Beyond bumper stickers

It feels a little redundant being up here; basically, I am going to deliver a sermon on a sermon.

As we open the Gospel this morning: And we look at what Matthew deems to be Christ’s first Public act: In which he lays down the law; So, to speak we are being confronted in a couple of ways.

The first being, that this beautiful scripture, along with many others is so familiar: in fact, I can almost bet that as soon as you saw The Gospel for today that some movie image jumped into your head, right? Much like Moses and the Ten Commandments being forever coloured for us by Charlton heston.

The other issue is that if we are somebody who has been involved or associated with Christianity for a while, there is a tendency to think “I know this” and maybe we miss the chance to fully engage with or embrace the ideas set before us today.

So, with that in mind I would like to quote Jack Nicholson in his role as the Joker “Gentlemen ( and ladies) let’s broaden our minds”

One of the first points to consider, is that blessed doesn’t always mean happy: well at least not in the way we usually think about it: Happiness to many today, is the new drug of choice, people are trying all kinds of things to achieve an almost utopian happiness: that disconnects them from suffering and conflict.

It is almost like “Just add water and It works” and I think religion must own that for itself as well. We can tend to make life a bit formulaic: “do this, then this – Bam”

Then we get disappointed and theologically confused when it does not work.

Before I continue, I am not saying that happiness is something you shouldn’t want or something you should feel bad for having. What I am saying is that I believe the ideas in the Sermon on the mount are more than nice mottos to live by and more than nice bumper stickers for your car. The ideas contained in the sermon on the mount go deeper than our happiness. In my opinion, they are doorways into an unbreakable deep comfort and the wonderful idea that we have access to a breakthrough love, a love that is always waiting, wanting to be felt and expressed. A love that is with us regardless of circumstances or how things appear. So maybe we can begin to think of blessed in terms of being loved and cared for rather than happy? The aspect of today’s Gospel that I find exciting is that we are being offered “a social reset button” What I love about this Gospel is; it sits in direct opposition to our ideas on success.

We are part of a society that says “Having everything is success”

this says to us, “Loving is success, forgiving is success and serving is success”

Those of you of you who have heard me preach before, know how much I like talk about “The Great Reversal” Well here it is again, inside the Gospel for today: we are reminded that God’s love works from the bottom up and is often expressed in the hearts of the poor, The oppressed and the peacemakers. As with any good piece of social commentary, we are being asked how we relate to it and what we are going to do with it?

Today we are being shown the meaning of the law, the heart of God and how we are are to behave/ engage; We are being called to repent, follow, and move. With the word move, we can think of it not only in terms of moving ourselves along the road, but also moving our church, our community, and our world along the road. If we take away one thing from these familiar words of comfort and social reorder, that could be called a holy protest. It is that we are being invited to participate with our loving Creator; in bringing new ideas about community, love, and justice to life: To make sure everyone’s life is valued.

It has been said that if you are after a blueprint for Christianity combine this with 1 Corinthians 13 and you can ‘t go wrong.

Oh, what a Church and world we would have if that happened.

In fact, I invite you to take a minute to think about that; What would the world look like if love, justice, compassion, and mercy were the currencies we dealt in? I also family invite you, to join me in being both scared and excited; as we not only continue to use our trusted ways of bringing the world changing ideas, set before us to life but as we also tap into our creativity to find new ways of expressing love, justice, mercy and compassion. Perhaps if we commit to doing that, this world this world can be a place that wipes away every tear as well as in the Kingdom to come.