Sermons at St. John’s Presbyterian Church

Thank You

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Mt 6:16-34, Joel 2:21-27, Luke 12:13-34

This morning’s passage from Matthew is part of the Sermon on the Mount, which runs in Matthew from chapter 5 – 7.  It includes the beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom, etc, the metaphors of salt and light, expounding on the law (for example: “ you have heard it said,  `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Next is this morning’s section on ostentation, then the Lord’s Prayer, a discourse on judgmentalism (take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.)  And the sermon ends with a section on holiness.  I think it is the most concise and powerful moral teaching in History.

          Last November I was in Israel and Palestine with a group of Presbyterians.  The first week we traveled in Israel, the second week we picked olives with Palestinians whose harvest and land was threatened by Israeli settlements.

          One day we took a tourist bus around the Sea of Galilee.  The Israeli’s have tourism mastered, with a park system organized to heard masses of world pilgrims through turn stiles, shuffling past sacred sites and into shops selling sacred sand, water and olive oil and on to restaurants where you purchase an expensive version of Peter’s fish.  I had a tough time reconciling capitalist organization toward maximization of profit with the home and sacred space of the prophets.  A holy Disneyland has got to be an oxymoron.

          Still I had dreamt of reading the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus might have given such a sermon, and so when we piled off the bus at the Church of the Beatitudes, I was excited.  I have to admit that the location of the church, built in 1938, near it late 4^th century predecessor, seemed like a plausible location for the sermon.  For it is set on a rock slab that rises from the lakeshore and looks like both a Mount and a slanted plain.  We call this famous collection of sayings the Sermon on the Mount, while Luke’s shorter version is called the sermon on the plain.

          It is unlikely that these sayings are verbatim copy of an actual speech, but are a compilation of oral tradition placed in a convenient spot for the Gospel writer’s stories. No doubt Jesus spoke such words more than once in different orders.  Nevertheless I had imagined reading and listening to Matthew’s version where Jesus might have spoken such words.  Given that the first church was not placed there until the fourth century, I imagined it outdoors.  So with tourists crammed inside for the guide’s speech, I stepped outside, found a spot overlooking the lake and began to read.  In my own imagination as much as I could be, I pictured Jesus without a microphone and started very loud.

          But quickly, all sorts of thoughts struck me with a heavy load.  Who did I think I was speaking these words?  There was no shortage of irony as I loudly read, beware of practicing your piety before men.  Who was I trying to fool speaking these words of authority?  I was quickly stopped cold with the fear of God, and felt like Isaiah, Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips.  But still, I was a follower of Jesus and no small part of my reason for being his disciple are these words before me.  I had dreamt of hearing this sermon in this place since my father read them to me as a small child.  So, by the grace of God, I picked up where I left off. Nobody can hear these words without being convicted over and over again.  When you think you have escaped one paragraph the next one lays you bare.  Eventually the words began to sink deeper, past fear and shame, and we began to feel the collective power, the echo of these words through history, across the world, through the people of God. As the guide’s speech on Byzantine architecture ended, people began to gather around.  And a church group from Ohio broke out with How Great Thou Art. It was a bit corny, but also powerful.

          Jesus words this morning are both challenging and encouraging.  The primary message is Do not be concerned about outward appearance, with how we look to the world.  It doesn’t matter whether the area of concern is economic, social or religious standing; our popularity with other human beings, our ability to impress, our accumulation of material wealth is shallow and fleeting.  It is God’s equal love for all, which will endure forever.

          Fasting is the religious act of choosing to deprive ourselves of something, even something good, like food, for the purpose of acknowledging that this thing is not ultimate, not God.  Jesus and other Jews were expected to fast on major holidays, such as Yom Kippur.

          But there are many times when we sacrifice privilege and choose to not partake of something.  Parents sacrifice for children, spouses for each other, kids for parents. We often sacrifice individual achievement for a team, on the athletic field, or at work, for our nation or church.  In the face of our global environmental crisis, God’s word is asking us to curb our consumption and exploitation of natural resources, to make sacrifices of creature comforts and transportation, so the poor, other living things and future generations will also be sustained with a share.    

          Mothers, both by choice and not by choice, make the greatest sacrifices for others.  Margo Wonder tells the story of refusing to marry her husband until he went back and finished school.  Then, she put her three boys through school.  Finally, when the boys were done, she went to Cal herself, graduating with honors.  This is the big story.  But we know there were thousands of little fasts and sacrifices along the way.

          For some who have taken strength and identity from their ability to sacrifice, the sacrifice they may need to make is to let someone else sacrifice for them.  Let them receive some of the joy and satisfaction of serving you.

          We men on the other hand want everyone to know when we have forgone a surfing trip or a football game to shrink the honey-do list.  And we are good at harrumphing and grunting along the way, just in case certain people (i.e. the wife) are not taking notice.  Did you see that garden?  I spent all day on it.  Sorry about all the dirt on my pants, I just had to get down on my knees to get all those weeds out.” 

          More than a few of us ministers can’t refrain from showing off our sacrifice and hard work.  We are worried about those folks who think all we have to do is preach on Sunday.  Or, if we haven’t measured up in one area, we feel we have to show our goodness in another.  Oh, how hard I’ve worked on this building!  Oh, how I had a tough time with a family!  Stop whining; stop patting yourself on the back.  If you have done well, God knows it.  If you need a break to practice what you preach with your family, take it. Jesus is saying: take a fast from your ego.

          Perhaps the greatest problem with mission work, whether secular or religious, is the sense of righteousness gained by the one who tries to be charitable.  Often the biggest thing that separates those who seek to help from those who need help is sense inside the helper that he is more righteous because he is helping. It is no wonder that honest business people can get annoyed at the hypocrisy of we non-profit folks. “Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.” 

          “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret.”  The 103 year old wonder woman is famous in this church because she gave herself to this church with joy and enthusiasm.

          I am honored to be a part of this congregation where so many give so much, through administration or music, art, justice work or gardening: and most of the time, you joyfully step up, knowing that your contribution to God’s community rewards your spirit.

          “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal.”  This is tough. Certainly Jesus is speaking of all material treasures on earth, especially in the Luke’s version of the sermon, but here it is in the context of his speaking on religious life.  So temples and churches are included too.

          The temple in Jerusalem was a massive, beautiful structure filled with silver, gold and jewels.  It took decades to build.  II Chronicles 9 notes the impression Solomon’s palace made on the Queen of Sheba:

[3] And when the queen of Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built,
[4] the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, and their clothing, his cupbearers, and their clothing, and his burnt offerings which he offered at the house of the LORD, there was no more spirit in her.

So she gives Solomon a load of gold and Solomon puts it to use:

[15] King Solomon made two hundred large shields of beaten gold; six hundred shekels of beaten gold went into each shield.
[16] And he made three hundred shields of beaten gold; three hundred shekels of gold went into each shield; and the king put them in the House of the Forest of Lebanon.
[17] The king also made a great ivory throne, and overlaid it with pure gold.
[18] The throne had six steps and a footstool of gold, which were attached to the throne, and on each side of the seat were arm rests and two lions standing beside the arm rests,
[19] while twelve lions stood there, one on each end of a step on the six steps. The like of it was never made in any kingdom.

Solomon lasted 40 years on that fancy throne, but ten of the twelve tribes were taken from his son less than a generation later.  And his temple was destroyed by Babylon, and all the treasure was looted.  Herod rebuilt it and that version was destroyed by Rome in 70.  Now the Muslim Dome of the Rock sits towering above the remaining wall.  Leave it to men to compete over whose steeple or minaret is the biggest.  Of course, Rome had massive temple structures and idols, built to impress, to show whose god was the biggest.

            When we go to share communion with Dick and Betty Hall, Dick enjoys hearing news about the church building.  Betty was a physician who served the poor.  Dick was an engineer, a hard working businessman who did quite well for himself. The two of them have always understood that their blessings were not given for their own advancement alone, and have given with joy and thanksgiving: that is, like so many of you regardless of your income level, give and give thanks for the privilege and opportunity to serve and give.  Dick was on the original building committee, and is proud of this facility and the ministry it has fostered. The foundation the Hall’s have joyfully given to establish has Christ as the chief cornerstone:  To share in the body of Christ, to preach forgiveness of sins and the sermon on the mount for ourselves and future generations. 

          Now it is part of the ideology of postmodernism that we each choose our own ideology and our own meaning.  And this often is thought to mean that we must choose a different way than our parents and grandparents. Surly Jesus words are a testimony to independent thinking. But too often this leaves us alone, floundering as individuals, susceptible to the whims of capitalist marketing.  We are blown to and fro, thinking this latest thing, this latest fad will make me somebody, this is the key to my happiness. 

          Carl Jung in Modern Man in Search of a Soul writes, “About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.  This can be described as the general neurosis of our time.”

          There are a thousand things to do with our modern lives, a bazillion things to spend our money on in search for identity and fulfillment.  Entertainment is everywhere tempting us to distraction, tempting us to think spending money on this or that product, to get this body, this house, this car, this phone, this whatever will make our profile complete. But there is no connection, no story that remains after we change our minds or our web page, nothing to hold us up when the stock market crashes, nothing to give us meaning beyond what we have consumed.

          Rabbi Kushner in When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough writes about the inability of psychotherapy or the secular pursuit of happiness to help of reach a sense of fulfillment:

 “There is an old Yiddish saying, ‘To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish.’ That is, if we have never known an alternative, then we assume that the way we are living, with all of its frustrations, is the only way to live…Psychotherapy can help us face up to the fact that the world we live in is horseradish.  It can teach us to adjust to this world and be less frustrated by it.  It cannot whisper to us of a world we have never seen or tasted…

          The question of whether life has meaning, of whether our individual lives make any real difference is a religious question not because it is about matters of belief or attendance at worship services but because it is about ultimate values and ultimate concerns.  It is religious because it is about what is left to deal with when you have learned everything there is to learn and solved all the problems that can be solved…

          “America’s Declaration of independence guarantees every one of us the right to the pursuit of happiness.  But because the Declaration is a political document and not a religious one, it does not warn us of the frustrations of trying to exercise that right, because the pursuit of happiness is the wrong goal.  You don’t become happy by pursuing happiness.  You become happy by living a life that means something.  The happiest people you know are probably not the richest or most famous, probably not the ones who work hardest at being happy by reading the articles and buying the books and latching on to the latest fads.  I suspect the happiest people you know are the ones who work at being kind, helpful, and reliable, and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are busy doing those things.  It is always a by-product, never a primary goal.”

5:20) “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.
[21] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22) The eye is the lamp of the body.  So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. Do not be anxious about your life, about what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

In Jesus words there is a message for both the well off and the poor.  It can be taken either way.  How often are we anxious about our bodies, or how our clothes or food will make an impression?  How impressed are we by the clothes and food of others?  Jesus is saying, there are better things to spend our money on.  Such concerns are not worth the anxiety they produce. Vanity is fleeting.

          On the other hand many who Jesus is speaking to are simply wondering whether they will have any clothes or any food at all. Stay faithful, and God will help you persevere.  God cares about the needs of the poor, which is a big part of the reason he gives such instruction and warning to the rich.

          What we have is not ours to hold.  What others have is not for us to envy.  This holds true whether we are talking about individuals, nations or the church.  Shiny stuff loses its shine, and soon enough the stuff itself is gone; moth and rust consume, thieves break in and steal. Our bodies, every one them will know ugliness and death.  The funeral industry would have us think otherwise.  And while we can thank them for their compassion and work with the grieving, all the make up, fine clothes and jewelry can’t make a dead person look alive.  There is no living meaning left in such things.

          Yet a person who knows they are loved and valued by God, forgiven by God’s grace, part of God’s family, seeking God’s light, living toward God’s equality and justice, despite our social popularity, despite being physically or fashion challenged, shines with the eternal life and beauty of God.

          The God we worship here at St. John’s is the God who brings us this message, this Sermon on the Mount, and embodied these words even to the point of death, even death on the cross.  Forget rational attempts to describe or prove this God’s existence.  Let us simply define a god as that to which we give our highest allegiance. Everyone has a god.  The question then is which god do we worship?  Ask yourself honestly if this message from Jesus is a truth that is deeper than history?  Can this truth be killed by a Caesar or Hitler?  Will it give us strength and meaning in the midst of the hardships of today? Will it still be true and give us hope when our wealth and beauty and health are gone?  Do we want our children and our children’s children, our neighbor’s children, the children of Oakland and Richmond and future generations the world over to hear these words and know these truths?  Can we be lifted up, even in the face of our own sin and death, to give thanks and praise to the life, which brings us this eternal Word?   And do we want to entrust such truths to individual whim, to the ebb and flow of political and social life; Or would we rather proclaim that such love and peace must be the Word of God, Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, and that this Jesus who embodied such love and truth is the son of God, and reigns in heaven for all eternity?  There is nothing at all in all creation that can separate us from his love.

          Now it takes electricity and a roof and a staff to exist in a building, and we give thanks to God for the blessings of web pages, sound systems, art and music to help worship.  Sometimes those things cause us some trouble and cause us to whine. And we must say goodbye to those we love and we wonder if all the stuff is worth the hassle if we don’t have them to share it with, but we give of ourselves not for the stuff, but because the one who brought this sermon on the mount is the most important truth in our lives, in the lives of those to whom we have said goodbye, and to those for whom we have yet to greet.  We give of ourselves because this is not the only truth, but because it is the most important.  And we know we can bank our souls on it.

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