6th Sunday After Epiphany
GO DEEPER
The Sermon on the Mount continues
The Beatitudes set the vision for a life of blessing
Last week we were challenged to be salt and light
And today…not so happy-happy
There is a refrain in our Gospel today
You have heard it said…
But I say
You have heard it said…
But I say
Jesus, after telling us that not one jot or tittle of the
law will be erased
After telling us that he has not come to replace but
rather to fulfill the law
He then says
In not so many words
But you
my friends
If you want to follow me
You’ll have to go deeper
…DEEPER
I think sometimes
when we hear the law
Thou shalt not…
It can be a little too easy
to place ourselves outside all the evil in the world
I haven’t murdered anybody lately
I’m not a terrorist
And my adulterous behavior is under control
But digging deeper
Digging into the seeds of anger and the seeds of lust
That hits home for everyone
The Law
It sets us up for a kind of moral minimalism
That’s what our legal system promotes in a way
Our laws are set up as ‘minimum requirements’
Just don’t do these things and you won’t go to jail
I had a professor who talked about the difference between
Our law---English law
And Church Law---which is from Roman law
(I don’t know if I have the terms right)
But the point was that one was a set of minimum standards
Meant to keep culture orderly
And sane and chaos free
And the other
Sets the top bar
And asks us to reach
Jesus is calling the disciples and
The curious crowd to
Engage, and stretch and reach
To dig deeper
He’s not interested in minimums
But there is more
there is something else at work in this passage
Remember that bit about leaving your gift at the altar?
I think that’s the clue to the ‘how’
Because we like short cuts
I’ll just make a nice gift
And then it will all be good with God
I’ll make it up to God indirectly
Then I don’t really have to do
the work
of making peace
Or of reconciling with my neighbor
I’d rather pay;)
There is something nice and clean cut
…a religious life based on transactions
It is so clean and tidy
And mathematical
I’ll always know where I stand
But I hear Jesus saying in this part of his sermon
‘That’s just not good enough’
I don’t want your gift as a payment
I want it in Thanksgiving
Murder, adultery, and every grave sin
They all begin as a seed…
A seed of anger
A seed of lust
A seed of resentment or jealousy
There is a continuum…
Between the seed….and the eruption
Left alone
Left un-reflected-on
The seeds grow
Our own inattention acts as fertilizer
Reflecting on this text
Called to mind an incident that happened
25 years ago
Rob and I had 3 children under 5
It was a particularly tough time for us
On Christmas Eve…or the Eve of the Eve
After he had been gone for a week
I took my building resentment
out to do the last minute
Santa Shopping
I was tired
Stressed
And it was late
I took my 80 bucks
And filled my cart at Toys R Us
I emptied my cart at the cashier
I hadn’t pushed the cart in ahead of me
Through the check out line
I Absent-mindedly left it behind me
…there was nobody coming up
The checkout lady was giving me my change
When…WHAM!
The cart hit me with great force in my side
The wind was knocked out of me
I turned and saw a woman
She had pushed the cart with all her might
Pushed that cart into my side
And she said “you think I want to deal with your stupid
cart?”
I was too tired
Too stressed
To do anything
To react in any way
I just left
I went to my car and cried
Not for that lady
Not really for me
Maybe just because it was Christmas and that was ugly!
I hadn’t thought about this incident in a long long time
I am recalling it now with different questions
Did the other lady go to her car and cry too?
Did she say to herself
‘where the hell did that come from?’
And what about me?
So many things could have happened if I hadn’t been saved
by my exhaustion
I could have found some choice, juicy words for that lady
I could have winked at the clerk and said something snide
under my breath
I could have shoved the cart right back at her
What I do know is that
Christmas can be so stressful
It was for me that year
But I still could afford to run and spend $80 on Santa
Gifts
Jesus doesn’t seem to make any distinction
About which side we are on.
When anger erupts it spurts its seed everywhere
Maybe going deeper means
Catching as much as we can
and dealing with it
Maybe it doesn’t matter who started what
The honor is in being the one to make the first move
The honor is in leaving the gift there
before the altar and going
Going deeper
Going toward reconciliation
And the scripture also answers the ‘why’ question
If we don’t
We’ll never get out of jail
I have a friend who asked me to pray for her
And for the healing of a relationship
the prayer she asked for was a NOVENA
which is a nine day dedicated ritualized prayer
These are scripted prayers
that ask for the intercession of Mary by one of her many
titles.
This was a prayer asking for the intercession of
Mary, the Undoer of knots
I loved the image as soon as I saw it
There was this statue of Mary
With beautiful flowing, unknotted,
untangled ribbons
All around her
Isn’t that what unreconciled anger, resentment…sin
Does to us
Doesn’t it just tie us up in knots?
I imagine that being tangled and knotted up
is what it feels like to never get out of jail
All of us have untied knots
Knots in necklaces
Knots in shoelaces
I can’t even count the number Christmas lights I have unknotted
And to do it right
You have to go deep
To the beginning
To where the knot began
To the seed
I hear Jesus saying
Go Deeper
I’ll be there
Let’s meet in that place
That place where the law is inscribed in your heart
That secret place,
Where it is a bit more quiet
where your conscience
Can hear my voice
And there we’ll start untying
And you will know the grace
…the profound joy
…and the deep, deep delight
of leaving your gift at the altar
and doing the work
of living a heroically generous life
