"Where's Your Heart?" A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

"Where's Your Heart?"

Mark 7:1-23; James 1:17-27

What’s at stake here?”

            Some biblical scholars argue that the conflict in this story mirrors a similar conflict in Mark’s community. Mark was a non-Palestinian Gentile, and he was writing to a mixed community of Jewish and Gentile Christians who were arguing over whether it was necessary to keep a kosher table at church gatherings.

            “’Don’t you understand?’” Mark asks. “’Don’t you see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’”  Thus, Mark says, Jesus declared all foods clean.”

            Other commentators have a different take on what the conflict is about. They say it’s about teaching humanly constructed religious ideas as God’s law. “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”  These scholars say the main point is about obeying God’s commandments, rather than human traditions and rules.

            But I agree with Tom Long when he says this is about using moral posturing to sidestep the commandments, that it’s about keeping our hands ritually washed while being up to our elbows in evil.[1]

            To paraphrase Walker Percy, it’s like getting an A-plus in ethics class and flunking life.

            What might this look like in our time?   Some government officials quote a verse from Romans 13 out of context to justify separating children from their parents at our borders, saying we are to obey the laws of the government, which has been ordained by God--which is one of the verses that has been used in the past to defend slavery and other evils.  Some people twist Jesus’ statement that we will always have the poor with us to justify not working to alleviate extreme poverty. They might say we can’t afford safety net programs that address hunger or homelessness, even though the richest people have received generous tax cuts,

            Can we understand why Jesus got angry with the Pharisees and the scribes, exclaiming, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, and calling on the words of the prophet: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”[2]

            Jesus was calling out the Pharisees and scribes for passing off human ideas as God’s commandments. 

            Now, the Pharisees were people who took their religion very seriously.  I believe they sincerely wanted to serve God faithfully. They were criticizing Jesus’ disciples for not living according to the tradition of the elders.

            Let’s back up a minute and remember the context of this encounter.  Just before this, Mark has told how Jesus fed 5,000 people… and walked on the water… and healed the sick. 

            The Kingdom of God is breaking out around them, and the Pharisees don’t seem to notice.  The sick are being healed.  The hungry are being fed.  Good news is being preached to the poor.  These are the things that Isaiah had prophesied that would be signs of the coming of the Messiah, but the Pharisees and scribes want to talk about hand washing and tradition. 

            A moment of GRACE is breaking into the midst of time and space.   Not only can’t the Pharisees and scribes see it-- but they keep asking the wrong questions.  They’re asking, “How can we protect our tradition?  How can we get folk to do things our way?

            Too often in the church, we ask the wrong questions.  How do we keep everybody happy?  How do we avoid conflict?  How will we survive?  “How do we make everybody follow our rules? How do I get everybody to do what I want?

            In the meantime, there are people inside and outside the church--people with broken hearts… broken dreams… and broken lives.  People who are lonely.  People who need to be restored to community.  People who need to be fed…and healed…and loved.

            Now, the process of spiritual growth is hard.  Sometimes it can be downright scary.  So, it’s no wonder that sometimes we, like the Pharisees, feel safer clinging to rules or traditions or familiar ways of doing things, rather than look for ways God is trying to use us to bring the kingdom of love and justice into the world.

           

            Jesus accused the religious authorities of being “hypocrites.”     The Greek word Mark uses for hypocrite has a revealing history.  It literally means an actor—a person who acts out a set dialog or script.

            In accusing the Pharisees of being hypocrites, Jesus was inviting them to put down the mask of outward appearances.  In giving them a list of things that can defile people, things which come from within, Jesus was challenging them to examine their own hearts honestly, and to pay attention to what’s really important.   We have been set apart as a holy people for a holy purpose:  to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

            It’s much easier to point a finger at the sins of others than to look inward at the things that can defile.    Yet today’s gospel lesson makes it clear that we need to pay attention to where our hearts are.  

            But what does that look like?

            In the epistle lesson we heard today, James fleshes out Jesus’ summary of the Law and giving some specific ways we need to live into “the perfect law of liberty.”

            If we are to love our neighbors, then we need to be engaged with them, relating to them, and caring for them. That long list of vices Jesus quotes defile us because they all divide us-- from God and from each other, our neighbors.

            What does it mean for us to be holy, and "undefiled"? James offers an interesting definition in his letter:  "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."[3] James teaches that religious practice is judged on what we do.  Widows and orphans were the most vulnerable members of ancient societies; they had no means of support, no means of getting any, and no one to look out for them.  Caring for them means to attend to the needs of the poorest of the poor, those whom nobody else cares about or feels responsible for.  That is true religion, true holy conduct.  That is what we have been set apart to do.

            We know God partly through our traditions.  But we worship the one true God, the God of ever-ongoing creation… and new possibilities.   God overcomes sin and death with new life.
            Jesus came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is near, calling people to repent, to change.
            In Jesus Christ, we have the perfect example of a person who is holy and whole.  The gospels tell us that Jesus went about preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives.  He taught by word and deed.  He blessed the children.  He healed the sick and ministered to the brokenhearted.  He ate with outcasts…forgave sinners…and called all to repent and believe the good news of God’s love and forgiveness.

            The world tries to set limits on what we believe is possible and sets boundaries that set us apart from “them.”   But Christ came breaking down the dividing walls and showing us that there is no such thing as a hopeless case.  There is nobody outside the circle of God’s love.   In Christ, there are no “others”—only neighbors.   Because God loves our neighbors, we are commanded to love them too.

            I like the way one of my colleagues puts it, in a sermon entitled, “Dirtiness is next to Godliness:” 

            Our hands are made clean and holy, not by washing them, but by getting them dirty.  Our hands have been set apart to reach out into the dirtiness of the world’s injustices and impurities on Christ’s behalf, to touch with compassion those considered untouchable or unclean by our social mores, cultural divisions, or political commitments. [4]

            As Teresa of Avila famously put it, "Christ has no body now on earth but yours… no hands but yours…  no feet but yours.  Yours are the eyes through which God’s compassion will look upon the world.  Yours are the feet with which God will go about doing good.  Yours are the hands with which God will bless others now."

            God has fully revealed God’s love for us in Jesus.  In response to that love, God wants us our love in return.  We are called to worship God through our total devotion…and through our ministry to all God’s children in need, as we love as Christ loves.  God’s way is a tradition of self-giving love.
            So, in the midst of the daily struggles and questions we face every day, may our hearts be in the right place.  May our hearts become more and more open to God’s love and life.  
            Amen.

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

September 2, 2018

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[1] Thomas G. Long, “Moral Words, Evil Deeds”, in The Christian Century. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2009-08/moral-words-evil-deeds

[2] Isaiah 29:13, according to the Septuagint.

[3] James 1:27

[4] I’m indebted here to the Rev. J. C. Austin, in “Dirtiness is next to Godliness,” (Madison Avenue Pulpit, 2003), a sermon posted in the past at website that no longer exists.

"A Greater Righteousness." A Sermon on Matthew 5:17-37, from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

"A Greater Righteousness"

Matthew 5:17-37

I sometimes wonder why so many Christians speak fondly about the Sermon on the Mount.  Public and private figures talk about the Sermon on the Mount as if it’s a safe way of showing that they are respectfully religious… that they believe religion is generally a good thing. 

But anyone who has spent any time soaking up the Sermon on the Mount knows, as one of my colleagues suggests, that “this sermon is no pretty, comforting set of teachings, but one apparently meant to drive off followers.”[1]  As Jesus instructs his followers on what it means to be disciples, he demands huge sacrifices.

The Rev. Amy Butler, a Baptist colleague, shared what happened the Sunday she decided to scrap her plan to preach the sermon she’d written on the passage from the Sermon on the Mount the lectionary assigned and, instead, “preached” the entire Sermon on the Mount.  She read all three chapters.

At coffee hour, several people came up to tell her that they didn’t like or didn’t agree with some of the parts of the sermon that day.  As she says: “Read from the BIBLE.  The words of Jesus.” But, she continues, “The Sermon on the Mount is counter-cultural.  That’s the point.” [2]

            Of course, there are some parts of the Sermon on the Mount that we really like.  But then there are the hard parts.  The part about loving your enemies… about not being a hypocrite… hard words about divorce.  There are parts that can make us feel uncomfortable. 
            So, as Amy Butler suggests, we have been guilty of watering down the Christian faith, turning the practice of following Jesus into a tepid list of suggested behavior, or a fool-proof recipe for wealth and happiness, or worst of all, a license to exclude or even hate people who don’t believe exactly as we do.  In other words, we tend to distort the Christian faith. 

This week’s passage brings some major challenges:  dealing with anger… adultery… divorce… and taking oaths.  So, as a preacher, I wondered:  where to begin?   I could do a whole series of sermons on the text:  focusing one week on anger… one week on adultery… another on divorce… and so on.  

But I keep coming back to what Jesus said about the Law.  “Don’t think I came to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have come not to abolish—but to fulfill….   For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew wrote his Gospel to a community of Jewish Christians, people who had been raised on the law of Moses as the embodiment of God’s will for human life.  In family worship, Jewish children were taught to ask their parents, “What is the meaning of the decrees and statutes and ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded you?”[3]   Their parents were to answer:  The LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our lasting good, to keep us alive.”[4]

In the Jewish faith, the law is seen as a blessing… a good gift… a source of life.

But what about the Jewish Law for Christians?   This was an important question in the early church. 

Tom Long suggests that there are two obvious and diametrically opposed resolutions to this question.  What we have long called the Old Testament--Torah law-- remains in full effect for Christians—every commandment.  Or we can decide that the new freedom in Christ cancels and abolishes the requirements of the law.  So, in simple terms, either Christ leaves the whole law intact-- or Christ replaces the law with something new.[5] 

But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus rejects both of these options, and offers us a third way.  The law neither remains as it is-- nor is it abolished.  Rather, it is fulfilled and transformed in Jesus Christ. As we live into the kingdom of heaven, we need to see and interpret every aspect of the Law and the Prophets in the light of Jesus Christ.

Professor Long suggests that we think of a powerful searchlight scanning the night sky.  The way a beacon works is that a relatively small source of light is passed through a great lens, which magnifies it into a powerful radiance that spreads over the sky. Now, think of a laser beam.  Here the energy source is concentrated. Its power is transformed into a light of razor-shape intensity.

In Christ, the law becomes both a searchlight and a laser.  When the law passes through the person and event of Christ, it is both focused and enlarged.  Its potential to illumine and to guide human life are both amplified and intensified.

            Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.”  He isn’t saying, “Now, the old law said this, but I’m throwing it out and giving you a new law in its place.”    No, even the smallest commandment stands.   But now, each and every commandment is seen through the eyes of the new thing that has happened in and through Jesus Christ. 

            What we’re hearing here in Matthew’s gospel is Jesus interpreting the law for his disciples and followers and Matthew interpreting what Jesus said for the people in his community.

            So what does this mean for us as Christians today?  How do we view the commandments in the light of our Christian faith? 

As we live together in Christian community and try to discern God’s will for our life, we need to ask of every commandment, every piece of the law, “What is the will of God that stands behind this commandment?” 

Take the commandment to keep the Sabbath.  Later in Matthew, Jesus and his disciples get into trouble with the religious officials because the disciples eat grain and Jesus heals a man.  Both of these things are technically violations of the commandment to observe the Sabbath.  But behind the Sabbath commandment is a God who desires that human society be just and merciful and that human life be nourished and restored.  This is the heart of the Sabbath commandment.  Jesus, who came to live among us, full of grace and truth, argues with the religious officials that, by violating the surface of the commandment, they have fulfilled the deeper meaning of the commandment.[6]

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus expresses this move to the deeper meaning of the commandments by saying: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” 

I agree with the scholars who suggest that the word “exceeds” is referring to the quality of righteousness, rather than to quantity. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to a different kind of righteousness—a righteousness that expresses the merciful, forgiving, reconciling will of God that is at the core of the commandments.

Jesus gave a series of practical examples where the heart of the law leads to a greater righteousness.  I think each of these examples is related to some concrete concern in Matthew’s church.  And they all have to do with personal relationships… with how we live together in human community.

In the verses we heard today, Jesus is addressing some of the more contentious issues of his time.  The verses on anger enlarge how we understand the commandment against murder.  Jesus isn’t rescinding the prohibition against murder, but he places murder on a continuum of outcomes related to anger.  He recognizes that human beings get angry, and he teaches that it can be transformed by living as a peacemaker, acting in ways that show the reign of God in our midst.[7]

In the verses on adultery, Jesus expands the meaning of the term so that it includes both action and intent.  According to biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine, when Jesus includes lust, it seems to suggest that no one should be regarded as a sex object.[8]

In the verses on divorce, Jesus recognizes the tradition that makes divorce possible-- but he places limits on the grounds for divorce. 

            The intent and the ideal is that the marriage will be forever.  But in the first century, most women were dependent on their fathers or husbands for their daily livelihood—indeed for their survival.   In a culture of male privilege, women could be used and discarded.  A woman who had been seduced brought great shame upon her family.  A woman who had been raped was considered damaged goods, and her ability to marry well would be jeopardized.  For those who were married, there would be the threat of divorce. Wives could be cast aside for ridiculous reasons, including burning bread,[9]  or to marry a younger woman. In a world where women were treated like property, where they could be coveted and used by men, Jesus reinforced the dignity of women, and he included women as disciples in his mission.

            God's in-breaking presence in Jesus Christ re-orders the relationships of this world and re-orients how we live.  During Epiphany, we claim once again that we have a living God, incarnate among us, not some far-off ruler up in the sky who keeps check-lists of when we’re naughty and nice.   We proclaim that the "Word became flesh and lived among us,” the Word embodied in everyday life—in inward attitudes and in outward actions.

            In the realm of God, relationships are not to be taken lightly.  When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he said, “Love God.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  On this hang all the commandments.”  When we honor our neighbor as ourselves, we live in mutuality and respect, in right relationship.  

Jesus calls us to see the world in a whole new way: to walk in God’s way of grace… forgiveness…mercy…and love.  When we live in God’s way of love, God’s love will shine through us for all to see.  People will know we are Christians by our love, and God will be glorified!

            The God who was born in a manger enters the messiness of our lives, seeking to heal and to save. This God offers us new life-- not a puny, flat life of avoiding a list of the "big sins"-- but a life deeper and wider than we imagined.   

            Life in the kingdom of heaven demands more and promises more. It is life abundant. Thanks be to God!

Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

February 12, 2017

     

        

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[1] Lisa D. Maugans-Driver, in Lectionary Homiletics (February 20, 2011), p. 23.

[2] The Rev. Amy Butler, “The Sermon on the Mount is Counter-Cultural. That’s the Point,” in the Opinion Section of The Baptist News, February 17, 2017.   https://baptistnews.com/article/the-sermon-on-the-mount-is-counter-cultural-thats-the-point/#.WJ9FcdySXq0

[3] Deut. 6:20

[4] Deut. 6:24

[5] Thomas G. Long, Matthew.  (Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), p. 53.

[6] Matt. 12:1-14

[7] I am indebted here to Marcia Y. Riggs, in Feasting on the Word   [Kindle edition]

[8] Amy Jill Levine, in Feasting on the Word.

[9] Craig Keener, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 192., cited by Carla Works, in Commentary on Matthew 5:21-37 at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary