February 22, 2015 -- First Sunday of Lent
Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation[b] of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that theLord your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Matthew 5:14-20
14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Sermon:
I was in the grocery store line behind an exhausted mother and her frustrated toddler the other day. The mother was at least five years younger than me, with her unwashed hair hastily pulled up in a haphazard ponytail, donned in sweatpants and a t-shirt. The little boy couldn’t have been more than five, and he was clearly not in the mood for grocery shopping. He kept trying to reach for candy and say, “Mine!” and his mom would snap at him with an irritated, “NO.”
Eventually, the little boy started crying. The mother’s emotions overflowed as well as her voice rose in anger. “Just do what I tell you!” she shouted in the little boy’s face. “Why won’t you just behave? What do you have to be so bad all the time?!” And then she slapped his arm. Hard.
He just stared back at her for a moment, taking that in. And then another wail rose as the spiral continued, of them pulling each other into deeper and deeper frustration.
I don’t know what it’s like at home for that young mom. I don’t know if she has other kids, or if she works a couple of minimum wage jobs to try to pay for those groceries she was buying. I don’t know if she has a partner at home, or if her only company is screaming toddlers. But I do know this: whatever it was she was trying to communicate to her toddler, it wasn’t working. He wasn’t able to be who she wanted him to be through her shouts and slaps. Like many children, he probably realized that he most had his mother’s attention when he misbehaved, and so he kept it up on purpose.
“Why won’t you just behave? Why do you have to be so bad all the time?” she demanded.
What is it exactly, that makes us change our behavior for others, or for God? Is it the knowledge that we are fundamentally bad all the time, that we are a constant source of disappointment?
Is that why God gave us the 10 commandments, the law, as strict rules for us, so that maybe God won’t be so annoyed at us all the time? Is God just an overworked, exhausted, unwashed mother, tired of another tantrum and ready to just slap us?
Perhaps. Or perhaps we’ve just reduced the gracious law of God to rules. Rules keep us in line. Rules keep us sure of who’s in and who’s out. Rules show us what is expected of us. Rules make us feel safe.
But they weren’t called the 10 Rules, now were they? They were called the 10 commandments. And commandment is mitzvah, the Jewish word for commitment. And mitzvah is deeply rooted in covenant relationship. Those commandments are housed in an understanding that God chose a people for peace (shalom) and life. That God graciously ordered their life together to make that a reality. To understand commandments – the law of God – outside of the context of that covenant relationship God created, is to reduce them to a to-do list.
Lent can sometimes feel like that. Do this: pray more. Don’t do that: eat chocolate or drink coffee. Do this: go to church. Don’t do that: spread gossip. Do this: show how faithful you are to others. Don’t do that: admit your doubts.
And, just like the law without covenant becomes hollow, so does this season. It becomes simply one big guilt trip, 40 days of remembering what disappointments we are to our weary Parent God. But that is not what the law was meant to do, and that is not what Lent was meant to be.
Jesus came to place the law of God back where it should be – housed within an understanding of God’s covenantal love for us, a covenant extended to all of us. He came to say that this law wasn’t just a rule book or to-do list. He came to put flesh and blood on the reality that God will go to extraordinary lengths to show us we matter, and we cab ne better. He came not to abolish, destroy, the law, but to fulfill it. The word is actually “complete.” The same word Jesus uttered from the cross when he was murdered by the State: “It is complete.”
Why was the law made “complete” on the cross? That’s what we’ll discover together this Lent, as we journey with this “rebel with a cause” Jesus. You see, when you redefine the law as what it was always meant to be – about covenant relationship with God and one another – that is a very threatening thing.
It threatens the Keepers of the Rules: the religious leaders who use the law as a tool for segregation and spiritual domination; the political leaders who use the law as a tool for social subjugation and power. Make no mistake: Jesus didn’t go to the cross because our vengeful, angry, tired God wanted to slap somebody and slapped her son instead of us.
Jesus went to the cross because he chose to. He went to the cross because he consistently subverted the Keepers of the Rules and extended the covenantal love of God to those they deemed unworthy. He went to the cross because he broke the rules of men to complete the loving law of God.
If we are going to take this Lenten journey to the cross, we will need to understand that Jesus didn’t walk around placidly holding sheep all the time. He turned over tables of oppression. He flagrantly broke Sabbath rules by healing no matter what day of the week it was. He mocked a Pharisaic idea of what cleanness and uncleanness meant, and sipped water with a Samaritan woman. He called people hypocrites when that’s what they were being, and asserted that a faith community could sort out its own conflicts without a power-hungry priest-type manipulating the situation. He told the most powerful in society that the greatest were the servants. And finally, he said he was the Son of God, the Messiah. He was not a mild, meek Messiah. He was a revolutionary, a renegade, an agitator of the status quo. And they killed him for it.
This Lent, let’s get to know that Jesus. Let’s get to know why he fulfilled the law by bending the rules towards justice and love. Let’s let his holy anger and righteous resistance unsettle us for these 40 days. And then lets come to the cross together, to see the law made complete in his sacrifice.
We may think we know the law. But do we know law in the context of covenantal relationship? We may think we know Jesus. But do we know the Jesus who ushered in a peaceful insurrection along with the resurrection?
Let’s meet the real Jesus this Lent, that the law of God might be written on our hearts, and recited to our children and grandchildren with love. Because, rooted in that kind of loving law, we might just be able to change. We might stop acting out to try to get God’s attention, and instead hear the cries of those in need around us. We might stop keeping score of how much better we are than others, and instead confess that we’ve never got it exactly right, no matter how good we are at faking it.
And we might start actually living the risky and self-sacrificial lives our Messiah calls us to, because we know that we are extravagantly loved by our Parent God, and so we know we can love God and our neighbor out of that same extravagance. Let’s make this journey of Lent a journey towards a law and a life fulfilled in the dangerous love of Jesus Christ, our rebellious Redeemer. Amen.
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