Sermons

“Choosing with Our Hearts”

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:21-37 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – February 12, 2017

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that your Spirit might truly transform our hearts and shape our choices and desires. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

We’ve been working our way through the Sermon on the Mount for a few weeks now, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any less intense. The “Sermon on the Mount” is what Christian tradition calls these three chapters of teaching in Matthew 5 through 7, giving them that name because right at the beginning it tells us Jesus went up a mountain, sat down, and began teaching. And yes, it’s pretty intense. We’re not even out of chapter five yet, and we’ve already been told that we might need to cut off our hands for our own good!

Do you suppose Jesus understood that it was stuff like this that would lead to Christianity getting a bad reputation? “Too many rules,” people say, with the assumption both that they don’t want to try that hard, and that everyone who’s saying they are must be a lying hypocrite, because no one could follow all the rules, all the time. Which might be true, I suppose, since I’m pretty sure everyone in here still has both hands.

But what if we came at it differently? As many of you know, I used to preach in the Land of Southern Baptistdom otherwise known as Alabama. There’s a woman in my church there who used to say that unlike churches where there were a lot of “don’ts” our church was about the “dos”, which for her mostly meant that we just focused on love. Do you suppose it’s possible to look at these passages through such a lens? Can we get through this without becoming lying hypocrites if we do?

Before we get too far in, I want to make a special point of pulling out verses 23-24, since I refer to this teaching every Sunday as we begin worship. You know how each week I say, “Jesus teaches us, before we come to worship God, to reconcile ourselves one to another”? Well, these are the verses I’m talking about when I say that. “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” This is why I’m constantly reminding us that the Passing of the Peace of Christ is not simply a moment for a friendly Hello. This is why we move that moment, during the season of Lent, to later in the service, generally right before communion, so we can be reminded of the seriousness of the ritual. When we shake hands and say those words, we are standing in, for one another, for the people that we need to seek reconciliation with. Sometimes, perhaps, those people are actually in the room, perhaps even in our same row. I hope that the power of this ritual and the promise of God’s mercy gives us the courage we need in those moments to shake the hands that we most need to shake. But often, the people we most need to reconcile with are elsewhere, and so, in order to properly prepare our hearts for worship, we must draw them to mind as we offer the reconciling peace of Christ to those who are right in front of us. I suppose we could try to do it exactly as Jesus described, where we all go find the various people holding grudges against us and meet back here when we’re done. But for reasons of efficiency, the church has come to the conclusion that the ritual act works better, if we are to actually know what time worship starts. At any rate, in case you’ve ever wondered what I am referring to when I introduce the Passing of the Peace, now you know. And it’s just one example of something Jesus manages to make more intense than we might have thought it was at first glance.

Reconciliation, adultery, divorce, making oaths – the stuff Jesus is getting into here is pretty heavy to begin with. But then he gets on this roll of “you have heard that it was said… but I say to you…” And his standards are a lot stricter! I think it’s important here to go back to the verses just before these, which we read last week. Jesus tells the disciples that he has come not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. And then he says “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” which kind of explains what comes next.

The Pharisees, of course, were the rule-followers of their day. To imply that their righteousness could be exceeded would have sounded a little crazy. But what if Jesus was measuring on a difference scale? What happens when we look at these teachings through the lens of love? In these teachings that he claims are fulfilling, rather than abolishing the law, Jesus is focused not only on the behaviors under scrutiny, but also on the state of the hearts from which those behaviors emanated. He doesn’t just want us to do the right thing; he wants us to want to do the right thing. It is through the re-shaping of our hearts that the law is fulfilled.

First-century Jews had a lot of rules to follow, if they were going to follow all of them. That’s why the Pharisees were so special; they were the ones who had devoted themselves to making sure they followed every point of the law, no matter how trivial or technical. What they may have forgotten, however, in their fervor to follow the rules, was the point of following God’s law, which is, of course, to bring us closer to God. The idea is not to master the rules, but to let the love that determines the rules master us. That is what Jesus is getting at when he talks about fulfilling the law.

The teachings Jesus gives in these verses may seem excessively harsh, with their references to cutting off hands and the fires of hell and all. There is an equally stark vision proffered in the passage we read from Deuteronomy. We’re coming in at the very end of the story here, after all the law has been given, taking up multiple long books. Having summed things up for the Israelites, Moses gives them a choice: follow the law and receive life and blessings, or don’t follow the law and receive curses and death. Now, of course, because we are human, there are two ways to interpret these options. There’s the transactional way, which is usually our first instinct: He said if I do this, I’ll get that, and I want that, so I’ll do this. And then there’s the Jesus way, in which it’s not that life and blessings are the reward for following the law, but rather that when we follow the law, life and blessings are what result, because the law is about love and the abundant life that God desires for each of us. The difference is subtle, but substantial. It’s the difference between copying down the right answers on a test and understanding the question. It’s the difference between teaching our children to follow the rules and teaching them to discern right from wrong. It’s the difference between saying what people want to hear in order to get what we want and true integrity. Is Jesus’ way harder? Yes, but not necessarily for the reasons we might imagine. And no, once we really get into it.

The Jesus way of following God’s commands requires not simply following the rules, but doing so with intention and awareness and humility. The point is that reflecting on why God is calling us to do one thing in a certain situation, rather than another thing, helps us grow more like Christ. Doing things Jesus’ way takes more time; it requires more thought. It requires that we not only do the right thing, but that we let those righteous choices seep into our hearts and re-form us. And precisely because we are letting the Spirit of God’s righteousness shape our desires, it gradually becomes easier and easier, second nature even, to do the right thing. This is what the lifelong journey of following Christ is all about. It is not something that happens in a day. It is not something we accomplish on our own. If people look at churches and see them full of hypocrites, it’s because on any given day, a large percentage of us are backsliding, that is, relying on the mercy of God to help us back to a place of integrity and love.

Every single day, God is setting before us life and death. But Jesus wants us to choose with our hearts, not based on which one will get us what we want, but on which one comes from love, leads to love, and multiplies love. And not cheap, candy hearts love, but costly love. It is the sacrificial love of Jesus that we’re called to choose here, the kind that loves those who have hurt us, those holding grudges against us, those who have betrayed us. That is the only kind of love that can truly transform our hearts. That is the kind of love that leads to abundant life. That is the kind of love that is stronger than death.

There’s a reason we use the word “practice” a lot in churches. It’s because we all need a lot of it. Consistently choosing the love Jesus offers us is often hard. But the more we do it, the more it becomes part of who we are. It shapes us, transforms us, makes us new. And isn’t that what we’re really seeking? May we find our heart’s desire. Alleluia and Amen.