Sermon 16th February 2014

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, continues our study of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  The Gospel reading is from Matthew 7 verses 1-14.

“The Sermon on the Mount isn’t meant to be admired, but obeyed”! I realise that this is quite a departure from my usual, more amusing, way of beginning sermons. But that does need to be said, and heard, as we come towards the end of this series. So: “The Sermon on the Mount is not meant to be admired, but obeyed”! And yes of course that means by you, and me!

Now it should be noted that taking this starting route cuts off all sorts of amusing possibilities. I even discovered that there is comic strip called Pearls before swine, which has great fun-poking potential. Failing that, I might have quoted whoever first used that famous line in response to the person who had let her go through the door first. After hearing, “Age before beauty”, the actress allegedly responded, “Pearls before swine”. Or I could jokingly suggest that this is what is happening right now, of course! But doing anything of that kind would be a long way from what Jesus meant when he first said it. It would also detract from the key lesson that we all need to learn, before we move on into Lent: that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount isn’t meant to be admired but obeyed. So, that is now out there!

The way dates have worked out means that we’ll take an all-age break next week, before closing out this series. But by this stage of his teaching Jesus has already begun to draw some conclusions. Yes, it’s probably more accurate to suggest that Matthew has had a hand in that. As we’ve heard a few times along the way, most scholars think that Matthew gathered Jesus’ teaching from several occasions into this condensed collection. But these are all Jesus’ words; and it’s easy to see how they have built up to this point. There will doubtless be more to say on that in a fortnight; but today we do need to see how Jesus was bringing it all together. In best, succinct, most challenging, and unarguable fashion, Jesus said, in 7 v. 12: “Do for others what you want them to do for you: this is the meaning of the Law of Moses and of the teachings of the prophets. (GNB) // So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.’ (NIV). And there is the Golden Rule!

Now just to be clear, Jesus wasn’t the first great teacher to express this thought. It was already in 1^st-Century Jewish use – and they’d probably copied it from the Greeks. But! Jesus was the first one to express it positively. It may be subtle, but there’s an important difference here. It’s not the same as saying “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you”. I’d say that’s made very clear in the second part of this quote – which was unique to Jesus. And what a staggering statement that is! Think of just how much there is in the Law and the Prophets; of all the ground those Old Testament books cover; and of what they teach us about God. And now think that they can be boiled down to just this one phrase: “Do for (or to) others what you want them to do for you”. Of course the detail is complex, and needs careful working out; but loving God is as simple as this! “Do for (or to) others what you want them to do for you”.

The positive expression of it is important - because it then becomes a positive invitation to do good! Christianity has, unfortunately (and, even more unfortunately, often rightly so) been portrayed as a negative religion. And, to be honest, it is all too easy to slip into negative, legalistic thinking, acting, and being. That’s well illustrated in the way that Jesus began today’s section – which is a subject that we’ll come back to. But for now we’ll stick with the positive that immediately precedes Jesus’ declaration of this ‘Golden Rule’. That’s the positive that is God himself - our Heavenly Father, as Jesus taught us to know Him.

In his commentary Tom Wright focuses on what verses 7-10 teach about prayer. There certainly are wonderful, and very important, prayer-lessons to learn from them. Members of both Action Groups could tell you that I began our recent meetings talking about prayer based on these very verses. I quoted them from a translation which best conveys the sense of the Greek. That encourages us (as Jesus himself does) to go on asking; to go on seeking; to go on knocking – because that is what prayer so often is and take. It needs persistence – as well as ever-better listening to God, for how and what to pray for, of course. And yes, there is easily a full sermon that could be preached on prayer alone from these verses.

However, it’s one of the delights of the Bible that God can speak to us on different subjects from the same passage. As I say, I think that in the greater sweep of Jesus’ whole Sermon, the bigger-picture focus here is on who God is, and what He’s like. Not least amongst the points that Jesus is making is that God really is the best Father that we could ever want, or have. He is the one who loves us; who always has time for us; who always wants us to want to spend time with him; and who is always more ready to listen than we are to pray, as the saying goes. So His response is always to give us the good that we need (not what we ‘want’, note well!)

For all the failings of our own earthly fathers (or of our own as fathers, perhaps), very few of us doubt that they want the best for their children. To explain Jesus’ illustration here, fathers aren’t mean practical jokers. The Palestine 1^st-Century staple bread was round loaves that could have looked like stones. The local fish was eel-like looking, rather like a snake. What kind of father would ever trick their hungry child like that – give them a stone instead of a loaf, or a snake instead of a fish? How much more true is that of God, who is our heavenly Father, Jesus says. And He, that, is to be our example, then: we are positively to seek out the good of others, and to do it for them. That is to be our response to being loved and cared for by our Father. And that is the summary of the Law and the Prophets, Jesus says!

So: how are we to go about doing that, in practical terms, then? It’s not at all often that I suggest we start with self; but this may just be right time to do that, in fact. Following the example, and teachings of Jesus, as ever, we need to begin with the positive. As he said, “Do for/ to others what you want them to do for you”. Of course there is always a need to be a little bit careful and sensitive in these things, because people do have different tastes. But in what ways would you like to experience God’s love and care for you? Well, who then comes to your mind as someone who may need to experience something of God’s love and care right now? How about (after listening prayer) then doing that good, kind, loving, and caring thing for them; with the aim of them experiencing God’s love through your positive actions?

I could say that this is a radical thought, because in many ways it is one! Certainly it is in the eyes of people who don’t believe in God (which is probably just what Jesus meant about pearls before swine, by the way.) But one of the joys about being part of this church are all the ways in which this does already happen. That’s not to say that we can’t do better, or more, because of course we can – and we ‘should’, if I can risk saying that. Of course we don’t all spend all of our time looking for ways to show each other God’s love. But that is the aim. It starts with doing it more than we do now; and it take each of us being responsible for what we do, and say.

So, that is the positive: and very positive it is too. But today’s passage begins with the negative, and we mustn’t try to duck that, any more than we can ignore the positive. So: “Don’t judge” then, Jesus said, because how you treat others is the way that you will be treated yourself. As the NIV has it, God isn’t mentioned here; but that’s certainly the implication, so the GNB is also right. And it is the same, Godly principle that’s at work here, I’d suggest. This too is based on the nature, and character of God – who judges, yes; but He does so with the mercy, grace and forgiveness that we can’t manage. The facts of this Communion service remind us of all that very powerfully, as we’re all welcomed at the Lord’s Table.

So we can’t, and mustn’t judge, then: not in the sense of refusing to be part of the legal system; but rather morally. Let’s be honest: it’s oh so easy to do that, to judge others. And often we do so by standards that we wouldn’t dream of applying to ourselves. But, in the classic illustration, every time we point the finger at someone else, there are 3 fingers pointing back at us! Jesus says very clearly that here too we are to start with ourselves. Of course none of us has nothing in our eye, to use his word-picture for it. We are indeed called to help one another to live more Godly-shaped lives, as other parts of the Bible teach. But it is to be help; not condemnation; and even to begin to manage that, we first need to take a long, hard, honest look in a mirror. What we see in there won’t be pretty; but it will be freeing, in the sense of enabling us to help and be helped in our quest to become more like Jesus. And there is no doubt that key in that process is stopping looking down on others.

That just about covers the whole of today’s passage. At the end of it – even with so much left unsaid, on so much of it – we may quail slightly when we hear again the quote that I began with: “The Sermon on the Mount isn’t meant to be admired, but obeyed”. It doesn’t make that statement any less true, though. So it’s little wonder, then, that Jesus (or Matthew) ends this Sermon with a series of warnings to his hearers. They (and we) have been hearing serious, life-changing, eternity-impacting teaching. They (like us) had to decide how they would respond to it, and to the person of Jesus.

It’s a very long way from easy, Jesus said. There are choices to make, at every turn. Nobody can drift along in the flow, and just get there in the end. No, if you want to get in through this gate, into God’s life, you have to be intentional about it. The road to travel to it is narrow; and not many people choose it, because it is so hard. How about you, then? I’m asking that not in a judgmental way, but rather because nobody else can make these choices for you. Today we have been shown some more of the signposts along this road. We’ve seen more of what it looks like to travel along it. Of course there is another, much easier road to drift down, for those who want to. But this is the one into God’s kind of life. It’s the one that is to be walked step by transforming step; into His likeness; with His help, and His gifts. So let’s pray that we do indeed go this way, then ...