Matthew 23:1-4
Now Jesus turned to address his disciples. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all just veneer.
Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help.“
I grew up in a church that had a lot of rules. I bet many of you did, too. Some of the rules were pretty scary to a kid. I was taught that if I was bad God would have to punish me. It would make God unhappy to do so, but that’s how it was.
It was only as I grew older that I began to see that those scary rules weren’t really God’s rules — God’s rules were things like love one another and care for the poor and powerless. They weren’t rules like dress a certain way or only guys can do or be certain things, or worship this exact way and no other. Those rules were rules that men created because they thought that’s how it ought to be. They are what the writer of Matthew’s gospel is referring to as “bundles of rules, loading us down like pack animals” in our reading today.
I began to look around at the world and began to see that the God I loved loved us back, so why would he (it was still always “he” at this point when I was still a chlld) -- why would he do terrible things to the creation he loves? I suspect that many of you had similar questions when you were young. It turns out that those were all really good questions to have.
I was blessed to live a childhood surrounded by good, loving people — and I knew they didn’t deserve to be punished for anything. I devoured books from the time I could first begin to read — not just fiction, but science and history — and I recognized that God created everything that was in those books — so why would God want to punish any of it? And when I wasn’t reading I was out in nature, playing with and learning every creature, every tree, every rock, and I saw that the God who created all that beauty, all that super-abundance of life must love it so very deeply.
Could the God who created giraffes and tiny kittens possibly not just want us to smile and share the joy? How can you not smile at a giraffe? And kittens, or a puddle of soft, new puppies? Or a newborn human child?
The one who arranged sunsets with the sun sinking down into the ocean and color exploding everywhere must want us to share that sense of awe. That wonderment. Not fear that at any moment we might slip and find ourselves facing damnation. The one who brought forth birds in every color combination known to humankind surely loves ALL of creation just as much — including us humans.
A God who loves creation that much must surely want creation to love him/her/it (you can see that over the years I’ve shifted ideas on the gender of God) – that God must want to be loved in return -- and that God wants us to love all the rest of that creation, as well.
And that includes loving each other. Sure, there are some that are so easy to love, no problem -- but there are others who are making it really hard, right now. They seem so filled with spite and nastiness. Loving them can seem so impossible, and yet--“love one another as I have loved you”— there are no exceptions, no excuses. That’s not a man-made rule like some of the ones I discovered when I was younger. That one comes straight from Jesus, so we have to figure it out somehow.
Perhaps, if we can’t love them all right now, we can at least pray for them — pray often and pray sincerely. Who knows? It just might turn into love.
May it be so.
It was only as I grew older that I began to see that those scary rules weren’t really God’s rules — God’s rules were things like love one another and care for the poor and powerless. They weren’t rules like dress a certain way or only guys can do or be certain things, or worship this exact way and no other. Those rules were rules that men created because they thought that’s how it ought to be. They are what the writer of Matthew’s gospel is referring to as “bundles of rules, loading us down like pack animals” in our reading today.
I began to look around at the world and began to see that the God I loved loved us back, so why would he (it was still always “he” at this point when I was still a chlld) -- why would he do terrible things to the creation he loves? I suspect that many of you had similar questions when you were young. It turns out that those were all really good questions to have.
I was blessed to live a childhood surrounded by good, loving people — and I knew they didn’t deserve to be punished for anything. I devoured books from the time I could first begin to read — not just fiction, but science and history — and I recognized that God created everything that was in those books — so why would God want to punish any of it? And when I wasn’t reading I was out in nature, playing with and learning every creature, every tree, every rock, and I saw that the God who created all that beauty, all that super-abundance of life must love it so very deeply.
Could the God who created giraffes and tiny kittens possibly not just want us to smile and share the joy? How can you not smile at a giraffe? And kittens, or a puddle of soft, new puppies? Or a newborn human child?
The one who arranged sunsets with the sun sinking down into the ocean and color exploding everywhere must want us to share that sense of awe. That wonderment. Not fear that at any moment we might slip and find ourselves facing damnation. The one who brought forth birds in every color combination known to humankind surely loves ALL of creation just as much — including us humans.
A God who loves creation that much must surely want creation to love him/her/it (you can see that over the years I’ve shifted ideas on the gender of God) – that God must want to be loved in return -- and that God wants us to love all the rest of that creation, as well.
And that includes loving each other. Sure, there are some that are so easy to love, no problem -- but there are others who are making it really hard, right now. They seem so filled with spite and nastiness. Loving them can seem so impossible, and yet--“love one another as I have loved you”— there are no exceptions, no excuses. That’s not a man-made rule like some of the ones I discovered when I was younger. That one comes straight from Jesus, so we have to figure it out somehow.
Perhaps, if we can’t love them all right now, we can at least pray for them — pray often and pray sincerely. Who knows? It just might turn into love.
May it be so.
RSS Feed