Loving God, Loving Others

 Loving God, Loving Others

Matthew 5:21-48[1]

Most of you will have recognized Norman Rockwell’s famous depiction of the “Golden Rule” on the splash slide for the sermon today. It was based on his previous 1953 drawing entitled “United Nations,” which was inspired by the UN’s humanitarian mission. His idea was to depict the United Nations as the world’s hope for the future: sixty-five people representing the world’s nations, “waiting for the delegates to straighten out the world, so that they might live in peace and without fear.” In 1961 Rockwell painted the oil on canvas entitled simply “Golden Rule” that would later become a mural at the UN building in New York City. Rockwell wanted to show that all religious have something like the “Golden Rule” in common.[2]

You might wonder why I would be talking about the “Golden Rule” in connection with our Gospel lesson for today. The answer is that in Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus summarized all that he was trying to teach the disciples about what it would mean to be a part of the kingdom of God, he did so by saying, “in everything to do others as you would have them do to you” (Mt 7:12). It’s easy to miss how important this verse is, but Jesus gave us a clue by saying, “this is the law and the prophets.” In other words, as the New Living Translation puts it, “This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” And I would add that this is the essence of all that Jesus taught in the “Sermon on the Mount” and elsewhere.

As we’ve been introducing the “Sermon on the Mount,” we’ve already seen that grace always comes first in our relationship with God. That was the lesson of the Beatitudes. And we saw last week that grace also always brings with it demands. God’s grace claims us in a way that reshapes us into a people who will practice God’s justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another. That’s what it means to love, and this week we learn that the demands of grace always lead us to love others. That’s what Jesus was trying to demonstrate in our lesson for today. He offered concrete examples of what looks like to truly love others. It means that we not only don’t kill, but we relate to others in ways that uphold their worth as human beings. Following the demands of grace means that we not only avoid cheating on our spouses, we also relate to others with pure motives rather than using them as objects. Jesus was illustrating the principle of the kingdom of God, the point of all that grace demands of us: to treat others the way we want them to treat us.

It might not be obvious at first glance, but the “Golden Rule” is basically a restatement of the “great” commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The “Golden Rule” frames loving your neighbor as yourself in more practical terms, but the point is the same. What sets Jesus’ teachings apart is that he insisted on love that comes from the heart. He emphasized that what is most important is not just your actions, but your motivations. That probably doesn’t come as news to most of us. But we also have to recognize that if our motivations are true, it’s going to make a difference in our actions. As I mentioned last week, Jesus’ approach to the demands of grace makes it harder for us to love God and love others, not easier!

I would say it’s no coincidence that Jesus focused the demands of grace, the demands that the kingdom of God make of us all, on the command to love your neighbor as yourself. When we miss that, we pretty much miss the whole point of God’s grace in our lives. That was not just the mistake of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day; it’s the mistake that Christians have made through the ages. The whole point of the demand that God’s grace makes of us is that we love others truly and sincerely, from the heart, in such a way that it lead us to treat them with genuine kindness, fairness, and respect. For Jesus, that’s the core principle for discipleship, for living in the kingdom of God, for “loving God with all your heart.”

When we miss that, it becomes too easy for us to do what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day did: we define our piety solely by external actions, by what others see and not by what is in our hearts. We focus on the letter of what Jesus taught, telling ourselves that we’re taking his word seriously, but all the while missing the point. We make our religion about blaming others for the wrongs in the world so that we can justify ourselves. Our piety is focused on labelling “them” as “sinners,” using Jesus’ very words to do so, while ignoring our own faults. That is not the way of grace. It is not the way of the kingdom of God.

I’ve mentioned before that I teach my confirmation classes that we won’t go too far astray from what Jesus was trying to teach us if we truly ask ourselves the question, “What would Jesus do?” I know it was something of a fad back in the day. But if we take the question, “What would Jesus do?” seriously, it will lead us to the point of all that Jesus was trying to teach us: to love others truly from the heart in a way shows them kindness, fairness, and respect. Love requires of us the best we have to give in order to treat other people with genuine care. It can be painful to love others in this way, but love is the way of the kingdom.

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” It seems straightforward enough. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. But putting it into practice is no simple matter. Jesus’ examples in our Gospel lesson for today make that uncomfortably clear. Once again, I think we have to take this lesson, as well as everything Jesus said in the “Sermon on the Mount,” from the perspective of the principles we’ve been discussing. When it comes to our relationship with God, grace always comes first. But grace always brings with it a demand: that we become people who will practice God’s justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another. That leads us to the point for today, that the demands of grace always lead us to love; love for God that shows in the way we love others. The true measure of our love for God is that we treat other people with genuine care in every aspect of our relationships with them. This is the principle of God’s kingdom; this is the point of the grace that God gives us all so freely.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/12/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman NE.

[2] Cf. “Rockwell’s ‘Golden Rule,’” blog posted on the Norman Rockwell Museum website on 2/5/2014; accessed at https://www.nrm.org/2014/02/golden_rule/ .

What Difference Does It Make?

 What Difference Does It Make?

Matthew 5:13-20[1]

One of the challenges we face in our world is that there is a whole generation of people who have learned to thrive in life without any kind of real dependence on God. In some families, there are multiple generations. It’s not that they outright deny that God exists. They just don’t see what difference it makes whether you believe in God or not. And many of those people look at all the churches around them and they genuinely don’t get it. They don’t understand why anyone would bother spending their time participating in “organized religion.” They see those of us who are engaged in the practice of our faith as hypocrites at worst and out of date at best. Personally, I think this is at least to some extent because we who profess faith in Jesus Christ have not adequately shown them what difference it makes.

As we discussed last week, it’s important to recognize that, especially in the “Sermon on the Mount” where Jesus talks about fulfilling the law and the prophets, grace always comes first in our relationship with God. That’s not only foundational for our lives, but it’s also necessary for our understanding of Scripture. The balance between grace and demand can be found throughout Scripture. In the Bible, God’s grace, God’s gift of love and life and mercy, always precedes any demands. This is true from the Ten Commandments to Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” to the Apostles’ teachings. Grace always comes first. But grace also always brings demands. The Bible insists that we who have experienced God’s amazing grace are to demonstrate it in the way we relate to others.[2]

This balance is crucial for our understanding of Scripture because when we downplay one side or the other, it skews our whole viewpoint. When we overlook the fact that all the demands in “the law and the prophets” that Jesus said would be “fulfilled” are grounded in the grace and mercy and love of God, we turn those demands into rigid rules that are applied in a strict and severe way. That’s just as true for the New Testament as it is for the Old. And there are actual faith communities in our world who do just that: enforce a rigid set of rules lifted out of context from Scripture and expel those who don’t live up to them. I don’t think that’s a very accurate view of the God who throughout the ages has lovingly called the human family into relationship with himself.

The opposite is also true: it’s all too easy to focus only on grace and ignore the very real demands that are found not just in the Hebrew Bible, but also throughout the New Testament, especially in the “Sermon on the Mount.” When we make that mistake, we miss the whole point of God’s grace: to shape us into the people we we’re meant to be. In the words of the pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when we ignore the demand for heartfelt obedience to God’s commands, we turn all that God has done for us into “cheap grace.”[3] I think we can also call to mind those in our world who expect a loving God to be tolerant of any and all kinds of behavior, regardless of the consequences to others or ourselves! Again, I don’t think that’s a very accurate view of the God whose love has always called the human family to practice justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another.

We see this balance reflected when we look at Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” as a whole. As we saw last week, Jesus opens this “sermon” with the beatitudes, which are a declaration of the grace that God pours out on all people through Jesus Christ. It’s important for us to see that grace always comes first. But in our lesson for today, Jesus insists that “until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Mt 5:18). That may sound strange, but he’s just echoing what the Scripture teaches from start to finish: grace always comes first, but grace also always brings demands.

Immediately following our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus begins to teach his disciples what it means that he was calling them to a “greater” righteousness than what the “scribes and the Pharisees” practiced. In contrast to the way they spelled out in great detail the precise actions one could or could not do, Jesus called his disciples to obey God from the heart. That would mean not only not killing others, it would also meant avoiding anything that leads us to devalue the life of another. Jesus didn’t make it easier to obey God’s commands, he made it harder. He went back to God’s original intention: to produce a people who would practice God’s justice, compassion, and mercy toward one another. As Jesus would later teach in the “Sermon on the Mount,” when we “do unto others as we would have others do unto us,” we fulfill all that God expects of his people in the law and the prophets (Mt 7:12). And I would add that we fulfill all that Jesus and the Apostles taught as well. And we do it because God’s grace has changed our hearts. When God’s grace changes our hearts, we can’t help but live in a way that shows the difference grace makes.

I think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said, “you are the light of the world.”[4] I think he wants us to show the difference God’s grace makes in our lives every day. And if you’re wondering what that looks like, our lesson from Isaiah puts it this way: “Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless” (Isa 58:6-7). It sounds a lot like what Jesus said in Matthew 25:35-36, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”[5] God’s grace makes it possible for us to live our lives as light for the world. When we do so, we show the very real difference God’s grace makes.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 2/5/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Perry Yoder, “Liberated by Law,” Sojourners Magazine, September-October 1999  (Vol. 28, No. 5), 46; Patrick D. Miller, Deuteronomy, 113; O. Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics II:363.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4, 43.  For him, “cheap grace” meant that God’s grace “justifies sin” without making any difference in the sinner, so that “everything can stay in its old ways.”

[4] It is important to recognize that Jesus speaks of being light for the “world” not just for the few: Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 125-26; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.2:804-805.

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 127: “It is not that the wretched are the object of Christian love or the fulfilment of a moral duty; they are the latent presence of the coming Saviour and Judge in the world.”

Grace Always Comes First

 Grace Always Comes First

Matthew 4:23-5:12[1]

A couple of months ago, I told you the story of my relationship with a Scripture passage. I’d like to do that for you again today with the Beatitudes. Of course, I grew up in church, so the Beatitudes are just something that I seem to have always known, like the Gloria Patri, the Doxology, and the Lord’s Prayer. But like many scripture texts, the Beatitudes were just “pretty words” to me. As a matter of fact, I think we all have to grow into our ability to really “hear” the words of Scripture, and the Beatitudes are no exception. It took me a while to find my way to be able to appreciate the true beauty of the Beatitudes: they remind us that when it comes to how God relates to us, grace always comes first!

As beautiful as the Beatitudes are, I have to be honest and admit that I found them intimidating for many years. Some of the ideas are confusing. We live in a world where “meekness” is viewed as “weakness.” So how can being “meek” mean that we’re “blessed”? We all understand what it means to be hungry and thirsty. But what in the world does it mean to “hunger and thirst for righteousness”? Do we really have to be “reviled” and “persecuted” in order to “qualify” as Christ’s faithful disciples? Perhaps the greatest stumbling block is the part about being “pure in heart.” I think it’s pretty obvious that nobody is always “pure” in heart! There’s enough here to intimidate even the best of us!

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we may find the Beatitudes intimidating. The view that they present us with the ideal of what it means to be a Christian is one that’s been around for a long time. The ancient church viewed the Beatitudes as a kind of pathway from repentance to perfection, a kind of “stairway to heaven” if you will![2] This was the way the church read the Beatitudes for centuries. It’s still the primary way that the Beatitudes are taught in the Catholic tradition today. Many other Christians as well see the Beatitudes as a “blueprint” for how to become a true follower of Jesus! They see them as steps you have to take if you want to “make it” into heaven.

But the problem is that makes our salvation all about what we do. “Making it” into heaven is something we have to work for all of our lives. But it misses the very wording of the Beatitudes. They don’t say “blessed are those who become” “poor in spirit,” or “meek,” or “pure in heart.” They say, “blessed are the poor in spirit,” “blessed are those who mourn,” “blessed are the meek.” It’s not about what you “become,” it’s about who you already are. I think the first clue to really being able to hear the Beatitudes is to understand that they’re meant to be words of comfort. They’ re meant to reinforce the promise of salvation for all who open their hearts to Jesus and the good news of the kingdom he came to proclaim![3]  

I came to this understanding of the Beatitudes after I’d completed my PhD and was already teaching as a Seminary Professor. I was asked to prepare a class on the Sermon on the Mount for a campus organization, and it was my first time to really dig into it. What I learned at that time was that, like every other passage of Scripture, it’s crucial to read the Beatitudes in the right context. That’s why our Gospel lesson began where it did today. In Matthew’s Gospel, we’re meant to read the Sermon on the Mount, with all of its admittedly intimidating demands on the lives of those who would follow Jesus, on the basis of the fact that Jesus was “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people” (Mt 4:23). He didn’t check the spiritual “credentials” of the people he healed. And he didn’t just heal Jewish people. Matthew tells us that he shared the blessings of God’s kingdom with people from all over.

From that perspective, it doesn’t make any sense to read the Beatitudes as a “blueprint” for the Christian life, but rather the Beatitudes are a profound way of spelling out the “good news of the kingdom.” The Beatitudes show us what the blessings we find when we align ourselves with God’s purposes in this world look like. That’s particularly important for the kind of people Jesus was addressing. Those who align their lives with Jesus’ “good news of the kingdom” often do so at their own expense. Those who look to God and God alone for what they need in this life aren’t typically the “movers and shakers” of our world. In fact, they are often precisely the opposite: the last, the least, the left out, and even the powerless.

And so we who seek to follow Jesus in this world often find ourselves in the kinds of situations he talks about in the Beatitudes. We mourn: we mourn the condition of a world that thrives on greed and violence. We may even find ourselves “reviled” or worse because we refuse to endorse the way things are. We hunger and thirst for God to come and set things right. Because we’ve come to know God’s mercy in our lives, we cannot help but extend that mercy to others, giving without any thought of receiving, turning the other check, welcoming those whom others see as outcast. And the good news that Jesus preached in the Beatitudes is that we are blessed: blessed because we know that our lives rest securely on God’s unfailing love for us.

I think Jesus knew that all who would try to follow him would desperately need the comfort and promise offered in the Beatitudes. I think he knew we would need to hear that we’re supported and surrounded by God’s grace every hour of every day of our lives. And so it is that in the Beatitudes, Jesus makes clear that grace always comes first in our relationship with God. Yes, the call to follow him that we hear in the Sermon on the Mount demands a great deal of us. But grace always comes first. That’s why Jesus starts his most famous sermon with a striking reminder of how much we truly are blessed. Before he instructs us about what it looks like to follow him in some uncomfortably specific ways, Jesus spells out for us just how richly we benefit from the gift of God’s grace. And God’s grace always comes first!

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/29/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. U. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 188. He names Hilary of Poitiers, Gregory of Nyssa and Ambrose of Milan, all from the Fourth Century.

[3] Cf. Luz, Matthew 1-7, 189: “For Jesus the unconditional assurance of salvation to people who are in a hopeless situation is decisive.” I don’t agree with his assessment that Matthew is responsible for shifting the emphasis to a blueprint for Christian living.

Building Together

 Building Together

1 Corinthians 3:1-11[1]

Anyone who has ever taken on a home renovation project knows that it’s rarely a job for one person alone. Most of us simply don’t have the skills to do everything that needs to be done once you started pulling up the linoleum and tearing down the sheetrock. There’s always something underneath the surface of things that winds up taking three times longer than you thought you’d need for the whole project! For me it was trying to turn a “Texas Lanai” into an indoor room. For those of you who don’t know what a “Lanai” is, it’s a kind of enclosed sunroom that actually sits on the ground. It was only after we had started the demolition that we discovered the concrete slab underneath was sloped toward the middle, like a drain. What a headache!

I think that we’re always involved in some form of “renovation” in the church.[2] The way things keep changing in society makes it a challenge just to keep up, let alone try to grow. These days it can feel like everything we do is vital to the survival of our church. That’s a lot of stress for anyone to take on. It’s a good thing that we in the Reformed tradition believe that ministry is something we all share together. I shudder to think what would happen if everything we did as a church was my responsibility. But even more importantly, it’s not even our responsibility together. Because, at the end of the day, building this or any other church isn’t something we do at all, it’s God’s work. We are all called to be partners in that work, but any growth that may come will be the result of what God is doing in and through us.

I think Paul was addressing shared ministry in our lesson from 1 Corinthians for today. As I mentioned last week, the Apostle Paul had founded the church at Corinth. After he had moved on, other teachers came and some of them were helpful, while others were not. A teacher named Apollos was one of the helpful ones. There were others who apparently thought they had more authority than Paul because they claimed to come from Cephas, or Peter. As a result, people in the church became confused about how they were supposed to live their lives together in Christian community. They were divided by their loyalties to different teachers, and the factions troubling the congregation. They seemed to be arguing among themselves about who was following Christ best!

But Paul redirected the conflict. He embraced Apollos as a partner in ministry, although we don’t know whether they ever actually met in person. But Apollos worked with Priscilla and Aquila, who had worked with Paul. For that reason Paul could embrace the ministry of Apollos among the Corinthians as a fellow-worker. And so he could say to them, “After all, what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants who helped you to believe” (1 Cor 3:5, CEB). They were both equally serving the church by carrying out the role that had been “given to them by the Lord.” By embracing Apollos as a partner in ministry, Paul was modelling the kind of shared ministry he encouraged them to practice among themselves.

But Paul made it clear that the real basis for growth—any growth—in the church is the work of God. That’s why Paul could say that “I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow” (1 Cor 3:6 CEB). He was careful not to take any credit for the work that God had been doing through him and Apollos in the church at Corinth. He says, “neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but the only one who is anything is God who makes it grow” (1 Cor 3:7 CEB). It comes as no surprise then, when Paul addresses this issue later in 1 Corinthians, that he emphasizes that what matters is working “for the common good” of the body of Christ, the church (1 Cor 12:7). One facet of “shared ministry” is that we work together for the good of the Body of Christ.

Paul also emphasizes in that section of 1 Corinthians that the only way that will happen in any congregation is if everyone is working together. And so Paul teaches the people in Corinth that each member of the church has a “gift of the Spirit” with which to serve others (1 Cor 12:4-6 GNT). He says that “there are different kinds of spiritual gifts,” but they all come from the same Spirit. He says that there are “different ways of serving,” but it is the same Lord that we serve. He says that “we all have different abilities,” but it is the same God who works in and through all of us. Another facet of “shared ministry” is to recognize that we are all called by God to share in the work of this church by using the gifts that the Spirit has given us. I know some of you may be thinking “I don’t have any gifts that can be useful to the church.” But St. Paul the Apostle insists that you do. I think it’s just a matter of recognizing that what you can do for the church is your “gift of the Spirit”!

Paul went further and instructed the believers at Corinth that if they wanted to join in the work of building up the Body of Christ, they had to build on the right foundation, and they had to do it carefully. The foundation upon which to build up any church is Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Cor 3:11). After all, he is the only true head of this or any other church. And only as we align our designs with his purpose will this church thrive. A further facet of “shared ministry” is that we are all following Jesus Christ, who said “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). The only “agenda” that will enable this or any other church to thrive is the one set by Jesus Christ.

We are all working to build up this church together. That’s important. The more people we have helping out, the more this church will thrive. Today we recognize that by installing new elders and deacons. But you don’t have to serve on a committee, a board, or even on the session to help with the work of building up our church. This church will grow as we all join together, doing what we can do to the best of our ability, recognizing that we are all “God’s coworkers,” using the gifts and talents God has given us to build this church. But ultimately the growth of this church is a bigger job than any one person can accomplish. At the end of the day, if this church grows, it will happen because Jesus is building his church. We will grow because God, who is able to do “far more than we could ever ask for or imagine” (Eph 3:20, NIrV), has given the growth!

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[1] ©2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 1/22/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] In fact, that’s the “motto” of the Reformed tradition: “the church reformed, always being reformed according to the word of God.”