Carefree Church: Sermon on Matthew 6:25-34

Good morning! Our eleventh Sunday of exploring the Sermon on the Mount. These last two weeks, Jesus has had some challenging words for us. If you were here last Sunday, maybe you remember Jesus' instructions on not being able to serve God and Mammon – we have to choose one. And investing with God is wiser than any investment we might make with Mammon, because all earthly treasures decay, but heavenly treasures – the kind that naturally grow out of our love and service to God and to our neighbors and neighborhoods – well, those last forever, where neither most nor rust destroy, nor can thieves break in and steal. To cling to Mammon is a fool's errand; to store up treasures on earth is a waste.

But maybe that sunny Galilean afternoon long ago, there were some in the crowd who grumbled when Jesus said not to store up earthly treasures. Can you hear it? Shh, listen to their voices: “Jesus, maybe you just don't get it. Do you know what it's like? Maybe it wasn't so bad growing up a carpenter, a woodworker; that was practically middle-class. Not everybody had that privilege, Jesus. Unlike you, I've got a wife, I've got kids. And heavenly treasure may all be well and good. But you're telling me to invest somewhere I can't see, hear, or smell to invest in things I can't touch, taste, or wear. Jesus, if I listen to you, I'm gonna die! Because what if things get hard? What if my crops don't grow? What if there's a storm? What if there's a fire? I have to store up earthly treasure, Jesus! The more I have, the safer I'll be, the better I'll feel. It's my lifeline. It's my buffer against the cruelty of this world. What do you have to say to that, Jesus?”

He has plenty, as it turns out. Maybe you've been part of that crowd before – wondering whether all this pie-in-the-sky talk of Jesus could ever be practical; wondering if you can survive listening to him. Maybe you've been worried about where your next meal will come from, or what will happen if your clothes rip and tear, or if the roof starts leaking. Maybe you've worried about the bills that keep piling up. Maybe you've just worried about little things – getting someplace on time, or passing through a dangerous situation. And maybe, just maybe, that situation has passed, but the lesson you learned from it was that little but a stockpile of earthly treasure can protect you from going through that again. Maybe, in the heat of the moment, you thought, “If I don't worry, if I don't pour everything I've got into this, if I don't let the quest for earthly treasure or food or clothes consume me body and soul, 'terrible things' will happen. Worry is the only way.”

But that ain't what Jesus says, now, is it? He sees things for what they are. This chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, now that he's interpreted the Law, is built around challenging three key idols that stand in the way of actually living it. 

The first idol was reputation. The Pharisees he knew were suckers for it – they went ahead and did plenty of the right things, but they did it to get themselves credit. And in being so concerned about reputation, their hearts were far from what they said and did; they became hypocrites; their righteousness was a skin-deep affair, it had nothing to do with a Father's love. Jesus tells us to reject Human Praise like a false god. 

The second idol was wealth – the accumulation of possessions, and by extension, other human pursuits. And that, too, makes us too stingy to live like God's kingdom is real. So, Jesus says, kick Mammon out the door, with all his dumb cousins. 

But in hearing that, we're liable to cling to a third idol. And that idol is security. We want to know that our position, our livelihoods, are secure. And when we feel too far away from Security, we try to appease this monstrous idol with a sacrifice of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual health – we cut them up in a dish called worry, and we lay them down at security's feet as an offering.

Jesus tells us to dethrone Security. Jesus tells us to never dice ourselves up into worry. Now, I'll be honest. I'm as guilty as any of y'all here. Of all the passages in the Sermon on the Mount, this is the one that I struggle with more than any other. I'm an anxious person. I have to struggle mightily to keep perspective when adrenaline starts pumping through my veins. I can be a bit of a worrywart. And I doubt I'm alone. I, sometimes, am that guy in the crowd, raising objections to what Jesus is saying. Deep down, I know it's true. But there's that part of me that wants to try explaining to Jesus what the real world is like. Maybe you can relate sometimes.

So Jesus says, to me and to you: “You cannot serve God and Mammon. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:24-25). Jesus gets right to the heart of it all, doesn't he? He tells us not to worry even about our lives and bodies – much less about essential care like food or water or clothing – and how much less about anything else we concern ourselves with? He's telling us to just abandon worry.

See, those in the crowd are prone to feel, even if it seems silly to say, that worry is essential to survival. If we don't worry, then won't that hurt us? Won't things go undone? Won't failure be knocking at our door? Well, no, says Jesus. First of all, worry does not make for health. When Jesus uses the word 'worry' or 'anxiety,' he doesn't mean sound stewardship. He doesn't mean preparation. He doesn't mean due caution. When Jesus talks about 'worry,' he means that inner state of anxiety we fall into – one that disturbs our peace, one that drives us to frantic action, one that takes the object of concern and catapults it to the top of the priority list. But worry isn't healthy. Maybe he got a chuckle from the crowd when he asked, “Which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:27). Because, deep down, they knew the very opposite was true.

We've confirmed it scientifically: anxiety tends to wear down the body and mind, and if anything, it would shorten your lifespan, not prolong it. Proverbs said, “Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down” (Proverbs 12:25). Another Jewish writing of the day said, “Anxiety brings on old age too soon” (Sirach 30:24). The crowd knew, if they thought about it logically for a moment, that anxiety does harm. It's even right there in the word: to 'worry' something means to choke or strangle it, to bind or squeeze it, like what wolves do with the throats of their prey. When we let ourselves be worried about things, or when we worry ourselves over them, we're choking the life out of our lives. It's not healthy.

And second of all, worry is ineffective. It really can't prolong your life. Worry, in the sense Jesus means, isn't going to serve a useful purpose. Understand the difference between worrying and being prepared. How many times in your life has worrying about something actually helped? Seldom or never, I'd wager – and, Jesus is going to tell us, there's a better way. Worry is a good way to get ourselves all disturbed, but a bad way to make the change we'd like to see in the world.

And third, worry is disordered. It gets things all jumbled up. A day only has so much room, and it comes with plenty of problems of its own. Why add to them by ineffectually adding tomorrow's problems, too? “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). Both God's kingdom and anxiety invade the present with the future. God's kingdom fills our present lives with the ultimate future, the hope of resurrection and intimacy with God. Anxiety, that counterfeit, fills our present lives with the near-future's burdens and problems – and doesn't even let us solve them.

And fourth, worry is unnecessary. It doesn't serve a useful purpose, and we can see that for ourselves if we'd just look, says Jesus. For instance, take a gander at those chirping birds over there. They don't store up earthly treasures for themselves. They don't sow. They don't reap. They don't have barns or silos or storehouses. So, by the objector's logic, they ought to all starve right away. But they don't. “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26). 

Storing up earthly treasures is no part and parcel of a sparrow's game plan for life – but God takes care of them. He's their Creator... but he's your Father. The birds live, not by worry, but by faith. In Luke's rendition of this message, he's specific on the kind of birds: ravens (Luke 12:24). An unclean bird. And even still, God takes care of them, the least worthy of all creatures. Maybe Luke says Jesus is thinking of the psalm that says, “He gives to the beasts their food, and to the young ravens that cry” (Psalm 147:9). Two sparrows are sold for a penny, Jesus said – they're cheap, they seem expendable – and, here's the kicker: “you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31).

And then, Jesus says, take a gander at those flowers. The Galilean hills had some lovely flowers. Especially these vividly bright purple anemones. How gorgeous! And where do they get that? Do they have to work for it? Do they have to toil at it, or spin thread? No, they don't do any of that. They just grow. They get it as grace – grace from God. God clothes even the flowers with brightness and cheer, although flowers and grass are the very definition of disposable, of something that isn't meant to last. But we are. 

So “why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (Matthew 6:28-30). Even King Solomon, with his royal splendor, couldn't match the natural beauty God lavishes on his littlest creations. Can we really believe that God loves us less than he loves them?

Actually, many in the crowd might have said yes. There was a rabbi – he lived a couple centuries later, but his idea may have been popular back then. And he said something a lot like what Jesus said, but with a very sad twist at the end. Here's what he said: “Have you ever seen a wild animal or a bird practicing a craft? Yet they have their sustenance without care. And were they not created for nothing else but to serve me? But I was created to serve my Maker. How much more, then, ought not I to have my sustenance without care?” So far, so good, right? That's almost what Jesus is saying. We are made in God's image; we are nearer and dearer to his heart than wild animals or birds; so if they can live just trusting God, so should we be able to. 

But then Rabbi Simeon takes a turn: “But I have wrought evil and forfeited my sustenance.” In other words, he says, we were originally meant to live like that, same as the birds and flowers. But that was in paradise. We're far from home now, in exile from Eden. With our sin, we've given up the right, we've lost the privilege, to live by sheer faith like the rest of creation does. So, the crowd thinks, “That's all well and good for the birds and the flowers. But our world is more complex. We're sinners; we've moved further from God's heart, not closer.”

Now, take note: The very fact that Jesus doesn't go there, means that for him, things are different. The Sermon on the Mount is not spoken to mere sinners. The Sermon on the Mount is spoken with an invitation to a radical new thing: a new covenant. Jesus isn't denying that we have wrought evil. He isn't ignoring what the Bible said about the curse in Genesis 3. But he is saying that he's opening the door to start moving beyond it. Yes, we still live in a cursed world. But if we take his hand, if we let him give us new hearts, then he separates us from our sin and restores us in God's sight – gives us new robes of righteousness that, over time, sink into and color our very souls with heaven's radiance.

And so, he says, you can start living now like God loves you without looking at your sin. And to believe God loves us that way is to trust that God not only can provide, but desires to provide. That's why he says that those who live by worry and anxiety are “ye of little faith.” Anxiety stems from a lack of faith in God as Provider – whether through a conviction that he isn't able, or – for most Jews in the crowd that day – maybe from feeling distant from God's love. 

Jesus says, if you want to know how God yearns to care for you, look at the birds and the flowers – and then multiply! And have you ever seen a bird or a flower with anxiety? Have you ever seen a flower have nightmares about paying the bills? Have you ever watched a bird stuff extra worms under the nest to save them for later? And how much more will our heavenly Father care for his children than his creation? “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:1-2).

Now, trusting in God as Provider doesn't mean we don't work. The birds work – they might work plenty to hunt down what they need. God is calling us to a carefree life, not a careless life. He isn't bidding us be reckless or permitting us to be lazy. Generally speaking, God provides for us through our work, same as the birds. But notice that, although the birds work, they don't worry. They don't store up earthly treasures. And they don't take it all on themselves. 

When the psalmist describes the young ravens crying out to God, he's suggesting that God provides for them in answer to their prayers. That's what it says in Job, too: “Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God for help and wander about for lack of food?” (Job 38:41). And if God will hear an unclean baby bird's prayer, why wouldn't he listen to his own sons and daughters? If the birds can work while living by faith and prayer, so can you.

“Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:31-33). That's the difference between pagan worry and Christian faith. For a pagan, an unbeliever, it makes sense to seek after all those things. It makes sense to reduce life to a frantic quest for the necessities, or even the luxuries. Because if earthly treasure, in all its instability, is all there is or ever can be, there's really no other way to live. And if that's true, and if you've got no confidence in a heavenly Father who loves you and works all things together for your good in the end, worry would seem pretty natural, even pretty sensible. But if you believe you can earn heavenly treasure, and if you believe God will take care of you as you do, then you can let worry go. You can live by faith instead.

That's not to say it's easy. And before we move on, a caveat: there's a difference between day-to-day anxiety and an anxiety disorder. At any given time, nearly a fifth of Americans have one of those. And too often, the church has responded to people suffering from psychiatric illness by just telling them to have more faith. Truth is, just as God often meets our physical needs for food and clothing by blessing our work, so God helps those with anxiety disorders by blessing their medication or their therapy together with their faith and prayer. 

Jesus didn't preach the Sermon on the Mount to give us more ammunition to judge each other – and actually, we'll talk more about that next week. Nor did he preach the Sermon on the Mount to heap up a mount of guilt on our shoulders. Jesus is offering us a new avenue to a new life, and outlining the kind of church he wants to create out of us.

And believe me: it's not a church of pagans. That's an oxymoron, and those who think it might be missing that 'oxy-,' if you catch my drift. Jesus is aiming to create a church of real disciples, not of pagans or even Pharisees. Too often, we've settled for some degree of those. And in particular, too often our biggest concerns are the same as those of pagans: get food, get water, get clothing, and get whatever else you can after that. That's where a pagan's real commitments lie. It's the only place they can lie. 

But we are called to a different concern, a higher commitment. Our treasures aren't earthly; they're heavenly. And where pagans seek after the basic necessities of life, we have something else to seek first and foremost. We are called to seek God's kingdom. That means devoting ourselves to God in faith, hope, and love; it means adopting his values, allying ourselves with his cause; it means accepting him as King and orienting our lives that way. And we are called to seek his righteousness. That means living out what Jesus teaches, which only Jesus ultimately makes possible by giving us his Spirit.

And all the other things will be added unto us – when our concern is the kingdom, when God tops our priority list, when we're investing in heavenly treasure and living by faith, God will see to our other needs in his own way in his own time. That isn't to say that we have an absolute guarantee that things will be fine in this life. Birds can starve to death, and they can get hurt. So can we. Jesus even says that each day comes with its own trouble – that doesn't sound quite as happy-go-lucky as a televangelist might tell you. But it's the truth: each day has trouble of its own, real trouble. Jesus doesn't deny that; he offers us a realistic but not worldly way to approach that trouble. If we live by faith instead of worry, we can trust that God will take care of us, whatever that might look like. It means we'll get what we need to survive – almost always here on earth, but absolutely always for beyond this earth.

Worry, at its most understandable, is fear of things that can kill the body: starvation, dehydration, exposure. That's what we need food, drink, and clothing to avoid. Most everything else we worry about can't even do that, so Jesus is tackling a worst-case scenario. But he also says, “Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). 

In other words, the most starvation can do to you is kill your body. But it can't kill your soul. Same holds true for an illness, or an accident, or spree shootings, or a terrorist. Those can all kill your body. But they cannot kill your soul. That doesn't mean we shouldn't avoid those things, where we can – but not at the cost of neglecting to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Because if we neglect that, then we risk the deprivation or even death of our souls.

Only when we understand that can we invest in heavenly treasure as a carefree church. Faith in the Father frees us from fearing what can merely kill the body; and that dismantles our worries; and that let us focus on seeking, not food or clothing, but the kingdom above all else. That's what I'm inviting our church to do. Actually, it isn't me doing the inviting; it's Jesus Christ. 

Support yourselves and your families day by day, but seek the kingdom first. Devote yourselves to the King. Spread the good news. Bring others into contact with him and his provision through you, through us. And don't be afraid. Don't worry about the costs. Watch the birds and the flowers, and see the relentless love of our Father. You won't be disappointed. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Amen.

Celestial Church: Sermon on Matthew 6:19-24

Believe it or not, this is the tenth Sunday we've been studying Jesus' Sermon on the Mount together. We remember how he began his Sermon with the Beatitudes – throwing his arms open wide for the outcasts of the earth: the meek, the humble, the forlorn, the poor, the hungry and thirsty, the victimized and broken. We remember how he charged them with a mission: to be salt to flavor and light to shine in the world. 

We remember how he insisted he hadn't come to cancel out what Moses taught them, but rather to show them a higher righteousness, one we now know we can only reach through the gift of the Holy Spirit given to all who believe in Jesus. The Spirit and the Law aim for the same goal: the love and life of God. But the Law points the way, and the Spirit fuels our speedy way there.

So where the Law told us not to murder, the Spirit already is curing us of murder's roots in anger and forming us into a people of forgiveness. Where the Law told us not to commit adultery, the Spirit already is curing us of adultery's roots in lust and forming us into a people of purity and love. Where the Law regulated divorce, the Spirit already is curing us of divorce's roots by forming us into a people of contentment and commitment. Where the Law regulated oaths and promises, the Spirit already is curing us of deceit and trickery and forming us into a people of truth and honesty. And where the Law regulated revenge and seemed to set boundaries to love, the Spirit already is pouring into our hearts God's love for even our enemies. That's how the Spirit gets us to the Law's goal when we couldn't follow it by our own strength. 

And then, we remember, Jesus warned us of the perils of the religious life – how even the very pillars of righteousness like prayer, fasting, and almsgiving or charity could be perverted into a mere performance by hypocrites. Instead, he charged us to avoid seeking praise for doing them – do them secretly, if we have to – so that our motive is pleasing our Father in heaven, who sees in secret and promises to reward us.

And so now Jesus unpacks more about the rewards he's been talking about. And he tells us that there's a big difference between the rewards the Father gives and the rewards the world gives. Because the rewards of this world don't last – maybe they fall apart while we're watching, or maybe they just stay behind when we're gone. “Do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19). 

Isn't that the truth? What do we have on earth – what things, what funds – that can last forever? Treasures on earth, especially material possessions, are mighty vulnerable. Those fancy new shoes will eventually wear out. That Porsche or that Jaguar will break down, just like any other car. Some circuit will blow in that flat-screen TV. And that's if no one breaks in and steals it first! Or if no disaster hits – I mean, you can all think of one local family that has seen this year what a tornado and a fire can do to a chickenhouse. 

Nothing we collect on this earth is safe – not a thing. Moth, rust, wear 'n tear, fire, storm – they all destroy. And what seems built to last can always be stolen away. Earthly treasure is a pretty risky investment. Ultimately, there's no security in it. And any security there seems to be, is tempered by the fact that, whether or not it lasts our lifetime, we can't enjoy it once that lifetime ends.

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth and rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19-20). That's the solution. Instead of storing our best treasure here, where it's vulnerable, store it in heaven, where it isn't. There's no decay in heaven. No thievery in heaven. No tornadoes or fires in heaven. What's on earth is precarious and temporary, but what's in heaven is secure and eternal. 

And where you invest is important, because your whole life – your feelings, your interest, your thoughts, your attention, your cares – will track your investment portfolio. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). It's important.

Next, Jesus says something cryptic – one of the more puzzling things he says in the Gospels, according to some interpreters, and that's saying a lot. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23). 

For people in Jesus' day, the eye was either a source of light, or the way light entered the body, or both. And what Jesus says makes perfect sense in a very literal way. If you have healthy eyesight, you can see. Your body will be full of light. If you don't have healthy eyesight – if there's something wrong with your eye – then, in the literal sense, your vision, or in their talk, your 'body,' is full of darkness.

But what that has to do with the topic at hand, how it connects to what Jesus just said or where he's going, isn't clear until you realize he, or at least his editor Matthew, is enjoying some wordplay. There's actually not just a double, but a triple entendre here. To speak in that world of having a 'good eye' was not just a way to describe its physical health, and to talk about having an 'evil eye' was not just a way to refer to its physical weaknesses. To have an 'evil eye' was to be stingy and envious – to look at others and want to take things away from them, or to look at them with resentment. So much so that, to this very day, there are places in the Mediterranean world like Greece and Turkey where the superstitions around the evil eye remain so strong that people cover their stores, their buses, even their airplanes with talismans in hopes of shielding themselves against its curse. When I was in Turkey a few years ago, I picked one up as a souvenir.

People listening to Jesus knew that having an 'evil eye,' being stingy and jealous like that, was a dangerous thing. But then to have a 'good eye,' a 'healthy eye,' was to have a generous way of looking at people – to look at them and, out of love or compassion or kindness, want to bless them instead of cursing them or ignoring them. And so a 'good eye' came to mean a person was generous – not for the sake of praise like the hypocrites, but for the sake of goodness, even the glory of God.

And the eye, Jesus says, is the lamp of the body: if your eye is generous – if you hold material goods lightly and give them away to others – then “your whole body,” your very life, “will be full of light,” of goodness. That is the kind of life Jesus is calling us to here. It's a life of investing in heavenly treasures through generosity – which, after all, is something Jesus already said we'd be rewarded for, if we did it with a focus on serving God. 

The opposite is a stingy eye, one more interested in clinging to earthly treasures than in giving them away out of the love that God rewards with heavenly treasures. And if you have a stingy eye, a 'bad eye,' “your whole body will be full of darkness” – your life will be tainted and darkened by your small, self-centered vision of the world and the meaning of life. “If then the light in you is darkness” – if even your best moments are corrupted by stinginess, greed, envy – “how great is the darkness!”, says the Lord Jesus.

That's a rich saying. But Jesus isn't even finished with it. Because there's a triple entendre here, an extra layer of meaning. The word that appears here as 'healthy' or 'good' actually means 'single.' A good eye is a single eye – one that can focus and stay focused on just one thing and see it clearly, rather than giving you double vision and divided attention. 

And that leads in to what Jesus is about to say. “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24). Laws at the time allowed, in rare circumstances, for a slave to be owned jointly by two masters. But under Jewish law, a jointly-owned slave couldn't eat the Passover meal from both masters' tables. He had to pick one. Ultimately, when it came down to it, he had to choose which one would have more of his devotion, more of his loyalty and commitment. Both couldn't share it – not forever, not in any stable way.

We cannot serve two masters. There cannot be two ultimate, life-consuming commitments in your life – because there will come a time when you have to choose. The more you devote yourself to one, the more you relativize the other – and then it's no longer your master. And so, Jesus ends this morning's passage, “You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24). 'Mammon' was the Aramaic word for 'money' – its root came from 'something you trust in' – and Matthew's Greek text leaves it untranslated because he sees what Jesus is doing here. He's saying that, when you let money master you, you treat it as if it were a god, an entity unto itself, a rival to his Father for mastery over your life.

And that's the God's-honest-truth of it. It's why we joke – but some of us live as if it were literally true – about “the Almighty Dollar,” and why we say money makes the world go 'round. Because many people throughout history have made this false god Mammon the centerpiece and master of their lives – whether through actively pursuing more money and more material goods, or trying to preserve the money and things they already have, or just wishing for it, dreaming about it, committing emotionally to it. 

Money makes a fine servant, but a dreadful master – one God wants to dethrone in your life. Because mammon, for all its seeming use, for all the seeming worldly wisdom of investing further in its schemes and temptations, is just earthly treasure – it and its fruits can be destroyed, stolen, wasted, lost.

But Jesus' words apply to much more than money and material goods, because there are ways besides crass materialism that we can devote ourselves to earthly treasure. We might devote ourselves, for one example, to human praise. That's what the hypocrites earlier in Matthew 6 were doing. They went through the motions of righteousness, upheld the pillars of Judaism with prayer and fasting and charity, but their motive was to be seen by people – to gain praise, respect, a religious reputation to be enjoyed for its own sake, with all the prestige that carried in their culture. 

And, like Jesus said, whatever praise or respect or reputation or prestige they get that way is the sum total of their reward. That's an earthly treasure – a purely earthly one. And a religious life lived as performance art is every bit as much a life of earthly treasure-seeking as a life that revolves around the acquisition, protection, or coveting of mammon. 

So is any life committed to some trophy or accomplishment, trying to set some record to preserve your name, like building a tower to heaven. But we can't even get through the first book of the Bible before we learn that it won't reach, won't preserve our legacy or give us a good name; only God can do that. Making Abraham's name great was an act of grace meant to bless all the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:2-3).

Or there's the life devoted to a hobby. Maybe that hobby is hunting or fishing – you build your schedule around it, you devote your spare time to it, you think about it all the time, to the point where God and his call on your life fades into the background. Or maybe the hobby is a sport, whether as a player or as a spectator – you schedule your life around it, you devote yourself body and soul to it, and God seems to fade out of your life; you have less time, less energy, to commit to him; given a choice between obeying God by fellowshipping with his people on a Sunday morning or spending that time in pursuit of the sport and its commandments, you're prone to choose Option #2.

The same goes for a job – a good thing to have, actually a pretty necessary thing to have at most stages of life, but when it becomes a rival to God and competes for your time, your energy, your effort, your sacrifice, instead of being part and parcel of a life serving God, then there may be more than a whiff of idolatry in the air. And then there's pleasure. Some devote their lives to physical encounters with men or women; some devote their lives to vacations and luxury; some devote their lives, their efforts, their resources, to gourmet food. But in all its forms, once it becomes another master alongside the Master of Creation, you can't serve both; one, in your life, will get a demotion – and Jesus makes clear which one should.

You just cannot, in the end, serve two masters. You cannot serve God and Mammon. You cannot serve God and Human Praise. You cannot serve God and Trophies. You cannot serve God and Pleasure. You cannot serve God and Hobbies. Money, material goods, praise, trophies, pleasure, hobbies – those are fine in themselves, fine when we hold them loosely, when we praise God for them when they come and praise God when they go. But when we organize our lives around them, when we serve them, when we effectively idolize them – and all too many of us do that, to one degree or another – we treat them like our gods. And when we do that, we set ourselves up for disappointment and loss.

Maybe tomorrow when they fall apart – mammon and its fruits decay and can be stolen; human praise is fickle; trophies and accomplishments can be eclipsed or surpassed; pleasure is fleeting; hobbies grow sour. But if not tomorrow, then our last day, it's guaranteed they will disappoint all who trust in them. 

Now, the ancient Egyptians didn't think so. They packed their pharaoh's pyramid tombs full of signs of wealth and prosperity to enjoy in the next life. And Viking chieftains, when their bodies were sent out on a boat and lit on fire, were packed in with plenty of grave goods so they'd keep their social standing and fortune in the next life. Most every ancient culture did something similar.

But there are no grave goods in the tombs of the early Christians. Grave goods disappear from Roman society as it shifts from paganism to Christianity. Because Christians knew that Jesus was right, and the Egyptians, Vikings, Etruscans, and just about every culture in the world was wrong: you can't take it with you. 

Serving Mammon and his cousins is a disappointment – if not during our lives, certainly at their end. And that is the definition of a bad investment. Only investing in heavenly treasure, only a life committed to God and his goals through active faith, is a secure and certain investment without an expiration date.

Today of all days, we should keep in mind that none of us knows how many days are written for us in the Lord's book. I doubt I have to remind you that ten years ago this very day, less than seven miles from here as the crow flies, a disturbed man fatally shot five and injured five other girls in a little Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines. Not one of those children left home that morning thinking that October 2, 2006, was their last day on earth. But for five of them, it was; and for five, it wasn't. And who can tell the difference?

I also don't have to remind you of the tragedies we've seen this week. A son of our congregation was stolen from the earth in the prime of his life a week ago – badly injured in a motorcycle race, sent into a coma, passed on the next day. (By the way, as of this morning, people – including a few from this church family – had given over $10,000 to help cover the family's medical, travel, and funeral expenses. That kind of generosity is the stuff heavenly treasure is made of.) 

And I don't have to remind you that one of our brothers is nearing his heavenly departure – but neither he nor any doctors could tell you for sure whether it'll be tonight, or tomorrow, or one or two or three weeks from now.

The truth is, none of us knows how many days we have on this earth to enjoy our earthly treasures. No one can say whether their earthly treasures will even last as long as they do – because moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. And none of us can tell how long we have to invest in heavenly treasure before that's all we have. Life in this world is dreadfully short, and the shelf life of the petty treasures we pointlessly chase is often much shorter. Submitting to their mastery is a foolish way to invest the days you're given. 

Take a look at your life. How much of your time and effort lately has been focused on storing up earthly treasures – money, things, praise and popularity, trophies and accolades, temporary thrills and pleasures, meaningless pursuits? And how much of your time and effort lately has been invested in storing up heavenly treasure by living prayerfully, generously, and faithfully for God, to seek his kingdom first and foremost (Matthew 6:33)?

Earthly treasures and earthly achievements will fade away. Heavenly treasures will last. Earthly food will rot. Only Jesus promises to be the Bread from Heaven for us, and to give us a spring to drink from that lasts eternally so we'll never thirst again. To devote ourselves to heavenly treasure, it's only fitting that the celestial church – the church with its eyes fixed on heavenly truths, heavenly goals, heavenly gain – should share a heavenly meal. And Jesus has offered us a foretaste of that.
 

So this morning, as we process the events of the last decade, the last week, and the days ahead, remember that only what's stored up in heaven lasts – and none of us knows when that's all we'll have left. But remember also that the only way we can reach our heavenly treasure is through Jesus Christ. He died to separate us from the guilt, power, and ultimately the very being of our sin. And he rose again to breathe new life into us. 

When we share this heavenly food, that truth enters into us, sustains us, fits us for the grand banquet in heaven of which this is a treasured foretaste. Come to the table. Do this in remembrance of him.

Prayer 101: Sermon on the Lord's Prayer

When we left the Sermon on the Mount last week, Jesus gave us two key instructions on prayer. First of all, prayer isn't meant to be a performance; don't do it like the hypocrites do, to be seen by others (Matthew 6:5-6). And second, prayer isn't meant to be a tiresome and laborious search for the perfect words to please God, like the pagan Gentiles tried (Matthew 6:7). So Jesus teaches us here a short prayer with tight lines – in Greek, fifty-seven; in English, fifty-two; in Latin, forty-nine; in Syriac, closest to the original Aramaic, just thirty-five words in all (Matthew 6:9-13).

And how does Jesus begin this model prayer? How does he teach us to address God? As Master? As Lord? As King? No – as Father (Matthew 6:9). That's it, that one word. Not a long string of titles, like in Greek and Roman prayers, trying to impress and flatter their gods by heaping up eloquent and creative things to call them. Jesus doesn't even require us to use the standard Jewish benediction: “O Lord our God, King of the Universe.” He just tells us to address God as 'Father.' He wasn't the only Jew who did, of course. We have other writings that pray to God as “O Lord, my Father and Master of my life” (Sirach 23:1) or simply pray, “You are my Father” (Sirach 51:10). And to call God 'Father' ties together the images of Creator, Lord, and Redeemer. Because a father, ideally, is a source of life, a provider, a protector.

Israel already knew that God was their Father. He'd said so in the eleventh chapter of Hosea. And there, God portrays Israel as a child and talks about raising him from infancy. “When Israel was a child, I loved him … It was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they didn't know that I'd healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love … I bent down to them and fed them” (Hosea 11:1-4). Can you picture that – the image there – of God bending low and spoonfeeding his people like a squirming infant? God goes on to talk about Israel's rebellion, what a wicked child Israel has become, and how he needs to discipline them... but when God thinks of giving them up, “my heart recoils within me; my heart grows warm and tender; I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath” (Hosea 11:8-9).

That's what Jesus means when he invites us to think of God as a Father. Tender. Loving. Teaching. Personally involved. Providing for us in our helplessness. Loving us even in our rebellion. Ready to discipline, but readier still to embrace. Committed to our good. That's the kind of father God is. And Jesus was known for calling God Abba – not just 'Father,' but Abba, an incredibly intimate and affectionate word – in some countries, still to this day the first word a child might learn. That just heightens the tenderness of this prayer. There's no great distance, no estrangement – just us and our Abba Father. 

That's what we get to call God – which is utterly amazing, when you think about it, isn't it? The hypocrites Jesus lambasts in his sermon turned family time into an occasion to show themselves off – and for those of you here who are fathers, wouldn't that be such a strange thing, to see your kids boast of how fancy they can be in talking to you? And the pagans kept worrying that if they didn't get the words just right, they wouldn't get access; that their gods wouldn't hear them. 

Sometimes we have the same fears. But we aren't supposed to. Jesus is telling us to set all that aside – throw our fears, our anxieties to the wind – stop fretting and just come close to God! When you think of God mainly as King, as Master, well, yeah, it's easy to doubt what right you have to approach him. But when the king is your dad, that's a different story, isn't it? The king's little ones can totter into his room at 3 AM to ask for a cup of water. Jesus invites us to approach God like that. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

But Jesus doesn't stop with just having us call God 'Father.' In this prayer, we address God as “Our Father.” And that's something interesting. This isn't a prayer for just anybody. Because, except in a more distant and much more metaphorical sense, most people in the world don't have God as their Father. In the Old Testament, it was the people of Israel to whom God presented himself as a Father. And in the New Testament, the more intimate Fatherhood of God is available to the disciples – the New Israel Jesus is bringing to birth. 

God isn't just Jesus' Abba now, but our Abba, because we live in him, in Christ; we're grafted into his relationship with his Father; our names are scribbled on Christ's birth certificate. To experience and know God as Father is to be united with the God's Son and filled with his Holy Spirit of Sonship, “by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'” (Romans 8:23). 

The Lord's Prayer isn't for occasional admirers of a generic god. And the Lord's Prayer isn't for “religious” people. The Lord's Prayer is the prayer of the church of Jesus Christ on the journey of discipleship. The Lord's Prayer is the thunderous heartbeat of those who race in the Spirit toward perfect love, to which the Law and the Prophets aim. The Lord's Prayer is a prayer for disciples, because only through Jesus can we truly have God for a Father.

But in praying to God as “our Father,” and not “my Father,” we make this a special prayer. This is not a self-centered prayer. This is not an egotistical prayer. This is not an individualist prayer. This is not an isolated prayer. Christian prayer can't be, because full Christian prayer is always prayer to 'our Father.' Christian prayer is the prayer of the church together, the prayer of the church in fellowship. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we pray it as one family – and not just us here in this sanctuary. We pray it with all the people of God – past, present, and future. 

When we pray the Lord's Prayer and say 'our' and 'us,' we're including Christian men and women in a Kenyan village; we're including believers languishing under persecution in the Middle East; we're including monks on Mount Athos in Greece, we're including house-churches in China, we're including American believers sued for their livelihoods because they obeyed their Christian conscience, we're including believing Presbyterians and Lutherans and Methodists and Roman Catholics and Baptists here and all over. And when they all pray the Lord's Prayer, they're including us!

And if we could see that more clearly, the fundamental unity of the body of Christ, all our silly feuds would drop. When you pray a Christian prayer, when you pray the Lord's Prayer, you cannot pray alone. Not only do you have Jesus praying for you in heaven and the Spirit praying for you in the deep recesses of your very soul, but you are praying for all believers – and they, whether they think of it or not, are praying for you. 

So if you've ever wished you were better at praying, if you've ever felt inadequate or isolated in your prayer life, if you've ever wondered how your prayers can stand on their own two feet – they've never had to. That's the power of a prayer to “our Father.”

And then Jesus goes on and gives us another word: he invites us to pray to “Our Father in heaven.” Because as close and as intimate as we get to God, we can't forget that there's more to the story. Remember last week's Sunday School lesson? This Father of ours is the very same God who “sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, … who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; … who brings out the [starry] host by number, calling them all by name. … The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22, 26, 28).

Our Father is still the King of the Universe, still the Maker and Sustainer of heaven and earth, still the Owner of the cattle on a thousand hills, still the Consuming Fire to whom the oceans roar and mountains bow. Our Father cannot be reduced to our level, cannot be comprehended, cannot be demystified or demythologized or deciphered or domesticated. He cannot be boxed up or contained, and he most certainly cannot be figured out or familiarized. As vast as the outermost stretches of the universe are distant from the face of the earth, that's how vastly higher are his ways than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). That is who our Father is. He's not our Father next door. He's “our Father, which art in heaven.” And that calls for faith.

After we've anchored our prayer in those truths, Jesus gives us two sets of three requests. And in the first set, you will not find the words 'me' or 'mine,' or even 'our' or 'us.' We start off the prayer with three petitions that are entirely about God. Who do we pray for first? God himself. God is the top priority in prayer. And we lead off with the first request: “Hallowed be thy name” – or, in modern language, “May your name be sanctified.” That is a very Jewish prayer – the whole Lord's Prayer is very Jewish as a whole in its themes and style, but without anything that would make Gentile members of Jesus' New Israel feel like outsiders. And we can tell how Jewish this line is, because the earliest form of a key Jewish prayer called the Kaddish went like this:

May his great name be exalted and sanctified, in the world which he created according to his will! May he establish his kingdom during your lifetime and during your days, and during the lifetimes of all the House of Israel, speedily and very soon! And say, Amen.

The three God-focused requests in the Lord's Prayer – sanctifying God's name, establishing God's kingdom, and even God's will – are all there. And to sanctify God's name means to treat his name and reputation as special, as important; it means to act in a way that glorifies him. The rabbis said that one might sanctify God's name by being kind to unbelievers, or by suffering for his sake, or by obeying his commandments and doing good works. And that matches with what Jesus already said: that our good works should shine before others to lead them to glorify our Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16). That's what we want to see.

Jesus is probably thinking about the Book of Ezekiel right now. Ezekiel was told to “prophesy to the mountains of Israel” (Ezekiel 36:1), to tell them that their misbehavior not only sent them into exile, but – even worse – “profaned my holy name” in front of the nations. “But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came” (Ezekiel 36:20-21). God promised to act in a way that would “vindicate the holiness of my great name” (Ezekiel 36:23), and that was by gathering the exiles, sprinkling them clean, giving them a new heart, and putting his Spirit within them – in short, by giving them, giving us, the new covenant (Ezekiel 36:24-28). Even dry bones can live again, when the Spirit is present (Ezekiel 37:1-14). 

And when the end comes, which Ezekiel describes as a battle with Gog of Magog, God promises to finally defeat evil – “So I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations; then they will know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 38:23). That's what it looks like for God's name to be hallowed – and that's what we want to see, what we want the world to see! We know that Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify your name.” And what answer thundered from heaven? “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again” (John 12:28). Hallelujah!

Where does the Lord's Prayer go from there? “May your kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10). That's a little bit unusual, because Jews usually talked about the kingdom being revealed or being established, not coming. But they spoke about God coming to them. And Jesus is combining the two, because in Jesus, God and the kingdom arrived together; and through us, God's presence is further unfolding and the kingdom is being further revealed; and we pray for the day when Jesus will return, and we behold the Father, and the kingdom is set up in full. Of course, this means we have to admit that utopia, a perfect world, isn't something we can engineer or invent or just naturally evolve into. No project, no politician, no simple answer will give it to us; only the gospel of the kingdom holds out that hope, that promise.

And the third request isn't so different: “May your will be done” (Matthew 6:10). These are the same words Jesus uses in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he puts the Father's plan to save us over his healthy human instinct for self-preservation: “Not my will, but may your will be done” (Matthew 26:42). Put together, these lines deal with the question: What do you, what do we, want most for the world? And the right answer is: for everything to be put right, for everything to be fixed and made whole. We want to see God visibly running things and all creation cooperating. And that's already started in Jesus' ministry, and it's ongoing somehow through the church's mission, but we're longing for God to get exactly what God wants, for God to be obviously and effectually the King of the Universe.

In other words, we want God to be clearly on earth what heaven already sees – “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). That's a daring prayer, because only a kingdom-ready people can pray it with a full heart. Only the people we see in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). Only the people whose “righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” can “enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20ff.). That's discipleship – getting readier and readier. And so the disciple church dares to pray for God's name to be sanctified, for God's kingdom to come, for God's will to be done. All of those things are the best blessing we can pray for creation.

That's the model for Christian prayer. We don't come to God with all our impressive wordiness and flattery; we don't come to God hesitantly or fearfully; we come to God together, as one body of Christ living by the Spirit of Christ, and name him as our Father, without forgetting his heavenly greatness. And the first thing on our new heart is him: his glory, his holiness, his rule, his will – because that's the only way for creation to run right, for all the evil of fallen human history to come undone, and for our deepest longings and creation's direst groanings to be answered. And then, only then, do we turn to ourselves in a second set of three requests.

And how do we start? “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Not, “We can make our own daily bread, thank you very much.” Not, “Give us this day a lifetime supply of bread.” And not, “Give us this day our daily filet mignon.” We're asking for what's actually essential, what we actually need – not all the luxuries we might dream of. We can live without daily filet mignon, but not without daily bread – that's the basics, the stuff of life. Like Paul said, “We brought nothing into the world, and we can't take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:7-8).

That's all we're asking: the basic necessities of life, freeing us up from day-to-day anxieties so we can keep living for God's glory. And when we get it, we disavow credit – it's first and foremost a gift of God, not the work of our hands or the purchase of our wallets. In asking for our daily bread, we're depending on God to provide what we need, when we need it, while we need it, just like God gave manna to Israel day by day in the desert (Exodus 16:4).

It's easy for us here in America to pray this line flippantly. Most of us have never had to worry about our daily bread; we've never been food insecure. But many people in Jesus' crowd that day were subsistence farmers, who really wondered whether they'd have something to eat tomorrow. My dad's mom's four grandparents were all immigrants – they came from German colonies along the Volga River in Russia; and they left because they knew the Russians would treat them badly. And as the decades passed, those left behind finally faced genocide under Josef Stalin – they fought to the death over single kernels of wheat, and many were taken into the labor camps. And one of their poets responded with this prayer of despair:

Our Father – are you still in heaven? Then listen how your name is abused as a curse, how your will is spurned in Stalin's hell on earth. The tyrant and his henchmen have power over life and death; and they take from us our daily bread and let us die like dogs from hunger.

Even to this day, food insecurity is a reality for most of the world. And when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we're not just praying for ourselves; we're praying for our brothers and sisters who are literally starving, and for our own real needs, too, for life and ministry. We're praying for an end to scarcity, not through the heaps of plenty we've stacked high here in America, but through God's simple daily provision – maybe even his provision through us, if we dare to think about it.

After we've prayed for our basic needs, Jesus invites us to pray for forgiveness. “Forgive us our debts,” he says (Matthew 6:12). Those listening to him were mostly Galilean peasants, farmers, workers – they knew what it meant to live in constant fear of debt. That's why so many of Jesus' parables are built around the theme of debt. And the Aramaic word for 'debt' and 'sin' is one and the same. We have a moral 'debt' to God – and we confess here in this prayer that we have plenty of them. All of us do. We are in debt up to our eyeballs, falling hopelessly behind. But God's Law offered the Jubilee cancellation of debts, and that's what we so desperately need! We need God to cancel out our debts, to forgive us! We don't just need to live; we need to live free.

We know that Jesus came to provide it; not only did he sign our debts to himself and pay them on the cross, but he sparked the eternal jubilee by his resurrection. There's forgiveness and grace abounding so much farther than we ever could have dreamed! But Jesus invites us to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). He comments, “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you; but if you don't forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). 

Strictly speaking, that's not a condition; but Jesus does teach us that forgiveness is the fruit of a forgiven life. And if we aren't filled with a Spirit of forgiveness, that might be a sign that we haven't found it ourselves. We all remember, maybe, Jesus' parable of the ungrateful servant – forgiven a massive debt, but refusing to forgive a small debt to a fellow-servant, so his master reinstates the massive debt and throws him into debtor's prison (Matthew 18:21-35)? Don't be like that. That's why we commit ourselves here to being people of forgiveness, as a sign of how much our Father has forgiven us. We pledge to God that we will release everyone from being indebted to us.

And finally, the last of the three petitions, in two parts: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). The first part echoes another Jewish prayer from the rabbis: “Do not bring me into sin, or into iniquity, or into temptation, or into contempt” (b. Berakhot 60b); and the second reminds us of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with the prayer, “Do not let Satan rule over me” (11QPs^a 19.15; 4QTLevi 21.17).

Put together, it's a very realistic prayer! The word for 'temptation' is the same word for 'tribulation' or 'trial.' In this world, we are going to face that – a lot. We will find ourselves in situations where Satan aims to entice us to avoid suffering or gain pleasure by straying away from faithfulness to God. When the crucifixion was just around the bend, Jesus warned his disciples to be careful, or else they'd fall into that temptation (Matthew 26:41). 

So here we ask God to protect us through this perilous life, to keep us from falling victim to Satan's clutches and lures, from giving in and going astray. We ask God to prepare us, equip us, and lead us safely through, so that evil doesn't dig its hooks and snares into us. And that's the third most important thing we can pray for ourselves: we need to live through God's provision, we need to live free through God's mercy, and we need to live right through God's protection and guidance.

That's where Matthew's text ends. In a Jewish prayer, after the set points had been covered, it was customary for people to then add on any remaining personal requests they had. And so may we. Once we've realized who God is to us, once we've focused our prayers on him and what's good for the world, and once we've covered the three most foundational needs we have, then God invites us to bring to him whatever else is on our heart, what specifically concerns us. And the Lord's Prayer will keep it in its place. Once we've set our hearts on God's kingdom, bowed to his will, and given thought to what we really need, then we'll see where our priorities should be. And like God's dear children, we can safely blurt out what's left.

And finally, Jewish prayers typically ended with some kind of doxology – a final set of praises. A few copies of Matthew's Gospel – not the oldest ones, but a few of them – include the doxology we know the early Christians used at the end of the Lord's Prayer: “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, Amen” (cf. Didache 8:2). And wherever this started, it's a short version of David's great doxology from 1 Chronicles that goes like this:

Blessed are you, O LORD, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name. (1 Chronicles 29:10-13)

Ain't that the truth! And all that gets condensed down to just a couple words – but just the right words. Friends, this is prayer like Jesus teaches us. It's simple, it's short, it's sweet, it anchors us in who God is to us and who we are to each other, and it brings us together to focus on God, the world, and our needs before we get to our wants and close with a glorious bang. What more could you ask for? Pray with confidence. Pray with passion. Pray like this, with the Lord's Prayer as the model for what Christian prayer is at heart, and watch what God will do. May our whole lives be like the Lord's Prayer. Amen. Amen.

Covert Church: Sermon on Matthew 6:1-18

Good morning, brothers and sisters! For the last seven weeks, we've been digging into the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus preached the greatest message of all time – there's just no doubt about it. Jesus sat down on the side of the mountain and taught the crowds in Galilee, any who cared to listen. And to this weak band of outcasts, he promised the very kingdom of God. He blessed them, he called them to a mission of being salt and light in the world. He summoned them to a righteousness beyond what they'd been taught. 

And then he instructed them, showing how to unpack what's in the Law. Where the Law tells us not to murder, the Spirit purges us of anger and makes us peaceful, conciliatory. Where the Law tells us not to commit adultery, the Spirit purges us of lust and makes us pure, chaste. Where the Law regulates divorce, the Spirit trains us in contentment. Where the Law regulates our oaths and promises, the Spirit purges us of deceitful manipulation and makes us truthful, candid. Where the Law outlines retaliatory justice, the Spirit strengthens us to protest injustice in better ways. And where the Law reminds us to love our neighbor, the Spirit gives us loving hearts for even our enemies. Because the Spirit conforms us to Christ, who is the very image of God. And so God's complete love and righteousness is the standard: “Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

And now in this morning's passage – really, unless you count Jesus' commentary on the Law all together, this is the longest chunk of the Sermon on the Mount dealing with a single underlying topic. This morning's passage shows Jesus turning from interpreting the Law to taking up the three pillars of Jewish righteousness – three main spiritual disciplines, three practices that every observant Jew would have admitted were essential, and yet Jesus diagnoses how they can go wrong and how to fix them.

I'm going to talk about them in a slightly different order this morning. In the middle, Jesus talks about maybe the most central one, the one we practice the most. And that's prayer. Jesus doesn't directly tell us to pray. And neither, as a matter of fact, did the Law. There's no command in there, “Thou shalt pray,” per se. But the Bible from cover to cover assumes that God's people do pray. 

Prayer, most basically, is just talking with God. And if there is a God (as we know there is), and if he cares about us (as we know he does), and if he chooses to listen to us (as he promises in Christ), then prayer is awfully important. Prayer is gaining an audience with the King of the Universe. Every Jew would have admitted that – many Jewish prayers began with the formula, “Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe,” and then go on to praise him for some gift he's given. And prayer allows us to ask for what we need – to not just fellowship with God, but to ask him to change the world in and around us in some way for the better.

We're used to doing that all the time. And we can. But the Jews also had three major sessions of prayer each day – the observant ones did, anyway. They noticed that as Sodom and Gomorrah smoldered, Abraham got up early in the morning to return to where he'd last been in God's presence (Genesis 19:27). And so the Jews practiced Shacharit, a morning prayer service after sunrise. 

And then they noticed that in the middle of the day, Isaac ventured out into the fields to talk with God (Genesis 24:63). And they tied that to the meal offering every day at the temple. And so the Jews practiced Mincha, an afternoon prayer service. 

And then they noticed that Jacob had communed with God after nightfall, when he rested his head on a pillow of stone and dreamed of a ladder to heaven (Genesis 28:11). And so the Jews practiced Maariv, an evening prayer service. 

The three patriarchs inspired three prayer services every day – and these are no spontaneous, muddle-minded thoughts served up to God. These are extended prayers written out in the siddur, the Jewish prayer book. They involve standing, facing Jerusalem, taking steps forward and back, bending your knees, even bowing. And this happens every day, three times a day. It maybe seems unfamiliar to us, but observant Jews still follow it, and Muslims have five daily prayers that involve standing, facing Mecca, and various bodily motions like sitting, bowing, prostrating, hand gestures.

Jesus assumes that the people listening to him will understand, when he's talking about prayer, it includes that. And then Jesus talks about the next pillar of Jewish righteousness. And that's the practice of fasting. Fasting was going without food, or even food and water, for a time – maybe sunrise to sunset, maybe sunset to sunset. It was a way to express self-denial, a way to communicate grief, a way to clear the heart and mind and focus on God. In seven verses in the Bible, fasting is mentioned alongside prayer. There was a yearly fast on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:27-32).

Fasting crops up over and over again in response to a national crisis, which in Israel usually was because the people had strayed from God. So Samuel has everyone fast when the Philistines are oppressing them (1 Samuel 7:6); Daniel personally fasts when he realizes the exile will last seventy years (Daniel 9:3); and Nehemiah personally fasts when he hears Jerusalem's ruins are ruined worse (Nehemiah 1:4). Those were all moments of national crisis and grief. And even here in America, presidents from Washington to Lincoln used to call for “days of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer” in response to special need.

And then there were personal fasts in response to personal crises, like the psalmist mentions: “I wept and humbled my soul with fasting” (Psalm 69:10). One Jewish book written sometime later, a biography of Adam and Eve – yeah, somebody tried that – describes Adam as fasting for forty days after leaving Paradise. And the Bible itself says that Moses fasted for forty days when he went up Mount Sinai to get the Law (Deuteronomy 9:9), and Elijah fasted as he returned there for a spiritual retreat (1 Kings 19:8). We know that Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert after his baptism (Matthew 4:2), and he said his disciples would begin fasting after he had departed from us (Matthew 9:15). He knows that the Pharisees fast twice a week (Luke 18:12), and Jesus assumes this is something we will practice.

Finally, Jesus assumes that we will practice the third pillar of Jewish righteousness: almsgiving. Some versions just say, “giving to the needy.” There were silver boxes at the temple, maybe at the synagogues as well, where coins could be dropped in for the poor – and, of course, people might directly give to the poor. In addition to the tithe to support the priests and Levites, ancient Israel had a special tithe every three years for the needy (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). This wasn't optional; it was something expected of every Jewish household, to set aside resources to be distributed to those in need. Jewish law now recognizes the maaser kesafim, a tithe for charity, as a universal obligation. And the Bible tells us that “he who is generous to the needy honors … his Maker” (Proverbs 14:31), that “whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed” (Proverbs 19:17). Jesus doesn't seem to think he has to tell us to do that; it's so obvious it doesn't even need an additional commandment. Jesus' people will give to the needy; he takes that as a given.

Prayer, fasting, charity – the three pillars of Jewish righteousness. Three visible expressions of the observant Jewish life, and three practices Jesus assumes his followers will keep doing on a regular basis. But here's the problem. Jesus knows that religion can be distorted. The very things God gives us to serve him and bless the world, we have a knack for perverting for our own self-interest. Jesus has been spelling that out for a whole chapter already, highlighting how people were twisting the Law to excuse the badness of their hearts. And now he goes on and points out that the Pharisees have found ways to twist the three pillars of righteousness into three pitfalls of self-righteousness.

Prayer is good. Prayer can and should be a way of getting closer to God. But prayer was never meant to be a performance. Prayer was never meant to be a means of getting credit for how good we are at praying. But the Pharisees Jesus knew were all about getting credit for how good and righteous they were, or at least seemed to be. The whole point, for them, was exposure – it was a chance for a photo op, we'd say today. Now, if you knew there were three scheduled prayer services, and you wanted to impress people, you might time your day out so that the time of prayer just so 'happens' to catch you in public, on the street corner, for everybody to see (Matthew 6:5). Think of a politician who makes a point to show up at a prayer rally – so long as somebody with a camera will be there to capture them for the media. Or, if you're at church, you might volunteer to be prayer leader so you can show off how good you are at it. That's not what prayer is for. But it's a temptation: to use prayer as an opportunity to perform for the people around you. That's dysfunctional religion.

Jesus gives another example: the Gentiles “heap up empty phrases,” they use “many words” and think those will make their god hear them better (Matthew 6:7). They strive for eloquence, they want to get it just right, and since they aren't sure which title their god likes the best, or even which god might be listening, they toss a bunch in in hopes of getting it right. Instead of prayer being about honest fellowship, heartfelt communication, it becomes a performance and a stab-in-the-dark. It becomes detached from real meaning. The phrases don't mean anything, really, to the person praying them. I mentioned the five daily prayers performed by Muslims; I should mention that those have to be prayed in Arabic, even if the person doesn't understand a word of it. And the gestures have to be just right, for the prayer to be accepted. But don't think I'm picking on Muslims here: our own ancestors a thousand years ago listened along to prayers in Latin they mostly couldn't understand. And that is dysfunctional religion. It's prayer as a performance, prayer as a mere ritual.

Fasting is good. Fasting can and should be a way of getting closer to God. But fasting was never meant to be a performance. Fasting was never meant to be a means of getting credit for how serious we are about fasting. Yet Jesus portrays some people as doing just that. They “look gloomy,” they “disfigure their faces so that their fasting may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:16). They don't take a bath. They don't change clothes. They walk around with ashes on their heads and contort their faces into pitiful looks and puppy-dog eyes so that everybody will look at them and think, “Now that guy's really suffering; that guy is really committed; that guy must be so holy.” They turn it into a show. Their fasting is a performance for the people who see them out and about. And that is dysfunctional religion.

And almsgiving, charity, is good. It can and should be a way of getting closer to God and serving those around us. But it was never meant to be a performance. Charity was never meant to be a means of getting credit for how generous we are. Yet Jesus knows of people who do exactly that. He paints an exaggerated picture for us, unveiling the heart that underlies this. Imagine somebody who parades through the streets, people blowing trumpets in front of him, while he shouts, “Look at how generous I am, handing all this money to these poor people right here!” Talk about unseemly! I don't know if anybody ever literally did that – but certainly they did make sure their coins made a loud, satisfying clunk in the alms box at the synagogue and temple – or, for that matter, that their large bill was conspicuously placed in the offering plate for all to see. That's charity as a show, a performance. And that is dysfunctional religion.

Jesus says that people who do these things are hypocrites – and that word literally means “play-actors,” like the people in the theater who wear masks to occupy a role that isn't actually them in real life. These hypocrites are play-acting religion for the sake of the crowd. Their outward piety is a mask for their inner vainglory. They make a display of being holier-than-thou, because they want people to admire them, to look up to them, to see them as religious role models. But it's all on the outside. The insides of their prayers, their fasting, their charity isn't about God; it isn't about the state of their souls. It's about appearances, about selfish gain. But even if they really did mean some of what they were doing, they still have a problem. They're spiritual show-offs.

We'd like to think we're better than the Pharisees. But Jesus is not preaching the Sermon on the Mount to teach us how to judge and condemn people – even 'religious' people, as some think. Jesus is instructing us how to scrutinize our own hearts, our own lives, not our neighbors' lives. He wants each of us to ask: “When I pray, am I putting on a show for people around me? When I suffer, do I try to act the martyr and earn sympathy for my sorrow or applause for my 'bravery'? When I give or do good to people, am I looking for a pat on the back? When I preach or evangelize or just talk about God, am I looking for credit?” 

Because, Jesus says, those who perform their religion for earthly credit will find their reward there – in earthly credit. And nothing more. “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16) – their full reward, with nothing stored up in heaven beyond it. God gives no credit for the religion we perform for the crowds. The issues isn't so much where we practice these pillars of righteousness as why we do it – what's our motivation? “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 6:1).

That's the problem with the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. They make a pretty show on the outside, Jesus says, but that's a hypocritical mask. “You clean the outside of the cup and plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. … You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:25, 27-28). 

Is that us? Too often, it just might be. Too often, we're tempted to look to get credit. And that's one of the culture's bigger complaints about Christians – that we come across as holier-than-thou, that we're looking to posture as our neighbors' moral superiors, that we talk a good talk but don't walk the walk. In short, that we're hypocrites. We're spiritual show-offs. And while our culture may be no better in the service of their professed ideals, Jesus calls us to have a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees – and exceeds the righteousness of 'cultural Christianity' (Matthew 5:20).

What kind of righteousness exceeds theirs? Jesus tells us. It's a righteousness that isn't focused on ourselves and how good we are. It's a righteousness that's focused on God and how good he is. It's a righteousness that isn't concerned with appearances but with reality. It's a righteousness that glorifies God. It's a 'secret' kind of righteousness – the practices of a 'covert church.' That may be hard to square with what Jesus already said, about letting our light shine publicly for others to see: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works...” Isn't that exactly what Jesus is criticizing here? Not if we let him finish: “...that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14). 

In short, here's Jesus' tip for us: what makes you look good, hide – even from yourself, if possible. Don't dwell on it, don't let pride infest your heart, don't seek a religious reputation, don't look for credit. But what makes God look good, show with gusto. Point to him, not yourself.

So Jesus advises us to pray simple, secret prayers. Instead of heaping up words, trust that God is your Father – he “knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). You don't have to worry about getting him to notice you. He's been paying attention to you since before you opened your mouth. And your prayer doesn't have to be fancy or elaborate. Short and simple is just fine with God, because he's not impressed by how thick your thesaurus is; he's looking at your heart. And so Jesus gives us a short sample prayer to teach us how to cover the key bases (Matthew 6:9-13) – we'll look more at that next week. 

And instead of making an effort to be somewhere visible and prominent when the time to pray rolls around, Jesus gives us the opposite image: “When you pray, go into your pantry and shut the door and pray to your Father who lives in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Does that mean we can't pray together? No. Jesus prayed for his disciples where they could see (John 17:1-26). Does that mean we can't pray outside? No. Jesus held his early-morning prayer retreats outside. But the lesson is clear. Prayer should be separated from performance as far as the context allows; the focus should be on God, and that's most evident when nobody besides God can see you do it. Instead of looking to be seen, look to be hidden.

And when it comes to fasting, Jesus doesn't recommend to us the flashy fast of disfigured faces and big public displays. Instead, he tells us, “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face” (Matthew 6:17). In other words, clean yourself up so that people can't even tell by looking at you that you are fasting. That way, “your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret” (Matthew 6:18). Instead of making a show of your suffering, instead of trying to garner sympathy or praise, live out what God asks of you without ostentation. That doesn't mean concealing your burdens from your brothers and sisters in Christ, because we're commanded to bear one another's burdens, which is hard if we don't share them with each other. But it does mean that, when we respond to suffering in the right way, we'd rather do it in private for God than in public for one another.

And when it comes to charity, Jesus tells us, “Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret” (Matthew 6:3). In other words, when you see a Salvation Army box, sneak up on it! Put your coins in the plate softly and discreetly; fold your bills to hide the numbers! In a world where the rich would fund building projects just so they could be honored with inscriptions lauding how kind and goodhearted they were, Jesus recommends private giving, anonymous generosity.

Today, as we celebrate Harvest Home, you can see a collection of gifts for the needy in front of the altar rail. This is our almsgiving. And if you look closely, no one's name is attached to any of the gifts. Unless you've been watching people bring things in and set them down, you probably don't know who contributed what, for the most part. Nothing here says which things Wilmer and Mary Jane brought, which things Joe brought, which things I brought, and so on. These gifts are anonymous. And now that we've blessed them together, we're going to take them to The Factory Ministries Food Pantry. And once they get there, they won't bear a label that says they came from Pequea EC Church, just as the other food and supplies in the food pantry won't be labeled with the church, the charity, or the business that donated them. Again, anonymous giving. The only thing that matters is that it serves those in need and does so in the name of Jesus.

The Factory Ministries is affiliated with the Together Initiative, and we're currently reviewing their philosophy of service to decide about becoming a full partner church. And as I've sat and talked with leaders of the Together Initiative, do you know the slogan they use to guide them? It's this: “What could we do if we didn't care who” – who on earth, that is – “gets the credit?” Isn't that a beautiful way to express the joyfulness of what Jesus is saying in this passage? “What could we do if we didn't care who gets the credit?” 

Jesus is setting us free from our need to perform. Jesus is setting us free from our hunger for a crowd's applause and approval. Jesus is setting us free to love God and to love our neighbors and neighborhoods without getting bogged down in ourselves. That's the boundless horizon of what we can do when we don't care which of us, or which of our churches, gets the credit.

Instead of acting from earthly motives like human approval, we can act from heavenly motives, like the glory of God and the imitation of his complete, whole-hearted love for one and all. That's no longer dysfunctional religion. That's pure, well-functioning religion – the kind that's all about our relationship with a Father who loves to spend time with us and work through us. Be holy as the Father is holy. Be perfect as the Father is perfect. Be secretly righteous as the Father is secretly righteous.

And Jesus gives us a promise. Earlier, he kept saying that those who put on a religious act out of earthly motives will get all their reward in this life. If they're looking for human approval, well, maybe they'll get it. And that's the end of their reward. God has little to nothing to do with their religiosity, so he has no interest in rewarding them (Matthew 6:1). 

But what about those who live out righteousness from heavenly motives? Jesus says it three times, so we can't miss it: “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:4, 6, 18). That's not to say we do it to try to earn his favor. We can't. He favors and blesses us already in Christ, in advance and even in spite of everything we say and do. And yet God does promise that a heavenly reward is naturally tied to sincere prayer, sincere fasting, and sincere generosity that glorifies him.

So that's our challenge this week. Don't let Harvest Home be the end of your journey into 'secret,' 'covert' righteousness. Keep being a covert church – covert as pertains to our credit, overt as pertains to the glory and love of God. Listen to what Jesus says about how to live a 'religious' life – how to do righteousness – without seeking credit for yourself but giving glory to the Father. 

Step away from performance and into the honest truth. Pray for him, fast for him, give alms for him, evangelize for him, live for him. Check your heart and turn it over to him for review. It may not be easy to strip ourselves of our need for approval. But we have the Spirit as the power-granting promise that God already approves of who we are in Christ – and that he always will. That's what his kingdom is all about. May we always live with our focus fixed on him. Amen.