21“Not everyone who says to me,
‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the
will of my Father in heaven. 22On that day many will say to me,
‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your
name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ 23Then I will
declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ 24“Everyone
then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who
built his house on rock. 25The rain fell, the floods came, and the
winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been
founded on rock. 26And everyone who hears these words of mine and
does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The
rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house,
and it fell—and great was its fall!” 28Now when Jesus had finished
saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, 29for
he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. ~ Matthew
7:21-29
Okay,
I know, I know, that I’m the movie guy – that annoying guy who always makes
analogies, references, outright plagiarisms of films but I simply can’t help
myself. This week, as I tackled this text I heard another voice: “No not Clint
Eastwood but the Movie guy voice: “Last week at Montecito Covenant Church –
Jesus gave us warnings to walk the narrow way, to watch out for wolves and to
be mindful and discerning of good fruit. And this week, hold on to your hat, he’s
doing it again.” So we continue in the same vein of listening to Jesus’ words
and our three points from last week are worth repeating:
1.
Jesus
said what we are reading today so we can trust that it is for our benefit.
2.
Jesus
lived what he was saying – both the practices that he preached on as well as
the warnings that he gave – he saw only few following him and was betrayed by
wolves in sheep’s clothing.
3.
Finally,
Jesus does the sermon on the mount. He is the one who judges fruit. He is the
one who cuts down trees. He is the one who does for us what we shouldn’t do and
accomplishes for us what we can’t do.
And
here we are again . . . So what else can
we learn about with respect to Jesus & judgment, part II, the sequel?
1.
First,
there’s a warning: Don’t be a stranger.
Jesus’ warning
certainly would resonate with Evangelicals – he points to the issue of relationship.
That we must both know and be known by Him. But HOW that happens should cause
us a bit of discomfort because these people claim to know him – “Lord, lord!,”
they exclaim and Jesus rebuffs them.
So the intimacy of relationship with Jesus is framed not by
mere recognition (“Lord, Lord”), nor simply private devotion (just hearing the
words or having a quiet time of Bible reading), nor large works of power (social
or political activism) but by both hearing and doing the sermon on the mount. So
we need to notice two things about Jesus’ understanding of intimacy.
a. Intimacy
is personal but not private.
Intimacy with Jesus demands a personal investment and begins
with myself not others. It’s not about changing the world first – it’s about
hearing and acting in way that allows for ourselves to be changed by him.
It’s about personally blessing the poor and the poor in
spirit, being humble, hungering and thirsting for righteousness and being
persecuted on his account. It’s addressing my
anger, avoiding my lust, taking my thoughts seriously, being faithful in
my marriage, telling the truth, and
being reconciled to my enemies. It’s
giving and praying in secret for “us” and not merely “I.” It’s not worrying,
not judging, not hoarding. In fact, my own person becomes a critical measure
for carrying out the sermon because Jesus commands that I do unto others as I
would have them do unto me.
The famous Catholic activist and agitator, Dorothy Day,
toward the end of her life said it this way: “The older I get, the more I meet
people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in
grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.” It often forces me to look
inwardly so I can act outwardly. It's work that demands that I listen to Jesus,
I do what he says, and that I ask and receive help from him (Matt. 6:9-13).
It's a refusal to separate love from obedience and refusal to separate fighting
evil from my own inward demons of hate, violence, greed, etc.
b. It’s
active but not grandiose – it’s small.
What strikes me about these tasks in the sermon on the
mount is that they seem so small given the problems of our world. The false
prophets problems are not that they are passive but seem to be that they imagine
that what will change the world by doing big things for God that don’t require
personal commitment. Note: none of their activities are mentioned by Jesus in
the sermon on the mount.
So these false
prophets are doing big stuff but it’s not the right stuff. And Jesus
responds, “Who are you?” So the sermon on the mount also implies that following Jesus is often
small work. Mother Theresa offers us a brilliant retelling of what I’m trying
to say. She says, “We can do not great things, only small things with great
love. It is not how much you do but how much love you put into doing it. Above
our front door, we have hung a sign that says, “Today . . . small things with
great love (or don’t open the door).”
How does this
understanding of intimacy impact our identity? Well – imagine if I wanted to
join the vegetarian society. And they said, “Okay great here is who we are,
what we stand for, and what we do.” And I replied, “That’s great – I love what
you do and I even bought a t-shirt and bumper sticker but I'm not so interested
in your rigid rules of eating only vegetables every day. However, I can create
multi-media advertisements for your group to get your message out.” Admittedly
that might be helpful, I might know the lingo, talk a good game, but it
wouldn’t make me one of them.
2.
There’s an invitation: God’s
real estate is for “everyone.”
First,
despite Jesus’ warnings of only a “few” followers, false prophets, and bad
trees – Jesus’ invitation is for “everyone” (vs. 24). The real estate option
for a nice solid bit of property to build your house upon is available to
anyone who wants to pay the price. You can afford it but are you willing to pay
for it?
Second,
the foundation isn’t revealed by the size or glamour of the house. Nothing is said
about any differences between the two houses other than the foundation of rock
or sand. Guess what a building inspector calls a small house on a bad
foundation? Condemned. Guess what a
building inspector calls an enormous mansion with vaulted ceilings, a pool, and
a four car garage on a bad foundation? Beautifully, condemned – and “How great
will be there fall!,” Jesus says. Our houses, in other words, are similar to
the sheep’s clothing that we talked about last week. They can be our camouflage
that we try to use to inflate or hide who we really are. We need to resist a world, a spirituality, which
says, “Your reputation, your life, your destiny, is determined by the size of
your house.” Friends, I also want to clearly state that it’s not about the
color of your house either. Some of you – your candidate won the White House.
Some of you – your candidate didn’t. Both of you better build on the right
foundation. Both of you better “do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Both of you better hear and do what he said to us. Both of you should remember
that you are neither Republican or Democrat, red or blue, but a follower of
Jesus. Worry about what you’re building on and everything else will fall into
place. Our houses can look different. Our foundations will not. And some of us
need to stop fussing over architectural plans and start building even if we
don’t know exactly where everything goes.
Third,
it’s also important to remember that the foundation doesn’t change the weather and
bad weather is coming. Following Jesus in this life will not save you from the
storms. Let me say that again, “Following Jesus will not save you from the
storms.” So why do we imagine that storms reflect who people are. I remember a
woman who said to me when I was leaving for California, “I don’t know why
anyone would move there. They have horrible earthquakes and expect us tax
payers to pay for their homes when they fall.” Of course, she failed to mention
the ever-present floods and tornadoes that hit Texas on a regular basis. Storms don’t reflect our choices, they
reveal them. Illus. Story of the flood in my friend’s community – who
shared with whom, who opened to whom?
3.
There’s a promise: You will
be surprised and astounded (NOT afraid)
It
should be telling that the response of the crowd does not actually resemble the
response that many of us sort of feel about Jesus’ words. We might be afraid,
or annoyed, they are “astounded.” Why? Jacob Neusner a famous Jewish scholar
and rabbi clues us in. He wrote a book about Jesus called A Rabbi talks with Jesus, which explores how a faithful follower of
Judaism would hear Jesus’ words on the sermon of the mount. Interestingly, Neusner
says that the ethic of Jesus doesn’t bother him. He appreciates Jesus’
teachings and hears in Jesus, for the most part, an acceptable, though
arguable, interpretation of Torah (the law or first five books of the Hebrew
Scriptures).
What
does concern Neusner, however, remains the astounding language that Jesus
employs for speaking of this ethic. He writes, “Yes, I would have been
astonished. Here is a Torah-teacher who says in his own name what the Torah says in God’s name . . . we now
recognize that at issue is the figure of Jesus, not the teachings at all.” In
a later interview, Neusner declared that Jesus’ attitude to Torah made him want
to ask: “Who do you think you are? God?”
The
focus of the parable about the two foundations, Jesus says, is about “my
words.” In vss. 24 and 26 he focuses not on the Old Testament but “these my
words” – with the emphasis in the Greek on “my” which is placed first. In fact,
our whole passage can almost be summed up by Jesus’ “my.” Entering the kingdom
of heaven is about doing the will of “my Father” (7:21). Those who are not
obedient are told “go away from me” (7:23). And the will of the Father and
one’s entrance into that kingdom directly relate to “my words.”
Gandhi,
whom I deeply respect and who truly challenged Christian visions of the sermon
on the mount by actually showing that the principles worked once said, “I
have never been interested in a historical Jesus. I should not care if it was
proved by someone that the man called Jesus never lived, and that what was
narrated in the Gospels was a figment of the writer’s imagination. For the
Sermon on the Mount would still be true for me.”
The
problem with Gandhi’s remarks, of course, is that Jesus’ ethic, his position in
the sermon on the mount, all stemmed from an understanding of who he was, which
allows him to say these seemingly bombastic things – these warnings about the
future in which he himself is the judge. These aren’t simply ethical teachings
– they are connected to what theologians refer to as eschatology – the end that
Jesus determines.
In the end (signaled by the
phrase “On that day” (vs. 22), the Christian message is that it is Jesus who
decides and determines our destiny. And Jesus can claim that authority and
power because of who he is. It reminds us of where we began – the who is as
important as the what or the how.
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