We continue this week with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and get to the very heart of Jesus’ message to his followers. And what a message it is. Turn the other cheek, if someone wrongs you don’t retaliate, love your enemies, pray for those who are out to do you harm. It’s a heavy list. And then, Jesus sums it all up with the words that cut through us like a knife: “Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” Say what?
Did you get stuck on those words as I was reading the gospel this morning? I suspect a lot of us did. So, let’s start there, because if you can understand what Jesus was really saying in this last verse of today’s text, then the rest of what he’s saying makes sense. “Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” When we hear that, we probably think that Jesus is calling us to moral perfectionism. He wants us to live perfect little lives and never make any mistakes. But that’s not at all what this meant in its original language. The word perfect comes from the Greek word for goal, end or purpose. So, it’s about becoming what you were meant to be, accomplishing your God-given purpose in life. In The Message translation of the Bible, Eugene Peterson does a better job of translating this word from the Greek. He renders it in English as, “You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.”
Can you see how different this is? What Jesus is asking us to do in the Sermon on the Mount is to live as God’s beloved people in the world. Our life’s purpose if not to try really hard to measure up to some artificial standard that we can’t possibly meet. It’s to live as the people God created us to be. I gave you a copy of Peterson’s translation of this whole text because this understanding of what Jesus is getting at really helps us to see how the whole thing fits. Let’s read through it. It’s in your bulletins on the insert.
38-42"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.
43-47"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.
48"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."
Jesus isn’t telling us, “Don’t ever make any mistakes or do anything wrong.” In fact, if you live like that – trying to be perfect – you will end up doing exactly what Jesus is NOT asking of us here. Because what he wants of us is love that is extravagant, over the top, love that doesn’t hold back. You can’t love like that if you’re afraid of making a mistake.
Have any of you ever seen the movie Babette's Feast? It takes place in a remote village in 19th century Denmark. Two sisters live there who are the daughters of a pastor who founded his own strict Christian sect. After their father dies, the sisters continue to lead the shrinking group of aging believers. They live joyless, austere lives.
One day a woman shows up from Paris who needs a place to stay. They take her in and she becomes their cook and housekeeper. She learns to cook the kind of food they eat, which is much like their lives: colorless, formless, and tasteless. For them, food is for sustenance, not pleasure.
What no one realizes is that Babette was a famous chef in Paris. Her only link to her former life is a lottery ticket that a friend in Paris renews for her every year. One day, she wins the lottery of 10,000 francs. It would be enough for her to return to the life she left in Paris 14 years earlier. But she decides, instead, to use the money to prepare a delicious dinner for the sisters and their small congregation. And that’s what she does. She doesn’t hold back, spending the entire 10,000 francs on this meal.
Babette prepares them a dinner the likes of which they never could have imagined: turtle soup, buckwheat cakes with caviar and sour cream, quail in puff pastry shell with foie gras and truffle sauce, rum sponge cake with figs and glaceed fruits, numerous rare wines. All served on the finest china, flatware, crystal and table linens.
Those who gather for the decadent meal secretly agreed beforehand that they wouldn’t enjoy it or make any comments about the food. But in the course of the eating and the drinking you watch them being transformed. Their mistrust breaks down, old wrongs are forgotten, ancient loves are rekindled and a mystical redemption of the human spirit settles over the table.
The meal is filled with eucharistic symbolism as it reflects a love that is extravagant, over the top, one that doesn’t hold back. It’s a model of the Jesus Way for us, showing us what life looks like in the Kingdom of God.
Some of you have heard me quote Annie Dillard who says that we catch grace like a man filling a cup under a waterfall. I refer to it often because it’s the best image I can think of to describe what the Jesus Way of life looks like. Imagine holding a cup under a waterfall. The waterfall is the love of God and it keeps coming and coming and coming. It’s always extravagant, over the top, a love that you couldn’t hold back if you tried. And that love fills us to overflowing. It fills us and it spills out all over the place and then it fills us again and again. That’s the way it works when we open ourselves to receive the love God has for us. And when we live as the people God created us to be, as God’s beloved, God’s love pours into our lives and out of our lives onto others. We can’t help it. That’s who God is and that’s who we are.
But it seems that we have trouble living like an open cup under a waterfall. All too often we’re more like jars. We take in a little bit of God’s love and we seal it up and carry it around like it’s for us and us alone. That’s not who God has called us to be.
So, what is it in your life that keeps you from being the person God has called you to be? What keeps you from loving extravagantly, over the top with a love that doesn’t hold back? I want you to think seriously about that today. I’m going to pass out some pieces of paper that I’d like you to complete. They say: “Believing I am God’s beloved child, I know that I am called to share God’s love with others. But I find it hard because…” I’d like you to take some time to think about what blocks you from being the kind of loving person God has called you to be and write that down. Then, when we receive the offering, we’ll have the opportunity to offer those concerns to God. These won’t be read or shared in any way, but they’re a way for us to bring our need for wholeness to God. So, if the ushers could help distribute the papers, let’s take some time to reflect on this and fill them in.
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Now, hang onto those, and when the offering plate passes your way, I encourage you to include these with your offering to God.
And then, there’s something else I’d like you to do this week. In a step toward living more as the person God has called you to be, I want to encourage you to venture outside your comfort zone and dare to love extravagantly. Think of a way that you would typically hold back, and bust loose. Just once.
• For example, you might bake some cookies, take them to your neighbor’s house, ring the doorbell and say, “Hi, I’m Nancy. I’m embarrassed that I’ve lived next door to you for two years and we’ve never spoken. So, today I decided to do something about it. These cookies are for you…”
• How about sending a card to a friend you’ve been estranged from, just to let them know you’ve been thinking about them and hope they’re doing well?
• You might say the words, I love you to someone you love but have never told.
• Instead of flipping that guy the bird when he cuts you off in traffic, why not say a prayer for him? (God knows he needs it!)
• Or you might just say hello to a stranger on the street, if that’s not the sort of thing you would normally do.
The point is to challenge yourself to step outside your comfort zone for the sake of love. To stop carrying the love of God around in a jar and let it flow into your life and over the top onto others. It’s to practice a love that doesn’t hold back. If you think you can do that pretty well, then I challenge you to go even further. Find a new way to express over the top love every day.
As you leave the communion table today, you’re going to receive a little reminder that I hope you will carry with your throughout the week so you don’t forget. Put it in your wallet, or your purse or in your pocket, or stick it up on your mirror, wherever it will remind you that you are God’s beloved child and to be what you have been called.