92.4K
Downloads
667
Episodes
Foundry is an historic, progressive United Methodist Church that welcomes all, worships passionately, challenges the status quo, & seeks to transform the world.
Episodes
Sunday Sep 18, 2016
Sunday Sep 18, 2016
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry United Methodist Church, September 18, 2016.
Text: Psalm 27
Palestinian-American Poet Naomi Shihab Nye tells this story of an encounter with a Middle Eastern mother and child: “The little girl at the airport gate in Cincinnati had a tuft of vivid pink ponytail sticking straight up out of her brown-haired head. I wondered how hard she had to beg to get her mother to do that. She was about five, wearing a lacy white party dress. When we boarded the plane she turned up sitting right in front of me. She poked her cute little face through the crack between the seats. ‘Do you have a table that comes out of your arm?’…When the flight attendant gave safety instructions over the loudspeaker, the girl chimed out loud responses. ‘You’re welcome!’ to ‘Thanks for flying with us.’ ‘Hope you have a nice flight too!’ Her mother tried to shush her. ‘But you told me to answer people,’ the girl protested. The mama said, ‘That lady’s talking to everyone. She’s not just talking to you.’ The plane took off toward San Francisco and the little girl looked down on Cincinnati. ‘Oh Mama!’ she cried. ‘We forget we live in a zigzag world. Look how it’s shining!’”[i]
“We forget we live in a zigzag world,” a shining world… This little Arab child had the eyes to see the beauty of the world, the light in the world, she saw everyone as a friend. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we don’t see.
Many months ago now, in a sermon, I lifted up the opening prayer from our United Methodist Order for Morning Praise and Prayer that begins, “New every morning is your love, great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world.” I regularly post the prayer on FaceBook and many of you have commented about how helpful it is. But something else I’ve heard in response to the words of this prayer is: “I have a hard time seeing God working for good in the world.” // So many people struggle just to get by; the specter of violence haunts our streets, our homes, even our computers; the earth is wrecked to line the pockets of the already wealthy; bigotry, cruelty and injustice not only land upon human bodies with humiliating, deadly force, but also become rallying cries to mobilize the very worst of human nature. And it feels tiresome to have to keep acknowledging the vitriol and division and polarization that seems so overwhelming in these days. But this is the soup in which we are swimming. We can’t escape it. I’ve been hearing how difficult it is for those of you who are directly involved in the political fray in any way to keep a sense of balance, kindness, and faith. I have been hearing painful stories about hateful, dismissive, words and actions from family members and friends. When our own loved ones begin to treat us like an enemy we know that the infection of this particular dis-ease has become pervasive indeed. We may wince to think of the ways that we ourselves have contributed to the ugliness that is determined to get its hooks in all of us. In the midst of all of this, our vision can get clouded by defensiveness, hurt, self-righteousness, regret, fear, sadness, and more. How can we see the shining, zigzag world, how can we see others as friends, how can we see God in these conditions?
Jean Vanier is a Catholic philosopher and the founder of L’Arche, an international organization that creates communities where people with intellectual disabilities and those who assist them share life together. Vanier himself has lived in this intentional community for more than 50 years. He talks about seeing God through “signs” explaining that, “A sign means ‘a great event that is visible and reveals a presence of God.’”[ii] Vanier isn’t just talking about things we might associate as “miracles”—like walking on water or immediate healing. Instead he mentions things like the 2010 film Of Gods and Men, a movie that retold the tragic fate of nine Trappist monks in Algeria. The monks lived in deep harmony with their Muslim neighbors until 1996, when Islamic fundamentalist forces ordered them to leave. The monks refused to leave the people with whom they had formed such close bonds and paid dearly for their solidarity. Vanier says that the film reveals God’s presence and, therefore, is a “sign.” He also mentions things that certain people do—acts of courage, of love, of humility, of service—and says that these are “signs”—great events that are visible and that reveal God’s presence. I imagine that many of us can get on board with this understanding as an abstract concept. But is this the lens through which we actually look upon the world? Are we actively looking for “signs” and, if so, do we have the eyes to see them?
As Naomi Shihab Nye’s story reminds us, children tend to see signs with great clarity. I am reminded of the moment here at Foundry back in July when this truth was on brilliant display. On July 17th, author Diana Butler Bass joined us for worship with her family. She wrote about what happened on her FaceBook page: “The pastor (Pastor Dawn) called the little ones forward for the children’s sermon, about a dozen preschoolers gathered on the chancel steps. The pastor asked, ‘Where is the candle? Do you see the candle?’ The children looked around. One sharp-eyed boy said, ‘There it is.’ And the pastor replied, ‘Would you get it?’ The boy retrieved the candle and handed it to her. ‘Where is the white bowl?’ she then asked. And the same happened. ‘Where are the silver and gold beads?’ Repeat. ‘Where is something that reminds you of Christmas?’ Again. Finally she asked, ‘Where is God?’ The children looked about. Up, down, all around. A few bewildered stares, some shrugged shoulders. Then, a small blonde boy in a plaid shirt, about three years old, said, ‘I know!’ The pastor said, ‘You do?’ The little boy looked excited insisting, ‘Yes, yes!’ Then the pastor said, ‘Where?’ And the little boy replied, ‘I’ll go get God!’ He jumped up from the chancel stairs and ran down the center aisle. His father, obviously a bit worried about the open doors at the back of the sanctuary, leaped out of his pew to fetch his son. Before he got very far, however, the little boy had returned. He was holding the hand of a kind-looking woman in her seventies, literally pulling her down the aisle. ‘Here!’ he cried, ‘Here’s God! She’s here!’ The pastor looked puzzled: ‘Miss Jean?’ And the boy pointed, ‘There she is! God! God!’”[iii]
I received an email from Diana later that day saying that her FaceBook stats revealed that her post of the story had reached more than 100 thousand people. She said “I've never seen people respond so beautifully to something I've put up on social media…People are hungering for goodness.”
The signs are all around us. But, as Vanier writes, “to see signs, we have to be alive to reality, to what is actually happening.” Perhaps that tempts us to circle back around to all the nastiness and struggle that pervades the world at present. That, some would say, is what is actually happening. True enough. But it is not the only thing happening. “New every morning is your love, great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world.” Are we looking upon our lives and the world with the expectation that all day long God is working for good? Do we have the eyes to see?
“Witness” is our guiding theme for this next year and one aspect of that is seeing. What do we witness? What do we see? I’m glad we have the year to explore these questions because there is so much to think about. But as a beginning—and way of framing this piece of our reflection on the topic—I was drawn to Psalm 27. It came to mind initially because verse four of the Psalm is part of the daily office I pray from the Celtic Daily Prayer book:
One thing I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
to dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to seek God in God's temple.
Having prayed this verse every morning for over two years, I have come to understand “the house of the Lord” not as a building—or a physical sanctuary—but instead as an enfolding in God’s presence. Where does God dwell, where is God present? I believe God’s “household” is the created world. Even so, I can have the experience—does this happen to you?—where I become so caught up in my own agenda and so familiar with my surroundings that I forget where I am and can only see as far as the end of my nose. Therefore, an awareness of where I am—God’s household!—opens my eyes to beauty and reminds me to look for God everywhere. My experience is that, without the daily reminder of how to fix my gaze—the reminder of what to seek, what to look for—my vision shrinks and becomes distorted and fixed upon distractions, divisions, destruction.
When I went back to read the whole Psalm, I was reminded that in this prayer we don’t find anything that could be interpreted as a denial of the painful realities of the world. This Psalm doesn’t suggest that if you just go to church regularly all the bad things will go away and your life will get easy and you’ll never get hurt or feel sad or angry. Instead, we hear of flesh being devoured (v. 2), of war (v. 3), of parents’ abandonment (v. 10), of slander and violence (v. 12). In the midst of all these realities, the Psalmist seeks the God who is known as a light and guide for the path, a teacher, a source of protection and help. And finally, the Psalmist’s testimony is: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (v. 13) If the Psalmist is correct, seeing God in the midst of pain and struggle gives us the courage to stand strong, to resist the forces all around us that would devour us given the chance. Seeing God even in the presence of injustice and attack also allows us to recognize beauty in the world when it seems there is no beauty to be found. That is, an awareness of God’s presence gives us the eyes to see the acts of kindness, generosity, tenderness, courage, self-sacrifice, patience, creativity and the like that happen right in the middle of tragedy and struggle. Seeing God helps us see what God sees…because if we are seeing God’s presence and activity, then we become aware of the people God sees, the ways God is at work. And if we are seeing that, we will know where we can participate in what God is doing in the world.
There is a lot to unpack about the process and practice and benefits of seeing God—and we’ll have opportunities to do that in the months ahead. But for today, the invitation is to recognize how important it is to know what you are looking for. The Psalmist says, “One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after”: to dwell in God’s household every single day and to behold—to see—the beauty of the Lord. What do you seek? What do you look for? Friends, today you are invited to go and SEE God.
“We forget we live in a zigzag world. Look how it’s shining!” Look! “Here’s God! She’s here!”
Sunday Sep 04, 2016
Sunday Sep 04, 2016
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, September 4, 2016, the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Luke 14:1, 7-14
Today’s gospel story teaches us something both about being a guest and about being a host. As a guest, Jesus tells us not to hog the best seat in the house. As a host, we’re taught not to only invite guests who can repay us, but instead to make a point to invite those who can’t. Both of the teachings could be interpreted as little nuggets of worldly wisdom, designed to get you a reward—in the first case, potential public recognition and promotion and in the second, some mystery prize behind resurrection door number one. This interpretation meshes with the worldly economy we all know so well. You know what I mean: quid pro quo, everything has a price, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” The worldly economy functions according to merit or popularity or material wealth or having insider knowledge or the wielding of brute strength or simply being born into a certain class, race, or caste. It is big on pecking order, seating charts, and keeping score. The questions in this economy are things like: “What do I have to do to get what I want?” “How much will this cost?” “What are the rules?” “Do I have what it takes?” “What have you done for me lately?” “When am I going to get what’s coming to me?” We see echoes of this in conversations about immigrants or the poor—about who pays taxes and who has done what they were supposed to do and who deserves support. We see the worldly economy in this recent business with 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism—when folks say things like, “he owes this country more respect.” And we can find the deposit of the worldly economy in our own lives when we find ourselves thinking that people owe us—that is, “After all I’ve done… my boss, my spouse, my friend, my child, God owes me…”
We learn the ways of the worldly economy early on and see them playing out on school playgrounds and lunchrooms and in the halls; and we see this worldly economy at work as adults—on the playground of the social scene, inter-office dynamics and in the halls of power. We joust and jockey and dance around these things, trying to figure out how to succeed. We size one another up and measure ourselves against others and weigh our options and our actions and our choices in what can feel like Game of Thrones—you win or you die. As we look around there are all the “stock characters”—the bullies and negotiators, over-achievers and slackers, the shy and the outgoing, the risk-takers and risk-averse, the socially awkward and the poised charmers. But in the end everyone is simply trying to find their way, to sort out how to survive, to live, to connect, be seen to have needs met, to be loved in the messy economy of the world.
Perhaps there are several levels to Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel. Perhaps there are some little worldly wisdom nuggets there—about the ways that good manners at a social engagement will end up serving you well, about curbing our entitlement tendencies, about being generous. But it seems there might be something deeper going on here. For me, the place that kept nudging me is the moment when Jesus turns to the host of the dinner party and says “do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.” Jesus says to invite those who cannot repay you.
Not to expect repayment from people runs counter to pretty much everything in the worldly economy. Jesus is advocating a completely different kind of economy, one that draws us into the realm of God’s Kin-dom. What Jesus suggests is that the Kin-dom of God employs an economy of grace. That is, all is a gift—not a right, not earned, not a hard, cold fact of material being. Everything is a gift from God. You are a child of God; you don’t have to negotiate that, it’s a free gift. You are loved by God; you don’t have to win that prize through skill or wise choice, God’s love is FREE. God’s interest in us is unearned (and whoever heard of unearned interest!?), but no less valuable and powerful. When we open our hearts to receive the gift of God’s love, then we are able to employ the economy of grace, to relate to people and to our lives differently. When we are willing to live as citizens of the Kin-dom, we are freed from the jockeying and the jousting for position. As those who know ourselves already to be loved, we no longer have to live by the rules we learned on the playground. We are freed to simply be ourselves, to respond to an invitation without an expectation that we will be (or should be) the guest of honor or without trying to present ourselves as overly important—but simply to arrive and to share in the gift of the moment. Of course, the world will continue to tug and pull at you, pushing your buttons of self-importance or insecurity (both of which, by the way, tend to make us try to get or keep the best seat in the house); but as you become more aware of and strengthened by God’s love for you, you gain freedom to be and to share yourself and to enjoy others, regardless of where you are on the seating chart. And—I must add—you also gain a sense of your own dignity and self-worth and so are able to recognize when someone is taking advantage or harming you and, therefore, can make a decision to resist.
When we take up residence in the Kin-dom of God and begin to be guided by the economy of grace, we are freed to be generous, we seek to love as God loves and to give as God gives. That means recognizing that the bounty of the feast is not reserved for those who already have enough, those who can sponsor a whole table. Instead, guided by God’s economy of grace, we see that the feast is prepared for all people and there is always enough if we make room for others and share. To love as God loves and to give as God gives means we let go of our tendencies to judge who deserves this and who deserves that. Dorothy Day said, “The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” God doesn’t say to you, “I might give you my love, I might invite you to my banquet table… But…what have you done for me lately?” God invites you and me to this banquet today, just as we are and not because we have done anything to deserve it. God invites those who are trampled and hurt by the worldly economy. God invites those who, in trying to find their way, have gotten lost and fallen into darkness. God invites all those—all of us—to the banquet, to the feast of freely given love, no scorecards kept.
We mistake the ways of God’s Kin-dom when we make it about rules and about keeping score and about earned interest and love averages. Part of the mystery in all this is that, having been saved from these fearful, selfish, life-shrinking, enslaving ways of the worldly economy, the economy of grace brings rewards not only into our lives, but also into the lives of those around us. One of my favorite writers, 14th century Sufi mystic and poet, Hafiz, puts it this way:
Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe
Me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.[i]
As residents with Jesus in the Kin-dom, freely love and give and serve. As residents with Jesus in the Kin-dom, consider the implications of God’s economy of grace on the ways you think about immigration, poverty, taxes, the minimum wage. Do something for someone “just because.” Include the one others leave out. Remember that you are a beloved child of God and therefore free to be yourself without games or apology. Remember that everyone else is a beloved child of God, too. Enter into this great mystery and receive the reward, the joy, of living –really living—in God’s love.
Today as we are invited to the banquet of love, compassion, and mercy, we’re reminded that even after all this time Jesus doesn’t say to us, “You owe me.” Just imagine what happens with a love like that…
[i] Hafiz, “The Sun Never Says,” The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master, trans., Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin Compass, 1999, p. 34.
Sunday Aug 28, 2016
Sunday Aug 28, 2016
Nonconformity
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC August 28, 2016, the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Luke 13:10-17
Now Rabbi Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath.
And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that made her doubt whether she was welcome since she had doubts and questions about some tenets of the faith. She was hunched over, unable to see (without craning her neck) how important she was in that place.
And just then there appeared a man with a spirit that made him cynical about everything, including himself. He struggled to trust, to hope, to believe that things might ever be better. He was hunched over, unable to see the beauty and positive changes happening in spite of constant struggle.
And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that made it difficult to manage the anger she felt at the reality of suffering and injustice. She was hunched over, unable to see that she didn’t have to manage her anger alone, that there was a whole community with whom she could lament, rage, and engage in acts of solidarity and change.
And just then there appeared a genderqueer person with a spirit that told them that they were crazy and broken. They were hunched over, unable to see that the mystery and beauty of humanity includes a variety of God-given, created natures.
And just then there appeared a man with a spirit that told him that he was a disappointment, that he was not a man, that he couldn’t be a faithful disciple, because he was gay. He was bent over, unable to see the strength and gifts and vision that he could uniquely offer because of his orientation, not in spite of it.
And just then there appeared people with spirits of grief, guilt, fear, despair, loneliness, self-righteousness, numbness, mental illness, addiction, exhaustion…
Now Rabbi Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath.
And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. And Jesus saw her and called her and set her free from what, in the original Greek, is described as a spirit that causes weakness. And the woman praised God at this unsolicited grace! But the leader of the synagogue was not having any of it—this is the sabbath after all. He directs his words to the crowd, but is really preaching to Jesus who has just made the mistake of healing on the wrong day.
In the two versions of the Ten Commandments found in the Bible (Ex 20:1-17 and Deut 5:6-21), the only commandment with a significant variation is the fourth one—regarding the sabbath. In Exodus, the sabbath commandment is grounded in creation, recalling God’s own creative activity and subsequent rest. In Deuteronomy, sabbath is connected to liberation, with the reminder that God led the people out of slavery in Egypt. Taken together, we learn that Sabbath keeping has to do with both creation and redemption: delighting in the creation such that we are ourselves re-created and remembering with joy that God frees us from all that is enslaving and harmful to our life.
Sabbath understood in this way makes Jesus’ encounter with the bent-over woman perfectly appropriate. So why does the leader of the synagogue get so bent out of shape? Well, evidently, over the years, the one clear prohibition in the fourth commandment—no work—required some further definition; a policy if you will. In time, according to one commentator, 613 additional rules and regulations were attached to that simple admonition. The result is that a commandment originally meant to provide a day of enjoyment and renewal became a fearful thing—leading folks to worry all day long that they might mess up and actually do something that could be construed as work.
I confess that I feel for the leader of the synagogue. Like him, I want to get it right and to follow God’s teaching. I am a huge fan of following the rules—jaywalking makes me nervous as does walking into a place when the sign says “closed” or not using the blinker when changing lanes. I am a team player—and, having played sports for years, I know that when people don’t know or follow the rules of the game, the whole thing falls apart. I know through experience that without shared commitments to agreed-upon norms, community breaks down. I feel for the synagogue leader and can feel the sting when Jesus speaks the word, “hypocrite,” that most painful of words when directed at those of us who are trying to be faithful, to get it right.
But part of being faithful is a willingness to receive correction, an openness to learn that we might be getting it wrong. Jesus points out that, according to the current state of things, an ox has a better chance of being treated well than does a human being; this, due to a provision written into the Sabbath policy that allows for livestock to be given water on the seventh day. Perhaps another amendment is called for.[i] After all, if an animal can be untethered in order to be cared for on the sabbath, cannot a beloved daughter be set free as well?
In this story, we see Jesus breaking some of the finer points of the synagogue’s Book of Discipline for the sake of a woman with a spirit that had crippled her life for eighteen years (what if she is only 18 years old?). In this case at least, it appears that what is called “nonconformity” by the religious institution is actually much more conformed to the heart and intention of God’s Law. Jesus’ acts of “nonconformity”—in addition to showing love and mercy—were meant to liberate the faith community from hypocrisy and from a harmful application of God’s law. Jesus wasn’t trying to destroy his Jewish faith tradition or to cause schism. // “Nonconformity” has been a word flying around a lot in our United Methodist denomination over the past months particularly with regard to those of us who stand and act in defiance of the discriminatory language and rules against LGBTQ people. My participation in acts of so-called nonconformity finds inspiration and justification in the story we have heard today and others like it. That is, I believe I am following Jesus. But, if I am taking this passage of scripture seriously, I must remain aware that I stumble into the sanctuary each and every week with some spirit or another from which I need to be liberated. I need the healing touch of Christ. And I also need to come open to a word of challenge, of correction, of conviction. I need to be open to Jesus who can see me and what in me needs to be…fixed and released…
We all come to this place in all sorts of shape, some of us feeling strong and some of us feeling weak and some of us uncertain and some of us more certain than we, perhaps, ought to be. We are here to worship or to find a place to belong or to hear a word of hope or challenge or to confess or to be healed or without really knowing why we have come. But you are here. Now. And, thank God, Jesus will not conform to even well-meaning human rules that would keep him from seeing you and extending whatever you need to live more fully and to see more clearly. It may sting, but even that is for the greater purpose of love and liberation.
Now Rabbi Jesus is teaching on this Sabbath and says, “You are set free.” Praise be to God!
[i] I am indebted to the work of Scott Hoezee, Biblical commentator for the Center for Excellence in Preaching, for the information on Sabbath referred to in the sermon. Center for Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary, ©Luther Seminary. The information was confirmed by my colleague, Rabbi Steve Weisman of Temple Solel in Bowie, MD.
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
Sunday Aug 21, 2016
A sermon preached by Rev. Will Ed Green, Director of Connecting Ministries at Foundry UMC, on
August 21, 2016, the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Sunday Aug 14, 2016
Sunday Aug 14, 2016
The Heart of the Matter
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC August 14, 2016, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Matthew 5:17-30
Is it possible to legislate morality? Will stricter gun laws keep people from killing each other? If we outlaw online extramarital hook-up sites will people stop cheating on their partner? Will legally enforced compliance with the agenda proposed by the Black Lives Matter movement insure the end of racism in every police precinct? Of course the answer to those more specific questions is absolutely not. But that didn’t keep Foundry from being deeply invested in the work of the Anti-Saloon League in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some may scoff at that as a romantic and misguided investment of resources and energy, but at that time alcohol was tearing at the fabric of families and whole communities on a massive scale. Something had to be done. The pros and cons of Prohibition are still debated today. Some may suggest that Prohibition—and gun control legislation as a contemporary corollary—are not “legislating morality,” but are rather attempts to protect citizens by setting legal boundaries for production, sale, and use of death-dealing products. And others will counter with statements like “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” And then the debate has a tendency to turn toward the need to focus on changing hearts and minds of individuals versus the benefits and necessity to address systems through policy and laws.
In Jesus’ time, the debate was a bit different since there was no separation of “church” and state. The “law” was inherently and simultaneously religious, social, legal, and moral. And the differentiation between “individual rights” and “communal systems” was nothing like it is for us; the interdependence of the individual and community was simply understood. In today’s reading from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that he hasn’t come to abolish the law or the prophets, but rather to fulfill them (Mt. 5:17). Jesus’ fulfillment of the law is his life, the way that he shows what it looks like to truly embody not just the letter, but the intent of the law. One of Jesus’ primary critiques of the scribes and Pharisees is the hypocrisy manifest among many, the ways that their lives don’t match their words (Mt 23:3). He also challenges the tendency to apply laws in a way that ignores or harms the poor and oppressed (Mt 12:10-12). So when Jesus goes on to challenge his followers to exceed even the scribes and Pharisees in faithfulness to the law (Mt. 5:20), it seems that he is saying: know the law and the teachings of the prophets and then try to actually live and apply them in life-giving ways. Jesus then offers some examples to help his hearers understand how they might do that. Here are a couple of those examples (Mt 5:21-30):
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’
22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.
23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you,
24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.
25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.
26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
So do these verses simple things up for you??
Undoubtedly, Jesus is setting a very high standard for his followers here. But what we have in these verses is not a full-blown ethical system, a list of rules, a new set of commandments. Rather, what we have here are some examples of how to get to the heart of the matter when it comes to living as God would have us live. Jesus takes a couple of examples from the Ten Commandments—“You shall not murder,” and “You shall not commit adultery”— then, in essence says, “On a scale of 1 to 10, I want you to live these things at 11.”
Jesus’ assumption is that all will know and understand what it means in the law when it says “You shall not murder” and “You shall not commit adultery.” After all, those admonitions are pretty straightforward. But Jesus goes on, stressing that the heart of these commandments is based on God’s desire that we do no harm to one another. The extreme case is murder, but Jesus goes on to speak about anger, urging us to understand that mismanaged anger can become the seed of violence. To be clear, Jesus would never suggest that we should never be angry; there is such a thing as “righteous anger” that can and must be expressed—prophets ancient and contemporary spend most of their time being angry and making sure everyone knows about it! But that kind of anger is a directed anger for the purpose of addressing injustice, righting wrongs, making a world that does less harm. Jesus’ teaching here challenges us to seek reconciliation and to be mindful of the words we use. We know well enough—even those who have become good at publicly pretending otherwise—that words can hurt us just as much as sticks and stones. Notice that the strongest consequence comes from spewing an insult at someone (calling someone a “fool” 5:22). Stubborn refusal to seek reconciliation and engaging in hate speech, while not taken to the extreme case of murder, is still not to be taken lightly.
And a second extreme case is adultery, but Jesus presses the point, emphasizing that unchecked lustful desire for another’s spouse or partner is the seed of that betrayal. Allowing ourselves to covet another person’s partner will harm every relationship involved—not to mention our own mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Let the small thing—the awareness of the way we are seeing someone (our eye), or our temptation to reach out and touch them (our hand)—let those things be the warning to stop ourselves from doing harm; let them also be the prompt to reflect upon what in our own life or our own relationship needs to be cared for. I’d wager that 9 times out of 10 when we are tempted to have an affair there is something in the shadows of our being that is trying to get some attention—something that has little to do with the object of our desire. I also hasten to add that in Jesus’ teaching and practice, women were not to be avoided as dangerous seductresses, but rather were welcomed as sisters and partners in the work of ministry. Jesus isn’t saying that a handsome woman or man cannot be admired as beautiful and attractive. He is pointing to the damaging effects of wanting to possess or take another in a way that objectifies them, that betrays trust, and hurts all involved.
Jesus is trying to explain the teaching from the Hebrew Scriptures that the heart is the inner source of outer actions. To put it simply: what is in our heart is at the heart of all these matters. Jesus taught “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Mt. 5:8) Later in Matthew, when the disciples express concern that Jesus has offended the Pharisees with his critique of their ritual purity laws[i] (Mt. 15:12), he asks them, “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.” (Mt. 15:17-19) And a bit later than that, in Matthew chapter 22, we get to the heart of this matter of the heart: “one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:34-40) // But before we allow ourselves to settle in to the comforting word, “love,” remember that in Jesus’ sermon he takes the law of love to “11” too, saying: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…Be perfect…as your heavenly father is perfect.” (Mt 5:43-45, 48) //
We are all swimming in the Olympic pool at the moment and there have been some amazing moments and truly breathtaking performances (Simone Biles!). But the Olympic moment that springs to mind as I reflect on Jesus’ teaching is not from this year’s games. The context was Berlin on the verge of World War II…Nazism, red and black swastikas flying, goose-stepping Storm Troopers marching before Hitler…It was the 1936 Games and Jesse Owens, the African-American son of a sharecropper and grandson to slaves, was winning gold after gold in track and field. But he struggled on the long jump. On his last attempt in the qualifying round, Luz Long, a tall, blue-eyed, blond German long jumper who was his stiffest competition, introduced himself to Owens and gave him some advice. Owens took the advice, qualified, and went on to edge Long out to take the gold. The first person to congratulate Jesse Owens on his win was Luz Long. Owens commented that “It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler…Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace.”[ii]
“Love your enemies…be perfect as God is perfect…” Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets. And at the heart of God’s teaching is love. To be perfect as God is perfect is, quite simply, to love as God loves. Jesus, in seeking to fulfill God’s law, shows us what it looks like to have our outward acts, our conscious decisions, our choices, our priorities consistently driven by a heart overflowing with God’s love.
The work of the church and of faith communities everywhere is to do all we can to teach, practice, model and encourage people to be ever more filled with the love of God. In the meantime, knowing that the world—and we along with it—are far from perfect, we need the guidance and protection of just laws that are enacted and upheld for the purpose of ensuring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all citizens, not just some. We are responsible for doing all we can to enact and maintain such laws. And then we are called to take it to the next level and attend not only to the letter but also to the heart of the law—and that always has to do with what is in our hearts. What is in your heart? Does an expanding and compassionate love reside there? Or is anger, hatred, lust, and dishonesty taking up residence? Howard Thurman, the great African-American pastor, theologian and poet, offers us the perfect prayer: “Lord…In my heart, above all else, let love and integrity envelop me until my love is perfected and the last vestige of my desiring is no longer in conflict with thy Spirit.”[iii] // These teachings of Jesus are challenging, there’s no doubt about that. But they are challenging us toward this good end: to love more and to allow God’s love to fill us so completely that not only our outward appearance and action, but even our inward intention is consistent with a whole-hearted love of God and of neighbor. Through the grace of God, may it be so… and in the meantime it’s always a good idea to truly meditate on the question: what is in my heart? How do you answer today?