February 9, 2020
I was born in Des Moines, Iowa. I was baptized at
Windsor Heights Lutheran Church by the pastor who would eventually become my
first bishop after my ordination. We
spent a few years on my grandparent’s farm, but then moved to Ames, where I was
confirmed at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church.
After I graduated from Ames High, I attended Luther
College in Decorah, Iowa, majoring in philosophy. I decided I wanted to go to seminary. Two things influenced my choice of
seminaries: first, attending a Lutheran seminary held little attraction for
me. I believed that the theological
viewpoint would be too narrow for me.
Second, if I was going to be a Lutheran pastor, I knew that I was likely
to end up in the upper Midwest. So, if I wanted to sow my wild oats, I needed
to do it right away.
So, I decided to go as far away from Iowa as I could
get – I went to the School of Theology at Claremont, in southern
California. STC, as it was known at the
time, was an ecumenical seminary, but owned by the United Methodists, so most
students were Methodist. There were a
number of UCC students, as well as Disciples of Christ. Lutherans were rare. In
a class of 25-30 students, I might be the only Lutheran.
One day in class, a professor was lecturing on the
Sermon on the Mount. He turned to me and
asked, “Chris, what would Martin Luther say about this?”
I had no idea what Martin Luther would say about
it. But I was in a class of 30
people. I had to say something.
So,
I said, “Martin Luther would say that this shows us how much we need God, and how
much we need God’s grace in Jesus Christ.”
And
that was right!
Much
of the Sermon on the Mount seems to be made up of impossible commands. Their primary purpose, Lutherans generally believe,
is not to force us into legal obedience.
The purpose of what Lutherans call, “the Law,” is to show us our need
for God and to invite us to reliance upon God’s grace, reliance upon what God
does for us in Jesus and not on what we do for God .
That’s
how Lutherans interpret the Sermon on the Mount. But I confess that I wasn’t entirely
satisfied with that understanding of Jesus’ teaching. Is the point of all this teaching simply to
make clear our own failures or own inabilities to set things right and our own
need for God? Or is Jesus calling us to
a new path? Is he showing us how to
realize properly the teaching that Moses gave long ago?
In
the course of this sermon, Jesus makes a number of shocking statements to which
our first reaction is likely to be, “Oh! I could never do that!” We’ll look at some of them more closely next
week. But the statement that always gave me the most difficulty was the one he
makes in 5:20 – “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the
scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Now
this statement gives Christians – and especially Lutherans – a lot of
problems. The word, “righteousness,” has
certain negative connotations. Chief
among them is “self-righteousness.” A
person becomes self-righteous when they think that their beliefs and behavior
put them on a higher moral plane than others.
Lutherans are, with good reason, wary of this word and anything that
might suggest that we have achieved a special status with God through our
behavior – or through what Lutherans call, “works righteousness.”
To make it worse, Jesus says that we should be more
righteous than the scribes and Pharisees, and they are the world champions of
righteousness. They are super strict
about the rules. Along the way, in the
gospel of Matthew, they criticize Jesus for allowing his disciples to violate
the Sabbath by plucking grains of wheat from a field to eat and by failing to
follow the tradition of making sure to wash their hands ritually before every
meal.
We generally think that Jesus is telling us that we
must out-Pharisee the Pharisees, that we must be even stricter about the rules
than they are. But I believe that Jesus
is telling us something else. I believe,
as Dallas Willard suggests, that Jesus is telling us that we are to become the
kind of people who naturally do what the law requires, what God wants, rather
than merely outwardly following the rules.
To understand what Jesus is talking about a bit better,
let’s look at two different characters in the gospel of Matthew. The first is really a group – the
Pharisees. The charge that Jesus most
often levels against the Pharisees in the gospel of Matthew is that they are
“hypocrites.” The Greek work for hypocrites
is a term from the theater. It refers to
the masks that actors wear on stage.
Because the stage is often set in a large amphitheater, the masks are
large and have exaggerated expressions so that everyone can see. This, Jesus charges, is what the Pharisees
do. As it says in the next chapter, they
practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them. Outwardly they conform to the law, but
inwardly they are unchanged.
In contrast to this kind of righteousness, there is
Joseph. Mary gets most of our attention
at Christmas. But Joseph is part of the
story as well. This is the Christmas
story that Matthew tells.
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in
this way: When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they
lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and
unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. (1:18-19)
According to the Law of Moses, Joseph would have been
within his rights to have Mary stoned publicly because she has brought shame
upon Israel. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21) But Joseph, because he is righteous, chooses
not to do this. He does not act to protect
his own reputation. He does not use the
law as a shield for himself or as a weapon against Mary. He acts with kindness toward Mary without
making a show of it. And this is why he
is righteous.
This
is how Jesus wants us to act. Even more,
it is what he wants us to become.
Because Jesus is most interested in inner transformation – not merely
outward conformity, but inner transformation.
It
is not merely Dallas Willard that changed my mind about the Sermon on the
Mount. It is also my own experience of transformation.
After
I had been ordained for about 15 years, I decided I needed to get serious about
my spiritual life. I had never been able
to match my idea of what a pastor’s spiritual life should be – daily Bible
reading and verbal prayer (especially with one’s spouse!) I had read that the late Episcopal priest, Morton
Kelsey, said he took up meditation so he could find of way of experiencing the
things he had been preaching about for many years.
So,
I started meditating. I sat down. I lit a candle. I experimented with different kinds of
meditation – centering prayer, guided meditation, chanting, gazing at icons,
counting breaths, body scans, mindfulness.
I would get bored after a month or two and change to something else.
Even
in those early months, though, when I didn’t really know what I was doing,
change began to happen.
I
noticed the first change when I was on my way to the hospital. I hated making hospital visits. My anxiety would sky rocket because, when you
walk into a hospital room, you never know what you’re going to get – the
patient is in good spirits and ready to go home; the patient is in pain and
awaiting treatment; the patient is scared and awaiting diagnosis; the patient
is not there; the family is there; and on and on it could go.
While
I was walking through the parking lot at Appleton Medical Center one day and
feeling my anxiety go up, I said to myself, “Chris, focus on your breath.” I did that.
Immediately, I began to feel better.
I felt as though I was ready for whatever I would find in that hospital
room. And, after that, I loved making
hospital visits.
Then,
one Sunday morning, after hearing me preach, a very thoughtful woman said,
“Your sermons have gotten deep.” I
smiled and thanked her, but inside I said to myself, “I thought my sermons were
deep!”
When
I asked my wife about it, she said, “Your sermons have been deep, but they’ve
gotten deeper.”
Over
these last 20 years or so, I have continued to practice meditation. It has made me more open, more accessible,
more gracious and compassionate. (If you
don’t believe me, ask my wife!)
I’m
not telling you this so that you’ll start meditating. I am telling you this as an example of what
Jesus is talking about – becoming the kind of people who naturally do what the
law requires. As we heard from Micah
last week: to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.
In
defense of Luther, I would say he believed that simply preaching the gospel –
the good news of God for us in Jesus – would bring this kind of transformation about
in people. I would also agree that Lutherans
have a legitimate concern about “works righteousness.” Jesus himself points to this in chapter
6: "Beware of practicing your piety
before others, in order to be seen by them."
The
way to avoid the problems of self-righteousness, however, is not to do nothing
or avoid doing good altogether. It is instead
to focus on motivation. Jesus provides
us with this:
You
are the salt of the earth. You may seem small and insignificant, but your
effect is profound. You are essential in
bringing healing and preservation and life to the world.
You
are the light of the world. Let your
light so shine before others, Jesus tells us, that they may see your good works
and give glory – not to yourselves – but to your Father in heaven.
You
are made for love. You are created for
the glory of God. You are here for the
healing of the world.
This
is the righteousness that is greater than the scribes and Pharisees. It is the life into which Jesus invites you.
Comments
Post a Comment