Sermon 2nd March 2014

Today, on the last Sunday before Lent, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, continues our study of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  The reading is from Matthew 7 verses 15-29.

To revert to type again, how about starting with this lot?

“Water is composed of two gins, Oxy-gin and Hydro-gin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.”

“Blood flows down one leg and up the other.”

“H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water.”

“For a nosebleed, put the nose much lower than the body, until the heart stops.”

“To keep milk from turning sour, keep it in the cow.”

“A vibration is a motion that can’t make up its mind which direction it wants to go in.”

“We say that the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things that people forget to put the top on.”

“I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing.”

“Vacuum: A large, empty space where the Pope lives.”

And, reminding us of last time’s sermon: “To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.”

Those are all (allegedly) actual quotes from children’s science exam papers. Each of them could well be helpful, in some way, for our final learning from Jesus’ first teaching block in Matthew’s Gospel. But, along with them, it still also needs to be said again that “The Sermon on Mount isn’t meant to be admired, but obeyed”. In case you missed it, that was the quote I used to start this summing up process a fortnight ago. That seemed then – as it still does now – a fitting way to round off a series that began with a challenge like this. Quoting again: “The point of the Sermon on Mount is to dare to live in present in ways that will make sense in God’s promised future.” After hearing the whole Sermon, the question is: will we do it?!

If you want a headline summary of what today is about, that is it. After hearing the whole of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the question that’s put to each of us today is: will we do it?

Now this may seem like lot of quoting, but here’s another from the start of this series: “The basis of this challenge” (says Bible scholar, Tom Wright) “is that God’s future has already arrived in the present, in the person of Jesus”. And that, of course was the message that Matthew was so wanting to get out there, as widely as he could. Like the other 3 Gospel-writers, his main agenda was for people to come to know who Jesus was, and just what he had done. Matthew then wanted them, like him, to become disciples of Jesus. Disciples were, and are, people living in, and for, God’s kingdom; in all the ways that Jesus had taught. That’s what Matthew also laid out very clearly in his book – what Jesus had taught – in a very systematic fashion. He did it for a very particular audience too, as we also learned at the start of this series.

Well, today is the 7^th, and last, instalment that it has taken to go through Jesus’ entire Sermon. Hopefully in that time we have come to appreciate that the systematic nature of it makes this teaching applicable to all of us. (As ever, if you have missed anything, or want to hear any of the sermons again, they’re all available in text and audio form on our website, or you can ask for paper copies.) So Matthew may have brought together different stands of Jesus’ teaching in this 1 place particularly for his original Jewish readers; but it’s just as relevant for us Gentile in 21^st-Century London! Again the hope very much is that that’s what we have not ‘just’ learned, but have also experienced since early January. To repeat Jesus words, what matters is doing it!

As you’d hopefully expect, we can’t and won’t get away from that key issue today. Unless and until we commit ourselves to the actual doing of Jesus’ teaching then we can’t really claim to have learned anything at all – because we clearly haven’t. Of course it isn’t coincidental that this word-picture is used to end Jesus’ teaching (even though Matthew then had his own editorial comment to round the whole section off). To use a journey image for discipleship: if we have come all this far with Jesus – and it has been quite some way – then we need to know that this isn’t about closing our eye and hoping for the best. To pick up another strand from a fortnight ago – before our brief all-age pause – this is very much about being intentional. If we do want to enter into God’s life, it is through a narrow gate; the road that leads there is straight, and hard; and so not many choose to walk it. To walk it takes making, and keeping, hard, costly, Godly choices: day in and day out.

Now we really shouldn’t be too surprised that we have landed up here. Think back to where we started, to how Jesus’ Sermon began. Those Beatitudes, as they’re known, were Jesus making a key announcement. He was telling people about something that was starting to happen; something amazing – which is good news for all people everywhere; because Jesus is bringing in God’s kingdom. Of course Matthew calls it “The Kingdom of heaven” instead, so as not to offend his Jewish readers; but Kingdom is an absolutely key theme: in Jesus’ Sermon, and throughout the Gospels. It has not been new to any regular Bible reader, I’d hope. Time and again in the New Testament we see this idea, this reality,that should be shaping our whole life.

So we have heard about the Kingdom of God plenty of times before; often in the way that Tom Wright so helpfully expresses it. Again it came up at the start of this series, the reminder that heaven is not the place we go when we die. Rather it’s the realm where God is fully in charge: that realm sometimes touches the here and now, as it especially did through the words and deeds of Jesus when he lived here in person. God’s promise is that one day these two realms will be fully joined. In this series we’ve seen how Jesus himself taught us to pray for just that in this Sermon. Many scholars think that is the key point of this entire block of teaching: that it centres on our praying and living out the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Be that as it may, what we’re told is when the Kingdom of God comes in all its glory we will see in full what we only catch very occasional glimpses of now. That really is a day to look forward to, then – and to pray and work for now. This life of heaven, where God is already King, is to become the life of the whole world, for everyone. God’s promise is that life as we know it will be transformed into the realm of beauty, delight and wonder that He has always intended it to be. A key part of our calling is to do whatever we can to make the presence of that Kingdom of God ever more real now, in the life of the world that God has placed us in. That is pretty much how being salt and light really looks in practice, I’d suggest. So, once Jesus had begun by making his central announcement, he set about teaching his followers how to go and do it.

Something else that we have learned in this series is that it was most likely Matthew who had grouped Jesus’ teaching together in this way. In headline terms, this grouping, or Sermon is made up mostly of Jesus’ ethical demands on his disciples. At some point the target audience (as it were) changed, from his closest followers to anyone who followed him; and there were plenty of them, of course. So this teaching is for all people; and it covers all of human life too. Some of that may be couched more in 1^st-Century Palestine language; but it really doesn’t take too much to work out how it also applies today. The reality is that people face so many of the same issues, and share so many of the same human failings, even if are in different shapes.

There has been way too much detail covered in this series to repeat it all now. But, as I say, all the sermons are still available, so do go through them again: on your own or in small groups. It’s all important, and very practical, stuff. For example: it’s to do with how we treat, and relate to, one another – inside, and outside the church; in marriage; at work; and home; how we treat and relate to God including prayer and spiritual discipline. We have also been challenged not to worry; not to judge; and never to give up; all because God is our loving Father, who longs to listen, to help us, and give us all that we need. Along the way have even been offered a Golden Rule to live by! And of course all that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of where we have been, or of the learning that we have been invited to do on this journey.

One feature that has been there at every stage along the way may be something that we’ve not noticed; until now, when Matthew points it out. Perhaps it’s one of those features people today take for granted – but they certainly didn’t in Jesus’ time. His hearers were amazed because he taught with great authority. Not for Jesus was it setting out what lots of people before him had taught on the topics that he taught about. Instead he was straight in with a bold, authoritative, “I tell you ...”. Jesus did that because he declared God’s truth in these new Godly ways – as God himself. It was part of his claim to be God that he made ever more strongly as time went on. In Lent, from next Sunday onwards, we will follow that part of the story, and see the consequences of it.

On this last Sunday before that part of the journey begins, here is where we now stand. We have heard (I hope) all that Jesus has had to say, with such great authority; on so many varied, but related, and all crucial topics. So what are we to make of this; and him? Well, if we are to journey onward, living and bringing in this amazing Kingdom life, we need to concentrate: take nothing for granted; have our wits about us. We already know that we need to be intentional. We also need to “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”, as these verses are put in Message version.

That’s all plenty to ponder further on – as indeed I hope we will each do, on into Lent, perhaps. But the one thing we can’t afford to miss today is Jesus’ final warning. When he talked about storms here (however relevant we may think that is after our recent UK weather!), he actually meant the Day of Judgment. This teaching is clearly, and intentionally, all set in an eternal context – where Jesus’ knowing of us (not so much our knowing of him, note) is the determining factor. Were there time, we might explore how some actions don’t seem to count as proof of a genuine faith. You may like to grapple with that yourself; but perhaps it’s something to do with a contrast between public show and Godly reality in life’s grind. Quoting from the Message again, what Jesus said is: “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, home-owner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on”. And there, I think is the joy, and challenge, of this teaching. Does the Sermon on the Mount shape our daily living in, and for, God’s future in the present; in all these ways and areas that Jesus set out? Does it? And will it do that? That is what makes us genuine disciples, in both God’s present and His future: if we hear Jesus’ word; and obey it. The question for each of us – the question for you, then – is: will you? Let’s pray ...