It is said… and Jesus makes your life way harder. Two weeks
ago, we began reading the Sermon on the Mount. Still on the mountain, as the
crowd nods and grunting in agreement with his words, Jesus decides it’s a good
time to talk about the law. It’s all well and good when Jesus is blessing the
people who I think should be blessed. It’s all well and good when I get to be
part of the city on the hill, part of the salt of the earth, part of the light
of the world. And then Jesus lampoons us. Jesus, who was suppose to come to
save us, who was supposed to help our lives be a little easier, a little more
comforting, a little more hopeful reaches into the core of the law to reveal
the depths of our failures to keep it. How many of us have gotten mad and
relished our bitterness? How many of us have made commitments – to a spouse, to
a friend, to a child, and not been faithful to them? How many of us have ever
said we would do something and then – for whatever reason – not been able to
follow through? How many of us, if we were really listening to this sermon,
would find a way to quietly slip out the back, unnoticed? I want to. I don’t
want to see the mirror of my failures staring back at me, accusing me, the
relentless voices reminding me of all that I can never be.
When the commandments are just about not doing things: not
murdering, not committing adultery, not taking the Lord’s name in vain we can
almost convince ourselves that we can keep the law. But Jesus makes these
commands a lot more complicated by indicating what this means we should do. Rather than teaching us a way
to avoid death, Jesus teaches us a way to live. Living, as it turns out, is a
lot harder than avoiding death.
It is a life of
confession.
You have heard it said, do not murder. But it isn’t really
about not murdering your neighbor; it’s about finding a way to live at peace
with them. Living at peace is more than refraining from anger and insults: it’s
about seeking reconciliation when your brother or sister is angry with you.
Sometimes, it’s a lot easier to wait for the storm to blow over, to call after
a couple of weeks after everything has cooled off than it is to take a deep
breath and say, “Was it something I did?” Luther complicates this even further.
In a sermon on the fifth commandment, he says: “‘Not to kill’ means not to kill
either with the tongue or the hand, or with a sign or in one’s heart… For to
have rancor in one’s heart toward a neighbor, or to laugh in one’s sleeve when
he dies or has bad luck, is also to kill one’s neighbor.” Further, he says “If
he is hungry, feed him, if he is naked, clothe him, if he is in prison, visit
him, and so on; otherwise, you are guilty of his death.”[1] Not killing
our neighbors is one thing; contributing to their livelihood and well-being is
an entirely different one. It removes us from our focus on ourselves and places
us in our neighbor’s stead.
You have heard it said, do not commit adultery. But it’s not
just about not committing adultery; it’s about faithfulness. Not cheating on
your spouse is a lot different than putting effort into loving your spouse. So
often, it seems our efforts are mostly to maintain relationships, to keep them
going, to put just enough effort in that they survive. It’s not just about being
faithful to your spouse; it’s about being faithful to your community; it’s
about faithfulness to God. All of these relationships are intimately linked. A
caveat: this is – by no means – meant to advocate that people in unhealthy or
abusive relationships should remain there. Rather, this is to advocate for
participating in the creation and maintenance of healthy ones. What does
community look like when we love and cherish those with whom we are in
relationship? What does community look like when we help each other love and
cherish their relationships? Not committing adultery is one thing. Being
faithful to loving and cherishing those around us is altogether different.
You have heard it said, do not swear… It’s not about not
taking the Lord’s name in vain; it’s about being a person of your word. It’s
about humility and recognizing that – so often, our words fall flat, we fail to
live up to our best selves.
And so we confess. We acknowledge that we willingly and
unwillingly participate in sinful systems that do not have our neighbor’s best interest
in mind and that we cannot unbind ourselves from these.
But, after the
confession, the absolution. Having said the confession and heard the
absolution so many times, sometimes it doesn’t really sink in that these words do something. These are words that point
us back to life that refuse to let us remain where we are. These are the words
that remind us that it is not about how many things we get right or wrong, but
about the grace that abounds out of Christ’s love for us.
And after the
absolution, we turn to Scriptures to remind us of who and whose we are. These
are the words of a God who has always worked through flawed humans, whose
determination to save us continually overpowers our determination to turn away.
This is God’s “Yes” in the face of all of our “No’s.” God’s “Yes” in Christ
determined the end of the story, the echoes of the promise reminding us that we
are not identified by what we do, but rather, we are identified by what God
does on our behalf.
Scripture leads to a
Confession, but this time, a Confession of Who God is: The Creator of all
that is, seen and unseen; the Redeemer who brought all of creation into right
relationship through taking all that creation is into himself and giving to
creation all that he is; and the Sustainer who continues calling, gathering,
and enlivening the church to this day.
Confession of who God
is leads us to Peace with our Neighbor. And so we share the peace, not as a
formality or as an interruption of God’s word. The peace is part of God’s word,
spoken to a reconciled and redeemed community even as it struggles to live into
that reality. The peace is a proclamation that we live in the world as it is,
but we do so in light of Christ’s reconciliation.
And Peace leads us to
the Feast. Communion is not simply a dead ritual, rehearsed week after
week; it is the proclamation that God has come to us in Christ and that Christ
continues coming to us. It is the proclamation that God’s Word, the Incarnate
Logos is out loose in the world. It is the reminder that we carry with us
Christ’s body and blood to a world who hungers and thirsts for love, for
reconciliation, for peace.
And the Feast Sends
us out: you are the proclaimers of this message, the preachers of this
strange good news that seems so odd yet tells the truth about who you are and
who God is. And how is this good news proclaimed? By contributing to the wellbeing
of your neighbors, by loving and cherishing those around you, by being a person
of the Word. Christ has determined to not let you define life as the absence of
death; rather, life consists of participating in God’s own life, for the sake
of the world.
[1] LW 51:152
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