I love three things about Facebook: playing Scrabble with Sally Hague, seeing pictures of the littlest kiddo in my family - 18 month old Anthony - and the appearance of Sermon Titles. This week a friend posted a picture that says it all. In Big Orange and White Letters it says: Don’t Go to Church … Be the Church. And pretty much in today’s Gospel Jesus said: Don’t Go to Church … Be the Church.
We are reading our way through the 5th Chapter of the Good News according to Matthew otherwise known as the Sermon on the Mount. People who hear this and who ‘get it’ are changed forever. People who hear Blessed are You – because you are dear to God, and are pure in heart and are kind and loving, you who seek peace and pursue it, you who hunger and thirst and long for righteousness – you shall be filled with justice and mercy. You Blessed ones are the Salt of the Earth. You Blessed ones are the Light of the World.
Today’s installation in Jesus’ Blessing and Commissioning of the agents of the Kingdom of God. This is the ‘how to’ section, how to go about the business of burning with Light and flavoring with Salt. Our righteousness is to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. For example … in how we take responsibility for our actions, how we love our dearest partners, in how we make promises … we are to be people of integrity. God yearns for us to walk upright, and to be exactly who we say we are without pretense. Blessed are you who are pure of heart; YOU shall see God.
Jesus says anger, bullying and name calling are the seeds of murder. And those seeds are in all of us. Anger wells up when we are offended, when we are wronged, when we are injured. We all feel it. Sometimes it’s that righteous anger that a sacred personal boundary has been violated, and that we or someone we love has been wronged and a serious and deep way. Jesus had that kind of anger when the religious authorities were badgering him about healing someone who was desperately ill on the Sabbath. Jesus got really, really mad at people for whom the care of the candlesticks was more important than the care of the children.
But our anger is often not that kind of anger. I get mad at someone who cuts me off in traffic or who takes the parking space I have been carefully guarding at Market Basket. I get mad at someone who doesn’t return my phone calls, or who doesn’t show up at a meeting I have asked for or who doesn’t answer a long long letter. I start to think “Hey! What about me … I am Just a Potted Plant?”[i] My place first in line, my dignity, my position, my authority is injured and I get angry. But its not righteous anger. Sometimes a little bit of jealousy creeps into the anger. Didn’t get the promotion. Didn’t get the scholarship. Don’t have the big house. Don’t have the nice vacations. Cultivated anger blossoms into resentment which grows into fury. As the nurses among us can testify, fury stoked and stoked can damage our hearts. And anger, resentment and fury can flower into genocide. Our anger can kill us, and can kill our neighbors. Its dangerous. We need to pay attention to it and what it is telling us about whether we are truly living a life of love, cultivating that which is important to God.
Jesus says coveting carries the seeds of destruction. Its not just the deed of taking possession of that which is not ours that is the danger. Looking with longing is the beginning of violation of sacred bonds. Looking, and desiring leads to small steps, minor boundary crossings that lead to one more and one more. Most of our wrongdoing is not the major big SINS. Most of our wrongdoing is the step by step kind, waltzing down the slippery slope of deception and self deception until we seem to be in up to our necks. Most of our wrongdoing begins with looking the wrong way because our feet then follow.
Please hold these words of Jesus about adultery along side another story. In the Gospel according to John the scribes and the Pharisees, the same supposedly righteous crowd we hear about today, brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught in the act. They demanded that she be put to death according to custom, according to law. She was guilty. Jesus invited those without sin to cast the first stone and when they slipped away, ashamed, he turned to the woman and said, they have gone, and neither do I condemn you – Go and sin no more. Its hard to start over. Its hard to sin no more.
We intend to be, we would be pure in heart, but too often we find ourselves convicted by our failings and our inadequacy to do the right, to live right. We stand convicted, and in need of God’s mercy, and God’s help to sin no more. One of the things those who would be pure in heart can do is to cultivate an awareness of our own frailty, our own propensity to wrong each other. We can cultivate antennae tuned to notice the wandering of our feet down a path we might not choose if we are honest with ourselves. One of the ways we can cultivate purity of heart to be willing to lay down our gifts at the altar and make amends with one who has something against us.
To be Church, not just go to church, we have to be willing to be agents of reconciliation, we have to be people willing to take the first steps of telling truth and making peace. In the Twelve Step tradition making a fearless moral inventory of our wrongs and making amends whenever possible are essential steps toward recovery. To be whole, to be Church we need to be willing to admit our mistakes and to try to make things right. To be Church we have to be able to admit to ourselves and to our loved ones and our enemies when we are wrong. We have to be willing to hear from each other when our frustration, slights and injury start to bubble with annoyance and anger. We have to be willing to tell our best friend when a joke is racist or sexist for full of slurs that our homophobic culture seems to think humorous. We have to be willing to try to understand each other when we behave badly, when we hurt each other and to practice hearing each other’s confessions and truly offering pardon. The Church is a school for love, and we and we should be thankful that we get so opportunities to practice forgiveness here, and to carry those skills, that experience beyond these walls.
This is not easy. This is not Hallmark brand of love. But it is what Jesus calls us to do, how Jesus calls us to live. And when we do this, our light shines, his light shines. AMEN.
[i] Brendan Sullivan, Esq when sitting next to Oliver North at a Congressional Hearing
We are reading our way through the 5th Chapter of the Good News according to Matthew otherwise known as the Sermon on the Mount. People who hear this and who ‘get it’ are changed forever. People who hear Blessed are You – because you are dear to God, and are pure in heart and are kind and loving, you who seek peace and pursue it, you who hunger and thirst and long for righteousness – you shall be filled with justice and mercy. You Blessed ones are the Salt of the Earth. You Blessed ones are the Light of the World.
Today’s installation in Jesus’ Blessing and Commissioning of the agents of the Kingdom of God. This is the ‘how to’ section, how to go about the business of burning with Light and flavoring with Salt. Our righteousness is to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. For example … in how we take responsibility for our actions, how we love our dearest partners, in how we make promises … we are to be people of integrity. God yearns for us to walk upright, and to be exactly who we say we are without pretense. Blessed are you who are pure of heart; YOU shall see God.
Jesus says anger, bullying and name calling are the seeds of murder. And those seeds are in all of us. Anger wells up when we are offended, when we are wronged, when we are injured. We all feel it. Sometimes it’s that righteous anger that a sacred personal boundary has been violated, and that we or someone we love has been wronged and a serious and deep way. Jesus had that kind of anger when the religious authorities were badgering him about healing someone who was desperately ill on the Sabbath. Jesus got really, really mad at people for whom the care of the candlesticks was more important than the care of the children.
But our anger is often not that kind of anger. I get mad at someone who cuts me off in traffic or who takes the parking space I have been carefully guarding at Market Basket. I get mad at someone who doesn’t return my phone calls, or who doesn’t show up at a meeting I have asked for or who doesn’t answer a long long letter. I start to think “Hey! What about me … I am Just a Potted Plant?”[i] My place first in line, my dignity, my position, my authority is injured and I get angry. But its not righteous anger. Sometimes a little bit of jealousy creeps into the anger. Didn’t get the promotion. Didn’t get the scholarship. Don’t have the big house. Don’t have the nice vacations. Cultivated anger blossoms into resentment which grows into fury. As the nurses among us can testify, fury stoked and stoked can damage our hearts. And anger, resentment and fury can flower into genocide. Our anger can kill us, and can kill our neighbors. Its dangerous. We need to pay attention to it and what it is telling us about whether we are truly living a life of love, cultivating that which is important to God.
Jesus says coveting carries the seeds of destruction. Its not just the deed of taking possession of that which is not ours that is the danger. Looking with longing is the beginning of violation of sacred bonds. Looking, and desiring leads to small steps, minor boundary crossings that lead to one more and one more. Most of our wrongdoing is not the major big SINS. Most of our wrongdoing is the step by step kind, waltzing down the slippery slope of deception and self deception until we seem to be in up to our necks. Most of our wrongdoing begins with looking the wrong way because our feet then follow.
Please hold these words of Jesus about adultery along side another story. In the Gospel according to John the scribes and the Pharisees, the same supposedly righteous crowd we hear about today, brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught in the act. They demanded that she be put to death according to custom, according to law. She was guilty. Jesus invited those without sin to cast the first stone and when they slipped away, ashamed, he turned to the woman and said, they have gone, and neither do I condemn you – Go and sin no more. Its hard to start over. Its hard to sin no more.
We intend to be, we would be pure in heart, but too often we find ourselves convicted by our failings and our inadequacy to do the right, to live right. We stand convicted, and in need of God’s mercy, and God’s help to sin no more. One of the things those who would be pure in heart can do is to cultivate an awareness of our own frailty, our own propensity to wrong each other. We can cultivate antennae tuned to notice the wandering of our feet down a path we might not choose if we are honest with ourselves. One of the ways we can cultivate purity of heart to be willing to lay down our gifts at the altar and make amends with one who has something against us.
To be Church, not just go to church, we have to be willing to be agents of reconciliation, we have to be people willing to take the first steps of telling truth and making peace. In the Twelve Step tradition making a fearless moral inventory of our wrongs and making amends whenever possible are essential steps toward recovery. To be whole, to be Church we need to be willing to admit our mistakes and to try to make things right. To be Church we have to be able to admit to ourselves and to our loved ones and our enemies when we are wrong. We have to be willing to hear from each other when our frustration, slights and injury start to bubble with annoyance and anger. We have to be willing to tell our best friend when a joke is racist or sexist for full of slurs that our homophobic culture seems to think humorous. We have to be willing to try to understand each other when we behave badly, when we hurt each other and to practice hearing each other’s confessions and truly offering pardon. The Church is a school for love, and we and we should be thankful that we get so opportunities to practice forgiveness here, and to carry those skills, that experience beyond these walls.
This is not easy. This is not Hallmark brand of love. But it is what Jesus calls us to do, how Jesus calls us to live. And when we do this, our light shines, his light shines. AMEN.
[i] Brendan Sullivan, Esq when sitting next to Oliver North at a Congressional Hearing
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