The Story of Stuff (5/18/14)

The Story of Stuff

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

May 18, 2014

Matthew 6:19-34

Don’t pile up possessions here on earth, where moths and insects eat away and where burglars break in and steal.  Instead, gather your nest egg in heaven, where neither moths nor insects eat away and where no burglars break in or steal.  As you know, what you treasure is your heart’s true measure.

The eye is body’s lamp.  It follows that if your eye is clear, your whole body will be flooded with light.  If your eye is clouded, your whole body will be shrouded in darkness. If, then, the light within you is darkness, how dark can that be!

No one can be a slave to two masters.  That slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and disdain the other.  You can’t be enslaved to both God and Mammon.

That’s why I’m telling you, don’t fret about your life—what you’re going to eat and drink, or about your body—what you’re going to wear.  There’s more to living than food and clothing, isn’t there?  Take a look at the birds of the sky:  they don’t plant or harvest or gather into barns.  Yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  You’re worth more than they, aren’t you?  Can any of you add one hour to life by fretting about it?  Why worry about clothes?  Notice how the wild lilies grow:  they don’t toil and they never spin.  But let me tell you, even Solomon at the height of his glory was never decked out like one of them.  If God dresses up the grass in the field, which is here today and is thrown into an oven tomorrow, won’t God care for you even more, you with your meager trust?  So don’t fret.  Don’t say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink/’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’  these are all things pagans seek.  After all, your heavenly Father is aware that you need them all.  Seek God’s empire and his justice first, and all these things will come to you as a bonus.  So don’t fret about tomorrow.  Let tomorrow fret about itself.  The troubles that the day brings are enough.

Hakuna Matata.

When Professor Kip Elolia who is from Kenya and a professor at Emmanuel Christian Seminary spoke to our youth a few weeks ago, he taught us some Swahili.  He said we already know some Swahili.

We know the word, safari, which is the word for a long journey.  It is also the word for my browser on my computer.     Apple wants me to think that whenever I go on the internet I am going on a safari.

We probably know jambo, which is the most popular greeting.    Hello, how are you?

And of course thanks to the Disney film, The Lion King, which is now 20 years old, Hakuna Matata is a common phrase.   The song, Hakuna Matata, written for the film by Tim Rice and Elton John is one of the top 100 movie songs of all time.  It is a simple song:

Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase
Hakuna Matata! Ain't no passing craze

It means no worries for the rest of your days

It's our problem-free philosophy
Hakuna Matata!

That is pretty much the song and the philosophy.

Hakuna Matata.   No worries.  No problem.  

The Jesus Seminar voted this section as authentic to Jesus.    They wrote that outside of his longer narrative parables, this could be “the longest connected discourse that can be directly attributed to Jesus.” (Five Gospels, p. 152).

That’s why I’m telling you, don’t fret about your life—what you’re going to eat and drink, or about your body—what you’re going to wear.  There’s more to living than food and clothing, isn’t there?  Take a look at the birds of the sky:  they don’t plant or harvest or gather into barns.  Yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  You’re worth more than they, aren’t you?  Can any of you add one hour to life by fretting about it?  Why worry about clothes?  Notice how the wild lilies grow:  they don’t toil and they never spin.  But let me tell you, even Solomon at the height of his glory was never decked out like one of them.  If God dresses up the grass in the field, which is here today and is thrown into an oven tomorrow, won’t God care for you even more, you with your meager trust?  So don’t fret.

Hakuna matata.

Historical Jesus scholars are excited about a new find.  Fox News has reported that enclosed in a clay jar discovered in Africa is something that appears to be Jesus’s birth certificate.   Jesus was born in Kenya.

Hakuna matata.  A red letter phrase from Jesus.

Oh, but Jesus, we do have worries.

I wake up at night worrying about all kinds of things.  I worry about the house and the bills and my parents.   I could give you a list.  While I know my worrying won’t add an hour to my life, in fact, if anything, it will probably shorten my life, I worry anyway.   It’s what I do.

I imagine that there could be people out there who don’t worry.   I envy them.   Perhaps they found a spiritual practice or a problem-free philosophy, or maybe hakuna matata is in their genes.    There are certainly plenty of books on how to worry less.    The first page of a Google search found the following titles:

The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You
Why Worry:  Stop Coping and Start Living
Five Steps to Stop Worrying and Anxiety
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
God’s Answer on Worry

I am not saying these books are not helpful.  I am just saying that if it takes a lot of books, the challenge could be larger than a book.    I remember hearing sermons about how it was a sin to worry.  That helps.  Just add a layer of guilt on top of the worry.   Now I can worry about being a sinner because I worry.

Thankfully medical science does identify anxiety as a condition that can be treated with a combination of therapeutic methods and medications.   That help is available and if worry and anxiety immobilize you, I strongly recommend seeking assistance.   There is no reason to suffer needlessly.  

The worry I am thinking about is more of a pervasive on-going existential condition.   If you are alive, you will worry.     I wonder why Jesus picked up on this theme.  My suspicion is that he was preaching to himself.    That is a trade secret.   We preachers are working out our stuff.   Mostly unconsciously, I suppose, but we preach to our own issues either directly or indirectly.

When I hear the historical Jesus admonishing people not to worry, my hunch is that he knows worry from experience.    Hey, he was a penniless homeless beggar who had a lot of people who didn’t like him.  His audience was an oppressed people under occupation.    He had a right to worry.

When Jesus says, “Hakuna matata—don’t worry” I think he is talking to himself as much as anyone.   I don’t know. I am just guessing but I am trying to find the human being here so I can relate to him.   Jesus was a thinker.  Thinkers worry.  He thought about important things.  He thought about empire and war and famine and poverty and injustice because he saw and lived it.  He likely knew that his way of talking and his underground movement would lead to an uncomfortable end.  It did.   I think he worried about his friends and what trouble they might get into because of him.

When he says, “Look at the birds” or “Consider the wild lilies” he is engaging in the first form of therapy.  It is worry-management 101.   Are you worrying?  Look outside yourself.    Get out of your head.

Buddha was a worrywart.   His story is one of a privileged palace prince who finally takes a few trips into the countryside and sees the world as it is.    Poverty. Disease.  Death.  So he goes on a quest.  Finally, he sits under a tree and through meditation becomes enlightened.   He discovers that craving is the cause of suffering.  It is in the head.   You need to get out of your head.  How?  You go inward.

Jesus in a sense goes outward.    See the birds.   Both Jesus and Buddha are doing a similar thing.  Both understand the problem is in the head.  Too much thinking.   You can’t think your way out of it.   You have to do something altogether different.  Live life and meditate.   Meditate and live life.

If you can, find someone with whom you can share your worries.   When I finally open up and get out of my head, I talk to my lovely bride.  Simply naming the worries is therapeutic.   The naming reduces their power.   “It is OK.  We can handle it when we get to it,” she says to me while she strokes my shoulder.   Hakuna matata.  My wife was born in Kenya.

The title of this sermon is “The Story of Stuff” because of Jesus’s teaching about possessions.   In this section Jesus is connecting possessions with worry.    One could make the case that as a species all of our conflicts and wars, all of our striving, all of our crime, and when I say crime, I mean crime of the Wall Street variety as much as any, is related to worry over possessions.

We worry over security.  The road to security, we think, is in having enough stuff.   At the international level it is having enough weapons to protect the stuff.   One would think we would be the happiest people ever.  We, that is the United States, have weapons beyond imagination and calculation.  Military bases, cities really, all over the planet.    These military cities keep the stuff flowing.  We extract stuff from all over the world.  That stuff, fossil fuel energy, was made hundreds of millions of years ago.   We have extracted half of the planet’s supply in less than two centuries.  We use it to burn in our machines, to make us happy.    Meanwhile, the people who live in those places from whence the stuff comes, have little to nothing.

Here we are on a Sunday morning, privileged partakers of petroleum at the peak of industrial civilization, seeking happiness and a cure for the gnawing anxiety from the words of a homeless wanderer who didn’t own a shekel.   Hakuna matata, says Jesus.   Take a look at the birds.  Are you happier than they are?  

“Gather your nest egg in heaven, where neither moths nor insects eat away and where no burglars break in or steal.  As you know, what you treasure is your heart’s true measure.”

What do you suppose Jesus, that peasant with an attitude, meant by that?   I don’t think he was talking about heaven in the common way it is understood, as the place you go when you die, if you are lucky and one of the chosen.    I think Jesus is speaking metaphorically.  The kingdom of God that Matthew translates as kingdom of Heaven out of respect, is not a place for Jesus.    Heaven is a word for what we might call an authentic life.   It isn’t an individual thing.  It is a vision of peace with justice and beauty for all creation.   It is balance.  It is joy.  It is love.   It is adventure.

I don’t know about you, but I cannot say that my treasure is always in heaven.  I am a worrier.  But now and then, despite myself, I get a glimpse, take a risk, do something meaningful, seek the kingdom, notice the birds.    I feel good if I can recognize grace part of the time.    

A sermon that meanders and discusses worry and stuff and meaning and grace requires poetry to hold it together.   I will close with this poem from Barbara Crooker.  I found it in Garrison Keillor’s collection, Good Poems for Hard Times.   This is called, “In the Middle.”

In the Middle

of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather’s
has stopped at 9:20; we haven’t had time
to get it repaired.  The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don’t ring.  One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon.  Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast.  Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return.  Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread.  Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail is a metronome, ¾ time.  We’ll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

Hakuna Matata, Beloveds.

Amen.

Behind the Mask (5/11/14)

Behind the Mask

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

May 11, 2014

A Permeable Life

Carrie Newcomer

I want to leave enough room in my heart

For the unexpected,

For the mistake that becomes knowing,

For knowing that becomes wonder,

For wonder that makes everything porous,

Allowing in and out

All available light.

An impermeable life is full to the edges,

But only to the edges.

It is a limited thing.

Like the pause at the center of the breath,

Neither releasing or inviting,

With no hollow spaces

For longing and possibility.

I would rather live unlocked,

And more often than not astonished,

Which is possible

If I am willing to surrender

What I already think I know.

So I will stay open

And companionably friendly,

With all that presses out from the heart

And comes in at a slant

And shimmers just below

The surface of things

Emmet Fox

The Sermon on the Mount

It is very significant that Jesus should call your consciousness the Secret Place.  He desires, as always, to impress us with the truth that it is the inner that causes the outer, and not the outer that brings about the condition of the inner.  Neither does one outer thing ever cause another outer thing.  Cause and effect are from the within to the without….

It is obvious from this that nothing is worthwhile; nothing has any real significance, but a change of policy in the Secret Place.  Think rightly, and sooner or later all will be well on the outside.

Matthew 6:1-18

Take care that you don’t flaunt your religion in public to be noticed by others.  Otherwise, you’ll have no reward from your Father in the heavens.  For example, when you give to charity, don’t bother to toot your own horn as some phonies do in synagogues and on the street.  They are seeking human recognition.  Let me tell you, they’ve already received their reward.  Instead, when you give to charity, don’t let your left hand in on what your right hand is up to, so your acts of charity will stay secret.  And your Father, who sees what happens in secret, will reward you.

And when you pray, don’t act like phonies.  They love to stand up and pray in synagogues and on street corners, so they can show off in public.  Le me tell you, they’ve already received their reward.  When you pray, go into a room by yourself and shut the door behind you.  Then pray to your Father, the hidden one.  And your Father, who sees what happens in secret, will reward you.  And when you pray, you should not babble on as the pagans do.   They imagine that the more they say, the more attention they get.  So don’t imitate them.  After all, your Father knows what you need before you ask.  Instead, you should pray like this:

Our Father in the heavens,

your name be revered.

Your empire be established,

your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Provide us with the bread we need for the day.

Forgive our debts

to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us.

And don’t make us face the test,

but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive the offenses of others, your heavenly Father will also forgive yours, and if you don’t forgive others, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your offenses.

When you fast, don’t make a spectacle of your remorse as the phonies do.  As you know they make their faces unrecognizable so their fasting may be publicly recognized.  Let me tell you, they’ve already received their reward.  When you fast, brush your hair and wash your face, so your fasting will not be noticed by others, but by your Father, the hidden one, and your Father, who sees what happens in secret, will reward you.

This passage raises a number of questions.   These questions include:

What is prayer?

What are we doing when we pray?

Are we trying to influence someone, something?

What is meant by the reward for what happens in secret?

In this section, Matthew’s Jesus is talking about three activities, charity, prayer, and fasting.    What did Jesus think about these acts of piety?  Thomas’s Jesus in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas has something to say about charity, prayer, and fasting.  This is saying 14:

Jesus said to them, “If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.”

What you find with the gospels is that the authors found something interesting about the historical Jesus and elaborated and exaggerated it.  They thought about what he said and tried to make sense of it.     What might have gone back to the historical Jesus was this admonition:

Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

That admonition is also found in Thomas.    Matthew applies it to charity.  Thomas applies it to the disclosing of mysteries.  

In this section on Matthew, the following might go back to Jesus:

When you give to charity, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

When you pray, go into a room by yourself and shut the door behind you. 

Our Father

Your name be revered.

Impose your imperial rule.

Provide us with bread we need for the day.

Forgive our debts to the extent that we have forgiven those in debt to us.

And please don’t subject us to test after test.

When you fast, comb your hair and wash your face.

If you are curious as to how the Jesus Seminar did this work, I recommend The Five Gospels.    I think it is all quite interesting.   

It seems to me that Matthew captured a certain spirit of the historical Jesus and elaborated on it.   Thomas did the same.  Thomas has Jesus say to forget all that piety stuff: prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  He was saying, to paraphrase:  It is all fake.   It is all a show.  It is all external.  It is all illusory.  It is the outer husk of religion.  It will do nothing for your inner life. 

Matthew doesn’t go that far.   He has Jesus value these practices but only to the extent that they are private practices and secret practices.    Matthew’s Jesus talks about the Father watching you.  Matthew frames his ethics around reward and punishment from the all-seeing eye of a supernatural Father figure.   

I don’t think the historical Jesus was that literal regarding the Father watching you.   But the historical Jesus was critical of religious practices and saw how they can be abused.   If these practices really have value, then you should do them without anyone knowing about them.

Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting were expected of people.  This is what you were supposed to do.   But these things aren’t necessarily done automatically because you like to do them.    You have to be told to do these things.   They require discipline, practice, and training.

They are like all those charity hours college students need to rack up before graduation so they can put them on their resume.   I am not picking.  We all do this.  See, look at this list of good deeds.  I am good.  Hire me. 

I don’t know if the historical Jesus would say this, but I would.   Good deeds are good even if selfishly motivated.    Giving money to the church is still a good thing even if you do so for a tax break.    One might question if there is ever any deed done that is completely free of self-interest.    At some level, likely at a level of which we are not conscious, our good deeds and worthy practices do something for us.   

Even Matthew has Jesus appeal to self-interest, “The Father will reward you.”   He is shifted it from public reward to Father in heaven.    I don’t think Matthew did us any favors by emphasizing supernatural rewards and punishments.    I think the nuance was lost as well as subjecting people to spiritual abuse by authorities.    You know what I mean, “Do this or you are going to hell” kind of stuff. 

That said I think the impulse by Jesus was to make for a deeper sense of self.      The practices, in his view, had become cheapened, common, and were being used to serve the baser aspects of our lives.    

For instance, it would be hard to imagine the historical Jesus, or Thomas’s Jesus or Matthew’s Jesus attending the National Day of Prayer.   If you missed it, it was May 1^st.    It is hard for me to see it as anything but a cynical display of partisan politics, superstition, and exceptionalism.   I think Jesus would look at that spectacle and say, “Go pray in your closets, guys.”      

But who is the hypocrite?  I have prayed in public before.    I have used my clergy credentials to make public statements.   I have worn my collar and marched for peace and spoke publicly for gay rights and what all.  I have received my reward for it.  I hope it even did some good.   It was certainly in public to be seen.  Is that what Jesus was talking about?   Maybe, but I do think there is value in expressing ethics in terms of faith.   I am thinking of Martin Luther King or more recently, the Nuns on the Bus, calling the nation’s attention to racial and economic justice as moral issues.

I think the text says to me, if you have to be religious in public, do it, but know there is a limited value in it.   The reward fits the expression.   If you, John Shuck, want to receive spiritual value from the practices of charity, prayer, or fasting, you will need to go behind the mask, beneath the public expression to an interior expression. 

The word translated as hypocrite or phony is more precisely actor.   Actors on stage would put on masks to show the audience the person they are portraying.      The image Matthew is using is that public piety is like a stage play.   

Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting were expected of people.    Social pressure encouraged compliance.  A combination of positive and negative reinforcement was required for motivation.    If these practices were expected socially, the reward was also social.  I think I hear Jesus saying that if I want these practices to have inner transformative value, I need to bring them within my own self.   These things need to have value behind the mask.     I need to make these things part of my nature, not just something I need to do because it is expected.     

I think Emmet Fox has a helpful understanding of this passage, when he writes:

It is very significant that Jesus should call your consciousness the Secret Place.  He desires, as always, to impress us with the truth that it is the inner that causes the outer, and not the outer that brings about the condition of the inner.  Neither does one outer thing ever cause another outer thing.  Cause and effect are from the within to the without….

It is obvious from this that nothing is worthwhile; nothing has any real significance, but a change of policy in the Secret Place.  Think rightly, and sooner or later all will be well on the outside.

What are these practices?  Almsgiving is easy to understand.  It is an old-fashioned word but it has to do with giving money for food, shelter, and other the needs of the poor.    It is easy to see that is a good thing to do.   Creating a habit of giving, of generosity that comes from gratitude is its own reward.   It is especially so when it is done without concern with what others might think.

What about fasting?  What is fasting?  Muslims who fast during the period of Ramadan do not eat until sundown each day.   It is a prescribed discipline to feel hunger.   This practice can lead to increased awareness and attention that you might miss by not engaging in this practice.    Jesus is criticizing those who through their appearance say, “Hey, look at me, I am fasting!  Aren’t I spiritual?”   The point is that if you want to do something spiritual, make it spiritual.   Don’t let on that you are fasting.  The benefits seem lost if they are used for boasting.   

What about prayer?  What is prayer?   I think this question could lead to another sermon or series of sermons.   I think prayer is something people have a lot of questions about, but that is beyond the scope of today’s sermon.   Perhaps this summer a few sermons on prayer might be in order.  

In the context of today’s passage, I hear Jesus saying, “Take care regarding prayer.”  There is a sacredness, a holiness, an intimacy with self and God, however one conceives of God.   Prayer in the words of the poem by Carrie Newcomer is about “leaving room in the heart,” being “porous” and “permeable” and “open” and “unlocked” to that which “shimmers just below the surface of things.”

If prayer is something like that, then making speeches disguised as prayers is not that.   That is a closing rather than an opening.   That is speaking for God and on behalf of God rather than being spoken to by God.   

I hear this message from Jesus in today’s scripture reading:   bring your prayer, bring your fasting, bring your almsgiving into the sacred space of the heart.   In that space will you find the greatest reward.    

I have been reading a book by Barbara Brown Taylor called Learning to Walk in the Dark.  It is beautifully written.  She ends the book with a prayer she keeps on her nightstand.    It is a prayer written by Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton.   I will close with it.    It is called Morning Prayer.  Let us pray:

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think that I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this,

You will lead me by the right road.

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always

though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me.

And you will never leave me to face my struggles alone.

Amen.

Red Letter Jesus (5/4/14)

Red Letter Jesus

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

May 4, 2014

Emmet Fox, The Sermon on the Mount, pp.88-90

Resist not evil, spiritually understood, is the grand secret of success in life.  A correct understanding of this commandment will lead you out of the Land of Egypt, and out of the House of Bondage; regenerate your body; liberate your soul; and, in short, remake your life from top to bottom.  As soon as you resist mentally any undesirable or unwanted circumstance, you thereby endow it with more power—power which it will use against you, and you will have depleted your own resources to that exact extent.  Whether you have to meet a physical, or a personal, or a business difficulty, you must not, as people usually do, hurl yourself against it mentally, or even stand stubbornly in the middle of the road saying, “You shall not pass”; but, observe the master rule of Jesus, and resist not evil. 

Refrain from resisting the trouble mentally; that is to say, refuse to feed your own soul-substance into it.  Feel out, mentally, for the Presence of God, as you would feel out physically if thrust suddenly into a dark room.  Hold your thought steadily to that Presence as being with you, and as being also in the person or the place where the evil has presented itself; that is to say, turn the other cheek.  If you will do this, the difficulty, whatever it is, the undesirable situation or the trouble that someone is making, will fade away into its native nothingness, and leave you free.  This is the true spiritual method of loving your enemy.

Love is God and is therefore absolutely all powerful.  This is the scientific application of Love, against which nothing evil can stand. It destroys the evil condition and, if a person is concerned, it sets him as well as you free.  But to return hate for hate, curse for curse, or fear for aggression, has the effect of amplifying the trouble, much as a feeble sound is multiplied in volume by an amplifier.  Meeting hatred with Love in the scientific way is the Royal Christ Road to freedom.  This is the perfect method of self-defense in all circumstances.  It renders you absolutely invulnerable to any kind of attack.

If someone makes himself personally obnoxious to you, do not resist him in thought.  Resist not evil; realize the Indwelling Christ in your “enemy,” and all will be well.  He will cease to trouble you, and either change his attitude or else fade out of your life altogether, besides being spiritually benefited by your action.  If you receive bad news, do not resist it in thought.  Realize the unchanging nature and infinite harmony of Good ever available, at every point of existence; and things will come right.  If you are unhappy in your work, or in your home, do not resist these conditions mentally, or indulge in grumbling, or self-pity, or in recriminations of any kind.  Such action will only strengthen that particular embodiment of error; so, resist not evil.  Feel out mentally for the Presence of Divine Spirit, all around you; affirm its actuality; and claim that you have dominion over all conditions when you speak the Word in the name of I Am That I Am, and you will soon be free.

Matthew 5:38-47

As you know, we once were told, ‘An eye for an eye’ and ‘A tooth for a tooth.’  But I tell you, don’t react violently against the one who is evil; when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well.  If someone is determined to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat along with it.  Further, when anyone conscripts you for one mile, go along an extra mile.  Give to those who beg from you; and don’t turn away those who want to borrow from you.

As you know, we once were told, ‘You shall love your neighbor’ and ‘You shall hate your enemy.’   But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors.  You’ll then become children of your Father in the heavens, for God makes the sun rise on both the bad and the good, and sends rain on both the just and the unjust.  Tell me, if you love those who love you, why should you be rewarded for that?  Even the toll collectors do as much, don’t they?  And if you greet only your friends, what have you done that is exceptional?  Even the pagans do as much don’t they?  To sum up, you shall be perfect in the same way your heavenly Father is perfect.

First some critical reflections.

When we read the Sermon on the Mount we are not reading the words of the historical Jesus as presented to us.  Some of his words are in there to be sure.  Overall, we are reading a portrait of Jesus as painted by the author that the tradition calls Matthew.   This Matthew is not an eyewitness of Jesus.  It was a name placed on this anonymous collection many decades after the gospels were written, perhaps into the second century.    

For convenience we call the author Matthew as tradition has done so.   But we should know I am not talking about the disciple of Jesus.   It is not likely that any followers of Jesus wrote any gospels.    To gain authority for particular texts, apostolic names or names of others involved in the movement were attached to these texts.   Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Mary, Peter and so on.  

Matthew created this portrait of Jesus who is like a new Moses.   Matthew’s birth story of Jesus is a retelling of the birth of Moses.   In both cases a ruthless bad guy kills all the children but Moses and Jesus both escape because they are destined heroes. 

As Moses received the Law from Mount Sinai, so Jesus climbs a mountain and reveals a new teaching, the Sermon on the Mount.   One of the ways in which Matthew creates this portrait of authority is to have Jesus say things like, “As you know, we once were told…but I say to you….”   That is not the historical Jesus.  That is Matthew.

As we read or hear the Sermon on the Mount, we are not reading or hearing the historical Jesus.  We are hearing or reading Matthew’s embellishment of the historical Jesus.   This is Jesus idealized by Matthew, framed by Matthew, and created by Matthew.    By the time we get to Matthew’s gospel Jesus is more of a literary figure than an historical person.  He is even godlike.  The historical person is buried in there.  You can get a glimpse of the historical person out of the corner of your eye, or faintly hear his voice amidst the music of Matthew’s symphony, but mostly the historical preacher and prophet has been crowded out by a miracle worker who speaks with the authority of God.     

I take pains to point this out because I think there is confusion between the historical Jesus and the various literary and theological portraits of Jesus.  They are not the same thing.    Because we place authority on these texts and on the person of Jesus it becomes important I think to separate this out.   

Last week I talked about divorce and remarriage.  Think of all the pain and suffering because of what Jesus supposedly said that he probably didn’t even say, or if he said something about it, it was in a completely different context. 

Then even when we go back to something we think the historical Jesus said, we are now talking about a human being who had an opinion.  We can debate whether what he said is interesting or not.   We can look at it from the viewpoint of Matthew’s point of view and see if it is interesting or not.

The question is one of authority.  It isn’t so much the authority of these old books or of a guy who said things 2000 years ago.  The problem with authority is contemporary people using these texts and figures to boss people around.    You can’t get married and you can get married because it says so in the Bible. You are a sinner or your behavior is bad because Jesus says this and that in the Bible.   Not only external rules, but even more powerful are the internal rules that authority dictates.  People take all this to heart. 

That is why critical thinking regarding texts is crucial.  Critical thinking liberates.   Critical thinking liberates you from the authority of a text or a figure painted by an ancient author or a contemporary preacher who is using this text over you.    You are liberated from the authority of the text and are able as an adult subject to evaluate what is written on its own terms.    It doesn’t matter whether Jesus or Matthew said it or not.  What matters is whether it is true or not.    Critical thinking liberates.

Now there is another movement.   Once you are liberated from the text’s authority you can as an autonomous subject enter the text again.   Marcus Borg calls this post-critical naiveté.  It is like suspending disbelief when you enter the movie theater.   You know who you are.  You know you are watching actors recreate a script.  But you enter it and allow it to speak to you.  

People might be thinking something along these lines,

“John, you talk about God as a human construction and you talk about the historical Jesus and how the miraculous and divine is legend and myth and yet in worship you say, ‘Let us worship God’ and we sing hymns about Jesus walking with us, how does this work?” 

We acknowledge our critical thinking and suspend, not give it up, not leave it at the door, but allow for the poetry of Jesus to touch the heart.   I move in between the Jesuses (Matthew, historical, Nicene Creed), and allow each of them to speak.   I am always the one moving.   What matters is not what the text says, but what I do with it.   Good poetry, good scripture, and wise words, transcend the speaker and the hearer.    When we say, “Let us worship God” we are opening minds and hearts to something beyond us and beneath us, that is perhaps within us and among us, to be open to beauty, truth, love whatever might be what we need.     But it is still us.  

Today’s section on the Sermon on the Mount contains the reddest words of Jesus.    The Jesus Seminar scholars were in consensus about the following words more than any other.    They ranked as red the following:

Don’t react violently against the one who is evil:  when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well.  When someone wants to sue you for your shirt, let that person have your coat along with it.  Further, when anyone conscripts you for one mile, go an extra mile.  Give to the one who begs from you.

That was red, and then this was red:

Love your enemies.  

The scholars were in consensus about that collection of sayings echoing the voiceprint of the historical Jesus.     They also voted as pink:

Don’t turn away the one who tries to borrow from you.

And…

God causes the sun to rise on both the bad and the good, and sends rain on both the just and the unjust.  Tell me, if you love those who love you, why should you be commended for that?  Even the toll collectors do as much, don’t they?

The scholars were saying that we can’t be sure of much regarding Jesus.  But if he said anything, he said something like this:

Don’t react violently to evil. 

When struck, turn the other cheek. 

When sued for your shirt, give your coat too. 

When forced to carry a pack for a mile, go an extra mile.

Give to the one who begs from you.

They are exaggerated sayings, aren’t they?   They are tough to institutionalize.   You can’t take them literally.  How many times do you turn the cheek?   If you give to everyone who begs from you, you would have nothing.  Then again, maybe that is the point?  

Biblical scholar, Walter Wink suggested that these passages were not passive, but reflected the creative and assertive third way.   Wink was involved in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.   His interpretation of these texts and the experience of South African liberation struggle helped him to see both in a new light.  He saw in these passages not passivity but assertive non-violent resistance.     He saw these texts as empowering texts spoken to the oppressed.  

When the oppressor gives the oppressed a backhanded slap on the right cheek, what do you do?  If you strike back you will be killed.   Or you cower in humiliation.   The third way, is to stand your ground, and turn the other cheek.  You show that you are a human being.    This isn’t a manual of operations.  Jesus was providing hyperbolic examples of creative responses to those who are violent. 

If someone sues you for your outer garment, take off your inner garment too.  What will happen?  You will be naked and the shame will be on the oppressor.

If a Roman soldier makes you carry his pack for one mile, which was the limit that soldiers could require someone to carry a pack, don’t stop after one mile.  Carry it another and watch the soldier try to take it back from you.   

In all three cases, do not let the oppressor define your humanity.  Find a creative way to resist humiliation but do not give in to the violence of the oppressor.    You are turning the tables on behavior that is designed to humiliate.

Don’t think of those who beg from you as the problem.  The system that creates the humiliation of begging is the problem.  Let’s mess it all up by giving it all away.   Recognize the humanity of all.

Sandra found an example of this.  On the cover of the bulletin you can see the “Love” paper sculpture created by hateful emails.   Honey Maid in an advertisement with the theme “This is Wholesome” depicted among various families a family with two dads and a mixed race family.   The company received a large number of hateful emails.    Some creative folks printed out the hateful emails and created this sculpture spelling the word “Love.”  That is turning the other cheek. 

It isn’t returning hate for hate, or violence for violence, nor is it allowing the haters to continue to humiliate.  The non-violent way of the historical Jesus is to love enemies.   You love them by insisting on the humanity of all.      You create something beautiful out of something ugly.

This collection of sayings have been inspirational texts for non-violent struggles such as the Civil Rights movement and the movement against apartheid.   They have also been interpreted as reinforcing passivity among those who are abused.   It depends on how they are interpreted.   I think understanding that the historical Jesus was speaking to occupied people in attempt to strengthen their resolve and inspire creativity helps us to interpret these texts in healthy ways that can foster transformation.    Even when it does not result external transformation at least it provides human dignity, and that is the crucial and important first step.

I printed in the bulletin those paragraphs from Emmet Fox because I think he interpreted this section masterfully.    He understood the resist not evil as not feeding the drama.   He wrote:

“Refuse to feed your own soul-substance into it.”

When people do the hating, they want you to enter their drama at their pace and with their rules.   Refuse to play.   Turn the tables.  Change the game.  Don’t get caught up in it.    Those who do the hating are likely caught up in someone else’s drama not of their making.  

When Jesus says, “Pray for your persecutors,” in this context it is recognizing the deeper humanity that binds all.    This hate, this violence, this anxiety is not our true nature, but is magnified fear and pain that spirals out of control.  We can recognize that and step out of that violent drama.    It is a trust that even though we cannot see it and are not in any position to see it, we are all broken people.    We all want love, acceptance, and understanding.  

The Dalai Lama in his wonderful book How to Expand Love advises starting in your mind with friends, those who are advantageous to you, then to those who you see as neutral, then to those who you regard as disadvantageous or enemy.     In each case, imagine and wish them well.  His is a very practical approach to expanding kindness, compassion, and peace.      

At the end of the day, it isn’t about texts or authoritative teachers.  It isn’t about rules or external circumstances.  It is about what is in our minds and our hearts and how to expand love. 

This isn’t easy.   I am in no way pretending that it is.  These are the hardest sayings of Jesus.  I think because they are the hardest, they have the potential to be the most transforming and life changing.     

As they say, we seek not spiritual perfection but spiritual progress.

Amen.