When You’ve Heard It All Before
Matthew 5.21-37
Sixth Sunday of Epiphany
February 16, 2020
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

I would have to actually pull out calendars and file folders to determine this number with accuracy, but I know it is safe to estimate, not counting written devotionals, Wednesday night studies, or summer book club lessons, I’ve preached about 300 sermons at St. Charles at this point in my tenure as pastor. That’s about 300 ways of expressing a handful of things I hold to be capital T “True.” For some of you, that’s about 300 cat naps…or resting your eyes very deep in thought for 15-20 minutes. That’s about 300 Sunday mornings of staring at a computer screen and wondering if I’ve pulled together anything meaningful to say. That’s about 300 car rides to church thanking God for showing up in my words even though I feel like the most ridiculous and unlikely vessel to use for any kind of Divine word. And I suspect it’s at least 250 occasions for looking at the scripture text for the week and saying to myself, “How in the world do you say something new when you’ve heard it all before?”

I think about inspiring colleagues like Dick Randels, who pastored in one place for 37 years. The gift of pastoral longevity in relationship of weddings and baptisms and graduations and funerals is astounding. But the real miracle to me might be: how in the world to you find fresh ways to communicate the handful of things you hold to be capital T “True” for 37 years? Just Sunday mornings alone, that’s almost 2000. And Pastor Randels was also working in the decades of Sunday night vesper services and Wednesday night prayer meetings when pastors were expected to generate sermon-length lessons yet again. Thousands of sermons and devotional reflections and meaningful moments. My peer, Richard Easterling, rector at St. George’s Episcopal, doesn’t preach from a manuscript. And he preaches two services every Sunday. The pressure to be poignant and meaningful and a little funny (but not too funny) and challenging by improvisation over a hundred times a year! Daunting! Remarkable! 

Whether it’s by outline or extemporaneous or printed manuscript, the challenge to make these old words fresh and new and inspiring is both a creative challenge and a weekly grind. If we’ve spent much time in church at all, we’ve heard all of this before. And one of my convictions as a pastor in this transitional time of church in the United States is that I’m not particularly interested in regurgitating the same, American Christian orthodoxy that I’ve heard thousands of times in my own lifetime and no longer hold to be capital T “True” in a life-giving way. How do we sit before sacred text and hear something fresh? something new? How do we listen to the words of Jesus preaching on a mountainside and hear an invitation to a compelling, vibrant, engaged life?

That is precisely the challenge facing Jesus in this portion of the Sermon on the Mount. The commandments of his tradition are so rote at this point, that they don’t inspire his audience. The rules around temple life and ways they have been perverted by Empire life all around them have simply become one more box to tick every day. Or worse, and more likely, one more way to fall short every day. One more way to be pushed farther away from community every day. One more way to set out for the good life and go to bed knowing it was only the mediocre life today. My sister-in-law shared a cartoon on instagram with me recently of a woman climbing a mountain. She reaches the very top and celebrates for half a second, “I did it! I made it!” Then she notices the larger mountain on the other side with an even higher summit to climb.

It’s the Greek story of Sisyphus pushing the same rock up the hill every day only to have it roll back down again. I feel enough of that already in my mind, body, and spirit. I don’t need sacred text laying out one more list of unaccomplishable tasks that ultimately just send the message: you fail, you aren’t enough. To disentangle cultural messages from sacred ones, we have to hear things flipped on their heads, deconstructed, and made new. That’s what Jesus is doing with all of these “you have heard it said” statements. You have heard it said…but I say. 

And maybe what we hope is to be completely absolved of these things. You have heard it said, “You shall not murder,” but I say, “Unless they had it coming.” He does this with adultery and divorce and beyond the text we read today to making oaths to God. And then he takes each one of these farther. Don’t murder? Not far enough. Don’t even get angry. Don’t call people aggressive names when your heart is racing. Don’t enter worship and participate in the rituals if you haven’t made it right yet. Don’t abuse the legal systems to your advantage even if the law allows it. Forget adultery, don’t even lust. Pluck your eye out if the second glance is causing you trouble. On and on he goes.

It sounds to us modern listeners, 20 years into the 21st century, like a whole new list of things to accomplish. A whole new set of boxes to tick. A longer list of ways to fall short at the end of the day. Because we’ve heard it all before. We’ve heard it too many times. And so, we don’t realize that what Jesus was saying to his 1st century audience was radical. He was telling them, forget what you’ve heard 1000 times. Forget the sacrifices and the rules around worship and what the powers-that-be are telling you makes for a proper spiritual life. The path of God is about the heart, the soul, the mind, the ways you interact with others on a micro level and a macro level. His words about anger in a courtroom and men lusting after women and men granting divorce to their wives were all radical words pushing against the way the Roman Empire had rigged the game. Don’t play their game. Don’t oppress your neighbor out of anger. This sermon was preached long before anyone talked about toxic masculinity or  smashing the patriarchy, but Jesus did preach the message to the men in front of him with women sitting beside them as equal participants: Don’t treat women as property with no rights and no dignity. The point of these rules and guidelines is about choosing how you move in the world on the path of God’s love. That’s teh real point: the path of God is about the love and compassion and empathy we embody and live out with our families and our neighbors and even with the people who make our blood boil to the point of imagining they spontaneously combust. 

“You have heard it said to those of ancient times,” Jesus begins as he speaks to the lessons of limitation we have inherited. “But I say to you,” he says as he expands each lesson. He uses the great “y’all” of scripture that we so desperately need to bring back. He is not talking to one person who must shoulder the burden of a unattainable perfect life. Jesus is not looking one person in the eyes and saying, “Wow. You have really missed the mark.” He is talking to ALL OF Y’ALL! This messages is for a holy “us” that God is drawing together. Jesus is saying, “Y’all have heard that things work only one way. And that way is killing you, leaving you exhausted, making the poor poorer and the rich richer, leaving women destitute and literally begging on the side of the road while men move along freely. This system isn’t working for y’all. For us. So I say…” 

Because “The ‘you’ in both [readings for today] Deuteronomy and Matthew is always plural,” David Lose reminds us, “The law isn’t about meeting our individual needs but about creating and sustaining a community in which all of God’s children can find nurture, health, safety, and blessing.” In fact, “Jesus intensifies the law to make us more responsible for our neighbor’s well-being. For by caring for our neighbor we strengthen a community that can best serve as a blessing to the world, God’s constant command and expectation of God’s people.”

Each pairing is an invitation to God’s love and a guide to fullness of life for a collective people. The very first poetry and story of scripture is God dreaming an interdependent world into being. Humans made in the image of God and fashioned from each other’s bone and flesh. Animals and trees and plants created from God’s breath and named by human to be enjoyed and protected by humankind. Yes, the arrangement breaks down pretty quickly, but it breaks down because the human ones don’t honor the dream of an interdependent world. The whole of scripture is calling us all back to that first Divine dream. Jesus is calling us back to the Divine dream with each expansion because these pairings are not meant to guide an individual toward anxiety-ridden perfection but to strengthen a community to aim for God’s dream.

Maybe you’ve heard it all before. My prayer today is that you hear it differently. That *we* hear it differently. Less about rules, more about living. Less about perfection, more about embodying faith. Less about getting it right, more about truly believing God’s dreams for us are not just possible but make a better life and world for all things and all creatures and all structures. The way we live together is about the great shalom God whispers again and again across time, and that’s the way into which Jesus invites us even now. Amen.

CALL TO PRAYER
Reaching for the Divine dream of interconnectedness, love, grace, empathy, and compassion, we hold space and silence together for our prayers to align, remembering we are being knitted together as a people. In prayer, we imagine a loving way in which to live and move and have our being. Together, we hold silence and listen for the truth of who we are and who God is. 

Let us pray.

SILENCE

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE 
O God,

Love is not one more thing to do, it is a way of being and moving in our world. Call us to love. 

When we are tempted to live out of our own self-interest, ignoring our neighbors and living only for ourselves, call us to love. 

When we are consumed by anxiety for our nation—living on a steady diet of 24-hour news and social media echo chambers, call us to love.

When we are isolated and withdrawn, hiding our story and masking our wounds, call us to love.

When we are distracted by minutiae and believe our worth is in the steady flood of our constant performance, call us to love.

When we forget and allow anger and bitterness to have the last word in our hearts, call us to love.

When we think we’ve heard it all and tune out and go numb, acting as though we are unteachable and incapable of change, call us to love.

May we listen for this call today and say “yes” to the fresh invitation to embody the Divine dream for us all, calling us to love again and again and again.

It is with the steps of Christ before us, the Spirit’s breath within us, and the Love of God around us, that we are bold to live just as we are bold to pray, saying:

Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. 
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, Forever. Amen.