• Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, tells this story from his childhood: “I remember to this day exactly where I was when it hit me: riding north on Haledon Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets in Paterson, New Jersey after Sunday morning church with my parents. Isn’t it remarkable how we remember exactly where we were when great events happen that change our lives?
I had learned some things about God and Jesus, about heaven, and about good and evil in church and Sunday school. Like most children at that age, I was a bit confused and overwhelmed by it all, especially by what this great being called God expected of me. I felt a little insecure, I guess, about not knowing and a little guilty about not doing everything that I was supposed to be doing. Then all of a sudden the sun shone through the fog. I saw the one thing necessary that made sense and order out of everything else.
I checked out my insight with my father, my most reliable authority. He was an elder in the church and (much more important) a good and wise man. ‘Dad, everything they teach us in church and Sunday school, all the stuff we’re supposed to learn from the Bible—it all comes down to only one thing, doesn’t it? I mean, if we only remember the one most important thing all the time, then all the other things will be O.K., right?’
He was rightly skeptical. ‘What one thing? There are a lot of things that are important.’
‘I mean, I should just always ask what God wants me to do and then do it. That’s all, isn’t it?’
His father replied: ‘You know, I think you’re right, son. That’s it.’
I had perceived—via God’s grace, not my own wit, surely—that since God is love, we must therefore love God and love whatever God loves. I now knew that if we turn to the divine conductor and follow his wise and loving baton—which is his will, his Word—then the music of our life will be a symphony.”
Peter Kreeft as a child grasped the central message of what Jesus is saying in our Scripture today.
1. Jesus’ reinterprets the law and makes it a more difficult way (not less).
• People love rules. They love rules because they like for things to be black and white. Give a person a rule and they don’t have to think any more, they just have to follow the rule. Rules are simple.
• I read on the news this week where a 61-year-old Portland, Oregon man died in a hospital parking garage just 100 feet from the entrance of the hospital’s emergency room. Portland police said no one from the staff of the hospital would respond to calls for help as officers struggled to revive the man who had suffered a heart attack in his car. None of the hospital staff came to help because they had a rule: Someone had to first call 911, and if there was not call they were not to respond. Judy Leach, a hospital spokeswoman, said emergency room staff was told it was a car crash and they were following the proper protocol by instructing police to summon an ambulance crew. Leach said Friday. “There are protocols in place to ensure the right thing is done for the right patient at the right time.” They had a rule, and no one bothered to use common sense. They followed the rule exactly and someone died.
• Rules are simple, but using our brains to think in terms of ethics, values and morality are not simple, and Jesus showed what the real intent of the law was. The law was not just to affect our actions, but our heart, our attitudes, our intentions and our motives. Now things really begin to get difficult.
• Jesus said that it was not enough not to have murdered anyone, you must not even hate anyone. You must not be angry with anyone. You must not insult anyone. You must not call other people names. And you must do everything you can to be reconciled to people when something has come between you.
• It is not enough not to avoid committing adultery. You must not lust after another person. It is not enough not to steal. You must not even desire what another person has.
• May I ask you, “Which is easier, not to commit adultery or not to lust in your mind? Which is easier, not to steal or not to want what you see someone else has? Which is easier, not to murder someone or not to call them a jerk?”
• It seems to me that we sometimes think of Jesus coming and making this whole relationship with God thing easier, when actually he made it much more difficult. He said things like, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48 Yes there is grace, and yes there is forgiveness, but we cannot brush aside the fact that Jesus is calling us to take on the character of God. We are to live on a higher plane. We are to strive to be perfect because that is what God is like. We are to forgive even those who do not deserve it, because that is what God is like. We are to seek to be like God, not only in our actions, but in our reactions, our attitudes, our thinking and our heart.
• When we attended the Episcopal church, we crossed ourselves several times during the worship service. But when it came time to reading the Gospel lesson, and the words of Jesus, we did it differently. We crossed our foreheads, our lips and our heart. In effect, as his words were read, we were saying, “Christ be in my mind and my thinking, Christ be in my mouth and in my speaking, and Christ be in my heart and in my living. Write your new law on my heart.
• This is something that calls for a transformation that cannot come through redoubled effort. No, this is something that only the Holy Spirit can do for us and in us. It is God who brings about the change of heart and transformation which is necessary to live the Jesus way.
• This is what the prophet Jeremiah spoke of when he said, “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Jeremiah 31:33
• This is what the apostle Paul spoke of when he said, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:1-2
2. Jesus’ way had to wait until the human family was able to hear it and follow it.
• When my children went to school, they began by learning the alphabet; they did not begin by reading novels or books on philosophy. That would come later. When they entered the first grade they were learning to count, and perhaps to add numbers; they did not begin by taking calculus or physics. That too would come later. You have to appreciate where we are today. The human race did not start out with the full understanding of what God expected of them. They were incapable of grasping it all. The people of Jesus day did not enjoy the benefits of living 2,000 years after Christ, and seeing things as we now see and understand them. And when we finally enter the Kingdom, we will suddenly see things in a new way, and understand things that had troubled us for years.
• Since the beginning of time the human race has been maturing and growing up. Technologically we have advanced, but also socially, even spiritually we have been maturing. We don’t often realize this. For instance, American democracy is a relatively new invention in the history of the world, and yet because we have always lived here, we take it for granted. But democracy is a recent advancement in how people govern themselves that was unknown and unimaginable in the times before us.
• It is also difficult for us to understand what it must have been like before there was a Jesus. Before that, it is impossible for us to understand what it must have been like to live in a world that had never had or heard of the Ten Commandments. The crudeness and cruelty of that world is beyond where our minds can travel. The mindset of Sodom and Gomorrah were more the norm than the exception.
• So when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments it was something so drastic and new that even the people God delivered from the slavery of Egypt initially rejected them. Moses was not even down from the mountain until they were in full rebellion. The history of Israel is marked by one moral failure after another until they wind up in exile. God was training the people to understand his ways and obey, even in exile. Jesus did not arrive on the scene until roughly 1500 years after Moses. It took that long just for them to get used to the Ten Commandments and be ready to hear what the next step was.
• Paul said that the law was a sort of tutor when he wrote, “But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. “ Galatians 3:19-25 (NASB77)
• The time finally came when mankind was ready to hear the next step from God. The Bible says, “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” Galatians 4:1-5
• So God did not give the beatitudes to Moses, he gave him ten simple rules, and they proved exceedingly difficult then and even until this present day. But neither did Jesus repeat the Ten Commandments. He went beyond the commandments, because after 1500 years, it was time to move on. But Jesus’ new way of obedience to God proved a mystery to the people of his day, and 2000 years later even those of us in the church still struggle with understanding and following what Jesus was saying. We still want to let our minds wander where they will. We still want to call other people names. We still wander through the stores wanting everything in sight. We still don’t turn the other cheek, forgive our enemies or do good to those who persecute us. No, we haven’t come very far.
• But that is exactly the challenge for us — to really understand the radical new message of Jesus and endeavor to be true disciples who follow him and practice what he said — understanding that we can only do so by inviting the presence of the Holy Spirit to indwell us and have him carry out his transforming work within us.
• Ezekiel spoke of God’s desire for us when he said: “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.” Ezekiel 11:19-20
• This is difficult. I was using a spiritual discipline this week called “Practicing the Presence”. In this exercise you attempt to actually visualize and feel the presence of Christ in the room with you. You practice being aware of his presence with you and speaking to you. As I did that this week I was shocked to hear myself saying, “But I don’t want to be bothered. I’m not sure I want you here all the time. I want to be free to do and think what I want.” I became more aware of what I was thinking about. My conscience was stabbed at the thought of what I was saying and how I was feeling.
3. We cannot live the way Jesus taught us without each other.
• I have become very interested recently in turning bowls on my wood lathe. I haven’t done much of it. I’ve turned a lot of spindles and things like that, but until the last few weeks I have not turned any bowls. So this last weekend I went to two places that had lathe turning demonstrations. It was wonderful. I could have stood and watched these artists turning bowls out of chunks of cherry and spalted maple all day. I have been reading about how to turn bowls and even watching videos, but seeing it in person is different. You can ask questions when you see someone doing it in person. The only thing I wish could have been different was if I had a chance to try to turn a bowl under the watchful eye of someone who has done it thousands of times. I wish I could have had a mentor or tutor. If I tried it on my own without watching someone in person and asking questions, it would have taken me so much longer to learn. I would have made so many unnecessary mistakes. And perhaps, in the end, I would still be doing a lot of things wrong that I didn’t even ralize.
• As I thought about that, I realized that being a Christian is much the same. It is a learning experience. It is something we learn from others. We need to be discipled. Yes, we have to read the Bible for ourselves, but we also have to actually see people putting the Bible into practice. We read the Bible in the lives of other people. We have to see how they do it. We ask them questions and get tips. We watch them and learn by their example. We ask them to watch us and tell us what we are doing wrong or how we can improve. We really can’t do it on our own. “It takes a community,” as Hillary Clinton said. It really does.
• But we have to be humble enough to realize we can’t do it on our own and ask for help. We need to be held accountable to someone — someone who can give us advice or correct us and tell us when we are wrong.
• I would have loved it if one of those woodturners would have watched me and said to me, “Watch out, you don’t want to do that. You are holding the chisel at the wrong angle. This tool would work better for what you are trying to do. You should set the speed at 1,000 rpm’s for that operation.” — and many other things that I hadn’t even thought of. The reason I would want that is because I want to be the best bowl turner I can be.
• And if you are really serious about being the best Christian you can be, you will realize that you need other people. You need to be in a small group, have a prayer partner, be in a Sunday School class, study the Bible with someone else on a regular basis.
• It would be great if after I get to know you all better I would be able to say to some young Christian: “You want to know what a Christian is like and how they act and react? Pull up alongside this person or that one. Get to know them. Meet regularly with them. Study the Bible with them. Ask them to be your mentor. Ask them about how to be a better Christian, neighbor, husband or wife, father or mother. Ask them to keep you accountable in some area where you have a weakness.” That is what the church is all about.
• How do we deal with anger as a Christian? How do we keep from calling other people names? How do we become reconciled to people who have offended us? How do we deal with lust and greed in our lives? We watch the lives of other Christians. We talk to them about their struggles and how they dealt with these issues.
• Here is the point: You are a witness both to Christians and non-Christians whether you want to be or not. People are watching. You are either a good example or a bad example, but you are an example... and people are watching.
• The Bible says, “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Romans 13:11-12
Rodney J. Buchanan
Amity UMC
February 13, 2011
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
