Heart condition
Commentary
Object:
As a middle-aged man, I am forced to be conscious of my heart health. And if I try to overlook the subject, I discover that both my doctor and my wife restore my focus.
A person cannot neglect the condition of his or her heart, for it is a matter of life and death. If I am careless with my eyes, my teeth, or my skin, I will pay a price, but it won't likely cost me my life. If, on the other hand, I am careless about my heart health, then all the rest will not long matter.
Just as the heart is central to our physical health, so it is also the key to our spiritual well-being. We're not speaking any more, of course, about the muscular organ that pumps our blood. Instead, we have in view that mysterious inner part of a human being, which is the seat of our loves and allegiances, our personality and our nature.
Because the heart is so important, it behooves the Christian to be attentive to it. And the passages of scripture we will consider together this week may prove diagnostic as we contemplate the condition of our hearts.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
It is a testimony to the mercy of God that we keep being presented with a choice.
In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, the Lord presented Adam and Eve with a choice between life and death. He had given them life, and he surrounded them with all that they needed to nourish and enjoy that life. At the same time, there was in their midst a cause of death, and the Lord warned them about it. They had a choice between life and death, and God urged them to choose life.
Having made the choice that they did -- the choice that we human beings chronically seem to make -- you would think that the Creator might leave his errant creatures to face the consequences of their choices. "They made their own bed," he might reasonably say, abandoning them to their own waywardness.
Yet that is not the case. He is unwilling to leave us lost, as exemplified by the story of the good shepherd (Luke 15:4-6) and articulated by the one who claimed to be the good shepherd (Luke 19:10). And so he does not relegate us to our fatal foolishness. Mercifully, he keeps presenting us with a choice.
We see the pattern throughout the scriptures. Joshua gave the people a choice in his farewell address (24:14-15). Elijah gave the people a choice in his famous showdown with the priests and prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:21). And wisdom offers us a choice at every fork in life's road (Proverbs 8:1-11).
Likewise here, in our Old Testament reading, Moses gave the people a choice. In a sense, of course, it is always the same choice in every instance.
On the one hand, there is God's way. Moses characterizes that way in three imperatives: love God, obey his commands, and walk in his ways. In the spirit of Hebrew poetry, these are not necessarily three separate and distinct ideas, but rather a kind of elaboration. To love him is to obey him, and to obey him is to walk in his ways. If the people will choose that path, then Moses guarantees the goodness of the destination to which it leads. "Life and prosperity" wait at the end of this road. The nation will grow, and the people will enjoy God's blessings.
On the other hand, there is a way of living that is not God's way, and that is always an option as well. Interestingly, Moses also characterizes that way in terms of three images: the people's hearts turning away, the people not hearing, and the people being led astray to worship other gods. Sin always begins in the heart, and so that's where Moses points first. The next image -- "you do not hear" -- suggests a people who are unresponsive to correction. God sought to intercede with Cain when darkness filled his heart (Genesis 4:5b-7), but Cain did not heed God's words, so it might be that the people will fail (or refuse) to hear what God says to them. Then those wayward hearts and closed ears combine to issue forth in a people who are easily led into the bondage of serving other gods. And that path, according to Moses, will result in God's own people perishing.
The stakes are life and death. This is not merely the relative earning power of having or not having a college degree. This choice marks the dramatic difference between the sort of abundant life that characterizes God's will for his people from beginning to end, on the one hand, and the comprehensive misery that comes from moving outside the boundaries of his blessing, on the other.
And the life-or-death issue is not for Moses' immediate generation alone. Rather, what his contemporaries choose will impact generations to come, whether for better or for worse. So Moses exhorts them, saying, "Choose life so that you and your descendants may live." Just as John Donne famously declared that no man is an island, neither is any generation a self-contained unit. Each one is heir to its ancestors and each one leaves some sort of legacy to its descendants. So Moses encourages the people to leave a legacy of life.
Finally, one more recurring theme within the passage -- a part of what is at stake -- is "the land." We will give that separate attention below.
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
We have a 29-chapter peek into Paul's relationship to the church at Corinth. Other than Ephesus, the apostle spent more time in Corinth, it seems, than any other single missionary outpost. He knew them well, and his correspondence with them suggests to us that they were something of a high-maintenance congregation. The Corinthian church presented Paul with a great many questions, issues, and problems to address, and we are richer so many centuries later that they evoked such a volume of counsel, instruction, and correction from the apostle.
No one welcomes the label of "immature" and least of all people who fancy themselves rather advanced. We surmise from Paul's later discussion about the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12-14) that the Christians in Corinth may have suffered a bit from spiritual self-importance. Because they were so accomplished in what they (perhaps wrongly) assumed were the truly important and impressive gifts, they credited themselves with a great spiritual maturity. So Paul's words here must have been a real comeuppance, calling them "infants" and "people of the flesh."
For us or for our congregations, tongues and miracles may not be the source of spiritual pride, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem. Perhaps for us the issue is education or money. Perhaps it is reputation or influence within the community. Perhaps it's our building, our staff, our programming, or our budget. Whatever the blessing, it can become for us a portal for pride, and so Paul's word to the Corinthians becomes a proper word for us, as well. "For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?"
We observe again and again in Proverbs how noxious to God -- and how contrary to wisdom -- is quarrelsomeness. It finds its source so often in ego and self, which work contrary to love, and therefore contrary to the will of God. We know that Jesus desired for his followers to be marked by unity (John 17:20-21) and characterized above all by love (John 13:35). For as long as we are bickering with one another, therefore, Paul says we're still spiritual babies and operating out of the flesh -- that is, the sinful nature.
In the case of the Corinthians, the disputes came in the form of factions. Specifically, factions that had identified themselves with different significant leaders and influences within that church's experience.
The unwilling players in this rift are Paul and Apollos -- and, we discover somewhat earlier, so are Peter and Christ (1 Corinthians 1:12)! Ironically, the people of Corinth have assigned to Paul and Apollos an importance they did not seek for themselves. They did not desire to be leaders of competitive movements or captains within a divided church. No, Paul recognizes that their true role is as "servants," and their only real importance is as those "through whom you came to believe."
This is no small importance, of course, for it is an eternal importance. How often, however, are we tempted to trade in eternal significance for a temporal one? Making an impact for eternity is all well and good, but we are so flattered when we find people rallying around us and according us an importance in the here-and-now. Paul is to be commended for keeping his eye on the ball in the midst of this particular Corinthian controversy. For rather than taking the opportunity of the letter to assert his own importance and bolster those who are on his "side," he focuses his attention and theirs on the bigger picture.
Finally, the apostle moves to a metaphor, as he so often does, in order to illustrate his point. We are accustomed to agricultural imagery in Jesus' parables, while Paul generally looks elsewhere for his analogies. In this case, however, he sees that "bigger picture" as being like a field, very reminiscent of several of Jesus' kingdom teachings. And in that field, he and Apollos both have a job to do, to be sure. Yet each task is essential, neither could succeed without the other, and neither is the final source of success, for that is God.
And so, while the Corinthians have -- immaturely -- used God's servants to form intramural squabbles, Paul insists that he and Apollos are actually teammates, "working together." And the bigger picture is that all of them -- Paul, Apollos, and the Corinthian Christians -- are all a part of what God himself is endeavoring to do.
Matthew 5:21-37
In my twenty years of pastoral ministry, I have met a lot of church folks who are carrying around in their minds some caricatures of the Old Testament and the New. The Old, they believe, is stern and harsh, while the New Testament is all love, grace, and forgiveness. The Old Testament is the rugged and fiery Mount Sinai, while the New is the gentle, green hills of Galilee. This perspective is nothing new, of course. All the way back in the second century, a guy named Marcion had already developed a whole system around this general impression.
The argument has so many facets. For our narrower purposes just now, though, we observe this: Can the Old Testament Law possibly feature any requirements so demanding, so challenging as this excerpt from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount?
Jesus clearly has in mind the Old Testament Law, along with the subsequent layers of tradition grown up on top of it, as he offers these teachings. "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times," he begins, recalling a familiar excerpt from the Ten Commandments. He makes explicit reference to what they have heard said four more times in the passage. And, in every instance, he follows it with his word on the subject: "But I say to you...."
At first blush, it seems almost blasphemous. How does a person quote God's law, followed by "but"? How does a person recall what God has said, only to add, "But I say"?
If what Jesus went on to teach had contradicted the spirit of the law, or had even diminished the letter of it, we might raise an eyebrow. Instead, however, we discover that he has only intensified the law, magnifying its spirit and faithfully cutting through to the very heart of the matter. When it comes to sin, of course, the heart of the matter is always the heart. This is our primary theme for the week.
Meanwhile, one of Jesus' primary themes in this selected lection is our relationship with other people. He begins with the subject of murder but moves quickly to the internal and driving concerns of anger and hate. And his solution is not mere repression. No teeth-gritting saints here. He does not just want his followers to keep their anger on a short leash: He wants reconciliation.
His instruction to "leave your gift there before the altar" must be translated for a twenty-first-century audience. The people of Jesus' day did not have a church on every corner. To take a gift to the altar was, for his listeners in Galilee, a several-day journey by foot. The prospect of making that trip, only to interrupt the act of worship in order to hustle home and make things right with some friend or relative, only then to return to Jerusalem and its altar was a dramatic one. It is marked by the same sort of hyperbole for effect as his later teaching about plucking out eyes and cutting off hands. Yet in each case, the extreme language serves to illustrate what is truly important to God. And, in this case, we sense that reconciliation between people is so important to him that our worship is unacceptable without it.
Jesus' emphasis on coming to terms with one's opponent (as opposed to our natural emphasis on defeating an opponent) resonates with Paul's against-the-grain counsel to the believers in Corinth (1 Corinthians 6:7). Furthermore, Jesus' counsel to settle "quickly" also reminds us of Paul's sense of urgency regarding interpersonal strife (Ephesians 4:26-27). We certainly see in our epistle passage how eager Paul is for the believers in Corinth to be marked by unity and peace, rather than division and strife.
Our listeners may be either amused or horrified by Jesus' instruction about how to handle the eye or hand that causes sin. At the same time, who can refute his logic? Would it not be better to enter the kingdom without a hand than to enter whole into the fires of hell? We don't believe that is actually the choice we face; yet it does put in perspective the no-nonsense way we are to deal with those things in our lives that undermine our faithfulness.
And no-nonsense is the tone that characterizes all of these teachings. While we may generalize about the sternness of the Old Testament, therefore, let us not overlook the still higher standards of holiness that Jesus sets for his followers in the New.
Application
We have noted above how Jesus' ethical teachings cut to the heart. The laws and traditions he cites were all designed to address sinful behavior. Yet for all the laws that endeavor to regulate behaviors, those behaviors are only what grow visibly above the surface. The root of every behavior, good or bad, is planted and nourished in the heart. So Jesus' teachings point to matters of the heart: anger, lust, reverence, integrity, and such.
Likewise, more than a millennium before Jesus' earthly ministry, Moses addressed the heart of the matter with the people under his care, as well. He cautioned them about their hearts turning away from the Lord, which reads like the first step toward every manner of trouble.
In our own individual Christian journeys, we may discover that real change happens from the inside out. We struggle to curb and control certain outward actions and habits, but they just keep recurring until our hearts are changed. You have to get a weed by the roots.
But how shall we effect such a change?
Fortunately, Moses gives us the answer, and it turns out to be a simple one. In our day, we use the symbol for a heart to signify love. Indeed, on some T-shirts and bumper stickers, the heart symbol is used as a substitute for the word "love." And so it will be easy for us to remember the heart condition that is both our goal and our key: "loving the Lord your God."
Alternative Application
Deuteronomy 30:15-20. "What comes after conquering." Perhaps you remember from your childhood this little rhyme: "Finders, keepers; losers, weepers." The saying is almost exclusively employed by the "finder," and it is usually recited rather uncharitably. We want to give a moment's consideration to that standard playground rule, however, because it includes a bit of wisdom that sheds some light on the words of Moses.
"Finders, keepers; losers, weepers." The saying assumes a certain paradigm: namely, that something of value originally belonged to Person A, but he misplaced it. When Person B finds it, then, it is rightfully his, and Person A is out of luck. The natural (albeit selfish) assumption is that Person B will keep for himself the valuable thing that he finds.
Finding a thing of worth, you see, is not the only part of having that thing. Once you have found it, you must also keep it. If you do not, then suddenly Person B turns into Person A. The finder becomes the loser. Because he failed to keep, he will weep.
That is the principle that was at stake for the children of Israel as Moses addressed them in the plains of Moab. They were about to find -- or, in their case, to take -- a thing of great value. Before them was the land flowing with milk and honey, promised to them and to their ancestors. The Israelites would be, at once, the agents of God's judgment on the wickedness of the inhabitants of the land (see Genesis 15:16; Leviticus 18:24-25) and the heirs of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The land, however -- this valuable find -- needed to be kept. It was not sufficient simply to conquer the land or even to settle it. They had to keep it. And Moses knew that the Israelites, if they were not careful, might end up as the "losers, weepers."
So, as the people prepared to cross the Jordan and take the good land that God had in store for them, Moses gave them instructions about how to keep it. If the people will love and obey God, Moses promises, then he "will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess." Conversely, if they turn away from him and refuse correction, then "you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess."
The land, you see, was not only God's promise and the people's destination; it was also part of what was at stake. For as formidable as the inhabitants of that land were, the Lord, Moses, and Joshua express complete certainty about the people's successful conquest of the land. What was more in question, it seems, was whether or not they would manage to keep what they conquered.
We recognize this theme from the beginning to the end of scripture. In the Garden of Eden, we see a desirable place that God had prepared for people, but they lost that place on account of their sin. Meanwhile, at the other end of scripture, we catch glimpses of the heavenly place that God has in mind for people, but we recognize that that good destination, too, is potentially lost to us by sin. In between, we have the story of the Israelites and the promised land. It is a most desirable land (see, for example, Numbers 13:27), yet Moses puts them on notice here that the land could be lost by their sin.
The place that God has for his people is always at stake. And so we are urged to choose wisely: to choose life. Otherwise, "losers, weepers."
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 119:1-8
Not too long ago a youth director was in a quandary with a group of young people about whether or not to cut down a tree in a yard they were clearing. The young people were excited with the power and pace of the work. "Cut it down," they cried. But the youth director demurred. He knew that the owner's wife liked the tree and was unwilling to lay saw to wood without consulting her. He told the young people this, and they looked at him like he was crazy. "What the worst she can do to you?" they asked. "What can possibly happen if you cut down a tree?" The youth director was stunned. The concern of these young people wasn't about the give and take of relationships and consultation. It was about getting caught or not. There was not an ethic of right and wrong guiding these young people, but rather an ethic of "can I get it away with it, and if I can't what's the worst that can happen?"
The painful truth is that that this is a more prevalent attitude in our nation than we would like to admit. It is the way of the banks that practice predatory lending and the credit card companies who charge up to 75% interest. They do not pause, even for an instant, to consider the moral implications of their actions. They only weigh whether or not it is legal, and if it is illegal, what are the chances of getting caught. It is the way of empires who simply utilize their military power because they can. There is no weighing of right and wrong; no deliberative moral process. It is simply a matter of having the ability to do something and wanting to do it.
Such moral indifference is not, needless to say, a path to happiness. In a climate like this there certainly is no happiness for the victims of amoral behavior. But in truth, there is no happiness for the perpetrators either. Yes. One can hear the snide remarks now. "I'd love to try to be happy with a billion dollars! Who cares how I get it!" Well, the point is that God cares.
Not only does God care about whether or not our way is "blameless." Our deep, personal happiness; our sense of true well being is built upon this. "Happy" indeed "are those whose ways are blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord."
A person cannot neglect the condition of his or her heart, for it is a matter of life and death. If I am careless with my eyes, my teeth, or my skin, I will pay a price, but it won't likely cost me my life. If, on the other hand, I am careless about my heart health, then all the rest will not long matter.
Just as the heart is central to our physical health, so it is also the key to our spiritual well-being. We're not speaking any more, of course, about the muscular organ that pumps our blood. Instead, we have in view that mysterious inner part of a human being, which is the seat of our loves and allegiances, our personality and our nature.
Because the heart is so important, it behooves the Christian to be attentive to it. And the passages of scripture we will consider together this week may prove diagnostic as we contemplate the condition of our hearts.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
It is a testimony to the mercy of God that we keep being presented with a choice.
In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, the Lord presented Adam and Eve with a choice between life and death. He had given them life, and he surrounded them with all that they needed to nourish and enjoy that life. At the same time, there was in their midst a cause of death, and the Lord warned them about it. They had a choice between life and death, and God urged them to choose life.
Having made the choice that they did -- the choice that we human beings chronically seem to make -- you would think that the Creator might leave his errant creatures to face the consequences of their choices. "They made their own bed," he might reasonably say, abandoning them to their own waywardness.
Yet that is not the case. He is unwilling to leave us lost, as exemplified by the story of the good shepherd (Luke 15:4-6) and articulated by the one who claimed to be the good shepherd (Luke 19:10). And so he does not relegate us to our fatal foolishness. Mercifully, he keeps presenting us with a choice.
We see the pattern throughout the scriptures. Joshua gave the people a choice in his farewell address (24:14-15). Elijah gave the people a choice in his famous showdown with the priests and prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:21). And wisdom offers us a choice at every fork in life's road (Proverbs 8:1-11).
Likewise here, in our Old Testament reading, Moses gave the people a choice. In a sense, of course, it is always the same choice in every instance.
On the one hand, there is God's way. Moses characterizes that way in three imperatives: love God, obey his commands, and walk in his ways. In the spirit of Hebrew poetry, these are not necessarily three separate and distinct ideas, but rather a kind of elaboration. To love him is to obey him, and to obey him is to walk in his ways. If the people will choose that path, then Moses guarantees the goodness of the destination to which it leads. "Life and prosperity" wait at the end of this road. The nation will grow, and the people will enjoy God's blessings.
On the other hand, there is a way of living that is not God's way, and that is always an option as well. Interestingly, Moses also characterizes that way in terms of three images: the people's hearts turning away, the people not hearing, and the people being led astray to worship other gods. Sin always begins in the heart, and so that's where Moses points first. The next image -- "you do not hear" -- suggests a people who are unresponsive to correction. God sought to intercede with Cain when darkness filled his heart (Genesis 4:5b-7), but Cain did not heed God's words, so it might be that the people will fail (or refuse) to hear what God says to them. Then those wayward hearts and closed ears combine to issue forth in a people who are easily led into the bondage of serving other gods. And that path, according to Moses, will result in God's own people perishing.
The stakes are life and death. This is not merely the relative earning power of having or not having a college degree. This choice marks the dramatic difference between the sort of abundant life that characterizes God's will for his people from beginning to end, on the one hand, and the comprehensive misery that comes from moving outside the boundaries of his blessing, on the other.
And the life-or-death issue is not for Moses' immediate generation alone. Rather, what his contemporaries choose will impact generations to come, whether for better or for worse. So Moses exhorts them, saying, "Choose life so that you and your descendants may live." Just as John Donne famously declared that no man is an island, neither is any generation a self-contained unit. Each one is heir to its ancestors and each one leaves some sort of legacy to its descendants. So Moses encourages the people to leave a legacy of life.
Finally, one more recurring theme within the passage -- a part of what is at stake -- is "the land." We will give that separate attention below.
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
We have a 29-chapter peek into Paul's relationship to the church at Corinth. Other than Ephesus, the apostle spent more time in Corinth, it seems, than any other single missionary outpost. He knew them well, and his correspondence with them suggests to us that they were something of a high-maintenance congregation. The Corinthian church presented Paul with a great many questions, issues, and problems to address, and we are richer so many centuries later that they evoked such a volume of counsel, instruction, and correction from the apostle.
No one welcomes the label of "immature" and least of all people who fancy themselves rather advanced. We surmise from Paul's later discussion about the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12-14) that the Christians in Corinth may have suffered a bit from spiritual self-importance. Because they were so accomplished in what they (perhaps wrongly) assumed were the truly important and impressive gifts, they credited themselves with a great spiritual maturity. So Paul's words here must have been a real comeuppance, calling them "infants" and "people of the flesh."
For us or for our congregations, tongues and miracles may not be the source of spiritual pride, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem. Perhaps for us the issue is education or money. Perhaps it is reputation or influence within the community. Perhaps it's our building, our staff, our programming, or our budget. Whatever the blessing, it can become for us a portal for pride, and so Paul's word to the Corinthians becomes a proper word for us, as well. "For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?"
We observe again and again in Proverbs how noxious to God -- and how contrary to wisdom -- is quarrelsomeness. It finds its source so often in ego and self, which work contrary to love, and therefore contrary to the will of God. We know that Jesus desired for his followers to be marked by unity (John 17:20-21) and characterized above all by love (John 13:35). For as long as we are bickering with one another, therefore, Paul says we're still spiritual babies and operating out of the flesh -- that is, the sinful nature.
In the case of the Corinthians, the disputes came in the form of factions. Specifically, factions that had identified themselves with different significant leaders and influences within that church's experience.
The unwilling players in this rift are Paul and Apollos -- and, we discover somewhat earlier, so are Peter and Christ (1 Corinthians 1:12)! Ironically, the people of Corinth have assigned to Paul and Apollos an importance they did not seek for themselves. They did not desire to be leaders of competitive movements or captains within a divided church. No, Paul recognizes that their true role is as "servants," and their only real importance is as those "through whom you came to believe."
This is no small importance, of course, for it is an eternal importance. How often, however, are we tempted to trade in eternal significance for a temporal one? Making an impact for eternity is all well and good, but we are so flattered when we find people rallying around us and according us an importance in the here-and-now. Paul is to be commended for keeping his eye on the ball in the midst of this particular Corinthian controversy. For rather than taking the opportunity of the letter to assert his own importance and bolster those who are on his "side," he focuses his attention and theirs on the bigger picture.
Finally, the apostle moves to a metaphor, as he so often does, in order to illustrate his point. We are accustomed to agricultural imagery in Jesus' parables, while Paul generally looks elsewhere for his analogies. In this case, however, he sees that "bigger picture" as being like a field, very reminiscent of several of Jesus' kingdom teachings. And in that field, he and Apollos both have a job to do, to be sure. Yet each task is essential, neither could succeed without the other, and neither is the final source of success, for that is God.
And so, while the Corinthians have -- immaturely -- used God's servants to form intramural squabbles, Paul insists that he and Apollos are actually teammates, "working together." And the bigger picture is that all of them -- Paul, Apollos, and the Corinthian Christians -- are all a part of what God himself is endeavoring to do.
Matthew 5:21-37
In my twenty years of pastoral ministry, I have met a lot of church folks who are carrying around in their minds some caricatures of the Old Testament and the New. The Old, they believe, is stern and harsh, while the New Testament is all love, grace, and forgiveness. The Old Testament is the rugged and fiery Mount Sinai, while the New is the gentle, green hills of Galilee. This perspective is nothing new, of course. All the way back in the second century, a guy named Marcion had already developed a whole system around this general impression.
The argument has so many facets. For our narrower purposes just now, though, we observe this: Can the Old Testament Law possibly feature any requirements so demanding, so challenging as this excerpt from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount?
Jesus clearly has in mind the Old Testament Law, along with the subsequent layers of tradition grown up on top of it, as he offers these teachings. "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times," he begins, recalling a familiar excerpt from the Ten Commandments. He makes explicit reference to what they have heard said four more times in the passage. And, in every instance, he follows it with his word on the subject: "But I say to you...."
At first blush, it seems almost blasphemous. How does a person quote God's law, followed by "but"? How does a person recall what God has said, only to add, "But I say"?
If what Jesus went on to teach had contradicted the spirit of the law, or had even diminished the letter of it, we might raise an eyebrow. Instead, however, we discover that he has only intensified the law, magnifying its spirit and faithfully cutting through to the very heart of the matter. When it comes to sin, of course, the heart of the matter is always the heart. This is our primary theme for the week.
Meanwhile, one of Jesus' primary themes in this selected lection is our relationship with other people. He begins with the subject of murder but moves quickly to the internal and driving concerns of anger and hate. And his solution is not mere repression. No teeth-gritting saints here. He does not just want his followers to keep their anger on a short leash: He wants reconciliation.
His instruction to "leave your gift there before the altar" must be translated for a twenty-first-century audience. The people of Jesus' day did not have a church on every corner. To take a gift to the altar was, for his listeners in Galilee, a several-day journey by foot. The prospect of making that trip, only to interrupt the act of worship in order to hustle home and make things right with some friend or relative, only then to return to Jerusalem and its altar was a dramatic one. It is marked by the same sort of hyperbole for effect as his later teaching about plucking out eyes and cutting off hands. Yet in each case, the extreme language serves to illustrate what is truly important to God. And, in this case, we sense that reconciliation between people is so important to him that our worship is unacceptable without it.
Jesus' emphasis on coming to terms with one's opponent (as opposed to our natural emphasis on defeating an opponent) resonates with Paul's against-the-grain counsel to the believers in Corinth (1 Corinthians 6:7). Furthermore, Jesus' counsel to settle "quickly" also reminds us of Paul's sense of urgency regarding interpersonal strife (Ephesians 4:26-27). We certainly see in our epistle passage how eager Paul is for the believers in Corinth to be marked by unity and peace, rather than division and strife.
Our listeners may be either amused or horrified by Jesus' instruction about how to handle the eye or hand that causes sin. At the same time, who can refute his logic? Would it not be better to enter the kingdom without a hand than to enter whole into the fires of hell? We don't believe that is actually the choice we face; yet it does put in perspective the no-nonsense way we are to deal with those things in our lives that undermine our faithfulness.
And no-nonsense is the tone that characterizes all of these teachings. While we may generalize about the sternness of the Old Testament, therefore, let us not overlook the still higher standards of holiness that Jesus sets for his followers in the New.
Application
We have noted above how Jesus' ethical teachings cut to the heart. The laws and traditions he cites were all designed to address sinful behavior. Yet for all the laws that endeavor to regulate behaviors, those behaviors are only what grow visibly above the surface. The root of every behavior, good or bad, is planted and nourished in the heart. So Jesus' teachings point to matters of the heart: anger, lust, reverence, integrity, and such.
Likewise, more than a millennium before Jesus' earthly ministry, Moses addressed the heart of the matter with the people under his care, as well. He cautioned them about their hearts turning away from the Lord, which reads like the first step toward every manner of trouble.
In our own individual Christian journeys, we may discover that real change happens from the inside out. We struggle to curb and control certain outward actions and habits, but they just keep recurring until our hearts are changed. You have to get a weed by the roots.
But how shall we effect such a change?
Fortunately, Moses gives us the answer, and it turns out to be a simple one. In our day, we use the symbol for a heart to signify love. Indeed, on some T-shirts and bumper stickers, the heart symbol is used as a substitute for the word "love." And so it will be easy for us to remember the heart condition that is both our goal and our key: "loving the Lord your God."
Alternative Application
Deuteronomy 30:15-20. "What comes after conquering." Perhaps you remember from your childhood this little rhyme: "Finders, keepers; losers, weepers." The saying is almost exclusively employed by the "finder," and it is usually recited rather uncharitably. We want to give a moment's consideration to that standard playground rule, however, because it includes a bit of wisdom that sheds some light on the words of Moses.
"Finders, keepers; losers, weepers." The saying assumes a certain paradigm: namely, that something of value originally belonged to Person A, but he misplaced it. When Person B finds it, then, it is rightfully his, and Person A is out of luck. The natural (albeit selfish) assumption is that Person B will keep for himself the valuable thing that he finds.
Finding a thing of worth, you see, is not the only part of having that thing. Once you have found it, you must also keep it. If you do not, then suddenly Person B turns into Person A. The finder becomes the loser. Because he failed to keep, he will weep.
That is the principle that was at stake for the children of Israel as Moses addressed them in the plains of Moab. They were about to find -- or, in their case, to take -- a thing of great value. Before them was the land flowing with milk and honey, promised to them and to their ancestors. The Israelites would be, at once, the agents of God's judgment on the wickedness of the inhabitants of the land (see Genesis 15:16; Leviticus 18:24-25) and the heirs of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The land, however -- this valuable find -- needed to be kept. It was not sufficient simply to conquer the land or even to settle it. They had to keep it. And Moses knew that the Israelites, if they were not careful, might end up as the "losers, weepers."
So, as the people prepared to cross the Jordan and take the good land that God had in store for them, Moses gave them instructions about how to keep it. If the people will love and obey God, Moses promises, then he "will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess." Conversely, if they turn away from him and refuse correction, then "you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess."
The land, you see, was not only God's promise and the people's destination; it was also part of what was at stake. For as formidable as the inhabitants of that land were, the Lord, Moses, and Joshua express complete certainty about the people's successful conquest of the land. What was more in question, it seems, was whether or not they would manage to keep what they conquered.
We recognize this theme from the beginning to the end of scripture. In the Garden of Eden, we see a desirable place that God had prepared for people, but they lost that place on account of their sin. Meanwhile, at the other end of scripture, we catch glimpses of the heavenly place that God has in mind for people, but we recognize that that good destination, too, is potentially lost to us by sin. In between, we have the story of the Israelites and the promised land. It is a most desirable land (see, for example, Numbers 13:27), yet Moses puts them on notice here that the land could be lost by their sin.
The place that God has for his people is always at stake. And so we are urged to choose wisely: to choose life. Otherwise, "losers, weepers."
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 119:1-8
Not too long ago a youth director was in a quandary with a group of young people about whether or not to cut down a tree in a yard they were clearing. The young people were excited with the power and pace of the work. "Cut it down," they cried. But the youth director demurred. He knew that the owner's wife liked the tree and was unwilling to lay saw to wood without consulting her. He told the young people this, and they looked at him like he was crazy. "What the worst she can do to you?" they asked. "What can possibly happen if you cut down a tree?" The youth director was stunned. The concern of these young people wasn't about the give and take of relationships and consultation. It was about getting caught or not. There was not an ethic of right and wrong guiding these young people, but rather an ethic of "can I get it away with it, and if I can't what's the worst that can happen?"
The painful truth is that that this is a more prevalent attitude in our nation than we would like to admit. It is the way of the banks that practice predatory lending and the credit card companies who charge up to 75% interest. They do not pause, even for an instant, to consider the moral implications of their actions. They only weigh whether or not it is legal, and if it is illegal, what are the chances of getting caught. It is the way of empires who simply utilize their military power because they can. There is no weighing of right and wrong; no deliberative moral process. It is simply a matter of having the ability to do something and wanting to do it.
Such moral indifference is not, needless to say, a path to happiness. In a climate like this there certainly is no happiness for the victims of amoral behavior. But in truth, there is no happiness for the perpetrators either. Yes. One can hear the snide remarks now. "I'd love to try to be happy with a billion dollars! Who cares how I get it!" Well, the point is that God cares.
Not only does God care about whether or not our way is "blameless." Our deep, personal happiness; our sense of true well being is built upon this. "Happy" indeed "are those whose ways are blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord."
