Preached February 20, 2011 at Church of the Apostles, Seattle
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
Psalm 119:33-40
Jesus, heal our hearts and our eyes so that we can see the world as you do, as perfect.
Amen
"You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
So, let me get this straight- even if we somehow figure out how to get perfect the same rain will fall on us that falls on all those miserable sinners we are working so hard to love and the same sun will shine on us as those we killing ourselves to be polite to? That hardly seems fair-
What is the reward then?
Don’t we get something exciting in exchange for perfection?
We are asked to be perfect and promised no special treatment in return.
But what if perfection and forgiveness and love are the rewards?
What if perfection is not the command, but the gift?
What reward is it to love only our family and greet only our friends? We will have no more than the rest of the walking wounded we are surrounded by.
We don’t get rewarded for being given gifts.
What if we aren’t being called to add things to our to-do list as much as we are being given kingdom markers. We are so ready to add to our checklists. Figure out what all we are supposed to be doing:
• Clean the fridge
• Go grocery shopping
• Pay the water bill
• Love my enemies
• Be perfect.
What if this is not a list of rules but a picture a snapshot of where we are headed? This is what we will loose, the privilege of living like tax collectors and gentiles. This is like a diagnoses of a progressive ordering of our hearts. If we continue on this path we will slowly loose our ability to distinguish between our friends and our enemies.
It is a diagnoses of increasing health.
Jesus is saying: This is what justice is going to look like, this is how much deeper and broader the ocean of love is that you are being invited to dive into. These are the road signs on the highway we are being invited to step foot on. This is our compass.
You will know you are on track when you look at some one who has hurt you deeply and feel only compassion. When the person who by all the logic of the world should be your enemy is only another limping pilgrim on the journey.
This is what the kingdom is going to look like.
Watch out it could happen to you.
We may follow the law, but if we don’t let the law cut us deep enough to love our enemies, then it still isn’t the perfection we are headed towards.
we heard the law in Leviticus this morning:
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
But some of us stopped there. we didn’t let it break our hearts. And who “our people” got too narrowly defined.
So Jesus comes and says
hey good news!
you will love even your enemies-
This following deep into the heart of God will cost us everything.
Even the ability to choose who we love.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves was hard enough, but now we need to shine our sun and send whatever life-giving rain we have on everyone we meet, without checking to see if they are righteous or unrighteous, good or evil.
It seems that God believe it or not, isn’t asking us who we like. God doesn’t need our judgments about who is deserving of Grace and love and forgiveness.
We aren’t being invited to give God our opinion of her children. God doesn’t need us to tell her who is good and who is evil, God sees our stories from the perspective of the sun and the rain. God sees us all from within the human heart.
And the light of God is so bright, that if we are foolish enough to make the mad choice to step into it, it will burn away all our self-righteous prejudice and we will see all people as our brothers and sisters, and maybe with those kingdom eyes so blinded by the love of God we wont be able to tell the difference, between our friends and our enemies. Or the difference between those we love and those who love us back
We are being offered those eyes- this is the gift.
Maybe God can’t tell the difference between us, maybe to God we are all so precious and so beautiful that watching us hold grudges against each other and treat each other with contempt must look so awful.
Don’t you see-
my sun shines on all of you, my rain falls on all of you,
don’t you see?
Everyone will become so beautiful to us that soon we will no longer be able to lift a hand against anyone because they will all be God. This non-violence isn’t an intellectual proposition; it is a new way of seeing. When we see with Jesus eyes, we understand why he went to the cross without fighting. He saw even the soldiers and the betrayers as brothers and sisters. We are all so precious and fragile when seen with Jesus eyes.
It would be so hard for the sun to choose who to shine on, or for the rain to aim its drops. We aren’t so different really,
the unjust and us,
the just and us.
There is no reward for living a life like this, this life is the reward. The sun will still beat down on our heads, the rain will still soak us through to the skin.
This is an invitation to a perfection we can fall back into at the end of the day, when we are wounded and tired, when we are drenched with cold rain and our faces and shoulders are sunburned.
When we have nothing left to give and even the thought of forgiveness makes us want to weep in frustration. We are invited to quit worrying about who hurt us more that day our enemies or our friends. We are invited to wrap ourselves in the love of God who sees us all from a different perspective.
This is the only promise,
this is perfect.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Stay Salty
Preached February 6, 2011 at Saint David of Wales
Isaiah 58:1-12
1 Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20
Psalm 112:1-9
Dear Jesus,
Love into us and love through us so that we may take part in illuminating your world, and see it as you do, as the kingdom of God
Amen
–you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world, and oh by the way, you need to be even more righteous than the most law abiding religious folks you know.
how is that for good news?
we say in so many ways. “Jesus I don’t want to be the salt of the earth,
can I be the saffron, or the cumin of the world? can I be something fancier, something that will really make a difference?
Salt only highlights the flavors that are already there, and too much of us could ruin what God is cooking up.
No one is going to sit down at God’s heavenly banquet and say “ooh, is that Salt? what made you think of using it? how clever!”
God doesn’t really benefit all that much from getting people like us, and by people like us I mean struggling, demanding, imperfect, precious people who dream of being known for who we really are and loved anyway.
If there are any other kind of people here, I want to talk to you after the service.
we are salt for the benefit of the kingdom
and We are light for the benefit of the whole household.
Jesus says:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
Jesus came to reveal who God has always been. The law and the prophets are just as true in Jesus’ life as they were before the incarnation. God’s heart of justice compassion and mercy are exactly the same. Jesus did not come to change anything about the law. It is the same Law. It is the law of Love.
Jesus didn't come to save us from the mean God of the Old Testament.
God is the same God who spoke the world into being with a deep longing for Justice, compassion, and revolutionary love.
God has always longed for the same thing, for us to share in the work of taking care of this unbearably beautiful world filled with unbearably beautiful people. we are not that special, and that is good news.
we are salt and we are light. salt may cease to be salty, and lights can be hidden, but God will still be God. Heaven and earth may pass away but God’s nature- God’s Law is not going to change.
God has been passing us notes all along and slipping suggestions into our bags. God has been sending her friends with maps and directions and calling us to come home into love since we started walking away.
And somehow, as smart and wonderful as we are, we didn’t get it.
Can’t you just see God, heart breaking for the world he loved into being -watching us horde and gloat. Watching some of her children starve naked on the streets while others are worried about how good they look in the eyes of their neighbors as they fast.
That was what Isaiah saw, and God speaks loud and clear through him about the true nature of fasting and the purpose of the law:
Is not this the fast that God chooses:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to let the oppressed go free,
to break every yoke?
Is it not to share our bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into our houses;
when we see the naked, to cover them?
and we still didn’t get it.
then when Jesus comes to lead the way, to take us by the hand and walk us into that promised land of self sacrificial love for our brothers and sisters, there is an expectation from the people with him then and from many of us now, saying:
“yay! Jesus has come to take us to a new place”
and Jesus says
NO I HAVEN’T-
don’t you understand??
we are going where we were always going-
deeper into the heart of love-
We do not get a change of direction but a friend on the journey
What we get is an invitation to follow Jesus all the way into the burning heart of love, all the way to the cross.
This is where we were always headed and if we don’t align our hearts with this law, Jesus says we will be some of the last to see this glorious kingdom of God shining all around us.
The good news is that if we follow the old maps, if we can hear God’s pleas for love in the law and the prophets, then we will be some of the first to see the reign of Shalom and love here on Earth.
and it’s hard because we look at the map / and we look at the world and it doesn’t seem to make sense.
How can we get to a place where:
our light shall rise in the darkness
and our gloom be like the noonday.
where The LORD will guide us continually,
and satisfy our needs in parched places,
and make our bones strong;
and we shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
our ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
we shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
this is one heck of a promise. and it’s the destination of a journey so deep and transformative that the whole world is altered.
this is God’s map. It has always been God’s map
this is the same world that Jesus is calling us into.
don’t look down on the Pharisees, their path is your path, but we have to go further, not change direction.
if you love the God go deeper into the law, Be who God made you to be and you will be transformed into your truer more salty self. the whole sermon on the mount calls us to go deeper and deeper in . these are our operating instructions, this is our map, this is the recipe we get to be salt in.
Everything we need to know about Gods love for the world is already there.
we are in the remedial class that needs help, and we just can’t get there by ourselves.
But God will use us anyway.
When we finally take that dang bushel basket of self importance off our heads, and let the light of kindness shine, we will see that we are in and have always been in a house of peace and justice and crazy, mad love. We can help illuminate it, but we didn’t invent it.
God is just inviting us back to be who we always were.
We were made by love ---
for love-----
in the image of love, -----
with a boundless capacity for love.
we don’t need to preach love to God, God is already Love.
God is inviting us, us! to help in the unfolding of this kingdom, so let’s accept the invitation.
- if God is reaching for a work light,
shine on.
- and if God is cooking up something that needs some salt,
stay salty!
Isaiah 58:1-12
1 Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20
Psalm 112:1-9
Dear Jesus,
Love into us and love through us so that we may take part in illuminating your world, and see it as you do, as the kingdom of God
Amen
–you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world, and oh by the way, you need to be even more righteous than the most law abiding religious folks you know.
how is that for good news?
we say in so many ways. “Jesus I don’t want to be the salt of the earth,
can I be the saffron, or the cumin of the world? can I be something fancier, something that will really make a difference?
Salt only highlights the flavors that are already there, and too much of us could ruin what God is cooking up.
No one is going to sit down at God’s heavenly banquet and say “ooh, is that Salt? what made you think of using it? how clever!”
God doesn’t really benefit all that much from getting people like us, and by people like us I mean struggling, demanding, imperfect, precious people who dream of being known for who we really are and loved anyway.
If there are any other kind of people here, I want to talk to you after the service.
we are salt for the benefit of the kingdom
and We are light for the benefit of the whole household.
Jesus says:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
Jesus came to reveal who God has always been. The law and the prophets are just as true in Jesus’ life as they were before the incarnation. God’s heart of justice compassion and mercy are exactly the same. Jesus did not come to change anything about the law. It is the same Law. It is the law of Love.
Jesus didn't come to save us from the mean God of the Old Testament.
God is the same God who spoke the world into being with a deep longing for Justice, compassion, and revolutionary love.
God has always longed for the same thing, for us to share in the work of taking care of this unbearably beautiful world filled with unbearably beautiful people. we are not that special, and that is good news.
we are salt and we are light. salt may cease to be salty, and lights can be hidden, but God will still be God. Heaven and earth may pass away but God’s nature- God’s Law is not going to change.
God has been passing us notes all along and slipping suggestions into our bags. God has been sending her friends with maps and directions and calling us to come home into love since we started walking away.
And somehow, as smart and wonderful as we are, we didn’t get it.
Can’t you just see God, heart breaking for the world he loved into being -watching us horde and gloat. Watching some of her children starve naked on the streets while others are worried about how good they look in the eyes of their neighbors as they fast.
That was what Isaiah saw, and God speaks loud and clear through him about the true nature of fasting and the purpose of the law:
Is not this the fast that God chooses:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to let the oppressed go free,
to break every yoke?
Is it not to share our bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into our houses;
when we see the naked, to cover them?
and we still didn’t get it.
then when Jesus comes to lead the way, to take us by the hand and walk us into that promised land of self sacrificial love for our brothers and sisters, there is an expectation from the people with him then and from many of us now, saying:
“yay! Jesus has come to take us to a new place”
and Jesus says
NO I HAVEN’T-
don’t you understand??
we are going where we were always going-
deeper into the heart of love-
We do not get a change of direction but a friend on the journey
What we get is an invitation to follow Jesus all the way into the burning heart of love, all the way to the cross.
This is where we were always headed and if we don’t align our hearts with this law, Jesus says we will be some of the last to see this glorious kingdom of God shining all around us.
The good news is that if we follow the old maps, if we can hear God’s pleas for love in the law and the prophets, then we will be some of the first to see the reign of Shalom and love here on Earth.
and it’s hard because we look at the map / and we look at the world and it doesn’t seem to make sense.
How can we get to a place where:
our light shall rise in the darkness
and our gloom be like the noonday.
where The LORD will guide us continually,
and satisfy our needs in parched places,
and make our bones strong;
and we shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
our ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
we shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
this is one heck of a promise. and it’s the destination of a journey so deep and transformative that the whole world is altered.
this is God’s map. It has always been God’s map
this is the same world that Jesus is calling us into.
don’t look down on the Pharisees, their path is your path, but we have to go further, not change direction.
if you love the God go deeper into the law, Be who God made you to be and you will be transformed into your truer more salty self. the whole sermon on the mount calls us to go deeper and deeper in . these are our operating instructions, this is our map, this is the recipe we get to be salt in.
Everything we need to know about Gods love for the world is already there.
we are in the remedial class that needs help, and we just can’t get there by ourselves.
But God will use us anyway.
When we finally take that dang bushel basket of self importance off our heads, and let the light of kindness shine, we will see that we are in and have always been in a house of peace and justice and crazy, mad love. We can help illuminate it, but we didn’t invent it.
God is just inviting us back to be who we always were.
We were made by love ---
for love-----
in the image of love, -----
with a boundless capacity for love.
we don’t need to preach love to God, God is already Love.
God is inviting us, us! to help in the unfolding of this kingdom, so let’s accept the invitation.
- if God is reaching for a work light,
shine on.
- and if God is cooking up something that needs some salt,
stay salty!
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