Bob Kaylor

The First Carols: The Magnificat (Luke 1:26-38, 46-55)

Well, today we begin the Advent season, and this Sunday is actually the beginning of the new year in the church calendar—a time of preparation and anticipation of Christmas, a time of waiting for a great event—the birth of a baby. Is there anything more worth waiting for?

I know what it was like when our kids were on the way. Plans were made, preparations were made for the nursery, names considered, clothes and diapers and all kinds of other accoutrements were slid into little drawers. We were so excited as we counted down the days.

But you know in the midst of all that waiting there’s also a lot of anxiety. Will we know what to do? Will we be able to provide for this child so that he or she can grow up healthy and happy? Are we ready for this?

I saw a statistic awhile back from the USDA that said the cost of raising a child from birth through the age of 17 can run up to more than $250,000, and that doesn’t include college. The truth is that bringing up a child isn’t just an act of love, it’s an investment. No wonder that these smiling parents coming into church on Sunday morning seem to be a little extra focused during prayer time!

Most of the young families I meet, though, have done some careful preparation. They’ve done the math, worked the timetable, and juggled the job responsibilities to make room for that little bundle of joy. There are others, though, like the single soon-to-be mom who is trying to make it on her own and wants desperately to give her child a good home. Her excitement is tempered by the realization of all that responsibility. No matter how much you prepare, having a child is a very, very big deal. Ready or not, here he comes!

 We read the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary and it’s easy for us to forget that Mary was just a kid herself. Girls in first century Israel were usually married by the age of 12 or 13; about the time girls these days are just beginning to notice that boys aren’t complete nose-picking idiots. She wasn’t married yet, only engaged, and living in a culture where the shame of being pregnant out of wedlock could result in the woman being at best ostracized and at worst stoned to death. On top of that, Luke doesn’t tell us but I’m guessing that Mary and Joseph hadn’t yet talked much about children and probably hadn’t opened a Roth IRA for future college expenses. Being told that you were going to have a baby under unusual and potentially dangerous circumstances was one thing, but Gabriel told Mary also that this would not be just any baby—he would be the baby. The child she would bear would be the fulfillment of God’s covenant with David (Luke 1:36-33), the Messiah who would save the world. Talk about your major announcements!

We certainly couldn’t blame Mary if she had simply said, “No, thanks.” She could have turned into a first century version of a “runaway bride.” Instead, she only asks one question: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (1:34). A lot of theological energy has been spent trying to definitively answer that question from a spiritual and physiological perspective. Luke, however, doesn’t give us a comprehensive lesson in divine obstetrics. The angel says that God’s Spirit would “come upon” Mary, and God’s power would “overshadow” her, making the child soon to be in her womb special indeed. Regardless of the physiology, this child would be called “Son of God” (1:35).

Talk about responsibility! And yet, young Mary responds not with fear, but with joy. Despite all the difficulty, the uncertain future, the possibility of bringing shame on herself and her family, the pain of childbirth and the long-term commitment, Mary said yes to the task she was being given. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord;” she said. “Let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Rather than being worried, Mary can’t wait to tell someone. She runs to her cousin Elizabeth’s house, who is herself pregnant with a son in her old age—a son who was also announced by an angel to her husband, Zechariah, and who would become John the Baptizer. Together, Mary and Elizabeth celebrate the news that God had somehow chosen them—the young and the old, the poor and the pious, the unlikeliest of people, to bring babies into the world that would not only bring joy to their homes, but hope for the whole world..

If you’re waiting for the arrival of a baby, you know it’s going to take nine months, give or take. But the baby that Mary is carrying has been anticipated a lot longer than that—indeed, the announcement of his coming went all the way back into Israel’s history—all the way back to Abraham. God promised Abraham that from his family, all the families of the world would be blessed. From that family came a nation called Israel, whom God rescued from slavery in Egypt and gave them a promised land. There God established a king, David, and promised David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel forever and establish God’s justice and mercy and peace—God’s kingdom—for the whole world.

But Abraham’s family and David’s kingdom both crumbled under the weight of sin. What could have been beautiful became broken because of their disobedience and rejection of God. The result was a people that were broken, exiled, occupied, and enslaved not only by the foreign powers of Babylon and now Rome, but by the even more insidious powers of sin and death—powers that enslave the whole world.

But the promise of the prophets was that one day the new king would be born—God’s chosen one—who would topple the powers of sin and death by taking them on himself. Isaiah had talked about him as the suffering servant, the wonderful, counselor, mighty God, prince of peace—the one whom the world had waited for.

Mary knew this story because it was the story of her people. For her, as for all of God’s people, the story of Scripture was the story. And now, somehow, impossibly, unbelievably, she was going to play a supporting role. The time of waiting was coming to an end, and all she could do was…sing!

“My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” she sings. We call her song the “Magnificat” because of the first word in Latin—magnify, intensify, reflect, make brighter. Mary sings because she magnifies the joy that God himself feels at the announcement that the time had come.

Indeed, God makes his announcement to the ones who need to hear it most—the poor, the lowly, the broken, the marginalized—those who have no power. Mary represents them—a young woman, barely perceived as a person in that patriarchal culture, with no status, no prospects, and with a common name, living in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. And yet, she sings:

“He has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the mighty one has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”

Remember that when the angel greeted Mary he addressed her as “favored one” (1:28). It was not that Mary was particularly righteous or worthy, though some Christian traditions have assumed that understanding, yet she is “favored” or blessed with the task of bearing the Messiah. It wasn’t her character that made her worthy, though I’m fairly sure that she was faithful based on her response. Instead, like her ancestor Abraham, God “favored” Mary—an ordinary girl in an ordinary place—and blessed her so that she might be a blessing to the world, a vital link in the covenant chain that God had begun with Abraham generations before (Genesis 12:2). We call her blessed because she blessed the world by saying “yes” to God. “Let it be with me according to your word.”

The blessing that God will work through her will come via the son that she bears—God’s own son, who will come to save his people from sin, but also to overturn the power structures that had so long held people in slavery. She sings:

“His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his descendants forever.”

What Mary sings about here is the promise of what happens when God occupies the earth as its true king. When God is king, all human power structures get overturned—the proud are replaced by the humble, the hungry are filled and the wealthy go hungry. And if you pay attention to the verbs in her song, they are past tense. Mary sings as though these things have already happened. Such is the confidence of faith! The child that she carries is God’s own Messiah…indeed, God himself—the king who comes and announces in his words and actions that the kingdom has arrived.

To put it another way, we might say that Mary’s song is the outline for everything that God’s son will do when he grows to manhood. He will scatter the proud and self-righteous by exposing their true selves. He will challenge powerful kings like Herod and Caesar, not through revolution or protest, but by setting up an alternative kingdom where true justice and mercy and peace rule—a kingdom that will one day trump all the others. He sat at table with the poor, the hungry, the sinners and the outcasts, filling them with hope, while the wealthy walked away from his call to give up their things in exchange for finding the kingdom. The Gospel writers tell us that the rich fools and rich young rulers walked away from Jesus empty, while the poor were fed with an abundance of bread on a hillside. The child that Mary carries will turn the world upside down. This is what happens when his kingdom occupies the whole world.

So Mary sings, even though we know what all of this will cost her. A sword will pierce her soul, she is warned when Jesus is just a baby. She will lose him and frantically search for him for three days when he’s a young boy because he is about his father’s work in the temple. She will think he has gone completely made when he turns thirty and leaves home to start preaching and challenging powerful people. And she will suffer the agony of watching him die on a cross, nailed there by the powers that always do that to those who would oppose them. But all that is in the future. For now, she sings.

We sing our Christmas carols, too, knowing that Good Friday is not far away. We sing them knowing where this child will go and what he will do. We sing them knowing that there is a cross ahead, but also and empty tomb.

But our Christmas carols often miss the power of this first one, sung by a insignificant girl in an insignificant town in an insignificant place, but with significant and ultimate hope and joy. The birth of a child is something to sing about because it changes things. Mary’s child will change everything. She believed the promise.

The question for us, however, is whether we live with the kind of faith that Mary had—a faith that things have already started to change. It’s too easy for us to look at what’s going on and think that nothing will ever change. We see gridlock everywhere we turn—in government, in economics, in poverty, in war, in everything. We hope that someone, somewhere, will change things.

But what if that someone is us? What if it is our job, as disciples of Jesus, to bear his truth, his grace, his mercy, his justice, his kingdom into the world?

I’ve been collecting icons for a few years now, and one that hangs prominently in my office depicts Mary holding the child Jesus and is titled with the Greek word that the Eastern Orthodox churches use to describe her: Theotokos, which means “God-bearer.” That’s a perfect description of what Mary did in giving her consent to the divine mission she was being offered. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” Let it be that through me, your king and your kingdom will come, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s a God-bearing life, and a God-bearing life changes things. God’s blessing always comes to us on its way to someone else.

What would happen if we looked at every day as an opportunity to be God-bearers? How would things begin to change if everyone who follows Christ began every day with Mary’s “yes” to God—“Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

Think about it. Start with a simple example. You’re in the grocery store and a mom with several anxious children is behind you in the register line. She’s at her wit’s end, just needing to get to the car and get her crying toddler home for a nap. You’re busy and in a hurry, too, but here’s a perfect opportunity to step out of line and say to yourself,

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

When there is conflict in your workplace, you have an opportunity to be a peacemaker through your calming presence. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

While the government argues about spending and taxes and programs, you have an opportunity to serve people in need rather than waiting for someone else to do it. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

Where there is injustice and where people are marginalized because they are different, you have an opportunity to say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” and show them the love of Christ who lifts up the broken.

If you’re worried and afraid of what lies ahead, take the example of Mary who trusted God in a tough circumstance. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

If you’re wealthy, you have an opportunity to say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” and use your wealth to invest in people rather than more things.

If you’re poor and wonder if you have anything at all to give, you remember that, like Mary you can still serve, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

If you’re looking for a purpose in your life, the coming of Jesus gives you one—a purpose in living and working for the kingdom. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.

Advent is a time of waiting, but like busy parents we, too, need to be at work preparing the way for Christ to come into our world and into our lives. When we serve the Lord, when we recognize that the king has come, we begin to see the world very differently. We begin to see the kingdom breaking in all around us, and we can sing with joy because of it.

 May we all become joyful God-bearers for the kingdom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rule of Life: Hearing and Doing (Sermon on the Mount series, part 11)

Back in 2006 I had the opportunity to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Isle of Iona in Scotland—a tiny island out in the Hebrides where Christianity first came to the region in the sixth century. Iona is only three miles long and a mile and a half wide, and it’s the last piece of land between the northern UK and Ireland.

Just getting to Iona is itself a pilgrimage that takes a whole day. I left from Edinburgh in the morning on a train to Glasgow, and then from Glasgow a 3-hour train ride to the port city of Oban at the base of the Scottish Highlands. In Oban, you get on a ferry that takes you 45 minutes through the mist to the Isle of Mull. Once you get to Mull, you get on a bus that takes you an hour and a half across that island on a one lane road where you have to stop constantly for other cars and flocks of sheep. That road takes you to the tiny village of Fionnphort, where you get on another ferry that takes you a mile across the channel to finally land on Iona.

Iona is a quiet place. There’s the old 12^th century Abbey, where the ecumenical Iona Community worships twice a day, and some small homes in the little village where only about a hundred people live. I stayed in a lovely little guest house and planned my three days of solitude in this mystical place that the Celts called a “thin place” because it seemed that the veil between heaven and earth was very thin there.

On my first full day there, I decided to go out and do some exploring, so at breakfast I asked the hostess where there were some good places to hike to. She gave me some ideas but then she said something I thought was strange, “Don’t get lost,” she said. I thought she was joking but she didn’t smile. I thought to myself, “No problem. I’m a trained infantry scout and this is only a tiny island. How could I possibly get lost?”

Famous last words. I headed out on a hike under a cloudy sky into the treeless green landscape. I crossed over the Iona Golf Course, which is free but is also pasture land where sheep roam freely. “Chipping” here has a completely different connotation. I made it to the back part of the island, where it is most remote and where the trails disappear into rocks and bogs. I wandered about on Columba’s beach, lost in thought. And then, without warning, it started to rain.

 Now, I’ve been in rain before, even heavy rain, but I’d never seen rain go completely horizontal. It was an apocalyptic rain that even my high tech rain gear could not resist. It rained so hard and the wind was so strong that I could hardly look up without being pelted in the face.. In just a few minutes, I was instantly soaked the bone and shivering in the cold wind. I wasn’t far away from the warmth of the guesthouse, but far enough that it was tough to know the quickest way back. I thought to myself, how stupid would it be to die of hypothermia on an island that was only three miles long?

Fortunately, about that time I stumbled on to a cairn—a little pile of stones that are set up to mark the trail in treeless landscapes. They’re everywhere on Iona. Some are set up by people as a kind of prayer, others are designed to help you find the trail through the rocks. This particular cairn marked a little trail off the beach, which led to another path that took me back to the golf course and a shortcut back. Prayer and navigation are sometimes the same thing!

I got back to the guest house, dripping wet with my shoes full of water and peat because they had been sucked off a couple of times by the muck. My hostess was gracious, but she gave me one of those “I told you so” looks as she helped me set things out to dry.

Sometimes when we think we’ve got it all figured out, we wind up lost and we need a way home.

That experience came back to me when I was thinking about how end of this series on the Sermon on the Mount. If you remember back to where we started, we said that the Sermon on the Mount is the follow up to Jesus first sermon which takes place in Matthew 4:17, where Jesus says, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Remember the idea of the kingdom—it’s the thin place, the reality where heaven and earth come together. It’s the journey to this kingdom, this thin place, on which Jesus invites his disciples to live and to work—to do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven until both come together forever. Jesus wants us to be at home in both places.

Jesus takes those disciples up on a mountain and then gives them markers for the journey of discipleship—cairns that Jesus has placed before them by embodying the life of the kingdom right in front of them. He lays out for them a pathway, a rule of life, that will guide them in the midst of a misty, murky, muddled world where the path can be easily lost if you’re not paying attention.

Remember some of the markers we’ve already seen: The nine beatitudes marked the character of a disciple—a character of humility, of single-mindedness, of peacemaking. Disciples are not to charge off into the world confident in their own abilities, but submit themselves to the direction of God through obedience and submission, even in the midst of persecution and trial. The “blessed” are those who listen to Jesus and mind the cairns that mark his character.

We then moved into another section of markers where Jesus laid some new foundation over a much older path. Jesus came not to abolish the Law of Moses, but to fulfill it in his own person. He thus gives his disciples a series of brighter markers – “You have heard that it was said….but I say to you.” A disciple’s path isn’t simply marked by what they don’t do, but by what they do that reflects the character of Jesus—things like replacing anger and judgment with reconciliation, replacing lust and adultery with commitment and respect, replacing oaths with actions, replacing retaliation with love for one’s enemies, and replacing performance with perfection.

But Jesus recognizes that there are some markers that, while they look like they lead in the right direction, can actually lead down the wrong path. He offers a series of nine markers of failure that reveal the difference between performance and perfection: We don’t give, or pray, or fast so that others can be impressed with our piety. Instead, we are to give and pray and fast in secret, seeking to please God more than others. We mustn’t store up treasure on earth for ourselves, or turn our vision toward shiny material things, serving wealth as our master, nor should we worry about what we lack. Instead, the path of the disciple is the way of trusting in God to supply all of our needs while we invest our lives in people—making disciples who will make more disciples, thus changing the world to look more like the kingdom one life at a time.

In chapter 7, Jesus names the last two of these markers. We don’t take God’s job of ultimate judgment on others, instead we pay attention to our own weaknesses. We don’t take that which God has called sacred and throw it away, and that includes ourselves. Instead, we take up a rule of life that keeps our focus on the pathway of serving God and serving others. In 7:7-11, Jesus tells his disciples to turn to God and ask for what they need. In 7:12, he turns their attention to others by stating a rule of life that sums up the law and prophets: do to others as you would have them do to you.

The pathway of discipleship that Jesus lays out for his disciples is not an easy one, and he is quick to admit that. The sermon closes with four more signs, four more cairns that warn those who would take this journey that sticking to the path he has laid out is the only way to life.

In 7:13, Jesus says, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

If we’ve been paying attention, we might recognize that Jesus has actually been saying this all along through the Sermon. This way of life, the way of the kingdom, isn’t easy. It requires you to give up claim on your life, to love those who hate you, to let loose of the assumed security of money and possessions, to forgive as you are forgiven. Few people take this path—even those who claim to be followers of Christ. Jesus is saying here that it’s virtually impossible to follow him and still follow the crowd. To be a disciple means that we venture off the pavement of the path of least resistance in life and instead embrace the climb and the patience of waiting at a narrow gate for the opportunity to enter the kingdom life.

That way can be made even harder by those who try to steer you off the path. “Beware of false prophets” says Jesus in verse 15, “who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Beware of those, in other words, who are so eager to tell you how easy the path can be. False prophets seem to be very nice and reasonable and trustworthy because, after all, no wolf is going to let you see his claws and teeth if he can dress himself up as a harmless sheep!

He goes on to say in verse 16 that “you will know them by their fruits” and that “every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.” What is the fruit that Jesus is talking about here? Well, I think the context reveals that “fruit” is the character of a disciple—the kind of character he has been outlining throughout the Sermon. Be careful to listen to people whose lives reflect the character of a disciple, Jesus is saying, rather than those who simply talk a good game. Don’t be impressed by their external marks of success, but look deeper at their character.

I think we can take this even more broadly when it comes to talking about churches. This week we’ve been preparing for our church conference, which takes place this afternoon, and one of the things that we tend to focus on as churches is our numbers—how many people are in worship, how much money do we have, etc. Now, these numbers are not unimportant, but they are not to be the only fruit we produce. This year, the denomination wants us to come up with numerical goals for worship attendance, and small groups, and people in mission. We’ve done that, and we’ll share them this afternoon.

But what we really need to pursue as a church is deeper than that. What we need is to cultivate a deeper sense of what it means to be disciples of Jesus. We need to cultivate Christian character and maturity in people – that’s part of our purpose. And that doesn’t happen quickly. There’s no high-speed highway to discipleship, only the long, slow, narrow path of faithful living day by day.

As we look to 2012, one of the priorities that Joe and I have set as your pastors is to develop the next level of disciple-building by establishing some covenant discipleship groups—groups where people can build one another up and hold one another accountable for daily growth in the knowledge and love of Christ and where the character of discipleship can be developed in community with others who are on the way. Our success as a church will not ultimately be determined by how many people attend our worship services (though that’s a good thing), but by how many lives we are transforming, and by how many of our members are bearing the fruit of discipleship that is shared with others who have yet to follow Jesus.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, once said this about the church: “I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist, but only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power.” Jesus says something very similar in 7:21 – “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, not everyone who says the right religious words and does the right religious things will experience the kingdom life. Only those “who do the will of my Father in heaven” will do so. We don’t need more religion, we don’t need more forms and processes, more doctrines and belief systems—we need the power that comes from following Jesus and being fully invested as his disciples.

Somewhere along the line, Christianity became a lot more concerned with what people think or believe than what they do. The Sermon on the Mount calls us back to action that springs from the deep character of Christ. We can no longer only be hearers…we have to be doers. We can no longer merely talk about the kingdom and its coming… we have to start living it out. Jesus tells us how to do that in these three chapters of Matthew.

Remember how we started this series with a quote from E. Stanley Jones as our thesis statement: “The greatest need of modern Christianity is the rediscovery of the Sermon on the Mount as the only practical way to live.” Indeed, Jesus closes the Sermon by saying that it is absolute bedrock.

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock.”

 People in Jesus’ day would have recognized another “house on the rock” as the temple in Jerusalem—the center of religion and sacrifice, the only place where sins could be forgiven. Herod’s builders were still working on the temple as he spoke, but in the last great sermon in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus warns that the Temple itself would come crashing down because Israel had failed to respond to his message. Halfway through the Gospel, in Matthew 16, Jesus promises that Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah will form the rock upon which something very different will be built—a community that is grounded in the person and work of Jesus, the true Messiah, the true temple, and the chief cornerstone of the kingdom—a community that embodies Jesus, not just talks about him.

The Sermon on the Mount is the foundation upon which the framework on the kingdom is built. The more we begin to live it, the more we begin to reflect and embody the character of Jesus. When we live this way, we are on solid ground. All other ground is, as the old hymn says, shifting sand.

The next day I went out hiking again on Iona, and the cairns took me to the top of the highest point on the island, the hill of Dun I, which is about a hundred meters above sea level. Not exactly a mountain by our standards, but a high point. On top of Dun I is another cairn, but this one was much larger than the others. By the time I made it to the top, the wind off the North Sea had increased to the point that I had to lean into it in order to keep from falling down. When I found the leeward side, I had the amazing experience of hearing the wind howl all around me and yet have calm in the shadow of the rocks.

That pile of rocks had been there a long time—This was where tradition says that Columba, the leader of the first monks to inhabit the island, came to pray. I imagine that he came here often because of the view, but I wondered if he didn’t come there also to that thin place to feel the wind while holding on the rocks, and remember Jesus’ words.

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who chooses to live a life grounded on the rock.”

May we be guided, sheltered, and build on the rock of Jesus and his words. Amen.

 

 

 

The Rule of Life: Dealing with Money (Sermon on the Mount series part 10)

This week we’re continuing in this section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is laying out nine different ways in which we can be inwardly divided between performance and perfection. Last week we looked at the first three, and we talked about how giving, prayer, and fasting can become a performance if we do them in order to impress others with our piety, rather than doing them quietly and secretly within a personal relationship with God. Jesus challenges us to stop play-acting as religious people and become authentically engaged with God, seeking to please him only. These first three markers of division have to do with how we engage in a relationship with God.

In these next three, Jesus expands the discussion to our relationship with money and material things. If we are not single-minded in our spiritual devotion to God, seeking to please him only, says Jesus, then we will almost certainly not be single-minded in our dealing with material things. When we don’t put material things within the perspective of the kingdom of God, then we’re likely to worship them instead of God.

Look at these three points that Jesus gives us:

First, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” says Jesus, but “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither rust or moths or thieves can get to it.” Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Jesus seems to be saying that we have a tendency to try to bank our futures in two different directions – in earth and in heaven.

He adds to that in verses 22-23 by saying that we turn our eyes in different directions. We’re attracted by shiny things that lead to darkness, rather than turning toward the light of God’s kingdom.

Second, in verse 24, Jesus says “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. We have, in other words, a tendency to be loyal in two different directions – toward wealth and toward God.

And third, starting at verse 25, Jesus talks about worrying about possessions and food and drink. We have a tendency to be anxious in two different directions – toward the kingdom of physical wants and the kingdom of God.

Now, of all the things we’ve talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, these are the teachings that challenge many people the most, particularly as we live in a consumer culture. “Laying up treasure” is something we’ve been conditioned to do, and an initial reading would seem to indicate that what Jesus is advocating for here is getting rid of bank accounts, retirement funds, and institutional endowments, among other things. But there’s a key word in the text here that clarifies what Jesus is talking about. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “Don’t lay up treasures on earth,” but rather, “don’t lay up for yourselves treasure on earth”—a subtle difference but an important one. It’s not the treasure that’s the problem, it’s what we intend to use it for.

The Bible talks about money and possessions more than 2,000 times—more than prayer and sex combined. Jesus himself addresses the topic all the time throughout the Gospels. Jesus assumes that money and possessions will be necessary parts of our lives, but he assumes that whatever we have isn’t really ours in the first place. We come into the world with nothing and we leave with nothing. Whatever we have ultimately belongs to God.

 I’ve used this illustration before, but I think it bears repeating. It’s like the game Monopoly. You start out with nothing, you’re given some money to manage, you play the game, and no matter whether you win or lose, in the end everything goes back in the box and someone else will one day play with what is yours. Jesus understands the fundamental truth that we do not really own anything—we only manage it for a time. We are not owners, but stewards.

 When we put up treasures for ourselves, we’re basically saying that God has no claim on God’s own creation and its resources. We somehow believe that the acquisition of wealth will make us happy and fulfilled, but to believe that is to believe a lie. In Luke 12, Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool, who keeps building bigger barns to store all of his acquired goods as he hoards resources for himself. But God comes to collect what’s rightfully his. “You fool,” God says, “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” And Jesus adds, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

We’ve seen what the unrestrained acquisition of wealth can do to a whole society. There’s a ripple effect through the whole world from the greed that causes people to try to live beyond their means. We’ve seen the results of people trying to build bigger and bigger barns and houses and bank accounts at the expense of others. We’re watching the earthly treasure of housing values, stock markets, and debt loads become rusty and moth-eaten and stolen right before our eyes.

Everyone’s talking about how to fix the economy, to get it back to the way it was. I would argue, however, as I think Jesus is arguing here, that we need a different economy altogether—the economy of the kingdom of God, the only economy that will last.

To have treasure in heaven means that we manage those God-owned resources in ways that benefit God’s kingdom. The material becomes spiritual when we use it for the kingdom. As E. Stanley Jones so wonderfully puts it, “The material is taken up into [the disciple’s] life as a sculptor takes up a chisel, not as an end in itself, but as a means toward the end of a perfect statue.” To have treasure in heaven means that we invest resources in such a way that we begin to shape the future in ways that reflect the coming reality of God’s kingdom. We choose not to be owners, but stewards. We choose to use material things for spiritual purposes.

 John Wesley summarized Jesus’ teaching with three rules for the use of money. Remember these? Rule 1: Gain all that you can – the idea is not unrestrained acquisition of wealth, but understanding that we are to acquire what we need through honest work. Some people have the gift of making money, but the point is to make money for the purpose of using it for spiritual ends. That leads to Rule #2: Save all you can. We save money so that we might keep from being in need ourselves. An emergency fund, a reasonable retirement fund—these are wise stewardship of money because they allow us to address immediate needs and not become a burden on others or be subject to the burden of debt. But that leads to Rule #3. We gain all we can and we save all we can so that we can give all that we can. This is the essence of having treasure in heaven—we recognize that we are stewards of God’s resources, so we give all that we can in ways that build up his kingdom.

And what do we give to? Well, the great Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones piggybacks on Wesley and explains that an investment in the kingdom is and investment in the lives of people.

“We have one great thing to invest—our lives. We may invest them in money, making it an end, but if we do, what happens? Money came up out of the earth and it will return to the earth. If our lives are invested in it, they will go to the dust with it. We may invest ourselves in buildings, but buildings come up out of the earth and they will crumble to the earth. If our lives are invested in them, they will go back to the earth with them. We may invest ourselves in physical pleasures, but the body is dust and to dust it shall return. If our lives are invested in the physical side of our nature, then they will go to dust with it. The only bank that will not break is the bank of human character. If we invest in people, then our investment is deathless. For you touch people, and they in turn touch others, and on it goes like the ripples of a pond to the utmost shores of eternity.”

Jesus invested in his disciples. The disciples in turn invested in others. Someone invested their lives in us, or we wouldn’t be here. I know I wouldn’t be. I think today of the many people who invested their lives and resources in me—the parents who adopted me, the pastors and church members who shaped my understanding of God, the youth pastor who brought me to his house for dinner every Thursday night when things were tough at home and bought me shoes and groceries without being asked, the teachers and professors who took extra time with me, the people who gave to scholarship funds so that I could go to college and seminary, on and on it goes. An investment in people is an investment in the kingdom of God—an eternal investment that goes on and on from generation to generation. You want to put treasure in heaven? Invest in people.

I think that’s what God wants us to do individually and collectively as a church—to invest in people. Ultimately, that’s what a church is about—it’s about people, the people who are here to worship Christ and, even more so, the people who have yet to know him. When we give to the church, we are ultimately investing in people—people who may become disciples who will invest in other people. The church certainly isn’t the only means of investing in people, but the point is that disciples are about making other disciples. That’s how the Gospel of Matthew ends, with Jesus telling his disciples to go make disciples—in other words, to go invest in people!

To be able to do that, however, we have to first be all in with God. Jesus makes this clear in the second principle here. You can’t have two masters. You can’t serve both God and wealth. The King James says “mammon” which is a way of referring to property and wealth in general as though it were a god, which is precisely the way Jesus means it here. Ever hear of “the Almighty Dollar?” We know its power. Money can become our master, boss us around, be our ever-present, all-consuming thought and orientation. You’ve heard this one, too, “Money talks.” Yup. And what does it say? One comedian says, “Money talks and mostly what it says is, ‘goodbye.’”

But Jesus’ point here is that we can’t listen to money and obey its demands and listen to God at the same time. We can only have one master. There can only be one voice directing us. We can’t live inwardly divided by trying to serve God while, at the same time, trying to serve our own interests couched in the guise of money and possessions. If we are mastered by God, then we can begin to master money in ways that are life-giving and serve the kingdom.

In Matthew 19:16, Jesus encounters a rich young man and illustrates the point. The young man comes seeking “eternal life.” Jesus tells him that the way to enter life is to keep the commandments. All well and good, says the young man, I’ve kept all of the commandments. But what am I still lacking? It’s like he knew in his heart that there was still something missing. And Jesus tells him: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then, come and follow me.”

Notice the language. “If you wish to be perfect”—if you wish to be whole and complete and mature, if you wish to be my disciple, then you have to give up being mastered by your possessions, and instead, “give to the poor”—invest in people!—and then come and follow me. Matthew tells us that the young man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. He was always going to be their slave.

It’s not easy, Jesus goes on to say, for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom. Those who are mastered by their possessions have a hard time giving them up. But it’s the only way that leads to freedom and new life. Those who are able to hold things loosely and use them wisely, says Jesus, will never fail to have enough, including eternal life.

The rich young man couldn’t give up his possessions because his anxiety wouldn’t let him. See, those who are mastered by money can never have enough to feel completely secure. Jesus addresses this in the third principle. Look back at chapter 6 beginning at verse 25 (read through 34).

Jesus is saying, look, you’re anxious for the wrong things. If you seek the kingdom, if you invest in the kingdom, then everything falls into line according to the right priorities. God orders, owns, and controls everything. It all belongs to him, and he graciously supplies what we need. No, we don’t merely sit back and wait for it to fall out of the sky, but when we’re diligent about orienting our life and work to the kingdom and the will of the King, God supplies what we need—not necessarily what we want, but what we need.

Now, notice how that rounds out what we’ve already talked about. If we’re investing in people, then the end result is that someone is going to be invested in us. That’s the economy of the kingdom. To be a community of disciples is to be a sharing community. The Book of Acts tells us that the early church practiced this principle. Acts 2:44 – “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” No one needed to worry, because everyone was invested in people.

Now, some might want to call this socialism, but that would be wrong. Socialism is something that’s mandatory and enforced from the outside. What we’re talking about here is stewardship that comes from being subject to God and God’s Kingdom. We’re not talking about a political philosophy here. What we’re talking about is a rule of life. It’s something that arises out of us because we have chosen to follow Christ.

As we have been saying throughout this series, the reason this sermon matters is because it is embodied by Jesus; and one of the things that is most striking about Jesus is that he was basically a person who was happy and content no matter the circumstance. Yes, we see places where he had to deal with the raw reality of conflict and sin and death, but when he told his disciples to live without worrying about tomorrow it was pretty clear that he wasn’t worrying about it himself, though he had plenty of reason to do so. Jesus seemed to always be fully present, which allowed him to notice the people in front of him at any given moment. He understood hard work, but he also seemed to understand that God would supply his needs when necessary out of the riches of God’s good creation.

We’ve seen the results of an economy that serves mammon. We have nowhere to go but up. The answer to our anxiety isn’t going to be solved by an act of Congress or the recovery of the stock market—it’s only going to be ultimately changed by the adoption of a whole different economy altogether—the economy of the kingdom: an economy based on investment in people, and economy that is subject to God’s rule of justice and mercy and peace, and an economy in which anxiety is replaced by commitment to a different kingdom.

 Are you all in?

 

The Rule of Prayer (Sermon on the Mount Series, part 9)

Matthew 6:5-15

This week we move into a new section of the Sermon on the Mount. Remember where we’ve been. We started by looking at the nine beatitudes, saying that they outline the inward character of a disciple. Remember how those began—“Blessed are…” Those who have the character of a self-emptying meek, pure in heart, peacemaking disciple are blessed, even though they may be persecuted for embodying the character of Jesus. Then we moved into a section where Jesus addresses and intensifies the Law of Moses. Remember how those began—“You have heard that it was said…but I say to you.” Jesus doesn’t abolish or replace the Law, but gets at the heart of the inner attitudes that lead to sin. That section is summed up by Matthew 5:48, which Joe so masterfully preached on last week—“be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Jesus is not calling his disciples to focus on the relentless pursuit of perfection in terms of flawless performance, but rather to be perfected in love, having the law fulfilled and embodied in us in justice and mercy and faith.

And yet, as Joe pointed out last week, performance is still the thing that gets in our way—particularly the idea that our faith is really about performing for others, rather than pleasing God. We become inwardly divided between serving self and serving God. In this next section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lays out nine different ways that self-interest, a need for approval and recognition, and a desire for security keep us from truly being perfect. If the Beatitudes are the nine markers of blessedness, these nine are the markers of failure—the result of trying to live life in two different directions. Today we look at the first three, which have to do with the inward division we have that prompts us to want to please or impress others, rather than pleasing God.

Go back to 6:1 and you’ll see how it begins. Jesus lays out the thesis statement for this section: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” The word translated “piety” here is actually the same word used for “righteousness” that we’ve been talking about throughout the series—“righteousness” being a word that encompasses right living and justice—covenant behavior. Remember the fourth beatitude – blessed are those who hunger and thirst for “righteousness”—God’s righteousness, God’s justice, and not our own self-righteousness. Jesus, as he does throughout the sermon, loops back on to this theme again here and gives its antithesis. This section of the sermon is about being righteous toward God, rather than self-righteous. It’s about exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, rather than imitating them. It’s not about performance, but about perfection. It’s about the inner reality, more than the outer appearance.

Indeed, Jesus uses the word “hypocrite” a lot in this section to describe those who focus on performing for the crowd rather than for God. That’s what the word “hypocrite” really means—it comes from the Greek theater and literally means one who is an actor that plays a role on the stage. To be a hypocrite is to be one who is outwardly playing one role, while inwardly being someone completely different.

The first of these nine markers of failure, then, has to do with playing the role of a magnanimous person. Look at verse 2: “Whenever you give alms (give to the poor) do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, so that they may be praised by others.” That’s playing the role of a generous, altruistic person, while the real internal goal is to be recognized by others. Offering time at the Temple was announced by blowing a trumpet, but the self-righteous were even more certainly blowing their own horn about their generosity, making sure everyone knew about it. They were about gaining applause from the stage, rather than gaining the quiet approval of God.

John Maxwell tells the story of a man in his church years ago who was a big giver to the church. Everyone knew that he was supporting the church in a big way, and he believed his money should buy him some influence. One day, the man came to John Maxwell right before worship and waved a check in front of the pastor, saying, “John, unless you do what I want, this will go away.” Maxwell, looked at him and just said to the man, “Will you kneel here at the altar and pray with me?” Stunned, the man did so, and John prayed, “Lord, Bill wants to rob you right now and I ask you to forgive him for doing so…”

Yes, Jesus certainly wants us to be generous givers, but the person who is concerned about perfection rather than performance will always give in ways that no one but God will know about, and they will expect nothing in return. God is spontaneously generous to us in ways that are often secret and subversive. To be perfect as God is perfect then means to match God’s generosity in ways that are quiet, secret, and subversive and known only to him. He is the only audience we should be seeking to please. The “reward” we receive for doing so is God’s own acceptance, which often runs counter to the acceptance of the crowd, as Jesus has made abundantly clear earlier in the sermon.

Performers are always looking for credit. The perfected are always looking at Christ.

The leads us to the second area where performance gets in the way of perfection—the area of prayer. “The hypocrites, the play-actors,” Jesus says, love to stand and pray in the synagogues (at church) and on the street corners so that they may be seen by others.” And then there are those that use a lot of extra words. That’s prayer as performance.

 As a pastor, I see this kind of prayer all the time. If you ever have a meal with a bunch of preachers, for example, you can count on the fact that the saying of grace is going to last a very long time because preachers feel they have to craft eloquent prayers in order to impress their peers. Sometimes I feel that God, just like everyone else in the room, is thinking “Get on with it, already!” Then there’s the “prayer voice” that we sometimes go into in public. When I was in seminary, I was in a worship class where we took turns doing the opening prayer, and one of the guys, who I knew was from somewhere like Tennessee, suddenly started praying with a British accent: “Oh Lord, we beseech thee…” Where did that come from?

A lot of Christians seem to be very concerned about making sure their prayers get heard by everyone. They want things like public prayer at school, public prayer at political events, even public prayer on the field of play.

Have you been keeping up with the big trend that’s been sweeping the Denver area and the nation in the past couple of weeks? It’s called “Tebowing!” People are spontaneously dropping to one knee and putting their hand to their forehead to mimic the Bronco QB, Tim Tebow, who kneels on the field after a touchdown (which he has not had that much opportunity to do). Last Sunday, one of the Detroit Lions “Tebowed” over Tebow after he sacked him. You would think that the football field was an even more likely place to pray than in church! Actually, this has been going on a long time in sports, and while it’s certainly great that athletes want to express their faith, Jesus seems to be implying here that there are better ways of doing so. Interestingly, though, players never seem to pray after something bad happens. Dropping to their knees like, “Oh Lord, thank you that that 350 lb. defensive end didn’t completely separate my head from my body on that last play…” or “Lord, thanks for allowing me to strike out with the bases loaded. You’re awesome!”

Jesus makes it clear here that prayer isn’t about speaking with eloquence to impress the crowd or about making a statement in a football stadium. That’s performance. It’s not what we do in public that matters as much as what’s going on inside of us. What you are in private is what you really are. Go to the inner room, go to the quiet place, be secret and subversive about it, and God will meet you there. It’s not the performance that God wants, it’s simply us.

So, Jesus offers his disciples a framework for prayer that tells them how to regularly approach God from the secret, quiet place. We most often refer to it as the “Lord’s Prayer,” and we pray it every week, but if you look close at the text Jesus is saying that this is the “way” we should pray and not necessarily the particular prayer we should pray every time. I’ve had people get very angry if the prayer gets left out of worship on occasion, but that’s missing the point. This prayer isn’t designed to be a mantra or a rote recitation, but rather a way of prayer that orients our inner lives to the way of discipleship. When we pray this way daily, we’re being shaped for perfection, shaped to be and do what God has called us to be and to do.

We begin by calling God “Father”—that’s a relational term. God is not the Force or a distant deity, but a person. This is a title for God that goes all the way back to Exodus and the story of God rescuing Israel from slavery. God says, in Exodus 4:22, “Israel is my son, my firstborn.” Now, Father isn’t the only name we use for God, but we use it here as a reminder that God is the one whose name we hallow and take upon ourselves. Over and over again, the Bible gives us the marriage image of Israel and later the church as God’s cherished bride, and God’s people as God’s children. We begin our prayer by praising God and living into our relationship as his children. We also recognize that the Father is not far from us, but very close. “Heaven” in biblical terms is not faraway, but is God’s space that is quite near to us.

Indeed, the next part of the prayer acknowledges that fact. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. The Father longs to see the sovereign and saving rule of heaven be made real on earth, his good creation. The kingdom of heaven is not something we long to go to, but something we long to see come here in fullness. When that happens, “God’s name—his character, his reputation, his very presence—will be held in high honor everywhere” (Wright ). The first half of the prayer is thus all about God, and when we pray this way we’re putting ourselves firmly at his feet. We recognize up front that it’s God’s performance, God’s kingdom that matters and not our own.

Next we pray for daily bread, which is a way of acknowledging that because God is the creator who loves the world and his people, we can ask him for what we need—and not just what we need for ourselves, but for the needs of the whole world. It’s not just “my” daily bread, but “ours.” When we pray this prayer, we’re remembering that it’s also a call to action—to make sure that everyone has the bread they need by sharing it together. We are, in other words, to work for what we pray for.

Then we pray for forgiveness. Jesus assumes here that we’ll need to do that often, recognizing that our performance isn’t perfect. This is a sobering thought, but the good news is that forgiveness is freely available as often as we need it. The caveat, however, is that God’s forgiveness of us is contingent upon our forgiving others. The forgiven must be willing to forgive. We can’t really play the role of the self-righteous is we remember we need to forgive in order to be forgiven. This kind prayer exposes us for who we really are, which is why we should pray it often.

The framework of prayer then closes by reminding us of the difficult time of testing that will inevitably come upon us as we follow Jesus. Jesus has already alluded to that in the beatitudes. “If we follow a crucified Messiah, we shouldn’t expect to be spared the darkness ourselves.” But we can and must pray that we be kept from and ultimately delivered from evil in all its forms and functions.

Anyone who prays in this way, shut up in the quiet of a daily conversation with God, will very soon realize that God is not as impressed as others may be with our outward performance, but only desires the inward orientation of our hearts to him and the work of his kingdom. This is not a system of words we repeat, but a way of life. In fact, we might say that the Lord’s Prayer summarizes the entire Sermon on the Mount because it continually, daily, orients us to the way of God, the way of perfection in love.

Jesus then turns to fasting, the third way in which performance gets in the way. Of these nine markers of failure, fasting is probably the lesser problem for most of us because we simply don’t do it. But I would argue that when we are willing to fast, we find that denying ourselves something allows us to be filled with something else-- a better dependence upon him. There’s no better way to remember that you’re dependent upon God than to go without something you take for granted every day. When your stomach rumbles, you can’t help but remember those who are always hungry. Fasting isn’t a performance for others, but a sign of radical dependence upon God.

What Jesus is giving us here is a rule of life that gets to the heart of who we really are, and not simply who we pretend to be. In a culture that idolizes actors, Jesus calls us to be real people who are radically in love with and dependent upon God. It’s in him that we find our true identity and true purpose. We need to cultivate our relationship with God daily, and that involves a disciplined rule of life that includes generosity, prayer, and fasting among other disciplines that we’ll be talking about in the next couple of weeks. It’s about cultivating the inner life, and if we do that well we won’t need to make a show of our faith—it will be naturally evident!

I want to challenge you, as I continue to challenge myself, to begin developing those daily disciplines that will begin to shape you as a disciple of Jesus Christ. (Talk about Rule of Life cards)