Christmas in Covid-time

 It is Christmas morning. Christmas in Covid-time.

I am aware that I have tried to slog out this strange season in the way that comes naturally to me, head-down, keeping emotions in check, waiting things out, hoping for the best but expecting less.

I suppose it's a kind of controlled numbness, designed to keep the edges from fraying, or to keep them from fraying over-much. Because fray they will.

But now it's Christmas, which ought to break into the numbness, stir up hope, restore a sense of . . . what? Mission?

I think that Joseph, the husband of Mary, might have been feeling a little numb himself. Mary, the woman to whom he was engaged to be married, was pregnant, and the baby certainly wasn't his. The Gospel According to Matthew tells us that Joseph "resolved to divorce her quietly."

He was a decent man, a merciful man. He was trying to spare Mary the shame and dishonor that would normally come upon a single woman in such circumstances. 

Everything on hold. Everything up in the air. 

But then . . . a fearfully powerful being, filled with light, a messenger from God, intervened. It was only a dream, perhaps. But this is what the being said:

"Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save the people from their sins."

To Mary, also, this same messenger, whose name was Gabriel, appeared. I suppose it nearly scared the girl to death! But the being said:

"Greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you! . . . And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

And not only Joseph and Mary, but also, a few shepherds in the fields on the night of the child's birth. They too must have used numbness as a kind of survival-strategy. It couldn't have been easy work. And prospects for advancement, nil. And the night, cold. There were no vacations, no sick-leave. Never a thought for getting an education, or building up a little nest egg, or moving to a new town, changing careers, starting over. There were only the sheep, and the stars, and perhaps a little fire to keep the cold at bay. 

But then, "the glory of the Lord shone all around." These boys were all most certainly awake, this was no dream. You and I can only guess what the "glory of the Lord" must have been like, but those boys were "filled with great fear," Luke tells us. And then the being, the messenger, spoke:

"Fear not, for behold, I bring you good new of great joy, that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."

So for now, for this one night, there would be no more slogging through, keeping your head down, trying not to feel too much. Instead, there would be these boys running through the streets of Bethlehem, looking for a baby in a manger.

I don't know how to wrap this little Christmas meditation up. I don't have any profound advice for dealing with whatever you're dealing with. I'm not promising you mountaintop experiences or happiness every day. But angels showed up, and they were fearful, and they filled the sky, and they were celebrating! For they too had been waiting for this night. 

It happened. The child was born, grew in wisdom and stature, and well, I suppose you know the story. But it begins with a majestic promise of God fulfilled in a supernatural way, with His messengers bringing the news to an amazed young couple engaged to be married, and a few exhausted shepherds out in the fields.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. . . ." [Isaiah 9:2]

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Read also: Jesus is the Light of the Lockdown 

The Sermon on the Level Place (5): Loving Your Enemies

Christianity is not a moral system, a plan for being good so that we can win the prize of heaven, but it should come as no surprise that many people do seem to think that's exactly what it is. That's how we (we Christians) talk about it among ourselves and often how we preach about it. In other words, though it's a mistaken notion, it's one that we ourselves are responsible for.

In our walk through the Sermon on the Level Place we come now to a set of imperatives that follow from the Blessings and Woes of the previous section. One may sum it all up this way: "Given what I've just told you, love your enemies."

Now there's a hard-to-obey imperative for you! We Christians have a couple of strategies for dealing with these difficult imperatives of Jesus. First choice: ignore them completely, and if someone brings them up, forget about it s soon as you can. Second choice: figure out a theological explanation for why we don't really have to obey the imperative at all (which simply provides a rationalization for Choice 1).

Let's get to the passage. Jesus has just been speaking of the kingdom of God. This "kingdom" is in fact the subject of all his early teaching. The reign of God has entered into the old order of things. It's a kind of new reality wherein you are likely to see the poor and the weeping and the hungry filled with joy, even though this very reality, this blessing, also sets them on a path toward persecution.

I tend to use the word that Jesus used for this new reality, kingdom, but admittedly that is a somewhat problematic word in our time. Michael Frost explains the term nicely here. Brian McLaren calls it "the ecosystem of God." And then there's N. T. Wright's explanation of the term:

The phrase "the kingdom of God" translates out as "how God is now taking charge of the world."

You can fill a whole library with books on this subject, but Jesus didn't provide a reading-list to his followers, he simply spoke of this "new reality," announced it and told stories about it. And it is in the context of this new reality that we set his many imperatives (how to live). We see that clearly in the 4th and final beatitude (Luke 6:22-23):

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

See that imperative? "Rejoice!" And see on what it is based? In following Jesus, you have joined in a heavenly project that the prophets of old were also a part of.  You're a part of God's kingdom project! 

All this is the "given" behind the imperatives (I would venture to say, all the imperatives) of Jesus. In other words, the command of Jesus follows from and is rooted in the new reality that he has announced.  To attempt to obey the command apart from that reality is simply to engage in a particularly fruitless kinds of moralism.

And so let's at last take a look at the "love your enemies" passage (Luke 6:27-31):

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.

First, note that the enemiles of which Jesus speaks are the enemies of the kingdom. Those who are being hated and  reviled (6:22) are being hated and reviled "because of the Son of Man!" In other words, they are hated because they follow Jesus. Because they are a part of God's new kingdom reality. Those who are treating the Jesus followers with such disdain are enemies of that kingdom. 

These are the enemies that Jesus is talking about when he says, "Love your enemies." In other words, their is a power struggle going on between God's kingdom and the kingdoms (the power centers) of this world. And if you opt in for Jesus, you become a part of that struggle. The other side is going to hate and exclude and revile you, abuse you, steal from you, and perhaps even kill you in the end. Love them anyway. Remember, your reward is great in heaven!

Note: the call of Jesus on our lives as Jesus-followers is to love people. Everybody. But here he is speaking specifically about those whom it is not only hard to love, but who don't seem to deserve it. The very enemies of Jesus and his message! But Jesus is not talking about deserving, or about your carefully calibrated measurement as to who should and shouldn't be loved. You can just toss those calibrations in the trash where they belong!

So far in this "sermon on the level place" we have had two imperatives:

1. Rejoice when people persecute you because of Jesus.
2. Love those who are doing the persecuting.

But please note: you are simply not in this picture if you are not following Jesus. God is on the move, his reign and rule is becoming manifest, and the powers of this world are reacting with enmity. If you belong to Jesus, the kingdom bringer, then rejoice, because great things are afoot, eternal things. Given this, walk in love.

This is one of those passages that leads into the deep things of God. I have done less than scratch the surface here, but I simply want to make a couple of points. First, put away notions of proving yourself to God by obedience to this commandment. One never loves to prove something, to get something back. That's calculation, not love. It will come to nothing.

Second, if you are a Jesus follower, you are blessed no matter how faulty and apparently inadequate all your following is. But just remember: Jesus is a teacher, and you are his student. Learning is a process. Learn at his feet, contemplate his words, and gradually get it deep in your knower that with Jesus the plan of God for his whole creation has been set in motion. This is nothing less that re-creation, and Jesus is at the center of it all. You're also blessed to be included in this. You're blessed to be excluded by those who like the ecosystem of this world as it is. So love the excluders, because come what may, you're blessed anyway.

The Sermon on the Level Place (4)

 So after Jesus introduces his sermon with the four blessing statements, he follows up with four parallel woe statements. His blessings, you may recall, were both counter-intuitive and foundational to understanding what it means to follow Jesus.

Before moving on to the woes, I want to emphasize that last point one more time. These "beatitudes" are not merely meant to be a collection of reassurances when you're feeling down, but the starting point of understanding what Jesus, with his arrival on the scene, was inaugurating: a new community of Jesus-followers, assured of their destiny despite appearances, and heedless of the world's disdain. [See Post 1, Post 2, Post 3]

The woe-statements, as I've mentioned, are parallels to the blessing-statements. So, whereas the poor are blessed, the rich have only woe to look forward to. Though the the hungry are blessed, the well-fed will one day hunger. And though the weeping are blessed, those who laugh will one day weep. Let's juxtapose these parallel statements so as to see their relationship.

• Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
• Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
• Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
• Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.
• Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
• Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

And finally:

• Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
• Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.

Remember, Jesus is a teacher, and he is setting out to teach those people who have come to him from far and wide. The healing that many of them received from the hand of Jesus is an indication of his power (and of his identity). He refers to himself in this passage as the "son of Man," a clear echo of Daniel 7:13-14.

. . . and behold, with the  clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days. . . . and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom. . . .

For our purposes, we must keep in mind that Jesus has been preaching that a kind of new reality had arrived with his own arrival. He called this "the good news of the kingdom of God." [Luke 4:43]

This "kingdom" is at cross-purposes with the powers of this world. This world's poor, hungry, and weeping are those for whom the kingdom is "good news." For those, on the other hand, who have triumphed in this world, who are rich and well-fed and full of laughter, there is nothing more for them in the world to come, where God's reign is complete. They have no part in it. 

There are strong echoes of this message throughout the New Testament. It is a big part of what we call the Good News. At the start of Jesus' ministry he proclaimed this news (Luke 4:18-19), and here as the prelude to his first extended classroom session, he demonstrates its reality by miraculously healing many.

So this new thing, this kingdom, he teaches his followers, is good news for those whom this world's kingdoms have left behind, but it is bad news for those who are satisfied with this world's kingdoms. Those who don't even perceive their need for a cure will simply not receive it.

Jesus is not pulling his punches: if you follow me, he seems to say, you are blessed, and the kingdom of God is for you, but bear in mind that all the rival kingdoms of this world will see you as a traitor. Such was the fate of the prophets, and such may well be yours. If so, rejoice. The kingdom of God is yours.

But as for the comfortable in this world, the self-reliant and well-situated, the winners, the first-in-line, for these folk the good news is bad news. They will reject it, for by their lights, by their system of values, it rejects their status, it robs them of their hard-earned glory, and it makes nothing of all their supposed merit. Why should they take up with such losers?

But as for the needy ones who have followed Jesus this far, they are becoming something more than receivers of mercy and healing (as great as that must have been). Sitting at the feet of the Teacher, they are becoming disciples. They are learning the new way that Jesus in his ministry teaches so consistently. They will learn and internalize the teaching of Jesus, and begin in a sometimes halting and imperfect way to walk it out. There is no place in the Gospel account for those who only come for the healing miracle but do not stay for the teaching. Such a one would not truly be a follower of Jesus at all, and that in the end is the purpose of this sermon: to make disciples.

The Sermon on the Level Place (3)

We've been talking about the beatitudes of Jesus as recorded by Luke in the Sermon on the Level Place. After healing many people, Jesus began his sermon with these announcements:

Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of God belongs to them. Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the weeping, for they shall laugh.

As we noted in the last entry in this series, the kingdom of God is a kind of key to understanding the whole sermon. The miracles of Jesus act as a sign that this kingdom, this reign of God, has entered into our earthly reality. And Jesus is announcing here just who this kingdom is for . . . the poor, the hungry, the weeping.

But then Jesus adds one more "blessed are" statement, and it's not at all like the first three. 

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. [Luke 6:22-23]

Jesus is describing a condition of conflict for the kingdom of God. God's reign is here, but it has come into a world of competing kingdoms, a world in conflict with God and his reign. While, for those to whom the kingdom of God belongs there will be an end to hunger and weeping and the helplessness of poverty, these things Jesus states as fact, there will also be hatred, rejection, and even death.

Jesus is not sugar-coating the truth here (he never does that). Up until this moment, the kingdoms of this world have had their way, but in Jesus they recognize their true enemy. The reign of God is not simply one kingdom co-existing among many. The maker of all things has set in motion an invasion plan. Jesus' arrival on the scene will stir up resistance among that those who want to continue with things-as-they-are. The whole New Testament can be seen as the story of kingdoms in conflict.

And this is why the people who are "blessed" shall also be reviled. But God's blessing is greater than the world's reviling. Rejoice, Jesus says, for they did the same thing to the prophets before you. You're on the right path.

If you read any of the four Gospel accounts you will see this reviling take place. It starts as a series of complaints from the religious authorities of the day, and end with a collusion between these authorities and the state, an alliance of convenience working together to have Jesus executed. At that time, many of the followers of Jesus, in fear for their own lives, either run and hide or join in the reviling.

Jesus is laying his cards on the table. He has come to enact God's reign in the world, to make it available. It means, ultimately, satisfaction and joy for those who so far in this life may have very little experience of such, but it also means, as we will see, following Jesus. This includes learning from him, experiencing the transformation that comes to those who allign themselves with Truth, but also meeting resistance, bearing up under scoffing, and quite possibly being killed. Jesus says, expect conflict, and rejoice!

* * *

A note: My method here, if I have one at all, is to restate what the text says, focusing on brief passages at a time, and trying to be careful not to import any meaning into the text from outside. That means I'll probably not be particularly original or wildly insightful. I'm just trying to see the text clearly and deal with what it says, not what I wish it would say, or not what it says plus something new and shiny. I consider it an exercise in simple straightforward reading, which where the Bible is concerned is not as common as you might think.

The Sermon on the Level Place (2)

 In the first installment of this series I mentioned that the Sermon takes place in the context of the miraculous. Jesus has gathered a large crowd, no doubt many of them troubled and needy in various ways, and Luke tells us that he healed many, for "power went out from him." We can only imagine what that must have been like, but it reminds me of another story: when the woman with a 12-year bleeding disorder presses through the crowd surrounding Jesus and simply touched his cloak and is healed. [Mark 5:25-34]

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" 

The woman answers, trembling, that it was her. And Jesus responds:

"Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." 

Now we see one potential parallel between these two Jesus stories. The woman who sought to touch Jesus' garment and the crowds surrounding Jesus in the Luke passage both received healing when power goes out from Jesus. Only in the case of the woman we have a single isolated incident, and in the case of the crowds we have, apparently, many.

My point is to emphasize that as Jesus' sermon begins with these miraculous events having just happened, and it is in this context that he opens his sermon with several startling declarations. 

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. 

Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

 A few things worth noting. First, the people to whom Jesus is speaking are, many of them, the poor, the hungry, and the weeping. We see this phenomenon time and again. The people who come to Jesus are the needy ones. 

Second, Jesus' great theme throughout his early ministry is the presence of, the availability of, the kingdom of God. This is his great overarching message, and here in the Sermon on the Level Place he gets right to it. I am not going to detour into an explanation of this concept here, but suffice to say that God's reign, God's Lordship, is available, Jesus says, to the poor. Not only available to them, but it "belongs" to them. And Jesus follows by saying, in essence, that when God reigns, the hungry are satisfied and weeping turns to laughter. 

Needless to say, but the poor, the hungry, and the weeping are not normally considered blessed, and they might even scoff at such language under normal circumstances, but they have just seen, time and again, power go out from Jesus and heal many of their number. Jesus is now explaining how that could possibly be. As he says often in other settings, "The kingdom of God is among you."

So I just want to emphasize that the kingdom of God is sort of a controlling idea, the key to explaining what has happened, and the key to understanding what Jesus will now teach in the Sermon. We do not understand Jesus at all if we do not understand this idea, this thing, the kingdom of God.

A final point. We should not spiritualize these "blessed are" statements in order to explain them away or make them less shocking. Jesus doesn't say "blessed are those who are poor in spirit," as he does in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. He does not, here in this context, speak of hunger for righteousness or mourning over sin. All we have here are these three simple descriptors: poor, hungry, weeping.

There is much more to be said than this, but not less: Jesus has come for the troubled, the needy, the wanting, the hurting, the wounded, the starving, the broken, the sad. Many chapters of the four Gospels seem to make this point emphatically. This is a fundamental point that we should always remember, and when we speak about Jesus to others, we should not forget to mention. This, in fact, is a very good place to start.

The Sermon on the Level Place (1)

 I haven't been reading the Bible much lately. As any ordinary Christian will tell you, that's not a good thing. After many years of reading and studying the Word, I just seemed to grow tired of it. I decided to take a break, and that "break" has lasted for quite a while, but now I think it's time to end the Bible-abstinence. 

Where to start? After a couple of fitful stabs, I've settled on the "sermon" of Jesus recorded in Luke's account, beginning in chapter 6, verse 20. This is Luke's version of the more familiar "Sermon on the Mount" found in Matthew's Gospel. Here in Luke it is more aptly called the "Sermom on the Level Place" [see verse 17].

Jesus has gathered a huge following from all around Judea. He has healed many. On this particular occasion, according to Luke, "all the crowd sought to touch him, for power came out from him and healed them all."

That power is the background of this sermon. The sermon actually derives its relevance and believability from this demonstrable evidence of supernatural power. Apart from this backdrop of the miraculous, this sermon is downright nonsense. 

That's because Jesus says the most remarkable and counterintuitive things here. And he starts out with some of the most counterintuitive statements of them all.

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh." [Luke 6:20-21]

I'm going to leave that there and come back to it tomorrow (or whenever I get to it). This would be a good time for anyone reading these words to marinate on these two verses. They will be a balm to your soul.

 

Virtue begins in love

I read something yesterday in my devotional (Come to the Waters, by James Montgomery Boice) that really struck me. Boice is speaking about Abraham, and how though Abraham at times sinned, that did not change God's view of him. Abraham remained, through it all, "God's man." Boice writes:

It is good to serve a God like that, a good who remains sovereign even when we doubt his ability to care for us, a God who remains gracious even when we sin. To serve a God like that is the world's greatest joy and opportunity. To know that he is like that is the greatest incentive you will ever have to keep from sinning.

So, "the greatest incentive you will ever have to keep from sinning" is the knowledge of God. The knowledge that God is sovereign is not enough. The knowledge that he is, yes, sovereign, and also that he loves us, that he is patient and merciful with us, draws from us a response of love in return, and in that state of loving and being loved we find our incentive to "keep from sinning."

Paul has a lot to say about this matter in Romans and elsewhere, but I want to turn to the one who shows us the heart of God more vividly than any other. Jesus said:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

The life of a Jesus-follower can be one of progress in virtue. That is what it is meant to be. That is the promise. We "keep in step with the Spirit," we grow in Christlikeness, we build our house (our life) upon the rock, not shifting sand. It is good to look to the virtues, but we begin by looking to Jesus, and seeing how he loved us, we respond in love. Progress in virtue, progress in commandment-keeping, is a progress in love for God and for people. All virtue begins in love.

The Kingdom Way

Lately my pastors have been preaching through the Gospel of Luke. They've just got through the "sermon on the plain" in chapter 6. Here's where Jesus says things like:

• love your enemies
• do good to those who hate you
• bless those who curse you
• to one who strikes you on the cheek, invite him to strike the other also
• and when someone wants to take some of your stuff, offer him even more stuff.

Oh yes, and

• give to anyone who begs from you
• don't demand back what someone has borrowed

And finally,

• treat other people (all of them) the way you would want them to treat you.

Now here are some rules to live by that virtually no modern self-improvement books will repeat (if there is a section in the bookstore for self-forgetful books, it might be in there). When I first heard this passage preached in my early days as a Christian, the preacher simply said (in essence), no, Jesus didn't really mean you should live this way, because of course you can't live this way, it's a ridiculous suggestion. All Jesus wanted to do was to drive you to your knees in repentance by showing you what a self-focused person you are and always will be.

That was bad exegesis, and consequently bad preaching, but not uncommon. I cut my teeth in a church tradition that was incessantly wary of what they called "works righteousness," and they saw every portion of Scripture in light of that wariness. They mistrusted any talk of good-deed-doing as inevitably leading to, you guessed it, salvation-earning works righteousness. Consequently, all discussion of passages like the Sermon on the Mount (and the Sermon on the Plain) were essentially acts of concentrated avoidance of the obvious.

Anyway, there remains the obvious, right where it has always been. Jesus' ministry starts with an announcement of the kingdom of God (see Luke 4:18-21, for example, and also 4:43), and the appropriate reaction to that is a celebration. The bridegroom has come! (see Luke 5:34) 

Probably all of Jesus' imperatives should be predicated on this thought: the kingdom has come! That seems to be the order of things in the Gospels. Jesus comes announcing the kingdom, and then he gets down to teaching what that's going to mean for people who follow in the Jesus way. It's going to look like, well, loving your enemies. Oh yes, and then he lives it out, even to the bitter end.

As I see it, this is Big Truth. The whole rest of the NT, from The Acts of the Apostles to The Revelation, is the ongoing working out of this Big Truth in all its implications. We will have to keep reading in order to understand all this better. What is more, we will need the Helper in all this. There is no blueprint for how to love your enemy, only the moment of truth when you have to decide whether you're going to love them or not love them. And in that moment, just like the Apostles in Luke's sequel, you're going to need the help of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 1:4,5). 

It would be Paul who would one day write, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." Then he said, "If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit." I don't think we can even begin to think about leading the life that Jesus prescribes in Luke 6 until we have begun to see that it is also the Spirit-led life that Paul is telling the Galatians about (Gal. 5:22).

Have hope, for the King has come, overthrown all your enemies, and he's given you his Spirit to guide you in the Kingdom Way.

On reading the Gospels wisely

I've been Reading Jonathan Pennington's Reading the Gospels Wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introduction. It's as good as I expected it would be, even if one or two chapters were decidedly slow-going for me.

Bottom line, "reading the Gospels wisely" is a major goal for me. I'm glad that Pennington points out what I've often noticed as well: the strange lack of emphasis on the Gospels (as opposed to the epistles) among many reformed evangelicals. And when they do reference something in the Gospels, the passage is inevitably seen through the lens of the (Pauline) epistles. In fact, this inverts the proper relationship. We ought to be reading the epistles through the lens of the Gospels.

I'll illustrate this from my own experience. In a recent conversation, a seminary student told me that Jesus' words in the first part of the Sermon on the Mount, where he equates anger with murder and lustful thoughts with adultery, were intended to show our helpless state and need for God's redeeming grace.

Well, that's a fine example of reading the Gospels through the lens of the Pauline epistles. In fact, such a reading is not so much Jesus-centered as Paul-centered, and not so much Gospel-oriented as Reformation theology oriented.

For me, coming to grips with Jesus has been the longest of long-roads in my faith walk, and one that even now I have only just begun. There have been many diversions. The "saved-by-faith-not-works" diversion was one, where absolutely everything was boiled down to that one message. The trouble is, the Sermon on the Mount cannot be boiled down to a mere truism. Sometimes reformed theology can seem nothing more like a theological avoidance-mechanism.

I suppose I should say here that I believe in the formulation -- saved by faith, not by works -- with all my heart. I suppose I should also say I have loved Paul's epistles for many years. But my primary study from now on is going to be in the Gospels. This is simply addressing a felt-need, I suppose. Jesus is the most supremely attractive figure in human history. We have four sources for his words and deeds -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is not to say I won't ever again be reading the OT or the epistles (after all, I go to an evangelical church, so the preaching will probably be frequently settled on the epistles), but that for me, in my private study and prayer, the Gospels will come first.

* * *

I'll be back with more from Pennington's book, and more also about the Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5, in a later post.

You don't have to go big, and you don't have to go home.

"Go big or go home" is the quintessential motto of our times. Everything has to be bigger, louder, faster. Everything has to be covered with more bling, more grandiosity, more hype. Everything has to be mega, everything has to be sexy, everything has to be "life-changing." As for home, well, "going home" means you're out of the game. Home is where you're sent for being inadequate to win the big prize.

Whatever happened to quiet? Whatever happened to slow? Whatever happened to the beauty of the ordinary? Whatever happened to plain and simple? Whatever happened to tranquility?

Hear now the Christmas meditations of Cardinal John Henry Newman:

THERE are two principal lessons which we are taught on the great Festival which we this day celebrate, lowliness and joy. This surely is a day, of all others, in which is set before us the heavenly excellence and the acceptableness in God’s sight of that state which most men have, or may have, allotted to them, humble or private life, and cheerfulness in it. If we consult the writings of historians, philosophers, and poets of this world, we shall be led to think great men happy; we shall be led to fix our minds and hearts upon high or conspicuous stations, strange adventures, powerful talents to cope with them, memorable struggles, and great destinies. We shall consider that the highest course of life is the mere pursuit, not the enjoyment of good.

But when we think of this day’s Festival, and what we commemorate upon it, a new and very different scene opens upon us. First, we are reminded that though this life must ever be a life of toil and effort, yet that, properly speaking, we have not to seek our highest good. It is found, it is brought near us, in the descent of the Son of God from His Father’s bosom to this world. It is stored up among us on earth. No longer need men of ardent minds weary themselves in the pursuit of what they fancy may be chief goods; no longer have they to wander about and encounter peril in quest of that unknown blessedness to which their hearts naturally aspire, as they did in heathen times. The text speaks to them and to all, “Unto you,” it says, “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

It's Christmas morning as I write this. I noticed while watching football on TV yesterday that there's some sort of "reality" show out there that features competition for the most grandiose Christmas decorations. Who can deck their house with more lights, synced to holiday music, able to be seen from space, etc. That, in a nutshell, is what Christmas in America seems to have become.

I think you'll find that as our culture drifts further and further from its Christiandom moorings, its celebration of some sort of Secularized Christmas will become more and more tricked up with gaudy display, all designed to present you with one and only one choice: that is, the choice between the myth of salvation by acquisition, or the perceived humiliation of not having all that your neighbors have. To signal to the world that you're in the game, you might want to add that 20-feet high blow-up Rudolph to your front yard seasonal display.

But of course, nothing could be more unChristmas than all that. [I could go on my usual rant against commercialism here, and how it is ultimately dehumanizing us all, but I'll try to keep that in check.]  It's as if we were all born into some giant fun house at the carnival, and don't even realize that out beyond the colored lights and the amped-up music there remains the real world. Or at the least the possibility of the real. But who even cares anymore?

Christmas is about humility. It is to shepherds that the angels come--mere boys--not to kings or corporate CEOs. And if you want to understand humility, just look at Mary, the mother of Jesus. You'll find her story in the first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. Or look to Jesus. The first chapter of the Gospel according to John might help here, or even Paul's tribute to Jesus, at the start of the 2nd chapter of his Letter to the Philippians.

Let me put it to you this way: the world does not want you to be at peace. So it will do all it can to keep you from hearing the gentle rap at your door when the Prince of Peace comes calling. This culture of go-getting, of brashness and self-promotion, of keeping up with the neighbors and putting on a good show, is killing us. It's frying our spiritual nerve endings, numbing our senses, keeping us trapped in the funhouse. But off in the night there shines a star, and down below, forced to shelter in a stable, a young maiden is giving birth to a child. That child will rattle the foundations of empire by going to a Cross. Praise Him!

A Great Light

Jonathan Pennington's book, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, is really engaging. I can't wait to pick it up each evening. Pennington is helping me "adjust my focus" when it comes to the Sermon.

If you'd like to hear Pennington himself discuss the book, this podcast is for you. And this one. Oh, and this one too.

Needless to say, I'm kind of stuck on the Sermon. My Bible-reading modus operandi lately has been to focus primarily on the four Gospels (I said "primarily," not "exclusively"). As for the Sermon, I just can't seem to get past it. In one of those podcasts above Pennington suggests that one good practice to help you understand the Sermon better is to memorize it. He admits he hasn't got it all down just yet, but much of it. Maybe I'll try that.

The Sermon as a whole is, among many other things, a call to radical selflessness or humility. I keep thinking, as I read this, that Jesus is out to convince people of the ultimate beauty of humility, and that in humility is foundational to holiness.

As such, the Sermon acts as a corrective, a kind of re-orientation of our hearts, turning us away from our normal concerns, calling us to something better and yet something daunting and apparently counter-logical. That which is central to God is not normally central to us.

Christmas can act as the same kind of corrective. So to finish, let's hear from Isaiah:

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

2 The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
    on them has light shone.
3 You have multiplied the nation;
    you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
    as with joy at the harvest,
    as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
4 For the yoke of his burden,
    and the staff for his shoulder,
    the rod of his oppressor,
    you have broken as on the day of Midian.
5 For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
    and every garment rolled in blood
    will be burned as fuel for the fire.
6 For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon[d] his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called[e]
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and of peace
    there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
    to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

To Hunger

Sanctification is that process by which the Holy Spirit conforms the believer’s heart and mind to the standard of Jesus Christ. It happens in every Christian (which is why they call them “Christians” after all). Christians are being made Christ-like in a gradual process that continues throughout the believer’s life and is only completed in the life to come.

I wanted to say all that -- a pretty standard definition of the term “sanctification”-- to get it out of the way before saying this:sometimes it seems an awful long way from reality in me.

And I suppose this can also be said: that it seems so far from reality in me has been something that just hasn’t mattered much to me of late.

That’s a sorry fact. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that Matthew 5:6, the fourth beatitude, is one of the highest and purest descriptions of the Christian life that can be found in the Bible.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

David had this hunger, for sure. You see it in his prayer to God in Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, / and renew a right spirit within me. 

The Christian walk will always involve this coming to grips with one's own uncleanness. We must from time to time stand in the place where Jesus stood, when Jesus said to him, "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man." Mt. 16:23

 

More thoughts on Matthew 12:7

I'm still thinking about Jesus' words, "And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not acrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless." [Matthew 12:7]

Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6. It is God speaking through the prophet to his people. He says of them, "Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early." Their love was not "steadfast." It was passing. It was probably "situational." You have to figure h[out whether the love is deserved. Whether it is "worth it." Whether the cost is too high or not. O whether, perhaps, it'll just get boring after a while.

But getting back to Jesus. When Jesus questions or even rebukes these Pharisees, I have a feeling that we modern readers tend to fall back on what we've learned about Pharisees back in Sunday School, about how they were legalists and all that (supposedly), and then we feel a pleasant glow of satisfaction in watching Jesus put them in their place. All this, of course, is so as not to let the rebuke fall on us.

So I want to ask myself this question: do I know, do I really know, what it should mean to me that God desires mercy and not sacrifice?

This is the question that the text should force us toward. Have I understood the love of God at all? Do I rest on the mercy of God when mercy is what I most need, but require sacrifices of others when they sin against me (or maybe just bother me a little)? God loves me as I am, or so I like to say. But as for you, I certainly wish you'd change your ways (sacrifice) and then maybe I can start to show you some love.

I have this feeling that when Jesus talks about love and mercy, that's always a key passage. That's always a case of Jesus getting right down to the nitty-gritty. We're following Jesus, day after day, sitting at his feet,  hearing his teaching. Again and again, he comes back to this. Did you hear that? It reminds me of what he said about loving your enemy. Your enemy!

And if you think, dear Christian, that you can sus out how and when to apply this teaching, and when not to, then you have not understood it at all. The first need is honest self-assessment. No, I don't believe I have understood what it really means that God desires mercy and not sacrifice. One reason I know that I haven't understood it: I haven't lived it. My mercy is like the morning dew.

 I believe, though, that if I am to grow in understanding on this matter . . . understanding what it means for me, and how to live it out . . . I am going to need to keep following Jesus, keep sitting at his feet and drinking in his teaching. There is no other way.

Some thoughts on Matthew 12:1-8

It's chapter 12. Jesus and the disciples go through the grainfields on the Sabbath. Some Pharisees pose their "biblical" objection. This is not the first encounter with objectionists. Back in chapter 9, when Jesus told a paralyzed man, "Your sins are forgiven." "Wait, What?" was the reaction of some Scribes who were there.

Jesus' answer for these people always has something to do with his own identity. The objectionists need to deal with the question of who Jesus actually is. The answer to that question is not exactly stated directly, although Jesus keeps calling himself the Son of Man, whatever that might mean. Here, when Pharisees object to Jesus and his disciples "doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath," Jesus once again answers with a clue, a hint, as to his own identity. First, he puts himself on a par at least with David (12:3-4). Then, with the priests in the temple (12:5). Then comes the statement that really makes me sit up and take notice.

I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For th Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath. (12:6-8)

 I suppose this is blasphemous stuff. If I'm a disciple following Jesus, a good and observant Jew all my life, I might be having some doubts about this man. I might be wondering if I've chosen the right teacher. But of course there is this to keep in mind: the man himself. If anyone else had said these words, ok then. But it's Jesus. Who in his mercy has healed so very many. And whose teaching is something I simply can't pass by with a shrug of my shoulders or a cynical eye-roll.

And even here, in this encounter with the Pharisees, there is this: "And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'"

And do I know what it means? Do I, me, this non-Jew who never set foot in the Temple, never had anything to do with sacrificial systems . . . or have I? . . . do I too need to learn what mercy really means. When I hear the words of God, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice," do I simply smile and say, "You tell them nasty Pharisees, Jesus!" Or do I, perhaps, wonder if this is something I too have never really understood? And if not, who then will teach me?

I think I'll follow along with the Teacher a little longer. But I get the feeling that this matter of mercy, mercy and not sacrifice, is something that, if truly understood, may just undermine everything I've ever learned, and maybe even the very systems on which human society sustains itself.

Reading (and writing, and blogging) the red letters

I've been slowly reading the Sermon on the Mount. The emphasis here should be placed on the word "slowly." I'll take a brief passage, write it out in a journal that I bought just for this purpose, and then just think about it, recall it, mull it over, for the next few days. In the course of that process, I might be reminded of other Scriptural texts on the same theme and write out one or two of those as well.

The conviction that lies behind this procedure (well, one of them) is that we Christians don't think about and talk about the things that Jesus thought about and talked about. Not enough, anyway. We tend to put the focus on other things, and then--maybe--draw on a saying or two of Jesus for support. In our sermonizing--this is my experience anyway--we would much rather begin with Paul and may or may not let Jesus in on the conversation. Or we might begin with Calvin (or Jonathan Edwards, or Martin Luther, or C. S. Lewis, or whomever) then draw upon Paul, and maybe throw in a quotation of one of the Davidic psalms, but never ever get to the teaching of Jesus.

It was my decision, in response to this lack of focus on the words of Jesus, to correct for it in my own Bible reading by starting with the words of Jesus. Not excluding, mind you, any of the rest of the Bible, but beginning with the "red letters" and letting the focus be where Jesus put it, rather than relegating Jesus to a secondary or tertiary reference at best.

That's the idea. That's how I have organized my Bible reading lately. It's a slow process, and if I keep it up, it may take me the rest of my life to get to the last red letters in the New Testament.

In terms of my secondary reading, Bible commentaries and that sort of thing, I will, of course, be looking for authors that mirror the teaching of Jesus. If Jesus, for example, seems to put a very high value on peacemaking, I want to hear what modern commentators have to say on the subject. And I'm hoping for this emphasis to fuel my future blogging and sharing here (for example, yesterday's daily prayer from Scotty Smith). I want to commend and share that which puts the emphasis where Jesus put it (this, by the way, will correspond quite closely to the fruit of the Spirit, since the Spirit of Jesus naturally cherishes and promotes that which Jesus cherished and promoted).

That's all. But expect to hear more on the subject in the coming posts.

Now here's a song:

A Red Letter Quiet Time

I mentioned not long ago that I was focusing on the red letters in my personal Bible time lately. That is, the words of Jesus, as recorded in the four Gospels.

This does not mean to the exclusion of everything else. But it means that, when I crack open the Bible in my quiet time, I start with Jesus' own words. They are the focal point of my meditation, journaling, and prayer.

This is an experiment. I've noticed that in church we hear an awful lot from Paul. It's as if we only see Jesus through the eyes of Paul, or perhaps we only see Paul, and Jesus is hardly in view at all.

I suspect that a consistent focus on the teaching of Jesus will lead to a different set of concerns, a different emphasis, than a similarly consistent focus on the teaching of Paul would. I am not suggesting that they are at odds, Paul and Jesus, but that they have different concerns, different emphases. In my experience, those who keep the focus on Paul's letter will tend to emphasize the doctrine of atonement and salvation by faith alone through Christ alone. But those who dwell on Jesus are more likely to focus on things like love, mercy, forgiveness, and justice.

As I say, this has been a kind of experiment for me, but I've enjoyed the process and I do sense that it's already been beneficial. This is the way it works. You start with a "red-letter" passage, a quotation of Jesus (I started with the beatitudes). Copy it out in a notebook which you have dedicated to this purpose. This is to slow you down, to get you thinking about the words and concepts. Copy the words out slowly in your neatest hand.

That might be all you have time for. But maybe tomorrow you'll have a little more time, so you copy it out again. but now the passage has now been simmering in your head for about 24 hours. The thinking of Jesus will have provoked some questions, some responsive thoughts of your own. So you write this all down, and you also seek other passages in the Scriptures that might help you. These secondary passages are not limited to the red letters. They might come from anywhere in the Word.

You might stick with this same passage for days, or it might remind you of something else that Jesus said, and you might on the next day copy that out. Every day you're copying out the words of Jesus. His focus is becoming your focus. His concerns, your concerns.

Here's a guarantee. The words of Jesus will challenge you. It is not in your nature to think like Jesus. This is something you acquire from sustained exposure.

Application--that's the difficult part, always--may require some painful dismantling of your self-image. You will be inclined to cry out for help. Prayer is an integral part of this process, since we are not simply meditating on the words of a long-dead historical figure, but on the word of the living Christ, the risen King.

What will be the upshot of this sustained conversation with Jesus over the course of weeks and months? I believe only good can come of it. The Christian walk is a walk of gradual transformation into the likeness of Jesus. I'm hoping this routine of reading and meditation will be a significant help in that direction.

Meditation at the end of another Christmas

I woke up at 4:00 this morning. All my life I’ve been waking up early on Christmas. As a boy, it was because I couldn’t start Christmas Day soon enough. My brother and sister and I would wake up very early, to find Christmas stockings hanging from the bedsteads, chock full of candy and chocolates (plus, always, an orange). We were very disciplined, we kids, about not eating all the candy at once, even before our Mom got up. We’d spread it out on the bed, admiring the sheer volume of sweets that had come our way. Sometimes we’d make trades among ourselves. And we were (or at least I was) convinced that it all came from Santa Claus.

There’s no stocking full of candy for me on Christmas anymore. I’m not even particularly interested in candy, as a matter of fact. Nor did I lie awake last night listening for the sound of Santa’s reindeer on our rooftop. Yes, as a child I believed all that Santa stuff, hook line and sinker. Though long after I stopped believing it, I still tended to lie awake on that annual night before Christmas, listening to the night sounds: perhaps a train in the distance, or the sound of the wind in the trees, or just the creaking sound a house makes sometimes (my Mom used to say the house was “settling”), and feeling somehow a strange sense of wonder and longing, just like I did as a child.

So it has always been a restless listening kind of sleep for me, that one night every year. The very fact that my body seems to retain the memory of that one night in 365 cycle, even after all these years, testifies I think to the power of the belief I once had in all that magical side of Christmas. A faith strong enough to keep you up at night, and listening for hoofbeats on the rooftop! The reason it didn’t bother me that we didn’t have a fireplace, by the way, and therefore no chimney by which Santa could get into our house, was because I knew that Santa was magical. He wouldn’t be stymied by lack of a chimney. Santa could do things. Santa was not like the rest of us, blocked by walls and locked doors and narrow chimneys (or no chimney at all), or even bound by gravity.

All that magical stuff was storytelling to surround some nugget of important truth, which had to do with such difficult to embody things as love, charity, peace. Even as a small boy I vaguely understood this much. It wasn’t all about the presents you got so much as a day, one day, to be unwary, unrestricted, in our joyfulness. One day. You wanted it to go on longer, of course, but it never did. Magic is always that way. There are limits to our access. It may be spectacular, but it’s always brief. The angels filling the sky with hosannas didn’t last all night, nor did it ever recur again. The briefer it is, the more special. The more, well, magical.

We could rid our skies of all heavenly choirs, I suppose, banish them to the dustbin of childish belief systems now usefully replaced by the politics and trade. But no matter how much the day-to-day, the rat race as it used to be called, the world that is too much with us, as Wordsworth famously said, no matter how much all that seems to blear our capacity for wonder, along comes Christmas. Christmas, as bleared and smeared a good thing as ever there was, yet despite all that, there was I, lying awake at four in the morning, remembering hoofbeats on the roof.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, the wonder is still there, waiting to be stirred, awakened. But it will not be fairy tales that do the trick. It will be, I think, the real. And the my mind wanders back to the stable in Bethlehem. The babe in the manger. God becoming man.

Magical thinking again, I’m sure many would say. Whatever. I’m not here to convince the naysayers otherwise. In taking on flesh, in humbling himself that way, Jesus took on something debilitating. In entering our world, he gave up access to the intense reality of heaven in order to join with folks who feel blessed even to have one single moment of near restfulness, the cessation if only for some brief interval of endless stress, fear, loneliness, pain, etc. Jesus, my savior, was a flesh and blood living and dying man. Much more as well, but certainly not less.

So we would have a quiet Christmas this year. My wife and I, sharing a pleasant meal (lasagna!), and talking about our favorite Christmas carols. Outside it was sunny and warmish and blustery, making me think of an early March day. Jesus walked in all weathers, and had to bundle from cold at times, or suffer the extreme heat of Palestine at other times. Sometimes his feet hurt, I’m sure. Always he ached within with a spiritual ache to see his Father’s world renewed. He was going about Palestine, in fact, announcing that very possibility. He was opening eyes, opening hearts. His story has extremes of the magical in it, and extremes of the very unmagical . . . cruelty, squalor, sorrow. On the one hand it’s quite unbelievable (I mean, what is this about walking on water, healing people with a touch, feeding thousands with a few crusts of bread), and on the other hand it’s sadly believable. We have all known traitorous friends, after all, or bullying mockers. They appear in the Jesus story as well.

What am I getting at? I don’t even know for sure myself. But all of history hinges on those events in and around the ancient city of Jerusalem, two thousand years ago. Something began there that cannot be stopped or diverted. A new thing, an inevitable revolution. It has nothing to do with elves, or grinches, or talking snowmen, or reindeer, or a fat man in a red suit. Yet all those fairy tales are not exactly off the mark either. They’re trying to get at something we have all wished for, even when, especially when, we were children. That which we long for, oh please make it real!

But only the very author of the real can make something real that isn’t. Like peace, for example. Real peace. Lasting, settled, and perfect peace. It will not be fantasy figures that bring that to pass. It will be the most real man who ever lived, making real what had only ever been dreamed of, longed for, and that the best of our storytellers have tried to capture in stories and poems and songs. A world where real peace was possible! Think of it! We have never come close on our own. Except, sometimes, lying awake on a special night, listening, wondering. We need, we have always needed, the author of peace (the very Prince of Peace) to make peace possible by entering  into the story of which he himself is the author. Peace itself, walking around in this world, talking to people, touching them, changing their lives.

There’s a lot more that can be said, and must be said, about this man. That will be for other times. But for now, to end, I want to go back to the prophet Isaiah, who lived nearly 800 years before Jesus. He said the very remarkable things. He forecast the way God would unfold his story in the world. To end with, here’s one of his forecasts. It’s worth repeating on this day especially.

To us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:6–7)

3 things

1. Jesus is a person, not a system. Theology has its place, but he is not encompassed by any theology. I fear that in many of our churches we lead people down a road marked doctrine instead of in the way of Jesus.
2. Sean MacDowell: "All religions (including atheism) claim to present a true depiction of reality. And this includes Christianity. But there is a key fact that makes Christianity distinct from other world religions — Christianity does not present truth merely as an abstract idea, but as a person who can be known."
3. May the gospel totally rearrange all the price tags, schedule, and trajectory of my life. 

More thoughts on the SotM

Jesus is astonishing. Jesus is disturbing. Jesus is challenging. Jesus disorders the way things are. Jesus is a disturbance in the field. And yet, Jesus comforts. Jesus consoles. Jesus restores. Jesus loves.

These two things together. It is difficult for me to think of Jesus primarily as a source of commands. “Seek first the kingdom” – in its context, do these words sound like a command, or simply a statement of truth. Jesus reveals the way things really are, and posits a life, a way, which follows naturally from that new understanding. This life, this way, being utterly true, is utterly compelling to those who have come to see and understand. To those, as Jesus might say, who have eyes to see, ears to hear.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus astonishes us with this compelling vision, giving us leave to imagine a life beyond the borders we have always drawn for ourselves. We have lived our foolish little lives, and now Jesus comes along and says, here is something so much larger. How large? A life where the broken and helpless receive all the riches of the kingdom of God. A life where there is no more mourning. A life where the meek, the weak, the ones who get walked all in this life and from whom the strong do nothing but take – because they can – these will receive the whole earth as their blessing.

Look, Jesus says, in this world you try to moderate sin, keep it within certain well-defined bounds. The Pharisees, men like them, men in positions to set bounds and define what shall be accepted, what shall be deemed unacceptable, define these bounds, then hammer away at people who cross them. Forget them and the likes of them. They have their reward already. I'm calling you out of their flimsy kingdom into something far higher and purer and freer.

Listen, everything depends on the reign and rule of God. Follow Jesus, listen to him, and you will understand. He will teach you about this realm. For now it is like a tiny seed, or it is like leaven in dough. You are the ground in which the seed is planted, and you are the dough into which the leaven is kneaded. The kingdom of God, as Jesus says outright to his followers, is in the midst of you (Luke 17:21)

There is therefore no pretension among you, no spiritual status-seeking, no pandering for approval. You have nothing to prove, and nothing to fight for. What you treasure is with God, the things of God, the plan of God and the glory of God and way of God. All the causes of anxiety are things enforced by this world's kingdoms. We've grown so used to anxiety we can hardly imagine life without it, but under God there is no longer any reason to worry. Nor even to return slap for slap (I have nothing to fight for), nor to deny another for the good of myself. If someone asks for my shirt, I can give him my cloak also, for I have no worry of what I will wear. God will provide.

How crazy is that!

And why should I judge anyone. This world is full of name-calling, full of condemnations. Jesus says, even to call someone a fool (a mild epithet these days) is to commit a sin worthy of eternal separation from the Father.

In the beginning of the Sermon, Jesus tells us that the kingdom is for the spiritually helpless, and in many ways throughout his ministry he will teach us that this spiritual category includes us all. At the end of the Sermon he advises us to build our house on a rock, not on sand. And yet, we don't think of the helpless building houses. We think of them, perhaps, as getting rescued, saved, yes, but building a house?

Step into the picture that Jesus paints in this Sermon, live your life in that place, in that “house.” A house of non-retaliation in a world of violence, a place of forgiveness in a world of vengeance, a house of mercy in a world of advantage-taking, a house of mercy in a world of hardened hearts, a house of freedom from anxiety in a world of debilitating worry, a house of meekness and a world that rewards the assertive, the aggressive, the puffed chests, the strutting and cock-sure.

All that – all that! – is going to get washed away by the next tide. Don't worry about. Don't even judge it. Build your own house. The kingdom has come. It's a new kind of living. Step in.