June 1, 2008 + Synchronicity: Words and Deeds + Frank Alton

Matthew 7:21-29



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The rabbis tell a story about a rabbi and a soapmaker who went for a walk together. The soapmaker said, “What good is religion? Look at all the trouble and misery of the world after thousands of years of teaching about goodness, truth and peace – after all the prayers, sermons and teachings. If religion is good and true, why should this be?” The rabbi said nothing. They continued walking until he noticed a child playing in the gutter. Then the rabbi said, “Look at that child. You say that soap makes people clean. But see the dirt on that youngster. Of what good is soap? With all the soap in the world, the child is still filthy. I wonder how effective soap is after all.” The soapmaker protested and said, “But Rabbi, soap can’t do any good unless it is used.” “Exactly”, the rabbi replied. “So it is with Judaism, or any other religion. It is ineffective unless it is applied and used.”

In this morning’s Gospel lesson, a rabbi named Jesus concluded an extended sermon with the same thought: the positive impact of his words can only be known by those who act on them. That is the way Jesus lived his life. The real reason for Jesus’ impact – both immediate and lasting – is that there was a seamless connection between his words and his deeds. From the opening scenes in the Gospels through the crucifixion itself, people noticed that Jesus taught with an authority rooted in synchronicity between his words and deeds.

But we often get it wrong right here. When Jesus says “everyone who hears these words of mine” we substitute words for religion, which we understand as a set of rules and principles to live by. Think ten commandments & Sermon on the Mount. Today’s passage is, in fact, the end of the Sermon on the Mount. When we read it we realize it’s much more than principles or a set of rules; it’s certainly not a call to religious piety. It seems like we all want to live by principles even when we can’t pull it off. Yet that’s precisely what Jesus didn’t seek to do. That’s what got him in so much trouble: he questioned everything that makes people feel safe with religion.

In his life and teaching, Jesus lightly, almost cavalierly, cast aside the many legal distinctions the Pharisee labored to maintain. Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the Pharisee as "...the one to whom only the knowledge of good and evil has come to be of importance in his entire life…Every moment of his life is a moment where he must choose between good and evil.” (Ethics, p.30) Every action, every judgment, no matter how small, is permeated with the choice of good and evil. The Pharisee can confront no one without evaluating that person in terms of good and evil (Ethics, p.31). All judgments are moral judgments. No gesture is immune to moral condemnation.

Jesus refuses to see the world in these terms. He bids his disciples to eat on the Sabbath, even though starvation is hardly in question. He heals a woman on the Sabbath, although after eighteen years of illness she could seemingly wait a few more hours. Jesus exhibits a freedom from the law in everything he does, but that doesn’t mean his behavior is arbitrary. It follows the law of love – loving our neighbors & loving ourselves. That leads to simplicity and clarity.
Unlike the Pharisee, Jesus is unconcerned with the goodness or badness of those he helps, unconcerned with the personal moral worth of those he meets, talks to, dines with, or heals. He is concerned solely and entirely with the well being of another. He exhibits no other concern. He is the paradigm of selfless action toward others - the exact opposite of the Pharisee. The Pharisee tries to be principled rather than compassionate. Jesus is compassionate above all.

Followers of Jesus are supposed to live in the same way. The responsible person is a selfless person, who does God's will by serving the spiritual and material needs of another, since "...what is nearest to God is precisely the need of one's neighbor" (Ethics, p.136). The selfless model of Jesus is the only guide to responsible action. There is no a priori right way to do that. It must be realized in the moment. Jesus is saying that if you've been doing your "Lord, Lord"-ing, and fail to care for an immediate need, you really haven't done a very good job of "Lord, Lord"-ing. Otherwise your eyes and ears would have been tempered or energized to see and hear what needs doing. The rules keep changing, as they did for Jesus, so we need to be willing to keep moving our foundations.

I was reflecting on this as I roller bladed at Venice Beach on Friday. I was watching homes being built and remodeled and some just sitting there. I couldn’t help but think about the message I’d been hearing about global warming. We’ve been told that the oceans will rise a few inches in the coming decades. I realized that at least the first floor of all these homes would be flooded – not a very good investment. That doesn’t mean the owners are foolish. But they will be foolish if they don’t do something different now. The same is true for us in many areas of our lives.

Jesus’ way of seeing religion as a way of responding with compassion at every moment rather than simply acting out of a prescribed list of rules is uncomfortable at best. In the culture I was raised in, I came to read Jesus’ parable about the house built on rock or sand through the lens of the story of the three pigs. For those of you who were not raised on that story, it speaks of three pigs who each built a house to protect it from the big bad wolf. The first two pigs built flimsy houses that were easily destroyed by wind, rain and fire, and both were eaten by the big bad wolf. The third pig built a strong house that couldn’t be easily destroyed, and thus survived. With that background the meaning of Jesus’ parable was clear to me. I must build my life on discipline, hard work and strong materials that will resist attacks from the big bad wolf. I must put myself into positions of strength from which I negotiate my way through life. The firmer the foundation, the less vulnerable I am. I imagine pouring a slab of concrete and then building a fortress on it, equipping it with all the conveniences I want, arming it with ballistic weapons, insulating myself from all those who aren't bright enough to build in the same way.

The problem is this interpretation doesn’t fit very well with the words Jesus has just spoken, which are, presumably, the words we must put into practice if we wish to build our lives on firm foundations. If we go back and read these words we learn that Jesus is suggesting that those who build on rock are poor in spirit, meek, and persecuted for righteousness' sake. We shore up our foundation by turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, and forgiving as our God forgives. Then we should stop worrying about what we will eat or wear, avoid judging other people, and ask God for those things that we need. This rock we are supposed to build a house on is a pretty strange rock. It sounds more like building a house on a foundation that is purposely designed to bring down the house as soon as the wind picks up or anyone approaches us. I think I like the third pig’s house a lot more than Jesus’. (Andrew Marr THE HOUSE BUILT ON THE STUMBLING ROCK: http://andrewmarr.homestead.com/files/housebuilt.htm)

But then, of course, when I take a second look, I realize that maybe Jesus did have it right. When we forget to show mercy to the poor, we build our house on the sand. When we put the flag above the cross, or equate the flag with the cross, we build our house on the sand. When we pray for the safety of our countrymen and for the destruction of our enemies, we build our house on the sand. When we get complacent about millions who are infected with AIDS or other infectious diseases, we build our house on the sand. When we spend every last dime we have on ourselves, or save it for a rainy day, while neglecting those in need, we build our house on sand. (Tod O.L. Mundo Progressive Blog)

Whether you grew up with the three little pigs or some other story, most of us are not inclined to hear Jesus’ words as clearly as we may at first think. We can hardly imagine a religion that is not based on a set of rules we are supposed to follow at all costs. But no matter how difficult it is, it is critical that we get it right, because the consequences of getting it wrong are tearing the world apart. Two of the direst consequences of perceiving God’s will as a pre-defined set of rules are judgmentalism and fear. We end up judging others and set ourselves up as righteous. We hesitate to do what we think God wants us to do because we’re afraid it will be or will be perceived by others to be sin.

With respect to judgmentalism, scribes in their day and media pundits and spin doctors in our day exercise power closely aligned with invoking the Lord’s name. When televangelists shout, "Come out, in the name of the Lord," and bishops or General Assemblies exorcise the demon of homosexual willfulness in the name of the Lord, and offer praise for mighty works of regeneration in the name of the Lord, are all subject to the shifting sand of the moment and its needs. When we say, write or in any way claim that we are doing the Lord's will, that God is on our side, when combating godless communism or secular humanism is the cry, when radical Islamists are invoked as enemies of the Faith, or the claim is made that our position is just because God wills it -- when in other words we invoke the name of the Lord to counter what we consider to be false deities, we participate in the very behavior Jesus condemned in this verse. (The Sign-off to the Moral Nightly News by Mark Harris Saturday, May 21, 2005)

Jesus’ authority was rooted in the fact that he didn’t invoke the name of the Lord to bolster his teaching. He took responsibility for his own teaching: “You have heard it said… but I say to you…” Nothing: simply the words standing there on their own, just waiting for the executioner to come. Likewise, the object for us is to make God’s will real in the world, in our actions and words, not in our piety. The Reign of God is entered by being God’s Word, by being the voice & action of God’s will; not by invoking the Lord’s name.

The second consequence of seeing God’s will as a pre-defined set of rules is that it makes us afraid to act because we might fall into sin. We’ve all been shaped by our culture; and religion is a part of culture. There have been prohibitions against things whose sinfulness is being questioned today. That makes us nervous. When those things get called into question, it feels like our foundation has been pulled out from under us. We’re tempted to go find it again. But that is exactly the wrong strategy – the one Jesus is rejecting here. Jesus is saying that his word is the foundation, and his word is a living word. I remember teachers joking about Paul’s call to present ourselves as living sacrifices. They said, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.” We’re afraid that Jesus is going to move the foundation, so we look for a more solid one and call it Jesus. So we cling to a set of dead words – even dead words that Jesus himself once spoke as living words. But they become dead when we don’t allow them to move. Jesus will move the foundation. But he is the foundation, so his promise is true: “I will be with you to the end of the age.”

One of the ways we put words and deeds together is by putting our money where are mouths are. In the same sermon Jesus spoke the proverb, “where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” If our hearts are rooted in the foundation of Jesus’ word of compassion, part of our treasure will be invested where that is practiced. Immanuel is only one of those places, but for those of us who consider this our faith community, it is a significant one.

As we sing I want to invite you to take your pledge card and bring it up to the communion table as an expression of your heart commitment. This is a personal decision with a communal expression.