Good Shepherd, Berkeley 2/16/14
With readings like those we heard today, it might be suggested
to a preacher to not be too preachy. Because who among us can say that they
perfectly keep the original 10 commandments, let alone Jesus’ ambitious
upgrade- 10.2.
In Deuteronomy we read,
If you obey the commandments of the LORD
your God … then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will
bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.
But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them,…you shall perish…
But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them,…you shall perish…
Like it or
not, we are clearly being told that following these commandments is a matter of
life or death. Not merely physical life and death, though. However we may wail
at our losses, we all know the bargain we have made as far as that goes.
Annie Dillard puts
it beautifully, speaking of life with God’s strange death-inclusive plan:
…We could have planned things more
mercifully, perhaps, but our plan would never get off the drawing board until
we agreed to the very compromising terms that are the only ones that being
offers; It is a covenant to which every thing, even every hydrogen atom is
bound. The terms are clear: if you want to live, you have to die…The world came
into being with the signing of that contract.
We all signed
that contract. We all know we are going to die. But Christianity
is concerned with a different kind of life and death, and a different kind of
covenant. We seek to have abundant life in this lifetime, and eternal life as
well. The great question is: how do we do this? And how do we avoid the worship
of those oh so enticing “other gods?”
Our reading in
Deuteronomy speaks of the wanderings of the heart, and perhaps this question is
a matter of the heart as well. What if Jeremiah had the right idea when he
described the new covenant of the Lord? It is upon our
hearts, as Jeremiah so beautifully puts it, that God’s laws will be written:
I will put my law within them, and I will
write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No
longer shall they teach one another or say, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all
know me, from the least of them to the greatest…for I will forgive their
iniquities and remember their sin no more.
What is
described is following the commandments because you can’t help it- because it
is written in your heart, it is part of your very being. I believe that this is
the new covenant Jesus was talking about at the last supper- the creation of a
oneness between God and humankind, a forgiveness of sin that was effortless and
inevitable because the two parts are one.
We do not, in
this particular violent and competitive culture, act from our hearts very
often. We act out of fear, out of intellect, occasionally out of pity.
Certainly our minds often rule over our hearts. And our hearts, I would say,
resist being written on like a new building resists graffiti.
Our minds, in obedience
to our culture, obey the laws of separation, of binary thinking, of a kind of brutal
duality, of a consciousness that is still in some ways, on survival mode.
“Putting on the Mind of Christ” is a wonderful
book by Jim Marion, who is not a theologian, but, of all things, a Washington
Lawyer! The title of his book refers to St. Paul’s plea in Philippians 2:5:
“Let the same
mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” This is a tall order- and an
astonishing thought-that we might actually acquire the consciousness of Jesus.
Marion puts forth the idea that the Kingdom of God that Jesus is always on
about is not only not a physical place, but it is a state of consciousness. A
non-dual consciousness where there is indeed no separation between God and
humankind, and no separation between humans.
Jesus is doing something quite revolutionary- quite shocking in
this Gospel passage. I read that it was not unusual, in rabbinical literature
of the time, to cast one form of teaching in contrast to another, and then
conclude with “But I say to you…” but no rabbi contrasted his own ideas with
the word of God in the Torah. This took a lot of chutzpah. This was a
radicalization of the Torah, as shocking as Jesus’ other radicalizations. Not
only murder, but anger, and insults are also seen as outside of the Kingdom of
Heaven. But Jesus, with typical compassion, knows that we will, inevitably,
have conflict with our brother or sister, and he tells us what to do about it.
This is a highly inconvenient truth for me, as I just had a
fight with my brother over a trifle. Even more embarrassingly, it was a
Facebook fight. Facebook had previously seemed like a safe way for us to communicate,
but that proved false even in the private message mode. I felt he did, in fact,
insult me. But I am, according to Jesus, to leave my gift before the altar and
go and be reconciled to him. He, who insulted me! Where’s the fun in that?
I have to say, Jesus putting this scenario of reconciliation so
close to the commandment not to murder seems to lend it a lot of heft. I am
going to have to call my brother. I am going to have to try to see with the
half-blind eye of my heart.
And it seems that I can’t even swear about my brother in the
privacy of my own heart, because Jesus is pretty clear about that too. Jesus’
injunction against swearing is kind of a fascinating peek into the things that
people actually said. Apparently they actually said things like, “By my head,
100 denari for that miserable donkey is an abomination!” or, “By Jerusalem, I
will never drink wine at this inn again!”
But we are not to swear at all- we are only to say only “Yes,
yes” or “No, no.” I have to say that if I had heeded that advise, my
conversation with my brother would have gone a lot more smoothly.
How do we get to the place where we can reconcile with our
brother or sister? How can we see with the eye of the heart? Upgrading our
consciousness is not an easy task, but this is Jesus’ great suggestion.
“Blessed are the pure in heart,” he tells us. We
can follow the lead of Jesus, and make sure to find a time when we can
“withdraw to a solitary and private place” for prayer and meditation, as he
often did. That may be the easy part, but we will never get to the next part
without it. For the next part- the hard part, we can only try to bless each
other, as he commands, with forgiveness, with gentleness, with prayer and of
course, with love. Then we may get to glimpse the Kingdom. Then we might begin
to see, although through a glass darkly, the view from the h
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