Action Jackson ...

Years ago, there was a toy marketed to kids who could care less about Ken dolls; they craved something more manly, something more adventurous.  The Action Jackson doll (and let’s face it the difference between Jackson and Ken was only in the clothing and packaging), was something more “modern”, more “cool”.  The 70’s style clothing from jumpsuits, to tennis shoes, was designed to reflect the idea that this figurine was ready for action.  He knew karate.  He had a few accessories to prove it.  This figure was the one ready to go out and save the world, get the girl, and return home without breaking a sweat.  So little boys were supposed to be attracted to these ideas and buy them off the shelves until they were empty.  The idea spawned a movie with Billy Dee Williams to portray this kind of hero.  And another movie or remake is now in the offing based on the same fictional character and fictional ideas.  But as movies go, the gentle mind of a child is embellished with far more adult ideas and action sequences.  But the one idea that was to distinguish Jackson from Ken was buried in his name “Action”.

Jesus did not have this reference when He was giving the Sermon on the Mount found in chapter seven of Matthew’s Gospel to the Jews.  But I imagine He did not think He needed it.  Open scriptures, even in the days of Christ, and the Bible was full of heroes that “acted” for God.  Noah built an ark, big enough to save the world, and still sad that it was so small.  Abraham sought God, not the gods of his family, but the real God he believed had to exist somewhere.  Moses led the people of Israel out of slavery and to the gates of the Promised Land.  The list goes on all the way to Jesus.  All of these Biblical heroes had something in common with Action Jackson, in that none of them were at home with Barbee pondering the meaning of life.  All of them were out in the world, taking action on the beliefs they held, and finding that God was right there ready to meet them, and take them to the next step in their respective journey’s.  The difference between Jackson and Ken; Ken stays home with Barbie, Jackson is out looking for something to do.  The difference between any Biblical hero, and the best friend they might have had who we know nothing about is the same difference.  One takes action for God, the other sits home with Barbie content to move no farther.

When Jesus spoke on this day, He was looking for more than had ever been.  He was not trying to reach just one soul, or just one person.  He was trying to reach every soul, and every person.  You included, me included, the best friends we may know, everyone from Jackson to Ken to Barbie.  No matter how they have been marketed, or how your friends think of you, Jesus was not just speaking to others, Jesus was speaking to you, and to them.  What was needed in the church of Jesus Christ, was a congregation of believers who acted on their faith; not content to sit at home and wait for something to fall into their laps.  This was a big change.  Up till now, a Biblical hero was distinguished by the fact that they were so rare.  Jesus was looking to change that entirely.  Jesus wants a sea of heroes, not a spattering.  Jesus was and is looking to recruit you into His idea of a Biblical hero, even if your story never gets formally recorded.

But how does anyone accomplish that?  Even for God that seems like a huge task.  And as we examine our churches, and the people that take up space in our pews, we begin to realize that few are heroes.  As we examine the image in our mirrors, and the indentation in our sofa cushions, we come to realize that we too are more like Ken and Barbie, than like Action Jackson where it comes to matters of faith.  This sad fact however, is not because this is the condition Jesus wants to find us in.  It is because we enjoy routine supported by a fundamental lack of faith that anything we believe in is real.  We recite the words and the stories, but we do not apply them to our own lives.  We honor Moses and David, but not for a minute consider that the story of Moses might not hold a candle to our own, if we “moved” out in faith.  We simply naturally assume that Moses will always be the hero, and we will not.  Ouch.  Content to assume a position we were not designed to take.  It is as if Satan has destroyed the purpose of Action Jackson and turned us all into Ken; who only goes to see movies to see what another hero might look like.

Jesus had other ideas and still does.  He picks up in verse 7 saying … “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”  Jesus says to “ask”.  Don’t sit there mumbling under your breath, or spewing half believing words you expect no answer to.  He simply says to ask.  Asking requires something on your part, it requires that you initiate the conversation.  He does NOT say you are supposed to fulfill the request, it is not your job to “do”.  But it is at least your job to ask for it.  And the Bible is not mamby-pamby about what will happen when you ask.  He says ask and it will be given to you.  This is mind blowing.  Our first thoughts however, are usually, what do “I” want?  We begin by making a list of all the things we want for ourselves that we believe would make us happy.  Money usually always winds up at the top of that list.  Somewhere near power and control over others and situations, somewhere near a desire to have all others love us, particularly the pretty ones.  And this is where we de-rail ask and it shall be given … to Sofie’s choice.  We ask God for things that would endanger our souls and then expect Him to deliver, or call Him a false god.

Have we ever considered for a moment, that in this case the context was still Biblical?  Ask for gifts of the Spirit, for the salvation of ourselves and our families, for protection from the world.  Ask a host of spiritual benefits for the lives of others and not ourselves, and we then offer God a petition He longs to grant.  But this is usually a change in our thinking, a change we are in so desperate need of.  But the admonition does not end in asking.  Jesus says to us to take the next step, He says to us to seek.  When facing questions we are unsure what to do, how many times do we open scripture without a clue where to look, but in spite of it, we seek anyway?  Seek and you will find.  Look for God and you will find Him.  He is not purposely hiding from you, he is more often blocked from your vision because you do not want Him seeing what you do.  You put God away more often, than you seek His face.  Seek and you will find.  So we have asking, and we have seeking or looking, but this is not all.

Finally, there is “knocking”.  Knocking expresses intent in its action.  Knocking says I am here, I am ready, I want in.  Knocking says I may not be sure what is on the other side of this door, but I am too curious to leave it there and just walk away, I want to get in there and experience it for myself.  Would that Jesus had a church full of believers who wanted in to His Kingdom which has already come.  What might we find inside the playground of spiritual toddlers that exist in the pure trust and security in our Daddy’s love?  What freedom might we find?  What relief from care and burdens might we experience?  But rather than be free like little children, we instead cling to our burdens, and never even attempt to shed them by knocking on the door of that Kingdom where admission is free, and our Daddy longs to greet us on the other side of that door.  We never knock.  So we never enter in.  All of this our own doing.

Jesus continues in verse 8 saying … “For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”  Get this through your head Ken doll’s, Jesus is not monkeying around.  He is not offering a half-hearted response like, ‘well, if it is God’s will, and if you have prayed hard enough, or begged long enough, or if there is someone’s life at stake, then maybe God will be there’.  Jesus states unequivocally that God will be there and your action will be met by reaction.  We will receive.  We will find.  We will watch that door open up so we can go in.  Action finds reaction.  Lethargy finds nothing.  Contentment finds nothing.  Lethargy and contentment with our spiritual conditions lead us to look nowhere and find nothing because we do not seek it.  Understanding your need.  Understanding your need is great may be the first step in getting you up off your butt to finally actually do something.  Even if it is only to ask for greater energy and faith in God, it will be granted.  Even if it is only to seek the meaning of this text, you will find it.  Even if it is only to dust off the door-handles of your weekly Sabbath School class and enter in to study and learn from the perspectives of others on truth, that door will be opened to you.  There is no timidity in the voice of Jesus.  There is authority in it.  He speaks knowing it is He you will find.  He speaks knowing He will not fail you.

Jesus continues in verse 9 saying … “Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? [verse 10] Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?”  Hello, parents in the crowd, are you listening?  This analogy is meant to cut through our negative or timid perceptions about our God and realize He is better than any parent we could have ever had.  Love motivates how our parents do their best with us.  They may not always give us a pony.  But they do give us gifts motivated by love.  They feed us with the best they have to offer.  They may not be able to afford Ruth’s Chris at every meal, but then if they could, the health detriments might outweigh the incredible taste anyway.  But parents look to keep feeding their children at every meal.  Sometimes when they are poor, they feed their children and go without themselves.  Parent are willing to sacrifice for their children.  Our God was willing to give up His only Son for the rest of His children, for us.  So our God knows a thing or two, about how to give good gifts.  He may not provide the winning numbers to power-ball, but He can put the meal on the table for today, and more importantly He can offer us true transformation that leads us to the road to perfection, if we but wanted it, if we but asked for it.

Jesus continues in verse 11 saying … “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”  Oh believers let us shed our Ken persona’s and adopt more of an Action Jackson state of mind.  Let us shed the ideas that our God is lazy, and nearly deaf, or completely uninterested in our lives.  Our God is passionate about each of us.  Our God is keenly aware of our lives and totally empathetic to what we feel, whether supreme joy (which He loves to create), or the depths of sadness (for which He is there shedding as many tears as we do).  It is not lack of interest that keeps us separated, it is lack of action.  We sit, complaining, but never seeking.  We sit, telling others of our woe, but never asking God to see it lifted and then knowing and trusted it will be removed entirely.  We don’t bother knocking anymore, because we don’t believe there are any doors to knock upon.  Clinging to our burdens so long, we forgot His Kingdom has already come, and the door stands right in front of us all day every day.  Get off the sofa.  Hit your knees or hit the streets and you will find God reflected in love to others.

Jesus then concludes this snippet of His sermon with the most profound of summations in verse 12 saying … “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”  People have called this the golden rule.  But that is a huge misnomer.  There is no gold mentioned here anywhere.  This would be better titled, the summation of the Law, and the Prophets is found in simply loving others.  What we would wish for, we might fulfill in the life of another.  In our marriages and in our romantic relationships, stop defining them by what you want, and instead by what you have to offer, and the passion that exists behind that offer.  What makes you happy in watching the reaction of your partner?  Is there any greater fulfillment in all of life, than seeing that happiness in their eyes, and knowing it is you who brought it to them?  Indeed there is not.  Defining your value this way is defining your value in the light of heaven.

Honoring your mother and father is not merely about obedience, it is about a level of respect and care that would return the love they have shown you, in an exponential way.  There will come a time when without your love and care, their degenerated capabilities will cause them to suffer.  But long before capacity is diminished there is time to love with a passion that knows it is loved in return.  There is time to enjoy the sharing of love, the dedication of time set aside from other priorities, to share and exist, and be known.  Relationships held in a new reverence where their value would be hard to overstate.  The Law, the Prophets, all designed to point your heart back to God, so that you can reflect His love to those all around you.  To those in need, but also to those who believe they have no need, for theirs is the greater danger, and all in equal need of God’s love reflected through you.

Love is not a passive, sit on the couch, kind of thing.  Love is an infectious, got a find a new way to express it, always searching, always discovering kind of thing.  Love and action find a symmetry, that cannot be found in the indentations of a sofa.  Seek for ways to express love to others, and you will surely find them.  Knock on the door of the hearts of others, yourself steeped in the love of God, and that infectious love will work its way into the hardest of hearts.  For it is changing hearts where the skill of God is unmatched.  It is in the transformation of hearts of minds and someday of bodies, where God will work His work of perfection within us.  It can start today.  Action Jackson is sure to find it.  Ken may or may not.  Who will your persona become?  No one can force you either way.  But there is so much more to a life of love, than perhaps today you are equipped to imagine, why not reach out, why not ask, why not seek a little, and just watch what happens in you.

And the sermon was far from over …

Lacking All Sense of Judgment ...

How does that guy end up with that girl?  Men think these questions to themselves, as from looking at the external beauty of the woman, and the relative comeliness of the man, the pairing just does not seem to make sense.  Could this beautiful woman truly not understand just how beautiful she really is?  Or could she truly not understand just how homely her partner is?  Does she just lack all sense of judgment or perhaps is her eyesight just that impaired?  Even the series of questions reveals a thinking about the judgment of men, that it is based in the appearance and little else.  Perhaps the judgment of the woman is based in something deeper, something more meaningful, something that will last.  But then …

Does this dress make me look fat?  I can’t wear that dress to the event because “she” is wearing one just like it.  The reasoning of women often seems grounded in insuring their own appearance remains at its peak condition, and cannot be confused with any other woman.  Having two women show up at the same event wearing the same dress is only acceptable if both are bride’s maids, and even then, both resent it.  Something about wearing the exact same dress is simply intolerable for women.  Yet as they examine the sea of men that accompany them to these events, they fail to realize that tuxedo’s, and even most formal suits, are so close in look and feel, that only designers can easily tell them apart.  Men are content to wear the same formalwear, without a second thought.  Women are content to allow them out of the house this way, in fact, most prefer it.  But two identical dresses require one women to go home and try again.  A self-imposed rule, but one as solid as any printed in a book of law.

Why a man questions the happiness of a couple where the woman is stunning and the man is at best “normal”; and why a woman constantly questions her own appearance; are questions of judgment Angels find great mystery in.  Would, that our lack of judgment only extended to our appearance.  But it does not.  Humans have a nasty way of taking what we have learned, and instead of building one brick of knowledge upon another, until we form a magnificent structure of understanding, we pick up our brick and run with it.  We ignore all other truth, even the question about how other truth might fit with our own to form greater truth.  Instead we grab the nugget of truth that makes up our brick … and we immediately proceed to slam someone else in the head with it.

We make our brick, the sole basis of our gospel.  We push aside any attempts at greater understanding, and we make our brick the determining criteria of whether others will find themselves in hell, or not.  Should they accept what we say, and how we see things, then they are fine for now.  Otherwise, hell and damnation are surely the punishment coming to anyone who would ignore the plain truth of our brick.  And since that is the eventual outcome they must face, slamming them in the head with our brick now, seems like the right thing to do.  And so, even in spiritual matters, we find ourselves lacking all sense of judgment.  We find our core doctrines as rigid as those of our Pharisee forefathers.  We find our propensity to curse any who refuse our beliefs, as natural and rigid as any zealot who ever walked the earth before us.  We may not kill others who disagree.  But we are comfortable condemning them in the afterlife to eternal death, believing they must convert or be eternally punished for their lack of insight.

But the truth of Jesus Christ is not found in the eye alone.  Nor is it found in the ear alone.  The eye and ear have radically different functions and perspectives and BOTH are correct.  The foot moves us to a better place.  The hand reaches out in comfort and affection.  The arms hold.  The brain discerns.  It takes every part of the body to even begin to understand the Truth of Jesus Christ.  Thinking the eye’s alone have it, makes the body deaf, and mute, and crippled.  Thinking the brain alone has it, makes the body cold, unfeeling, and unable to move at all.  But this kind of body analogy forces believers to begin to accept the reality that “their” brick is not the ONLY brick, that makes up a picture of truth.  It reveals that even in spiritual matters, we are ill equipped to judge.  And so Matthew continues recording the Sermon on the Mount in chapter seven of his gospel.

Jesus continues in verse 1 saying … “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”  When we judge others, we reveal something about ourselves.  It is automatic.  It is unavoidable.  No matter the subject, from bad fashion, to bad doctrine, what we use to judge others says MORE about us, than it will ever say about them.  And so, our Lord, the One we claim to follow, gives us a simple instruction that we should just not judge.  He continues in verse 2 saying … “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”  The brick of truth we use to slam others in the head, will eventually be the same brick that slams us.  As our insight into truth deepens we will come to realize the using truth to slam others is the wrong use of truth at all.  Truth without love, is “truth” outside of Jesus, and therefore less about truth and more about opinion.  Doctrines are meant to point people to Jesus, not divide people who claim His name from truly loving each other.

Jesus continues in verse 3 saying ... “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? [verse 4] Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? [verse 5] Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”  This analogy is not just about fashion, or about whether a couple is evenly matched in beauty and physique.  It is about something deeper than this.  It is about doctrine.  The mote that is in our brother’s eye represents some misunderstanding our brother has in related to scripture, that we think we know better about.  The condition of our brother is not even made in dispute, Jesus does not even argue it.  But, the beam that is in our own eye, represents a FAR greater error by orders of magnitude than the little misunderstanding our brother has.  I dare say, it is the beam of doctrines, rigid and large and all-encompassing that have no sense of love within them.

While we take an unusual interest in the small error of our brother, we reveal our complete misunderstanding of love at all.  Love is not meant as an excuse to sin, it is meant as a motive to seek Jesus who can change our very desires to want sin no more.  Love does not destroy doctrine, it becomes the foundation for them.  For if doctrine cannot be forged in love, it is merely opinion, not truth.  Truth is unafraid of new thinking, of questions, of growing larger than it is today, because our understanding grows larger.  We begin to incorporate other perspectives of the body, the eyes, the ears, the fingers.  And instead of shrinking, our truth becomes greater and more beautiful.  The man sees himself through the lens of Christ and sees that love reflected and true, is a great attractive quality that any woman would cherish.  The woman sees herself through the lens of Christ, and realizes that perfection is not brought about by Maybelline, but by submission to Jesus who makes her of infinite value to His Kingdom and the heart of any man.  Families are formed, with Jesus as the foundation, and nothing Satan can throw can rip them apart.

We learn to obey the simple edict of our Lord, to judge not.  Then the strangest of things happens.  Jesus proceeds with a text that is nearly the exact opposite of the entire lesson He just lays out.  Jesus continues in verse 6 saying … “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”  Yikes.  We just went through the entire idea of Judging Not, His exact words, but now dogs and pigs are introduced.  How can we know who a dog or pig is?  Isn’t the point of the gospel to be shared with those who do not know Jesus?  If we begin by thinking they are all dogs and pigs, who would ever get to hear the gospel.  It makes no sense, or does it?

Take a closer look at the preceding texts.  The beams and motes, are in your “brother’s” eye and your own.  It would seem as though these verses are specifically targeted at members, at believers in Jesus.  We should be avoiding the doctrinal brick in the head between those who claim the name of Jesus, of those who believe in Him.  The generic admonition not to judge, allows us to spread the gospel of love to everyone without judgment.  Where the dogs and pigs begin to emerge is where love of others is rejected in favor of love of self.  Those who would twist the gospel of love, into blanket excuse and permission to love themselves with abandon, without limits, and at the expense of others.  Those who claim forgiveness is their get out of jail free card, while having no intention of change, or desire to change.  Those who would twist the life and sacrifice of Jesus as a way to sin and claim forgiveness, never even attempting to see if the sin itself might be transformed away from them, removed from their desires, and replaced by something more holy.

The pigs who would turn and rend you, cut you with sharp teeth and no concern, can easily be those whose version of life and philosophy is self-centric and do not want it disturbed.  They can certainly be out of the church, but they can populate it as well.  Those who do not understand love, may not want you to upset their perception of love for others.  They may be greedily feasting on doctrines who do not require them to love, only to obey the lists of do’s and don’ts outlined in the traditional interpretations of men.  It is not up to us to pre-determine who the dogs and pigs are.  It is up to us to be careful when we encounter them.  And to take heed not to become them.  The latter the far more dangerous outcome of our embrace of the rigidity of doctrine than the former.  To keep our pearls, and keep what is holy, we must center our love in Jesus Christ, and insure it always turns outward, away from ourselves, to those in need.  When our love is rejected on occasion, we must be more careful in its expression, and pray more for change.

In this way, we adhere to the counsel of Jesus, avoiding judgment, and still passionately pointing the world to Jesus to find relief from sin, not a continued embrace of it.

And the sermon was far from over …

 

The End of Fear and Uncertainty ...

How much of your life is curtailed because of fear?  How many things do you avoid, or risks you refuse to take, because the fear of the loss that might come to pass, is just too great for you?  The thing we call life, the way we define our existence, is so often ravaged by our fears.  We construct a box for ourselves to live within, hoping that if we stay confined to our box, we will be safe.  But inevitably life has a way of knocking down the walls of any box, and when the reality of those challenges present, its most devastating side effect, is to deepen the fear that governs how we live at all.  Imagine for a moment if you had taken every risk you were ever presented with, but imagine that they all worked out positively.  It is as if your brain won’t let you imagine that outcome.  Surely the nature of a risk, is that not all of them work out the way we want, so imagining they do is nearly impossible.  It presents a “too good to be true” scenario.  And yet, your mind is much more comfortable imagining every risk would have worked out badly.  And that kind of imagination, governs what you have done, and what you will do.

That kind of risk avoidance, that is so easy to imagine going badly, and so difficult to imagine working out the way we want, leaves a footprint in how we live.  It confines our actions, and stunts our imaginations.  It pushes us to want a life we can define, and predict, with relative certainty will go the way we want.  You call that common sense.  An outside observer would call it moved-by-fear.  So to get you to look beyond.  To get you to examine what life may have to offer beyond the limits and history of your fear, you must ignore your fears.  This is especially true in matters of religion.  Nearly every time an Angel is commissioned to communicate with mankind, the first few words are generally, “fear not”.  There is a reason for this.  Confronted with the supernatural, with the out-of-bounds, something beyond the limits you set for yourself and your ideas about life … the first human response is one of fear.  Not joy, not rejoicing (imagine it, most of the news they have to say is usually always good, sometimes really good), not even curiosity.  The first human response is fear.

Having an Angel appear in your real world, knocks the wall down of the nice little box you construct for yourself.  Thus, the message of the good news they bring must wait, while first they re-assure our fears.  And these messages are most often reserved for believers, for people who have chosen to believe in our God, in His Word, and the history of communication between God and man it has presented.  Even behind the lives steeped in belief, remain human fear, human uncertainty.  And this condition is not meant to be permanent.  It is not even meant to be how we live today.  Consider as an example, the slightly misplaced argument that toddlers have on the playground about “my dad is bigger than your dad”.  The real notion behind it, is that the toddler is asserting his/her own security based on the idea that their dad is big enough to ward off any threat.  The toddler is comfortable looking to daddy to protect them, care for them, and generally be a fence between themselves and evil.  While slightly misplaced, the basis of this argument is sound, if we were to apply it to God instead.  Even daddies need that analogy.

Security enables us to feel better.  Certainty, a hedge against the downside of risk, allows us to live life in a completely different way.  When you are not scared about eating, about making a living, about God taking care of the things, the burdens, you usually take upon yourself; something wonderful happens.  You begin to let go of the fear, and start to really live, outside of the box, outside of the boundaries you used to place upon yourself.  Your existence begins to change because the way you think about your existence begins to change.  It is in a sense self-fulfilling, but it cannot begin or be effective, without an outside assurance that will cover the fears we face, and hedge the risks we no longer fear to take.  What our “Daddy” can do for us in this regard, is something He longs to do.  It is how we live in the eternity of heaven.  And it can begin right here and right now, if we will only let Him do it for us.

Jesus Himself gives us the roadmap for this.  Matthew continues recording His Sermon on the Mount in chapter six of his gospel.  Jesus has just concluded a snippet about true currency valuation, and what relevance money has in the light of eternal things.  But before humans can let go the fear of using our money differently, we need assurances too many of us ignore.  Yet here they are.  Picking up in verse 25 Jesus continues saying … “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”  This is radical reprioritization.  We spend our lives working to feed our families, put a roof over their heads, and clothes on their back.  From the extreme rich, to the very poor, the mechanics remain the same.  Yet here is Jesus putting an abrupt halt on everything we value, on our entire economic structure, and furthermore saying “take no thought” for it. 

This is beyond a general admonition not to have fear regarding it.  This is nothing even remotely related to having balance between responsibility and spirituality.  This is a one-sided, completely weighted statement, that passes up any boundary we are comfortable with.  “Take no thought” means past not worrying or stressing, don’t even think about it.  We can be that certain in how we live, that God Himself is looking after our lives, that we need not even think about what we eat, or wear.  The question is not whether I shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, or Walmart, for my clothing.  The proposition Jesus makes, is that my body is the important thing to God, and God will take care of clothing it.

Jesus continues in verse 26 saying … “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”  Jesus has a point.  Birds wake up every day, and go eat.  The bird never has to worry that they will not find food.  They simply look, and there it is.  God does the worrying.  God provides for the feeding.  The bird is just living his life, he is not obsessing about whether he has a full pantry of food at home, or whether his canned goods supply are adequate to withstand the next hurricane disaster.  The bird just wakes up and eats.  Mom’s bring home food for their little birds.  There is never a worry about this kind of thing.  If you took the evil of predatory creatures out of the equation, birds would thrive.  You don’t see them going extinct because of lack of food.  Even though they still have to contend with what man does to their natural habitats, with pollution, with weather events just like we do.  Yet after a hurricane, when the storms roll away, there are the birds.  They just wake up and eat and live without a thought about it.

Jesus drives home the point in verse 27 saying … “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”  This is not just a frustration the shorter population faces.  It equally applies to health issues you have almost no control over.  Think about it, as you read this, your local hospital is filled with people in varying degrees of need.  This is true all over the city, country, and world in general.  Wealth is no barrier against being there.  Youth isn’t either.  Fitness despite all its other benefits does not shield you against cancer.  And our thoughts about what we want, and our fears about what we want to avoid, do nothing from keeping any one of us from becoming the patient in the bed right next door.  If we cannot control our bodies by sheer force of will, why do we take on the fear and stress over them as if we could.  The stress does not fix the problems, it only makes them worse.  There is a better solution.

Jesus continues in verse 28 saying … “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: [verse 29] And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [verse 30] Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”  Ok Macy’s, your entire value proposition has just been cut to the ground.  And so has yours Walmart.  Jesus asks us to simply look at the beauty He has created around us in nature.  Beauty that occurs whether we encourage it or not.  If God offers us the beauty of Roses, and Lillies, and Tulips and Trees; He takes care of things that have a short span of time here in the world, and things that last.  Flowers cannot just transplant themselves to find better foods.  Nor has a tree ever been given this kind of option.  The Sequoias have been there for quite some time, and yet still they grow, their beauty a remarkable thing.  If God so takes care of the transient things, why would He not take care of you?

Jesus summarizes His thoughts picking up in verse 31 saying … “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? [verse 32] (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. [verse 33] But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  Your thoughts, your worries, your pursuits are either wasted in the temporary things of this world, or founded in the eternal things of God that matter.  Jesus tells us here that what we eat is not worth thinking about, food will be there.  He tells us what we wear is not our concern, God will make sure we have something, and that it lasts.  Following this advice may not offer us a wealth of new clothing every season, but it will meet our needs.  Following this advice may not have us eating at Morton’s every night, but it will have us eating to meet our needs.  And trusting God, to provide these things, is to just test what He provides.  His gifts are amazing.

What should be our focus is seeking His kingdom, the thing that lasts and matters.  The rest of the temporary needs will be met.  Jesus concludes this line of thinking with a more realistic and somber thought continuing in verse 34 saying … “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”  The problem is not our food, or clothes.  It is our priorities.  It is our faith or trust in God.  It is our inclination to focus upon ourselves and begin to indulge the evil that lays in wait all around us.  THAT is the real problem.  That is something we can have a little stress about.  Because the problem there is not half so much about what surrounds us as what lies inside of us.  Our refusal to trust.  Our refusal to change how we live, and who we rely upon to support us.  We take on burdens that do not belong to us, and in so doing continue to entertain fear, and uncertainty, that otherwise could die a permanent death.

How great could be our Christian lives and experience if we could think differently about who takes care of us, and who is there to meet the risks, and solve the challenges.  A sense of self-reliance is our biggest handicap.  Atheists must rely upon this as it is all they have.  But Christians should be able to rely upon something more, to a point where we literally … take no thought.

And the Sermon was far from over …

 

Instructions We Never Really Read ...

Whether you may be a parent assembling a toy for your child, or perhaps a simple piece of furniture, or just attempting to use that new software for the first time; there are many occasions where we pay little attention to, or discard the instructions completely.  This may stem from the notion that we “know” what needs to be done, and the instructions will only slow us down.  Or it may be that the instructions were written in a foreign language, and we figure we couldn’t have understood them anyway.  Finally, it may be that the instructions were just too long, and would have required too much of our time and attention to really read.  So we set about “assembling” or “interacting” with our objective in the manner we think is best.  Throughout that process though, a good many of us find ourselves at a dead end, unable to figure out how to proceed next and our first recourse beyond google … is to check the thing we avoided up to this point, to refer back to the instructions.

The disciples of Christ were simple men, when it came to matters of the Kingdom of God.  For that matter, most of the audience in attendance at the Sermon on the Mount were simple people.  They all understood the need for prayer.  But the mechanics of how to pray, was something no one was completely certain of.  The Sanhedrin had ideas, and they followed them.  Traditions passed down, that no one dare oppose.  But the people sitting on this mountainside, were learning wisdom from the Messiah Himself.  What was coming out of His mouth, was coming out of the mouth of God’s own Son.  So to have their questions answered from Jesus was quite literally, a God send.  The people and the disciples wanted more certainty in how we should communicate with God.  And Jesus sensed their need even before they had occasion to voice it.  Matthew recorded the entire instruction set in only 10 verses in chapter six of his gospel.

Jesus begins his simple instruction set, in a common language of the people, in a way that would easy for them to understand, picking up in verse 5 saying … “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”  This text follows on the previous section that talked about how we should give our alms to the poor, and those in need.  One of the important points of that section was to give in humility, and in secret, not looking for credit, or an opportunity for comparative holiness.  And so to begin, Jesus continues this very theme as it pertains to prayer.  Prayer, designed to draw attention to itself, prayer designed to show off the oratory skills of the person offering it, will miss the blessing of true one-on-one communication with God.

It is difficult to truly humble ourselves in front of others, particularly when our goal is not humility, it is to be “seen and heard” as a person who prays “powerful” prayers.  In the days of Christ, the Sanhedrin ruling class craved this kind of attention.  They did not just want to pray, they wanted to be “seen” praying, to be heard saying their prayers before God in public places in order to gain the attention they deserve.  And we look down on them for that.  But then, we turn around and offer several public prayers in our church services, in front of hundreds or even thousands of other believers.  Those who are asked to pray at these times, are suddenly cognizant that they will be “scrutinized” by the church for how well they pray.  It cannot be too long, or too short.  It must make a point.  It should not be a mini-sermon.  It should be pertinent to the activity that follows or precedes it.  All of the sudden, the Sanhedrin is reborn in us, and while we may not sound a trumpet to call attention to ourselves, the sequence of events published in the bulletin will perform that same function just as well.

And so we miss the benefit of humility, for the sake of seeking credit, for the eloquence of our speech.  Jesus continues to offer His alternative to us in verse 6 saying … “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”  Here we go again.  Our human minds equate this promise to a powerful secret Santa; we avoid public prayer, and our secret Santa showers us with the desires of our hearts.  But then, that is not what is promised here.  What is admonished is prayer in secret, in places where no one will judge us for our eloquence, where we will not be seen at all.  In that place, true humility before God will be possible.  To know our need.  To know how vast our need is.  Is already a blessing that words can scarcely describe.

But beyond having a semblance of how wretched we truly are, and how glorious our God is, while in secret we can pour out our hearts to God, craving the change we so much need.  To lay our sins down upon the altar of prayer in that private place is possible.  We can confess what we would not want other ears to hear.  We can ask, not only for forgiveness He freely offers, but for re-creation within us we do desperately need.  To want something else.  To have our very desires remolded by our Creator, is possible when we are not being watched by our peers, or even family and friends.  Our salvation will be personal.  It will be one-on-one.  It will be Jesus saving you … from you.  This cannot be done in group session.  It cannot be done in public, for we become too conscious of who is watching and what they will think.  It must be done in our closets, in our private places, where no one is watching but our God who never sleeps.  It is there, in private, where our salvation is achieved.

God does not simply grant us the wish list we bring to Him.  Instead in those private moments, He works on the character within us, to re-create our thinking, our desires, our motives, and ultimately as a result, our actions.  This reward is only possible when you are free to pour out who you are to God, in a place where you can do this without the pressure of others watching.   And so what do “we” do?  We hold prayer meetings to pray in front of each other.  We do it again at family meals, or family worship.  And while these practices are not wrong in themselves, they deny us a benefit we might otherwise be getting if we were praying in our private places.  Our problem, is that we replace our private prayers, with only the corporate ones, and then think to ourselves that our prayer life is “just fine” based on the number of times we pray in a week, instead of the passion of our prayers poured out in private with only God watching.

Jesus continues His instructions in verse 7 saying … “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”  Vain repetitions.  How many of the prayers for our food are a complete copy of the last time we said “grace”?  How many other occasions whether public or private, turn out to be carbon copies of our previous prayers, they become memorized speeches instead of meaningful petitions.  Churches use “readings” in public forums that are half-uttered prayers based on scripture we repeat over and over.  Even the Lord’s Prayer itself coming in just a few verses away will become something we repeat over and over, thinking we have said what we needed to say.  But its repetition will make its impact upon us dull, to the point of changing nothing in us.  The idea that we repeat what we say “so that God will hear us” states, that our God is deaf, and uncaring.  Repetition is not the way to gain the attention of God, it is a way to bore Him to tears.

Jesus continues in verse 8 saying … “Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”  And herein is the secret to why we pray at all.  It is not to make God aware of what we need, as He already knows that.  It is not to beg God to provide what we need, that only reflects a lack of faith on our part, and is completely unnecessary when we understand how much He loves us, and can take trust in that love.  His actions precede our words.  There is nothing He does not know about us.  Therefore our prayer life, is meant to show US, our need, and His love.  We do not need repetitions.  We need earnest communication with a God we KNOW is there listening and loving.  We need a method to submit to Him, to lay before Him, our thinking, our desires (yes even the sexual ones), and our motives, to change as He sees fit.  Prayer is a perfect mechanism to do this.  Prayer becomes a channel where we enable God to save us, and ignore our otherwise disobedient lives.  It is a channel where we ask Him to do what we know He already wants to do in us.  Not for us, but in us.  The things He does for us, He is already doing before we utter the words.  What we truly need is the things He longs to do in us, and for that we need to give Him permission using the vehicle of our prayers.

All of these instructions precede the example of prayer Jesus would outline for His people.  It was Jesus Himself who just finished saying we need not offer vain repetitions.  The Lord’s Prayer can become a vain repetition when we have the vanity to think it is the only prayer we ever need offer.  It can become vanity when we seem to only ever offer it in a public place, in front of other people.  These were the instructions we simply find ourselves overlooking in order to get to the easier word-for-word repetition we could find in the Lord’s prayer itself.  And we somehow find a way to look down on our Pharisee forefathers.  Nevertheless Jesus wanted us to know what we could say to our God, and why it was important.

He begins in verse 9 saying … “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”  First we identify that who we pray to is not just a nebulous god such as the Greeks or Romans might identify.  Other cultures have gods that live beyond our sight as well.  But our God, is also “our” Father.  Jesus lifts up humanity and offers us the privilege of calling His Father, Our Father.  Our God lives in heaven, not the heavens meaning the skys, but in heaven the city built trillions of years before our existence, the place He chooses to dwell.  Heaven is a place where other life forms gather to be with Him, and to be close to Him.  They would need a city to facilitate that goal, and so they have one.

Hallowed is His name.  We do not know the name of the Father, but one day we will.  Whatever that name is, it is to be hallowed, spoken with reverence.  This term is to remind us of who we are, and who He is.  For it is His greatness, and His love, that would be willing to part with His only Son to see us redeemed.  It is the greatness of His love that is able to re-create in us what we have broken in our choice to embrace sin over and over.  For that alone His name is hallowed and reverenced.  But not unspoken at all.  We tend to think because God is who He is, we should avoid talking to Him on a personal level, because that would somehow bring God down to us.  But the point of prayer itself is to bring us up to God.  That His name is hallowed, only reminds us of that notion.  It does not keep us from speaking to Him in the words that pour from our hearts.

Jesus continues in verse 10 saying … “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”  In heaven, it is the highest honor of existence to carry out the will of God.  Angels long to do it.  Other creations long to do it.  God does not need us to do it, He can do everything and anything all by Himself.  He permits us to help, because of His patience and love of His creation.  To carry out the will of God on earth, despite our circumstances, bad decisions, and human failings, is no less a privilege to us.  To think of it in those terms, is to be a toddler granted a new toy in the Kingdom of God.  Daddy is going to hold our hand and help us do, what He needed to do.  Perhaps in the life of another, perhaps you will be the tool to reflect the love of God the Father.  In so doing, Daddy gets his will accomplished, sharing with you the joy of loving and making a difference.

Jesus continues in verse 11 saying … “Give us this day our daily bread.”  This part of the prayer is not designed to send God a gentle reminder due to His old age and tendency to forget things now.  Nope.  This simple sentence is meant to address a few ideas in you.  One, we need only ask for what we need today.  There is no stockpiling in this idea, no hoarding, and no worrying about tomorrow.  That is a complete departure from everything in our world.  We work to take care of ourselves, always thinking about what we need in the future.  Here is Jesus reminding us, to quit it.  If we cannot trust God to already know He loves us and was already planning to meet the needs of today, how can we trust Him with the greater needs of our salvation?  We should all be homeless, or at least be ready to be homeless, ready to let go of everything we cling to, and stockpile.  But that idea is beyond our comprehension.  So we work, and convince ourselves that this line in the prayer is nothing more than a blessing on food, and we repeat it vainly every time it is said.

Jesus now changes the subject a bit as He continues in verse 12 saying … “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  There was a very Jewish notion in this text.  Literally translated it means, all those loans you think you loaned out, go forgive them.  Release the people from their debts, give them the freedom not to worry about them.  Why?  It was in the sentence before, we are already getting whatever we need for this day from our God, we just got finished asking for that.  So if I have all I need from God, why am I asking you to repay loans.  I don’t need your money, I have my God.  I can change your request of a loan from me, into a gift of resources, underwritten by my God.  A chance to do His will on earth as it is in heaven.  And Jesus intended to come back to this one.

But for now, another pressing thought as Jesus continues in verse 13 saying … “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”  This one came from experience.  Those 40 days and nights in the desert being tempted of Satan were very hard on Jesus.  None of us could ever have withstood it.  But that did not happen by accident it happened because the Spirit led Jesus there.  It was necessary to try His gold in the fire.  Here Jesus asks the Father that we experience no such equivalent.  It is hard enough for us to stay out of sin when there is no temptation.  But when temptation comes, too many of us fall to it.  So here, Jesus asks that He and His Father find a way to shelter us from evil and deliver us from evil, changing who we are without the added burden of temptation.  It is the greatest mercy our God could ever show us.  Again the reminder to us, of how great, and eternal is our God, and the conclusion of the prayer.  A prayer we speak so casually now, we have it memorized, and it makes so little dent in our thinking anymore.  The sample Jesus spoke has become the only prayer we take certainty in.  We have increased our inventory of prayers not much beyond this one, at least not with any certainty.  How sad.

But the instructions were not over yet.  Jesus goes back to the trespasses thing again picking up in verse 14 saying … “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: [verse 15] But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”  How can we be free when we cling to who we were?  If we cannot release others to be free, it is ourselves we bind.  It is a tangible demonstration that we hold something back from God, a part of ourselves and our greed, that we refuse to let go.  We do not free others and in so doing we do not free ourselves.  We hold ourselves captive to our greed, and refuse to trust God with our daily bread.  Instead we cling to the notion that we can provide our own bread, let God focus on some other need.  And this thinking then permeates our salvation.  We can purify some portion of ourselves, let God work on something else, something we “need” help with, as these portions of ourselves we can do for ourselves.

And so “self” remains at the center of our religion, pushing Jesus to the side in a partnership role.  And we keep our salvation at bay, preventing the heavenly Father from truly releasing us from the past, from who we were.  As co-pilot, Jesus is not granted the access He needs to redesign the aircraft.  While we stubbornly cling to the pilot’s chair and role, we block our Lord from doing what He so longs to do for us, if we would only yield control.  Instead choosing to trust ourselves with our needs, both temporal and spiritual.  We begin to look upon the Lords Prayer as something we say over and over in church, and thereby meet our obligations for prayer.  Slowly but surely we take more of our salvation out of the hands of Jesus, and put it in our own.  Increasingly denying what we allow God to do for us.  Increasingly becoming comfortable with the chains of slavery to our self-love we hoist upon ourselves.  Ultimately we find ourselves not truly knowing who Jesus truly is.  For we have come to trust only us, in any matter of concern regarding us.  We feed ourselves.  We keep our debts.  We provide for ourselves.  And we will purify ourselves, when we get around to it, though that day never seems to arrive.  And thus Jesus is not our savior, for we have never allowed Him to save us … from us.

All because we cannot let go of our past.  All because we are unable to free others from owing us, and in so doing free ourselves from the burden of being owed.  We are unable or unwilling to change loan into gift, because we worry what the financial implications might be, of not having the wealth of another to count on to sustain us.  When we already have a better guarantee than any other human could ever provide, we have the love of a Father God, not just a Father, but OUR Father.  We opened the prayer with that line, and already we have forgotten it.  This ability to release others from their wrong doing extends beyond financials, it extends to every part of human interaction.  Others will do us wrong.  It is human weakness, and satanic evil behind it, but it will occur.  When it does, we have the choice to free them, and in so doing free us from it.  Or we can cling to it, and let it build hate and revenge in us over it.  Until we drown out the idea of real freedom, and become slaves to our slights.

Oh the blessings we forego when we make those choices.  But it need not be so.  Freedom is here.  It is right around the corner for you.  It is as simple as trusting your Father, enacting His will here upon earth, letting Daddy hold your hand, and becoming an instrument of love.  It releases you.  It brings with it, a freedom such as you have never known. 

And the sermon was still far from over …

Investing In Perfection ...

You cannot out give God.  You can try.  He enjoys that I think.  It’s like a Parent watching a toddler try to out-love them; a toddler just does not understand love enough to do it more than a parent, but they know enough to be extremely cute at trying.  God does not give us things, because of our tithes and offerings.  He gives us things, even when we hate Him.  Our behavior does not determine His love.  It is His love that has the power to alter what we do, by changing who we are.  So His gifts to us are coming, to some degree, whether we like them or not.  A toddler can say “no” all they like to a parent, but a loving Parent is going to feed them in spite of what they say.  A loving parent is going to cloth them, and house them, no matter what the toddler thinks about these things.  Many of us toddlers would prefer to run naked, eat bugs, and sleep in the mud – but I think our heavenly parent has higher aspirations for us than that (even if He allows us to realize that kind of eat-bugs-thinking is not all it is cracked up to be).

Sometimes we don’t treat our gifts as something we value.  Sometimes we do things with them, that are downright destructive.  God gives us health, and we take up a practice of smoking, or skydiving.  Now, you can survive skydiving, although the risk is plainly apparent.  But no-one survives the practice of smoking while maintaining excellent health.  It kills you slowly, accumulating over time.  It is less perceptible, but its long-term effects can hardly be hidden.  The gift of God was given, regardless of what we did with it.  God may know what we will do, but He offers us our gifts anyway, hoping we will allow Him to influence what we do, but never controlling our reaction.  His love for us remains, and He does not starve us from His love, only because we make bad choices. 

Wealth can be either a gift, or a curse.  What we do with that can either destroy us, or enable us to bless the world around us.  Whether we consider ourselves wealthy is only a matter of perception.  Comparatively, we will always find those in the world with less than us, some far less.  By the same token, there will always be those in the world with far more than us.  So whether you consider yourself wealthy is how you think about yourself.  Whether others think of you as wealthy depends on whether they have far less, or far more.  The only question that remains is a reflection of “who” you love.  When your resources are spent upon yourself, what most people consider, “taking care of yourself” – it is plain that you are high on the list of things you love.  Those with families spend their resources there as well.  And even though this only seems like the responsible thing to do, and the sensible thing, it is not the only thing our hearts should be so focused upon.

Case in point … the Word of God calls out a practice known as Tithing.  Giving 10 percent of your income back to God (in most cases through a church), is one of our first opportunities to become toddlers showing that our love of God is greater than our love of wealth or means.  It is rarely convenient to part with money.  It is rarely “sensible or responsible” when measured against the “needs” our families have.  But to give it anyway, in spite of these “realities” begins to put a crack in our adult armor, and return us to place of child-like trust that our Parent will not see us destitute because of what we give.  The Bible actually also mentions giving offerings beyond the tithe.  For those already parting with 10 percent of their income, offerings by definition, raises the percentage given.  The Bible does not specify what more we would offer, only that the practice is like icing on a cake, and good for us to do.

Most believers are content to stop here.  I give my tithe.  I give my offerings, and now I am done.  Whew!  That was rough.  (silly toddler, you have no idea how many gifts and blessings are coming your way, open your eyes and watch).  But most believers are content that having engaged faithfully in these 2 practices our obligations for giving have been met.  Nice try.  But there is one more, that was designed with a far more specific purpose in mind.  The last one perhaps is more meaningful, because it directly impacts the giver in a way the others do not, and it impacts the receiver in a way the others could not.  And before you think I am just trying to guilt you into giving more, it was not my idea, it came from Jewish tradition, but was called out and ratified by Jesus Himself.

Matthew records the guidance in his gospel in chapter six, continuing with His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes up the practice of one-on-one charity.  He begins in verse 1 saying … “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.”  The practice of giving alms is not the same as tithes or offerings.  Tithes and offerings are given to the priesthood, or in our day to the church, for the preservation and expansion of the church.  Giving alms was something you offered the poor, the homeless, the destitute that called for help from the street corners, and shelters, and impoverished places where they were forced to reside.  Those who asked help because they had need. 

In the time of Christ many of these were crippled unable to earn a wage.  Some had horrific diseases like leprosy, or possession, and were social outcasts.  In our day, the diseases are no less real, addiction (whether to drugs or alcohol or sexual misconduct).  In our day, our veterans suffer from PTSD, and find extremely hard times trying to transition from killing or being killed every second to “normal” society.  There are those in our world who only fake it, and use panhandling as a way to earn enough money to avoid other types of harder work.  But this perception is so easily accepted by those with means, who are looking hard for an excuse not to give.  I challenge anyone so inclined to stand on a busy street corner for 10 hours a day in the heat or cold, and call that “easier” than working a real job.  Those who ask means of us, present us with an opportunity to give alms.

But the further counsel of Christ is profoundly deep.  To give to the poor, only to be seen of our peers, denies us the rewards our Father would otherwise like to see us claim.  Giving for the credit, or the notoriety of giving, feeds our pride.  It is meant to make us appear better to our peers.  It fosters the notion of comparative salvation.  And it denies us the privilege of humility.  Giving to another, one on one, where you offer what you have, to meet the need of the poor who asks, can truly change how YOU think.  If it is done in secret, away from credit and pride, it becomes something only you, God, and receiver will ever know.  That kind of giving changes your heart.  It puts another crack in the adult armor that believes we must be sensible and trust in ourselves to provide for ourselves.  That kind of giving, opens up the possibility that God could actually take care of you, just as you are taking care of the needs of the poor who stand right in front of you.  This is the reward you miss, when you give for other motives.

Jesus continues in verse 2 saying … “Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”  In the time of Christ those who desperately craved to be seen as righteous, sounded trumpets to call the attention of the crowds and passersby to the alms they handed out to the poor.  This was not a call of assembly for more efficient distribution, this was a call to show everyone else, that they were generous.  When in truth, they were not.  This was an exchange of services; money, for a better reputation.  Jesus notes, they received what they had purchased.  And the lack of impact within them, was the opportunity they lost.

Jesus continues in verse 3 saying … “But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:”  Instead of attention, Jesus asks us to not even we think about what we are doing.  We just do it.  We do not measure to ourselves the size of our donation, or the rationale for it, or whether we think the person might not use our gift the way we think they should.  Ignore all that.  Decide not to think about all of that, and give anyway.  As our Parent gives to us, knowing that we often misuse and abuse what He gives to us, but He gives it anyway.  Not as a means of control, but because He cares about us, and loves us.  There is something personal about giving directly to someone who asks.  There is no middle-man, it you and them and God.  Our gifts are not meant to occupy a continued place in our thinking.  They are meant to happen, and be forgotten.  We are not meant to keep inventory of them to use in a false analysis of our comparative holiness with our peers (even if only in our heads).  We are meant to discard the memory, and only maintain the practice.

When our giving is so common place that we could not possibly remember all the times we did it, or to who, we are finding a reward only the Father understands.  Jesus echoes these sentiments as He concludes this section of His sermon in verse 4 saying … “That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.”  Here we go again.  Our selfish minds immediately begin to think of this promise in financial terms.  We give the homeless ten dollars in secret, and we expect God will give us back 20 dollars more openly.  A business transaction.  But that is not the reward our God who is obsessed with our salvation is making.  The giving we offer in secret, in humility, and without remembering it constantly, has the power to help change how we think inside, and who we love outside.  It has the ability to act as a tool to focus the values we hold in our hearts away from ourselves and towards others, as it is in heaven.

The financial investment we are making is in the perfection of our hearts, not in the doubling of our wealth.  Our gifts and our giving may well cause us to lose what we have, to become poor as well.  We could find ourselves having some of the same needs as the people we once gave to.  Jesus is not making us a promise to shower us with wealth, that may very well destroy us because we are still not ready for it.  Jesus is making a promise that the more important results and rewards that our personal giving to others makes is within our hearts and minds.  And then there is something else, something even more, that money cannot buy, but humble giving can sure contribute to … the life of the receiver.

Imagine being the poor, or destitute, or even someone who fakes it.  Imagine seeing Christians give to meet your needs every time you encounter one of them.  Not just folks who roll down the window and hand you a dollar from their cars, on their way to somewhere else.  But folks who pull the car over, get out, and ask you how they can help.  Who stop to buy food, clothes, and take you to a shelter and pay any fees associated to get you in it.  Some of them who would even take you home with them.  Imagine being on the receiving end of so much love from SO many total strangers, who have nothing in common but a passionate love from Jesus Christ for someone so dirty, stinky, and likely diseased as yourself the poor and destitute.  Even the heart of the faker will be broken in tears over watching what the true love of Jesus Christ looks like, not just in one of His followers, but in all of His followers.  That kind of simple humble giving has the potential to truly change the world, finding poor who are searching for this kind of love, and discovering you who becomes so passionate about making sure they find it in you.

That is the reward of the Father.  That is how the gospel is spread throughout the world.  And just for the record, this is exactly the method Jesus used.  He met the needs first, there was no sermon, before the starving were fed, the naked were clothed, and the funds or needs asked for, were granted.  Only after the needs were met, the love was demonstrated, could the words find a listening ear.  Our church growth is stunted, because we go out with words to those in need, and expect our prayers to get them what they want; instead of our hearts so steeped in His love, that our passion gets them their need.  We must become toddlers once again.  Toddlers share as they love, without a thought about it.  We cannot out-give our God.  But we can surely try.  And in the trying, find something we could hardly have imagined.

For those who find Tithe, and offerings, and now the practice of giving alms to poor, just one more drain upon already meager resources – I would advise prayer, to see things and feel things, with the passion of Christ.  Through submission, over time, what you value is going to change.  What looks like burden today, will begin to become blessing tomorrow.  And the best part is, our Parent was always in charge anyway.  He was already meeting our needs before we thought to ask.  This is only His chance to bring us into the system of giving to share with Him, what it is like to give, only because you love.

And the sermon was far from over …