The New Way in An Old World, Sermon on the Mount, Week 3

The Rev. Tommy A. Thompson
St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, West Vincent
6th Sunday after the Epiphany
12 February 2017

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The following poem by George Herbert is one of my favorite poems and one with which any human being on earth can resonate.

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                              Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                             From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                             If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                             Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                             Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                             Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                             My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                             So I did sit and eat.

We know what it is like to be welcomed and yet not feel worthy of the welcome.  We know what it’s like to feel like we fall short or that we’re just not good enough. Have you ever felt that way? If so you’re definitely not alone!   Unfortunately, the church is to blame for much of this feeling of not measuring up…Even though St. Andrew’s and the Episcopal Church as a whole does an amazing job of sharing the Good News of God’s love for ALL people, we cannot ignore the fact that the church of which we are part has a dark spot in her history and even in her present … unfortunately we’ve been one of the primary reasons people are afraid…feel unwelcome…outcast…alone…helpless – most particular in the sight of God.  To put it short, we’ve given people a very bad picture of God toward them.  When you feel unwelcome/unclean/unworthy to be in God’s presence, it’s not easy to hear good news in Scripture lessons like the one we just heard today.

In this poem, it’s not just anyone offering the invitation to come and sit at the table…It is God – pure, holy, spotless, radiant, majestic –God!  God invites me/you/him/her to be a special guest at his table and the first reaction is to draw back – to feel guilty of dust and sin…  How often has this been my response to God’s invitation…I feel too dirty – too guilty to do anything in God’s presence so I draw back.  But quick eyed love notices…knows how we’ve been made to feel deep within…and God responds gently and tenderly, sweetly asking “What it is that you lack that makes you feel unworthy to be with me at my table.  And my response…I lack a guest worthy to accept your invitation.  I’m unkind and I’m ungrateful…I cannot look on you in your holiness, radiance, and glory!

And like a kind grandmother who can sense the good outcome before it happens, God takes me by the hand with a bright smile upon His face and responds “Who made the eyes but I?”  It is brokenness within that thwarts your perspective…you think you cannot look upon me yet I created your eyes for just this purpose…to look upon love and be loved.

Oh but the excuses continue to flow…yes you might have made these eyes but I have marred them…so let me in my shame go where I deserve and that’s certainly not here at your table and in your presence.   But God, full knowing our condition is patient and will continue to listen and offer a new perspective in the midst of the old until we finally do just accept that He is love and we are loved.  Now God speaks and no other excuse will be able to follow.  God responds, “Why yes – of course you have marred your eyes…of course you have sinned…of course you feel guilt…of course you have walked a path that includes dirt and darkness.  But let me ask you this.  Do you know who bore the blame?  …. I can imagine silence filling that room.  God bore the blame on my behalf.  He knows my condition and knowing full well my condition, God stepped into my existence and lived my life, bearing the blame of dust and sin and overcoming it by his love when he rose from the dead! God did this for me!  For me – the unkind and ungrateful!

So I have no more excuses…. Instead, I offer my own works.  Okay I get it, it’s because of what you have done that I get to be here…I’ll come to the feast…but I must serve you…you cannot serve me.  No, God says – If you think you must do the work, you still aren’t getting it…you must do one thing -- sit down and accept the gift.  Just be…stop doing and just be with me.

What a picture of God!  I believe that Herbert has zeroed in on the very heart of God toward us through this timeless poem.  And I believe it is this picture of God that must be held up and illuminated as we make our way through the bible and the journey of faith.  We will run into some very difficult challenges throughout this journey but we must never forget that God is for us and if God is for us, nothing God says or does is intended to bring us down…to make us feel unworthy…unloved…dirty and without hope of being made clean.

It’s not because Valentine’s Day is just around the corner that I share this poem but mainly because the Gospel lesson for today is indeed one of those challenges on the journey.  To truly understand what Jesus is doing, we must begin with God’s love for us…that God is for us…and whatever God says to us must be for our own healing and good and never for our condemnation or to bring us down.  

I’ve noticed that when Jesus’ sermon is read (particularly this part of it), many of us including myself cringe... we can’t wait for it to be over and we hope the preacher won’t expound on it...and the preacher hopes she doesn’t have to...
It’s hard enough for us to hear, “have righteousness equal to scribes and Pharisees and you will enter the kingdom of heaven”...even harder to hear that our righteousness must exceed it...it’s one thing to hear, “you shall not murder,” but quite another to hear “if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. It’s one thing to obey the command “you shall not commit adultery…” It is another to hear, “Whoever even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart...

This is serious stuff Jesus is proclaiming...stuff that seems so far removed from the world we live in... Jesus proclamation is radical heard through the filters of this decaying world...it turns upside down everything we’ve been taught as normal...And there’s a reason for that.  Remember – God knows our condition full well.  He knows the world in which we live.  Which is why this sermon of his sounds so radical.  It is not for this age that is passing away.  It is the revelation of the new way in the old world – the ethos of God’s future kingdom clashing with the many ethoses of this world that God is making brand new.  An ethos is “the guiding beliefs, principles and ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology.”  As we hear Jesus’ sermon on the mount, it is clear that the ethos of the kingdom that has come, is coming and is to come is grounded in relationship, human dignity, and is centered upon concern for the other and not simply the self.  In a world where we’ve been taught to look out for ‘number one,’ this sounds so strange and so foreign.

We’ve all experienced this kind of shock to the old system by a new way being introduced.  It reminds me of what happens with exercise and nutrition.  It was only a few years ago that I realized that I let myself go for too long without proper exercise and nutrition.  My cholesterol was getting high…fatigue was becoming too great a friend…I was as heavy as I had ever been in my life.  Something had to be done.  But when I listened to the doctor, my friend who is a nutritionist and fitness trainers, it was hard to take in – it was a shock to the old system.  They knew the regimen they were laying before me was more than I could handle all at once…but they pushed me anyway and encouraged me…and gradually (and that’s the key word), I began living into the future reality of myself and no longer in bondage to the old system.  I lost over 40 pounds through forming healthy habits.  Many old habits have died but many more still need correcting.  And that’s okay…I’ll get there.  And that’s the point.  Change doesn’t happen over night…

God doesn’t expect any of us to fully get the sermon on the mount to the point where it is no longer a challenge.  He especially doesn’t expect us to live this reality in a moment but offers his gracious invitation to walk the journey with him constantly.  As we walk with him practicing the new way in the midst of an old world, new creation bursts forth into the world and old bad habits die.  We are never fully there as the fullness of the kingdom of God is still to dawn.  Step by step…breath by breath, resting in God’s amazing love for us, we become the future in the present.

Imagine you’ve been out fishing and hiking all day in the mountains.  You’ve had so much fun … the fish were biting so much as the sun began to set you forgot about time.  You’ve had a blast…you’ve caught a lot of fish…but now the rain sets in…you hear the thunder…that beautiful day you enjoyed just a couple hours ago has turned dark.  You’ve got a long hike back to the truck. The happy go lucky fisherman is now a hiker groping through dangerous terrain in the dark of night. You may chart the way by the wind in the trees, the obscure glimmer of the stars behind the clouds, the memory of the way as it was described earlier, or the faint light of a lantern against the storm...But the brilliant flash of the lightning illumines the path, the perils, and even the distant goal in the twinkling of an eye...Suddenly everything is clear, although the darkness quickly closes in again.

This is what I think Jesus’ sermon is like. It can be compared to flashes of light out of the future kingdom to come.  Without the flash of divine light that Jesus’ sermon is, we are left with the obscure glimmer of cloud-covered stars and the faint light of our own faith and reason.  The good news is that the Christ light shines forth from the reality of Jesus’ sermon showing us the way to our future…and we never travel alone – no we travel with the one who came from our future, is in our future and happens to also live in our present. He knows us better than we know ourselves and still loves us more than we will ever know how to love.  He has our best interest in mind always.  He is the perfect guide!

I hope we can hear Jesus’ sermon in a non judgmental and non-condemning way.  It is the God of love who preaches this sermon to us.  He doesn’t offer us impossible challenges just to watch us fail and say “I told you so!”  No, this is the same tender God of Herbert’s poetry.  He shines the light from the future way in the midst of the old world to gradually transform us into everything he already knows we are – citizens of His future kingdom whose ethos is love.  You don’t have to be all of this today.  Just be God’s beloved daughter, son…come to his table, sit down and eat.  The rest will take care of itself.  Amen.