Sermon on the Mount: Living Into Dying, and Dying Into Living- Gary Harder – Nov. 26/06

Introduction
We come today to the end of our series of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount. The section for today, Matthew 7:13-28 is often called the “Epilogue”. We come today also to the last Sunday of the old church year. Next Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, begins the new church year. This last Sunday is called “Eternity Sunday” – thinking about life and death, and remembering loved ones who have finished their life’s journey here on this earth. And being aware that each of us will join them one day. Each of us will one day die. No exceptions.

Jesus, at the end of his Sermon on the Mount, paints word pictures, striking images. A wide road leading to death. A narrow road leading to life. We picture it in our minds. Or try to imagine figs growing out of thistles. Or see in your mind a bad tree and a good tree. Or visualize someone building a house on sand because its easier to build there.

So today I will try to bring together eternity Sunday and the conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount. Eternity Sunday calls for some poetry. The conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount calls for us to deal with the images of a road that leads to either death or to life, and of a foundation base solid enough to build a life on.

Eternity Sunday Poets can sometimes help us embrace grief on this eternity Sunday. Listen to Rachel Miller Jacobs, poet and pastor, write about her father’s death.

When my father died
I was washing potatoes in my kitchen,
the graveyard smell of wet dirt thick in my nostrils.
I’ve read about people who saw a distant
though much-loved soul leap from its body,
but not me –
not until the doctor came in,
and my stomach heaved,
any my bones turned to water,
and I heard the rush of blood in my ear,
did I know, with the certainty of a contraction,
my father’s death.

(Vision, Spring 2004, Vol. 5, No. 1, p.69)

Sermon on the Mount: The stark contrast – the two ways The epilogue of Matthew 7 builds a series of contrasts in a series of images.

1) there is a broad road – which leads to destruction, and a narrow road, which leads to life.
2) There are bad trees which yield poor fruit, and healthy trees which yield good fruit.
3) There are people who talk a good talk – hearers of the word only, and there are doers, the folks who listen to Jesus and actually try to act on what he says.
4) The hearers and talkers only are building their lives on sand – which will collapse in a storm. The doers are building their lives, their houses, on solid rock foundations which will withstand any storm.

Along the way there are warnings about false prophets, false teachers who will be found out in the end when no good fruit results from their teaching. And there are folks who are self-deceived, thinking they are doing all kinds of good things for the Lord, but who aren’t doing the will of God, and so won’t be recognized by God.

I wonder if we are made a bit uncomfortable with the stark contrasts Jesus states. They are so “either/or”. Its one or it’s the other. And one way leads to doom, to death, even to judgement. And the other way leads to life, to blessing. Our post modern world is mostly very uncomfortable with such stark contrasts – especially with words of judgment for wrong choices. We protest. Life just isn’t that black and white. Choices aren’t that either/or. Trees aren’t either all good or all bad. It isn’t so clear what is life-giving and what is deathly about how we live. There are many roads, many choices, which could be okay, any number of which lead to God. Why now the stark contrast between a path that leads to life and a path that leads to death?

I grew up not liking vs’s 13 & 14. “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

The broad road was all the fun stuff in life that I was forbidden as a Christian. I looked with envy at the broad road. And on the people that walked it. Movies. Dancing. Easy sex. I never could see the point in getting drunk, so that wasn’t a part of my envy. And I tried smoking only once and hated it, so that wasn’t appealing either. But the people on the broad road were smiling and laughing and having fun, and I wasn’t included. But God would get them in the end.

The narrow road was not doing all the bad things people on the broad road did. The narrow road wasn’t much fun. It was austere. It was filled with “no, you can’t do that”. You followed the rules. You obeyed. You tried to be good. You didn’t laugh much or have much fun. Fun was forbidden. It was a tough, hard road to walk, but God would reward you in the end with heaven. So it was worth it after all. Mostly it was only us Mennonites who would make it to heaven. Most other folks, all the “English”, now having a good time were laughing their way straight to hell.

Is this really what Jesus is teaching us with this image of gate and road?

These contrast images come at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. They come as an epilogue, a conclusion. In the sermon Jesus has given us a glimpse of what God’s Kingdom is like, of how God works in the world. God is wanting to bless people, especially those who are grieving, those who feel poor or marginalized or persecuted. God is into loving the world, even enemies, and we are invited to both experience and reflect the love and forgiveness of God. We are encouraged to deal with our anger in a way that builds rather than destroys relationships. We are to honour the covenants we make, especially our marriage covenants. We are taught to pray as a part of a loving relationship with our living God who will give us what we need. We are warned that materialism isn’t a big enough goal in life. We are encouraged not to worry, but to trust in God’s provision. We are warned not to be judgmental of others, for that breaks community.

Living like this is mostly counter culture. It is not always an easy way to live. It is a narrow path. But it is God’s way. This is what God’s kingdom looks like. And it is life-giving. We know deep down that this way, God’s way, is life-giving in its fullest form. We know that God’s way of loving is in the end deeply meaningful, deeply satisfying, deeply fulfilling in a way that no other choices can be. It is a way that leads to true life – a full life that we live now already, and which will reach a completion in eternity.

We do not create the narrow road, God does. It is a gift of God. God then invites us to walk the road that is life and is life-giving and leads to full life. God’s Spirit empowers us to live that way.

Eternity Sunday. Lament Psalm Five, another poem, th
is time by Ann Weems. Ann wrote this book of poems 13 years after the death of her son.

O God, find me! I am lost in the valley of grief,
and I cannot see my way out.
My friends leave baskets of balm at my feet,
They call me to leave this valley,
But I cannot follow the faint sound of their voices.
They sing their songs of love,
but the words fade and vanish in the wind.
They knock, but I cannot find the door.
They shout to me, but I cannot find the voice to answer.
O God, find me!
Come into this valley and find me!
Bring me out of this land of weeping.
O you to whom I belong, find me!
I will wait here,
for you have never failed to come to me.
I will wait here,
for you have always been faithful.
I will wait here, for you are my God,
and you have promised
that you counted the hairs on my head.”

(From Psalms of Lament)

Sermon on the Mount: The stark contrast – two foundations

Jesus completes the stark contrasts by talking about building a house on a sand foundation or a rock foundation. He says that “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. In other words, the words of Jesus are the rock. Jesus is the foundation. The foundation is already built.. “For other foundation can no one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). We just build our lives on that foundation.

Earlier, in this series of sermons, we acknowledged that a particularly Mennonite temptation in reading the Sermon on the Mount was to see it primarily as en ethical framework for living. Mennonites talk much about “ethical discipleship”. And so we should. But if that means primarily that we start with ethics in our reading of this sermon, that it all depends on us, on our hard work, on our ethical obedience, then I think we have lost the empowerment of these teachings of Jesus. This approach doesn’t feel very grace filled. 

So we said then that the Sermon on the Mount comes in the context of, and is an extension of, Jesus’ healing ministry. It is not first of all about ethics. It is first of all about healing and wholeness and being embraced within God’s love and God’s care for us and our world. By living in God’s “way”, by building our lives on God’s foundation, we experience wholeness and health and spiritual vitality. The narrow road, then, is a gift of grace to us, a gift of real life. The rock foundation is a gift of grace to us, a gift of real life.

It’s like one of my favourite hymns expresses.

I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
he moved my soul to seek him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true,
no, I was found of Thee.
Thou dist reach forth thy hand and mine enfold,
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea.
Twas not so much that I on thee took hold,
as thou, dear Lord, on me.

(#506, hymnal, a worship book) 

Grace filled foundations
I was thinking much of foundations this week – foundations of grace and love to build a life on.

A marriage.
On Sunday evening Marg Friesen called me to excitedly announce the engagement of her daughter Sandy to Gerald. They are planning a Christmas wedding. And I thought about what makes for a good, solid foundation for marriage. The obvious answer of course is love. God’s love for us and our love for each other. But what does such love look like? How does it get expressed in a relationships, especially years down the road? And I thought about things like trust, like forgiveness, like intimacy, like commitment. The word “covenant” comes immediately to mind – giving your life freely to each other in mutual support, a permanent commitment joyfully made out of a depth of love. I thought about a spiritual, faith based foundation for a marriage. I thought about a community of support – family, friends, church, all encouraging and supporting and loving. And I thought about what Jesus has been teaching his followers. Don’t judge each other. Don’t nurse your anger at each other. Don’t commit adultery. Learn how to pray together. Don’t fill your life with worry. Learn to trust God. That is solid foundation stuff. That is solid marriage stuff. That is Sermon on the Mount kind of stuff.

A parent/child dedication.
And then I was remembering that next Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, we are going to have a “parent”child” dedication service right here. We are going to bless some babies and their parents. We are going to symbolize to baby and parents that each child is a gift of God deeply loved by God. We want that child to grow up knowing that it is God’s child, deeply loved. We want that to be a core identity formation mark of each child. You are a beloved child of God. And we as a congregation will promise to support the parents in their sacred task

I think that is really rock solid foundation stuff to build a life around, and to raise a child around, and to build a family around and to build a church around. It is an immense, grace filled foundation.

A death, a funeral.
And then I am so aware that today is eternity Sunday. Today we remember loved ones who have died. And we remember death vigils and we remember funerals. Only two people directly a part of our congregation died this year, Leo Thiessen (February) and Susan Dykstra Koop (September). There were also several miscarriages – the loss of dreams and hopes, the death of a future child.

Death is an occasion for us to remember our dependence on our creator for life and breath. It brings us back to our foundational conviction that God can be trusted to prepare a good future for us. “Death does not have the final word. In the midst of deep grief, we can believe that God has something better in store for – for our loved ones and for us. The radical belief in resurrection not only gives us hope, but it shapes our lives as we live out our faith”, (Klaudia Smucker, “Walking on holy ground”, Vision, p.25) and as we live toward eternal life. That is as foundational as it gets.

Today we reflect on eternal stuff. We reflect on eternal life, and must realize that eternal life, real life, has already begun for us here and now as we experience God’s love, and will only be extended and fulfilled and made complete in God’s eternity. Which means that our lives now must already be in continuity with life then. Life after death, as mysterious as that is to us, will only be an extension in a fuller, more complete way of a life with God we already experience today. Then we will know God more fully. Then we will know true love more fully. 

And so we live into dying, and die into living.

Conclusion
I close with a final poem by Ann Weems

Jesus wept,
and in his weeping, he joined himself forever to those who mourn.
He stands now throughout all time, this Jesus weeping,
with his arms about the weeping one;
“Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.”
He stands with the mourners,
for his name is God-with-us.
Jesus wept.
“Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted”. Someday.
Someday God will wipe the tears from Rachel’s eyes.
In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls
of those who weep,
and of those who weep with those who weep.
If you watch, you will see the hand of God
putting the stars back in their skies
one by one.