There
is an ancient proverb that reads, “You think because you understand ‘one’, you
must understand ‘two’, because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.” That’s pretty deep. I came across it earlier this week in a book
I’ve been reading; The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Are
Transforming Mission, Discipleship, and Community by Paul Sparks, Tim
Soerens, and Dwight J. Friesen. We think
we know what two is because we know what one is. Two is just two ones. Right?
There’s more to it than that. In
order to understand what two is you have to understand how the ones are joined. You have to understand “and” – how it is that
two “one’s” become the entity “two”.
That’s just profound.
In
that book the authors use this teaching as a starting place for how Christians
tend to go about being church in North America.
We like to think the church is here to help individual Christians grow
in their faith. Just as we look at two
simply being two one’s or three being three one’s or even 5,000 being simply
5,000 one’s, we see the church as simply a bunch of individuals getting
together to do church things.
What
tends to happen in our churches is that the “one’s”, the individuals, wind up shopping
around for a church in which they feel most at home. They want a church where there are more
“one’s” just like them. The result is
that the “many” consists of “one’s” that are very much a like. North American churches tend to be
consumeristic and homogenous. We shop
around for a church that meets our needs and the people are very similar to us
in race, ethnicity, values, and beliefs.
This
uniformity amongst ourselves means that we don’t have to work very hard at
understanding what “and” is. Yet, as the
body of Christ, the “and” is what we are about. How it is that individuals come
together and be Christ-like community, how we go about being the body of
Christ, is what we are about.
The
Bible tells us that the literal human body of Jesus Christ is about the
reconciliation and healing of broken people, of even enemies. In that body, the human flesh of Jesus, God
was at work reconciling the world to himself.
Atonement (At-one-ment between God and humanity) the big word we pull
out of our hats on Good Friday in an attempt to explain why Jesus had to die,
didn’t just happen the minute Jesus died death for us and in our place. Atonement, humanity’s reconciliation to God,
began the moment God the Son became Jesus the human embryo in the womb of
Mary. At that moment, at Jesus’
conception, God and sinful humanity were essentially and organically
reconciled. The two became one; two
natures in one person, fully God and fully man.
Carrying
on, in that body Jesus then went on to live the righteous human life that we
cannot live. He lived it for us and in
our place. Just as his death was for us
and in our place, so he lived the righteous life for us and in our place. This means is his death on the cross wasn’t
the sole means of our salvation. Our
salvation is the by-product of who he is in his very self – God the Son become
human – and how he lived.
Our
salvation - our participation in Jesus, God the Son become human, and in his
eternal relationship with God the Father by means of God the Holy Spirit
indwelling us – is in no way established or grounded on how good or bad or
righteous or unrighteous we are. It is
founded on the righteous life that Jesus lived and continues to live for us, a
righteousness that we participate in because we are “unioned”, bonded, “Krazy
glue-ed” to him by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
If
Jesus human body and how he lived in it and died in it and was raised with that
same body made incorruptible and immortal was all about reconciliation (all
about “and”), then we the church, the body of Christ, our fellowship in him is
about living out this reconciliation. It
is all about the “and”.
This
is what Jesus was getting at when he told his disciples “unless your
righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees you will never enter
the Kingdom of Heaven. The Scribes and
Pharisees based righteousness (right relationship with God and one another) on
keeping the commandments of the Law.
Noble task as that was, Jesus in our text today shows the impossibility
of it.
The
Law says do not murder. But Jesus says it
isn’t enough simply not to murder. If we
feel angry and do harm or even just want to harm another we might as well have
killed them. If I call another a fool or
a moron, which I readily do to the drivers in front of me every time I get in
the car, I deserve to be sent (not to Hell, that’s not what the text says) to
Gehenna, the fiery garbage pit on the outskirts of Jerusalem for being a waste
of a human life. Moreover, how many of
us come to church knowing that there are people we have hurt and yet we have
done nothing to fix the relationship? We
need another source of righteousness!
The
Law says do not commit adultery. But
what about lust? Every one of us here,
especially the men, have right eyes and right hands that we do not deserve. We need to do a little more than swear oaths
that make what we say sound true. We
just need to tell the truth in all circumstances. Anybody here do that all the time? We need a source of righteousness that
doesn’t hinge on our own efforts to keep faithful observance of the commandments.
I
could go on with more of the Sermon on the Mount here, but I think we get the
point. If our righteousness hinges on
our own efforts, then we have no hope of living anything other than a lie before
God, our neighbours, and ourselves. So
what do we do? We must throw ourselves
back on Jesus and the atonement that he is in his very person and the righteous
life that he lived, the very life that he has included us in by the gift of the
Holy Spirit poured into us. This
righteousness, his righteous, is a righteousness that exceeds religiousness.
I want
you to really hear me on this; really, really, really, really, really hear me
on this: There is nothing we can do to
make ourselves righteous meaning rightly related to God and to others and the
land. Nothing. Humanity is fatally flawed, indeed fatally
flawed in this respect. This is why
there is death in God’s good Creation.
But, Jesus has done it all for us and in our place. By his death he dealt death and our fallen
existence its fatal blow and by his resurrection God has started a new creation
that he has graciously included us in by the gift of his Spirit. When Jesus returns all will be made new. Until then we must live as his disciples
being empowered and transformed to show forth his righteousness.
There
is a new reality in town, a new kingdom to live in. Yes, it appears the Old Thug is still around
bullying in the neighbourhood. But,
we’ve been made alive in Christ by the gift of his Spirit and as his body it is
time for us to get out there and let him make his Kingdom be known through us.
A Scribe once asked Jesus what the greatest
of the commandments was and he answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all you
mind and your neighbour as yourself” (Lk. 10:27). This actively loving God, neighbour and self
is the realm where Jesus makes his reign visible and felt. Actively loving God, neighbour, and self is
where we get down to the work of understanding what “and” is all about. We are Jesus’ body, his disciples who are
internalizing and shining forth his way of life because he has infused his new
resurrected life in us by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let us live in his righteousness and strive to
show the world what “and” is all about.
Amen.
