Mountaintops

Exodus 24:12-18; Psalm 2; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

Growing up in West Virginia, I have learned something about our roads. West Virginia roads are different from the roads in other states, you know. We’ve lived in Tennessee, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Ohio, and West Virginia. And in those places, the roads are different because the land is different.

When we lived in upstate New York, half-way between Rochester and Buffalo, we learned that in that area of the country, roads go north, south, east or west. Only the occasional road goes northeast or southeast, and roads do not bend. Ever. They go straight as a ruler on the map. What about going around a hill? There are no hills except the Niagara Escarpment, which is a drop off of about a hundred feet when you go north far enough. One hill in the whole region. So the roads are just straight.

In Tennessee, the roads either go up the valley or down the valley and the valleys are mostly straight. Only once in a while do you come to a road that goes over the mountain between the valleys, but in general, they were wise enough – and cheap enough – to find a gap or low point between the mountains to cross from one valley to another. In New Jersey, they do much the same, with the roads running down the valleys and only an occasional road going over the mountains - which causes all sorts of traffic problems when you live in west Jersey and commute to the east along I-78.

South of Atlanta in Georgia, the roads are just like upstate New York – straight and boring, except they have 6 or 10 lanes packed with cars and everyone drives 85 miles per hour.

But in West Virginia, we’re the only people crazy enough to take major roads and try to run them straight east and west across a state with mountains that go north and south. So we build big bridges. So our roads are in the valley for a mile, then up the side of the mountain, then we break out on the mountain top and then back down the other side to the next valley. And combine that with the fog that settles in the valleys – or half-way up the side of the mountain, and you have a wild ride – darkness separated by wonderful sunny views from the mountain tops and then back into darkness. It’s a great way to learn about life, for life's journey is like that.

Mountaintops are wonderful places. When the air is clear, you can see for miles and miles. You have vision. But mountaintops also have fog and that can make it difficult to see a path to walk upon. The wind blows strong on the mountaintops, always threatening to throw you back into the valley, dashing you to pieces on the rocks below. The hawks circle below you and above you. And the day is actually a few minutes longer on a mountaintop, letting you live in light for a few minutes longer than in the dark valleys below.

In our readings this week, we have three mountains in four readings.

The first mountain talked about is Mount Sinai. God invited Moses up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone that contained the Law. This much we already know. But what we don’t usually talk about is the part of Exodus 24 just before our reading.

“Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.

Part way up the mountain, God allowed the seventy elders of Israel to see Him. It was after this that Moses was ordered to come up to the top of the mountain to receive the tablets of the Law. And while Moses was there for forty days and nights, the Lord not only gave Him the Ten Commandments, but God also gave Moses detailed instructions for the design of the Ark, the Tabernacle where God would reside, the decorations, the Altar, the garments of the Priests, how they were to be consecrated, and the Sabbath. Indeed, Moses received far more than Ten Commandments – He received a huge description of how God would relate to the nation of Israel. And when he came down, he discovered that the people had made a golden calf and were worshipping it. After breaking the tablets and putting down the rebellion, Moses returned to the mountain and God made a new set of tablets. God showed himself to Moses on this visit up close. But this time, when Moses went down, his face glowed. His face glowed so brightly that he had to put a veil over his face because people were frightened of him. Can you imagine being so close to God that your face glows for decades afterwards?

Did you know this story? If not, this is why it’s important for us to read our Bibles. Don’t just read the readings that I publish each week on Facebook, but read before and after those readings.

Do you know that there are 1189 chapters in the Bible? Almost 1200 chapters. And each week, our Sunday morning readings total about 1-2 chapters. That means that if we covered every chapter in our Sunday readings, it would take between 12 and 24 years to cover all of the chapters in the Bible. And yet we don’t even try to cover all the chapters. We cover the four Gospels and the Psalms much better than the rest, but we don’t even cover all of them. That’s why you need to read on your own or at least join us in a regular Bible study that covers those odd places like we are doing now, covering Ezra and soon to be Nehimiah in our Wednesday 10 am class, and I Peter in our Wednesday evening class. (Or Romans at the Monroe Chapel Wednesday evening class).

And did you notice that when God appeared to Moses, God has feet? “Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky.” Do you see his bare feet standing there on that glistening blue crystal floor?

This is considered to be another appearance of Jesus Christ before He was born on earth. For we know that God the Father is a spirit being, but Jesus Christ is also God, a man, and so most scholars take this to be an appearance of Jesus Christ some 1300 years before his birth to Mary. And I bet you missed hearing about this before, because it isn’t part of the Lectionary readings that we cover on Sunday Mornings.

Yes, it is amazing what you will see when you go up to a mountaintop to speak with God. It is amazing what God will tell you, as God told Moses. And it can be as simple as opening your Bible at home and sitting down for a while to read quietly and talk with your God away from the world, up on a mountaintop all alone with Him – or in your chair, seeing Him on that mountain.

Reading can take you right there. I remember when our children were on a swim team, I would take along one of Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander books, set up my folding chair at the corner of the pool, open the book and I'd be sailing on the ocean, watching the action in my mind's eye and suddenly I'd get drenched as a wave broke over me (as a swimmer made a flip turn!). A book can take you up the mountain.

Our Psalmist talks of another mountain, a very important mountain.

 God says in the Psalm:“I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.”

Zion, the mountain on which Jerusalem is built, is a very special mountain to God. Jerusalem. The name means “City of Peace” because shalom or salem means peace. It is here that Genesis 14 tells us that Melchizedek lived, the King of Salem, the first priest of God mentioned. It is where he first met Abraham, the grandfather of Israel and offered him bread and wine. Abraham had just recovered loot from a group of bandit kings and gave a tenth of it to Melchizedek – this is the first tithe mentioned in the Bible and the first sharing of bread and of wine. Who is this king of Salem, the city that would be known as Jerusalem on Mount Zion? The Book of Hebrews, chapters 6 and 7 says that Christ is our high priest, not a levitical priest, not a member of the tribe of Levi (the priests who served in the Temple on earth), but Christ “has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek…”

And the writer of Hebrews continues:

“First, the name Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.” Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.

Just think how great he was”
Have you heard before of Melchizedek? Read Genesis and Hebrews, climb that particular mountain, and you will find this great man.

Clearly Melchizedek is another visitation of Jesus Christ upon the earth, 500 years before Moses. You never know what you will find on a mountaintop, who you will talk to, who will lead you to God.

The mountain of Zion later became the capital of the Jews as David moved his capital there and built the City of David, a fortified city within the city of Jerusalem. Here, the Temple of Solomon was built. Here you could find God and make sacrifices to Him. Here, the High Priest gave atonement for all the sins of the people of Israel and the strangers who had come in their midst.

And then there is the Mountain of Transfiguration, Mount Hermon, the tall mountain that is part of what is called the Golan Heights and lies between modern Lebanon and Syria.

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him up the mountain. They’ve been healing people in nearby Caesaria Phillipi and now Jesus wants to get away. So the three of them walk up to the top of the mountain, almost 6000 feet above the valley floor. On the way up, they would have seen many small shrines that remained from even more ancient times, because people have been putting worship temples and shrines – little lean-to’s and huts - on Mount Hermon for millennia. It was one of the “high places” mentioned in the Book of Kings.

When they get to the top, the three disciples are amazed because Jesus changes right in front of their eyes. His face glows and his robes turn a blazing white. It is like Moses’ face glowing, only much more so, for Jesus is showing His God nature to his three most trusted disciples. And then comes Moses and Elijah to talk with Jesus.

Poor Peter is so overcome that he volunteers to make temples for the three of them, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. He thinks he is honoring them, but what he doesn’t realize is that he is insulting the Son of God and Daddy’s watching. For by his act of worship, Peter is putting Jesus on the same level as the men Moses and Elijah – and putting all three on the same level as all those false gods that people had built shrines to over the centuries, those shrines that lay in the snow on the side of the path up Mount Hermon like those little roadside shrines that people make today when someone they loved is killed in a car accident. God does not want His Son to be worshiped in a decaying roadside shrine. And so God gets Peter’s attention.

“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
I find it interesting that Peter repeated most of this when he wrote his second letter many years later.

Peter wrote:

"For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain."
Did you notice that Peter left out the “Listen to him!” part? I understand. It must have been very embarrassing to be told to “shut up” by God himself. More than embarrassing – downright frightening. And you will notice that the three disciples hit the dirt, face down and terrified.

But Jesus touched them and told them not to be afraid. We never need be afraid when Jesus is with us. And He was alone with them again. And Jesus told them not to speak of this until after His Resurrection. Mountaintop experiences, you see, can be transforming and they can be frightening. And sometimes they need to be kept quiet until the right moment.

I grew up on a mountaintop, the range of hills just east of the Ohio River. Many mornings, we’d be in bright sunshine while the valley just to the west was covered in fog, still in darkness. I think it makes a difference to your personality, whether you live with that open sky where anything is possible – or you live closed in, hemmed in by walls around you.

But even if you’ve been born in a valley – and there are people who seem to spend their lives in the valley – it is possible to walk to the mountaintops. How do we do that?

It seems to me that going to the top of every mountain worth climbing, there is a road, a path, or a climbing trail. In the pew in front of you is a guidebook to the mountains of life. It is called a Bible.

When you read the Bible, you will find the stories of the paths others have followed. Most of the people in the Bible encountered God and had their time on the mountaintop. It is well worth it to see what paths led them to the mountaintops – and what paths led them into valleys in their lives.

The Old Testament has several long stories. There is the Genesis story, telling of Adam and Eve, yes, but also telling the story of Abraham and his family, how they came from the valley of the Euphrates River to the hill country of Israel and how Lot almost died in the Jordan Valley when God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

There is the story of the Exodus, how the descendents of Israel escaped from the Nile Valley to camp at Mount Sinai, and how most wanted to stay in the valleys and low places, but a handful went up the mountain.

There is the story that begins with Joshua and proceeds through Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, and Nehimiah, the story of the people of Israel leaving that low place near Mount Sinai and entering the Promised Land, the hill country, finding Mount Zion once again and David and Solomen ruling the great Kingdom of Israel, which extended from deep in modern Syria to include much of Lebanon, most of Jordan, and clear to the borders of Egypt. And it also includes their fall, where they were taken off of Mount Zion and sent down to Babylon in the Euphrates Valley, far from the Temple of God, which had to be rebuilt one day when they walked home to Mount Zion once again, climbing that mountain once again.

And there is the story of Christ, whose life was filled with journeys between Mount Zion and the Jordan Valley, whose life led him to the lowest people on earth and to the right hand of God the Father, seated in Heaven. And there is the story of those who followed Him…including ourselves whom we can see in this great travel guide to the mountains and valleys of life.

I try to live on the mountaintops. And the way I get to the mountaintops is the way any experienced climber does.

To begin with, I rest. For me, resting is on Mondays. Because it is so important, I try to truly rest, looking for God’s blessings wherever God will show me. It is like walking around at the base of a mountain, staring through binoculars or a telescope, eating and drinking, planning and thinking, looking up at the mountain, wondering how God will get me there as I look at the mountain through the lens of God’s Word, the Bible, and I think carefully about what I must do to reach the next peak.

On Tuesdays, I cover the lowlands. I make great progress on Tuesdays, walking along, wondering where this path is leading, always wondering, wondering, wondering what will be the easy path that will cover the most ground and planning ahead to cover those steep parts that are always there in our lives. I probably walk half the distance or more on Tuesdays because I’m rested from Mondays and I know where I’m headed.

Wednesdays get a bit tougher, since the flat ground is now gone. I turn back to God’s Word and try to fill in the blanks, get the ideas for where I’m headed. I read and reread certain stories that seem follow the same path as my life is already, and I turn around behind me to encourage any others that are following me, for I’ve found that there are always people following. There are people following you. If you can help a couple catch up with you today, they’ll be there with you when the going gets steeper.

Thursdays. Have you ever noticed that most mountains have a steep section that is followed by a longer section that isn’t as steep. I look forward to Thursdays on the mountain of life, because that’s a day when I can rest just a bit, scanning ahead to see what I’ll do when the really tough part comes.

On Fridays, the tough part is here. On my hands and knees now, I struggle to get up the worst section. It’s during these Friday climbs that I always have to ask for help, praying to God for help, for a rope, for friends to lift me up. I’m so tired, I’m worn out, what little rest I got on Thursday is long gone and I’m thirsty, because the sun and the wind seems to be strongest on Fridays and the wind is always blowing in your face. Time seems to stand still because Fridays are the longest, hardest days climbing the mountain of life. Have you ever had a year in your life that is all Fridays?

And then, just when I’m ready to give up, it is Saturday and I reach the top, climbing up over that last edge and walking carefully but joyfully up the spine of the mountain to the peak. I take all day Saturday getting there, taking out my mind’s camera and putting pictures of joy into my mental thumb drive. The wind stops, the sun shines, and a red-tailed hawk screes at me, as if to tell me that there’s even higher that you can go if you’ll keep at it, that the travel guide you’ve been using has still more climbs that will take you to higher peaks, and that Heaven itself is even more beautiful than this mountaintop. And I make camp and settle in for a beautiful night on top of the mountain, surrounded only by the birds, the beautiful, joyous views, and God who is standing there talking with me.

And then it’s Sunday and I get to tell you about what I’ve learned over the past week. I get to tell you about the mountain that I climbed, the views I’ve seen, the parts of the travel guide that is the Bible that got me there. And it never seems to quite match the beauty that I remember, the touch of the cold wind, the smell of the rocks, the pain in my muscles that turned to such wonder and joy up on that mountaintop. For, as the great coach Vince Lombardi said, “the man on the mountaintop didn’t fall there.”

I wish you could join me there, I wish you’d try to climb some of these mountains, I wish you’d leave the plains and begin teaching other people what it’s like to encounter God on the mountaintop on a crisp, windy, sunny day.

I wish you’d find a couple of friends to begin teaching as you were taught. For every one of you has seen a Moses, a man or woman who glowed with the love of God reflected in their face, bringing words from God back down the mountainside to tell you of God’s love. Every one of you has been to Mount Zion, a place of peace, the City of Peace where you have experienced the peace that Melchizedek, the King of Righteousness has brought to you, the bread and wine that has reminded you of the sacrifice of Christ, the wonder of seeing God working in your life. Every one of you has seen Christ transfigured, changed from a mere man in a storybook to the One who saved your soul.

The greatest thing about this job is that every week I get to watch while God changes people. You hear an occasional story. I hear most of the stories because you tell me them. You spend an hour looking through the guidebook on Sunday mornings – I get to travel the world of the guidebook.

And here’s the thing that most people don’t realize. You can travel that world too. You just need to step out and begin to lead another up the mountainside. The first and most important mountain is called the Mountain of Belief. You’ve almost all conquered that mountain and experienced the joy that came at the top of the mountain when you first believed. You climbed the mountain of Baptism and experienced that joy again. Now lead another up those mountains and experience the mountaintops once again. For the only thing that beats your first time on top of those mountains is helping others experience that very same mountaintop.

Look for the mountaintops in your life. Open your guidebook, your Bible, and pick out a new mountain to climb. Live on the mountaintops – spend as little time as possible in the valleys. Climb new ones, every day, every week, every year. Lead others up the mountainside. And you will see God!

Difficult Things

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119:33-40; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: “Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”
When I read through the Bible, I like to vary the translations I use, because that allows me new insights. A different way of wording things often opens up entirely new understandings of God’s Word. So, during the week, you will often find me on biblegateway.com , a website that allows me to pick from many different translations, looking at a passage through the lens of the NIV, the NRSV, the Message, the NKJV, the KJV, even the Greek or Latin or Hebrew versions, trying to get a deeper understanding of the Bible and what it means to us in our lives.

Invariably, it is the odd things that stop me in my tracks. I’ve learned over the years that God’s Word – particularly the New Testament – is full of odd ideas, ideas that don’t conform to the way the world would have us to act, ideas that simply are counter to all the common sense and wisdom of this world. And of all the people who wrote or speak in the Bible, no one flips our worldly wisdom on its head more than Jesus Christ Himself.

But before we get to Jesus speaking today, let’s look at our first reading, our reading from Leviticus. For it is full of odd ideas, strange commandments, revolutionary new ideas that can flip around our ideas of what is right and proper and just.

When I was growing up, when I went to high school and to college and then again in my jobs, it was drilled into me that I was to avoid “wasting things”. Don’t waste that food, don’t waste that drink, don’t waste the electricity! Make sure the lights are turned out, the windows are closed when the air conditioning is on, the heat is turned down in your room during the day (we had an all electric home with heating panels in the ceiling that allowed us to control every room separately). My grandmother taught me that the cuttings from making a dress or curtains could be pulled together later to make a patchwork quilt. My teachers taught me that old tests could be mimeographed on the back with new handouts. And my father taught me that you don’t throw away the 6-inch long cutting off a two-by-four because you never knew when you’d need a block or a shim – and, of course, all metal was precious, to be kept for future welding projects. And you made sure they were properly separated into neat piles in the outbuilding or beside the outbuilding, for you didn’t leave things lying around where people could steal them.

In farming, you harvested all the potatoes, all the ears of corn, and all the radishes. The cherries all came off the tree, as did the apples, and the peaches, because all of them could be eaten fresh or canned or turned into a sauce. You simply didn’t waste anything.

And here comes this reading from Leviticus 19, which says:

“‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.”

Gleanings are the last little bits of grain and fruits and vegetables that have been left behind by the first pass. LEAVE food on your property for people to steal?

This took a bit of getting used to.

But, you see, after you read through a bit more of the Bible, you begin to put things together. God created everything. Everyone is God’s child. Everyone is precious to God. God owns the cattle of a thousand hills. Everything is actually God’s, and we are simply to take care of it for God.

And then it begins to make sense.

There are several good reasons for this passage.

First, there is food available for the homeless, the man or woman without property, the poorest of the poor. They can walk through your field and pick up the food that you don’t really need…the wheat stalks, the grapes, the ears of corn, the small carrots, the finger-sized potatoes. It was the farming equivalent of a food pantry.

And then there is the fact that that fruit and those seeds are there to fertilize the land for the next season, for nothing is a better fertilizer for fruit trees or vines than decomposing fruit, nothing is better than wheat chaff for fertilizing a wheat field, and nothing is better than a few tiny carrots to attract carrot-eating grubs to the edges of your garden. Just don’t plant the carrots in the exact same place next year – plant them ten feet away.

But the third and most important reason for leaving the gleanings, the scraps around the edges of your field is that the habit of doing so reminds you that you aren’t harvesting YOUR food for YOUR family…You are harvesting God’s provision on behalf of God and doing what God asks. Yes, most of it goes to you, but after some years of this you remember that this is God’s field which God has asked you to take care of for God’s purposes, and one of those purposes is supporting other humanity near you. Gleaning changes YOU for the better. You learn to see your starving neighbors as neighbors instead of thieves.

Before Christmas, my niece let me know that she had acquired an extra king-sized mattress at an auction. The mattress was new – she had bought the package for the box springs. We needed the mattress, for our old mattress was about 25 years old, so a week later, we had the mattress. But now, what did we do with the old mattress?

We tried the mission. No, only pristine condition mattress would be picked up. We called Waste Management. Because our trash is picked up as part of the church’s business account, they’d pick up the mattress for $150. (If our trash account was residential, the fee would have been less than $10.) We couldn’t just burn it. So what to do with it?

When we lived in Georgia, which is a place where the churches are large and packed full on Sunday mornings, there was a Friday and Saturday ritual. Late the night before, when the weather was dry, people would put old couches, chairs, dishwashers, refrigerators on the curb outside their home. It was like having a yard sale for free.

The next morning, between sunup and 9 am, men and teenage boys driving old, broken down pickups would drive through the neighborhoods and the old furniture would disappear. These scavengers were part junk dealers, partly families looking for a good deal, partially flea market dealers. The system worked well – the wealthy suburbanites got rid of their junk, while the scavengers made a few bucks every weekend.

Eventually, Saundra was talking to a guy who had an idea where he might use the mattress and we paid him to take it away. We really missed those gleaners from Georgia over the 6 weeks that mattress sat in our hallway. God’s system works.

There’s more in that passage, but let’s jump to the Gospel where Jesus is giving instructions about how we are to live.

You’ll recall that in the Old Testament law, the idea of just compensation was put forth. In Exodus 24, the Law of Moses states:

“‘Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. "

This law set a standard for the people of Israel. It seems somewhat brutal now, but recognize that before this Law, the standard was, “I can get whatever revenge I can take.”

There might be a fight that leads to a broken arm, and before this law, a family might show up and kill all the children and wives of the man who punched the man, and then, just for good measure, they might kill him by torture. This law limited the revenge punishment to “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, etc.”

But there was a problem. This detailed punishment applied in only a narrow situation – when a person was convicted of a crime with two or more witnesses. Not in the general situation where someone was harmed. This was not something for individuals to punish other individuals with. It applied only to criminal trials. Yet over the centuries, people simply repeating that easy to remember “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” formula. had taken it to be applied to all situations – even to a couple of children wrestling on the front lawn.

People considered it to be a standard justifying revenge in all cases.

Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. “

What? I’m not supposed to take revenge on someone who has harmed me? If you punch me, I’m not supposed to punch you back?

Then Jesus goes on:

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. “

When my wife Saundra explained this to our then-four-year-old son Ian, Ian said, with all his four-year-old wisdom, “That’s just stupid!”

And, you know. He’s not the only person confused by this wisdom of God. When we were mentoring some Chinese college students a few years ago, we explained this to one of the students, who replied, “That’s just crazy!”

Jesus took it even farther:

“And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

Why does Jesus ask us to do these things which appear foolish to our worldly wisdom? Didn’t He realize that if you let someone slap you around, they’ll be doing much worse to you soon? Didn’t he realize that if you give a thief something easily, he’ll take more? Didn’t he realize that if you give a beggar money, he’ll ask for money all the time from you?

Of course Jesus understood these things. But if either the Hatfields or the McCoys had understood it, there would have been a lot less murders on the Big Sandy River. If gangs understood this, there would be a lot less murders in Chicago today. If this was generally used in Libya, in Syria, in Iraq, there would be peace in those countries today.

Mohatma Gandhi, not a Christian, but a man who had nevertheless studied and understood much of what Jesus taught, was faced by a growing cycle of revenge killings in the newly independent India and Pakistan, and he famously said to his friends on both sides of the Hindu-Moslem fighting: “An eye for an eye means the whole world goes blind.”

You see, deep under these commands of Jesus are a couple of principles, a couple of deep ideas, a couple of bedrock concepts that we simply must get in our minds if we are to react in a holy Christian manner to situations that popup from time to time.

The first principle is this: EVERY human being is an image of God and therefore EVERY human being is worthy of deep respect as if they were God.

If Jesus, the Son of God walked in here today and said to you, “I need to borrow your vehicle.” I would bet that as soon as you had confirmed for yourself that the man was really Jesus, you’d hand over the keys.

(BTW, did you know that Jesus drove a Honda? In John 12:49, Jesus says, “I do not speak of my own accord.”)

Our task, our holy training for ourselves, our goal is to reach the point where when someone simply says, “I need your shirt!”, you offer him your coat, too.

Our task, our holy training for ourselves, our goal is to reach the point where when someone says to us, “I need to borrow a hundred dollars,” we say, “Let’s go to the ATM.”

Our task, our holy training for ourselves, our goal is to reach the point where when someone calls us vile and nasty names, we simply say, “is there anything else I should know?” in a calm, steady voice, treating our antagonist with respect, even if they don’t treat us with respect. Our antagonist will often calm down when we react peacefully. But this does not mean you need to be destroyed by robbers or bandits.

Sometimes, people don’t get it and a further reaction is called for because we KNOW they don’t get it and there is no point to a further beating. No one will see your testimony, no one will ever speak about your goodness, no one will come to Christ because of your patience.

There is a story about Evander Holyfield, the four-time heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Holyfield is a long-time committed Christian and lived in the Atlanta area while we were living there. The story goes that one day a group of three or four men knocked on his door one day. When Evander answered the door, they shoved him back and pushed their way into the house, planning on robbing the place. Holyfield simply said, “how can I help you?” One of the men punched him in the side of the face and said, “tell us where your money is.” Evander turned his face back around to look at the man and kept quiet. The man punched him again, this time hard enough that the 270 pound Holyfield stumbled backwards a couple of steps. At that point, the retired boxer said, “Gentlemen, I have no further instructions from my Lord.” The police were soon called and arrested the dazed and hurting men fifteen minutes later. I think you know what happened.

It should be noted though that at another time, Peter asked how many times he should turn the other cheek. Jesus told Peter that he should turn his cheek “seventy times seven “ times. Clearly Evander Holyfield had not heard that teaching if this story is true.

Jesus went on to tell us:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?"

The second principle that Jesus was teaching is that it doesn’t matter what other people are doing to you…the question is your response. Will you do the right thing? Will you treat them right even if they don’t treat you right?

Imagine that I give you these instructions. I want you to drive to Circle Drive and stop at every home and knock on every door. I want you to deliver a specific message to every person there, on the Drive and in the subdivision, which will save them from a terrible poison that is in the water. Then, I want you to come back here. Tonight at 8 pm, the people of Circle Drive will arrive, and because of their reaction to your message, they will corner you in the church, and they will beat you and cut you and kill you tonight. And furthermore, most of the people will ignore your message and die from the poison anyway.

Would you do it? Would you do it if the Holy Spirit asked you? If God asked you?

(Of course this is hypothetical – there is no poison in the water that I know of.)

Jesus had to do that. Knowing everything ahead of time, He had to come to earth, deliver a message telling us how to live and avoid death and because He brought that message to Him, we killed him – as He knew we would. He died for the few of us that believed Him. He would have died if only YOU believed Him. He cared that much for each of us.

Yet Jesus doesn't ask us to make that sacrifice. Jesus simply asks us to turn the other cheeks if someone slaps us and to pray for our enemies. He simply asks us to give up some of our possessions to people in need. He simply asks us to take insults without looking for revenge. He asks us to forgive when people say mean things to us and not to react with gossip or backbiting. He asks us to be holy. So far, He has not asked you to do what He did. He has not asked you to die to save another.

The final line of this Gospel reading, the final line in this chapter, the final thing He says about this tells us much, too:

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Perfection, you see, allows for waste – the right type of waste. In God’s Universe, there is no waste, for the grapes that are left on the vines, the wheat that wasn’t harvested, the grapes that fell to the ground are eaten by the poor who were not given their own land or feed the insects and mice.

Perfection, you see, does not apply to honor, for those who would be perfect do not respond to insults such as the slapping of our faces.

Perfection, you see, is not about holding onto our stuff, our clothing, our money, for Jesus says the perfect will give away these things, not just to the deserving poor, but even to thieves.

Perfection, you see, is not about how well we are doing in the material things of life, our jobs, the size of our 401k, the number of rooms in our homes, the size of our W-2’s, for God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.

Perfection, you see, is about loving God and loving all the images of God, the portraits of God, the people who love you and the people who hate you, the people who are nice to you and the people who beat you and steal from you, the people who are friends and the people who are enemies. Perfection is understanding that God will always take care of you and never leave you, that God loves you, that you understand this so much you don't need to worry about insults or possessions or clothing or even death itself because God has it all covered for you.

Now go and find a stranger to help and to love today. Share the Gospel in word and deed.

Fulfilling the Law - What the Law's Purposes are for us

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

The story is told - It is probably not true (since I made it up) – of an island in the Western Pacific ocean. It was a peaceful island for centuries. Then one day, a group of men from Japan came and took over the island for a couple of years. Then other men from a place called America drove away the men from Japan and took over the land.

One day, soon after they arrived, the American men brought huge metal beasts and cut down a straight path through the trees. Then they used those metal beasts to make the surface of the ground very flat.

The next day, the men brought some other round metal beasts and began to throw sand and water and another type of sand they brought with them into the round metal beasts. The metal beasts spun around and around. Then, the men tipped over the metal beasts and out came a type of bread dough, grey, that the put in large metal coconut shells with wheels and handles on them.

They took the bread dough and went to the flat place. There, they poured out the bread dough and made the top of it very flat. They covered all the long, flat stretch of land where they had knocked down the trees. For three days, they did this, night and day.

On the fourth day, the American men walked on top of the bread dough, which had baked in the hot sun. The American men walked down to the end of the baked bread dough and then walked back to the other end several times.

The local men wondered what was the purpose of this huge piece of bread that the men from America had baked? Why did they do this? And so, they also walked down on top of the bread dough to the end and back again. Yet on their bare feet, the baked bread was terribly hot and so they hopped off the grey bread onto the cool sand time and again as they walked the length of the bread. Sometimes, though, they needed their friends' help to get out of the weeds and back onto the bread.

Who was going to eat this grey bread? But the bread was surely not something they could eat – it was too hard and did not taste good. Perhaps the bread dough had been made for the American’s god? And so some of the local men began to discuss among themselves how they might also make a piece of flat bread for the American’s god.

And on the fifth day a flock of giant birds landed on the bread. They did not eat the bread, but they walked on the bread, and vomited men onto the bread. For the purpose of the grey bread, it seems, was fulfilled that day as those B-17’s landed on that island, ready to begin the bombing of Japan.

Sometimes, when we live in this world, God does things which we just don’t understand. Once in a while, we learn more about what God was doing, but sometimes God’s purposes are just far beyond us, as the baking of a huge piece of bread appeared to the men of Guam. It was only later that they learned about cement and how it becomes concrete, and that the purpose of the pouring of all that cement mixture was to make a runway for airplanes.

In the same way, our understanding of the ways of God and what God does can take a long while to develop. Sometimes, we never understand until we reach Heaven. But sometimes, God is doing an act of preparation, God is getting things ready, God is pouring a runway for something that is still to come.

The giving of the Law was one of those preparations.

Let’s go back in time, let’s think about life before Moses, let’s think about life before Abraham. Let’s think about the way people lived a long, long time ago in the Middle East.

There was a simple rule in those days – you did what you wanted to do if you could get away with it. Imagine that! If you wanted to butcher my cow, you could butcher her and eat her unless I could stop you. If you wanted my sack of wheat, you could take it unless I could stop you. If you wanted my wife or daughters – they were yours unless I could stop you. And I could take anything of yours unless you could stop me!

Naturally, living like this gave a certain advantage to the big guys and the big families, for the only thing that was “right” was to survive. Have you ever seen the Mad Max movies? This must have been the feel of the place, everyone taking. The only people who didn’t take from each other were families and clans – and those families and clans that were smart enough and wise enough to join forces against outsiders.

The Egyptians were the first to work together, we think, because when a river floods, people have to work together, or the river just creeps around the end of my land to flood me because you didn’t build your section of floodwall. And the Nile river flooded every year. So eventually, some four or five thousand years ago, some Egyptian strong man forced everybody along a stretch of river to work together and he became the Pharoah, the king of Egypt.

Outside of Egypt, things were still wild. Some kings established a few laws, some declared more laws, and some got very strict about everything. But outside of Egypt, a king was in charge of every place of a few hundred or a few thousand people. A different king might have ruled the town next door, and still another ruled the next village. Every village had a king and every king had his rules. In exchange for following the rules, each man and woman received the protection of the local king.

We know a bit about the rules of some places. In the town of Babylon, you had to pay a tax to the king. A king named Hammurabi, who ruled near Babylon had a more extensive code.

#127: "If any one "point the finger" at a sister of a god or the wife of any one, and can not prove it, this man shall be taken before the judges and his brow shall be marked. (by cutting the skin, or perhaps hair.)"

Law #15: "If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to death."[23]

Law #22: "If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death."

Law #53: "If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined."

(The above laws from Wikipedia article on Code of Hammurabi.)

In the town of Sodom, the rules were different it was the rule that all of the men would greet any visitor to the place and force themselves upon him. We see this in action in Genesis 18-19.

And yet, in the midst of all this hodgepodge crazy quilt of rules that men were making up in each of the little towns and villages, those little tiny kingdoms, a man named Abraham roamed with his sheep, his cattle, his wife, and his servants. Abraham had no king. Abraham did not live in a kingdom. Abraham followed no king’s laws – he was free and independent, doing what Abraham pleased.

But Abraham desperately wanted a son. One night, God talked to Abraham and gave Abraham a promise:

“Your descendants will be more numerous as the stars you can count.”

Abraham questioned this a bit, because Abraham was already an old man in his 80’s, and his wife was almost as old, but Abraham believed God. Abraham believe in God’s promise. And because Abraham believed in God’s promise, God declared Abraham to be “righteous”, not guilty of the crime of rebellion that almost everyone since Adam, the first man, had been guilty of. Now, Abraham was not a rebel, but a loyal citizen of God’s kingdom, and Abraham received God’s protection. Abraham wasn’t particularly good – But he trusted God. And that was what made him righteous.

Years later, after Abraham had a couple of sons and those sons had sons, Abraham’s grandson Jacob – also known as Israel – and his twelve sons and their families moved to Egypt to escape a famine. There, they eventually became slaves. And over 400 years later, at God’s bidding, Moses and his brother Aaron led the Israelites to escape from Egypt. Abraham’s descendants – all 600,000 of them, were still under God’s protection. God had fulfilled that promise of descendants.

Shortly after the escape, God called Moses to come to the top of a mountain to receive the Law from God. This was not just any Law, it was a very detailed Law, 613 commandments given by God. And our first reading from Deuteronomy 30 describes Moses speaking to the descendants of Israel about that Law:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. 

The choice was clear – love God, obey him and follow the Law meant life and blessings. Rebellion meant destruction. Unlike following man-made laws, following this set of laws led to life and blessings, while rebelling led to destruction.

And so, throughout the history of Israel, there was a group of people who tried to follow the Law and a group of people who followed other gods. The God-followers and the rebels. Whenever the kings of Israel and Judah tried to obey, they prospered. Whenever they worshiped other gods, they suffered and came to bad ends.

And God gave them second and third chances, which saved several of those kings and the people of Judah and Israel from destruction, for sometimes it just took the words of an individual, a prophet, to turn around the king, the king went to his knees and apologized to God and things turned around. For God gives everyone second and third chances.

The history of Israel and Judah is the history of a people coming to God and rebelling against God. Eventually, both nations were destroyed, the people carried away to slavery because they had strayed so far from God. But even then, after 70 years in Babylon, the people were allowed to return to rebuild the Temple and restore the worship of God.

For you see, that was what the Law was all about. It wasn’t about following a particular set of moral and ethical and legal guidelines. It wasn’t about the walk down the runway and back, seeing who could walk on the runway the best or the most. It never was about that. Something more important was coming. The Law was just a preparation for something much more important.

It was about believing that God was so good, so powerful, so trustworthy that people would do what God asked them to do because they believed IN God. Just as Abraham had believed God’s promises and been declared righteous by God – did these people believe God’s promises? Were they rebels from God – or were they loyal citizens of God’s kingdom?

Jesus arrived and began to preach about 560 years after the return from Babylon.

Jesus had a strong message for everyone. Through the series of examples in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 5, Jesus pointed out to everyone that the Law was not about our actions – it wasn’t about walking down the runway and back - the Law was much more than that, for the Law was a set of standards that pointed us toward becoming the type of citizens that God wants in God’s kingdom. It was about us becoming virtuous, holy people. The Law was necessary to teach us how to fly spiritually, just as the runway was necessary for men to fly in those B-17’s. Let me take one example. Jesus said:

²¹ “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. 

What is murder and what is anger? Murder is killing someone purposely, usually because of anger. But anger is also the intent to harm someone. The only reason anger doesn’t proceed in every case to murder is either self-control of the angry person, or an inability to murder because of the defenses of the intended victim or the intervention of someone else.

Jesus is saying that there is no difference to God,. God isn’t concerned with your actions – God is concerned with the state of your heart. The very fact that you get angry at someone is enough to show you are defying God’s will. We say to each other, “I wanted to kill that man but I didn’t.” 

God says, “You are not doing what I want when you want to harm another. You aren’t trusting me to take care of evil, you don’t trust me to deal of injustice, you ultimately don’t believe that I will be with you eternally, because if you had an eternal perspective, you would let these little things slide by without any anger. You still want to be a little god, controlling other people, and so you aren’t letting me be your God.”

You see, God has exceedingly high standards if you are going to try to be good enough for God.

Jesus went on:

“Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

"Raca" was an insult. Merely insulting another person puts us in danger of the fire of hell. Why? Because a mature follower of God, a person who truly believed that every person is a unique portrait of God would never insult another image of God, another person, for if they were mature, they would have placed deep in their hearts the knowledge that when they look at another person they are seeing a portrait of God! And when they insult another person, they are insulting God.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I can say anything I want about my child, but don’t you dare say something negative about her?” This is how God feels about each of us, God’s children. But since God can read our minds, it goes even deeper – Don’t even THINK evil thoughts about someone else if you are trying to truly follow God! That’s how GOOD God wants us to become!

I could go on and on through our reading, hitting each of these point, and I suggest you re-read it again this afternoon.

(I will take one point and explain it, since it has been the subject of much anguish for people.

Jesus said: “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

In those days, it was accepted that a man could divorce a woman for almost any reason and the interpretation of the Law was that it was only fair to give her a certificate of divorce so she could remarry. But Jesus said, “No!” If a man divorces his wife except for serious cause, he is doing something terrible, for in those days a woman really had tremendous difficulty surviving on her own, for the farm work was terribly hard work, with most people working with wood and stone tools, not even able to afford steel blades for their plows or hoes. A divorced woman who did not remarry probably starved or found work as a prostitute.

And so Jesus said, “What are you doing? The man who divorces a woman without the greatest of causes is forcing this woman to become the victim of adultery when he remarries. Furthermore, since she needs to eat, she will be forced to commit adultery and so will the man who marries her later. Or she will become adulterous through prostitution! Look at the chain of sin you are causing because you decided you didn’t like your wife!”  And we would do well to remember this also. The marriage vow is a promise made before God and should be taken seriously. It affects many, many people.

But what do you do if you are the second husband to a woman and have been happily married for years and just now found this out this view of Jesus? Should you divorce or separate from your wife? No!

Do like you would do with anything you have done wrong. Explain to God that you didn’t know the situation, and ask God for God’s forgiveness. This too can be forgiven.

Notice that Jesus only deals with the man divorcing the woman. This passage doesn’t say anything about the woman who divorces a man for cause or not for cause. That is beyond the scope of this passage and Jesus doesn’t address it here.)

Now, back to the main point. Jesus said, “I have not come to destroy the Law, but I have come to fulfill the Law.”

These words have been difficult for many people. Do we follow the Law or not? Do we follow a portion of the Law? What do we do with the Law now that Jesus has arrived, been sacrificed, and resurrected?

The purpose of the Law is not to provide a set of moral or ethical rules. The Law had three major purposes:

First, it was established to provide a legal framework for the people of Israel to live together, to worship God, and to identify themselves as a kingdom. In many ways, Jews became defined as both the descendents of Jacob AND the people who followed the Law of Moses. The Law brought Israel together in relative harmony. Any law is better than anarchy, and this was a particularly good set of laws. In fact, the Law of Moses still provides a legal framework today and is actually the basis for much of the common law of England and America today.

Second, it was designed to point people toward the God who gave the Law, as a set of useful ways for living that would improve our lives. Even the laws that are commonly put forth as crazy, such as “you shalt not make a garment from two types of cloth” were intensely practical at a time when wool or linen were really the only two cloths available, for they shrink at different rates and if the garment became wet, it would tear itself in two. Other laws prevented other problems. For example, brothers and sisters having children together is a great way to end up with genetic handicaps, which were a great burden before modern medicine, and there were laws against incest. Rebellious children cause problems for the entire community, not just the parents, hence the commandment to obey your father and mother. So the Law simply pointed to a practical way to live which would make your life better, and because following the law led to a better sort of life, people began to wonder more about the God who had sent this Law. What sort of God was he? What is God’s character? How can I be a better worshipper of this God who seems to care for me?

The third purpose of the Law was to help us to understand the sort of virtuous person God is looking to develop, and to learn to move toward that sort of virtue, that holiness. Perhaps you still get angry, but at least the Law has kept you from killing your next door neighbor. Perhaps your ancestors considered eating pork, but the Law said not to do it and they avoided trichinosis, which is a disease commonly contracted by eating infected raw pork. Or they avoided swine flu because they didn’t raise pigs. Perhaps they did raise pigs. Perhaps our talk today about the Law leads you to consider why God would establish a Law against eating pork or shellfish or horsemeat or shrimp? The Law points us toward holy living, both spiritually and physically. But the Law cannot make us holy because we still have our natural, rebellious spirit dragging us off course. Holiness is too hot for our feet to handle with help.

When Jesus arrived, and we believed and were baptized, the Holy Spirit came into us. Now, with the Holy Spirit in you, you can love that neighbor you’ve been angry at and avoided killing because of the Law.  Perhaps you have insulted a friend, but now with the Spirit you can love that neighbor. Perhaps that question of eating pork, shrimp, lizards - or not - leads you to work on the physical virtues which lead to a longer life which is more productive for God. For the Holy Spirit is concerned with our physical health as well as our spiritual health.

And now are you beginning to get it? For God established the Law in preparation, a hot runway we didn’t understand that had been put in the midst of our wild jungle trees, a path to get people looking at God, to get people to wonder about God, to worry about what God thought, and through that, to begin thinking about why it might not be so good to always do anything we want to do. Instead, following the Law made by a wise, good, powerful Creator of the Universe might lead us to a point out of the jungle of wild beasts, to a place where we could look up and begin to wonder about this God and what this God wanted.

But there was a danger that gradually developed with the Law as time went by, for as people kept their eyes focused upon that grey runway that is the Law, people had begun to believe that the Law was the be all/end all of life, our goodness measured by how well we followed the Law, our worth by how well we followed the Law, our goal in life was to follow the Law like those men who walked the length of the runway and thought that walking the runway was the purpose of the runway. We began to worship the Law. And many, many people throughout history - even today - are bound in slavery to walk back and forth on the runway of the Law, trying time and time again to walk the entire distance on that hot pavement - and failing time and time again, dying inside each time they fail, becoming more and more depressed, certain that great things will never happen until they walk perfectly the entire distance of the Law, falling again and again into the jungle of despair. You may be one of those people. 

But the arrival of Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law, our chance to look up, the same way the arrival of that first B-17 was the fulfillment of that runway carved out of the trees on Guam and lifted all heads – Jesus was the reason, the purpose, the end-all/be-all of the Law. Jesus gives us all the chance to escape from that dead-end runway of grey despair.

For Jesus was the only person in history who had ever walked with the Law in perfect harmony. Jesus was the only person who ever followed the Law completely and wholly. Jesus was the one Person who could point to the Law and say, in effect, “What’s the big deal?” For He had the spiritual sandals which allowed Him to walk on that burning hot road, that road that leads to the jungle of destruction if you don’t follow it perfectly. And, like a B-17 flies, Jesus could spiritually fly, taking us with Him!

There are two possible responses to Jesus being the only Man to walk the Law perfectly.

You can say, “Jesus was special because Jesus was divine.” And that is correct. Jesus is God Himself walking on this planet. And surely that means that whatever Jesus said is of tremendous importance, for He is God Himself, just in a different form from God the Father.

Or you can say, “Jesus was a man, but a particularly good man.” Then why, my friend, can’t you walk the Law just as well? Is it because you are not particularly good? Is this why you need Jesus’ help?

So Jesus has us right where He and the Father intended before the creation of the Universe – ready to bow the knee, admitting our weakness in the face of perfect divinity, ready to worship God as we should, the Law’s purpose now fulfilled.

Will you worship God? Have you heard God’s Word? Have you heard the Holy Spirit speak to you today? Will you tell others what you have heard?

Will you bow down your head in humbleness, knowing that Jesus could do something you cannot do, knowing that Jesus is the divine Son of God? Will you look up to Jesus Christ and recognize Him as your God, worthy of being followed?

Break the Yoke! - How does Jesus set us Free?

Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112:1-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; Matthew 5:13-20

In ancient times God gave Moses the Law to bring to the people of Israel. Many of us think of this Law as the Ten Commandments, but there were actually 613 separate commandments. Over the centuries, the people of Israel tried to follow the Law. And they found they could not follow the Law. No one could.

Was it too complicated? Was it too difficult? Were 613 commandments too many demands?

No, for later on the Apostle Paul pointed out that no human appears capable of completely following any system of laws. Look at yourself – at some point in your life, I bet you’ve said to yourself – “I would never do this” or “I would never do that”. That’s your own personal law. But if you think about it, if you have set up more than one or two laws for yourself, you have broken one or more of them. For example, you may say “I will never eat a cookie before supper.” Yet haven’t you eaten cookies before supper? Of course you have. In fact, that’s the reason you said to yourself “I will never eat another cookie before supper.” You broke the law even before you made the law.

Have you ever borrowed a pencil, a piece of paper, an eraser without asking? You’ve stolen, even if you replaced it, for you did not have permission. Have you ever driven faster than the speed limit, even for just a few seconds? You’ve broken the law. Have you ever watched a television show you shouldn’t watch, even for a minute? You’ve broken your personal moral law. And God, who has the perfect video camera of everything you’ve ever done, even in total darkness – knows exactly what you’ve done. Can you imagine how much money you’d owe in fines just for speeding if God prosecuted you for every time you’ve broken the speed limit? Can you imagine how many years in jail you’d get if God prosecuted you for every time you imagined beating up someone or hurting them in some way? For God knows your thoughts as well as your actions, and Jesus made it clear that your thoughts can break the Law also. Ne told us that hating is considered by God to be the same as murder, and looking at someone with lust is the same as adultery.

There is something about being a human creature that leads us to break the law. Yet most of us do not simply recognize this in ourselves, but instead we get all worked up when someone else we know breaks the law. We point fingers, we yell, we shout. We complain when they make mistakes, we complain when they break a rule, we complain if they are not perfect. Yet if the truth were known, we have done the same thing or something just as bad and we are thankful we did not get caught. Yet who are we fooling? God caught us. God always catches us. That’s one reason we should always forgive people who make mistakes, act badly, or say mean and nasty things. Very soon, we may fall into the same hole.

And so when we realize just how badly we have behaved, how many times we’ve broken the Law, we begin to carry around a tremendous burden of guilt. It isn’t just a psychological guilt – we really are guilty of those crimes against God. When I was in high school, you wouldn’t believe the number of other students I punched out - in the safety of my own mind! In my mind, I punched and I kicked and I beat them in revenge for what they had done and said to me. And so I am guilty in God’s eyes of those crimes, for the only thing that kept me from actually doing those crimes was the sure knowledge of human punishment. Yet God is not bound by human eyes that cannot see a crime committed in the privacy of your mind. God can see those crimes being committed.

That guilt becomes a real burden, for we know that we've done wrong. The ancient prophets wrote that it was like putting a heavy wooden yoke on an ox. For those of you who don’t know, a yoke was a heavy, carved piece of wood that was connected to the tongue of a wagon and forced the ox to pull the heavy wagon. The only way for the ox to get free was to break the yoke.

By the time of Jesus, some people known as Pharisees were adding to the weight of the guilt on people. They looked at poor people and said, “Don’t you realize you need to be wearing a robe that was made a particular way?” The poor people looked back and said, “But I can’t afford that robe.” The Pharisees said, “Then you aren’t following the Law and you are a bad person.”

The Pharisees looked at other people and said, “You aren’t supposed to eat pork or shrimp or lizards.” The people looked back and said, “The only meat we can afford to eat is pork or lizards.” And the Pharisees said, “Then you aren’t following the Law and you are a bad person.”

The Pharisees looked at still other people and said, “You aren’t supposed to live in the same house as someone you aren’t married to.” And those other people looked back and said, “I can’t afford another place to live.” And the Pharisees said, “Then you aren’t following the Law and you are a bad person.”

And then, Jesus arrived.

Jesus said that He had come, not to destroy the Law but to fulfill it. Jesus said that He had not come to get rid of any of the 613 commands. He even said that not one of those commands would go away.

And then He made a very scary statement.

Jesus said that you would have to be even better, even more righteous than the Pharisees to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

If a Pharisee, who seemed to live right, who dressed right, who ate the right food couldn’t get into the Kingdom of Heaven, then who could?

The answer, you see, was no one. No one could get into Heaven on their own righteousness. No one except Jesus.

In our translations, we often translate passages such that we say “faith in Jesus “ gets us into Heaven. But, according to Timothy Luke Johnson, the literal translation of these passages is often “The faith of Jesus” gets us into Heaven. In Greek, pistus Christus.

Jesus, you see, had tremendous faith in the love of God. Jesus knew God because Jesus had been with God since before the Beginning of Time. And so Jesus simply pointed out – "If you will follow me, If you will be my loyal follower, If you will try to do what I ask of you, I will get you into Heaven, because I know that God loves us both so much God will find another way."
And so God did find another way.

Jesus was sacrificed upon the cross to pay the fine for everything we’ve done wrong. Jesus was sacrificed on the cross to set us free from the burden of our law-breaking. Jesus was sacrificed to break the yoke of guilt that keeps our heads down – and now we are free to do good, to follow Jesus, to truly live!

The Law is still the law. Following the Law will lead you to a better life. For example, the Law says to not eat ham. And we have now found that eating too much ham is bad for our health, our cholesterol levels, our sodium levels, our blood pressure. And we’ve found sound reasons to follow the other commands of the Law. But, you see, Jesus fulfilled the Law. Jesus showed us that someone human can follow the Law – but He also showed us that the Law isn’t how you get to Heaven. Instead, the Law is meant to show us just how messed up we truly are – and to lead us to admit that weakness to ourselves and to God. Because of Jesus, we humbly admit our weakness and bow to God - or we point out that Jesus cheated because He was the Son of God - and bow to Jesus as divine, giving Him the respect of listening to His words as Truth. And either way, we have come to bow before God.

Instead of trying to follow the Law to gain Heaven, we now know that the way to Heaven is to believe in the promises of God. As the Apostle Paul pointed out, over 400 years before Moses and the Law, God gave Abraham a promise, a promise of many descendants, as many as there are stars in the sky. Abraham believed God and so God declared that Abraham was righteous, that He was “good enough” for Heaven.

Now, we are to believe the promises that God gave us through Jesus Christ. Chief among these promises is that people who choose to follow Jesus, the Son of God, will be resurrected, brought back from the dead to live eternally. Our yoke to the Law was broken, we do not have to sweat about following every one of those 613 commandments exactly all of our lives – we simply need to follow Jesus, to find God’s Will for our lives and to follow what the Holy Spirit tells us to do, like an ox who now has learned to do what the farmer wants done and so he no longer needs to carry a heavy yoke which keeps him attached to the wagon, or like a dog that no longer needs a leash because he has learned his master's will.

And just before Jesus was sacrificed on that cross, the night before He died on that cross, Jesus called His students, his disciples together and said, “I need you to remember this always, for it is very important for you.”

That evening, He took bread, broke it, and shared it with his friends and said, “This is my body which is broken for you.”

He took wine, shared it with his friends, and said, “This is my blood which is shed for you.”
For you see, it is important that we remember that Jesus was the One who broke the yoke. It was Jesus who set us free. Only Jesus had the faith in God to completely follow the Law and become the sacrifice for us. Now, we need to learn to follow Him with our whole heart.

As the Apostle Paul wrote:

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,  for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.
We have the mind of Christ, God who walked on this earth, given to us by the Holy Spirit we received at baptism. Let us listen to what the Spirit has spoken. Let us do what Christ directs us through the Word of God and the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit. Let us learn to do good each minute in each situation rather than blindly follow the Law.