The Gift of Radical Grace

Matthew 5:21-37

When I was a young child I loved the TV show Romper Room. Miss Delores or Miss Marjorie or Miss Nancy, or some other Miss, would sing a little song about two bees, a Do-Bee and a Don’t-Bee, to teach lessons about good behavior. “I always do what’s right; I never do anything wrong. I’m a Romper Room Do-Bee, a Do-Bee all day long.” 

I was all on board with this, being a Do-Bee. Romper Room Lady had all my attention, my complete loyalty. My grandmother would tease me about this, though. She would sing, “I always do what’s wrong; I never do anything right.” And I always reacted the same way, utterly scandalized that she would mock the idea of the Do-Bee. She would just laugh, tickled pink. It never got old – poking at my little four-year-old prissiness.

I just thought it was important to be perfect, that’s all. And I thought as long as I knew the rules and they were manageable, I would make it. 

And although I grew up, and I learned to poke fun at the Do-Bee song too, I still hate to be wrong.

Even when we outgrow the Romper Room Do-Bee song, we still work hard to see ourselves as faultless. And one of the ways we manage that is by comparison. This is how it works.

If necessary, we acknowledge that we may have possibly upset someone, but then we say, “At least I’m not as careless as she is, or a liar like he is,” or whatever criticism seems most apt. As long as I am not like that, I think I am okay.

This is where it is important to have a bar, a dividing line – and to know what side of the line you are on – the Do-Bee side or the Don’t-Bee side. The law provides such a line.

If you can say confidently that you have never murdered anyone, then you’re in good standing.

If you can say confidently that you have never committed adultery, then you’re safe. And on it goes. Comparative goodness: when we say, “compared to some other people, I’m doing pretty good!”

You just have to find someone you can be very critical of. Someone you can look at and think, “O my goodness. How could they do that?” Someone you can point at and say, “I would never do that, ever.” I’m a Romper Room Do-Bee.

In our weekly Bible study, we have been reading the Old Testament stories about the kings and the prophets of Israel, and we see quite a few examples of Don’t-Bees. There is a sentence that we read again and again, “they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” And we say to each other, “Incredible. They did it again. What is the matter with these people?” 

The stories are repetitive, stories the same bad behavior we have seen a hundred times before – it’s not even original. And we look at these sinners disapprovingly. Because we have read the books of the law, haven’t they? We know what is permissible and what is not permissible, don’t they? Are they incapable of learning? Of getting something right?

And there is something satisfying about this, for us, to point at them and condemn them for their sins. To hold them at arm’s length and think how incredible this is that they keep screwing up. 

But sometimes I wonder, what if someone wrote a book about us? Would it possibly sound the same way? Would there be the refrain, “They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” They worshiped idols of all sorts, they nurtured hate in their hearts to varying degrees, they mocked people they found disagreeable. They were careless about keeping sabbath and worshiping God and caring for the most vulnerable among them. They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, in the most ordinary and banal ways.

It’s an uneasy feeling, thinking that these things could be said about us. We wouldn’t call ourselves evil; we have been careful to stay well away from that line in the sand, keeping evil far away from us. We like to think we are safely on the right side of the line. I never killed anyone. I never swore falsely against anyone. 

But then Jesus kind of whisks that line away. 

You have heard that you should not murder, but I say to you that if you harbor anger toward a brother you are liable to judgment. And who has not harbored anger?

Jesus says, you have heard that you should not commit adultery, but I say to you that if you have looked at another with lust in your heart you are guilty.

If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. And before you know it, you feel like you are drowning. How is it possible to live like this? How is it possible to be okay? Where is that line now?

Honestly, I think that was Jesus’ agenda. Take the line away. Because it just makes it far too easy to excuse ourselves. Take that line away. Because if your concern is simply not crossing the line onto the wrong side, then you are doing the bare minimum. But is that really good? The bare minimum? 

If you are only concerned about avoiding doing wrong, then are you giving any thought at all to what it would look like to do right?

If all your attention is on the boundary line, and looking at the people who are on the outside of the line, the wrong side, then do you ever bother turning the other way and looking toward the center? 

A character in Graham Greene’s story, The Heart of the Matter, goes to confession once a month, and he says to the priest, “I have done the minimum.” This is what he has spent his entire life doing – he has scrupulously kept his eye on the line. He has utterly failed to see and understand the heart of the matter.

This week we begin the season of Lent, which is a period of penitence, of reflection. As we prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Easter, we are encouraged to take an honest look at ourselves, to begin – or re-begin – a walk of spiritual discipline. We are invited to take up a practice that will aid us in this journey.

When we immerse ourselves in something like this, we are likely to see differently. To see that figuring out how to do the minimum is not the desired goal. 

Jesus said from the mountaintop, “I didn’t come to abolish the law.” But he did intend for us to understand the law in a whole new way.

That is, to understand that it’s not about us, it’s about God. It’s not about how good we are, how we measure up, whether we stay on the right side of the line. It’s about the truth that no matter where we are, in relation to the line, God loves us. No matter how we measure up, or don’t, God accepts us. No matter how good we are, or are not, God forgives us. 

God’s mercy is wide and God’s grace abounds. And the truth, as Jesus shows us, is that all of us are in need of that grace.

Of all of God’s gifts that keep on giving, this one is the most meaningful. The gift of God’s radical and abounding grace. 

Grace will see us through all the times we stumble. Most amazingly, grace will help us worry less about that line and enable us to see the heart of the matter, the love that God is drawing us into. Grace will equip us to show more compassion toward those people we figure are hopelessly, outrageously, on the wrong side of the line.

For, as Jesus also said, the whole of the law can be summed up in these two commandments – love the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. And if love is the essence of the law then we know these things:

That it is right to seek reconciliation rather than retribution.

That we should speak the truth always, in love.

And that we should never, ever lose sight of the essential humanity of anyone. 

Heaven knows, God doesn’t lose sight of it. Remember that. God calls us to stand in that place where Jesus stands, and God’s grace will lead us there. 

Photo: ChurchArt,com

The Gift of Public Witness

Matthew 5:13-20

One of my favorite films of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life. We never used to call it by the title, though. In our home when the kids were young, it was just “George Bailey.” We watched it so many times, we knew it so well, you could just stick the VHS tape in the player and let it play from wherever it was stopped the last time we played it. Kira, as a little girl, liked to do just that. A little George Bailey to unwind at the end of a tough day at kindergarten was just the thing. It didn’t take much to do the trick.

George Bailey is a man who has lived a very ordinary life. He’s never been anywhere, never done anything really special. And then one evening he is feeling like whatever luck he had has run out. His life, he decides, is worth nothing. He never made a difference in the world. It didn’t matter that he was born, and it wouldn’t matter that he died.

But he was wrong, wasn’t he? That night George was given the amazing gift of being able to see just exactly what difference he did make, and to whom he made a difference. George was never an important person in the ways the world defines that – nonetheless, his life truly made a difference. This is true for each one of us, ordinary as we may be. You matter. What you do, or do not do, matters. 

From the moment of your birth, you made a difference. Out of the primordial waters of your mother’s womb, you swam into the world. The doctor or midwife who caught you lifted you up and said, “It’s a boy! Or it’s a girl! Or yes, it’s just what you already knew because everyone knows now well before the baby is born. 

And all eyes in the room were on you; you were at that moment the most important thing in the world. 

And then there was that moment when you locked eyes with the ones who had been waiting for you. You stared at each other, meeting each other for the first time – in curiosity and wonder. 

In earlier times, it was customary to salt the baby, as you would a chicken breast or a roast. The salt, people believed, kept away the evil spirits, protecting the newborn from harm. Every effort would have been made to keep this new life from any potential danger, for you were loved from the moment you took your first breath.

Even if your mother, your father, didn’t know how in the world they were going to raise you, provide for you – bringing a new life into the world is the greatest leap of faith – that was okay. Somehow, and by the grace of God, there is love. You matter.

Then, maybe one day, they carried you into the church to be baptized. A few drops on the forehead, or full immersion in the waters; they called your name and said, “You are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Once again, there might have been salt. Many years ago, it was customary for the pastor to take a pinch of salt and place it on the baby’s tongue. You probably liked the taste of it, like most people do. “A covenant of salt,” the pastor might have been thinking in that moment. Salt is a good preservative. It makes things last a long while – maybe even forever. 

On that day when you were baptized, the church gathered together and, once again, all eyes were on you. Each one watching remembered their own baptisms, somewhere deep inside, because every baptism is a moment for us all to remember that we have been baptized. In this baptism we were, each one of us, called into a new life, anointed as Christ’s own. With every baptism, we enlarge this big, beautiful family. All of us brothers and sisters of Jesus – there can never be too many. 

And this means that we are brothers and sisters to one another. And so with every baptism we say, welcome to the family! We’re a little bit quirky, kind of dysfunctional, but we love each other and that’s what counts.

Welcome to the family, little one. We have some rules, which you will learn, probably by osmosis because, to be honest, we don’t really talk about these things enough. You just learn by hanging out with us. 

Rules like, saying “I love you” is optional, but showing your love is mandatory.

Rules like, if one of us is in trouble, all of us are there to help carry the burden, because you really are your brother’s keeper, your sister’s keeper. 

And here is an interesting one: It’s not only the people in our family that matter. All the people in the neighborhood matter, and any one of them could, potentially, become a member of our family – anytime. We are a family with very porous boundaries. So this means our love and our care extend beyond the walls of our house. 

It’s a big task, we know, and that is the reason we gather together, because none of us could ever do it alone. We do it together because that is exactly what Jesus has called us to do. This is exactly who Jesus has called us to be.

Way back in the first days of his ministry on earth, Jesus stood up on a high place so everyone around could hear him, and he said, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” He was talking to all of us, together. Salt and light – this is the life we have been called into. This is our new identity. And that’s kind of a big deal.

Maybe none of us will ever be a big deal in worldly terms. Maybe we will never be newsworthy for anything we have done. Maybe our lives will be just as insignificant as George Bailey’s was. But here’s the thing: We are salt of the earth – always flavoring things, protecting and preserving things, making an actual difference in our world. And we are the light of the world, which should never be hidden away. The world needs our light. The world needs our saltiness.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Texas, our campus minister, PJ, would offer us communion every Sunday. and the first thing he would do, before giving us the bread and the cup, was to put a little pinch of salt on our tongues, saying, “Remember your baptism.”

I have borne witness to this today – that when you are baptized, you are enough. You have the Spirit within you and the whole community of faith around you. You are well equipped to carry the gospel out into this world. You are well equipped to fight back against the powers of evil around us. You are well equipped to stand up against injustice wherever you see it and speak up for your neighbors wherever they need it. You have what you need, church. 

It is a gift to be able to bear witness to this good news. Now the gift, dear ones, is yours. Every day you take the gospel out into the world with courage and love, just boldly being who you are – salt and light – you are surely blessed.

Photo by author.

The Gift of Poetic Challenge

Matthew 5:1-12

During our weekly Bible study we have talked about the fact that some things cannot be explained with words. It tends to come up when we encounter a passage where the words are confusing. We muse about it for a while, and we begin to think that this might be one of those situations that words cannot describe.

Still, we try, because words are the best device we have. If you have ever found yourself in a foreign country where you didn’t understand what anyone was saying, and they didn’t understand you, you know how frustrating it is to not have words. You try gestures, pointing, maybe drawing pictures, but nothing works as well as words.

We sometimes call ourselves people of the book – both Christians and Jews – because we rely on the words of scripture so completely. What would we do without words? And yet we know very well, if we spend enough time in the scriptures, that there are many instances where words can actually lead us astray.

There are a bunch of reasons for this – problems with translation, multiple manuscripts that don’t entirely agree, incomplete manuscripts where words are missing. All of these, but the most significant reason, I believe, is that we are trying to use words to say something that there are actually no words for.

Jesus is doing that all the time. He wants to tell us about heaven, the realm of God. But there are no words adequate to really give us a clear understanding of heaven.

The prophets of the Old Testament had the same challenge, as they tried, repeatedly, to tell the people what God wants them to know. Imagine being given the task of speaking for God. So prophets end up doing really weird stuff. Like the prophet Ahijah, who took his brand new, never yet worn, garment and tore it in 12 pieces, because he wanted to say something about the 12 tribes of Israel. Or Ezekiel, who lay down on his left side for 390 days to demonstrate the length of punishment for the land of Israel – just one of the many weird things Ezekiel did. Sort of like performance art, really. 

They say not all art is meant to be beautiful and I believe that’s true. Because not everything that needs to be said is beautiful.

Even when the subject is the kingdom of heaven. To what can the kingdom of heaven be compared? Mustard seed? Yeast? Absurd images, aren’t they?

What is the kingdom of heaven like? This is something we want to know. Those of us who want to dwell in the kingdom, we want to know what we are looking for. What are we hoping for?

In the last chapter, we were with Jesus as he began to call his disciples, saying “follow me” – they abruptly rose, letting go what they held in their hands, and followed him. And then, with these disciples, he began walking all through Galilee, healing the people of their suffering, proclaiming the kingdom of heaven – sometimes with words. 

Soon he had accumulated a crowd of people following him, and he sat down on a mountain and began to speak.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And on he went, lifting up one truly miserable state after another – the mourning, the meek, the hungry and thirsty – and calling it blessed.

Not every single one would be called miserable, no. I can appreciate merciful, pure in heart, peacemaker – which are all admirable. It’s just that – well, we don’t choose those things too often, do we? We like mercy in theory, but given a choice, nine times out of ten we would choose to see our enemy punished. 

And it gets worse.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they persecute you, when they slander you –

For yours is the kingdom of heaven.

Who can blame us, then, if we believe that only suffering will get us to our eternal reward. Doesn’t that seem like what Jesus is saying?

When I was working as a hospital chaplain years ago, I walked into a patient’s room to say hello. Introduce myself. I could immediately see she was suffering. And she already had a visitor at her bedside. He was a deacon from her church. He struck me as very chipper, high-spirited. He held the hand of this elderly woman who was obviously in pain, and he loudly proclaimed to her – and me, and anyone who happened to be nearby in the hallway – how very fortunate she was because clearly God favored her to give her such suffering. I thought, that is some kind of crackpot theology – also, just bad manners. I think the woman in the bed might have thought so too, although she was as polite as she could be, given the amount of pain she was experiencing. 

I promise I won’t ever tell you that God gives you suffering to earn your reward in heaven. I don’t believe that. But it is true, nonetheless, that all of us suffer. We all have pain and hardships, and there is no point in denying it. And I think that fact is closer to what Jesus is saying.

Pain is real. Mourning is real. Injustice is real. And those things are particularly real if you have a kingdom mentality.

Because in the kingdom of heaven, we know the pain of others as we know our own pain. We feel injustice toward others as if we, ourselves, were being treated that way. This way is the kingdom way, where we feel the grief of a child being separated from his parent, where we feel anger when innocent people are knocked to the ground and have pepper spray shot in their faces. Or worse, bullets.

Kingdom people don’t ignore the pain of others. We don’t pat them on the hand and tell them, it’s just God’s way. It’s not God’s way.

God’s way is the way of mercy and justice and grace. Things that are actually hard to say in words – which takes me back where I started. Every word Jesus said about the kingdom of heaven is a metaphor for something that could not be said. Poetry.

Thank God for the gift of poetry. Metaphors. Images that convey things that cannot be said in ordinary prose. Thank God for music, which bypasses the mind’s censors and allows us to just feel something true. And for a tender human touch, which can be a thousand times more powerful than any words we might say. Thank God for all the ways we have to express the goodness of God. 

 Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash