Dealing with Judgmentalism and Naïveté

Matthew 7:1-5, 15-20

7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye…. 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

According to Jesus, we disciples are to be neither judgmental nor naïve. To put that in positive terms, we are to be both merciful and discerning. That sounds like a challenging balance to maintain. If we are walking a tightrope, it is no better to fall off on one side than on the other. If we fall off on the right side, it is to little purpose if we shout on the way down, “At least I didn’t fall off on the left side.” One disciple may say, “I may have been judgmental, but at least I wasn’t naïve.” Another disciple may say, “I may have failed to be discerning, but at least I was merciful.” But it avails nothing. Jesus wants both. He wants us not to fall off at all…on either side. We are to be discerning and merciful, merciful and discerning. As we strive for the right balance, there are three key terms in Jesus’ teaching that demand our attention.

Term 1. Judge: Jesus says, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged.” As Jesus uses the term, judging is making a negative assessment of another person’s ultimate worth and eternal destiny based on his or her present faults while giving no attention to one’s own faults. Jesus warns that this approach will catch up with us. God will judge us with the standards that we have applied to others.

When we judge, we are usurping the role of God, but God is still present, God sees, God remembers, and God has not resigned his position. We will one day stand before him and be judged. Guess what standard he will use for us! This reality calls us to approach our lives and relationships with a certain humility, compassion, mercy, and spiritual honesty.

As we have worked our way through the Sermon on the Mount, we have taken spiritual inventory. How are we processing the anger in our lives? How are we approaching our sexual or romantic lives? How much do we live our lives with genuine integrity? How are we doing with dedicating our material resources to serving the kingdom of God? How are we measuring up to the standard of godly perfection? Anyone who comes through this inventory without having plenty of personal work to do just is not paying much attention.

We all have at least a latent desire to fix the whole world, to set things right, to play God. Jesus is telling us to start with ourselves. When our understanding of our own inner spiritual dynamics has been put to the test by tackling our own sins, then we might actually turn out to be of help to someone else, if they invite our help. And they might invite us to help if they see that we are not judging them.

Term 2. Hypocrite: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.” As Jesus uses the term, a hypocrite is an actor playing a role, more concerned about appearances, impressions, and reputations than about reality.

If we are obsessed with how we are coming across, it is hard for us to learn anything. When our daughter was a pre-schooler, I tried to help her friend, whom we will call Samantha, learn to read. Samantha was a performer, an actress, completely obsessed with how she was coming across, what response she was getting from her audience. She was bright enough; she could memorize her lines, but, as far as she was concerned, her lines had no relationship to the words on a page. I was not able to teach her anything. As she matured, she eventually learned to read, but I assume that came only as she learned to get her attention off how she was coming across long enough to take in what was on the page. I am not saying that Samantha was a hypocrite; I am just pointing out that her focus on how she was coming across interfered with her learning. The point of comparison follows.

As it is with learning to read, so it is with our moral and spiritual development. We make progress only when we get our attention off how we are coming across so that we can really grapple with putting together the foundational pieces of godly living.

If we go through life focused on our own reputations, it is not likely that we will have very satisfactory relationships. If we expect our spouse, our children, our neighbors, our friends, our church, to constantly enhance our reputations, chances are that not a few of them will resent it and will resist our expectations. Children seem especially resistant on this score. They come equipped with excellent hypocrisy detectors, and they soon catch on if we are more concerned about what others think of our parenting than we are about how they are actually thriving.

Sometimes, the generational rebellion against hypocrisy can go the opposite direction. My great grandparents were students of scripture, faithful church members, Sunday school teachers, and good neighbors. As they aged, they took in my great grandfather’s bachelor nephew, twenty years younger, to help them run their farm. It was a good and happy relationship. When my great-grandfather died, there was not a good alternative for either survivor but to keep the arrangement in place. As my great grandmother had never learned to drive, her deceased husband’s nephew became her driver. My great grandmother’s daughter-in-law, I’ll call her Aunt Hazel, was much concerned about appearances. I do not know if it had occurred to her that the sooner she could get the nephew out of the house, the sooner she, her husband, and family might get into the house, but that was a possible additional motive. She went to my great grandmother and told her that her living arrangement was a great scandal to the whole neighborhood and must be stopped. My great grandmother thought about it for a time, and then announced to the family that, as she and her deceased husband’s nephew did not want to be a scandal, they had obtained a marriage license. So far as I know, all the family and neighbors, and church members, except for Aunt Hazel, were delighted, and for some of them the delight was slightly heightened by Aunt Hazel’s sputtering humiliation. Perhaps some of them too had been victims of her concern for appearances. Hypocrisy does not usually work out well in the end. It is best to root it out early on.

Term 3. Recognize: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.” As Jesus uses the term, to recognize is to see who person really is. While we are not to judge, we are to recognize, to discern. Jesus said that we will recognize truly godly people by the fruits of their living, not by appearances and reputations, but by real productivity. Godly people, people of spiritual depth and maturity, people of compassion and mercy, people of wisdom and discernment, will leave a trail of good fruit in their tracks.

Let’s take my grandmother as an example. Like her mother, she was a godly church woman and Sunday school teacher, but she added touches of good-humored, broad-minded compassion and skill in human relations that were extraordinarily fruitful. She spent much of her adult life living with her husband in a tiny, one bedroom telephone office where they not only raised my mother, but also by turns a couple of nieces, the extra bed being a fold-down by the switchboard. She was in many ways, the human center of her small town of Bluff City, Kansas. She would talk easily with anyone, rich or poor, respectable or scandalous, sober or drunk, and treat them all the same. Two generations of young people saw her as the embodiment of acceptance, wisdom, and guidance. When she was terminally ill, and in such pain that she could not sleep, she sat up at night writing letters of encouragement to young people that she knew to be going through hard times. When she died, the funeral home in Anthony, Kansas, had to set up speakers outside so that those who wished to attend the service but could not get in, could at least hear it. She never had any significant money, never cared a whit about appearances, but she was one of the most fruitful people I ever knew.

Acceptance, mercy, and compassion are good, godly qualities, but Jesus also wanted his disciples to be careful about who they selected as spiritual leaders, guides, and models. He warned them against leaders whose spiritual lives were not fruitful. We are not to judge people for their faults. We are to be merciful and compassionate to people who have fallen short of Christian standards. But we also are to be careful about who we select as our spiritual leaders.

At First Christian Church, we welcome into our fellowship everyone who wants to learn about Jesus and about following him. We welcome into our membership everyone who professes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Lord and Savior of the world, who has been baptized into union with him, and who wishes to be part of our fellowship and mission. But Jesus wants us to be careful, discerning, recognizing, about selecting our leaders because he loves us and does not want us to be led in the wrong direction.

In this passage, Jesus is warning against false prophets, who disguise themselves as good sheep, but are really destructive wolves. But his warnings apply to other leaders besides prophets: evangelists, preachers, pastors, elders, Sunday school teachers, and so forth. No leaders are perfect or without fault, but we want our leaders to be established on the solid foundation of sacred scripture, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. We do not want leaders who teach false doctrine. We want our leaders to be subject to the moral teachings of the New Testament, and if they fail, to be duly repentant. We do not want leaders who break New Testament moral rules and remain unrepentant. We want our leaders to be moving in the right direction, growing in all of the 9 ways. We do not want leaders who are complacent about their walk with Christ. We want our leaders to be developing discernment about the difference between essentials and nonessentials, about what is clear from scripture and what is debatable, about when we must be united and when we can allow diversity. We do not want leaders who ride off on their speculative theological hobby horses in ways that are divisive of genuine believers. We want our leaders to learn how to hold important lines without being unnecessarily offensive. We do not want them unnecessarily driving people whose faith or morality does not yet measure up out of hearing range of the gospel. We want our leaders to understand the priority of expressing the redeeming love of God in effective ways to lost and broken people. We do not want leaders who do not care about broken people. We want our leaders to be humbly merciful and compassionate

Now, none of us will perfectly measure up to what we want in our leaders. All of us are unworthy. All of us require grace and mercy. All of us are on a journey, but a spiritual leader should at least know our need for help, should know the direction of the journey, and should be willing to learn, learn, and learn some more. With that kind of leader, Jesus can work with extraordinary patience and great results.

Dealing with Double-mindedness

Matthew 6:19-21, 24-34

Matthew 6:19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also…. 24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

This is our eighth sermon on the Sermon on the Mount. It seems that I preach from today’s text or its close parallels in Luke’s Gospel about once a year. It is a rich text and can go a lot of different directions. I will try not to repeat myself too much. I will focus on five brief excerpts.

Passage 1. “…lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven….”

Jesus has an investment plan for us. He says that we should invest (literally, lay up treasures for ourselves) in heaven. How do we invest in heaven?

We invest in things that help increase people’s faith, hope, and love, things that draw them to Jesus, things that make them more like Jesus, things that engage them in doing Jesus’ work. Does that sound vaguely familiar? I have borrowed those phrases from our newly adopted mission statement. In short, we invest in the mission of Christ’s church. We invest our human resources, including our time and our money, in doing things in this life that anticipate the perfect future that will be in God’s new heaven and new earth, in doing things that win friends who will fellowship with us around the Messiah’s table in eternity.

Last Sunday afternoon, we adopted a mission statement, a vision statement, a plan statement, and a set of two budgets. The baseline budget is the kind of budget we can use if we merely maintain our giving at the level of 2009; no, we can’t spend every budget line to the max at our 2009 giving rates, but that is almost always true in church budgets; not all spending plans come to fruition; not all budget allowances need to be spent. The allowances are present to allow the spending that may be needed as events unfold. When we turn from the baseline budget to the growth budget, the specific proposals for increased spending come from the requests that were made for the work of our Ministry Teams: Evangelism and Compassion, Discipleship, Worship, and Friendship and Hospitality. We instructed our Board to aim for an appropriate balance of growth in numbers, spiritual maturity, mission, administrative capacity, and pastoral care, and we authorized them to begin from the baseline budget and to gradually implement as much of the growth budget as they can within the limits of what is financially possible, prioritizing and reallocating to achieve the balanced growth goals. The Board is not about to indulge in deficit spending. The Board can act on our instructions only to the degree that we increase our giving.

What do we get if we as a congregation increase our giving? Well, we have given the Board some leeway to prioritize and reallocate to maximize our growth with available funds. But, according to what we put in our growth budget, we expand and enhance our youth and children’s ministries; we use some money to strengthen the Wednesday evening worship which we hope will become the foundation of the church’s second worship service this fall. We increase the amount of money available for Christian education curriculum to meet the needs of expanding numbers. We budget money for improved audio-visual equipment to serve our worship services. We begin to pay for the Friendship and Hospitality food that David and Mary Ann Bell and others among us have been supplying from their own pockets. We increase the amount of money available for advertising as we begin to brand our church in line with the Mission/Vision statements. We increase the amount of money available for buying choir music and for paying guest musicians to enrich our worship services. Of course, the Board may reallocate some of this, but they should do so only to maximize our balanced growth potential.

Over time, all this should draw more citizens into Christ’s kingdom and more members into this congregation. In short, it is a way that we can invest in heaven. It is a way we can help people join us on our one Foundation, our faith in Jesus Christ. Eddie Keever had heard about how quickly this church paid for a new roof a couple of years back. He quipped: “We paid for the roof; now it’s time to pay for the foundation.” Not a bad thought. Giving toward spiritual growth and mission goals is investing in heaven. It is our spiritual foundation.

Passage 2. “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also….”

Some people teach that if our hearts are in something, we will invest in it. That may be true. But Jesus knows that it works the other way around too. When we invest in the redeeming love of Jesus Christ, we start caring more about the progress of that love. We begin to pray for the outreach efforts of the church. We begin to put more time and energy behind our money in building a community of hope through Jesus Christ. Giving more helps us care more.

Passage 3. “No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and money.” If we are serving two masters, if we are serving God and money, we are double-minded. If we are double-minded, we are unstable in our all ways; we cannot expect to accomplish much. How many of you have ever worked in a situation where you were not sure who your real boss was? One would-be boss told you to do one thing, and the other would-be boss told you to do the opposite. It is hard to accomplish much in a situation like that. Jesus tells us to make God our boss, and then we will know whom we are serving. We are serving whatever expresses the loving heart of God reaching out to a lost and broken world.

Passage 4. “…seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness….”

We cannot understand and apply the Sermon on the Mount without first understanding that the kingdom of God is at hand. At hand means here and now as well as in the eternal future. The kingdom of God means that God reigns, that God is in charge and that we are not. The kingdom of God being at hand means that we can experience God’s love, God’s power, God’s providence, and God’s protection in our daily lives right here and now, in and around Berryville, Arkansas—or wherever we are.

Today, we are dealing with problems related to money and double-mindedness. We cannot deal in the Jesus way with those issues or any of the other issues raised in the Sermon on the Mount until we trust that God is in charge. That is why the culminating point that Jesus makes in this passage is, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” What he is saying is, if you will make living your life in accord with God’s reign your most basic assumption and your top priority, then your material circumstances will fall into line with your being a blessed child of God.

That is not to say that there will not be difficulties. Jesus is not giving us a formula for how to win friends, influence people, and always be healthy, wealthy and worldly wise. If that was his goal for us, he and his apostles did not set very good examples for us. We have to remember that Jesus’ idea of a blessed life is measured by beatitude attitudes, not by cash value. But, oh what blessing there is in living life in the Jesus way! You can’t buy that blessing, and neither can you beat it!

Passage 5: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow….”

Some of you are puzzled about how we can increase our budget for 2010 when our 2009 giving and spending did not match our 2009 budget. Let me tell you a true story. When I went to pastor Warren Hills Christian Church in Indianapolis, I discovered after a few months that they were in much worse financial situation than they had revealed when we were negotiating. They had for the past several years been cutting their budget to match their pledges, and then their actual giving would shrink by more than their budget cuts. It was a downward spiral that would soon bring their existence to an end unless something changed. When what you are doing is not working, do something else. Some of the leaders persuaded the Board and congregation to vote for a larger budget. They raised the budget about 25% and the giving increased about 15%. That was the biggest jump, but each year they either increased the budget or showed what we could do with increased giving, and each year the giving increased. Our giving never matched our budget, but our growing budgets helped us increase the giving that was available for us to spend in Christ’s mission. As long as we stretched in faith each year, our giving increased. Then one year, one of our largest contributing families pressed for substantial increases in our outreach giving. They probably would have seen to it that we reached the ambitious goal. But a couple of Board members vehemently opposed the budget increases, and it scared the Board back into a cautious pattern. The large-giving family left the church, and the growth in giving stopped. The church growth stalled as well.

What I learned: A stretching faith can build a church, but anxiety can kill a church, or at least reverse its growth. Let’s choose faith.

I am well aware that not all of us can increase our giving. But some of us can. In order to achieve the goals we have projected in the growth budget, we would need about $1200.00 a month increased giving and a little bit more to cover any losses or declines in giving by others. Let’s imagine that 15 households gave an average of $100.00 more per month. Of course, to get that average, some would need to give more to make up for those who could not give that much. But we might even have two or three households who could cover the whole increase to give us a jump start. In any case, I believe that it is an achievable goal if we decide to pursue it.

Let’s be honest. What is needed is an overhaul to our attitudes about giving to Christ’s work. On the bottom line, it is really an issue of hope, faith, love, and commitment. Through the remainder of 2010, we need to take our time and money and go with Jesus wherever he leads. If we will go with him, he will go with us…all the way to the goal.

Dealing with Enmity

Proverbs 20:22; 24:17-18; 25:21-22; Romans 12:14-21; Matthew 5:38-48

This is our seventh sermon in the series on the Sermon on the Mount, “The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached: A Spiritual Overhaul by the Master.” We have discussed changing our goals and standards and being delivered from evil. We have dealt with rage, lust, deception, and hypocrisy. Today we turn to deal with enmity. Let’s read about it in Matthew 5: 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist (or, my preferred translation, Do not retaliate against) the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

For many of us, the most challenging thing Jesus ever said, was, “You must be perfect,” and the second most challenging thing he ever said was, “Love your enemies.” That’s just plain hard. It is surely no accident that these two most difficult teachings are in the same paragraph. Loving enemies and being perfect go together like a horse and carriage, and when the horse and carriage are coming down the street together toward us, looking to us like they are careering wildly out of control and threatening to destroy us, our first impulse is to flee, but that would be a mistake. The horse moves with the power of the kingdom, and the carriage will carry us safely to the kingdom. They have been sent to rescue us from ourselves. So we had better take another look at this horse and carriage, and take the leap of faith to get aboard.

Who are our enemies? Some people seem to think that, if we just live obediently to God, we won’t have any enemies. Not so. The perfect Son of God had lots of enemies, pretty serious and vehement enemies. Indeed, most of them were his enemies precisely because he was so obedient to God. Of course, that’s not how they saw it, but that is because their vision of what it was to obey God was so much smaller than Jesus’ vision. They had a small vision of God’s blessing people who were familiar, pretty much like themselves; Jesus had a big vision of God’s redeeming the oppressed, the lost, the outcast, and the foreign. To those of small vision, Jesus’ large vision was frightening, threatening them and their ways. They hated him for disturbing their comfort zones.

Who were these enemies? The Sadducees with their priestly control of the Jerusalem temple and its system of atonement, the Pharisees with their control of the synagogues and its system of shaping the culture of Judaism, the Herodians with their drive for political power and privilege, the Zealot revolutionaries with their commitment to overthrow Rome, ordinary people who simply did not like for new ideas to rock their boats, and even Jesus’ own family and disciples who wanted to keep him safe even at the cost of opposing his ministry.

What did it mean that Jesus loved these enemies? Whatever else it meant, it did not mean that he gave in to their small vision. It did not mean that he tried to do whatever they wanted him to do. It did not mean that he sought to please them in the ways he conducted his ministry. It did not mean that he softened the challenge of his message for them. It did not even mean that he never lost patience with them. He bluntly and clearly challenged them to wake up to the heart of God, and when they persisted in trying to block his ministry he sometimes spoke and acted with exasperation.

In today’s Sunday school lesson in the fellowship hall, the Pharisees greeted Jesus on the shore as he got out of the boat with his disciples. They asked him for a sign from heaven to authorize his ministry. This was after he had driven out countless demons, healed lepers, the lame, the deaf, the mute, raised the dead, calmed storms, fed multitudes, and much, much more. In exasperation, he groaned deeply with despair, and spoke sharply, “No sign will be given to this generation. Then he got back in the boat and went elsewhere. Did this mean that he did not love them? Not at all. He just recognized the reality that, if they at this time had any interest in the truth, they would have already seen it. There was nothing more he could do for them until they had a change of heart. He could not directly persuade them into the kingdom. There was nothing more he could do than to keep his focus on the mission that might eventually win them over and to speak the truth.

And he spoke the truth with shocking bluntness. When Peter, the disciple he saw at the foundation of his church, tried to prevent his going to Jerusalem, he said, “Get behind me, Satan.” In his last days in Jerusalem before his crucifixion, he said that the religious leaders in Jerusalem, who were operating their religious leadership for their own purposes, would be held accountable for killing the Son of God. He said that the temple that was no longer serving God’s mission of redeeming love would be left with not one stone on another. Before members of the Sanhedrin, when the High Priest’s asked, “Are you the Christ, the son of the Blessed?”, Jesus answered, “I AM, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” In other words, Jesus said, “Not only am I the Messiah, but also, although I now stand before your judgment, because of this, you will one day stand before mine.” The High Priest probably did not feel very loved right then. He tore his robes and raged about Jesus’ blasphemy. But Jesus in love had warned him so that, if he chose, he could escape the judgment that was coming.

Did Jesus really love his enemies? Oh, yes. He sought the best for them as much as he sought the best for others. He went to the cross for them as much as he went for others. He prayed from the cross for them, perhaps more than for others, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It was his will for his followers to receive his former enemies into the church as soon as they had a change of heart. Indeed, former priests, Pharisaic rabbis, Herodians, Zealots, ordinary people, Jesus’ mother and brothers, and eleven of his twelve disciples were prominent in the early church. Their coming to the side of Jesus’ redemptive mission was an answer to Jesus’ prayers for them. I am sure that there was much rejoicing in heaven for each one who woke up to the redeeming love of God through Jesus.

But, for Jesus, loving his enemies did not mean wasting his time trying to please them. What did it mean that Jesus loved his enemies?

1. Jesus’ loving his enemies meant he did not retaliate against them. He did not return their fire with like fire. Even if his enemies lied about him, he did not lie about them. Even if his enemies adopted violent political strategies, he did not respond in kind. In the end, he let their violent political strategies put him on the cross rather than calling his followers to arms to defend him. When his follower Simon Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus healed it and rebuked Peter, “Those who live by the sword die by the sword.” In other words, fighting fire with fire is not a long-term winning strategy.

2. Jesus’ loving his enemies meant that he prayed the very best for them. He was able to do what he did only because he really believed that God reigns, that God’s will and God’s ways win out in the end, and therefore that prayer that taps into God’s reign is the most powerful weapon in the world.

3. Jesus’ loving his enemies meant that he kept his focus on doing the will of God which was the best hope that his enemies had to get out of their self-imposed boxes of death. If he kept pursuing his calling as the divine Son of God, his enemies might catch on. They might see and have faith, they might repent of their wrong attitudes and actions, they eventually might be baptized into Christ, into his life, death, resurrection, into his reign and mission, they might receive the forgiveness of sins, and they might open themselves to the leading and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Significant numbers of them did. Jesus’ way was personally costly, but it was ultimately the winning way.

This is a sobering and challenging message. It is a call to a perfection of faith and living that we probably have not yet reached. I try to do it right, but I fall short—by smaller distances than I used to fall short, but I still fall short. I have no room to point fingers, nor do I expect that the rest of us do.

If we thought that the counsel of perfection to love our enemies meant that we must achieve it by our own efforts, then those of us with the capacity for self-examination and honesty could only despair.

If we thought that the counsel of perfection meant that anyone who falls short is hopelessly lost, then we would simply have to give up now.

But that it is not what it means.

Even in the face of the counsel of perfection, there are at least four reasons for hope.

Reason for Hope Number 1: God reigns. Everything that Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount is based on the assumption that we do not reign, that our efforts do not determine final outcomes, that, both now and finally, God reigns. We are commanded to seek first the kingdom of God and to let the rest fall into place behind. God’s reign provides for us and protects us so that we can do far more than we could ever do on our own.

Reason for Hope Number 2: Jesus died for us. Hear these words from

Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Do you hear the hope? While we were still weak, while we were still sinners, while we were still enemies, Christ died to reconcile us to God. The love Christ commands for our enemies, he first lived out for us at the cost of his own life. Our hope that we can learn to love our enemies rests in what Jesus did in loving us while we were still his enemies. Our weakness, our unworthiness, cannot undo what he has done for us. But nonetheless, his love calls us in gratitude to dedicate ourselves to consistently express his love even for enemies.

Reason for Hope Number 3: Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to those who believe in him. The Holy Spirit will help us learn to think in the strange new ways of the kingdom of God. Make no mistake: the ways of the kingdom are strange and new to the children of this world, even and maybe especially if we have been raised in church. The Holy Spirit enlivens the scriptures for us and gives us an inner voice from God without which we are lost. Degree by degree, the Holy Spirit grows spiritual fruit, Christlike qualities, in us. It is not our job to make ourselves perfect, but as we are covered by the grace and righteousness of Jesus, the Spirit will work within us to bring us toward actual, lived-out righteousness. To the degree that we depend on him, he will show us how to love our enemies.

Reason for Hope Number 4: We can pray. When we pray for God to help us become more like Christ in our attitudes and actions, including loving our enemies, only occasionally will God zap us so that the changes are instantaneous. Usually God will answer the prayers through a long process of gradual transformation during which we really learn things that will help us in more ways than we have imagined for the rest of our lives. When we pray to love our enemies, we may not be able to carry that out perfectly overnight, but so long as we persist in that prayer, God will honor that prayer and transform us until at last we prevail. Prayer is a potent weapon for those on the journey toward a perfect future.