this is why object & particle collide

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew the 5th chapter!

We’re almost there, today we just begin to glimpse the finish-line as we move toward the end of our incarnation sermon series!

There’s only two more weeks left. Can you believe it?!?

As you may have been able to surmise from today’s Gospel, though, this last stretch is something of the final grind of our journey. 

Today is not so much the final anthems of completion, as they are the moment when we begin to question whether we have the fortitude to complete this journey…

Today is a bit of a “make or break” moment.

Are we going to finish this series, or are we going to throw in the towel???

Now as we wish we could just coast along, Jesus continues to up the ante, he keeps increasing the pressure.

As we contemplate continuing or not, it is worth recalling that Jesus’ call has always been for our own good. The plain truth is, any exertion of ours will be worth the effort to complete this journey with Jesus.

Wrestling with the incarnation, with Jesus’ words -easy and not-so easy- are always be worth the trouble…

Finally, the trouble is worth it because, here’s the thing: when Jesus speaks these difficult teachings Jesus isn’t saying this as just anyone…

No, Jesus gives these teachings as none other than God in bones and flesh.

After all, if it were anyone else speaking, well perhaps we could try and ignore these words, decide the efforts needn’t be exerted.

If it weren’t this God-dwelling-in-humanity speaking these words, Jesus couldn’t assume the authority to say something as audacious as “you’ve heard it said, but I say unto you,” either…

That’s the trouble, like it or not; this is why we must put forth the effort in the last grind of our journey; 

the one who makes these claims is the same one we claim is God in bones and flesh, God incarnated in a human just like me and you…

This rub is also, incidentally, why the incarnation matters.

These tough teachings of Jesus are, truth be told, a little too embarrassingly specific.

While the world would prefer to consign faith to some spiritually nebulous territory free from the fetters of this life, Jesus’ placement of faith right in the middle of the messy world we live in every day isn’t, well, dignified…

In contrast to all those spiritual gurus who have found that the trick of faith is to keep it as far away from the messiness of real life as possible; 

Jesus simply wades right in and declares that these promises he has been making to you are not some disembodied, abstract, spiritual words that have no bearing on our lives.

And honestly this is something of a scandal.

This scandalous work of God is why, as Christians, we must wrestle with the incarnation.

Unlike all other ways of navigating life, Christians must wrestle with the fact that if we want to know what God thinks about things, how God feels about things, we don’t have to ascend to the heavens but simply look here!

The uncomfortable claim our faith makes is that God has shown up, and God has been revealed, and that revelation isn’t hidden or set apart but all too close to the messiness of life we’ve spent so much time, energy and money trying to avoid, put in the closet, and no matter what ignore…

This improper and dirty work of God is why, sisters and brothers, the God who puts on flesh and blood can only be grasped by people who have been grasped by faith. 

In today’s Gospel Jesus insists that as blessed children of God, as salt and light all of our lives are affected;

even the parts of our lives we would like to keep to & for ourselves,

the parts of our lives we would like to keep God away from…

Today Jesus continues his sermon on the mount, and admittedly Jesus gets a little too close for comfort. Jesus speaks about these dimensions of our lives where we can’t even begin to imagine God showing up. 

Today Jesus insists that since he had declared you are God’s children, light of the world, well then he gets all of your life.

Today Jesus draws the connection we’ve been doing our best to avoid, that God has laid claim to all your life; 

not just those moments of spiritual escape, but the difficult moments;

those moments when we struggle treat others kindly, when we struggle to speak lovingly, when we are angry, when we find our glances lingering a little too long, when we struggle to love our loved ones, when we make, or rather refrain, from making vows,

all of it…

Now the simple fact is, folks like us don’t like like God impinging upon our lives. We prefer God up in the heavens, thank you very much; not this close. We appreciate at least a little autonomy, for pete’s-sake.

So, it’s no surprise then, that the moment Jesus starts talking about our lives in a way that isn’t disembodied spiritualism, we do our best to confine his words to mere moralisms.

This way we can keep God’s claim at arm’s-length.

So to help us really hear Jesus’ Words,

to hear how embarrassingly incarnated they are, we will continue our practice of reading the Message translation. 

Let’s also keep trying to listen to these Words as if we were one of those first people Jesus stopped and said “follow me” to, or perhaps as one of those people who had heard of or seen Jesus and so you followed along to eavesdropped on this sermon of Jesus.’

(Jesus continued his sermon) “You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple fact is that words kill.

“This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.

“Or say you’re out on the street and an old enemy accosts you. Don’t lose a minute. Make the first move; make things right with him. After all, if you leave the first move to him, knowing his track record, you’re likely to end up in court, maybe even jail. If that happens, you won’t get out without a stiff fine.

“You know the next commandment pretty well, too: ‘Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.’ But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices—they also corrupt.

“Let’s not pretend this is easier than it really is. If you want to live a pure life, here’s what you have to do: You have to blind your right eye the moment you catch it in a lustful leer. You have to choose to live one-eyed or else be dumped on the trash pile. And you have to chop off your right hand the moment you notice it raised threateningly. Better a bloody stump than your entire being discarded for good in the dump.

“Remember the Scripture that says, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her legal rights’? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are ‘legal.’ Please, no more pretending. If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an adulteress (unless she has already made herself that). And if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you’re automatically an adulterer yourself. You can’t use legal cover to mask a failure.

“And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

Well that sounds a little different, doesn’t it?

The truth, though is that this doesn’t just sound different. No, honestly, dignified folks like us know it’s a little embarrassing for God to be particular about these humiliations of humanity. 

Here, let me put it this way;

if it wasn’t bad enough that God decided to get all ungodly by becoming a human, now God starts talking about the indignities we all do our best to pretend aren’t a fact of this life.

This is why the incarnation matters, sisters and brothers.

This is what is so scandalous, so unique about our faith. 

The plain truth is, as humans we’d rather God gives us some list to escape our humanity and become more and more godly; 

but God knowing the truth about us does exactly the opposite.

Here’s the scandal of the incarnation: in the incarnation God gives-up the piety-project of godliness to come to the godless; 

to save us, make us children of God, make us salt and light so that all the world may find the truth that the world needn’t come to God because God has done the dirty work of coming to the world, to us, to me and you.

Here’s the real rub of today’s Gospel,

and it isn’t Jesus’ challenging words, keeping the hyperbole in it’s place (as metaphor),

it’s that Jesus is God.

What is unique,

what is embarrassing,

and what is really challenging about Jesus’ Words today is that Jesus isn’t giving advice.

That’s why I’m not going to bother exhorting you all to live the life Jesus is describing.

We all already know we should.

You know the plain wisdom of Jesus’ Words.

In fact, anyone worth their salt would give us similar advice to keep our life on the up-and-up.

In fact, the plain truth is, these claims of Jesus aren’t even that unique. 

No.

What is unique, though, is that the one making these claims isn’t a spiritual guru, and he isn’t a life-coach, an advice columnist, day-time TV judge or therapist, either.

No. What is unique about today’s Gospel is that the one talking about these all-too human aspects of life is none other than God.

See, if the one making these claims were just some life-coach, we could ignore them. After all, good advice is just that, advice. And advice, of course, can be taken or ignored, its at the discretion of the hearer.

But when the one making these claims is God, we must listen to these Words,

really listen to them.

And when we really hear these words,

not as mere advice and not as pithy moralisms,

but as God talking about the parts of life that are all too ordinary, we are really able to hear the embarrassing thing,

the shocking thing;

that Jesus dares to speak about these dimensions of our lives because God has come all the way into our lives,

God has dared to show up where we’d never guess God would;

God has redeemed our lives,

even the place where we wrestle to speak to others as they deserve, to make amends, to look at others with respect, to honor our word;

every aspect of our lives.

In other words, the shocking thing is that God has decided to be Lord of all of our lives…

As we noted, it’d be much more palatable if God were to give us some spiritual direction to leave our humanity behind;

and truth be told, that’s what sinners like us will be tempted to do with Jesus’ Words today.

See, the temptation with today’s Gospel is to turn God’s Word into moralism; that way we could deal with God’s Word, either ignore it or as Nike would say ‘do it.’ 

Truthfully, that temptation is exactly the reason we’re having this “Incarnation Sermon Series.” I want us to be able to really hear God. I want God’s Word to cease being some thing we posses but the Word that posses us. I want us to give up trying to be God, and instead let God be God for us.

This is why the incarnation matters, sisters and brothers; the incarnation reveals what God has done;

not what you can do or even should do.

The incarnation reveals that God has come to humanity, and not in some superficial way, but all the way -even in the places we think God would be too busy being godly to get all dirty with. The incarnation reveals that God has gotten mixed up in all of your life, even the mundane, and plain sinful parts.

The incarnation reveals God’s will;

that God be Lord of all our life.

And it is this willing of God that makes us Children of God, indeed.

The incarnation matter because it reveals what God has done; declared in Word & deed that “You are a child of God.”

Amen