God's People Surprise the World

God’s People Surprise the World
Matthew 5:38-48; Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-19; Psalm 119:33-40

Our four-week study of the first third of the Sermon on the Mount comes to an end today. The sermon is Jesus’ affirmation of his grand policy speach about what the realm of God’s rule looks like and what may be expected of those who are part of that realm – God’s people. They are generations of people like you and me. The language has changed, the geographical location has varied, and the clothing and culture has changed. If you don’t think so, just think about all the different clothing and hair styles that we have lived through in our lifetimes.

The core of Jesus’ manifesto of kingdom life has not changed over all the generations. In every age the people who best exemplified kingdom living have surprised, indeed shocked, the world. That’s what God’s people do. Building on a lifestyle that stands with the least, the last, and the lost — those who receive no honor and are often dishonored — God’s people have character. They are engaged with the world, and they play fair by being in a right relationship with God, with other people, with people of the other gender, in intimate relationships, and in fulfilling solemn promises. Often this deeper, fuller understanding of relationship — what Jesus labels as greater righteousness — runs counter to the ways of the world. Hence, God’s people continuously surprise the world with behaviors which are unexpected, and, admittedly, unwelcomed by the reigning powers of the world which either hide behind God-language or outwardly flout God.

In the preceding seventeen verses Jesus talked about murder, adultery, and taking oaths. As he wraps up this section of his sermon, he’ll talk about not resisting and about love, in other words, how we with our “greater righteousness” are to deal with enemies. If the world was surprised by the previous behaviors, it will be astounded by the response God’s people give to enemies and oppressors.

The “law of retaliation” (given three times in the Torah(1)) gave an injured party the right to inflict the same kind of pain or injury on the person who caused the original pain or injury. On one hand, this law sets limits on the amount of retaliation one can seek. If someone broke your finger, you couldn’t chop of his hand – or his head. On the other hand, the law turns the victim into the same kind of bully as the one who caused the injury. When we hit back at the person who hit us, we become like them. When we shout back at the one shouting at us, we become like them. When we shoot back at those shooting at us, we become like them.

Unfortunately, too often you and I don’t want to get even, we want to hit back harder or more times. We want to do worse to them than they did to us. Then we become worse than them – and we try to justify our actions. Even more than that, we have let “them” determine how we will act. When we let “them” control our feelings and actions, we are not living under heaven’s rule – letting “heaven” control our lives. Mahatma Gandhi pointed out the ultimate extension of this kind of behavior: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” At some point someone has to stop getting even and poking out eyes.

The slap on the right cheek was not a Muhammad Ali left hook. The slap was most likely done by a right-handed person which means that the slap was with the back of the hand. That’s a sign of insult. Rather than insult back, turn the left cheek to the individual. And it can’t be slapped with the right hand. Their power has been removed from them. We don’t have to lower ourselves to their level.

The same approach seems to be the sense of the other images. If a person is willing to give up a coat – in essence, go naked – when someone sues to take a shirt, then the individual hasn’t let “them” – the suer – determine what they are going to do. By being willing to give even more than they want, their power is removed.

Warren Carter suggests that the coat is a metaphor for responding to a larger systemic oppression. He writes:

“Why strip oneself naked in court? This gesture represents the stripping away of land and property which the creditor is enacting. By standing naked before one’s creditor who has both garments in his hand, one shames and dishonors the creditor. Nakedness exposes, among other things, the greed and cruel effect of the creditor’s action and the unjust system the creditor represents. Removing clothing, along with all that it represents (status, social relations, power, gender, etc.), reveals the basic humanity which should unite the indebted and creditor. The act enables the poor to take some initiative against power that seems ultimate. The act protests by unmasking the powerful one’s heartless demands as inhuman, and the act offers the possibility of a different relationship, even reconciliation. A changed system is not guaranteed, but God’s reign has exposed the nature of the present system and pointed to an alternative.”(2)

God’s people surprise the world by responding not as the world responds but by responding in such a way as the sin, the evil, the greed, the heartlessness of living without God is exposed, brought to the light of God’s judgment to be seen for what it is by one and all. It is the perpetrator of evil who is ultimately stripped naked.

We can put this into a different perspective. What kind of predicament would each of us be in if God decided to “get even” with us? We repeatedly turn away from God. We deny God daily with our words and our lives and our thoughts. We disobey God. We ignore God. For all we’ve done and haven’t done, God would have the right to “get even” and destroy us. That isn’t what God does. That isn’t what we are to do.

Thus we are to love our enemies, not get even with them. Nowhere in scripture does it say to hate the enemy. Nowhere. It probably became pseudo-scripture, because it seemed appropriate. If you can’t love someone, then you hate them. And hating someone means that it is easier to love the neighbor. Those who seek to become righteous by obedience to the law will find a way to make the law obeyable. Thus the law gets interpreted as loving some people and allowing hatred for others. That’s not what God intended, that’s not what Jesus now commands us.

We are to love our enemies. This love is not just an inner feeling. It means doing something for the benefit of the other person, doing something that helps the other person, regardless of one’s feelings for that person or what one has to do. We are not to demonize those we disagree whether it is politics or religion or child-rearing. When we make them into demons we permit ourselves to believe that it is all right to hate them. That is not Jesus’ way. As Christians, we should always be conscious of the fact that every person has been created by God. All of us are children of the same heavenly Father, who sends sun and rain, snow and drought on the righteous and unrighteous alike.

Thus Jesus says that God’s people are to be “complete” – perfect – as God is complete/perfect. This can be paraphrased: “You are to be all-embracing in your love, in imitation of God, whose love embraces all.”(3) Eugene Peterson in The Message puts the verse this way: “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

To be “complete” or “perfect” means not dividing our love — extending it to some people and keeping it from others. It means whole-hearted love for all people — just as God has shown his whole-hearted love for all people — including us — by not getting revenge, but giving everything for us that makes for peace between God and us.

If that doesn’t surprise the world, nothing will.


(1) Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:19-20; Deuteronomy 19:21.
(2) Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), p 152.
(3) Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew (Interpretation Commentary Series) (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), p. 62.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

God's People Play Fair

God’s People Play Fair
Matthew 5:21-37; Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8

We are taking the month of February to look at the first of the three chapters which make up the section of Matthew’s gospel traditionally called “The Sermon on the Mount.” The opening chapter is essentially Jesus’ vision for the faithful community, the church.

Two weeks ago we looked at the opening verses, the “Beatitudes,” which define the character of the faithful of community. The first four beatitudes focused the nature of God’s rule as it happens for people who experience no honor. The second four beatitudes promise ultimate rewards for the people who live their lives in such ways as to benefit the those mentioned in the first four. Jesus changed the focus of the final beatitude from others to his hearers when they commit themselves to the righteousness and justice of those who lack them.

Last week we talked about Christ’s followers being particularly salt, and how the subtle ways of the world will rob believers of their saltiness, as desalination processes remove salt from sea water. Jesus called his hearers to a greater righteousness which we defined as fulfilling the Law and not just obeying it. Fulfilling the Law requires a relationship with the Law-giver, to know God’s intentions through the Law and what actions are right for each situation. That is the way in which God’s people in relationship with Christ, engage the world to flavor, challenge, and preserve so that God’s Law may be fulfilled.

So, God’s people have the character of righteousness and justice, and they are engaged with the world to flavor and challenge it. The way that they do that is that they play fair. You perhaps have heard it said about someone that they “play well with others.” That’s a great definition for Christians, for playing well with others is what showing mercy, having pure hearts, and making peace is all about.

The greater righteousness of Jesus centers on relationships. It is more than outward acts. Inner attitudes are also involved. When there is inner anger at another person, even if there are no outward actions, the relationship is destroyed. When there is inner lust in the heart, even if there are no outward actions, the relationship is cheapened. When there are acts of revenge or even feelings of wanting to get even, nothing is done to help build or re-establish the relationship. Playing fair is not a white-washed facade. Playing fair is more than skin deep. It goes to the very core of a believer’s being.

Righteousness can be defined in several ways. One way is to say that righteousness is doing everything rightly. Perhaps it’s having a clear job description and doing everything on the list, or having 10 commandments or 300 commandments and obeying every one of them, or never driving over the speed limit, or having a personal code of ethics and living one’s life within those rules. This way of defining righteousness means doing what is right, obeying the law, acting according to the rules.

Righteousness can be defined also as a right relationship – a relationship not based on what you do, but who you are. It is loving and caring for others. It is being loved and cared for by others. It is trusting that the other will be faithful to the relationship. In biblical terms, this is righteousness by faith – or righteousness by trust. It has little relationship to the righteousness by law.

One way of describing righteousness by relationship is to look at the bond between parents and children. There is a promise and a commitment given. In the beginning, it is a promise only expressed by the parents to the children. “We will be your parents and you will be our child. We will love and care and sacrifice for you throughout your life.” An infant doesn’t know what’s going on, but without these promises from the parents and the parents carrying through on those promises, children would not survive. Parents care for children. Children grow up to love their parents. Children learn to get along with each other. These are models for the right relationship that God earnestly desires to have with us and that God in Christ invites believers to participate in.

Unrighteousness is all those acts, words, thoughts, and feelings that cheapen the relationship between people. Righteousness is all those acts, words, thoughts and feelings that maintain, establish, or re-establish good relationships between people.
The remainder of chapter five, the first third of the Sermon, is driven by Jesus saying, “You have heard that it was said..., but I say to you....” If we aren’t paying close attention, we will likely say that the original quotation must be from God. The original kernel of the thought might have come from God, but it has gone through interpretation between the original thought and the current understanding.

• “Don’t commit murder” is part of the law (Ex. 20:13; Deut. 5:17), but “all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment” is not scriptural.
• “Don’t commit adultery” is part of the law (Ex. 20:14; Deut. 5:18).
• “Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord” has similarities to commands found in the Hebrew scriptures: “You shall not swear falsely by my name, desecrating your God’s name in doing so” (Lev. 19:12); “When a man makes a solemn promise to the Lord... he cannot break his word” (Num. 30:2); “When you make a promise to the Lord your God, don’t put off making good on it” (Deut. 23:21).

Jesus does not seem to be presenting a new law which opposes that Law that God had given to Moses. It seems more likely that Jesus is interpreting the Law in opposition to popular interpretations in his day. Jesus is filling up or fulfilling the law with his interpretation.

Fulfilling the law with true interpretation is a heavy task. Any preacher who seeks to be truly salt and light for the Christ community and the world is exceedingly conscious of the gravity of the work to which she or he is called. Preachers stand in a position of authority. We are on a raised dais high above. That’s for sight and hearing. But people raise us even higher. If a preacher says it, it must be true. I pray that I do correctly interpret Christ to you, and I pray just as earnestly that the Spirit enables you to hear what Christ says, even if I get it wrong.

We cannot manufacture righteousness. It is a gifts we receive through being in relationship with our Lord. Jesus simply rejects the question of how one can become righteous in God’s eyes. It all depends  on the human heart. The heart can be totally devoted to God and to righteousness only when it is genuinely devoted to others.

Jesus changes the location of authority. It is no longer in the written text or with those who interpret it. It is now located in Jesus. Remember, Jesus’ post-resurrection parting words, “I have received all authority in heaven and on earth.” If in the evangelist John’s terms, Jesus is the “Word” made flesh, then Jesus is his own interpreter.

God’s people are to play fair in the ways we relate to each other in public and private, in relationships with individuals of the other gender, with intimate relationships, and with the fulfilling of solemn promises. While God’s people occasionally get caught with the first three, often very visible, forms of fracturing of relationships, the last is often unnoticed and expected. The lack of keeping one’s word slowly eats up a congregation’s vitality. The first three kinds of breaking relationships are not related to the “evil one” (v. 37). This one destroys the trust and community relationship that should be the visible witness of God’s people. If one can’t trust the word of God’s people, can the lack of trust in God’s word be far behind? Failure to keep our word conflicts with the certainty of God’s Word.

Jesus offers these as examples of the greater righteousness and of living under God’s rule. They are models to help us discover the ways we are to act under God’s rule, not hard and fast rules written in stone. The power of the Law can be so intense that it burrows deep into our lives to expose our sin and lead us to repentance and the forgiveness that Jesus came to bring us. Forgiven and freed from rote obedience, we can fulfill the law – live as Christ calls us to live – in relationship played fairly through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

God's People Are Engaged

God’s People Are Engaged
Matthew 5:13-20; Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Northern California is delighted to be getting significant rain fall this weekend, and snow in the higher elevations. Sure that makes the skiers happy, but it also makes the natural resource agencies and water agencies happy as well. Much of California has been experiencing prolonged drought. And the reservoirs are drying up. In other parts of the country, underground aquifers are being tapped out and wells are having to be drilled deeper. In our region people are concerned about the chemical spill into the water source for a major part of the population of West Virginia. Other folks are concerned about what fracking will do to ground water supplies.

When three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered with water, it seems ironic that we have problems with water supplies. Of course the problem is that the bulk of the water that covers the planet is salt water. We will occasionally gargle with salt water for a sore throat. And nearly every IV drip in the hospital is a saline solution (also currently in shortened supply). We can’t drink salt water. After dips in the ocean we rinse the salt brine off of our bodies. So other than specialized uses, all that water is of no use.

Technology is advancing to make it easier to make fresh water out of salt water. A few years ago Singapore opened a desalination plant that can produce 36 million gallons of fresh water a day, a tenth of their need. That much water may help Singapore’s 5.4 million people, but would only be a drop in the bucket for California’s population that is more than seven times Singapore’s.

While salt can be removed from water, adding or removing salt from other things is not so easy. Who of us hasn’t had some food that was too salty? I suspect that there are not very many anchovy lovers here. A grain or two of salt can open a great flavor, a whole lot of salt will ruin a bowl of food. Since none of you ever met my mother, you needn’t take offense at one of her pet peeves, if it applies to you. My mother was a good cook who carefully seasoned food, but she was always upset by people who grabbed the salt shaker and applied it liberally before ever tasting the food presented.

There is a fine line between too little and too much salt.

We are used to pure salt. I once bought a box of store brand of salt and when I got home I was told that the only acceptable brand was Morton’s with the girl and the umbrella. We can’t imagine salt not being salty. Yet not everyone has access to pure salt. This was probably the case with people of Jesus’ time and place. When sodium chloride is found mixed with impurities, particularly in humid weather, the salt will leach out leaving behind the impurities. Then the stuff that was supposed to be salt won’t be salty. And there is no way of getting the saltiness back. The impure stuff has to be thrown away and replaced.

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth....You are the light of the world.” It is important to note that these are not imperatives: “Be salt!” “Be light!” They are indicatives, affirmations: “You (plural) are salt!” “You (plural) are light!” Jesus doesn’t ask us to be something we are not. He asks us to be what we are. His words are a warning against failing to be what we are.

If we are salt, how do we lose our taste? When the purity of our faith is adulterated, the pure “salt” may slowly slip away leaving us with a “tasteless” faith which may be impossible to restore to its pure form.

In a chemical desalination process, the sodium chloride molecules are induced to attach themselves to certain other compounds and leave the water behind. The same thing happens to some of Christ’s people. Ideas and attitudes are constantly floating around believers which can cause Christians to attach to other ideologies and saviors. That’s not to say that the world or culture is universally evil and that we should run for the hills or dig a subterranean bomb shelter. We do have to keep alert and distinguish foolishness from wisdom, and worldly acclaimed wisdom from God’s truth.

Another desalination process is osmosis. The salt water is run through a series of membranes and filters that strip off the salt molecules. Christians can lose their saltiness in a similar way. We linger too long at the water cooler. The idle talk, the off-color jokes, and a subtle shift in attitudes will grab our saltiness. We tango with idolatry in what we think are innocuous ways until one day we find that we have lost our Christ-salt and have become tasteless.

The traditional way of desalting water is to distill it. The water is brought to a boil and comes off as steam which is captured and allowed to cool. Since water and salt become gaseous at different temperatures, the salt stays behind. Christians as just as human as everyone else. When pressure mounts in our lives there has to be a release. We hit a boiling point and flip out. When confronted with brokenness we react with brokenness, and before we know it, rather than being the people of God’s world — people who flavor, challenge and preserve godly values and present a godly presence — we are just like everyone else in the people’s world.

If you remember that I said earlier that Jesus said, “You (plural) are the salt of the earth, ...the light of the world.” That’s ‘Y’all’ if you are of southern heritage. That means that we together are salt. So while each one of might think of ourselves as a grain of salt with little impact, together, as the church, we are a box of salt. That’s important. We need to work together to watch each other’s back, to guide each other when we are being attracted away from Christ, when we are being filtered away from Christ, when we are being distilled from Christ. Together we can maintain and protect our common saltiness for the glory of Christ and the sake of the world which God loved so much in him.

Thomas Long in his commentary on Matthew  titles the section on salt and light, “What Good Is the Church?” He begins his answer with: “The church that lives according to the vision expressed in the Beatitudes is a colony of the kingdom of heaven placed in the midst of an alien culture.” He concludes, “The point is that the church, like salt, has one purpose — to live the kingdom life in the world. Whenever the church loses sight of that mission and becomes something else — a social club or a theological debating society, for example — it becomes as worthless as salt would be if it weren’t salty.” (1)

The church — God’s people — are engaged in the world. Steven McKinley wrote, “This is how the Christian life is lived … in community. Sinful community? Yes. Imperfect community? You bet. But still lived in community, and I will not apologize for being part of that community, nor for inviting, encouraging, and urging others to be part of it.”(2) That’s the salt and light effect, flavoring and challenging the world.

God’s people have been doing this for centuries. Church people established religious colleges and created social service agencies, like the Welfare House and the Outreach Council. God’s people engage the world through ministering in prisons, nursing homes and hospitals. God’s people go to where the natural and human-made disasters happen and they stay after the first responders leave. God’s people were often the ones to spearhead the creation of shelters for orphans, battered women, runaway youth, and homeless veterans. It is a battered, bloody, and bedraggled world to which Christ came as savior, and Christians engage with it.

When Jesus calls his hearers — me, you, the church — to greater righteousness, that involves our “insides” matching our “outsides”. That’s the point of the rest of this chapter when Jesus reinterprets the law. If we are called to follow Jesus, who came to fulfill all righteousness, then we, too, need to seek to “fulfill all righteousness” or as Jesus will say later in the Sermon: “Desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (6:33 CEB).

If “righteousness” is defined as “doing what God requires,” then the “greater righteousness” might be fulfilling the Law rather than just obeying the Law. Obedience to the Law only requires an understanding of the legal codes. Fulfillment of the Law requires a relationship with the Law-giver, in order to know God’s intentions through the Law and what actions are right for each situation.

God’s people, in relationship with Christ, engage the world to flavor, challenge, and preserve so that God’s Law, God’s rule may be fulfilled.

Thanks be to God.

(1) Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Westminster Bible Companion) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), pp. 51-52.
(2) Quoted by Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” Matthew 5:13-20, February 9, 2014.

God's People Have Character

God’s People Have Character
Matthew 5:1-12; Micah 6:1-8; Psalm 15; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

A number of Christmases ago Paula gave me a National Geographic globe. I hadn’t had a globe since I was in elementary school. In the geography of the 1960s, it seemed that nations changed every week. As a stamp collector I got to know the new countries as well as colonies and nations that no longer existed. We live in a diverse world.

When Paula and I visit Elizabeth and family, first in Chicago and now in Washington, DC, we find ourselves immersed in a sea of languages and cultures. It is a far different world than Pike County, Ohio. The 1890s flood of immigrants through Ellis Island – possibly some of our ancestors – didn’t see any use in learning English. The New York Times editorial board wrote in 1891 that there were districts in that city and others “in which a foreigner of almost any nationality can live without being subjected to much inconvenience through his ignorance of any language but his own.” Those languages receded with each succeeding generations: 84 percent of second generation immigrants spoke the native language, less than half passably, 12 percent of the third generation, and two percent of the fourth generation.(1)

The world is becoming flatter as the language of the world becomes digital. Google is able to translate text into another language. I get a note in one sermon group from a pastor who preaches in English and Spanish. If I happen to open the Spanish note, all I have to do is click the English tab and up comes a translation.

What a diverse world we live in. It is anything but homogenous. The wonders of DNA testing can now pinpoint exactly where our first ancestors lived and what path their genes traveled to get to us. Our genetic bloodlines will tell us that we are all mongrels of sorts. People in South Korea think of themselves a being culturally homogenous, which they hope will help with reunion with North Korea. Yet at the same time the country is host to immigrants from126 different countries and races. One South Korean professor points out that Koreans “are of the Han race and Han means sky, sky embraces everything, so the term ‘Han race’ is inclusive.”

While we pay a lot of attention to differences in culture, language, race, or which side of a human-drawn line people come from, God defines the world much differently than we do. That’s a key message that Matthew gives us. The ministry of Jesus is one of remaking the world in such a way that God’s people are defined by character and conduct more than their heritage.

Jesus starts the series of sayings we know as the “Sermon the Mount” with a description of the character of the realm of God’s rule. “The kingdom of heaven,” often used interchangeably with “kingdom of God,” is not just about geography. It is also about the nature of the rule that God lavishes on creation, ever more so as it inches closer to the divine reality envisioned from before day one of creation.

Jesus’ opening words describe God’s people. These words are called the “Beatitudes” because the first word in St. Jerome’s late 4th century Vulgate Latin translation is beati. The original Greek word is makarios, translated “happy” or “blessed.” Neither word fully captures the depth of the Greek. This was a culture which placed a great deal of weight on shame or honor. Those concepts have little to do with blessedness or happiness. One set of commentators suggest that a better translation for “happy/blessed” would be “how honorable...,” “how full of honor...,” “how honor bringing....” The “woe to you...” sayings later in Matthew would similarly be translated: “how shameless you are....”(2)

That makes sense. The first four sayings are about people who have experienced no honor. Mark Allan Powell of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, writes that the first four beatitudes do not “offer ‘entrance requirements for the kingdom of heaven’ but ... describe the nature of God’s rule, which characterizes the kingdom of heaven.” Powell continues:

 “The people who benefit when God rules, Jesus declares, are those who otherwise have no reason for hope or cause for joy, who have been denied their share of God’s blessings in this world and deprived of justice—in short, people for whom things have not been the way they ought to be. For such people, the coming of God’s kingdom is a blessing, because when God rules, all this will change and things will be set right.”(3)

“Those who are hopeless” – the “poor in spirit” – are not just impoverished economically, they also experience spiritual poverty. These are people who have no reason of hope in the world. Not only have they been denied access to a sufficient living, they also have no access to God, no experience of God in their lives. They are not in control of their lives and they don’t even know that they are dependent upon God.

Powell writes that contemporary scholars understand that “those who grieve” – “those who mourn” – refers simply to people who are miserable or unhappy. It is not a characteristic one would seek. He says,

“If the poor in spirit are those who find no reason for hope in this life, then the ones who mourn are those who find no cause for joy. They are blessed because ‘they will be comforted,’ a divine passive that implies God will act, so they need mourn no more.”(4)

Eugene Boring in the New Interpreter’s Bible, notes that one of the characteristics of the true people of God is that they lament the present condition of God’s people and God’s program in the world.  He says, “This is the community that does not resign itself to the present condition of the world as final, but laments the fact that God’s kingdom has not yet come and that God’s will is not yet done.”(5)

“The humble” – “the meek” – may have a positive sense of humble or gentile. But the word can also have a negative sense: “humiliated,” “walked on,” “doormats,” or “powerless.” These people “inherit” their blessing. It is not a reward that they earn, but a gift for which they must wait. They have been shut out of the fullness of the world’s resources which God intended for all people.

The images of “hunger” and “thirst” not only depict desire, but also deprivation—those who do not have food and drink—the people who do not experience justice—the people who know that God’s will is not being done on earth.

In short, the first four beatitudes speak of reversal of circumstances for those who are unfortunate. These are not characteristics that people should exhibit if they want to earn God’s favor. Rather, these are undesirable conditions that characterize no one when God’s will is done.

The next four beatitudes may be interpreted as promising eschatological rewards to people who exhibit virtuous behavior. The virtues that earn blessings are ones exercised on behalf of the people mentioned in the first four sayings. In other words the people whom Jesus declares honored, happy, blessed in the second four sayings are those who help to bring to reality the blessings promised to others in the first four.

“People who show mercy” – the “merciful” – are healers, people who seek to put right that which has gone wrong. They favor the removal of everything that prevents life from being as God intends: poverty, ostracism, hunger, disease, demons, debt. Not only will they be treat mercifully at the judgment, they will see mercy prevail.

Those “who have pure hearts” – the “pure in heart” – are those who are truly pure as opposed to those who are only apparently so. Simply put, they have integrity. Commentator Boring describes it this way:

“ ‘Purity of heart’ is not merely the avoidance of ‘impure thoughts’ (e.g., sexual fantasies), but refers to the single-minded devotion to God appropriate to a monotheistic faith. Having an ‘undivided heart’ (Ps 86:11) is the corollary of monotheism, and requires that there be something big enough and good enough to merit one’s whole devotion.”(6)

“People who make for peace” – “peacemakers” – are those who work for the wholeness and well-being that God wills for a broken world. Peacemaking is part of “showing mercy” and doing it with a “pure heart”. It is acting for the sake of others with integrity and honest motivations – love for the neighbor without hidden, self-serving agendas.(7)

“Harassed” – “persecuted” – because they are righteous has to do with those who show mercy and who work to establish God’s shalom. They are examples of people committed to righteousness. If they are pure in heart, then their commitment will not falter in the face of persecution.

The first eight beatitudes all talked about people in the third person. The final one abruptly shifts to “you.” Suddenly the words aren’t about some faceless, nameless others, but about the hearers themselves, about the “me” who is listening. Why would I be reviled and persecuted and lied about? Because I am committed to righteousness and justice and because of this commitment, I will end up in the position of those who lack them — being unjustly persecuted. However, I – you – we – have already heard the blessings God has in store for such people. Will we believe those promises for ourselves or not? Will we believe that God will make all things right for us? If so, we can rejoice and be glad, knowing we have a great reward in heaven. We have the characteristics desired in God’s eternal people.

Thanks be to God.

(1) “Immigration and Language Diversity in the United States,” Rubén G. Rumbaut and Douglas S. Massey, Daedalus, Summer 2014; cited in The Wilson Quarterly, Fall 2013.
(2) Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, second edition (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 2002), p. 47.
(3) Mark Allan Powell, God With Us: A Pastoral Theology of Matthew’s Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 129-130.
(4) Powell, p. 135.
(5) Eugene Boring, “Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. VIII (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 178-179.
(6) Boring, p. 179.
(7) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday” Matthew 5:1-12, February 2, 2014.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Called to Partnership

Called to Partnership
1 Corinthians 1:1-9; Isaiah 49:1-7; John 1:29-42

Before pastors were seminary-educated, a future pastor would study under an experienced pastor. One student was being coached in preaching. The old preacher said, “Every sermon has three parts. First, you tell the folks what you’re going to tell them. Then you tell them. After that you tell them what you told them.”

Paul does the same sort of thing in the letter we know as First Corinthians. We very quickly learn that this was probably not the initiating correspondence between the apostle and the congregation which he had founded and with which he had spent as much as eighteen months training and forming them into a vital community of Christ believers. Unfortunately the NSA wasn’t gathering data in those days or we would have every letter, email, and voice communication that Paul had been party to. And we wouldn’t have speculate about some of the missing pieces in the extended conversation.

The church in Corinth was probably a collection of several house churches. That is, it didn’t have a nice building like we are used to. They were still a new church development. They may have all gotten together periodically, not necessarily weekly. But small groups of the folks would gather in homes of certain leaders for Bible study, for prayer, for discussion of how keep safe from the authorities yet introduce other people to the Good News of Jesus Christ. Think of how we might do it here. We already have the Presbyterian Women’s circles as a kind of model. Some folks could meet my house a couple of times a week. Others might go to Audrey’s house, since she has lots of room. Another group might meet with Bob and Kitty Neely at the far country known as Lake White. There would likely be several other groups.

What would happen is that each group would develop its own identity, its own flavor of the gospel. The leaders would meet every so often to do their own Bible study, to compare notes from their groups, and to plan for the larger meetings. More than likely, however, the groups would begin to reflect the character and views of each leader.

That’s where the problems started, at least as Paul understood the messages which he was receiving from different members of the church. The leaders of the various groups and their viewpoints on the gospel were becoming more important than the gospel itself. People were starting to say that they followed Apollos or Paul or someone else, rather than Christ. The house churches of the larger congregation were becoming fractious factions disrupting the unity of the church and derailing the message of salvation in Christ.

From what we know of Paul, he was more than a little upset about this. But he counted to ten and wrote several drafts of his letter before posting it. Like the seasoned preacher, he alludes to what he is going tell the Corinthians. Then he begins with great wisdom and sensitivity. He doesn’t charge in ridiculing the various leaders, or picking one over another. That would only deepen the divisions that were forming.

Paul briefly reminds them of his credentials – “called by God’s will to be an apostle of Jesus Christ” – which he will touch on again several chapters later – and then moves on to talk about the Corinthians themselves. He addresses the whole church – “God’s church that is in Corinth” and “all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place.” Paul reaffirms the corporate consciousness which he had instilled in them in his year and a half ministry among them. Paul rises above the factions and reminds the people that all together they are the local expression of the universal church which meets in every place.

Not only are they the local manifestation of the whole church, they have a share in the universal calling. They are “those who have been made holy to God in Christ Jesus, who are called to be God’s people.” They are called to be “saints,” as the traditional language reads, or as Eugene Peterson phrases it in The Message, they are “set apart for a God-filled life.”

The apostle’s underlying thought here is, regardless of what faction the individual believers may be aligning themselves with, they are failing to live up to their call. They are forgetting that they have been washed, justified, and sanctified. That’s another thought that the apostle goes into later on in the letter.

Rather than upbraiding them from the start, Paul reminds them of the blessing that they have been. He give thanks for the Corinthians, “because of God’s grace that was given to you in Christ Jesus.”  The incredible promise of the gospel is that no matter how messed up we were prior to meeting Jesus, once we’re connected to the world of the cross, through belief, through baptism, through our daily attempts at faithfulness, we are adopted daughters and sons, we are heirs to the riches of God’s eternal realm. No matter how often we slam the church for doing things we disagree with, no matter how often we accuse a “they” of being infidels and apostates, no matter how often we don’t live up to our meager understanding of obedience to Christ, God’s grace is not taken from us. We deserve death and destruction, but instead, we have been sentenced to love and life.

Paul tells the Corinthians, “You were made rich through him in everything: in all your communication and every kind of knowledge....you aren’t missing any spiritual gift while you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.” Yes, the Corinthians may be a ragtag bunch of broken believers, which we can sometimes identify with, yet they are a bunch of believers gifted by God with grace, hope, and the power of the Spirit. There is a deep well of gifts and talents that simply need to be let out of the prisons of doubt, reluctance, fear, anxiousness, and lack of God-vision.

We are graced. We are gifted. And we have a guarantee. “God is faithful, and you were called by him to partnership with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” God is faithful. The future is secure because Christ has promised that in the end, no matter what, he will return, he will resurrect, he will find us faultless, he will establish his rule, and until all that happens, he will keep his church alive.

Very few people follow in the family profession any more. There too many other possibilities for career tracks. The economy is more volatile and the technology is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Most of our children and grandchildren can no longer expect to work for the same company or have the same career for forty years. We grew up seeing shop signs like “Brown and Son Hardware” or “Stone and Sons Contractors.” Even family farms aren’t being handed down to the next generation.

That’s not the case with the gospel. God calls us to partnership with Christ. One of the few places were we can see this methodology at work is in law firms. A newly bar-examined lawyer is given an entry level position in a firm. She’ll probably have a mentor to help her get accustomed to the routines. After a number of years of steady, careful work, she’ll be asked to be a junior partner. And if she continues a successful career arc, she will become a senior partner. With each level of advance comes more responsibility. But each level also brings more benefits. Senior partners are responsible for the firm, and they reap a share in the firm’s profit.

We are partners with Christ in the ministry of the gospel. We are entrusted with great responsibility to take the Good News with us wherever we go. We are walking billboards, 3-D YouTube displays of God’s activity in the world. But we also get to have the joy of knowing that Christ is making it all possible. We are partners now so that future partners can also share in grace, mercy, love, hope, joy, and peace of being brothers and sisters of Christ and heirs of eternity.

The Church is not about us. That’s what Paul had to remind the Corinthians. We are no less divided than they were, following leaders more attuned with their own thinking than the thoughts of Christ. The Church is about God in Christ, reconciling the world to God’s self. What a fellowship, what a joy divine!

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Solemn Testimony

Solemn Testimony
Acts 10:34-47; Isaiah 42:1-7; Matthew 3:13-17

Allow me to date myself. One of my favorite television shows growing up was Perry Mason. I loved the skill and dedication he had as a lawyer, the loyalty of his secretary and private detective, and cocksure banter of the homicide detective and the district attorney that always got ripped apart in the end. It was there that I first heard those words of the oath that is the best known oath in our country. You know them. They are used in every courtroom drama (not to mention real courtrooms: “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” And as the drama unfolds, one attorney or the other will say to a witness, “Let me remind you that you are under oath.” Or she will say something like, “Perjury is criminal offense. Tell the court the truth.”

Testimony is a very interesting thing. It can be very compelling for jurors. Or it can have no effect on a jury, no matter how sincere the telling is. Some testimony can be easily ripped to shreds by a close cross-examination. Other testimony can be unassailable. For those of us with no knowledge of forensics or human psychology, some testimony is hardly comprehensible and you have to trust the experts. Sharp observers can get a pretty good read on a witness’ veracity by his or her body language.

Many years ago I hear someone ask, probably unoriginally, “If you were hauled into court and charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Substantial evidence, incontrovertible evidence, evidence that would withstand the fiercest cross-examination.

That’s an interesting proposition. We would much rather defend a charge that we aren’t a Christian. It is easier to say things like I go to worship, I tithe, I go to Bible study, I take a turn at the food pantry, I sing in the choir, I visit the nursing home, I go on mission work trips. Whereas if we were charged with being a Christian, we would have to say that going to worship doesn’t mean anything, that the tithe is only a part of our giving to charity, that we do this or that for the social connections, that we don’t really believe what we read or hear. Would we be able to pull off that kind of testimony, or would we get caught out?

The church in the early centuries knew a lot about being guilty of being Christian. From the slaying of Stephen by people in Jerusalem onward through the persecutions ordered many Roman emperors and their lieutenants, early Christians gave up their lives for the faith. And Christians still do. In sub-Saharan and equatorial Africa, in South Sudan, in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq and Iran, in Pakistan and India, in southeast Asia, in China, in even the United States, Christians are martyred for the name of Christ which they bear. The word “martyr” comes from the Greek word for “witness.”

Witnessing is dangerous business. The federal government has a witness protection program to relocate and change the identities of key witnesses in certain kinds of criminal cases. In racketeering cases criminal organizations don’t think twice about rubbing out a witness before a trial to prevent testimony or after a trial in revenge for having given damaging evidence.

The church does lots of things. In good Pauline fashion, preachers preach, evangelists evangelize, exhorters exhort, disciples disciple. They interpret, explain, cajole, urge, encourage, support, uplift. As powerful as their messages – spoken and otherwise – are, what they do is derivative. On the other hand, to testify is to report the facts, to tell the truth – the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Twice, Peter tells the gathering in Cornelius’ house, “We are witnesses.” And he says, God “commanded us . . . to testify that [Jesus] is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead,” just as the “prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

I ended last week’s sermon with Ernest Nichol’s hymn words, “We’ve a story to tell to the nations.” In the words of John Shearman, “The Christian celebration of Epiphany is intended to mark the globalization of the gospel.”(1) This Jesus whom we call our Lord and Savior, is not a local deity based in Bethlehem or Galilee. He is, in Peter’s words, “Lord of all.” What is more astounding is that we – you and I – are the Gentiles which are referred to so often in the gospels and epistles.

The context from the Book of Acts is clear. The chapter before today’s reading, chapter nine, is the chapter in which the zealous Pharisee Saul, traveling to Damascus to persecute Christ-believers, encounters the risen Jesus, and is converted from foe to friend, from enemy to evangelist, from adversary to ambassador to the Gentiles. In chapter ten, Peter undergoes a parallel conversion, one he struggled with as mightily as Saul did. That is until he was brought face to face with Cornelius and his household. Only then did the dream become tangible and the words, “Never consider unclean what God makes pure,” made sense.

The non-Jewish magi followed a brilliant star. Saul was blinded by a great encircling light. Peter’s understanding was broadened. Cornelius and the people gathered with him heard Peter’s testimony about Christ and about the universal offering of God’s grace. And the Holy Spirit fell on them.

We have two epiphanies in Acts chapter 10: that of Peter that it is God who invites with grace, and that of Cornelius that even Roman military officers, and by exten-sion, anyone else, may receive the grace that God offers. God’s gift and call in Jesus is for all. The universalism of Christianity is not universal salvation for everyone who does what is right. The universalism of the Christian faith is that all are called, without regard to language, culture, tribe, gender, educational background, race, economic security, age, or any other measure by which we are prone to differentiate ourselves from others. If the other is a human being, then he or she is a child of God and our equal, not our superior, not our inferior, our equal, a brother or sister in Christ. Christ was not born for some, did not die for some, and was not raised for some. He was born, died, and was raised for every human being.

Through our baptism we are obligated to look and act with dignity on every person we encounter, alike or different, in agreement or disagreement with the way we see things. When we villainize others for any reason, we victimize ourselves in the witness box with perjury. We will fail to be convicted of being a Christian, and we will be denied by Christ.

Like Peter, we are witnesses whom God chose beforehand. And what is our testimony that is the very air we breathe whether we speak a word or not? It is this:

Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and endowed with power, who traveled around doing good and healing everyone oppressed by the devil because God was with him, both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him up on the third day and allowed him to be seen by us, who ate and drank with him after God raised him from the dead. He is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead and everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Friends, this is the table where we eat and drink with Jesus after his resurrection, as we break the bread as his body was broken for us and share the cup remembering his blood shed for us. This is the joyful feast of the people of God because it testifies to what God has already done in Christ and proclaims the glorious reality of what Christ does for us now and forever from now.

This is our solemn testimony. Thanks be to God!

(1) John Shearman, “Introduction to the Scripture, First Sunday After Epiphany, The Baptism of our Lord,” posted by David Shearman, Midrash, midrash@joinhands.com, Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 3:41 PM.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

The First Stewardship Sermon of 2014

The First Stewardship Sermon of 2014
Ephesians 3:1-12; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Matthew 2:1-12

It’s the 35th day of the current church year. It’s the 12th day of Christmas. It’s the 5th day of calendar year 2014. Regardless of which year you are following, what are you doing with your year? If you are following the church year, it’s already one twelfth gone. Time flies when you are having fun!

A lot of people make resolutions at the beginning of the year. My observation is that fewer people are doing that. I think that is because making resolutions is a futile business. Many new year’s resolutions never get achieved, usually because the individual resolution is unrealistic or because there are too many of them. In one of this past week’s comic strips Morris Middleton tells his wife Midge that he has made two resolutions – to quit swearing and to fix the snow blower. She wants to watch, so she can see him break two resolutions at the same time.

Christmas is a new beginning. Yes, it does mark the end of the shortest days and longest nights. The bright lights help to lengthen the days. But that only holds for us who live north of the equator. Our Chilean, Aussie, and South African friends are heading towards Fall not Spring. So we need to remember that the new beginning of Christmas has nothing to do with weather or climate. Christmas is about God, and more specifically, God-with-us. Christ is the first gift of what we have come to call Christmas. Jesus has nothing to do with season of commercial activity that starts imposing itself on us sometime in October. If human living were likened to the ocean, then the Christmas shopping season is a barnacle encrustation on the good ship Church. There is no way that we can emulate God’s gift of Christ. Our hearts and our pocketbooks will never be big enough.

Because we can’t out-gift God, that takes a huge burden off of us. And at the same time it puts a large and precious responsibility on us. Paul writes to the Ephesian believers to remind them of “the responsibility to distribute God’s grace,” which God gave to him for the Ephesians. God revealed to Paul what may be variously translated as a “mystery,” a “secret plan,” “mysterious ways,” an “inside story.” That responsibility, that grace, has been handed down from generation to generation until it was handed to us.

God’s grace. What a gift! What a responsibility! Even the database of Amazon.com can’t cover all the aspects of God’s grace, which is a transforming power that is able to heal, restore, and renew broken lives, communities, institutions, and even nations. Johnny Hill, who teaches homiletics at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, says that this part of the Ephesian letter presents the church as a cosmic organism for revealing and understanding God’s divine will for humanity and all creation. God discloses God’s self through the Epiphany.(1) And because we are the current holders of the gift of Christ, we have the same responsibility that was laid on Paul.

When Paul wrote the Ephesian letter, he was a prisoner of Caesar. When he was accused by the Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem of subverting the Jewish faith, Paul pulled a legal maneuver on the plaintiffs, claiming that they had no legal standing to accuse him since he was a Roman citizen. That set in motion a whole legal process that took him to Rome and, ultimately, to death. He was a technically a prison of Caesar. And that would give him a lot of street credibility. He was in the position to be a kind of cause célèbre of the oppressed. Here was someone every Christ believer could identify with and get behind. But Paul didn’t put that spin on his situation. He described himself as a prisoner of Christ. He was in manacles of the gospel. For Paul, that meant that the link between him and Jesus Christ was unbreakable. Paul’s identifying as a follower of Christ was not a whim or a passing fad. And it certainly was not something to be taken lightly, something to be added to his Facebook or LinkedIn profile to puff it up. The privilege of being connected with Christ did not make life easier or more luxurious.

Paul says that anyone connected with Christ is a prisoner. Perhaps all of us should be wearing day-glo colored jumpsuits to identify us as Christ’s prisoners, like the orange jumpsuits worn by prisoners held by the Sheriff’s Department. If we are prisoners, then we are held to a stricter accountability enforced by the shackle that connects us with Christ. That shackle is the responsibility of being a steward of God’s grace.

God’s grace is not like a windfall surprise that we can either hoard up for a rainy day emergency, use for some hitherto unmet need, blow on some wished-for but unnecessary bauble, or evaporate in a fit of recreational self-indulgence. To be a steward of God’s grace is to be constantly aware of its significance and treasure which are not to be taken for granted. Grace is not something that only a select few can receive. Nor is it a commodity that can be bought, sold, bartered, or earned. It is freely given. It pours forth from God’s abundant love made absolutely clear in God’s redemptive plan for humanity birthed into the world in the manger child. This grace must be cared for, cherished, respected. It’s not to be tossed carelessly in the corner, shoved under the bed, or hidden in the back of the closet.

Paul said that earlier generations weren’t let in on the details of God’s plan. But in Paul’s own lifetime the holy mystery has been revealed the apostles and contemporary prophets through the working of the Holy Spirit. This plan, this mystery, “is that the Gentiles would be coheirs and parts of the same body, and that they would share with the Jews in the promises of God in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

The world of today, which lives mostly for the pleasures of the moment, would see the hope of the gospel as just another worthless new year’s resolution, overblown, unattainable, and easily broken. And it would be, if only one of us had to carry the whole responsibility. Thanks be to God that isn’t the case. All of us share it. The seventy of us here, the hundreds of people in the village of Waverly who are Christ-followers, the millions of believers in the United States, and the several billion all over the world. As the saying goes, many hands make light work.

But work it is. Hard work, important work. We cannot shirk our duty. This is our stewardship of the gospel which we have received. This stewardship has little to do with our checkbooks, although they could be a useful tool. The responsibility of God’s grace entrusted to us means that we are stewards of ourselves as conduits of God’s grace to others. In a blog post last summer, Shane Blackshear wrote,

“If I had to say the one thing holding the American church back today, it would be a consumeristic culture. We’ve come to expect that the latest technology comes standard in our cars. Our movie theaters should  have wide rows with extra padded seats and that lean way back.
“Unfortunately, we think our church should be no different. Just like the movie theater, we come when the production starts, sit in our seats, are entertained, and think we should leave satisfied when it’s over.”(2)

God in Christ does not call us to be the entertained, but to be those who entertain, those who tell the Good News. A song out of the American gospel tradition begins, “We’ve a story to tell to the nations, that shall turn their hearts to the right, a story of truth and mercy, a story of peace and light.”(3) That story began with Christ, was passed to the apostles and Paul, and handed down across the centuries to us. Like an ongoing internet blog, each of us adds a post, a chapter –  our story, the story of God’s love active in our lives lived in relationship to Christ and to each other.

We are stewards of our stories. We have encountered our own faith and the faith of others in strange and mysterious as well as ordinary ways. Grace lives as the intricate web of God’s connecting Spirit work – that shackle that binds us to Christ.

You are the steward of your faith story, woven lovingly by the Holy Spirit together with the faith stories of others. Stewardship of the God’s gospel of grace is not to be treated like a new year’s resolution, to be quickly discarded. It is from forever ago to forever to come. Shane Blackshear wrote,

“Sadly many people go through life thinking the perfect church is just around the corner, or as many young evangelicals do, they decide that they don’t need church at all and embark on solo-Christianity.”(4)
Solo-Christians deny the gospel and break faith with God. They are not stewards of the mystery, the inside story, the secret plan revealed in Christ. Epiphany, represented by the magi, means that the Good News is truly good, and it is for all the world.

Glory to God in heaven and on earth peace among those whom God favors. Amen.

(1) Johnny B. Hill, “Ephesians 3:1-12: Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word; David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press), Year A, volume 1, page 206.
(2) Shane Blackshear, “Five Ways to Be Unsatisfied with Your Church,” www.shaneblackshear.com posted July 15, 2013; accessed January 4, 2013.
(3) H. Ernest Nichol.
(4) Blackshear, op. cit.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.