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Well, we’ve made it through the easy stuff. We’ve made it through Easter and the Resurrection, through the Ascension and Pentecost, and through last Sunday, the Holy Trinity. Now for the hard part: what does all this mean for our lives? The question Jesus asks us now, in his Sermon on the Mount, is, “How shall we live?” “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” says Jesus. So “a wise man is like one who built his house upon a rock. The rains came and the floods rose and the winds beat against that house, and the house did not fall, because its foundation was on rock. But a foolish man is like one who built his house on sand. And the rains came and the floods rose and the the winds blew and beat against that house, and great was its fall.” To understand why Jesus ended his Sermon on the Mount with this warning, it’s helpful to recall what kind of religion Jesus himself practiced. Jesus was a Jew, of course. And as Hyam Maccoby, a Jewish scholar in London, reminded Karen Armstrong, Judaism is a religion of wisdom and ethics, not of theology. “Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other religion, really, [except Christianity],” he said. In Judaism, “there is no orthodoxy as you have it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you like.” “No official theology? None at all?” asked Armstrong. “How can you be religious without a set of ideas – [without beliefs] about God, salvation,and so on – as a basis?” “We – [Judaism, the religion of Jesus] – have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy,” Maccoby replied. “’Right practice’ rather than ‘right belief.’ ...We Jews don’t bother much about what we believe. We just do instead.” What Karen Armstrong found in her study of Judaism was that, for Jews, religion is a body of wisdom offered by God to a people as a guide for living. The people are called upon not merely to know the body of wisdom or to believe that what God said was wise, but to make a commitment to the doing of wise things, a commitment to the living of a moral life based on wisdom. Committing one’s self to do what God said to do and not to do what God said not to do is to commit one’s self to experiencing life as God intends it, which is to experience the kingdom of God. “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds,” says the Lord. “Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” It’s helpful to remember that this is the religion Jesus himself practiced when he preached his Sermon on the Mount in which he offers his wisdom for living. And then, at the end, Jesus gives us this warning: “Not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom, but only those who do the will of my heavenly Father.... Whoever hears these words of mine and does them,” Jesus adds, “is like a wise man who built his house on rock.” And as all his hearers acknowledged, “he spoke as one with authority.” Christians sometimes have a hard time with words like these, even if they come from the lips of Jesus. “Since no one ever does God’s words completely,” we reason, ”then it is clear that one cannot be put right with God by works. Therefore, one can enter the kingdom only by faith, by believing in Jesus, the One who does do them completely for us.” But this reasoning, without some parsing, runs the risk of misunderstanding the nature of religion and faith as they are found in Jesus. In our modern, English-speaking world we ask people if they believe in God the same way we ask them if they believe in the tooth fairy. In asking the question of belief, it is possible, in English, for us to mean nothing more than, “Do you think the tooth fairy exists?” and “Do you think God exists?” Such a question would get you locked in a padded room in biblical cultures. The word “believe” is never used in that way in the Bible. In the Bible, the reality of God is a given. God’s reality is assumed, simply taken for granted. Belief, for us today, is not synonymous with faith. Belief, for us, is largely a matter of the head or the mind. Belief, for us, is saying, “Lord, Lord,” the giving of verbal or intellectual assent to the reality of something. It is possible for us, in English, to say we believe in something without acting upon that belief. In English I can say that I believe that an airplane will take off from Denver and land safely in Mexico City several hours later. But if, because of timidity or fear, I do not actually board the plane, if I do not actually trust it enough to get on the plane and make the trip, then I will miss the wonderful vacation I insisted that I was looking forward to. In English, we can say we believe that the plane will land safely even if we don’t personally trust it to do so. The Bible simply does not recognize such a distinction. In the Bible, to believe is to get on the plane. In the Bible, belief is about the issue of authority in this experience we call life. “To believe,” in the Greek New Testament, is the same Greek word as “to have faith” – pistein . And pistein is about trust and obedience, not just about intellectual assent. Pistein – belief, trust – is about doing what the one who speaks with authority recommends. Do you trust the authority of God? Is your confidence in God such that you will not only hear (from akouein, to hear) what God says, but do it (from hupakouein, to hear intently, to obey) because you trust what God says to be reliable? Do you trust God enough to build your life wisely, on the word of the One in whom you say you put your trust? In the Bible, to believe – pistein – is the same as to have faith, to trust – pistein. But in modern English, the words ”belief” and “faith” can mean different things. And it is for this reason that I think we should throw the English word “believe” out of the Bible. It has ceased to have a meaningful place in our religious discourse. The way we now use the word “believe” has made it useless as a way of talking about faith in God the way Jesus talks about faith in God, because now we can say we believe in God, then go on to live in ways different from what God requires, but have people shrug their shoulders as if they see no contradiction in that. For us, when belief says to Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” belief can hear his words and, without contradiction, not do them. That’s why it’s no longer a useful word. But in the Bible, when belief says to Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” it is faith that hears the words of Jesus and does them, because faith – trust, personal confidence – is what belief meant then. “Believe in God; believe also in me,” says Jesus. And what he meant was, “You trust God, don’t you? Trust me as well.” This is why Jesus says that the wise man is like the one who builds his house on rock instead of on sand. To believe, in the Bible – to have faith – is to have such confidence in the authority and wisdom of God that one seeks to builds his life the way God prescribes. So do you personally trust God enough to spend your life giving to those who ask of you? Jesus asks in his sermon. Do you personally trust God enough to spend your life walking two miles with someone when he asks you to walk only one, to love not just those who love you, but to love your enemies as well? Do you have the faith to pray as Jesus prayed, trusting that if you forgive the sins of others, God will forgive your sins in the same measure? Do you have the faith in God necessary to store up for yourself treasure in heaven rather than here on earth, the faith to be judged with the same measure with which you judge others, the faith to be recognized by the fruit you bear, the faith to seek to live the kingdom life God recommends? All this, and more, Jesus tells us, are the words a wise person not only hears, but does. Not because the doing saves you or causes God to love you, but because there is wisdom and life there. Ryan was six years old when he said it, and his brother Dan was four. Both boys loved pancakes, so their mother promised to make pancakes on Sunday morning. At the table, Ryan and Dan began to argue over who would get the first pancake. So mom said, “Boys, why don’t we act as if Jesus were here? You know, if Jesus were here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake; I can wait.’” And Ryan turned to Dan, and with all the authority of an older brother, he said, “Dan, you be Jesus.” Tragically, much of human history is the story of such foolishness, the story of our assigning the role of Jesus to someone else. Dan, you be Jesus. As Chesterton says, “The Christian ideal” – actually living the kingdom life – “has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.” What foolish people we are, preferring sand to rock. Oh, we believe in rock, but, “’Lord, Lord,’ it costs so much less to build on sand. You be Jesus.” If I hear Jesus’ great wisdom sermon correctly, faith is something that issues not just in “Lord, Lord,” but in obedience, in works, in actual building, in building on the rock of kingdom living as the one who spoke with authority outlines it. For him, there is no conflict between “works” righteousness, on the one hand, and a righteousness that comes by faith, on the other. In his sermon, Jesus agrees with St. James that faith without works is quite dead, as dead as a plane ticket bought for a vacation but left unused. Christ is the sure foundation, as St. Paul says – not only the foundation in which we believe, but also the foundation upon which Jesus himself calls us to build, not because the building causes God to love us, but because it’s in the building that wisdom and kingdom life are found. Think of it this way: We have been saved, as St. Paul insists. Note the past tense! It’s like being pregnant. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves more saved, more justified with God, than we already are. We are in good hands, as Huston Smith puts it. We are in good hands because God loves us, and because Christ has sealed that love with his own life and blood. That’s the message of Lent and Easter and Resurrection and Ascension and Pentecost and the Holy Trinity and all that, the easy part. It’s good news, and we affirm it. “Lord, Lord,” we say in the creed. But what does that good news leave me with if I continue to live as if the new foundation were something to look at and admire, even adore, but not to build on? What does that good news leave me with if I continue to build on sand? If I say, “’Lord, Lord,’ thanks for the foundation,” but then go on as usual, fearfully trying to brace up my present life with spiritual duct tape against the day when the rains will fall and the winds will blow, what does the good news leave me with? Perhaps you remember the story some years ago of a Japanese soldier, who, after the end of World War II, continued to live alone in the jungle of a Pacific island, not believing that the war was over. In effect, he continued to believe in and fight a war that was no longer being waged. And it was not until his old commanding officer personally sought him out and ordered him home that the soldier would believe that the war was really over. Only then did he go home and start to build a new life. What St. Paul is telling us when he says that God loves us and that we are justified, saved, by the grace of God alone is that the war we’ve been fighting all our lives is over. We do not have to try to earn a relationship with God. It is a gift. It is our inheritance. And what Jesus is telling us when he says that God loves us, loves us so much that he sent his own Son into the world to save it, not to condemn it, is the same evangelical message. As commanding officer, Jesus tells us that the war is over. “God loves you,” he says. “Go home and build a new life, a life on the rock of these words of mine. Build as if your life depends on it, which it does. Not because God won’t love you if you don’t, or if you build imperfectly, but because – Trust me! says Jesus – it’s the wise way to build.” Because not even the kingdom of heaven comes without storms; not even the kingdom of heaven comes without the winds and rains of real life. When Paul tells us that the righteousness of God, salvation, “is effective through the faith of Christ for all who have such faith,”he is saying the same thing: “You are now free to go home and, with faith, with confidence in God’s wisdom, free to build the kingdom life, knowing, as Jesus knew – having the same faith in God that Jesus had – that you matter to God no matter what. You are free to have the faith of Jesus, knowing that God loves you. You are free; free to live without fear, as Jesus lived; free to build on solid rock; free to hunger and thirst for a righteousness that exceeds that of the pharisee; free to show mercy; free to make peace; free to turn the other cheek; free to give to those who ask of you. “You are free to walk a second mile when you’re asked to walk only one; free to love not just those who love you, but, without fear, to love your enemies; free to pray as Jesus prayed – that God will forgive you your sins in the same way that you forgive the sins of others – free, without anxiety, to store up for yourself treasure in heaven rather than on earth; free, without fear, to be judged with the same measure with which you judge others; free to be recognized by the fruit you bear; free to trust God the way Jesus trusted God; free to live the kingdom faith of Jesus and to experience the kingdom the way the One you have faith in recommends; free to live this life because you know that God loves you no matter what and that, in building on the solid rock of Jesus’ wisdom, your house will stand and not be washed away when the rains come and the winds blow. In the Bible, there is no conflict between faith and works. For Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, just as for James in his later letter, faith without works is as dead as the “Lord, Lord” of a life built on sand. It is true that if we do our good works thinking they will somehow cause a loving God to love us more than he already does, or will cause God to love us more than he loves others who don’t do them, then we are fighting a war that has been over for centuries. But that war is over. The question of God’s love, the question of salvation, is settled. You have been justified, saved. There’s nothing you can do about that. There is only one question that remains. It’s the question of all the Sundays after Pentecost and the question of the rest of our lives: How shall we live, now that we know, in Jesus, that we are loved? In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen |