While We Were Talking

Matthew 17:1-9

Transfiguration of the Lord A

February 26, 2017

Fondren Presbyterian Church

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Last summer my best friend, his two teenage sons, and I drove from Russellville, AR to Bozeman, MT to meet his wife and her parents for a family vacation.  We took a more scenic route than usual so we could see some of the sights along the way.  

            After passing through Colorado and the magnificent sights of Vail Pass, Glenwood Canyon, and the wide-open skies of the western slope, we came into Utah a few hours ahead of schedule.  Looking at the map we decided that there was enough time for a quick side stop at Arches National Park. 

            It is said of the Grand Canyon that it is one of the few things in the world that fails to disappoint and always lives up to the hype.  I could say the same about Arches.  There in the middle of the Utah desert, stretching for miles to the horizon, are incredible red sandstone outcroppings, berms, and, notably, arches, formed by millennia of wind erosion. 

            Driving through the park we reached one particular promontory where, looking out at the landscape stretching ahead, I found myself speechless.  It was a sight that defies description because words are not enough to capture it. 

            I am not one to throw around the language of spirituality too loosely.  But seeing that landscape, with that sapphire blue sky, in that calm and still place, was, I have to say, a truly spiritual experience.  It was one of those moments when you feel God right there; with you; in the moment. 

            Ancient pagan and modern Celtic spirituality described those places where heaven and earth feel closer than in others as “thin places.”  The wind swept island of Iona, a gentle spring gurgling up in a remote place in the Highlands, a promontory looking out over the magnificent Utah desert.  All of those can be thin places.

            “Up a high mountain” might fairly be called the biblical vernacular for “thin place.”  Whenever someone goes up a high mountain in scripture, some kind of encounter with the holy is in the offing. 

            Moses goes up the mountain and meets God.

            Elijah goes up the mountain and hears the voice of God.

            The psalmist turns his eyes to the hills looking for guidance from…God?

            So common is this motif of mountains as places of divine encounter that the very expression “mountain top experience” has crept into our vocabulary to describe those life-changing moments.

            That day on the mountain in ancient Palestine surely lived up to its name for Peter, James, and John.  Jesus takes them, and only them, up a high mountain.  What happens there is one of the more dramatic moments in Jesus’ ministry before the events of holy week.

            The text tells us that when they got up the mountain, “he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.”  That English translation of the Greek word “metemorphothe” as “transfigured” gives us the name of this day.

            Now when we hear the word “transfigured” our minds often go to change.  Jesus was changed before them from the man they knew into this glowing radiant figure who evidently shares the glowing visage of God revealed to Moses so long before.

            If we want to be literalists and concern ourselves only with the words on the page, that is not a bad place to stop the sermon and get on with our days.  Of course, we know the rest of the story and we know that Jesus was with God in the beginning and we know that in the fullness of the biblical witness we have Christ revealed not as an evolving divine figure in the world but as God incarnate, born of Mary, walking among and ministering too us. 

            Fully human AND fully divine is the theological principle, not fully human and MOSTLY divine as though there were still some divining to be done down the line.

            This Jesus who goes up the high mountain with Peter, James, and John was fully God at the bottom of the mountain, so what does the text mean when it says he was “transfigured before them?”

            To understand Christ in that moment, we need to first understand the mountain, or more particularly, the mountaintop as a place of divine experience.

            Montreat North Carolina is a thin place for many Presbyterians. 

            And for thousands of Presbyterian youth each summer it is a mountain top experience.  It is a place where, together, they come to know what it is to live in the blessed community of Christ in a place where the membrane between heaven and earth is quite nearly invisible. 

            Each night at Montreat, groups from churches or presbyteries who travel together to the conference gather for back home time.  Back home takes as many forms as there are groups to share it.  There is no magic formula other than using the time as an opportunity to live more fully into the miracle of the week. 

            In my home church, one of the traditions is to do “pows and wows” for the day.  Some call them mountains and valleys, some highs and lows, but the idea is the same.  Each person is invited to share the thing that gave him or her the biggest wow or surprise of the day and the thing that gave him or her the biggest pow or disappointment. 

            At a youth leader’s conference not long after Montreat one year, a discussion started over dinner and one of the youth professionals made the comment that after Montreat that summer some of the adults wanted to revamp their youth ministry to model it after the week at Montreat.  The logic was that during that week the group had come together in such amazing ways, they learned in keynote, the unpacked what they learned in small groups, they bonded in free time, and they opened up to one another in such incredible vulnerability during back home time and their version of pows and wows.

            Someone asked how it went with the changes, and the youth professional said it had been a disaster. 

            We went around the table talking about why that might be when one of our number piped up and said, “maybe there is a reason people in the bible visit the mountain top but never live there.  It’s a visiting place not a place.”

            You could have heard a pin drop.

            She was exactly right.

            The goal of making every moment as spiritually enveloping as a Montreat Youth Conference is tempting and laudable, but it is a mountain top and mountain tops are for visiting not for living.

            Peter jumps at the chance to stay on the mountaintop.  When Moses and Elijah appear and begin talking with Jesus, Peter offers to build three dwellings assuming that now that they are up the mountain, Jesus plans to stay there.  After all, who would want to leave?

            It is tempting for us to want to set down roots and build our tent on the Mountain top where we encounter God so fully, where the distance between heaven and earth is so minimal, and where the glowing radiance of God lights our way.

            It is not long, however, that Jesus bursts this particular bubble and just like closing worship at Montreat always arrives on Friday night, Jesus sends the disciples back down the mountain and back to the day to day of their living.

            So why take us up there in the first place?

            It seems awfully unkind for God to draw us to these thin places and up to these mountaintops just to usher us back to the thickness of the world.  Why not just leave us alone?

            The answer, I think, comes in vs. 5. 

            While Peter is speaking to Jesus about setting up camp right there on the mountain top- while he is distracted by clinging to the moment to make it last- the voice of God comes upon them just as it did in the moment of Jesus’ baptism.  Again, God says to them that Jesus is God’s son and with him God is well pleased.

            There is no new information revealed on the mountain. 

            Peter, James, and John are not bearers of some new information about God or Christ, or the relationship of the divine to humanity.

            What they get in that moment is the voice of God telling them what they already know; Christ is God’s son, the beloved, with whom God is well pleased.”

            That mountain top experience was, to be sure like a whelming flood to those disciples, but they were washed over with familiar waters.  They were reminded of what they knew down at the bottom of the mountain; that God is near them and with them and for them.

            I think that is the real point of thin places; of mountaintops; of all the places where we pause and see and feel the goodness and nearness of God.  The truth of God is no somehow transformed in those moments; it is our lives that are transformed.  What changes is not what we see but how we see.

            Perhaps another way of saying what happened to Jesus up on that mountain is that he was seen by the disciples in a whole new light.  In that moment, they caught a glimpse of what was already true about the radiance of God in Christ.  They encountered a thin place and in it they reencountered the truth of the glory of God and THAT is why rather than tell them to set up camp Jesus sends them back into the world. 

            Thin places and mountaintops are not rewards for our endurance in the world, they are the places where our strength to bare witness in the world is renewed and refreshed.  Christ takes us to the mountaintop not so that he might be changed before our eyes but so that our eyes may be more fully opened to him and in him WE might be changed.

            Friends, this week we begin the journey of Lent.  So often we see this as a valley to be traversed so we can reach the mountaintop of Easter morning.  Perhaps this is the year to see Lent not as the valley but the mountain- the gift from God to come to a place where God is near and the light of Christ may shine in our lives. 

            Let us pray.

            God of every mountaintop, you call us to live in your light.  In this season of preparation, transform and transfigure our lives so we may know more fully your love for us and share more boldly your love for the world.  We thank you for those places in the world where we are drawn closer to you and where we know more fully the hope and love you have for us.  We pray these things in the name of the one who calls us to the mountaintop, Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

When Prayer Hurts

Matthew 5:38-48

Ordinary Time 7A

February 19, 2017

Fondren Presbyterian Church

Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

After the Democratic National Convention in 2000 when Al Gore selected CT Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate, ABC News ran a story vaguely implying that it might be tricky for an Orthodox Jew to serve as Vice-President.

            The story did not echo the “Hotline to the Vatican” kind of scare tactics unleashed on Kennedy in 1960, but the question was raised in this and other news stories, “How will an Orthodox Jew who observes Torah laws deal with an emergency on the Sabbath?”  In other words, if he is forbidden from operating anything mechanical- he walks to the capitol and takes the stairs on the Sabbath- how will he manage to retaliate against an enemy or deal with a phone call to a foreign leader during a crisis? 

            Unlike the fears of past Catholic candidates that their faith would mean control from a far away Pope, the concern with Lieberman was that he was so religiously devout that his beliefs might interfere with him taking us to war.

            A politician so devoted to the demands of his faith, he would be unable to take us to war.

            Those words have, to my knowledge, never been uttered about a Christian candidate for President or Vice President not Anglican George Washington, not Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson, not even Quaker Richard Nixon.  Never has the world been worried that they might take too seriously Jesus’ words…

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

            When was the last time you got a sideways look when someone heard that you were a Christian and worried that you might be a little to attached to that justice, fairness, equality, righteousness, peacemaking, cheek-turning, pray for your enemies stuff?

            Why doesn’t the world- the powers and principalities of the world- fear us?

I mean when you read the gospel, it is pretty scary stuff if your business is maintaining power through force, dishonesty, intimidation, or any of the other tools of power wielded so freely in our culture. 

            In fact, the forces of power in the world are more often than not the mirror opposite of what the gospel calls us to believe, do, and be. 

The dangerous proposition that is the gospel of Christ is an equal opportunity critic of the powers and principalities.  So much so that the gospel message itself has been the target of thinkers on both the left and the right.

            Ayn Rand, darling of the Tea Party wrote, “If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism which men must reject.”

            And then there’s Karl Marx, father of communism, who said, “The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness.”[i]

            The powers and principalities of the world of all philosophical stripes know a threat then they see it and the gospel is a threat.  And a community filled with gospel people is absolutely deadly. 

            So why doesn’t the world fear us? 

            Or at least fear us as much as they fear Joe Lieberman?

            One answer, a pretty simple answer really, is that we are realists.  We read the words and we hear the words and we even sit through preaching on the words, but in the end we live in the REAL world and the trained indifference of our hearing filters out all of that idealistic falderal.  Yes, yes, loving our enemies is a good idea but in Jesus day enemies did not wear suicide vests or fly airplanes into office towers or order drone strikes on civilian populations. 

            There are enemies and then there are ENEMIES and in our day and age we are living with the latter.  And that excuses us from the letter of this command, we tell ourselves.

            And, if we are honest, there is some truth to that.  Ours is a time vastly different than Jesus’.  As powerful as they were, I doubt that all the Caesar’s horsemen and all the Caesars’ men could do much to push international politics today. 

            This and so many other of Jesus’ admonitions in the gospels read like good ideas whose place is in the idealistic context of the church and not out in the real world where we need real world solutions to real world problems and not pie in the sky theology.

            Standing here in the relative safety of this pulpit it is tempting to jump on that bandwagon to simply dismiss those reactions to Jesus’ message as just so much unfaithful drivel.  It is easy and tempting to take that pervasive realism in church and culture, set it up as a straw man, topple it, and then proceed to beat the hell out of everyone with this gospel story.   

            But the truth is that when it comes to constructing a strategy for living in this real world there is something to that ultra-realistic view of Jesus’ words if we hear them as ways to succeed in the realities of our world. 

            Turn the other cheek, give more than you are asked, go the extra mile, and love your enemies are not very good strategies for getting ahead in this world.  In fact, they are probably the four most important ingredients to being a doormat in this world!

            So it is no wonder that the powers and principalities so readily reject Jesus and this fools errand of a model for living in the REAL world; no wonder the world doesn’t fear followers of this message that is, by every metric cherished by the world, weak, foolish, and destined to fail. 

            This is not how to get ahead in the real world.

            And that is exactly the point.

            Contrary to the Rev. Good Hair TV preachers, the gospel is not a recipe for success and prospering your life in this world.  Rather than revealing a better way to win at the game, Jesus rejects the game all together and shows us in its place a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

            What Jesus proposes here is a whole new way of living that is contrary to the rules and the goals of the world.  In these words is the start of a counterculture- a revolution rooted in community that rejects the limitations and assumptions of the “real world” by introducing a whole new reality; the kingdom of God.

            So what is the formula for this new reality- this kingdom reality?

            First, we have to reorient our relationships from adversity to community. 

            We have to stop seeing the other as the target of justice- you took my eye, I will take yours- and adopt a posture of forgiveness, forbearance, and reconciliation.

Notice that when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” there is no implication that it is going to be struck too!  We read that into the text.  What Jesus commands is not about offering your other cheek so it too may be slapped, but giving your neighbor the benefit of the doubt that it will not be.

            When Jesus upends the assumptions of this world, he rejects the notion that we are living zero-sum lives where your gain means my loss and the one who dies with the most toys wins. 

            In this short passage of just 69 Greek words, Jesus gives 6 separate commands on how to relate to another person.  One after the other, Jesus uses these admonitions to lay the foundation for reconciliation and community; a new reality founded not on the limitations of the world but the boundlessness of God. 

            But what kind of community? 

What kind of community is Christ calling us to embrace in this new reality of the kingdom of God?

            In our moment in history, this second part of Jesus call to community is perhaps one of the most radical pieces of the gospel. 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵so 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. ⁴⁶For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

            I heard a politician being interviewed one day and the interviewer asked him where he got his news and he listed several news sources including the Wall Street Journal and Fox News.  The anchor was visibly surprised.  He looked incredulously at the politician and said, “but you’re a Democrat!”  To which the politician replied, “exactly.  I already know what I think.”

            As the experts have unpacked the last Presidential election one of the themes that is emerging is the impact of the “echo chamber.”  More than in recent years, we seem to be withdrawing into communities of strict commonality where our diversity of opinion and outlook is reduced to the lowest common denominator.  There are news sources for liberals and conservatives, social media like Facebook and Twitter follow your likes and dislikes to know which news stories to put in your daily feed; there are even online dating sites now that let users filter potential partners based on political views!

            We have become so adept at parsing our neighbors and pigeon holing one another that we have reached a point in a rapidly diversifying world that our lives are less diverse each and every day.  

            We have gone from us vs. them to us vs. them vs. them vs. them with ever shrinking circles defining who is in and who is out and our civil discourse has become so bellicose that we have trouble seeing any of them as deserving of the time much less our friendship, care, community, or prayer.

            Jesus takes this moment in human history and turns it entirely upside down.  Notice that Jesus does not encourage us to become more diverse in our circle of friends and neighbors. 

Diversity within the boundaries of communities we define is not the point. 

            The point is to get rid of the boundaries all together; to tear down and stop building the walls that parcel us off one from the other.  We are called to create and live in communities defined by being no more discriminate than the sunshine or the rain; to let our goodwill fall on the world the way the rain does on the earth. 

            Jesus calls us to a true community of the whole human family.

            That this text comes up in the lectionary as we are in the middle of a national debate on immigration and the politics and policy of refugee admittance to this country is, I think, as much if not more a function of providence as coincidence.  Like most of you, I have personal opinions on what our national policy should be but I have no expertise to claim in international relations, national security, or immigration policy.

            What I can offer is the observation that from the earliest stories of the Israelites to the modern story of the church, God’s people have been called and commanded to care for the immigrant in their midst.  Welcoming the stranger is at the heart of our call to community in Christ and care for neighbor is an indispensible element in our Christian faith which is based on the gospel of Jesus Christ and not the realpolitik of the day. 

This call hospitality and community is not a negotiable part of the gospel and any church, community, society, or nation that fails to be mindful about and demonstrate care for the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee in their midst stands afoul of the calling of Christ. 

            The place of the church in the world is standing directly in the path of a culture of fear of the other and division among peoples as we proclaim loudly and without ceasing that ours is a God whose love falls like the rain; covering and nurturing all the earth. 

            Those last words of our text today, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” may sound like a charge too great to achieve.  When used in this context the Greek word telos, which can certainly be translated as “perfect” might fairly be rendered “whole.”  The telos to which Christ calls us is not the perfection of flawlessness but the perfection of wholeness of completeness.  We are made whole and given all that we need to relentlessly give voice in the world to the promise and vision of the Kingdom of God. 

            Imagine that!  A church relentless in its proclamation:

            of the dignity of all people;

            the boundlessness of God’s love;

            the promise of God’s kingdom;

            the eternity of God’s love;

            and the call to all creation to holy community defined by how wide it reaches rather than by whom it excludes.

            That is a church to make the powers and principalities tremble; a church for the forces of division and dehumanization to fear.

            Leonard Bernstein, when he debuted his modern mass, said that in his opinion the most dangerous words in any language are, “let us pray.”  When we utter those words we acknowledge the one who calls us to prayer and prayerful living and we declare in the face of the world our faith in the one who is greater than the world. 

            Those are the first words of our resistance to the world. 

When we pray, not only for those we love, but also for those God loves;

those who have done us well and those who have done us ill;

when we pray even the prayers that hurt to say, we begin our active resistance to the powers and principalities that would divide God’s children and we take the first steps toward the holy community of Christ.

            When we pray, we begin a revolution of wholeness in a broken world.

            So…let us pray.

            God of boundless grace, you have called us to cross every human border and boundary so we may begin to realize your holy community of promise.  Give us ears to hear your word above the din of the world and eyes to see your children beyond the interests of our own lives.  As the hymn writer said, grand us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of this and every day.  Let the holy revolution of your promise begin here in our hearts.  Amen.

---

[i] As happens so often, Dr. David Lose provided invaluable insight to the text and offered this observation about Rand and Marx in a Working Preacher post from 2014.

People of The[ir] Word

Matthew 5:20-37

Ordinary Time 6A

February 12, 2017

Fondren Presbyterian Church

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Our text from Matthew today is from the Sermon on the Mount.

            I am going to go out on a limb and guess that you may not have known that after all the lyrical language of the “blessed are they…” formulations and the affirming metaphors of salt and light, Jesus, in the very same sermon, moves on to murder, adultery, and lying. Jesus must have skipped that day in preaching class when Dr. Black-Johnston warned that we needed to keep in mind the weariness of our listeners.

            Blessed are the weak, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and oh by the way,…

            The word radical is probably not one most of us associate with this text.  That blessed are the peacemakers bit, that was radical stuff, but this whole adultery in your heart thing feels a little…fundamentalist!

            At first glance it seems that what Jesus does here is take the law- that register of commandments on how to order spiritual and worldly living- and make it even more difficult to hold.  The law that was already strict becomes entirely inflexible.  When I think of the radical message of the gospel, I think of Dr. King on the Mall in Washington or Dorothy Day’s non-violence in the face of power or tens of thousands of Christians marching alongside their neighbors in protest of political policies that target the beliefs of people they have never met. 

            What I don’t think of is taking legalisms and making them more legalistic and less forgiving and, if I am honest, at first glance that is what it seems like Jesus is doing here.  The one who calls us to radical hospitality and radical love has become a purveyor of fundamentalist moralistic judgment.

            At first glance it seems that way.

            And if anyone else was doing the talking here, it might be reasonable to understand this text that way. 

            But this is not some politician trying to score cheap points or a preacher trying to scare their flock into submissive obedience to their interpretation of God’s own law.  This is God incarnate; this is joy of heaven to earth come down; this is wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace speaking and if we are to hear the truth in the words we must keep in mind the truth of the speaker.

            Two of my friends in Little Rock build pipe organs.  They have built them all over the world from small country churches to some of the largest cathedrals in Europe.  Each instrument, they say, has its own voice.  You can play the same piece of music on two different instruments and there will be subtle differences because each one has its own unique voice. 

            Nothing less is true about Jesus so how do we hear these words in HIS voice?

            How do we hear them in the voice of the one who is in fact a bearer of radical Good News?

            The root of the word radical is the Latin radix which means root or in some circumstances foundation.  The radix is what lingers below to give strength and stability to what is above.  If you ever visit the 9/11 memorial in NYC, you go into the basement to what is known as the bathtub.  There you see the enormous concrete footings with tiebacks holding them steady and keeping the seeping waters of the Hudson River at bay.  That radix-that foundation- is all that is left of the shimmering pillars of glass and steel that once towered over lower Manhattan.[i]  

            So what is Jesus the radical- Jesus the one who presses us toward the foundations of our faith- doing here in this odd and off-putting exegesis of the law?

            He is radicalizing it.  Jesus is radicalizing the law.  At least he is radicalizing it in so much as he is pressing us to look past the words and into the foundational spirit of God’s law.  Jesus wants us to get beneath the surface and see what is down below, out of sight, yet essential to holding our world of faith upright.

            From the outside looking in, it seems as thought what Jesus does here is tighten the vice of the law and make it even more difficult- in fact impossible- to keep.  But seen from the radix- from the view not outside but deep within- we find that what Jesus is doing here is not tightening the grip of the law but sharpening our understanding of it.

            “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”

            The words of the law are about murder but the foundation of that law- the radix that Jesus the radical calls to our attention- is not merely about not taking a life.  It is about the way we live together.  The law forbids the most egregious end to our anger, but it is the anger itself that God wants us to deal with. 

            “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” 

            The words of the law are about adultery but the radix of that law is about our failure to see the other as more than the potential solutions to a momentary need.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’  But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.”

The words of the law are about not lying when under an oath to God, but the radix of that law is about the need to enter every relationship, large or small, with integrity and honesty. 

Far from reducing the law of God to a reactionary literalistic moralistic code up to which none of us can ever begin to live, Jesus the radical takes us to the radix- the foundation of all law…the ordering of our relationships.

And that, more than any possible checklist of do’s and don’ts, is at the heart of God’s law. 

Still, even that feels out of reach.  Not only do we need to guard against breaking the letter of the law but also the unintended consequences of walking down the road toward breaking it; not just taking another’s life but devaluing it; not just breaking our covenant vow but reducing another person to an object of momentary desire; not just refraining from lying but refraining from thinking of another as unworthy of our truth.

The purpose of the law is human flourishing and that cannot happen as long as we manipulate, objectify, or scorn our neighbor.

Jesus calls us in this text to really do some deep self-examination and soul searching about our own relationships.

I heard one preacher reflecting on this text who said that after pondering these three admonitions from Jesus he thought to himself, “well, two our of three ain’t bad.” 

He never told us which was the third one.  Though I think I have a clue.

The first command Jesus draws us into considering is the prohibition on killing and with it this call to resist living with such anger that we simply disregard our neighbor.  I would wager to say that there have been times in all of our lives when we have let our anger or frustration with someone get the better of us and, in my life at least, I have murdered more than one personal relationship with my inability to get past my anger.

Still, though I sin and fall far short of the glory of God, I feel like I am at least on the right track with this one.

That’s one.

The second command Jesus draws us into considering is the prohibition on adultery.  Easily reduced to a law solely about marital fidelity, this commandment is also much more.  In Jesus time, marriage was the most common personal relationship shared by his audience.  It’s demands and traditions were well known and in it Jesus saw an opportunity to underscore God’s provision and care for all of God’s children.  It is about covenantal relationships in whatever form they take. 

Anytime we see in the other a means to an end rather than an end in itself, we diminish that person and fail in our covenant relationship with our neighbors.  As surely as if we had broken a marital vow, when we break the command to love neighbor AS self we have broken God’s command.

Any well-examined life will reveal times when we have failed to value our neighbors as ourselves.  I like to think that as I get older and learn from my failures in life, I have grown more toward obedience to this law rather than away from it.  So hopefully on the right track here too.

That’s two.

The third command Jesus draws into considering is the prohibition on swearing falsely.  Listen again to what Jesus says:

“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’  But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

Jesus’s first two trips into the radix of the laws reveals a need to be even more attentive to the spirit of each one.  Here, however, Jesus takes a different turn.

“Do not swear at all.”

You heard that right.

“Do not swear at all.”

It is tempting to hear in this final exhortation on the law as a repudiation of it. 

Wishful thinking.

There is no way that Jesus, whose character we have come to know through his teaching and speaking and centuries of faithful encounter through the church would have said, “don’t worry about that whole not lying thing.  Lie away, truth be damned!”

What Jesus does here is not excuse us from swearing in God’s name truthfully, but remind us that swearing in God’s name at all is a mistake.  Not because God’s name is not worthy of our truth, but because our truth is never full enough to bear God’s name.

Or heaven’s name.

Or even Jerusalem’s name.

And to say otherwise, to pretend that we are in possession of a truth so fulsome that it might bear the name of God, is the doorway to hypocrisy and we all know how Jesus felt about hypocrites!

When Jesus tells us, “do not swear at all,” he reminds us that however confident we are in our truth, however fulsome we are in our beliefs, however convinced we are that we are right and they are wrong, we still see through the glass dimly, we still fall short of the glory of God, and none of us ever poses the fullness of God’s truth. 

Like the wise preacher said, two out of three ain’t bad!

I like to think that my confidence in my own understanding of what is right and what is true leaves room for the possibility that I am mistaken or misguided. 

I like to think that, but then I get on Facebook and see a post from someone whose shared opinion hits me like a personal affront.

Or I turn on the news and I see my government doing things in my name that I cannot conceive how anyone thought it to be an idea worthy of a great nation.

I get myself worked up into a real lather of frustration with these otherwise bright people who say and believe such foolish things, who are so wrong headed, who see the world through these bizarre glasses.

I might be wrong, but I KNOW they are wrong!

Really, I do.  I KNOW it.

I am positive that my point of view is right.

Truly.

Just read the bible!

Just look at the words of Jesus!

I am not perfect, but I think I am on safe ground saying that on some of these current issues I am right and they are wrong.  I am not a little sure of it I am positive.

Really.

It is the truth.

I swear to God…

Oops…

As we continue to live into this season of discord and disagreement in our culture, it is perhaps more important than ever to remember that the truth is not something we can monogram and call exclusively our own. 

Truth in its fullest sense belongs to God. 

And so do those with whom we disagree. 

And just as it is essential that we as disciples of Christ stand up for what we believe including the dignity and promise of all God’s children, we must live that belief even with those children of God in whom we struggle to see dignity or promise.

 In our text last week, Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the law but to see its fulfillment.  He links his ministry to the gift of the law the foundation of which is at the heart of his ministry; the building and bettering of human relationships and communities and the proclamation of hope in the kingdom of God. 

In the coming days, I hope that we will all seek to see our world and especially our neighbors through the lens of the radix of the law.  That we will seek out those places where our relationships may be repaired or rebuilt.  That we will remember each and every day that the truth of Christ is not ours to posses but ours to proclaim…

…with love, fidelity, and compassion for ALL of God’s children. 

Let us pray.

Giving Lord, you build our lives on the roots of your promise.  Fill our hearts and our lives to overflowing with the hope and love of Christ.  May we see in each of your children the value, dignity, and love you see in all your creation.  Give us hearts of generosity, spirits of gentleness, and the courage to share your truth in a sinful and broken world. Amen.

---

[i] Dr. Scott Hoezee at Calvin Theological Seminary made this great connection.