No Turning Back

The old "Just Say No" is powerless to bring righteousness; only the Spirit of Love can conquer the flesh...

Proper 8c • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

We continue today, on this Sunday before Independence Day, in our walk through Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, and true to form, Paul continues to press his case, in defense of himself and his gospel, deep into the conflict between justification by grace through faith and the idea that one can be justified by means of the law. We find him here once again stressing the point that by freedom from the law he does not mean lawlessness; liberty is not the same thing as anarchy. As I said in previous reflections on this text, to be free does not mean entirely to come loose. Freedom comes with its own responsibilities and disciplines. A driver’s license gives you freedom to drive, but the responsibility to drive safely. And just as there are traffic laws designed to help people drive safely — for example, the rules that one drives on the right side of the street, that one drives with the flow of traffic instead of against it, and observes the speed limit — so too there is a basic rule that assists Christians in living a righteous life in freedom: and that is the rule of love. Saint Paul even quotes it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This one law sums up and distills all that is valuable in the rest of the law.

This was the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Saint Paul, and if you want to get a little bit more modern about it, I will remind you that it was summarized in the last century by that unlikely quartet of evangelists, John, Paul, George, and Ringo in that memorable phrase, “All you need is love.”

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So, you might well ask, What’s the problem? It seems that the Galatians wanted more — they wanted more like the annoying little girl in the commercial: “We want more we want more!” In this case what they want more of is more rules, more laws; they can’t seem to accept the wisdom of “all you need is love.” Paul gets exasperated with them — no surprise, as he is throughout this letter — reminding them that “for freedom Christ has set us free… Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery!” Jesus has shown you the way of love; do that, and you will live!

I can well sympathize with Paul’s exasperation. A few years ago I wrote an essay on this very subject, highlighting the fact that Jesus has given us the law of love as a guide to right behavior. Most people seem to understand this, but one respondent in particular kept insisting that there had to be more. In end I said he didn’t have to take my work for it; he could take Jesus’s word for it or Saint Paul! But he still couldn’t believe that they might have meant what they said. Jesus offers us the freedom to live in love — with its joys as well as its responsibilities — but some wish to turn back to a rule-book rather than embracing a guiding principle that will require them to engage in spiritual discernment.

For, let’s face it, the old rule book from four or five thousand years ago has rules in it that no longer apply to us, but also lacks rules for many of the things that we encounter in our daily lives. What are we to do with new things that come along, like cloning, that the Scripture says nothing about? If we approach everything with this law of love in our hearts it will give us the tool to find new answers to new questions, new ways to live righteous lives under the responsibilities, and with the freedom of love.

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Paul urges the Galatians not to get involved in what he calls “the flesh.” He precisely puts this distinction in terms of flesh and spirit. Works of the flesh are the works the law attempts unsuccessfully to suppress — the “thou shalt nots” of the old law; but the leading of the Spirit brings one into doing the positive: loving your neighbor as yourself and bearing the good fruit of joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against these, Paul reminds us, there is no law.

Paul urges the Galatians not to fall back into the law of the flesh. That is the law that attempts to restrain the flesh, but in the long run cannot do so. Yet it is so tempting to think that one can live a virtuous and righteous life just by following the rules of all the “thou shalt nots” — and yet one could never murder, never steal, never cheat on a spouse, and still be a terrible, mean, ungenerous, unloving person. The true liberation of the Spirit brings with it the generosity that moves beyond merely avoiding the bad, to doing the good; that chooses to love others as much as one loves oneself: and that brings duties and responsibilities — not just to refrain from doing things that you would not want done to you, but actively to do those positive things which you would wish to be done to you. To turn back from this balance of spiritual freedom and duty into a life bound only by a set of “thou shalt nots” is to become a slave to the flesh, and turning back from all that God wills for the good of the children of God; who, as I reminded us last week, have grown into their inheritance, with all of its responsibilities.

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With freedom comes uncertainty, with exploration comes risk. Some would rather remain in what they imagine to be the safe harbor of the familiar “thou shalt nots” of childhood — and yes, with children you sometimes have to say “No” first before they can learn the law of love. That is why Saint Paul analogizes the life of the Christian to the life that moves from childhood to adulthood. But God in Christ wants more for us, and calls and challenges us to follow him, even to places he himself knows will offer him no welcome, to places where he will find nowhere to lay his head. In today’s gospel we see that he has set his face towards Jerusalem, where he will face so many challenges. Many, from the Samaritans to Saint Peter himself, will be obstacles in his path. Some whom he calls to follow him will turn back or offer excuses as to why they cannot follow him. Those who were ready to delay following Jesus, or to turn back from following him, had reasons that were good in themselves — burying the dead and bidding their families farewell. But Jesus gently rebukes even such well-meaning turning back. To be fit, to be ready, for the kingdom of God means letting go of what lies behind and pressing forward to what lies ahead.

This letting go is well symbolized in the story of the call of Elisha that we heard as our Old Testament reading this morning. Elijah follows God’s instructions to choose Elisha as his successor, and Elisha initially offers an excuse not unlike that of the man in the gospel, that he wants to say goodbye to his family. Elijah then offers what I can’t help but see as one of those wonderful New York Jewish expressions, such as Jon Stewart might say, “So what’s stopping you?” In response, Elisha makes a powerful symbolic end to his whole past life: he slaughters the oxen and burns his plow and its equipment to cook their flesh, a gesture far more dramatic than that of the apostles who left their boats and their nets behind when they were called to follow Jesus.

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Paul challenges the Galatians to let go of things that hold them back from living truly free and loving lives. He recited for them all of the works of the flesh, all of those things that they thought by keeping away from they were being righteous; but he reminded them how powerless the law was to prevent anyone from doing such things — as he would say to the Romans, the law ironically often provokes such things, tempting us to commit the very sins the law forbids, tempting us into disobedience! (For example, how many people insist on touching the wall marked “Wet Paint”? If it weren’t for the sign they wouldn’t be touching that wall! But put up the sign that says “Wet Paint” and you watch — people will go up and touch it.) The law tempts us into doing the very thing it seems to oppose. The old law is as powerless as it is negative, but the leading of the Spirit overcomes sin not by overruling it the way the law did, but by overwhelming it by means of the superior exercise of the power of love. As another old saying has it, “Love conquers all” and that includes sin, too. The old law was like gasoline poured on a fire as far as the flesh is concerned; the new law of love in the spirit drowns the fire of the sinful flesh like a cleansing waterfall or fountain — to which we have access in Christ through the waters of baptism: a new life, heading onward, not looking back, free to take on all of the new responsibilities that love provides and demands.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, in Jesus Christ your Son you have opened for us the way to salvation: Strengthen our hearts that we may follow where he leads and never turn back, loving our neighbors as ourselves, with the love with which he first loved us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit we give unending praise, now and forever.

You Are Better Than That

SJF • Epiphany 7a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
If you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

We continue our Gospel readings from the Sermon on the Mount and pick up on a theme that is woven through the whole of the text up to this point. We began by speaking about meekness as a humble acknowledgment of exactly where one stands, and not being afraid to stand there. This led to seeing Jesus calling each of us to be what we are — truly to live up to all God has gifted us with. Then last week we saw Jesus sharpen and refine the Law of Moses, getting at the Spirit behind the letter of the law, and calling us to faithfulness, honesty, fidelity and truth.

This week the gospel continues to challenge us, not just to be who we are, or to be all that we can be, but to be even better than that. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Now that is a challenge if ever there was one. Most of has have a hard enough time being fair to middling, let alone being good — and we know in our better moments (or perhaps even our best moments) that we are very far from being perfect!

I mentioned in an earlier sermon in this series how people will sometimes say, “Be a man,” to someone who is not acting as he ought to — particularly when showing fear or cowardice. And today’s reading reminds me of another phrase you are likely to hear addressed to people, man or woman, young or old, who are not acting as they should. It is a phrase that expresses both disappointment and hope. And that phrase is, “You are better than that.”

I noted what was odd about that first phrase; that you can say “Be a man!” to one who to all intents and purposes is a man. And what is odd about, “You are better than that” is that since the ones to whom it is being said are acting badly, just what evidence is there that he or she is better than that. Maybe they are just as bad as they are acting at that moment!

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And yet we know we are called to be better than we often act. This is part of the challenge of life lived as a disciple — which means to be a student, to be one who learns, one who follows a teacher. If people didn’t need to learn anything, who would study? If we thought we were already perfect, who would go on trying to improve him or herself. As Jesus would also say, it is the sick who are in need of a physician! We come to our senses, so to speak, when we become aware of our imperfections — whether we are made aware of them by our own conscience speaking inwardly, or the voice of a friend or mentor or teacher speaking outwardly, facing us with that truly honest assessment, “You are better than that.”

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In his sermon on the mount, Jesus provided a measuring rod by which we could see where we might stand on that ladder of perfection. It is the law quoted from the book of Leviticus, from which we heard the original setting and context in the first reading from the Old Testament today. It is, by the way, the only Law that Jesus quoted from that most technical law-book of the Torah, perhaps because it does form such a useful summary: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Most of the laws in this section of Leviticus deal with rules that were already “on the books” — or at least on the tablets, the ones handed down at Mount Sinai: you know the ones: not to steal or to swear falsely or to profane God’s name. Some of the laws edge over into what we would call fair business practice: not to commit fraud or to withhold a worker’s pay. Some of the laws deal with cruelty or mischief — as if anyone needed to be told not to mock the deaf or not to put stumbling blocks in the way of the blind! (Though given the state of the world I suppose such things do need to be spelled out sometimes.)

But in the midst of all of these familiar and logical rules is one that sticks out as going beyond just being fair, to being generous. That is the law that instructs people not to reap right up to the edges of their fields, but to leave some of their own crops unharvested — a portion of the grain and the grapes alike are to be left unharvested so that the poor can gather them. And it is important to note that this section of Moses’ law-book is framed with the words, “You shall be holy as I the Lord your God am holy” at the beginning, and “I am the Lord your God” at the end. This section of Leviticus is sometimes called, “The Holiness Code.” In it, God calls his people to be holy, to be as holy as he is. Is there an echo of that in Jesus’ teaching, “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”?

For what else does it mean to go beyond the minimum of loving your neighbor as yourself? Just as Jesus sharpened the scope of the other laws, Jesus says we need to go beyond kindness just for our neighbors, our friends and family; but show it to our enemies and our persecutors. Just as the owners of field or vineyard are not to strip their fields and vines for their own use and their own families’ use, but to leave them, to leave what is left for the strangers, the wayfarers, the poor; so too we are called to go beyond doing good to those who do us good, but even to bless and pray for those who do us harm. As Jesus says, if you greet only your siblings, you are only doing what comes natural, nothing worthy of praise.

Jesus calls us to be like God in his generous perfection: God who sends rain on good and on bad, whose sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous. Jesus calls his followers literally to “go the extra mile” and “turn the other cheek” — and in case you ever wondered where those expressions came from, here they are! We are called to be better than that.

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It has been said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who say that there are two kinds of people in the world, and everybody else. Among those who don’t divide the world into two kinds of people, there was once a wise old rabbi who divided the world into four kinds of people. The saying is so old that it isn’t even recorded which of the wise old rabbis said it, but this is what he said (in my own somewhat updated version!):

Of the four kinds of people, there are the ones who say, “What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours” — this is a selfish person; such a one, if he saw his house and your house were both on fire, would put out the fire at his house but leave yours to burn!

Then there are the ones who say, “What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine” — and that is either meshuggeh or no better than children swapping their sandwiches at lunch.

Then there are the ones who say, “What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine” — and that is a villain.

But then there are those who say, “What is yours is yours and what is mine is yours” — and these are the saints. (Pirke Avot 5:10)

As we are reminded from time to time, we are called to be saints; and in our Gospel today Jesus urges us to this perfection, the doing of good not only to those who favor us, of doing good not only for our friends and family, but even for those who hold us in contempt; to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile.

When I was a child, an annual ritual included standing in a doorway and having my height marked in pencil on the woodwork of the door-frame. I would always try to stand as tall as I could, to somehow get that pencil mark up a little higher. I think in the long run I failed in that; but I do seek — and I hope you do too — always seek to be better than I am.

What are the marks on your doorways? What are the grapes or grain you could leave untouched for others to be nourished by? Perhaps it’s the left-behind wheat and grapes that go to make the bread and wine that become God’s Body and Blood.

What extra miles have you trodden, or coats or cloaks provided — and has your cheek ever felt the sting of an unearned slap, and yet you’ve not returned it with a blow or protest?

These are the questions, brothers and sisters, that point us on the road to perfection, the road we are called to follow as disciples, challenged by our Lord to be better than we are, and to seek the perfection of God’s heavenly kingdom; where Father, Son and Holy Spirit live and reign, One God, now and forever.+

The New Moses

SJF • Epiphany 6a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Moses said, “See I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity... Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.

We continue our readings today in Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount. In this passage Jesus speaks particularly about a number of passages from the Law of Moses, several of them from the Ten Commandments. In this, Jesus is taking on the role of a New Moses — he is, after all, as Matthew emphasizes, giving this teaching about the Law on a mountain, just as Moses received the Law from the hand of God on another mountain.

Matthew and others in the early church got the message about a new Moses appearing on the scene to teach the people, based on a promise Moses himself made in Deuteronomy, his farewell address to his people in chapter 18. He said, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” (18:15) Matthew wasn’t the only one who saw Jesus as fulfilling this promise. Simon Peter quoted those very words from Deuteronomy to the same effect when he defended himself before the people for having healed the afflicted man who sat by the Beautiful Gate, a scene from Acts 3 portrayed in the stained glass window just around the corner from me. Peter proclaimed that he worked this miracle through the power of God made known in Jesus, and through the faith of Jesus Christ, and he quoted that passage from Deuteronomy. This Jesus, whom God raised from the dead, is the fulfillment of Moses’ promise, and more.

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So what, acting as the new Moses, what does Jesus do in this portion of his sermon on the mountain? We are accustomed to thinking of Jesus as the one with the light touch, the lenient and tolerant one who forgives; the generous one. And indeed he is that — when dealing with individuals, especially individuals demeaned and judged by others, or those willing to throw themselves on the mercy of the court. In those cases Jesus is acting as a pastor — the best pastor, the Good Shepherd! In those cases, such as the one where he stands up for the woman caught in the very act of adultery, Jesus acts as a defense attorney.

But on the mountain Jesus is acting as a new Moses, as a supreme court judge who is giving a strict interpretation of the Law to those who have sought loopholes or made excuses. Here Jesus cuts through the evasive undergrowth to get to the spirit undergirding each law. And in this cutting to the core each law ends up being sharper and more demanding, not easier and more casual. Just as when you sharpen a knife: there is actually a little less of it — you have actually ground some of it away — but it is sharper than ever.

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Our reading from Deuteronomy sets the stage for this, showing Moses presenting the commandments of God, and following them or not, as a matter of life or death. This is not just idle speculation or trivial argument about nonessentials. This is a turning point in the history of God’s people, a decision made before crossing the Jordan; as weighty a matter for them as crossing the Rubicon was for Julius Caesar. The Law of Moses will be a source of life or a source of death, depending on how it is treated. It is like a very useful tool — a very sharp knife indeed — that comes with a warning note on the box advising just how sharp and dangerous it is. If you obey the commandments, using them in the way God intends, you will live and prosper; but if you are careless, or misuse the tool, you will fail and die.

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As I say, Jesus raises the ante — if you think getting beyond matters of life and death can be raised, seen, and called. But this is a game of strip poker Jesus is playing: He strips away all of the protective padding in which the Law had become encased over time, all those evasions and excuses, to get to its sharp and dangerous core. In the passage we heard today, Jesus addresses murder, adultery and swearing falsely — three commandments from among the Big Ten delivered on that other mountain, and he polishes the sharpness of these Laws so they cut like Ginzu knives!

He starts by quoting the law, “You shall not murder,” but immediately gets beyond the letter of the law to the spirit, beyond the crime itself to the evil energies that lead to the crime. He is like a good detective addressing the murder mystery by looking at the motives that lead to and underlay the crime: anger, hatred, insult, and dissension.

He takes up another of the 10 Commandments: “You shall not commit adultery.” But once again, he clarifies that it is what lies behind and beneath adultery — that is the real problem — the lustful eye that casts its gaze on another man’s woman, or the dismissive and unloving spirit that sends a wife away with just a piece of paper.

Finally, at least in the portion assigned for today, he summarizes another set of commandments from different parts of the law — not just from Sinai — under a single principle: “You shall not swear falsely.” But then he tosses even this basic principle aside to affirm one even more basic: do not swear at all and risk not being able to follow through on your promise, but simply say Yes or No, and then take or refrain from action, as appropriate.

In each of these moral situations Jesus sharpens the knife: he provides those who first heard him preaching from the mountainside, and us, with principles that are after all easier to understand than the complexities of the Law, with all those evasions and loopholes, but perhaps harder to follow and more demanding to obey. This passage, especially the part about plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand if either of them leads you to sin, is considered to be one of the “hard sayings of Jesus” the things that some Christians, including a few preachers, would like to soften and explain away. Volumes have been written by those attempting to make Jesus mean something other than what he said.

In doing so, such commentators attempt to redo the very thing that Jesus wants to undo: they want to dull the edge of the moral conscience; to wrap it in the cotton wool of legalism, to put it on a shelf out of sight and out of mind; to find a likely suspect and convict him rather than do the hard detective work of ferreting out the motive that led to the crime; or to cry out in this game of poker, ‘all bets are off.’

But Jesus will not have it so: and if we are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world — as he told us in last week’s portion from this gospel — then we should not have it so either. Rather let us look into our hearts and our consciences with the same piercing examination, and honest evaluation, that Jesus calls us to. The sharp knife of discernment and judgment is like the surgeon’s scalpel; or like the knife that young man used to cut off his own arm when trapped by a boulder (you can even see the movie!). It is one thing to save your body by being willing to sacrifice your arm. How much more vital to save one’s immortal soul by allowing the Good Physician to heal us and restore us by his sharp teaching.

You have heard what was said by Moses; and you have heard what Jesus had to say. May each of us choose wisely, for it is life or death that awaits us, and the choice is ours to make.+

You Can Go to Hell

SJF • Proper 21c • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.+

When I was a child, one of the major features of Sunday afternoon, after coming home from church, was the Sunday newspaper, most especially the funny pages. I remember one of the features vividly: not a comic strip but a single large cartoon panel. And what it showed week by week was a satirical view of what life was like down in Hell. It took the approach of the Lord High Executioner from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado: “Let the punishment fit the crime.” One of these cartoons stuck in my mind. This was the panel that showed what happened to people who smoked too many cigarettes. In Hell they were locked into stocks like those from a Puritan New England village. And with heads sticking out through the hole, they were forced to smoke old mattresses rolled up like giant cigars, one after another for all eternity.

This cartoon series was part of a venerable tradition, going back to the ancient Greeks. Many a Greek myth portrayed the sufferings inflicted upon people in the afterlife for their sins in this life: Sisyphus was cursed to push a boulder up a hill only to have it always roll to the bottom again just as he got it almost to the top; Tantalus was doomed to unending hunger and thirst, chained in a pond which would drain away when he tried to bend down to take a drink; and unable to reach the branches rich with fruit, just above his head.

Much later, the great Italian poet Dante populated his Inferno with all sorts of sinners. And these too suffered fates in keeping with their crimes: the lustful burning in unquenchable flames, the misers buried up to their chins in garbage, and the worst of all (in Dante’s mind) the traitors, literally being chewed on for all eternity by the greatest traitor of all, the treacherous fallen angel Satan himself.

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I’m sure that all of us have been tempted, in light of the horrors we hear in the news, to picture visions of Hell, populated with any number of contemporary villains, suffering all sorts of fates reflective of their crimes. It gives a certain satisfaction to know that even if villains get away with their crimes in the here and now, there is a terrible punishment waiting for them in the there and then. The human imagination of such justice has endured for thousands of years, from the Greeks, through Dante, and even in the funny papers.

So when we heard our gospel today, we were on familiar ground — or rather under it. Jesus describes this unnamed rich man suffering torments not unlike those of Tantalus, surrounded by flames, and in an agony of thirst. And we’d be tempted to think that the rich man must have been a great villain, to warrant this punishment.

After all, Sisyphus the perpetual rock pusher was a master swindler who (according to the myth) even tricked the grim reaper and locked him in a cupboard for a while. And forever-thirsty Tantalus was worse — he was punished with unending hunger and thirst because he murdered his own son and, to test the wisdom of the gods, invited them to supper and served them his son’s body cooked in a stew, to see if they could tell and avoid eating the cursed dish. So too with the traitors chewed upon by Satan in Dante’s vision of the Pit of Hell: Brutus and Cassius betrayed Julius Caesar, and getting the worst of all, Judas who betrayed Christ, the epitomes of treason and treachery.

So it is natural to think that the rich man in our parable must have been very wicked to end in Hell. However, Jesus has prevented us from taking that view before hand. He’s already told us about this rich man. We are not told that he is a great villain, a murderer, a terrorist, a traitor. What was his crime? What did he do to warrant such a terrible punishment? Why did he go to Hell?

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Jesus offers us only bits of evidence concerning his life: he is rich, he dresses in purple and fine linen, and he feasts sumptuously every day. He is a rich man who enjoys his riches. So why should he be doomed to an eternity of torment?

We find an answer to this question by looking at that passage from the book of the prophet Amos. Here too we find the easy rich at ease in Zion, and those who feel secure further north on Mount Samaria. They lie on beds of inlaid ivory, they eat the best cuts of meat, drink fine wine, are anointed with oil and spend their time fiddling on musical instruments. This is what they do; but that’s not what gets them into trouble. It is what they don’t do that is the problem. What they don’t do is grieve over the coming destruction of Israel.

The sin of these people isn’t that they enjoy their riches, but that they ignore the fact that their country is going to Hell in a handbasket, and them with it. Their doom lies not in the fact that they live in comfort and spend their time making music, but that they live in comfort even while the doom is advancing, ignoring the prophets, plucking their harp-strings and singing their tunes when what God calls for, as Amos has told them, is for justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness as a flowing stream.

And this helps us to see the sin of the rich man in our Gospel. It isn’t that he is rich, or that he enjoys his riches. His sin lies in the fact that while he is enjoying his riches there is a poor man lying at his gate, about whom he does nothing. The sin of this rich man is that he ignores what is going on right on his doorstep, ignores the poverty and pain that he has every opportunity and means to alleviate — but instead keeps his wealth for himself and his dinner guests. The rich man’s sin is the sin of omission: it lies in what he doesn’t do.

And amazingly he keeps on not doing it! Even in Hell, even wrapped in flames and parched with thirst, the formerly rich man still doesn’t get it. He has the nerve to ask Abraham to send Lazarus, of all people, to dip his finger in cool water to bring him comfort. Ah…now finally he’s noticed Lazarus, he’s finally noticed the poor man, the poor man who lay at his doorway all those years. Now at last he sees the person he stepped over to get through his gate, he sees the “invisible man” whom he treated like “Mr. Cellophane” all those years. Finally he’s taken notice and what does he want? He wants Lazarus to wait on him! As greatas the chasm between heaven and hell, between Abraham’s bosom and Hades — surely there is also a great chasm in this rich man’s understanding!

When Abraham finally explains it all to him the rich man finally seems to grasp his situation, and calls out for a warning to be sent to his brothers who are still living — perhaps the first thoughtful thing he’s ever done, although now too late. If only Lazarus might be sent to warn them! But he receives the chilling answer that an adequate warning has already been given. The Law and the prophets have already laid out the whole duty of humankind: to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, to pursue justice and righteousness, as Saint Paul told Timothy, to do good, and to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share. There is no secret password to salvation, no complicated hidden riddle to solve — and unlike that old joke about Saint Peter making it hard on some people getting into heaven, no one is expected to spell chrysanthemum! No, my friends, what God asks has been laid out for all to see, given in the law, reinforced by the prophets, and summarized by Jesus Christ himself: to love God with your whole self, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And you are unwilling to hear that warning, even a warning from one risen from the dead will do no good. You can go to Hell, if you want to.

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These are hard words; this is a hard lesson; but it is also an additional warning to us. God has told us clearly how to go to Hell if we want to, how we can pave the way to eternal death with every missed opportunity to help our sisters and brothers. Every week, we confess our sins, we acknowledge that we have not always heeded God’s warning to us. We acknowledge that we have sinned against God not only by what we have done, but by what we have left undone. We explicitly confess that we have not loved God with our whole heart, and that we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We say those words, every week. Do we mean them? We have this weekly reminder before us, this weekly summary of the law and the prophets, this weekly confession of what we have failed to do.

And further, if we don’t want to go to Hell, God has provided us with the ultimate warning, a warning from the one who was in fact raised from the dead. He, the Risen One, has told us what to do, and we ignore his warning and omit our duty at our peril and to our loss. Hear, O my people, the Lord our God is One Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Let those who have ears to hear, hear.+

Body Building

SJF • Lent 3b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Saint Paul wrote to the Romans, “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”+

In the movie The Karate Kid, young Daniel seeks a master to teach him karate. The master tells him he must agree to obey his instructions to the letter, without any objection, without any question. Daniel has visions of that smart white suit, and a black belt within easy reach, so he readily makes that promise.

But when he shows up for his first class, karate master Miyagi-sensei tells him to hold on to his T-shirt and jeans; he’s not ready for that smart uniform yet. Instead of taking him to the work-out room the Master takes Daniel outside and puts him to work painting a fence, showing him exactly how the brush must move, evenly and smoothly up and down. Daniel figures since Miyagi-sensei is going to teach him karate for free this is the least he can do, to paint the old man’s fence for him.

The next day he arrives expecting to start class, only Miyagi-san puts him to work scrubbing the floor, again showing him how to move the wash-brush left and right. And again, Daniel thinks this is probably only fair trade — but begins to wonder when the karate lesson is going to start.

The next day he figures it’s about time, only to discover Miyagi-san has another chore: washing and waxing three beat-up old cars, after more tedious instruction, on how to bend to fill the sponge with soapy water, and how to move the polishing cloth in circles circles circles. When the end of that long day comes — this third day — the boy can restrain himself no more, and blurts out, “I thought you were going to teach me karate, but I’ve only been doing your chores!”

Miyagi-sensei turns in anger. Daniel has broken his promise to do as he was told without question, without objection. The old man snarls, “I have been teaching you karate. Defend yourself!” and thrusts out his arm, up, then down. And Daniel, reacting immediately, guards himself up and then down, with exactly the movement he’d used to paint the fence.

The Master then sends out a powerful kick, and using the same bending motion he’d used while dipping the sponge in the soapy bucket, Daniel dodges. And so it is for each assault the old man throws; each one is countered with a movement learned in the household chores. At the end the Master stares at the boy, frowning, but with a little bit of a twinkle in his eye, and then walks away in silence.

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The church has it’s own training program for body building — building the body of Christ, that is. And sometimes the program may seem to have as little to do with the life of the world to come as painting a fence has to do with karate. But if we look closely at the discipline of the church, we will find that it works in much the same way, strengthening us and training us to do God’s work even as we do worldly work.

And I take as an example the Ten Commandments, God’s training plan, which we repeated in the Decalogue at the beginning of our liturgy, and heard in full as our first lesson this morning. Only the first three commandments directly address what you would normally call “religious” issues, directly defining our relationship with God. The fourth commandment is transitional: it deals both with God and us, and relates our rest here upon earth with God’s heavenly rest at the end of creation.

But the rest of the commandments, a majority six out of ten, deal with entirely human affairs, and hardly seem theological at all — God is only even mentioned in the commandment to honor ones parents, to assure those who do so of a reward. Apart from this passing mention to God, the last six commandments focus entirely upon us, and how we are relate to each other. We turn, as Jesus’ own summary of the law puts it, from matters concerning our love of God to matters concerning our love of neighbors, with our parents standing right there as the first “neighbor” we encounter.

From the commands to worship God alone, to accept no substitutes for God, to honor God’s name and to remember the sabbath, we move to the commandments about honoring our parents, not killing, not being unfaithful, not stealing, not bearing false witness, and not envying our neighbors. Those six commandments have nothing explicitly to do with God, and yet it is God who gives them to us; it is God who gives us these exercises, these chores.

It may seem to be as irrelevant to religion as fence-painting is to karate, but God knows better. God knows that if we do not love our neighbor we cannot love him. God gives us each other to practice on, so to speak, teaching us what love is all about. You may remember what John the beloved disciple wrote, “If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”1 John 4:20

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Still there are those who think, like the Karate Kid, that they can rush right into loving God without loving their neighbor. They concentrate their effort on the externals, and miss the essence. And when the Master comes, he is simply furious.

Look at what happened to the Temple in Jerusalem — which was intended as a house of prayer for all people. The priests had leased out the Court of the Gentiles, leaded it out to traders, as if the Gentiles didn’t matter to God, as if all the rest of the people of the earth didn’t deserve their place in God’s Temple, as if God hadn’t provided them with their own space to worship him. The leaders rejected God’s transforming grace. The conformed the Temple to a world-view in which Jew and Gentile couldn’t possibly get along, let alone worship in the same building. They refused God’s purpose that the Temple be used as a training ground for the next world, for God’s new creation, in which all people — Gentile and Jew alike, would be gathered into God’s kingdom.

The Temple took 46 years to build, and about a decade to corrupt. But it took only a day to cleanse it, when the Master came to whip it into shape.

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We still need periodic visits from our Lord and Master, and normally we get them once each week on the Christian sabbath, the Lord’s day, when God reminds us that our religious disciplines are meant to turn us into disciples; our love and honor shown to God are meant to equip us to love and honor each other, to train us to be all that we can be. God wants to build the body of the Church, the body of Christ.

When our worship of God doesn’t have our heart in it, when it is mixed with worldly concerns, it won’t be able to inspire and lead us to love our neighbors more. And if our love and respect for our neighbors is only a token and a show, it will not equip us an empower us to know and love God. But when our love and respect for others is truly and freely given, it will strengthen us to bear God’s love, building our spiritual muscles as we are clothed with grace to bear the weight of glory, freed from the body of death and given the body of life, which we become as we are built into the church.

And as I say, when it doesn’t work, when we come to see loving God and neighbor as empty exercises that have nothing to do with our daily life or the life of the world to come, well, that’s when we need the Master to spark us to remember what we’ve learned, to spark us to life as he challenges us, and changes our chores into charisms.

That transformation of ourselves, our souls and bodies, into something better than what we are to start with, that took more than one day, the day Jesus took to whip the earthly Temple into shape. No, this takes a bit longer. It takes three days — from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. For it is in that particular destruction and rebuilding, that destruction that took place on Good Friday, and that rebuilding that took place through the rest in the tomb, and on to the glorious rising on Easter Day, Jesus shows us how completely made-over we can become when we live in him, when we allow him to live in us; when we let him into our hearts to transform the temple of our body into something new and amazing — even if it takes 46 years to build, or 56, 66 — dare I say 86? There is always room for rebirth, renewal and restoration. And we don’t the strength to do it on our own.

Who will deliver us when our spirit fails and languishes? Who will deliver us when our discipline seems pointless, and our spiritual well runs dry? Who will deliver us when our friends and our neighbors just get to be too much for us and we flee to some imagined sacred haven where it will just be God and us? Who will deliver us from this body of death?

Well, thanks be to God in Jesus Christ our Lord! For Jesus Christ, starting with his own death and resurrection on that weekend long ago, shows us perfect body building: building his body, the church, that wonderful and sacred mystery. And it starts out there, my friends, out in the world, out there where six out of ten of the commandments are obeyed, out in the world where it is so tempting to dishonor our elders, to lie and to cheat and to steal and to kill and to covet. For if we have not made peace and loved our sisters and brothers outside the doors of this church, we will find neither peace nor love within. We will simply find ourselves changing the coins and buying the pigeons, instead of worshiping the one true God who alone is love.

But again I say, thanks be to God in Jesus Christ our Lord! He will help us; he has helped us. He has not forsaken us, and has in his own person shown us that even what is dead can come to life, when it is built up in him. When spiritually dead are raised to new life when they let Jesus into their lives, they can be built into the body of the church to do God’s will in the world.

When the church is working as it should, trained by its Lord and Master, it is a marvelous thing to see. When the church is working as it should, people can love the unlovable, forgive those who hurt them, comfort those who suffer, rejoice with the joyous, kneel with the humble, and stand with the righteous. This is the body that God wants to build us into if we will let him. This is what God means the church to be. This is what Christ died for, and this is what he was raised to life for. Are you ready, sisters and brothers; are you ready? +