where our hands become God’s hands!

So maybe, the real problem of hypocrisy is that instead of rejecting the high standards God has for us and sneaking around them and being all judgy about those who don’t keep them up to our standards, maybe we all need to get in the mud to help our neighbors; to love our neighbors, to get their donkeys out to safety, or their cars out of the snowbank, or put food in their pantries, or give them hugs and prayer blankets when they are grieving, or backpacks full of food for their kids.

One church leader has said that when every church in every community is finally filled with all the broken folks all around us, then, and only then, will Jesus return.

Maybe not to end time.

Maybe just to make us finally see the church as he does, the church he wants, the church filled with the Holy Spirit, ready to make a difference.

The law is good. It reveals to us to us what is perfect. But love. It reveals the very heart of God to us and in us.

May it be so. Amen and Amen.

Sermon from Matthew 5:13-16 for February 3

So…

As we continue our series on the Sermon on the Mount, I have been tempted to come up with a catchy title for it that kind of illuminates the essence of what Jesus is saying about what the Kingdom of God.

Last week, we began with Jesus seeming to suggest that Kingdom of God is made up of people very different then what the world often thinks of as winners!

He said, blessed are those (and I suggested perhaps a better translation is “made holy are those”) who depend only on God, who grieve, who are humble, who want to obey him, who are merciful, whose hearts are pure, who make peace, who are treated badly for doing right, who are insulted, mistreated, and have lies told about them because of Jesus.

Jesus seems to be saying that the Kingdom is not made up of the world’s elite, nor of Israel’s elite in his day, but rather Jesus seems to be suggesting that God’s kingdom is actually made up of those followers of his who are, in fact, humble, grace-filled, and merciful.

It just strikes me that this seems to be a rather strange way to start a kingdom! No fire breathing dragons, no grand armies of ice people. No huge machine of war. Just humble, struggling people, a lot like you and I.

But it does reflect what the prophet Micah said in Micah 6:8, “You mortals, the Lord has told you what is good. This is what the Lord requires from you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to live humbly with your God.”

So, this Kingdom Jesus is introducing is different. It is not made up of the powerful, but rather the humble. Not made up of the successful, but rather those who mourn.  And then Jesus offers up two new images of God’s Kingdom that might suggest today’s sermon title: “Sermon on the Mount: Lightly Salted”. You get it? Light. Salt.

Sigh!

I have in the past described the OMHPC as a bowl of granola: fruits, flakes, and nuts. Look around, you know who is who!

And that may adequately explain who we are. A bunch of Jesus’ loving folks hanging out together trying to be the kind of disciples Jesus would love, just like that original bunch of crazies.

But, here’s the thing: while seeing ourselves as granola is great, it isn’t the whole story! It just means that any fruit, flake, or nut can join us and feel right at home. It means that they, just like you and I, are welcome and even loved.

But it doesn’t describe who we should be, or who we are be becoming.

And that’s where Jesus decides to go in his teaching on the mountain side.

Struggling folks are welcome! Downtrodden folks are welcome! Broken hearted people are welcome! Even folks with really big hearts are welcome! Jesus wants you to come. And then - God intends to build his Kingdom through you.

So, you are welcome to come, but not just to hang out!

You may need to do that for a time to get some serious healing happening. Jesus is certainly in the business of healing and so should be the church.

But then, God intends you to help him build a Kingdom of grace and love and mercy and acceptance. God can use you, yes you, to build a Kingdom of humble, transformed people.

You see, when Jesus says that we who are part of his Kingdom are salt, he is not suggesting that we are common table salt in any modern sense. We miss the point of the parable if we see saltiness as something less than what Jesus is suggesting.

Salt in Jesus day was incredibly valuable because of its incredible powers. You can look it up, sodium chloride is way cool. It is needed by the body to regulate all kinds of things. It can and is used as a preservative. It can melt ice! And it makes food taste good! It was even used as a form of payment by the Roman Armies to its troops because of its value.

So, think about that! We are salt, that is of the highest value, because of our incredible powers.

Fruits, flakes and nuts we may be, but lest you get too comfortable in your laid back 1960’s in your OMHPC tie dyed t-shirts acting all groovy, remember, God made you and I powerful! Because God plans to use us granola types, because God is in the business of using our weakness as well as our giftedness to his glory.

We are salt. But since our minds immediately go to that salt shaker on the table that we see as common and fairly uninspiring, lets change the image to something that I think communicates all this power to change the world better.

What if Jesus had said, you are the habaneros, scotch bonnets, and ghost peppers, meant to spice up not just the church, but the whole world!

So now hear what Jesus is saying, “You are like the best salsa ever made for everyone on earth. But if the salsa no longer tastes like salsa, how can it make food amazing? All it is good for is to be thrown out and walked on.

So, all you folks who have been thinking that what you bring to the table doesn’t count for much, sit back and take notice! You are in fact the hot pepper that this particular bowl of salsa needs. You are exactly what the Kingdom is made of: spicy, gifted, humble, amazing disciples!

And in case you missed where Jesus is going with this, he adds another image to make sure that the concrete thinkers in the bunch have sufficient anchors to hold the abstractions in place.

He says, you are also light. Some of us may not be too bright, but that’s another sermon for another day. I once went in an empty lava tube called the Ape Caves outside of Mount Saint Helens. Sue and Allison and I went down into this thing walked a few hundred feet and then shut off our head lamps. Light is really, really good in darkness!

We individually and collectively are the ones tasked to take the light (Jesus) to the world, to shine that light in the darkest of places, to bring hope, and joy, and transformation to the world.

We are bearers of the light, and the salsa that always spices things up.

So, where are the places of darkness you know need some light?

What are the ways that a community of faith like this could make a difference?

And what other peppers do you need to go with you?

Who’s the jalapeños, or serranoes, or poblanos, or kung pao peppers that could make this salsa rock?

Our church motto is: “Making a difference: in Jesus name! And we can make a difference, because we are the Kingdom!

Now who’s in charge of the guac and the tortilla chips? Just asking. Amen.