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Jesus, Immanuel, Forever Going Deeper

  • You've probably heard this story before, but I thought I'd tell it again
    • After lots of years of traveling to different Thanksgivings, a family finally gets a chance to host themselves.
    • The couple gets together and starts planning, including the turkey
    • As the turkey's going in the oven, the one spouse begins to cut the end of the turkey off... why are you doing that? I don't know, just always was told that's how you're supposed to
    • Over the course of the dinner, this question gets brought up - the couple asks their parents. Well, said one of the moms, that's the way I was always taught to as well.
    • So they ask the grandparents - why did you do this? Well, same reason, always the way I was taught, too.
    • Finally, they find the recipe from the great-grandparents: they cut the end off the turkey because the oven was too small to fit the whole bird.
  • Funny how things laid down as rules can have that effect - often times, we follow them because they seem like the right thing to do, but unexamined, they can lead to unintended consequences.
  • The moral of this story was to look at the heart of the matter: the why.
  • This is also where Jesus is today in our gospel - what is at the heart of the rule is what matters.
    • Jesus today is routinely going back to edicts that consistently sound reminiscent of the 10 commandments: arguably the most famous rules set out by the Hebrew Scriptures
    • And his response, bounded by his promise to fulfill the law, is to push us beyond them: to go deeper.
    • Jesus develops an A-B rhythm in this part of the sermon on the mount:
      • You heard about murder, but consider the heart: anger
      • You heard about adultery, but consider the heart: lust
      • You heard about divorce, but consider the heart: convenience (in an era when marriage different than today, it is interesting to think about where Jesus might be pushing back on people who divorce bc it's not working for them financially or for other reasons)
      • You heard about vows, but consider the heart: integrity
    • Our earlier story could be thought of the same way: You heard about cutting the turkey, but consider the heart: oven space.
  • This move by Jesus requires something different from his followers - it requires them to not look at the law as an end unto itself, but instead as a means to a further end.
    • But in doing so, it also moves from certainty to ambiguity - from exclusion to inclusion.
      • It's much easier, for instance, to determine and manage the consequences of murder, adultery, divorce, and vows. Much harder when it comes to anger, lust, convenience, and integrity.
      • Those latter become more "know it when you see it" - but it also means that perhaps people can find their way to the right end even if they don't precisely adhere to our means.
      • We're far more apt to engage in conflict when we focus on the law as the end - indeed, I'd argue most of our current cultural fights are about the law as ends.
        • And why not? There's a comfort in knowing that we all cut the turkey the same way, but what if someone decided they could still get the same Thanksgiving dinner without it? What do we think of them then?
        • As silly as that sounds, applied to a different topic, we've found that wars have been fought over just about the same level. Our polarization might be as much about discovering what rules we choose to adhere by and which we see as wrong.
        • So, instead, we trade the comfort of shared means with the promise of an expansive space of moving the right ends, even if it's more difficult and ambiguous. We spend less time debating murder, and more time exploring all the ends to reconsider anger and right living with our neighbors.
      • This is why, too, that in my preaching and in my way of working in a community of believers, I seek to explore these things: I am fully convinced of Karl Barth's encouragement to have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, but interpret the paper through the Bible.
        • It's not that we should seek to develop a series of rules in order to know who is in or who is out, or do adhere to means-become-law: a politic, or a cultural approach.
        • Instead, it's to try to get to the heart of the issues - the deeper questions, the ambiguity, the why. You heard about this thing happening around us, but consider the deeper issue of the heart.
        • Which may mean at times that it might cause cognitive dissonance inside of us, as I'm sure it did with the people listening to Jesus. It may mean that for as many people who walk away feeling like what they've reflected on was exactly right, some folks will disagree.
        • What matters, then, is not a fight on the law, but an exploration of the heart - how are our hearts connecting to the issues at hand?
  • But, truly, when listen to our hearts desire, I wonder if that's what we're looking for: not a law, but a heart.
    • When I look around this sanctuary, and I think about the people who have connected to this congregation, I'd argue they run the gamut of just about every modern American. They're old, young, rich, poor, gay, straight, and of multiple races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. But perhaps most importantly, they're all beloved children of God who have found their way to a particular moment in a particular place to understand the world as they experience it.
    • That sounds a whole lot like the God's Heavenly Commonwealth.
    • And how do we live it out?
      • I'd go back to the turkey:
        • Acknowledge the place where we've allowed law to become an end - maybe a great rule of thumb is if we read a text and feel like it has a political fit... if we decry something as to conservatively outdated or dangerously too social justice oriented, then perhaps it's saying more about ourselves than the text.
        • Ask why? That requires the complicated discussions that explore context, history, and the vulnerability to hear one other in our difference: there is a marketplace of ideas that interpret the law as it's always been, and will always be.
        • Then, finally, it's developing the rhythms of the deepening heart - we heard about this certainty, but what of the ambiguity? What might the root of the why tell us about ourselves and God?