Matthew 9:18-26

As he finished saying this, a local official appeared, bowed politely, and said, "My daughter has just now died. If you come and touch her, she will live." Jesus got up and went with him, his disciples following along.

Just then a woman who had hemorrhaged for twelve years slipped in from behind and lightly touched his robe. She was thinking to herself, "If I can just put a finger on his robe, I'll get well." Jesus turned—caught her at it. Then he reassured her: "Courage, daughter. You took a risk of faith, and now you're well." The woman was well from then on.

By now they had arrived at the house of the town official, and pushed their way through the gossips looking for a story and the neighbors bringing in casseroles. Jesus was abrupt: "Clear out! This girl isn't dead. She's sleeping." They told him he didn't know what he was talking about. But when Jesus had gotten rid of the crowd, he went in, took the girl's hand, and pulled her to her feet—alive. The news was soon out, and traveled throughout the region.

Do you see! Do you see? The healing narratives are about an invitation, a clearing the way into full community.

The woman who had hemorrhaged for twelve years was ceremonially unclean. She could not fully participate in the community. She was always on the outside looking in. There was no way for her to be part of the life of her community, not fully at least. The act of healing, while important, is a bit player in the ultimate ramifications of the healing. This woman who had been on outside looking in was now on the inside. She could fully be with her community. The barrier of the ceremonial law of the Jewish Scriptures had been removed. This woman, was finally fully welcomed!

The girl that Jesus raises from the dead is one of the ultimate acts of reconciliation. She was in the place of the dead and yet this Jesus was able to bring her from there to here, the place of the living. You don’t get any more outside than death.

This action of bringing her from the place of death to the place of life is an image that other writers in the New Testament will grab onto, particularly Paul of Tarsus. We see this language all over his writing of the Romans, Ephesians, and Corinthians.

One of the things that I have learned over the last 18 months is that life to the full is found in community. We need one another. In our physical isolation I was able to find life and connection through the digital realm. I needed it. Yet, as wonderful as it was, there was nothing that could replace the vitality of being with people in an embodied way. I think that this reality hit home with me when I did a driving tour to see and pray for the people that I have been called to specifically serve. Even just seeing folks from a distance in a driveway was magic and filled me with wonder and awe at the beauty of our shared community.

So, do you see? Do you see that the goal of healing is not healing in and of itself? It is the bringing people together into a reconciled community! How beautiful is that!

Matthew 9:9-17

Passing along, Jesus saw a man at his work collecting taxes. His name was Matthew. Jesus said, "Come along with me." Matthew stood up and followed him.

Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew's house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus' followers. "What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riff-raff?"

Jesus, overhearing, shot back, "Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: 'I'm after mercy, not religion.' I'm here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders."

A little later John's followers approached, asking, "Why is it that we and the Pharisees rigorously discipline body and spirit by fasting, but your followers don't?"

Jesus told them, "When you're celebrating a wedding, you don't skimp on the cake and wine. You feast. Later you may need to pull in your belt, but not now. No one throws cold water on a friendly bonfire. This is Kingdom Come!"

He went on, "No one cuts up a fine silk scarf to patch old work clothes; you want fabrics that match. And you don't put your wine in cracked bottles."

I love that Jesus is all about the outsider. The person that the religious folks have no time for.

Do you notice what he’s doing in this story?

He’s eating with people whom the religious folks find disgusting. This is a statement that can’t be overlooked or minimized. Table fellowship was a big deal in this culture. When you had table fellowship with someone you were saying, “They’re with me and I’m with them.”

Now, as you read the stories in the Gospels, Jesus eats with the religious folks and with those whom the religious folks find deplorable.

I have to wonder if what the religious people found so frustrating about Jesus eating with the “riff-raff” was the mere fact that he ate with them or the fact that in doing so he was uniting them to one another.

Think about that for a minute. Jesus was having table fellowship with all these people. In so doing he was the bridge between them. If the religious wanted to be with Jesus, they necessarily had to be with the outsiders. If the outsiders wanted to be with Jesus, they necessarily had to be with the religious. It was not either/or for Jesus, it was both/and. He was bringing these different people together through himself.

How many “good Christians” would have table fellowship with those considered to be “riff-raff” by their community? Sadly, not as many as we would like to imagine, I think.

This passage is another reminder for us to go show up in the world and not hide from the world.

Matthew 9:1-8

Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralyzed man, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, “This fellow is blaspheming!”

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.

One quick note, I chose to use the NIV this morning because The Message was not discernibly different except that it created some confusion with the context, making the story too different from Mark 2 (the other place we read this story).

Another passage filled with loads of theological stuff. It’s dense. It’s also one of my favorite stories in the Gospels.

This morning I am struck by the communal aspect of what is happening here. We begin by seeing a group of friends bring their paralytic friend to Jesus, we end by seeing the broader community celebrating. In the middle we see the religious leaders upset.

My attention this morning is drawn to the friends who bring the paralytic to Jesus. They don’t know what is going to happen. Will Jesus heal? Will Jesus not heal? We learn from Mark 2 that they get the man to Jesus by digging a hole in the roof of the house, would Jesus be mad at the destruction of property? All these guys wanted was for their friend to be healed and walk again. Why? Probably so he could do life with them.

I think this is the thing that we so often miss when we read the Bible. These stories were about real people who had real lives and were living in real community. Could you imagine the overwhelming joy these men must have felt when their friend rose up and walked out of that house? They could finally do life fully together. He could be with them without barrier.

Isn’t that the beauty of the gospel? The reconciliation of all things! Jesus authority to forgive sin was so amazing because it brought about reconciliation in real and embodied ways. It was not just a theological idea of words. No, it translated into real life.

And, all of it done in the context of community. From start to finish.

I think sometimes we overlook the value of having people around us who will carry us. Sometimes we just can’t get to where we need to be on our own. It turns out we need one another.

Matthew 8:1-17

Jesus came down the mountain with the cheers of the crowd still ringing in his ears. Then a leper appeared and went to his knees before Jesus, praying, "Master, if you want to, you can heal my body."

Jesus reached out and touched him, saying, "I want to. Be clean." Then and there, all signs of the leprosy were gone. Jesus said, "Don't talk about this all over town. Just quietly present your healed body to the priest, along with the appropriate expressions of thanks to God. Your cleansed and grateful life, not your words, will bear witness to what I have done."

As Jesus entered the village of Capernaum, a Roman captain came up in a panic and said, "Master, my servant is sick. He can't walk. He's in terrible pain."

Jesus said, "I'll come and heal him."

"Oh, no," said the captain. "I don't want to put you to all that trouble. Just give the order and my servant will be fine. I'm a man who takes orders and gives orders. I tell one soldier, 'Go,' and he goes; to another, 'Come,' and he comes; to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it."

Taken aback, Jesus said, "I've yet to come across this kind of simple trust in Israel, the very people who are supposed to know all about God and how he works. This man is the vanguard of many outsiders who will soon be coming from all directions—streaming in from the east, pouring in from the west, sitting down at God's kingdom banquet alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then those who grew up 'in the faith' but had no faith will find themselves out in the cold, outsiders to grace and wondering what happened."

Then Jesus turned to the captain and said, "Go. What you believed could happen has happened." At that moment his servant became well.

By this time they were in front of Peter's house. On entering, Jesus found Peter's mother-in-law sick in bed, burning up with fever. He touched her hand and the fever was gone. No sooner was she up on her feet than she was fixing dinner for him.

That evening a lot of demon-afflicted people were brought to him. He relieved the inwardly tormented. He cured the bodily ill. He fulfilled Isaiah's well-known sermon:

He took our illnesses,
He carried our diseases.

This is one of those passages that most of us preachers can spend hours on. It is rich with theological poignancy. There is much that we could dive into and tease out. But, this is not the time or place.

The question that I have for you is this, “Did you notice what Jesus was doing?”

I’m serious.

Did you catch what he was up to in these stories?

I have been a professional Christian for a long, long time. I have read and re-read the New Testament many times over. But, it was not until this past year that I really took note of what Jesus was doing in these kinds of stories.

It’s one of those things that when you see it for the first time you slap your forehead and think, “How have I not noticed this before? It’s RIGHT there!”

Do you have an idea yet?

Here it is: Jesus was bringing people into community. He was clearing the path so that they could come and be fully participating members of community together.

It’s not really about the healings. It’s about something more than that. What Jesus was doing as a result of the healings was making it so that individuals were no longer exiled from the community.

The leper couldn’t be in community. The demon possessed couldn’t be in community. The lame, the blind, the deaf, none of them could fully participate in community.

Jesus even says as much when he heals the Centurion’s servant, “This man is the vanguard of many outsiders who will soon be coming from all directions—streaming in from the east, pouring in from the west, sitting down at God's kingdom banquet alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

He was saying, “You see! You see! Those who were on the outside will be on the inside. Those who were not a people will be a people. They will come and eat at God’s table.”

When the kingdom breaks in, this is what we see happening. People who were on the outside, people isolated from community, people who were once “untouchable,” become part of community. Those who were only able to participate on the fringe, are brought into full participation.

This is the beauty of the healing narratives. The healings are cool, no doubt. But it is the effects of the healings that we must notice.

How are you helping bring people into community? How are you breaking down barriers for people to fully participate in your community? Maybe this weekend, you can do something to help facilitate that.

Matthew 7:22-29

I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, 'Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.' And do you know what I am going to say? 'You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here.'

"These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

"But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards."

When Jesus concluded his address, the crowd burst into applause. They had never heard teaching like this. It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying—quite a contrast to their religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard.

I love this line, “These words I speak are not incidental additions to your life…”

I am also struck by, “All you did was use me to make yourselves important.”

This morning as I process these words and ponder them, I don’t really know what to say.

The conclusion of the sermon on the mount is one final push and challenge by Jesus to remind those listening that they have to respond with their lives. It’s not about the words we say or parrot. It’s about how we are living. We must build our lives on the words and principles found here.

There is a very real call here to embody what Jesus is talking about.

What does it mean to embody something?

It means that we must physically live out the words in the real world. There is no way around it. These teachings of Jesus must find their way into our real lives. Lives lived in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and communities.

I think the most challenging thing for me as a pastor is the last bit, “It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying—quite a contrast to their religion teachers!” Ouch! Every week I lead people into discussion about Jesus, am I living out what I’m preaching? Is it evident that I’m doing so? I want that to be true. Yet, I know how much work I have yet to do.

I desperately want to see more fruit of the Spirit in my life, “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” When these are the ways that people describe me, when these are the things that I can begin to see in myself, then I’m on the way of practicing what I preach.

The question I have to wrestle with this morning, “Do I believe that these are simply incidental ideas or do I believe that they are foundations to build my life on?”

Matthew 7:13-21

"Don't look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don't fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.

"Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or other. Don't be impressed with charisma; look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook. These diseased trees with their bad apples are going to be chopped down and burned.

"Knowing the correct password—saying 'Master, Master,' for instance—isn't going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills.

“A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook.”

This punched me right in the face this morning.

I am coming to believe that the two ditches that are along either side of pastoral ministry are these: emotional manipulation and financial manipulation. These seem to be at the root of so much abuse in the American church.

Before I finalize a message to preach on Sunday I have to make sure that I’m not practicing in the ways of emotional manipulation.

It’s just too easy.

I am confident that early in my years as a public speaker that I used it to great effect. The ability to create a “holy hush” due to the use of the manipulating of people’s emotions felt so “successful” at times. After some time I came to realize that it was nothing more than cheap salesmanship and really nothing more than a way to get people to agree with me. In other words, it was about “winning.” You see I would create my messages as arguments, trying to “prove” something. I imagined in my head an interlocutor who was disagreeing and challenging me. So, I had to “win” the day for the gospel. There was this sense that do so required “exposing the need.” What that translated to in my world was exposing some sort sin or failing in a person’s life and then getting them to feel the weight of that (which is odd because I would have told you “feelings” have nothing to do with your spiritual life). Then taking them from that place of vulnerability I would seek to get them to agree with my solution for their lives.

All of this was of course couched as “leading people to Christ.” But, it was really about me and placing myself in a position to get people to do something.

Thankfully, I had mentors who demonstrated a better way. They showed me a way that was not dependent on “winning” but a way that was built on pointing people towards Jesus and what he embodied: grace, mercy, love, truth, compassion, and empathy. They showed me that when we preach we need to leave the manipulation and moralism behind. As Peter writes, my responsibility is to “declare the excellencies of [Jesus].” This is the work to which pastors are called.

Perhaps over the last few days you have seen the headlines from the other ditch, the ditch of money and greed. One televangelist is crying for money for a new jet and another saying that Jesus has not returned because people aren’t giving enough money to his ministry.

It’s all manipulation.

I pray that those of us who are pastors would follow Paul and know nothing but Christ and him crucified. I pray that we would be people of the Cross. I pray that we would eschew the wisdom of this world and embrace the folly that is Christ crucified and resurrected.

Matthew 7:1-12

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

My custom is to use The Message for these daily devotionals because it’s often jarring to read these well known passages in a different translation. While I really like the way Peterson renders this section, I think he misses the central issue that Jesus is getting at. But, I think the NIV, NRSV, and other more literal translations get at it a bit better.

Why?

Because of the word, “hypocrite.”

That really seems to be the heart of what Jesus is teaching here, we must engage with one another in humility because we are flawed and none of us are perfect. If we act as though we have it all together then we are nothing more than hypocrites.

All in all, I think Jesus is saying, “Give one another the benefit of the doubt.”

When Amy and I joined the staff of CRU we were assigned to a campus team at Illinois State University. I am so grateful for those years. We grew up there. When we arrived to campus we were in our early 20s and not much older than the students were serving. I was young, brash, overly confident, and believed I knew everything.

Boy, was I wrong.

Thankfully, our team leader, Matt Kent, was kind and gentle. He didn’t put up with my childish ways, but he also acknowledged he was imperfect. Matt is the embodiment of humility (he probably just blushed without knowing why). One of the greatest gifts that Matt gave Amy and I through his leadership was this, “We will believe the best in one another.”

“Believe the best in one another.”

What Matt meant by that was that we would endeavor to give the same amount of grace and mercy to one another that we wanted to receive ourselves. This meant that we didn’t question one another’s motives. Our posture was to assume that each of us on the team had the best intentions and wanted what was best for one another. By serving together in this way, we experienced one of the healthiest teams that I have ever been a part of. There was no question where you stood with one another, there was little to no drama, and all of us really respected one another. That’s not to say we didn’t have disagreements or arguments or hard conversations. No, it’s just that when we did we knew that we were all coming from a place of mutual respect.

In our society we take an approach of, “I will extend respect to you if you first extend respect to me.” Do you see how this is so broken?

The thing is, I’m guilty of it too.

There are days when I have forgotten that lesson taught to me by Matt about, “believing the best.”

As a follower of Jesus I am reminded this morning that believing the best is something that I’m called to from a deeper place. It’s part of my new identity. I am called to believe the best because I recognize my own weaknesses, my own need for grace, and my own hope for mercy. You see, I need grace and mercy from the people in my life because I’m so deeply flawed. If I’m deeply flawed, then I can’t expect others to not be deeply flawed. All of us need grace and mercy. All of us are carrying around planks in our eyes, when we are able to recognize this reality then we are able to offer up grace to our neighbor and their speck.

Let’s not be hypocrites. Let’s not act like we have it all together. Let’s recognize our own sin sickness and engage the world from a position of humility.

Matthew 6:7-15

"The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what's best—
as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You're in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You're ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.

"In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can't get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God's part.

You can pray very simply

If that isn’t an encouragement I don’t know what is.

I think that sometimes we have in our minds that prayer is something akin to spells that we see in fiction. You know what I mean, right? There’s this idea that we often hold that thinks we need to use just the right words and have just the right intentions and have just the right body language for prayer to work.

But, that’s not the case at all.

We can approach God with simplicity.

There is no need for big words or lots of words or few words.

There is no need for theological treatises.

There is not right or wrong time to pray.

There is no right or wrong body position to pray.

We can simply come.

Over the years I am learning that just showing up in prayer is the key. Setting up some time to pray and then doing it is what matters most. More and more I am finding that I have less and less words. During the last year or two my most often prayer has been, “God, seriously? What the heck?”

So often I find that I don’t know what to pray for or even how to pray. When that happens I pray that and leave it at that.

I am reminded often that the Scriptures say, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”

You see, we don’t need all the words, or the best words, or even any of the words. We can simply show up in prayer and trust that God is at work in us through the Spirit. This is grace.

We can also use all the words. There is freedom to dump everything in our hearts and minds out as well, even if it’s an unfiltered stream of words that flows without breathing. Sometimes simplicity in prayer is knowing that we don’t need to filter anything with God. This is grace too.

To experience this grace we find ourselves unclenching our fists and relaxing our shoulders. We breathe again. There is a yielding and trust in God.

I am so grateful that we can pray simply. How about you?

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

"Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding.

"When you do something for someone else, don't call attention to yourself. You've seen them in action, I'm sure—'playactors' I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that's all they get. When you help someone out, don't think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.

"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?

"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.

—

"When you practice some appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God, don't make a production out of it. It might turn you into a small-time celebrity but it won't make you a saint. If you 'go into training' inwardly, act normal outwardly. Shampoo and comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face. God doesn't require attention-getting devices. He won't overlook what you are doing; he'll reward you well.

I have often wondered what it was about the prayer closet, the secluded place, that was so important. I understood what Jesus means here about “playacting” or “hypocrisy” in our more literal translations. That all made sense. But, I have often wondered if there wasn’t more to it.

Peterson expands what we read in the NIV when he writes, “Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”

Here’s how the NIV handles that verse, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

As I have been pondering this, this morning I think what Peterson is tapping into here is the “Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret,” part of the verse.

There are a few people in my life who really know me. These are people that I feel “seen” by. There’s a depth of knowing by them that allows me to let my guard down and simply be.

This idea of the Father “seeing” is something that I have glossed over too many times. I have focused so much on the “reward” aspect. Too often in my young Christian life I had the belief that if I prayed rightly that I would be rewarded by getting what I asked for.

I don’t think that’s what is being said here.

No, I think the reward is knowing that the Father sees me.

Imagine that!

The Creator God of the universe…

sees you…

knows you…

is present with you…

cares about you…

None of this is dependent on whether or not you pray in a secluded space. It’s all true regardless of you or your actions because that is the beauty of who God is. God’s actions are rooted in God’s personhood, God’s being, God’s identity, God’s nature. God is faithful regardless of us.

What is dependent is our experience of this seeing by God. This is our reward! The intimate, experiential, awareness that the Father sees me.

Every kid I know (and I am well acquainted with being a child as well) wants to be seen by their parents. I was moved by images of an NFL rookie after playing in his first NFL game running into the stands to his parents and family. It doesn’t matter how old we get, there is something about being seen by our parents.

How much more so the Creator God?

The more I practice the simplicity of secluded, private, prayer the more I am growing in my awareness of the presence of the Divine. More and more I am feeling seen by God. More and more I am feeling secure in my relationship with God. More and more I am feeling loved by God.

Matthew 5:38-48

"Here's another old saying that deserves a second look: 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' Is that going to get us anywhere? Here's what I propose: 'Don't hit back at all.' If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

"You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

"In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.

“Grow up!”

Once again, reading this in the Message just feels different. These passages are hitting me in places that I don’t like to talk about at parties.

It’s fascinating to me that this passage, above most in the Sermon on the Mount, gets explained away whenever it’s convenient.

Here’s a secret:

I do it.

I make excuses to hate my enemy.

All. The. Time.

It’s not just a once in a while kind of thing. It’s a most of the time kind of thing. It feels so good to “get them” when they show themselves. Man, it feels like justice when I can stick it to people I’ve determined as my enemy.

Usually I explain it away in one of two ways. First, when I’m feeling super spiritual I will say something along the lines of, “I’m not hating my enemy, I am speaking truth to them. It’s for their own good.” When I’m being really honest I say, “Listen, I’m not going to be a doormat for Jesus. I’m standing up for my rights and for my family.”

Those are my “go-to” outs for loving my enemy. What are your outs?

We all have them.

More and more I am realizing that this love thing is at the center of being a follower of Jesus. If I want to grow in my Christ-likeness then I must grow in love. There is no way around it. This is the thing.

I am not good at loving, on the whole. I do well some times, especially if I know people are watching. But, in places that I don’t talk about at parties, I struggle.

As I grow older, I am becoming more desperate to learn how to love well.

Sometimes people ask what does it look like? What does it practically look like to love like Jesus. That kind of love is laid out for us in 1 Corinthians 13. Have you ever noticed it before? I mean, I know it’s read at weddings. But, have you ever realized that this is the way to live the Christ oriented life?

Consider it today…

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut,

Doesn't have a swelled head,

Doesn't force itself on others,

Isn't always "me first,"

Doesn't fly off the handle,

Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

Matthew 5:27-37

"You know the next commandment pretty well, too: 'Don't go to bed with another's spouse.' But don't think you've preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices—they are also corrupt.

"Let's not pretend this is easier than it really is. If you want to live a morally pure life, here's what you have to do: You have to blind your right eye the moment you catch it in a lustful leer. You have to choose to live one-eyed or else be dumped on a moral trash pile. And you have to chop off your right hand the moment you notice it raised threateningly. Better a bloody stump than your entire being discarded for good in the dump.

"Remember the Scripture that says, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her legal rights'? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are 'legal.' Please, no more pretending. If you divorce your wife, you're responsible for making her an adulteress (unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity). And if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you're automatically an adulterer yourself. You can't use legal cover to mask a moral failure.

"And don't say anything you don't mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, 'I'll pray for you,' and never doing it, or saying, 'God be with you,' and not meaning it. You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say 'yes' and 'no.' When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

This is tough stuff from Jesus. In our modern day and age you might be made uncomfortable by some of Jesus’ statements here.

It hit different reading this in the Message than in the more familiar NIV.

What struck me this morning was the radical minimum standard of integrity that Jesus was calling for. Morality and commitment were not just behavioral issues for Jesus. He pressed into people’s hearts. The sentence, “You can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure,” really struck me. This is such a subversive way of thinking in our day and time. So many of us deem what is legal and what is moral as the two of the same things. But, Jesus calls us to something deeper. He demands a depth to our integrity that goes beyond the legal.

“You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk…”

Oof!

This challenge by Jesus to his hearers was meant to cut them to the quick. The reality is that integrity is something that demands from us more than just words. It requires action. But more than action, it demands something even deeper.

Did you notice that?

You can do the right thing and still not have integrity.

You can say the right thing and still not have integrity.

You can say and do the right thing and still not have integrity.

Jesus’ call here is a wholeness of being. It goes down to the soul or heart of a person. If we are living duplicitous lives then eventually they will be exposed. To live with integrity means that the wholeness of who you are, the wholeness of your being, lines up and is integrated.

Your words and your actions and your soul must all integrate.

We live in a day and age where integrity is rare.

This challenges from Jesus is one that we need to hear again and again.

Matthew 5:11-16

"Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

"Let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

"Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

What will you be?

This is the question.

It’s not a question of what won’t you be. It’s a question in the affirmative. What will you be?

Too many times in our day and age in America, Christians are known for what they’re not.

“Don’t dance, drink, or chew and don’t go with girls that do.”

American Christianity is too often portrayed as some sort of cancel culture. Which makes sense, if you think about it. I remember Christians trying to get Teletubbies off PBS, I can’t count the number of times Disney has been boycotted by Christians. The fundamentalist, evangelical culture that I experienced in college was one marked by ridding ourselves of secular influences like non-Christian music. I spent hours pouring over lists of “If you like this secular band, then try this Christian band.” There was a time when I traded in my Garth Brooks for Michael James.

In our desire to be different and set apart we too often find ourselves only championing those things which we are against.

Notice the way Christ discusses how he wants his followers to live in the world.

Be salt.

Be light.

Bring out the God-flavors in the world.

Bring out the God-colors in the world.

It was a new way of being.

There is a significant difference between saying, “Don’t be darkness,” and “Be light.” The negation of being leaves us in a place of not knowing how to move forward. We end up stuck and lost. But, when we are given an affirmative command to “Be” we are finding ourselves united with the divine.

Why do I say that?

Because God’s nature is being. When asked his name, “I AM.”

God is.

To be a God follower, to be a Christ follower, is to BE something. We are being salt and light.

This weekend I would encourage you to take some time and ask yourself, “Do people know me more for who and what I am or do people know me more for who and what I am against?”

Matthew 5:1-10

When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'carefull,' you find yourselves cared for.

"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.

"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.

Over the last couple of days I have been thinking about this passage a bit. N.T. Wright and Michael Bird in their book, The New Testament In Its World, argue that the beatitudes are the agenda for kingdom work. It strikes me that as we start to seek living this agenda out we will likely find ourselves at one time or another practicing all of this.

Each of us will likely jump into the fray at different points. Some of us come into this at the beginning of the agenda, at the end of our rope. Some of us might pop in at the middle and others may experience persecution right from jump street. Where ever we find ourselves, we must recognize that living this way is our agenda as followers of Jesus.

The longer I try to become more like Christ, the more attracted I am to people who live this way. I find them to be refreshing and life-giving.

Most particularly I am finding that I want to be around the peace-makers. Peterson says it like this, "You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.” Thinking about peace-making this way is so beautiful to me. The idea of teaching people to cooperate as opposed to competing feels subversive in our world today. There are so many stories about leaders in our government who refuse to find middle ground positions of cooperation because they can’t look like they are capitulating to the “other side.” As a result, good policies don’t get done on behalf of our nation. I also think about the disunity in the body of Christ and the schisms and divisions that have happened over the years because people were unwilling to pursue peace-making.

Over the last few years I am growing less concerned about my theological tribe “being right.” I am more concerned with those of who claim to follow Jesus practicing this kingdom agenda that we find in the opening lines of Matthew 5. Again, I’m pretty wrapped up in this idea of peace-making as I write this. What would it look like if the Christians of our world steeled themselves toward making peace? How would our neighborhoods, towns, cities, states, and nation changed if there was a collective effort toward teaching people to cooperate with one another?

I guess, at the end of the day what I long for is people to love their neighbor and their enemy as themselves.

Luke 4:18-30

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Tonight I’m talking about this passage at some length during Beyond Sunday School at 7 pm. You can join me in the Zoom Room if you would like to be part of the conversation. I am also realizing that this passage hits home with the conversation that my friend Mike and I had on the Simple Theologian podcast yesterday about “disappointment.”

This passage is a microcosm of the prophetic ministry of Jesus. He starts by quoting a famous passage from Isaiah. It was a passage that many in the first century were holding on to as an image of what would come in the Messiah. To be sure, when Isaiah wrote it, he was writing about the return from exile in Babylon. But, by the time of Jesus it was being held on to as something deeper, a hope for the climax of the history of Israel. Isaiah 61 had become the picture of what would happen when God would set all things right by bringing his people out from under the oppressive pagan regime and placing Israel again in its rightful place as God’s chosen people.

At first people are ecstatic! They are excited, thinking that Jesus was embodying this hope for national Israel and that the climax of history was at hand.

But, then Jesus says something that they didn’t expect. Jesus, in the words of the great theologian Lee Corso says, “Not so fast my friends!”

This was bigger than national Israel. This was inclusive. This was universal. What God is doing with the in-breaking of his kingdom is expansive in ways that the people could never have imagined.

Jesus says from the jump of his ministry, a pagan widow and a gentile cripple may have a better seat in the kingdom than national Israel. Why? Because at the heart of Jesus’ message, just like every prophet before him, was the call to repent. There had to be a change in direction. This change in direction for the people he was speaking to was to see themselves as the agent of global blessing as opposed to being the blessed.

Perhaps if Jesus was speaking to us as Christian Americans he would say, “Friends! Repent! The kingdom is here! You must no longer cry ‘God bless America!’ but ask, ‘How can we bless the world?’”

This is, in some sense what he is doing. There was a fundamental misunderstanding of the people about their role. God had chosen Israel to be agents of blessing, justice, and mercy to the whole of creation. But, Israel had flipped it around thinking that in their chosenness they were the recipients of blessing, justice, and mercy from the rest of creation.

When they were challenged, they became irate.

Why? Because they were disappointed that God was not working in accordance to their personally designed framework. They were experiencing missed expectations. Anne Lamott says, “Expectations are resentments under construction.”1 When we are disappointed by God this disappointment is often rooted in our own expectations that we have created. When we experience this disappointment we have two paths. One is to move toward resentment where we continue to feel the disappointment over and over again. This leads us into a place where we are hardened to change. Or, we can move into a season of disillusionment where we deconstruct the illusion of God that we have fashioned. This eventually leads to a deeper understanding that is based more in reality than the view we held before. I have found over the years that there is a spiral of growth as my expectations lead to disappointment that leads to disillusionment that leads to deconstruction which leads to a reconstruction of new understandings of who God is.

How do you respond when your expectations of the divine fall short? What have you done with your disappointments in God?

Matthew 4:12-17

When Jesus got word that John had been arrested, he returned to Galilee. He moved from his hometown, Nazareth, to the lakeside village Capernaum, nestled at the base of the Zebulun and Naphtali hills. This move completed Isaiah's sermon:

Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
road to the sea, over Jordan,
Galilee, crossroads for the nations.
People sitting out their lives in the dark
saw a huge light;
Sitting in that dark, dark country of death,
they watched the sun come up.

This Isaiah-prophesied sermon came to life in Galilee the moment Jesus started preaching. He picked up where John left off: "Change your life. God's kingdom is here."

Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.

What do those words mean to you?

I think if most of are honest they don’t mean a whole lot. We are a people who don’t know much about kingdoms, kings, or any such things. Sure, we have some ideas, but we are people who lived our lives in a republican democracy. In our experience the idea of a kingdom is pretty far outside our experience. We live in a time and place where we believe that each of us has the right to speak into who our leadership is. Our nation is one built on a constitution and people we vote into office to represent us.

So, if we’re honest, when we hear Jesus say, “Change your life. God’s kingdom is here,” it just doesn’t hit the same way that this kind of thing did back in the first century.

Over the last number of years this idea, “kingdom of God,” has become something that I’ve been thinking a lot about. Mostly because I realize that I don’t have a good grip on it, but also because it seems to be at the center of what Jesus was talking about and trying to live out when he was doing ministry.

I have to confess, I still don’t think I have my mind totally wrapped around what it means.

When we bump up against concepts and themes in the Scriptures that are so far outside our common experience we have to recognize the gulf that exists between our time and their time. Then, we have to being to do the work to build a bridge over that gulf. It’s hard work. This work demands something that I don’t have a lot of, humility. To do this work requires me (and you) to say, “I don’t know.” As a professional Christian that is expected to have all the answers about Christianity, that is a hard pill to swallow.

I want to be really clear, I don’t think that I have it all figured out when it comes to this whole “kingdom of God” thing.

One of the things that seems to be true about the kingdom of God is that it demands us to change. However they were living back in the first century and however we are living today, to acknowledge the kingdom of God is to acknowledge our need to change. Perhaps this is why we get uncomfortable thinking about this kind of stuff?

Why must we change? I think the answer to that comes from the end of the story. Do you remember Jesus talking with Pontius Pilate before his crucifixion? He says something to Pilate about his kingdom that I think points us toward the necessity to change. He says that his kingdom is not of this world. The way that Jesus is King is different than the way that other authorities practice their authority. It also means that his kingdom is unlike anything we have seen in history. Jesus’ kingdom transcends our usual way of thinking about these things.

Because of this, we must change.

One of the changes that I see throughout the Gospels is that Jesus is constantly reconciling people who are separated from one other. It appears that in the kingdom of God the various barriers we create between one another are brought down. We love our “us vs them” or figuring out who the “other” is. But, if we are going to try and participate in this kingdom of God then we are going to have to change and set aside our desires to sort and separate.

I’m still struggling to grasp and understand the kingdom of God metaphor and how to understand it in light of our current reality. How do you make sense of it? For me the bridge building comes from that reality that it’s not a kingdom of this world, so it allows me some freedom to leave the militaristic version of kingdom to something else entirely. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.