Jesus Hits the Reset Button (Sermon on the Mount part 1, Feb 2 2014)

Homily:  Yr A Proper 4, February 2 2014, St. Albans

Readings: Micah 6.1-8; Ps 15; 1 Cor 1.18-31; Mt 5.1-12

Jesus hits the reset button (Sermon on the Mount #1)

In 1990, George H. Bush gave a speech to a joint session of Congress in which he proclaimed a new world order.  It was the end of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Bloc.  It was the eve of the Gulf War in Kuwait and Iraq.  It was a time of hope, of hope that the superpowers and the UN could work together to usher in a new era of peace.  And so President Bush proclaimed a new world order, one in which “the rule of law governs the conduct of nations.”

It hasn’t worked out so well.  As I speak, there is war in Syria, in South Sudan, and in the Central African Republic.   The USA and Russia are at loggerheads and the UN has been ineffective.  So much for President Bush’s new world order.

Now, this wasn’t the first time that someone had proclaimed a new world order.  This morning we begin the first of four Sunday readings of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, beginning in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.  And make no mistake, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the proclamation of a new world order.  By the time he gets to the end, Matthew records that “when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching.”  And we should be no less astonished.  Because beginning with the Beatitudes which we heard today, Jesus proclaims a new world order, a world in which the economy of exchange is replaced by the economy of grace.

Since the dawn of humanity, we are used to thinking in terms of exchange.  We say things like:

“you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”

“people should get what they deserve”

“That’s not fair”

“work hard and good things will follow”

“God helps those who help themselves”

“If you obey God, you will be blessed”

That’s the language of exchange.  Another language for this economy of exchange is to talk about Karma.  This past week, Romi sent me a link to an interview in which Bono of U2 talks about the difference between Karma and Grace.  In it he says,

“You see, at the centre of all religions is the idea of Karma.  You know, what you put out comes back to you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics, every action is met by an equal and opposite reaction.  And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that.”

Grace is a gift of God.  Grace is the free and unmerited favour of God towards you.  You can’t do anything to earn grace.  You can only receive it, and respond to it.

Jesus in the sermon of the mount is proposing a revolution.  The economy of exchange, the idea of Karma needs to be overthrown and upended and give way to Grace.

Because we’ve got it wrong.  When Jesus looks at the world around him, when we look at the world around us, we still see a world that is dominated by the principles of exchange.  Even when we look at our religious tradition, which is supposedly based on the teachings of Jesus, we still can see the power of exchange at work.  In our Psalm that we read this morning, a psalm that Jesus would have read, the first line reads:

Question:  Lord who may dwell in your tabernacle, who may abide on your holy hill?

Answer:  Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, who speaks the truth from his heart.

I think most people hearing this would immediately think in terms of exchange:  If I lead a good life, then I get the goodies, in this case meaning I get to dwell in the tabernacle of the Lord.  Certainly that’s the way most of Jesus’ contemporaries heard it.  The religious authorities of the day had constructed a vast array of rules and regulations to assist them in leading what they understood to be a blameless life.

But according to Jesus, they’ve got it all wrong.  They’ve misunderstood what God was trying to teach them way back in the days of Moses.  When the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, God heard their cry and responded to them, “Blessed are the slaves in Egypt, for I will rescue them from their oppression.”  That was grace, the gift of redemption in the Exodus.  It was only after the Exodus that God through Moses gave the people of Israel yet another gift, the gift of the Law which would teach them how to live together in community, how to be the people that God created them to be and how to be a blessing for others.

But for the most part, the people who came after misunderstood.  They forgot that the blessing came first and then the Law.  The dominant interpretation in the Old Testament became that of Deuteronomy, this idea that obedience to the law of Moses brings God’s blessing and disobedience brings God’s curse, the withdrawal of God’s favour.  A divine economy of exchange.

And so Jesus hits the reset button.  He goes back to the beginning.

Just like Moses, Jesus went up the mountain, up to the place where God and humanity meet.

When Moses goes up the mountain, he warns the people not to come up the mountain with him.  It’s too dangerous.  He sets limits around the mountain.

But when Jesus goes up the mountain, he invites his disciples to come up the mountain with him.  It is a new image of God, it’s the image of a God who looks upon us with favour and invites us into relationship.

When Moses speaks from the mountain, he proclaims Commandments.

But when Jesus speaks from the mountain, he does something different.  He proclaims not commandments, but blessings.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

What does it mean to be blessed?

I must admit that I wrestle with the idea of blessing.  Even though I am the person officially sanctioned in our tradition to do blessings, even though I bless people every week, I’m not always sure that I know what I’m doing.

One of the problems is that I often hear people say things like “I am blessed” or “count your blessings”.  Maybe some of you use that sort of language.  The problem is, when I hear someone say that they’ve been blessed, rarely are they talking about being poor or hungry or in mourning, like the people that Jesus blesses.  Instead, they usually mean that something good has happened in their lives, and they’re giving God some of the credit.  They’ve got a good job, or a nice home, or a loving family or whatever it is.

The problem is that this sort of language gets so easily infected with the language of exchange, with the idea that if you do good and if you obey God and you believe the right things, then God will respond by showering you with blessings, with good things.  And then, we can go one step further and turn this around and say to ourselves, “hey, my life is good, I’ve got money, and I’m happy and I must have all these blessings from God because I’m a good person.”  And then we go a step further, and do some sort of horrible integration between this sort of theology and capitalism and consumerism and we get what’s sometimes called the prosperity gospel, which says that those people that are healthy and doing well economically must be living good and faithful lives that are pleasing to God.  And then we use that to justify income inequality, and to look down on the poor and blame them for their own poverty.

And as soon as we even start to go down that trail, it’s time to hit the reset button and hear Jesus say again,

“Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry, those who are persecuted.”

Jesus is offering an alternative vision, a new world order, a radical, subversive, revolutionary way of understanding both the world and God based on grace.

What does it mean for you to be blessed?  It means that God sees you, is with you, cares for you, and will act for you.  Not because you’re good.  Not because your deserve it.  Not because you’ve earned it.  But because you are a child of God, and God loves you and God especially reaches out to those who are in need. 

Which is all of us, by the way.  It’s just that some of us don’t know it.  Some of us are rich in spirit.  We think we’re okay, we’re good, we got things under control, we don’t really need any help right now.  The economy of exchange works pretty well for us.  In fact it works so well that I’m just not ready give up relying on my own abilities, possessions, rights and actions and to rely on God’s grace instead.

But some of us are poor in spirit.  Crushed by life.  In desperate circumstances.  Aware of our own inadequacy, of our own sinfulness. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  The kingdom of heaven is all about grace, and the poor in spirit are ready to receive grace with open arms, just as those who mourn are ready to receive the gift of comfort and the hungry will take what they’re given.  People who are poor in spirit get this grace stuff.

Jesus blesses people who have no claim on God’s blessing.  It’s not a quid pro quo.  It’s pure gift.  Grace.

Amen.

Made for a Purpose (January 26 2014)

Homily.  Yr A Proper 3.  January 26, 2014.  St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 9.1-4; Ps 27.1,5-13; 1Cor 1.10-18; Mt.4.12-23

The Lord is my light.  So begins Psalm 27 that we read together this morning, and that’s where I want to begin this morning.  We are in the season of Epiphany, and one of the central images of Epiphany is the light that comes into the darkness.  It’s an image that’s picked up in both our Old Testament and our Gospel readings this morning.  Isaiah, in the 8^th century BC, longs for a light to come into the darkness of the lands of northern Israel, the first of the lands of Israel to be conquered, the first of the people of Israel to suffer military oppression, hunger, forced exile and depopulation.  Isaiah longs for light to come into this darkness, much in the same way that millions of people in Syria, and in the Central African Republic long for light to come into their darkness at this very moment.

For people in ancient times, in the days before electricity, there were two very different ways of picturing the light that comes into the darkness.  One image is the sun.  At the dawn of each new day, the light of the sun overcomes the darkness and chases it away.  It is a powerful image of light, a bright light that makes everything visible.  The sun is one way to imagine God as light, as the light that comes into the darkness.  That’s what Isaiah was hoping for in his day, that’s how Matthew, with the benefit of hindsight, sees Jesus:  a great light, a new dawn. 

But there’s another way we can picture light, and that is the light of the small clay oil lamps that were the most common way of generating a little light at night in biblical times.  The oil-lamp gives us a different way of imagining God as light.  The oil-lamp creates a small circle of light in the darkness, warm and reassuring, just enough to light up our hands and our faces and the immediate surroundings, but certainly not enough to dispel the darkness. 

It’s enough light to move around, to take a step.  But the light of an oil-lamp doesn’t light up very much of your path, maybe only the next couple of steps.  It’s not like the sun, which chases away the darkness and lights up your path as far as the eye can see, revealing any obstacles and twists and turns along the way.  No, with the oil lamp it’s just one step at a time.

And so I think it’s interesting that when we say things like, “The Lord is my light” and “the light that comes into the darkness”, depending on whether we’re taking the sun or the oil-lamp as our image of light, we are talking about two very different experiences.

With the sun as our image, we’re talking about an experience of illumination, of truth, of certainty, of knowledge.  We can see what lies ahead of us, the doubts and fears of the darkness have been cleared away.  But with the oil-lamp as our image, things are a bit less certain.  We have enough light to take a couple of steps, but beyond that, it’s still dark. Uncertainties and questions remain, and to take those first steps requires an act of faith.  Maybe Martin Luther King Jr. had the image of the oil-lamp in mind when he defined faith by saying that “faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

I think that responding to God’s call is a lot like that.  When God calls, usually we only get an oil-lamp’s worth of light, just enough to see a few steps ahead but not enough to see the whole path.  And that makes responding to God’s call an act of faith.

Our gospel reading today begins in darkness.  John the Baptist has been arrested, and John’s followers, including Jesus, are immediately put at risk.  Jesus withdraws from Judea to go back to his home region of Galilee.  His life is in turmoil.  He leaves his family and his hometown of Nazareth.  Why does he leave?  Is it to avoid arrest?  Is it to protect his family?  Don’t know.  He heads north to make a new home in Capernaum.  And yet in the midst of this flux, this turmoil, this darkness, Jesus is aware of God’s call.  And in an act which is surely a gesture of defiance at the forces of darkness, Jesus begins to proclaim the exact same message that got John in trouble:  “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  

And at that moment, as Jesus launched his ministry, I don’t know how far ahead he could see.  I don’t know if the full extent of his journey was visible to him, whether he’d already worked everything out.  I tend to think that, like the rest of us, the light that God gave him was more like an oil lamp than the full-on sun, and that those first few steps were taken without knowing where the rest of the journey would lead him, and that making that initial, dangerous proclamation was an act of faith.  Faith is taking that first step, even when you don’t know where the path is leading.

The gospel continues with the calling of the disciples.  Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee, sees Simon and Andrew, calls to them “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” and immediately they leave their nets and follow Jesus.

As Matthew records it, it’s a pretty stripped down story.  Not many details.  I’d like to know some of those details!  Was this the first time that Simon and Andrew had ever met Jesus, or had they known each other for a while?  Did they know what Jesus was all about, had they heard him teach in the synagogue?  Was this the culmination of a series of planning meetings and discussions or did it really happen as suddenly as Matthew is suggesting?  When Jesus said to them “follow me”, did Simon and Andrew start running through a check list of pros and cons, did they ask any questions, did they take any time to think about it, or was it really a spur of the moment decision? 

That’s the sort of stuff I’d like to know!  But Matthew doesn’t give us any of that, just the stripped-down, bare-bones version.  Why?

I think it’s because Matthew wants to make it clear that responding to God’s call is an act of faith.  The Lord is my light, but I don’t usually get that as full-on sun.  I get the oil-lamp, just enough light to see one or maybe two steps ahead, but not enough to see the whole path.  We don’t always get the details, we can’t always see too far ahead, heck, most of the time we’re not even sure whether God’s calling us or not.    We don’t know anything about why Simon and Andrew, and then James and John respond to Jesus’ call.  But we do know that their response is an act of faith.

And how we respond matters.  Two weeks ago I talked about our altars in the world, the place where each one of us responds to the purpose that God is calling us to.  It was an idea that found some resonance here, and generated some questions and insights that some of you have shared with me over the last couple of weeks. 

For some of us, talking about our altars in the world helped us realize that what we do matters and what we do is sacred.  That is no small thing.  The Lilly foundation did a survey amongst church congregations in the US recently, and they discovered that most people in the pews don’t feel called, and they don’t feel that what they do outside the church is worthy of God’s attention and interest.  I want to say just the opposite.  God sees, God cares, and God calls us to participate in the work of his kingdom wherever we are.  Your altar in the world can be anywhere, but wherever it is, it is sacred.

For some of us, the image of an altar in the world resonated strongly because we were at a point of transition in our own lives, and because our lives seem to be so often in transition, and because transitions bring questions of meaning and purpose to the fore.  UCLA did a survey recently in which 4 out 5 US College students stated that “finding my purpose in life” is an important part of the college experience.  However that same survey indicated that only 1 in 5 college professors ever raised questions of meaning and purpose in their courses!  We need a place and we need images and metaphors that help us to talk about questions of meaning and purpose, especially when our lives are in transition.

For some, the immediate question whenever we talk about call and vocation, is how can I know what God is calling me to do?  To that question, which is a good question, the best I can offer from my own experience is that we don’t know.  Instead, we trust.  Most of us want the bright light of the sun that reveals the path that lies ahead.  Some people get that.  Many of us get the oil-lamp that allows us to see only a few steps at a time.  Taking those steps requires us to trust, and sometimes might even require us to back-track when we choose the wrong path.  Responding to God’s call is an act of faith.  But it’s not blind faith.  When Jesus is asked for guidance on how to live, his response is straightforward.  Love God, and love you neighbor as yourself.

For some people this whole conversation is difficult, because too often we associate  vocation with employment, and many people don’t find their jobs to be meaningful.  We spend a lot of time at our jobs, and if you are in a job that provides you with a sense of meaning and purpose, you are blessed and should give thanks every day of your life.  Many people are in a different situation, where work, is well, work.  But vocation is not the same thing as employment.  Vocation is at its core relational.  God calls us to be in relationship with others, to serve others and especially to respond to the needs of those who are oppressed or vulnerable.  Your work is just one of the places where you have the opportunity to be in relationship with others.

And finally, at least for this morning, one of the things that I find the most amazing is the radical inclusiveness of God’s call.  All of God’s children are made for a purpose.   Ordinary fishermen like Simon and Andrew are called to follow Jesus.  From the surgeon doing a heart-transplant to the infant with disabilities, all of God’s children are made for a purpose and called to that purpose.  Our purpose is grounded in our identity as God’s children, not in our giftedness, nor our abilities, nor in the situation in which we find ourselves.   Our gifts and abilities and situation will certainly shape our purpose and mission; everyone’s altar in the world will look different. 

But the truth that each one of us was made for a purpose is grounded not in what we are, nor in where we are, but in who we are:  children of God, loved by God, made for a purpose.

Amen.