Month: February 2023

Based on Matthew 5:20-37. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on February 12, 2023.

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The Gospel According to Matthew is structured in such a way to evoke comparisons to Moses. Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses. We are currently in the Sermon on the Mount, which echoes the time Moses went up on Mount Sinai to enter into a covenant with God and receive the Law.

Jesus is the new Moses who delivers a new Law. This section is referred to as the antitheses, meaning a sequence of statements with contrasts. But as Jesus had just said, he came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. His contradictory statements make the Law even more strict. He is saying that the Law that Israel had received was not really complete. The Law of Moses was basically set on a 7 or an 8, and Jesus is turning it up to 11.

When Moses received the Ten Commandments and then all of the other laws captured in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, God was trying to create a new nation. Israel was just a ragtag assembly of tribes wandering in the desert. If they accepted God’s sovereignty and Law, they would become a holy nation, a priestly people set apart to serve God. Jesus comes along and says, That’s not good enough. Yes, it was fine back then, but now it’s time to create a new kind of community.

This new community needs righteousness exceeding the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes were experts in the Law, and the Pharisees were known for following the Law scrupulously. But Jesus says, I AM the Law, and I will show you the way to fuller living in My kingdom. To be a part of this kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, here are all the things you need to do. And let me warn you, this is tough stuff.

First off, don’t murder. I think I can handle that one. I personally haven’t murdered anyone today. But Jesus goes further, saying, don’t insult anyone. In fact, don’t even be angry with anyone. For anger disrupts relationships, and holy relationships are the foundation of the kingdom of heaven. If you harm your siblings in any way, you are destroying that foundation.

As I mentioned last time, some Christian sects take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously. Most Christians throughout history have not. We started out as a small group living together with everything in common, as described in the Book of Acts, but later on allied ourselves with Empire. We made a deal with Constantine and his successors, sometimes implicitly but often explicitly, that we would condone their violent ways if they would allow us to continue to serve God.

Indeed, the Christian church often went further and actively perpetrated harm in God’s name. There are too many examples to list. The earliest one I can think of is the Crusades, where Christian armies went murdering and pillaging throughout eastern Europe and the Middle East under a Christian banner. Antisemitism has been rampant since the Middle Ages, resulting in the Inquisition, pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust. The Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify brutal acts as Christians colonized the Americas. Boarding schools were created to destroy Native American culture, no matter the harm done to the children who were forced to attend them. Many churches openly supported slavery. Incidentally, on this date in 1909, the NAACP was founded in Springfield, Illinois, after race riots there. Denominations have continued to splinter over the past fifty years because of a variety of social issues that ultimately revolve around the question of who is to be included in God’s kingdom and who should have the privilege of leading and teaching God’s people.

We are the unfortunate and unwilling inheritors of this legacy. We can say that we’re not like those other Christians who did all of those horrible things, but we are tainted by the sins committed by our predecessors whether we acknowledge them or not.

Last week, I talked about our calling to be the light of the world. We should not be dentists to the world, but we should allow Christ to examine us and to show us our failings. In order to shine Christ’s love on others, we need to make ourselves worthy of carrying His love. We need to examine ourselves individually, as a congregation, as a denomination, and as a part of the universal Christian church to expose the ways in which we have caused or perpetuated harm.

Often, we commit sins of omission rather than commission. We fail to take responsibility for being a force for good in a broken world. Elie Wiesel famously said:

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel

Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor who saw firsthand what happens when good people fail to act. Neutrality helps the oppressor. We who are strong must help those who are weak.

When I think about all the ways Christianity has sinned over the last two millennia, and the legacy of that sinfulness in terms of poverty and oppression, I become overwhelmed. I cannot undo four centuries of white European oppression of people of color in the United States, done either in God’s name or with the church’s consent. I cannot undo the harm that was done by marauding Christians throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. If I spent the entire rest of my life working for peace and reconciliation and restitution of what has been stolen, the most I could hope for is a drop in the bucket, an infinitesimal good among an enormous evil. Even if our congregation or whole denomination decided that was our only objective, we could barely move the needle.

The reality is that the world is broken in ways that I can’t heal, and that we as a group cannot heal. But, we are a people of hope, not hopelessness. We are a people who believe in a God who can overcome sin and even death. We worship a risen Christ who promises eternal life in his kingdom. Reconciliation may be impossible for us, but with God, all things are possible.

Jesus commands us to be reconciled with our siblings in the kingdom. If you’ll notice, he didn’t say, “If someone has wronged you and you are holding a grudge, go and be reconciled to them before offering your gift at the altar.” No. He said, “If you have wronged someone, go and be reconciled to them.” The onus is upon the party who has committed the sin.

Again, you may say that you haven’t broken any relationships that need to be healed. But Jesus sets the bar impossibly high and asks us to broaden our perspective. Think about the people who are not here today and why. At least some of them are people that we know who have been hurt by our actions or inaction. Many more of them are people that we don’t know, but who hold us accountable for the sins of the Church.

Being the light of the world means showing love to those who need it. Jesus says that we should be reconciled to those who have a claim against us. Relationships are healed one-on-one. Relationships are healed when the person who is in the wrong reaches out in humility and asks for forgiveness. Relationships are healed when two people come together and experience God’s presence, the binding power of the Holy Spirit. Relationships are healed when you are willing to own your role in the harm that has been done, or in perpetuating a system that is harmful, or in enabling harm through your silence or inaction.

This is hard. This can be painful. But ultimately, healing comes only when you build something new and beautiful as you work towards a greater good.

Let me tell you about a situation I was in right at the beginning of my tenure as department chair, back in August. There is an endowed professorship that historically was tied to my department. The previous professor who held that position left in summer 2021. The end of the story is that the position is no longer restricted to my department, and there is an active search right now to fill the professorship with a new hire in a different department. This was an extremely painful experience, right after I took over. I was extremely angry at various administrators, which reached its climax with a call to my dean that I regret.

The story has a happy ending of sorts. The dean and I have a pretty good relationship now. He understood where I was coming from, and I eventually understood that there were just miscommunications along the way. Also, the root of the problem wasn’t any evil act on anyone’s part. Rather, the problem came about because of a set of mutually incompatible expectations and a lack of sufficient resources. It resulted not from a personal failure but from a systemic failure.

So often, our interpersonal relationships are damaged by these systemic issues. There isn’t enough time or money or space to satisfy everyone’s needs. Saying yes to one good thing means saying no to another good thing that deserves a yes. What we say is not always the same as what other people hear, and vice versa. Decisions that were made a year or decade or century ago have repercussions that are still felt. The systems are too big for us to change on our own.

But what we can do is to heal relationships one at a time. I cannot resolve the university’s lack of sufficient resources, but I can develop a good relationship with my colleagues so that we can work together towards the greater good of serving our future alumni. I cannot resolve all of the harm done by the Christian church over the centuries, but I can show Christ’s love to those who suffer because of the church’s actions.

Jesus sets the bar impossibly high. He asks us to live in this life just the same as we will live in his eternal kingdom. He asks us to be perfect in an imperfect world. He says all these things knowing that we cannot possibly reach that ideal. But he also promises to fill us with the Holy Spirit who can help us grow in grace and become more Christ-like. He also promises forgiveness when we forgive, new life when we abide in him, and a glorious future that he is preparing for us.

Not every relationship can be salvaged. Not every harm can be remedied. But in baptism, we have each been claimed by Christ and responded by promising to be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. We embody God’s Word when we bring peace to a violent world, when we heal broken relationships, when we enable the oppressed to go free and flourish. We may fall short—in fact, we will fall short—but Christ will be with us by the Holy Spirit, helping us to do God’s will if we will only try. We are Christ’s body, Christ’s eyes and ears and hands and mouth to everyone we meet as we heal what is broken in this world. Let our yes be yes, as we answer our calling to be vessels of Christ’s reconciling love. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on February 5, 2023. Based on Matthew 5:13-20.

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Today, we are continuing the Sermon on the Mount. This is arguably the most important part of the Gospel According to Matthew, and sometimes is treated as the “canon within the canon.” Some Christian sects, such as Anabaptists like Mennonites and the Amish, elevate the Sermon on the Mount above other teachings, basically viewing the Gospel through the lens of this sermon. It contains some of the most famous teachings of Jesus, like the Beatitudes that Susan spoke about a couple of weeks ago.

The passage I just read starts with two of the most popular images to describe the church: salt and light. From a modern perspective, it is sometimes hard to understand the cultural depth of these two images. Let me first speak briefly about salt.

How can salt lose its saltiness? What does it mean to be “salt of the earth”? I’ve read a bunch of different commentaries with different explanations, so I’m not sure which is right. One possibility is that Judean salt was impure and would be kept in a sack. The actual sodium chloride would leach out faster than some of the other constituents, leaving rocks that were of no use but to be trampled under foot. Another possibility that makes more sense to me is that salt was traditionally used as a fertilizer. Too much salt kills plants, but a modest amount helps poor soil, a little bit like adding lime. For me, that squares with being “salt of the earth.” So we are supposed to bring new growth to barren lands, or barren hearts.

What I mostly want to talk about today is light. I would bet that everyone here today is within arm’s reach of a light source. I personally keep one in my pocket. If you look around, you’ll see little lights on the microphones and big lights hanging from the ceiling. Lorie has a light over her head, and I’m looking right into some bright lights. Lights are everywhere.

Indeed, lighting needs have driven technology far more than we appreciate. In ancient times, the primary source of light was lamps filled with animal fat, whether from cows or goats or fish. These lamps would stink. Rich people would use vegetable oils instead, especially olive oil. Eventually, candles were developed, still using animal fat. This was all the state of the art until the nineteenth century. The need for oil to provide light drove people in the north Atlantic to hunt walruses to local extinction. Then it drove the global whale trade.

The first major change was the use of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. In the nineteenth century, coal gas lamps became common in cities. A lamplighter would go along the street each evening and light the gas lamps to brighten the way. Homes were plumbed with gas lines. With the advent of petroleum, many people switched to kerosene lanterns. Think about this: the oil industry was born in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, but the Ford Model T, which was the first mass-produced automobile, didn’t go on the market until 1908. What were people using the oil for? Primarily, for light.

And what drove Edison’s pursuit of electrical technology? Light. He patented and commercialized the incandescent bulb in 1880 and revolutionized our use of light. Since then, we have developed more sophisticated light sources like fluorescent and LED bulbs.

Light is foundational to society. It allows us to navigate at night and indoors. It enables us to search for what we have lost. It allows us to read and to learn.

In Matthew, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.” Yet the Gospel According to John opens poetically, saying, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.” John wrote that Christ was the light of all people. How do we square this with Jesus’s words saying that we are the light of the world? Well, Paul described the Church as Christ’s body. Christ is the light, but we are the vessels of that light. We are the lamps filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit, burning brightly with the love of Christ. We shine, not because of who we are ourselves, but because we carry the light of Christ’s love. Jesus came to teach us how to become vessels of his love, lamps burning brightly in a dark world.

Being the light is a prophetic task. I subscribe to a daily email from the Center for Action and Contemplation, a Franciscan center founded and led by Father Richard Rohr. Their theme in 2023 is The Prophetic Path. So far, the focus has been on Jesus as a prophet. Often, we think of prophets as those who tell the future, but in reality, a prophet is someone who speaks the Truth, with a capital T, about the present. The prophet sees what’s going on in the world and points it out. Father Rohr wrote, “What is a prophet? Let me try this as a definition: one who names the situation truthfully and in its largest context. When we can name the situation truthfully and in its largest context, it cannot get pulled into interest groups and political expediency. … We don’t want the big frame. No one wants the big picture. … The prophet or prophetess speaks truthfully and in the largest context.”

Think about the first prophet, Moses. Yes, he told the Israelites about the Promised Land of Canaan, but more importantly, he denounced the evil of Pharaoh and the might of God to overcome that evil. All throughout the Old Testament, we hear about prophets speaking of the evil being done in Israel or Judah. Prophets like Amos denounce the way that the powerful mistreat the poor. He said:

For three transgressions of Israel,

    and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,

because they sell the righteous for silver

    and the needy for a pair of sandals—

they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth

    and push the afflicted out of the way;

Amos 2:6-7a

Amos goes on to proclaim that destruction is coming, but his primary message is that the present order of things is evil and not aligned with God’s will. That is the prophetic task, and that is what it means to be light. Like a spotlight, the prophet focuses the people’s attention on specific ways in which the world is broken, calling them to repent and fix the broken parts of their lives and their communities and their society.

Sometimes, the situation is so dire that a prophet is needed to proclaim Truth to the masses. Martin Luther King, Jr., was just such a prophet, speaking out against the systems and structures that perpetuated evil dating back centuries. But prophets like him are few and far between. Most often, we are dealing with the mundane, the casual, day-to-day shortcomings in our lives. Growing in God’s love is a process that takes time.

In that sense, we can be like the light of a dentist. Now, I only know one person who enjoys going to the dentist, and that’s Jesse. But most of us go to the dentist regularly to make sure we have good, healthy teeth and gums, or to correct problems that have emerged over the years. When we lived in Arkansas, our dentist was not very good. I think he just wasn’t very thorough. When we moved to Illinois, Rhonda and I went to a new dentist who found all of the things he had overlooked. Both of us needed root canals, in addition to several fillings. Our new dentist had better tools that allowed her to see the problems deep in our teeth and correct them before they got even worse. That was an unpleasant experience that played out over several months, but the alternative would have been even more suffering and eventually lost teeth.

In the same way, when the light of Christ’s love shines on the dark parts of our lives, it can be painful. If you really take Jesus’s teachings seriously, you will see all sorts of unpleasant aspects of your life: ways that you have mistreated your neighbor, ways that you have failed to love God with all your heart, ways that you have sinned by getting your priorities out of whack. Some people fear that experience, just as some people fear the dentist, but the reality is that hiding from God just delays the inevitable. If you do not root out problems when they are small, they fester and grow and ultimately can take over your life.

Now, I’m not advising you to be like a dentist, identifying all of the problems in other people. That’s a path that leads to being judged a hypocrite and alienating the people you care about. Christianity has earned a reputation for hypocrisy because churches so often criticize others while condoning sin among their members and leaders. As Jesus said elsewhere, “Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” What I’m saying is that each person needs to let Christ illuminate themselves to find those sinful parts of their lives and root them out, so that they can become Christ’s light to others.

Because that was Jesus’s commandment in this passage. Be the light! We have been given an amazing gift, the gift of membership in Christ’s family, blanketed with Christ’s love. Jesus says it’s as if we are a lamp. What is the purpose of a lamp? Let me ask it this way: Do you naturally desire to look at a lamp? Probably not. When I run at dusk or after dark, headlights are a real problem. When a light is shining right in my eyes, it becomes all that I can see. When the car passes, I am momentarily blinded until my eyes adjust. We are not drawn to light like moths. Rather, we use light to illuminate our path.

We are not called to be a dentist’s light, rooting out evil in other people no matter how painful. We are not called to be a flashlight shining in people’s eyes and blinding them to the world around them. We should not expect that our light will draw people to us like moths to the flame. Rather, we are called to be a streetlamp, illuminating the path to goodness. We don’t need to be a bright beacon like Martin Luther King, Jr., or Dorothy Day or William Barber or Desmond Tutu. We just need to be a part of the process of life and shine a little bit of light, a little bit of love, when we find someone in a dark place.

Jesus commands us to shine our light on the world to reveal the good and the bad, and to enable people to see a path to God. We are all people on a journey, one that ultimately leads to the eternal light of God’s presence. In the meantime, some people are walking in darkness, frightened of the world around them, unaware of God’s presence in their lives. We who know Christ know God’s love. We walk in the light of that love and can channel it to shine for others.

Let’s not put our light under a bushel. Instead, let’s shine for the world. That means exhibiting God’s love for the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” God loves THE WORLD. Not just some people, but the WHOLE WORLD. Unfortunately, many people do not know the loving God that we know. They may have heard of a judgmental God, one who only loves people who act in a certain way or believe a certain thing, or one who condemns people who act in other ways. We know a God who loves everyone, who desires that each person should walk in the light of Her love.

Let us seek to be a church that preaches the true Gospel, the Good News that the kingdom of God is at hand for everyone. Let us be light in the darkness of people’s lives so that they may see the path that leads to God. Let us not be afraid of the dark, but know that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never overtake it. Amen.

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