An Inside Job

Message for Sunday, February 9, 2014

 

  

Scripture   Matthew 5:13-16

Dear Jesus:

In John’s gospel we hear you testify: “I am the light of the world.”

And now we hear you say of us in Matthew’s gospel: “You are the light of the world.” 

  Now tell us, dear Jesus: Which should we believe?

Take a step back, you say? Okay: We will. For what’s this you say about a Gospel of Thomas? …

 

How many of us have heard of the so-called Gospel of Thomas? It’s not in our biblical canon, of course – and yet it’s a recent find I think we all need to know about. A little background, if I may; this is important, and at the risk of sounding dry …

The Thomas manuscript was discovered in Egypt in 1945. Many scholars believe it provides invaluable insight into the oral traditions that gave rise to our four standard gospels. There are no narratives in the Gospel of Thomas. It consists only of sayings attributed to Jesus.

The reason I share all this: Many of Jesus’ sayings here are found later in remarkably similar fashion in Matthew and Luke’s gospels. One of those sayings forms the basis for Jesus’ words we hear to his disciples today: “You are the light of the world.” 

Interestingly, there seems to have been an ancient clash between the “You are the light of the world” Jesus in Thomas and the “I am the light of the world” Jesus in John. Parallels between the two suggest that Thomas' work preceded John's work, and that John then issued a point-by-point rejoinder to Thomas.

 

Case-in-point: John’s foil we know as Doubting Thomas. You may recall that in John’s Gospel, when the resurrected Jesus appears to the other disciples,  Thomas did not believe what they told him: “We have seen the risen Lord!” He needed visual proof. When the risen Christ gave it to him, he shouted out that great confessional oath: “My Lord and my God!” One can almost hear John in the narrative background: “Gotcha, Thomas! The light is Jesus, and not in you! You’ve come around!”

In Thomas’ work – which again directly influenced Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount – resurrection is not mentioned as an external Jesus-centered event. Resurrection of one’s life is experienced through personal epiphany, teased out from us by Jesus: “You are the light of the world!” John’s gospel, however, has Thomas – again, his foil – experiencing only Jesus’ resurrection, and in so doing confessing John’s core truth: Only Jesus can be the true light and the true Lord.

 

So, friends – in the words of the late folk singer Pete Seeger: Which side are you on? The recently-discovered Gospel of Thomas, reflected by Matthew’s Jesus today: Jesus says, “You are the light of the world?” Or, do you side with the Gospel of John: Jesus says, “‘I am the light of the world.’”?

Joe Bunker has been helpful to me here. At 66 years and counting, Joe is our longest active member in our congregation. Going back to the first post-World War II years, Joe has seen a lot here – and has many stories to share.

And one story Joe has shared with me I share with you now with his permission. It seems that in the mid-1980s, Joe was approached in a restaurant by another member of this church. This was a time when our pastor was the late Tal Haynes, and there was a great controversy swirling: Tal had divorced his wife and one year later, with nary an announcement, married the church organist. Add that to the fact that Tal labored in the great Carl Pritchett’s shadow, and you can see where this was going: Some defended Tal, some wanted him out. Our church was divided; in a handful of years, we lost over half of our membership.

Back to Joe’s restaurant encounter. His friend approached him and asked, “Which side are you on?” Joe reports that he responded, “I’m not on anybody’s side!”

Guess who remains faithful to this church to this day. “I’m not on anybody’s side.”

Guess how God might want us to remain faithful today to the gospels passed down in our scriptures to us. Which side are you? Not anybody’s side – really. Regardless of what Jesus may or may not have said, I find it can be a faithful stance today to embrace the words found in Matthew and the ones found in John: “Jesus said, ‘You are the light of the world,’ and “Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world.’”

Let me suggest we embrace both. That we move beyond the search for discrepancy to discover integrity, from reveling in that Thomas-and-John conflict to enjoying our scripture’s harmony. Let me suggest we lay stake to this claim: God’s Epiphany light cannot be quenched however it shines – through Christ, or through us as in Christ. That God’s Epiphany light is found by Jesus through us, and found by us “in Christ”, as the Apostle Paul liked to put it. John and Matthew – Matthew borrowing from Thomas – are both “right”.

 

Now, saying that … it’s the words of Matthew’s Jesus we encounter today, and not John’s Jesus. So let me preach on these for just a little while!

Jesus says to us today, “You are the light of the world” – and he says to us as well, “You are the salt of the earth.” These are bold claims. Claims I find sorely need to be heard in this day and time by a mainline Protestant church such as ours.

For we mainline Protestants are no longer the Church of the Promised Land: when Time magazine loved us, Presidents cozied up to us, and governments on all levels took their moral cues from us. Today, we mainline Protestants are more of a Church of the Exile, if not the Exodus: holy remnants, if you will, either exiled by contemporary worship and megachurch interests, or wandering in our religious desert of an exodus while movements calling themselves “spiritual” sprout up all about us.

In this Exile-and-Exodus context, then, let us hear Jesus’ words afresh: “You are the light of the world … You are the salt of the earth!” For this is a day and age when the Christ-God of the Gospel of John – long emphasized by our Protestant forebears – no longer serves us well alone. This is a day and age we need take our cues from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well. That Jesus does not just work outside-in for us: “I am the light of the world – pouring down on you, laminating your Promised Land power!” We need to be reminded today that – lo and behold! – Jesus empowers us by pointing out what’s already inside and about each of us. What’s already inside and about us, that we might not only survive but thrive in an increasingly barren land.

Light, salt, dare I say joy – all of this, Jesus is teaching us today: we, a church in cultural exile and exodus.

All of this, we are learning anew, is an inside job.

An inside job intimately connected with Jesus' central Good News claim -- which is not and is never Jesus, himself! I invite each of us to hear in these bold words -- "You are the light of the world, You are the salt of the earth" -- familiar echoes of Jesus' Good News: the kingdom of God, among and within us!

If our Good News which is God’s kingdom – some would say “kin-dom” – is to be shared, we must let it shine anew, from within ourselves. Let us look from within – not from without -- and not from an illusion of being without. Let us forget institutional identity – what the preacher says or how the preacher says it – and let us forget Christ from on-high if you have to: Jesus is calling us to emanate saltiness from within – caught more than it is taught. Jesus is inspiring us to glow all about – not reflect and refract him in the stained glass, all around us.

I love Bette Midler -- and I have an issue with one of her most popular songs. Its refrain means a lot to some; this perspective is mine alone. Midler’s refrain: “God is watching us from a distance.”

Friends, our transcendent experience in this transcendent sanctuary need not be a removed experience – removed from God or one another. The light of the season of Epiphany may have begun with its emanation and illumination from this distant star over Bethlehem. And yet Matthew’s Jesus five short Sundays later – and three short chapters later – now has it radiating from a radically different and intimate place: the lampstand of our lives, with the lampshade removed.

Salt, light – the joy of the gospel:  We cannot give it to ourselves or even give it to the world. From Jesus to the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we are told: the salt, the light, the joy are a given – already present, in ourselves!

Picking up from Thomas’ cues -- Matthew’s Jesus, like Mark’s and Luke’s, teaches us this, and teaches us well: The Good News of God’s kingdom is an inside job. And our task is to evoke that from inside others, as well.

 

The story goes that three men from the East – the evil triplets of the magi of the Epiphany – took from humanity the crown of life: the thing that would make us the most joyful. They said to each other, “Now that we’ve taken the crown of life away from the humans, where are we going to hide it?”

“I know!” the first of the three said. “We will take it up to the highest crevice on the highest mountain and we’ll hide it there!” “No way,” the other two said, “You know how humans are. They’ll hunt, and they’ll search, and they’ll eventually find it there.” The second one said, “I know what we’ll do! We will take it to the deepest, darkest crevice of the deepest, darkest ocean and hide it there – they’ll never think about looking for it there.” The other two shook their heads: “You know how they are – these humans: They’ll hunt, and they’ll search, and they’ll eventually find it there.”

They pondered some more. Finally, the third came up with the solution they all could agree upon: “We’ll hide the crown of life – this thing that will make them most joyful – and put it inside of them. They’ll never think to look for it there!”

The Beatitudes: "Arise!"

Message for Sunday, February 2, 2014



Scripture    Matthew 5:1-12

In his final book A Man Without a Country, the late Kurt Vonnegut noted that some Christians want the Ten Commandments posted in public places, but none seem to want to do the same with the Beatitudes: “ ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom?” he wrote. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”¹

Let’s bring it back home: How about posting the Beatitudes in our church? Any church?

The Sermon on the Mount is making a comeback these days . Among many recent offerings on the subject, Hans Dieter Betz of the University of Chicago has written this massive tome – all this, on three chapters of scripture! In his 88-page introduction, Betz writes: “The conflict between the authority attributed to the Sermon on the Mount … and the realities of common church life and history has never escaped astute observers inside and outside the church.”

Which may explain why the church institutional in the twentieth century largely ignored these three chapters of collected teachings. For example: the three-year Sunday biblical guide for many, if not most, mainline Protestant pastors – known as the Revised Common Lectionary – only stretches through the first of the three Sermon on the Mount chapters in its triennial cycle. And then only if the cycles of the moon dictate a late Easter, which means a late Lent, which means a longer Epiphany season. And it’s only with a longer Epiphany that Matthew 5 is added as “filler”. Luke’s shorter, and probably earlier, version – known as Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain – suffers a similar fate.

And an interesting fate this is, for teachings so universally influential that spiritual thinkers from Tolstoy to Gandhi, from Christian mystics to Islamic scholars, have extolled all three chapters of its ethical riches. Words that Betz identifies as the “epitome” of Christ’ teachings.²

Why this lectionary oversight? Why this conflict – this discomfort – this dis-ease – between Sermon on the Mount and the church?

Maybe it’s not so much our conflict over or discomfort with the Sermon on the Mount that prompts us to cast these teachings to the discipleship sidelines. A recent nationwide poll of Christians from many denominations revealed that nearly three out of four of us who know what the Sermon on the Mount is about consider it to have very little relevance to our contemporary life.³

The Sermon on the Mount: It’s been seen as irrelevant. Even though churches for nearly twenty centuries used this carefully-defined unit of teaching as a reliable guide for church membership preparation. Even though it is beautifully designed for catechetical instruction, and “studied more intensively, quoted more frequently” over time than any other text in Matthew.

 

And yet our last hundred years of world history seem to have swept its relevance away. What with two world wars around a great worldwide depression, and a Cold War and all its satellite “hot” wars, the promise of the progressive movement in the North Atlantic world at the beginning of the last century proved both utopian and naïve to many. Worldwide, more persons perished as a result of warfare in the 1900s than in all previous human history combined. Starvation, beyond compare and imagination. A Holocaust. Worse: Stalin’s Great Purge. Ethnic cleansing.

So much for the hubris of Protestants millions a century ago, planning to “win the world for Christ by 2000” – an ideal swept away by realpolitik and total war. For with the sowing of the first bullets of World War I, and the reaping of national enmities that followed, a famine of interest in the Sermon on the Mount’s concept of a divine kingdom “on earth, as it is in heaven” swept over the face of Christendom. While amidst this kingdom famine sprang forth the tender first shoots of postmodernism, grafted to astonishing theories of relativity, convincing us out of war’s rubble that there was no ultimate objective truth…

But wait: There is ultimate, objective truth. Not that we might ever arrive at that truth – not in this lifetime. But the Sermon on the Mount presents us with a road-map for that truth that beckons us: Come along on the journey! As one wag puts it, it may seem all relative – but, then again, we are all related!

And so along this journey we go! Gathering at Jesus’ feet with his disciples now, those we are told who “came to him” to hear him. Beginning to listen to this epitome of Jesus’ teachings, metaphorically spoken from a mountain: the place ancients considered the “navel” of the universe between heaven and earth. Listening to Jesus instructing, in Matthew’s context, Jewish and Gentile Christians both how to live among each other, and among the world.

The Sermon on the Mount. It all begins with today’s series of blessings and promises known as the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit … those who mourn … the meek (i.e., the powerless) … Blessed are the merciful … the pure in heart … the peacemakers … the persecuted …” And he’s blessing “you” – you plural. He’s speaking to a community of disciples, here.

 

“Blessed are … Blessed are … Blessed are …” – What to make of all these blessed “blesseds”?

Some of you might recall the Good News Bible, so popular in the 1970s. “Blessed” came to us in that translation as “Happy.” A feel-good word, for a feel-good generation.

And yet, Jesus spoke in a Semitic context, and Matthew, the most Jewish Christian of all the gospel writers, understood this well. And in the Semitic context – conveyed well by our Hebrew scriptures – the concept of righteousness is key to blessedness. As in this Beatitude: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” Righteousness: meaning, doing right by God by doing right by others.

The Greek makarios – translated “Blessed” – does not convey well the active and righteous Semitic understanding behind it. Elias Chacour, who knows Jesus’ Semitic vernacular – Aramaic – suggests a more active verb.

Chacour is an Eastern Orthodox priest from Galilee – and now archbishop of areas that include his home region. He has worked tirelessly for justice for his fellow Palestinians and reconciliation with the Jewish people in Israel.

We come closest to the true meaning of the Beatitudes, Chacour states, when we understand the active, righteousness-laden Aramaic equivalent of the Greek word translated “blessed”. For in Jesus’ native language of Aramaic, Chacour notes, to be blessed is to wake up – or get up – or stand up. To ... Arise! As in, “Get up, arise, you poor in spirit … Arise, you who mourn … Arise, you who are meek …” Participatory words, rather than being blessed as a spectator.

"Arise!" It is a joyful, uplifting word –midst reminders of the world’s brokenness all around us. “Arise – Arise – Arise!” Take action! As in Jesus’ very active words subsequent to the Beatitudes we will hear next week: Be salty! Let your light shine! Don’t keep it under a bushel! Don’t just say, as a people of hospitality, “Here we sit – y’all come!” Shout out to the world, “Here we stand – y’all come!” Be a people of conviction: teaching and preaching and encouraging those most vulnerable to arise!

Here’s to Jesus the Jew, teaching his audience anew, the weepers, the persecuted, the approximately one-half of the Roman Empire world at that time suffering in debt slavery, that they – that we – are all created in God’s image, and we can therefore stand up – arise – for the sake of basic human dignity! A dignity that transforms persons and communities and churches anew, bringing us alive!

Beginning with the right to worship freely. Beginning with the right to speak freely. And then continuing with freedoms we seldom discuss, so central to Jesus’ ideas of blessings: The right to eat. The right to be clothed. The right to have adequate shelter. The right to have quality and affordable health care. These are, indeed, rights – and we have a responsibility as Christians to ensure those rights.

Enslaved, ensnared, entrapped at times as we may feel today, in the midst of violence and vulnerabilities and social stratifications of endless varieties, we can take heart in the empowerment these Beatitudes provide. Not that our lives might become more orderly. But that our lives, and the lives of those around us, might become more just.

  Dare we long for God’s kingdom: the freedom to be loved?

  Dare we pray for God’s kingdom: the freedom to be heard?

  Dare we work for God’s kingdom: the freedom to be fed?

 

With these holy rights come – as ever – holy responsibilities, so others may enjoy them as well. We shall hear of some of those responsibilities in next Sunday’s message: Sermon on the Mount, Part 2.

Until next week, then: Arise! You mournful, meek, and merciful – you poor, pure, peacemakers, and persecuted: Arise! For it’s you who shall be loved. For it’s you who shall be heard. For it’s you who shall be fed. You: the salt and light of the world.

  You – Yes, You: Arise!

 

¹Kurt Vonnegut, quoting Eugene V. Debs, in A Man Without a Country (Seven Stories Press, 1995), p. 81.

²Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 1.

³Personal notes from a workshop with the Rev. Dr. David Buttrick on the Sermon on the Mount, Houghton Lake, MI, June 2004.