Epiphany 7

When we were in Saskatoon, Diana and I often attended services at a Lutheran church that was close to where we lived. To get there, we walked past a large ultra-conservative charismatic church that had its own school (the kind where women had to wear dresses and couldn’t hold office in the church aside from the music ministry or elementary Sunday school teachers), a Roman Catholic Church, and another large evangelical church. Now, before you think that we were walking five miles in the snow, uphill both ways, realize that our walk was maybe six or eight blocks.

But I loved reading the church signs that the churches had. One Sunday the Roman Catholic Church had a sign advertising a festival for its patron saint. The charismatic church sign then said “all saints are welcome” and the evangelical church sign said “you don’t need to be a saint to come here.”

Another Sunday in the middle of summer the Roman Catholic church posted a sign on its door warning worshippers that the air-conditioning unit had broken. The charismatic church sign said “there’s no air conditioning in hell” and the evangelical church sign said, “come in and cool down, our air conditioning is working.”

But my favourite church signs centred around the gospel lesson for today. One day the Roman Catholic church sign said “remember the Golden Rule,” the charismatic church sign read “Sermon Sunday: who are the enemies of Christians?” and the evangelical church sign read “Love your enemies; it confuses them and makes them uncomfortable.”

A journalist once asked the great Mahatma Gandhi what he thought about Christianity: “your Christ I like,” Gandhi replied, “but your Christians I can’t stand.” And you know what? He had a certain point. How many times have you defended your faith with the statement “we’re not like that!” or “those people in that church see things differently than we do.” As Christians, it seems that we fail deeply, and often, at being good representatives of our faith. Instead of focusing on living in community, we can shift our focus to ourselves.

It becomes very easy for us to imagine that we are solitary travellers on the road of the gospel, because our vision becomes very focused on what we perceive to be at the end of the road: God‘s kingdom.

Think of the last time you made a trip to say…drive to Calgary. When you can see the skyline of the city north of Airdrie, have you ever noticed that you stop paying attention to what’s going on around you? You become so focused on those big tall buildings that they begin to represent everything for you - the end of your journey.

But you don’t go to those buildings, do you? No, chances are you go to a tidy house in the suburbs or a nice hotel. You may never go near those big tall buildings that were your focus; but they remain your focus nonetheless. In the same way our passion -- our good and right desire -- for the kingdom of heaven can sometimes get in our way of understanding what Jesus means when he speaks directly to us. And we’re not alone in that.

Today’s gospel lesson continues the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew; telling the story of what life looks like the kingdom of God. For us, it takes four or five weeks to read; but for Jesus it takes about fifteen or twenty minutes to speak. So far, after two thousand years of studying it, we’re still trying to unpack all that Jesus was saying.

There’s one thing that remains abundantly clear: as a moral teacher, Jesus doesn’t really fit the bill. You see, already Jesus assumes that the people he’s speaking to are moral people -- that they have a sense of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ -- but he also repeatedly emphasizes to them that mere morality is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’…but I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.”

“You have heard that it was said ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy‘…but I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you…for if you love those who love you, what reward to you have?”

Those two “you have heard that it was said…” are basic moral laws. One, you should right wrongs when you see them or when they are done to you, and two, that you should hang out with those people who are like you and avoid those who aren’t. They’re constants, repeated throughout just about every moral system.

Does Jesus make sense? Do you think that the crowd gathered around him is listening with delight? I don’t think so. In fact, I think that the disciples are completely mind-boggled about this entire business. What is the point in becoming a disciple of a great religious teacher if you can’t wave a bit of your own piety in everyone else’s face?

Because think for a moment where Jesus’ teaching is going to lead you. Have you ever heard of anyone who completely modelled this kind of behaviour? Sure you have - Jesus did, in the book of Acts, Stephen did, Paul did (eventually). And they all have something in common: what is it?

Let me give you a hint: they all died. Directly because of living out these words. Jesus likes morals and morality; I’m not for a minute going to say that he doesn’t. But what Christ knows is that morals and morality are not going to save you from hell. They will provide guidance, good ways of living your life, but they cannot save you. Because morality and hypocrisy are soul mates.

In the US right now, the national debt is become the huge moral issue of the day. “How can Obama run the debt up so high? It’s immoral and unchristian!” And you know what? They have a certain point: running up a debt so high that it will take 5000 years to pay off is never a good idea.

But the same people who are protesting the immorality of Obama’s spending on health care and education are the same people who supported his predecessor when he picked two wars, cut taxes for the rich and doubled the national debt.

As one commentator in the States put it, “it seems that every pure moral claim is mixed with hypocrisy.” That shouldn’t surprise anyone - when it’s you who is claiming an eye or a tooth when you’ve been wronged it’s easy to being righteous; but when you’re the person from whom the eye or tooth has been claimed the issue may not seem so cut-and-dried.

Someone comes among you preaching sedition and blasphemy, threatening to overturn your centuries-old model of faith and religious life. What do you do? Morally, you remove the sickness, like a surgeon excising a tumour. But as you’re doing it, you’re also killing the Saviour of the world.

Liturgically, we confess that duplicity every Sunday: “we have fallen short of the life you desire for us” or, more traditionally put: “we confess we are captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” Morality - which is how we respond to sin by moving away from it and putting it farther from us-- is not equal to God’s response, which is to wipe sin away entirely.

The last verse of today’s gospel lesson is directly responsible for my own desire to study the Greek language during my undergrad years. “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect,” Jesus says, and it appears to us like Jesus is saying that’s it’s a perfectly fine and reasonable expectation that we should be - not try to be, not strive to be, but that we SHOULD BE - just like God.

But the interesting thing about language is that it changes with time and use. In our culture now, perfect means ‘without blemish’ or ‘flawless’. The Greek word that is used here means “complete” or “finished”. We are not flawless, but in God’s world we are complete. We are not called to artificial smoothness but to wholeness - to holiness - for no other reason than Christ calls us to be.

We are called to love our enemies -- whomever they may be -- as a reminder that God loves all of creation, that God alone is sovereign and God alone is the source of all mercy.

Jesus speaks to us out of the knowledge that the law cannot provide salvation for us; but only the gospel gives salvation. And certainly, the law can guide us or drive us to the gospel - to the person of Jesus Christ and his suffering, death, and resurrection -- but it can never be the means of our salvation.

That’s part of the reason why Jesus always carries the law to the most extreme examples of which he can think - so that his listeners (and us) can understand that worrying about our own worthiness or unworthiness is not a fruitful task.

But rather, Christ seeks to help us understand that all things in our lives come from God: good and bad, just and unjust. Human beings can be great moral teachers, but as Paul reminds us “let no one boast about human leaders…for all things are yours.”

So remember, when you are aware of the ways that you fail to live perfectly, when that little devil on your shoulder reminds you of all the stinging things that you’ve done in life…that none of it matters. Not life or death or present or future - for all those things are part of who you are, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

And the next time that you are speaking with someone about your faith, and they bring before you their negative experience in a church, you can look at them, and honestly say to them - you’re right. We’re not perfect, and we know we can’t be. But still, we all belong to Christ.

In that way, you will proclaim the kingdom of God, and be complete.

And it saves us having to buy a bigger church sign.

Let the people of God say amen.