Jesus Raises the Bar

Hey, welcome, everybody. It's good to be together this morning.

My name is Debbie Manning. If I don't know you, I'm one of the pastors here on the table team, and I'm going to--is there a fan that we could turn off because my papers are blowing everywhere. Thank you, Maggie Keller, for still being in the room and doing that. But, hey, we're in the Sermon on the Mount today, and we are talking--this is going to be really fun and exciting. We are talking about the law. Okay, who wants to do a whoop-loop to law? Yay!

Because when we think about the law, our head goes to a lot of different things, don't they? Thank you, Margaret.

A lot of different things.

Rules, judgment, maybe even a little exclusion. But I was thinking about what's behind the laws,

why we have them, why are they important?

And I think ultimately what laws and rules do is they lead us to righteousness,

right? Right living with God and one another.

And the laws and the rules, here's the thing, they shouldn't be the end game. It's not the end all. What they do is they lead us to change. They're kind of part of our process of becoming. It's inner transformation.

And you know what that does? It creates people and communities that are based in love and justice,

mercy, kindness. That's what rules and laws are actually about. And sometimes we get a little sideways. But as I was thinking about it, and you know you have to hear about it at least once every couple of months, it made me think about my grandchildren. Patty, I'm going to have you throw up the first pictures. Like there they are. And if you don't, you will know them because they all go to this church.

But here's my grandchildren and look at how loving they are. Aren't they just so, I mean, the way they behave toward each other.

Like look at that. It's so dear. It's so just kind until it's not.

Patty, you can keep, there they are. They're getting ready for a little outing with Dade and Papa. And then the squeeze gets a little hard.

And there's some behavior that goes along with that. And look at this face. Look at that face.

Because here's the thing with these littles. And hopefully we're trying to teach and model and guide because we have our own rules for how we behave.

But here's the thing. When little Tommy is at my house and he paddles little Nellie over the head with a pickle ball paddle and she's screaming and crying and I'm holding her and I'm saying, Tom, that's not okay. That's not kind. You need to come up and you need to check on Nellie. And guess what else? You need to say I'm sorry. And when little two-year-old Tommy walks up with a big fat smile on his face and goes, I'm sorry and runs away, somehow we know that he didn't quite get the heart behind the rule.

And isn't that part of what we're talking about today?

It's the heart behind the rules.

It is the thing that is not just about doing what's right, but

it's about being kind and just and caring. It's about relationship.

And that's what we're going to find out today because what Jesus does in our text today is he connects those dots to his listeners from outward acts to an internal orientation.

It's one thing to live rightly, but it's another thing for our hearts to be oriented towards love.

So Jesus, he fulfills the law. It doesn't mean that he burdens us with all these laws and rules, but it actually ends up freeing us to live in community, a community that's shaped by love and by belonging.

So we continue in the book of Matthew. We're in week three of that. We started out with the Beatitudes. Blessed are those who mourn, the meek, those that are peacemakers. And what those Beatitudes did was teach us about the divine life, the life of Jesus that we're all called to. And last Sunday, Justin reminded us not that we are becoming salt and light to the world, but we are salt and light to the world. But in our text this morning, we see transitional verses in the Sermon on the Mount that move us from delivering blessings and encouragement to addressing issues surrounding the law. So join me as we get into our text today from Matthew 5, 17 through 20.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until it's all accomplished.

Therefore,

whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

So in this passage, and this is going to be important, this little bit of teaching I'm going to do, hang in there with me because it is actually foundational to our Christian faith.

So this passage, what it does is it introduces Matthew's emphasis on the law.

Because of his own background and Judaism, Matthew would consider the law of Moses a revelation from God.

And by law, what Jesus is speaking about, he's speaking of the Torah, the Torah which includes the Ten Commandments, the story of Israel, and the prophets.

What Jesus is talking about is sort of shorthand for the entire Hebrew scripture as it would have been during his lifetime.

So Justin referred to this scholar, author, New Testament and Jewish studies professor over at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Ami-Jill Levine where he will be doing his study over the month of October. And here's what she has to say about the law in this text.

By law, Jesus is speaking of the Torah, the five books of Moses. And although the Hebrew term Torah enters into the Greek as nomos, translated law, the Hebrew is better translated as instruction.

Prophets are the former prophets, first through second Samuel, first through second Kings. The major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 12 minor prophets. These texts together, especially with the Psalms, actually ground Jesus' teaching. The Mosaic law expresses the divine will for human life.

The pathways to righteousness.

The Jewish culture at the time would have fully understood this and it is the backdrop for the gospel. And that's why it's important for us to understand that. The most common view at the time was that the will of God was expressed in the law as interpreted through the Pharisees

and other sects.

But here's the shift. Here's what's important for us, important in this text today.

The shift is that according to Matthew,

the will of God is expressed in the law as interpreted by Jesus.

Matthew sets Jesus up as an authorized interpreter of scripture.

And here's the problem that Jesus continually encounters throughout his ministry is that those interpretive

of his day were used to get around some of the plain understanding of scripture.

And we see that. We see that in some of the saints. In Matthew 23,

Jesus says, "Woe to you, the scribes and the Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint, dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of law and justice and

If these, you ought to have, it's these you ought to have practiced without neglecting, that's important, without neglecting the others. You blind guys,

you strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Somewhere in there, Jesus isn't saying those rules aren't important, but he's saying there's something behind the spirit, the foundation of those laws that

And here's where I really need you. You know, I told you this before, hang in there with me because I was learning as I was studying about covenant loyalty. How many people does that sound familiar to? Covenant loyalty.

Because that is foundational to the text we're in today and to who we are as Christ followers.

So covenant loyalty. It's rooted in the biblical term, hest. And what it means is a profound, a steadfast love, faithfulness and a commitment within a binding relationship.

Most notably, between God and human beings.

Here's what's big. It's the model for our own human relationships.

It's about an active, unwavering devotion that goes beyond any duty, obligation, and it involves mercy, enduring love, and a promise of faithfulness that underpins all of our relationships. I'm looking at this, I'm going, Gino, that's what you did with Lynn.

Your love of her and those last years of her life went beyond obligation and duty.

It was underpinned love and mercy and compassion and that's the life we're called to live, always. So here are some of the key aspects of covenant loyalty.

I'll keep it brief. Divine love and faithfulness.

And that's God's unwavering commitment to his people, to the promises that he's made to all of us.

Human relationship.

It's that we, God's people,

that we commit that we're going to be faithful in return,

that we are going to reflect in the way we live this deep relational nature of our own faith.

And I think this is so important to the text we're looking at today.

One of the key concepts of covenant loyalty is that it's relational,

not, underline this, just ritualistic.

True covenant loyalty. It emphasizes a deep emotional commitment and genuine love and mercy rather than just, I'm going to outline that again, just outward rituals.

Covenant loyalty is embodied in Jesus Christ.

Because it's Christ who fulfills God's promises through his sacrifices and he establishes this new covenant.

Covenant that is about internal transformation and a direct relationship that we all have with our creator.

So that Mosaic covenant where God gives the law to Israel, it's a guide. It is a guide for maintaining relationship with God. Like I don't think we can separate those things.

It might be the ultimate both and. We have to hold those both together.

So what Jesus does in this text is he lays this deep respect,

this deep respect for the Hebrew scriptures that will not allow us to dismiss them as irrelevant. Now that might sound funny to some of you, but there's a history in the big C of dismissing the Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.

There's often this common perception that somehow the law implies legalism and that it's actually a counterpoint to

But this is not a law versus grace thing.

Again, it's both and we hold both of these things and Jesus definitely points to this in this text.

Because Jesus, what he does here, he relies on the moral commandments and his interpretation of them to be the true understanding of Hebrew scripture, the central meaning.

And his lens, the lens that he looks through,

that he talks about the Torah teachings,

he's undergirded with the core values of love,

mercy,

justice, and loyalty.

So here's the bottom line, friends, is that a disciple, being a disciple means to follow the Torah and it means to follow Jesus' instruction in regards to the Torah.

And I think we have to understand that to move forward, even in this study of the Sermon on the Mount. So in the text, Jesus affirms God's story. He doesn't reject the past. He actually honors it.

And what Jesus does here with the law is he raises the bar. He reframes the law. He doesn't abolish it or discard it, but he actually fulfills it.

The law and the prophets,

if you did deeply, were always pointing to God's vision of justice and of love.

So in our community,

we don't erase scripture. We actually hold scripture as our sacred text.

But we let Jesus, we let Jesus show us its fullness, welcoming people into the story of God's love.

And our own stories, think about your own stories, our own history that remind us that tradition matters,

that the shoulders we stand on matter.

And it makes me think a lot about when I do weddings. And let me give you a little backdrop to that. Always as a parent over the years, my husband and I would say, gosh, it's really cool to see our kids just a little more enlightened than we are standing on the same values and rules that we held as a family. But they seem to get it a little better and do it a little better than we do. Just like I think we have the privilege, I guess, of doing it just a little bit better than my parents before me. And I think we may be seeing things differently. But still stand on the shoulders of our parents.

And I think that's important to remember. And this just past week on Wednesday, I was meeting with a couple that I'm going to marry, officiate their wedding in a few weeks. And we were walking through the ceremony outline and we got to the moment where in the ceremony where I have a question for the parents. And I stopped and I got a little teared up because I said, I

have the most heartless and the coldiest moments in the wedding.

Here's why.

I ask the parents to stand.

And then I say,

this couple is in large part who they are because of how you've raised them and loved them and coached them and guided them. And sometimes even if those relationships are not perfect, sometimes if they're hard, we still are who we are.

And you're all here in this room right now. We are still who we are to some part on that foundation, the history, the tradition,

those things that we stand on.

And I think that's an important thing to remember.

So we've got Jesus who fulfills the Torah by interpreting it rightly and living it completely. He fulfills the law with love.

He brings the law to fulfill it, to the goal that God has. And when Jesus states that he has come to fulfill the Torah and the prophets, the implication is this, that he's going to perform the commandments and further expand upon it. And I was thinking, I wonder if it's more about reminding us of what God's original intent was for those rules and those laws.

Because the law was always, Matthew says it later on in the chapter, the law was always about love of God and love of neighbor.

And we follow a Jesus who embodies that perfectly in word and deed and sacrifice. He embodies what the law pointed to. Jesus has a place where love is holy, holy, holyness, justice,

mercy.

And as a community, we practice the ways of Jesus, not by rigid rules, but by living out that love,

that love that creates space for all to belong.

Jesus raises the bar. And he calls us into something much deeper.

The Pharisees, while in this text, some of them focused on

the word of compliance.

Jesus points to inner transformation. What is going on in here? And for us, because let's not, like, there isn't one of us who isn't following that direction with law and rules.

But in this text, Jesus points to the Pharisees neglecting the wavier matters of justice and love and mercy.

And this is what he says about this text.

God needed instead of people with whom mercy, love, forgiveness and faithfulness, in short, God's own righteousness would be evident.

The passage in particular affirms the integral continuity between Israel's story and Jesus' and thus between Israel's vocation and that of Jesus' followers.

The scribes and the Pharisees mentioned at the end of this passage represent not the whole of Israel, but a particular way of forgetting Israel's distinctive vocation to strive for justice,

wholeness and reconciliation.

A forgetfulness, this is important,

to which Christians have no less, are no less susceptible.

The Pharisees were meticulous rule followers.

Now, I'm not objecting to if you're wired, maybe that's how you flourish, you are detailed, you have rules, you operate that way.

But there has to be heart behind those rules.

There has to be room to live out the true call of justice and love and compassion and mercy.

Because ultimately we're all susceptible and it is so much easier to follow lists,

to follow the rules, to check the box, I did this, I did this, I go to church every Sunday, I did this, I prayed for her, I did this. It is not about that.

It is the heart behind all those things.

So here's the deal.

Jesus calls us beyond outward compliance.

Not to forget our actions, the rules, but he calls us beyond outward compliance to inward change, to inward transformation.

True transformation comes from the heart, the heart that's shaped by the gospel message, the hearts that's shaped by Jesus.

And it's about love for God and love for neighbor. And if your rules, our rules don't fall under that heading,

something's wrong.

It's not legalism that we sway to, but it's spirit-led obedience.

You know, I gave some small examples that were simple,

but this text, I couldn't help but think about what's going on right now in our country, in our communities, the rule of law, all the hard stuff going on, the things that make us fear for a country and a community based in justice and love and mercy and compassion. And I bet I had a half a dozen conversations over the week with people from this community. I had a bridal shower yesterday from a young woman who said,

"What do we do? What is the next step in making sure that things are just and equitable?

What do we do?"

That's always the question we ask. Justin and I met this week and said, "What's going to be our ask at the end or during this sermon series?" Something we are thoughtfully and prayerfully thinking about.

But here's where I held a little hope.

Because often it is what is right in front of us. And here's the hope that I think we as a community have. Because in our mission here at the table, we are practicing inclusion when we're living in a world that is trying to divide us all.

Here at the table, we are choosing love over judgment.

We are teaching and living a faith that welcomes everyone

the table.

When Jesus addresses the crowds and the disciples, he's declaring that they are held to a higher standard.

A higher standard than those who even know the Torah inside it out and claim to strictly adhere to it.

But Jesus is holding us to a higher standard too.

And in our church mission, this community's mission, we're going to honor scripture as the story of God's love.

We embody Jesus' fulfillment by practicing love in action.

We pursue a righteousness that's deeper than rules.

And we do that with a radical welcome into the life of this community.

To follow Jesus is not to abolish the law.

So if that's ever been in your head, know that that is not true. But it's to fulfill it. To become a community where all belong,

all are loved.

So here's our question today.

What role does God's law have in your life, in my life today?

For Jesus,

right living has to do with mercy, has to do with justice, forgiveness.

The practices that were the focus of the beatitudes that we talked about.

But here's the beauty, friends, you're so lucky because in the weeks to come, we're going to dive deeper into what those rules are, how Jesus expands upon those and how we are called to step into that.

That bigger, fuller meaning of what it means to follow Jesus.

Would you pray with me?

Gracious and holy God, we thank you for sending Jesus.

Not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it in love.

Through him we see your heart, a heart of justice and mercy and belonging.

Shape us as a community practicing the ways of Jesus. Help us to create space where all are welcomed, valued and loved.

Give us a righteousness deeper than rules. A righteousness rooted in love for you and our neighbor.

By your spirit. Empower us to live as people of grace.

So that our church may be a living witness of your kingdom. A place where your law of love is fulfilled in us. In the name of Jesus,

who makes all things whole, we pray. Amen.

Thank you, Debbie.

Your message was so fitting for communion of moving beyond ritual to relationships. And I think communion is exactly that. It's our chance to come together relationally each week and be reminded of that.

The night before Jesus was betrayed, he broke bread with his disciples and he said, this is my body broken for you.

In the same way, he took the cup and filled it with wine and he said, this is my blood shed for you. The new covenant.

So today that's exactly what we get to do is share the meal and share in relationship.

A few logistical things. There's an orange line. If you're in front of the line, you're going to come here to the room for your communion and if you're behind it, you're going to go to the back of the room.

The bread is gluten free and you're going to take a piece and dip it into the cup.

I think that is all that I need to tell everybody. Everybody is welcome. Kids too. So if kids are here, they're welcome to communion and everyone is welcome if you're interested. So let's bow our heads and say the prayer that the Lord taught us. Our God, important heaven.

(Inaudible) No matter who you are or what you've done.

No matter who you love or what you've lost. No matter where you've been or the places that you stayed.

You always have a place at the table.

Because you are a beloved child of God and beloved you belong. Go in peace everyone.