Sermon for 2.13.11

Scriptures for today are here: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi6_RCL.html

SERMON NOTES FOR 2.13.11

Happy day before Valentine’s Day! One of the great cultural festivals, complete with flowers and balloons and candy hearts and best of all, chocolate! And it’s all about love. And if we Christians know anything, we know that God is love. So naturally, when we arrive at church the day before Valentine’s Day, we expect hearts and teddy bears! Rainbows and unicorns! And chocolate!

So we take a look at the gospel and we get: “If you say, ‘you fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. And, if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away – better lose an eye than go to hell.” Well, Happy Valentine’s Day.

Evidently Jesus was not clued in about Valentine’s Day. (Obviously, he was a Bachelor.)

Now, I’m speaking a bit flippantly about Valentine’s Day, but the truth that we know about God, above all truths, is that God loves us, in fact God is the love that created us – and God’s most important commandment is for us to love God and love each other. So how does it make sense for a loving Savior, Son of the God who is love, to talk in such harsh and demanding words as he does in today’s gospel?

To understand this gospel, the first thing I think we need to do is forget about Valentine’s Day – which happens just once a year – because the whole point of this gospel is that love is not just a sometime thing, and it is not just about romance – if we are living a Christian life, love is what we love every day and every moment.

To understand this gospel, it helps to back up a little and put our scriptures in context. Our scriptures today talk about life-enhancing and life-destroying choices. In Deuteronomy, we have Moses’ farewell speech – Moses was the great lawgiver who brought the Ten Commandments down from Mt. Sinai, and before he dies, he tells the people of Israel that the Law is their guide to life. If they choose to live God’s way, they will be making a choice for life, full human flourishing, true joy – and Moses urges them to choose life.

In our gospel from Matthew today, Jesus intentionally picks up where Moses left off. For the past three weeks, we have been reading the Sermon on the Mount. For Matthew, it’s important that we get the point that Jesus is on the mountain, like Moses on Mt. Sinai, giving us the law we are to live by. In last week’s gospel, which was also part of this sermon, Jesus said he didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it – and here he goes on to show us what he means.

He starts with the Ten Commandments (or 3 of them – the commandments against murder, adultery and bearing false witness) – and he doesn’t get rid of them but intensifies them, expands their scope, you might even say he radicalizes them. In fact what he does in each case is, he moves from a negative law – you shall not murder, bear false witness, commit adultery – to a much broader, positive law. Living as a Christian means not just paying attention to the few things we shouldn’t do – but also adopting a much broader positive way of life – the way of love. So pay attention to how Jesus makes each of these commandments broader, more positive – not commanding us NOT to do something, but giving us a new way to live.

He begins: "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.” Let’s just admit up front that we’ve all probably called other people fools. And it’s not possible to go through life without getting angry. If people tell me in counseling that they never get angry, I’m pretty sure they’re lying to me – or worse, lying to themselves.

Let’s try to understand what Jesus is doing, by asking ourselves this: if we promise not to murder each other every time we disagree, is that the basis for a good and healthy relationship between us? Well, it’s a start – but I have to say that it’s a bare minimum. If we want to be in right relationship with each other, we have to promise more than we won’t kill each other – we have to agree that when we disagree with someone, we won’t let it simmer until it boils over in resentment, anger, and frustration that leads us into a law court, as Jesus points out, or permanently scars our relationship. Because when we get this angry, we are failing to treat each other with respect, we are deadening our relationships, killing the love that exists between us.

If we want to have a relationship based on love, we have to do what I always counsel people who getting married to do – learn to disagree in a healthy way. We have to understand that conflict, when done right, is a gift from God to help us learn things we don’t know. And therefore, we have to say what is on our minds in a non-accusing way, we have to listen carefully to what the other person has to say and try to understand how they feel and how they perceived the situation.

So think about an argument: Harry gets angry at Sally and starts yelling and screaming at her. And every time she tries to say something in return, Harry isn’t listening because he’s busy using that time to make up his next argument to prove why she is wrong. For him, the point of this conflict is to win. At the same time, Sally, after trying a couple of time to say what she wants to say, clams up and refuses to talk any more, and just caves in to make him stop being angry. A week from now, she’s forgotten what the argument is about, but she’s still angry. For her, the point of this conflict is to get through it so there will be quiet, even if there isn’t any peace.

Who’s wrong? Both of them. They have both failed to use this conflict creatively. Which means truly, deeply listening and trying to understand, and making oneself understood. Because we have to try to understand each other if we are going to be able to put ourselves in the other person’s place, and putting ourselves in each other’s places is the basis of any love relationship, because it makes it possible to love the other as we love ourselves.

Jesus goes on to say something very interesting: “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” How fascinating – Jesus says that our failure to live in right relationship with each other actually prevents us from worshiping God. Religious observance, loving God, doesn’t mean anything if it’s not accompanied by true, right relationship, loving our neighbor, in the rest of our lives. Worshiping God is an empty ceremony if we have not addressed the brokenness in our relationships with each other – and right relationship is one gift we offer God. In fact, in a very deep way, our relationship with God is based on our relationships with the people around us – we learn how to love God by loving people.

Oh yes, this gospel is all about love – Happy Valentine’s Day.

Jesus goes on to talk about another commandment – you shall not commit adultery. And again, he expands it to cover something so common that it’s very difficult for us to hear –don’t even look at someone other than your spouse with lust (remember Jimmy Carter?). Once again, what Jesus is doing follows the same pattern as before. Yes, avoiding adultery is the bare minimum in marriage. But Jesus says marriage is much bigger than this – if we are looking at other people, dreaming of other relationships, making up fantasies of how good life could be, we are diverting our attention from our spouse, putting a wedge in that relationship. And we have promised to love and cherish that spouse for life. Which means they deserve all our attention – not just by meeting the bare minimum, but by devoting ourselves, truly and deeply, to our spouse – paying attention to them, putting their needs before our own, working to develop that love relationship.

Oh yes, this is a Valentine’s Day gospel – because love is more than hearts and roses.

Jesus talks about divorce in very stark terms – and what we need to understand is this. Marriage is a sacrament and we are to devote ourselves to it, working hard at love. But sometimes no matter how hard we try, we fail – and is there a second chance? Of course there is: We serve a God of grace and love, and the whole message of Jesus’ life and ministry is that God is aching to forgive us so we can be reconciled. The point of what Jesus is saying is that in marriage and in all our other relationships, the main work of our lives is learning how to love each other – and that is a task we need to devote ourselves to, heart and soul.

Jesus says this crazy thing about cutting off hands and tearing out eyes if they cause us to sin – which is a kind of hyperbole ancient Mediterranean people used – don’t try this at home! What he means is this: if we are living in a way that causes harm to others, we shouldn’t look for other people to blame – we need to look at ourselves – take a look at what we need to change in ourselves to fix the situation – and then change it. Because there’s only one person in this world that we can change, and that’s ourselves.

Jesus talks about one more commandment – don’t bear false witness against others. Based on this saying, some Christian groups refuse to take oaths in court of law. But again, Jesus is saying something much deeper than this. He is saying, live your life with integrity; it shouldn’t take an oath in a court of law to make us tell the truth; we should tell the truth all the time. Let your yes be yes and your no be no, he says, it doesn’t take swearing on the Bible to live this way. Martin Luther went a step further and said not only are we to tell the truth about each other – we are to interpret each other’s actions in the very best possible light. We are to give each other the benefit of the doubt, believe the best of each other, don’t even hint of negative motives, don’t gossip about each other. Which could possibly be the hardest of these commandments to keep, because it’s hard to act as though we believe the best about each other all the time. But once again, it is a commandment that allows us to learn to love each other, to treat each other with respect, and to allow each other to flourish as beloved human beings.

In each of these sayings, Jesus has taken a simple negative prohibition – don’t do something, achieve the bare minimum – and he has expanded it. Do more than meet the bare minimum, he says. Work toward real, true, deep, lasting love in all relationships. And as we learn to love our neighbors, we will learn to love God. Loving God and loving our neighbors are the truest, deepest, most challenging commandments – but in learning to obey these commandments, we choose life, life lived in the fullness of God’s love.

So Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. I hope there will be chocolate.

Sermon Notes for 2.6.11

Scriptures for today are found here: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi5_RCL.html

What is the economic value of a church? We might not be accustomed to thinking of a church in terms of its economic value to its surrounding community. But University of Pennsylvania professor of social policy Ram Cnaan decided to measure the economic impact of a dozen Philadelphia churches. This required him to ask questions like: what is the value of a marriage saved? ($18,000) An addiction conquered? A suicide averted? ($19,600) A teenager taught right from wrong? His researchers counted up the value of weddings, funerals, social services, festivals, counseling services, preschools, charity work, and so on; they added up staff salaries and maintenance work; they calculated things like help finding jobs and training for leadership; they put values on more intangible benefits like a safer corner of a tough neighborhood, and added it all up for these 12 churches. They called the value of a church its “halo effect.” When they totaled it all, these 12 churches added up to $50,577,098 a year – an average halo effect of $4.2 million per church per year, for churches with expense budgets much, much less than that.

You bring the Body of Christ together, put us to work making change in our world, and we can do some amazing things. And all this happens in a society where church is less and less respected or valued as a contributing part of society. Fifty years ago, it was taken for granted that churches were positive influences in the community, and everyone was expected to belong to one. Now, it’s more usual NOT to belong to a church, and if the unchurched population that surrounds us thinks about churches at all, studies show that they are likely to think of us as intolerant, judgmental, narrow, old-fashioned, fundamentalist. Yet quietly, without fanfare, churches make a huge difference in people’s lives.

Which I think would make Jesus very happy, judging from the gospel today. Recall where we are in Matthew’s story: Jesus’ first act is to be baptized, where he hears a voice that says “You are my Son, Beloved, in you I am well pleased.” It is his own belovedness that becomes the foundation for everything he does. And now, in his first sermon (the Sermon on the Mount) he begins to pass that belovedness on to us, because he knows a great truth of human life: the experience of being loved changes us – it changes how we view ourselves and how we relate to other people.

If our gospel last week was Jesus beginning his ministry by blessing us, telling us that God’s love would be with us even in the darkest corners of our lives, so that we could work in partnership with God to bring God’s kingdom to earth, then today’s gospel is where he begins to tell us how to do this, how to be kingdom people, how to share God’s love with others so they also know they are beloved. But his instructions are unexpected – he doesn’t say, march out into the world and overwhelm those who disagree with sheer force of numbers, like a worldly king. He doesn’t say, frighten people into believing in him, he doesn’t say, put on great demonstrations of power and miracles; he talks about ordinary everyday things.

You are the salt of the earth, he tells us, you are the light of the world. They are curious metaphors, quiet things – a teaspoon of salt, a lamp on lampstand. So it helps us to unpack these metaphors a bit. If you are a chef, you know that salt has a very interesting quality. Jesus didn’t say “you are Sugar” or “you are Pepper.” If you add sugar to a dish, its predominant quality becomes sweetness. If you add pepper to a dish, the pepper calls attention to itself with spiciness. Salt is different: if you add salt to, say, chocolate chip cookies, they don’t taste salty – salt brings out the sweet flavor of the sugar and the round, full flavor of the butter – but if you leave out the salt, the whole cookie tastes flat and lifeless. If you add salt to meat, it makes the meat juicier, more tender. If you add it to vegetables, the flavor of the vegetables becomes crisper, more defined. We Americans eat too much salt (because we can afford to), but at its heart, in moderation, salt’s main contribution to a dish is not to overwhelm, but to support and enhance: it brings out the flavor that is already there, makes it richer, livelier.

A lamp lit and set on a lampstand is similar in some ways. You don’t light a lamp to look at the lamp – you light it so you can see everything around it – it lights up a whole house, as Jesus says, and makes it possible for us to carry on normal human activities even on a dark night. The light turns the grays and blacks, the shadows you can see on a dark night, into the colors of your home, words on a page, smiles on the faces of your family. It’s not the light we look at, it’s the things the light allows us to see.

Both salt and light simply create an environment so everything else can shine. So it is with us followers of Christ, says Jesus, we don’t exist for ourselves – we exist for the world around us – we are gifts given by God for the sake of the world. And if we are truly being who we are called to be – salt and light – we bring out the best in those around us.

Do we believe we can really do these things? Be salt and light for our communities? Let me tell you an amazing story that happened just this week in an Episcopal church. (This story is paraphrased from a story that appeared online at the Episcopal News Service.) Tuesday night, after warnings of overnight temperatures of 30 below zero, St. Mark's Church in Casper, Wyoming, decided to keep its doors open all night as an Emergency Warming Shelter for the community's homeless. The shelter, organized entirely through alerts on Facebook, spurred generous donors into action and volunteers into service, transforming St. Mark's parish hall into a well-stocked and welcoming venue within hours of the first Facebook alert. All day, a steady stream of families and volunteers poured through the church's back door, laden with sleeping bags, bedding, coats, gloves, hats and boxes of food. By mid-afternoon, a local small business owner commandeered the large commercial kitchen and began preparing vats of soup, along with hundreds of cookies & muffins. Throughout the evening mobile crews with carloads of coffee, cookies, coats and bedding scoured the city's underpasses, parking lots and out-of-the-way places in search of homeless people still outdoors, bringing people into the church so severely under-dressed for the weather that they never would have survived the night. (One interesting note: it was a semi-homeless man who came to volunteer who served as the best consultant for where and how to find this often invisible segment of the community.) Someone at the local radio and TV stations read about the emergency shelter on Facebook and reported it on the 10 pm news, and a homeless person came to the shelter and guided the volunteers to 18 freezing people huddled in an abandoned apartment without heat or food. The outpouring of community generosity was so vast that there was enough food, clothing, bedding left over to stock the neighborhood Safe House and Salvation Army. A tremendous gift to the people of St. Mark's was the crew of 20- and 30-something dedicated and passionate young adults who volunteered most of the night at the shelter -- none of whom presently attend a church. One volunteer was heard to say, "I am not a churchy-kind of person, but something about this place really resonates with me."

Something about this place really resonates with me – yes, that’s the feeling you get when Christ is alive in a place, when Christians are living with the joy of being beloved by God. Being beloved by God doesn’t mean that we are happy all the time, it’s not a matter of living a sugary-sweet life; it’s a matter of being salt and light for the world. Being beloved by God means that we give that love away: we give ourselves for others, come out into the cold when we could be safe and warm at home; take the time to pray for those who are sick or bring meals to those stuck at home; spend hours helping others find jobs to support their families or write anonymous checks to help out those who have nothing left. It means that we find where the world is suffering and enter into that suffering – not because we enjoy suffering, but because that’s what our Savior did. He inaugurated the kingdom of God by entering into the world’s darkness and bringing light. And when you shine even one small light into the darkness, the darkness is gone.

If we are the light of the world, we will know that the light we are shining is merely a reflection of the true light, which is Jesus Christ – we will be the window that lets his light pour through. And if we are a community that lets God’s light pour through, that means people will sense something about the power of God’s love when they see us in action. They will know the things that can’t be measured by any money, any halo effect: what’s the value of a prayer? A meal for a family when someone is sick? A smiling person saying welcome when you walk in on Sunday morning? The bread and wine of the Eucharist? A group of friends? The love of Christ? Everlasting life?

It’s by the things we cannot count that we know the true economic value of the kingdom of God: priceless, incalculable, a treasure beyond compare.