Series on the Mount
Jesus Will Wreck Your Life
October 14, 2007
Matthew 7:12
What might be your greatest fear? What do you dread the most? What possibility scares you the most?
I think the greatest fear for humans is God. Here’s a being that is greater than we can comprehend. More holy than our wildest imaginations. No wonder the bible talks about fearing God. Yet God is also more than loving than we will ever know. But this is scary especially when you think about what Jesus said referring to love in chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” How can I love perfectly? It petrifying.
Two men were walking along discussing God, eternity, and judgment. One of them stops and says, “You know, there is a question I’d like to ask God.”
“What question?” his friend responds.
“How could you let all the evil and despair and injustice occur in this world?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense!”
The first guy stops and with serious expression says, “But the question terrifies me!”
“Terrifies you? How could asking such a fundamental question terrify you?”
“Well, I’m afraid God might ask me the same question.”
Turn to Matthew 7:12 and we will hear Jesus sum it up.
12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
There are a few things here. First this verse is:
Jesus’ Shema: a summary
This is what Jesus believed. This is the way his followers are to live. We are to love. Not just believe in who Jesus was but it must transform the way we live and interact with others. This is scary. Yes, this is terrifying. Why? Because I believe that we begin to live out what Jesus teaches and form a new community and a new way of living that stops judging others and embraces the poorest of the poor and stops lusting after everything that can be bought and sold and especially in our day: sex. If we would actually forgive others and if we would pray for God’s will in our lives and pray for our enemies and actually fast and generously give of anything and everything that we have and poor out blessings on everyone around us (not just those we know well and who are easy to love), then it will wreck out lives. Yes, Jesus will wreck your life.
Most of us when we see this verse put ourselves first. We ask, “What would I like to be done for me?” But this doesn’t really capture the meaning. If loving is desiring what is best for others, then we must ask what is it that would benefit them the most. Not what would benefit me if I were in that situation. Loving will wreck your life.
For Jesus this short little creed is what the entire Old Testament is about: Loving others. Doing for them and treating them in the same way that you would want to be treated. It is a radical departure from our self-centered existence that will wreck your life.
“Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer.” – Dorothy Day
“Following Jesus is simple, but not easy. Love until it hurts and then love more.” – Mother Teresa
Bookends on Jesus’ teachings
Verse 12 of chapter five, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
Between these two verse 12’s of chapter five and seven lies Jesus’ teachings about how to live: which means loving others. Loving God means that we love others. Relationship integrity. Treating people with dignity and respect as children of God. Not hating. Not judging. Not writing off someone which in Jesus’ day might be a death sentence because people often depended on their community to survive.
The stuff before is sort of like prologue. An Introduction. The stuff after is like a conclusion. Final thoughts to remember as you go to live a different way of life. It is a new way of living and one must die in order to live it. Think about it.
Think about the picture Jesus paints elsewhere. You die to the old self and old way of living. You take up your cross. Jesus will wreck your life. If you want to be comfortable, don’t follow Jesus. Believe in Jesus by all means. Believe that who he said he is, he is. Understand the bible. Keep on living the same way you always have. Keep on doing the same things. Because if you follow Jesus especially the American Jesus that asks for very little (maybe 10% and a prayer here and there and ten minutes in the morning and an hour or so on Sunday), if you really follow the Jesus of the bible, it will wreck your life. He will wreck your life. You must like out the life of Jesus in you. It is no longer your life. It is his life, his spirit, that lives in you.
How many of you believe in CPR? If someone would collapse and stop breathing, will that belief change anything? Not likely. At least not until someone actually acts on it.
The sum of all that we fear or at least should fear is Jesus.
Jesus turned my life upside down and has continued to do so ever since. Just when I feel pretty good about where I am at, Jesus drops a bomb. His light illuminates something that I believe and thought that I believed about him, or myself, or the church and it is shocking.
A few years ago, it became a short-lived novelty to sing “God Bless America” at a major league baseball game. I have no problem with the song. It is a wonderful song. It is a prayerful song. But I was convinced (convicted if you will) that singing that song in the that setting for the reasons that lay behind it was making a mockery of God. I didn’t stand and sing it. I couldn’t do it. Now I didn’t expect everyone to do what I did. I didn’t expect that others would feel the same way that I did. It wasn’t easy. Some brothers and sisters in Christ thought I was going to far and told me so. Maybe I shouldn’t be so radical. How come God didn’t tell them that? I didn’t know. But I did not what God had showed me and I couldn’t conform. Jesus was ruining my comfort zone.
Sometimes God comforts the afflicted, and sometimes God afflicts the comfortable.
Sometimes I am called to be the pastor and sometimes I am called to be the preacher.
Jesus will wreck your life.
Say it with me. “Jesus will wreck your life.” Tell your neighbor.
There is a guy named Shane Claiborne who sees this Shema of Jesus to do to others as a radical call to a radical way of living. When he was in college at Eastern University near Philly, the newspaper had a headline about some homeless families that were being evicted from an old, abandoned cathedral.
There were forty families (children included) that had no place to call home. There were numerous buildings in this area that had been abandoned and the housing opportunities by the government started with a long wait on a long list. So these families took up residence in this old cathedral that did not have heat or electricity or any utilities. They were ordered to vacate the premises or be arrested. So Shane and his friends wrestled with what it means to love others as yourself and soon found themselves in a car headed to the “badlands.”
The building took up an entire block and someone had strung a banner across the front that said,
“How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?” Shane and his friends knocked the door and were invited in and embraced without hesitation. The families gave them tour while the kids jumped on their backs. They poured out their hearts, their struggles, and their dreams.
Shane went back to school and hung up flyers that said, “Jesus is getting kicked out of church in North Philly. Come hear about it: Kea Lounge, 10 pm tonight.” They thought maybe a dozen people would show up but over a hundred people packed the lounge.
The next day dozens of students poured into the cathedral saying, “If they come for you, they’ll have to take us too.” Nearing the final hour, when the eviction was to come, the people gathered to sing, pray, and break bread. Whoever will stay when the officials come and risk arrest, raise your hand. As Shane raised his hand, a little girl named Destiny sitting on his lap asked why he was raising his hand. “Do you want to stay here?” he asked. Destiny said, “Yes, this is my home.” “That’s why I’m raising my hand.” She hugged Shane and slowly raised her hand.
The media jumped all over it. And when the officials showed up, they took two steps, saw the crowd, and got back in the car without saying a word.
But the fight wasn’t done because if the students diminished, the police and officials would come and evict the families. A cell phone and air horn was purchased so that whenever the officials showed a smaller group of student that rotated would call the rest and the horn would blow and the people would pile into cars heading to Philly.
The archdiocese eventually got the fire marshal involved because they could come and evict the families saying that they were acting in the best interests of the families since things were safe. The night before the inspection two firefighters showed up at midnight. In a panic they tried to talk their way out of it thinking that this was a veiled attempt at a midnight eviction but the two fire fighters said that they were not here to evict but against orders they were here to help prepare the building for inspection. The fire fighters took them to the fire station where they were given boxes and boxes of smoke detectors, exit signs, and fire extinguishers. When the fire marshal showed up, there were no citations and no reason for eviction.
Eventually the families held a press conference and everyone received housing. Lastly, they marched to the mayor’s office to ask that he might try looking through their eyes and walking in their shoes. Then they took off their shoes and left them in a pile outside his office.
- Adapted from The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne.
These students would never be the same. Jesus will wreck your life.
