“The Heart of God”
Matthew 5:38-48
This morning’s Gospel Lesson is right-smack in the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
It is Jesus’ first big sermon, and it is aimed—primarily—at Jesus’ disciples, a group of folks who have only recently started following Him.
They are this motley crew of people, most of whom don’t really know one another very well at this point.
They don’t even know Jesus very well.
They are fishermen who have left their businesses in order to follow Christ, tax collectors—those hated villains who had made their living ripping off their own people, some are former followers of John the Baptist…
They are not educated.
They have no power.
They have no money.
They really have no idea what they are doing and they don’t necessarily know much about religion or God.
And yet here Jesus is teaching them and bestowing all kinds of grand titles on them: “You are the salt of the earth,” Jesus says in verse 13.
“You are the light of the world,” Jesus tells them in verse 14.
What do you suppose they were thinking?
And then He tells them they are to not only love their neighbors, but their enemies as well.
They are to pray for those who treat them badly.
If someone slaps them on the right cheek they are to offer them their left cheek as well.
If someone wants the shirt off their back, they are to give them their coat as well.
And they are to be perfect, as their Heavenly Father is perfect.
These are very faulty human beings Jesus is speaking to here.
They don’t live this way; they have never lived this way.
And, you know what?
If we are to be Jesus’ disciples, these words apply to us just as much as they did to Peter, James, John and the rest of Jesus’ first followers.
A pastor tells the story of stumbling into his kitchen after a long day of work.
He put down his groceries and pressed the voice-mail button.
It was one of his church members: “Pastor, I’m doing the Scripture reading for Sunday, and I have that passage where Jesus says, ‘Turn the other cheek.’ You know that passage, right?
Do the other Gospels have that same passage?
Is it different in the other Gospels?
Could you let me know, because…no offense, but I think Jesus is wrong.”
Over the centuries, many people have gone to great lengths to try and explain away Jesus’ words in all kinds of ways.
And when this is done, suddenly His commands seem distant and irrelevant to us.
But the Real Jesus will have none of this.
The Real Jesus looks at you and at me and says: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Is Jesus taunting us?
Is He asking us to do something that is impossible?
Is this some kind of joke?
Is Jesus setting us up to fail?
The Greek word here translated as “perfect” is telios.
It refers to the purpose of a thing or of a person.
Being “perfect” means to be who God created us to be—to be about that purpose.
It means to be completely focused on our role in God’s Kingdom…
…so that we “may be children of” our “Father in heaven.”
Max Lucado writes about a big, muscle-bound man named Daniel who was ripped off by his own brother.
He vowed that if he ever saw him again, he would break his neck.
A few months later, Daniel became a Christian.
Even so, he couldn’t forgive his brother.
One day Daniel was walking down a busy sidewalk and saw his brother.
This is how Daniel described what happened: “I saw him, but he didn’t see me.
I felt my fists clench and my face get hot.
My initial impulse was to grab him around the throat and choke the life out of him.
But as I looked into his face, my anger began to melt.
For as I saw him, I saw the image of my father.
I saw my father’s eyes.
I saw my father’s look.
I saw my father’s expression.
And as I saw my father in his face, my enemy once again became my brother.”
God created every human being in God’s image.
And God saves us in order to be the people God created us to be.
And as Christ’s followers we are called to “love as God loves.”
Now, don’t get me wrong.
We can’t do this on our own.
It’s not like a ten-week muscle building-fat burning work-out.
It’s not a fad diet with guaranteed results.
It’s not some admonition to simply try harder.
If it was, it would certainly be a recipe for despair.
What it is is a plan of action rooted in the promise in verse 45 “that we may be children of our Father in heaven.”
Think about it.
What Jesus says here has us looking at the very heart of God Himself.
God loves the unlovable, comes and lives among us in Christ, suffers our worst, and rises to forgive.
Turn the other cheek, give your cloak, go another mile, lend, love your enemies—because that is how God loves.
If we want to follow God, fleshed out in Jesus, we will be adopted into a life in which we find ourselves loving this way before we even know what we are doing!!!
The week before last, we made an error on our Food Pantry order…
…when I say “we” I really mean “me” due to the fact that I was the one typing the order into the computer.
In any event, we made our usual order for five or six thousand pounds of food to be delivered—by truck--from the Chattanooga Area Food Bank to the church on Tuesday—which is two days before Food Pantry Day.
And we have a really good system in order to have everything prepared and ready for Food Pantry day on the following Thursday.
That is, if everything goes as planned.
Well, whatever I did wrong the week before, it deleted our order.
And the Chattanooga Area Food Bank didn’t bring their truck to the church building and deliver the five or six thousand pounds of food we need in order to feed the hundreds of hungry folk who come to the food pantry every other week.
And, because we have to make our order several days ahead of time in order for the Food Bank to deliver the food we purchase, we were stuck.
By the grace of God, we were able to put-in another order, but how were we going to get it to the church?
And once we got it to the church, how were we going to be able to set the food up in time?
I mean, we weren’t going to be able to pick all that food up until Thursday afternoon—and the Food Pantry opens at 5 p.m. on Thursday.
And there is a lot that goes into getting the food prepared.
About 120 grocery bags have to be prepared with what we call “staples”—canned goods, mac and cheese, spaghetti, tuna fish, etc.
Then, the fruit and vegetables, many of them have to be bagged because they come in big bulk quantities.
This takes a lot of time and a lot of hands.
We had to think fast.
The first question was, “How are we gonna get the food here?”
A couple of our folks went and rented a U-Haul truck.
The next question was, “Are we going to be able to get enough volunteers to get all this done by 5 p.m.?”
Phone calls were made, a few emails were sent out, and by two o’clock in the afternoon there were well over 30 people at this church building unloading food from the truck, bagging carrots and apples, putting food in grocery bags, and getting everything ready to feed our hungry neighbors on a wet and cold day in February.
And you know what?
We finished in record time.
It took, maybe an hour and a half.
And because of all these amazing people coming together, from different churches in our community we were able to provide food for everyone who came that evening—we fed 288 individuals.
We had a record number of volunteers when we needed it most.
As I watched, I kept thinking: “Here are God’s Children—doing what they do best--working together in order to love and feed their neighbors.”
We are all caught in the tension between human nature and being children of God.
And to be perfect is not some command meant to add pressure to our already overwhelmed lives.
Of course, most of us have a very flawed understanding of perfection.
Perfection does not mean that we are somehow magic.
It doesn’t mean that words don’t hurt or that we don’t bleed.
It doesn’t mean that we are morally superior to anyone else.
Or better than anyone else.
It doesn’t mean that we belong to a particular political party or hold the so-called correct viewpoints on hot-button issues.
It’s not a “moral majority” kind of thing.
It’s not about the law or being able to follow a bunch of rules and regulations.
It has nothing to do with choosing the right fork at the dinner table or knowing everything there is to know.
Perfection is less about getting things right and more about loving as God loves, and Jesus is God’s concrete example of that love.
John Wesley had a great definition of Christian Perfection.
He said that Christian Perfection is to “have a habitual love for God and neighbor.”
That is what I want to have more than anything in the world.
That is who I want to be!
Jesus calls us to be more than we ever thought we could be—to claim our identity as God’s children.
Returning hate with love, turning the other cheek, praying for those who stand against us—is incredibly counter cultural.
But it is what it means to be truly human—to live like those created in the image of God.
It is returning to our roots; our roots before the Fall, in the garden.
Martin Luther once said that the Christian Life is not about arriving but always becoming.
And St. Augustine, at Communion, would invite people to “receive who you are” and then “go become what you have received.”
The Sermon on the Mount, of which Matthew Chapter 5:38-48 is a part is not a do-it-yourself kit for getting into heaven.
We are saved by grace through faith, it is a gift of God, lest anyone should boast.
But, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to be the people God created us to be.”
Perfection is the “life of Christ” lived in and through us—if we are willing.
It is what Paul meant when he said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”
It is something that only Jesus Christ can do in us.
And it is our only hope.
Jesus said to the first disciples, Jesus says to you, Jesus says to me: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
Red Bank United Methodist Church-- You are God’s beloved children.
Be what you have been called and give God the glory.
And perhaps, others will see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Amen.
