It's Performance That Counts
Sermon
LIKE A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
Sermons For Pentecost (First Third)
Nothing aggravates me more than buying something that does not work when I get it home. Whether it is purchased at a local store or through the latest mail-order catalog, if the item does not live up to its advertised promises, I feel cheated. Most people do not mind spending money on those objects of their desiring, some of them necessary, others frivolous, provided they live up to the expectations which were made on the packaging.
At one time or another, I suppose, we are all tricked by the slick advertising schemes, designed to create the illusion that this product is vital to our survival. With mega-hype and great fanfare, we are persuaded that this item will add quality to our lives, save us time, or enhance our ability to perform our routine tasks. The gimmicks employed dull our senses and the promises of "satisfaction guaranteed" lure us into the acquisition. Regardless of the size of the purchase -- a house or an automobile, an automatic vegetable slicer or battery-powered fuzz remover -- all the promises in the world mean very little if the performance is not there. It is performance that counts!
I have often heard athletic coaches talk about some young person who has the potential of being a great player of his/her chosen sport. I have also heard teachers brag about their budding piano student who will certainly become a virtuoso. But because of a lack of intensity, or desire, or even sheer laziness, the young athlete or the up-and-coming pianist never fulfills those early signs of promise. The performance never measures up to the potential. In all phases of life, it is performance that counts.
Marriages begin with a sacred covenant, embodied in a wedding ritual that includes several vows and promises. The words verbalized in that ceremony, and the oaths taken during the service are quite specific: honoring one another, comforting one another, forsaking all others and living in a loving relationship until they are parted by death. No matter what may be thrown in their paths, the couple promises to see it through together. It would probably be safe to say that 95 percent of those couples who stand at the altar are serious about their promises and mean every word of them -- at least at that moment. However, the real strength of a marriage is not measured by the dollars spent on launching the couple into the married life. Rather, the crucial test of the marriage is found in those hours invested nurturing the relationship, keeping the vows and performing the promises made during the ritual. Once again, we are reminded that it is performance that counts.
In our text, we can hear Jesus challenging those hillside listeners with this same theme. At the heart of these closing words of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is calling into question all our grand professions which are not backed up with gracious actions. Lip service and verbal affirmations matter little if they are not fleshed out in one's daily life. I have no definitive word, nor do I have a text to prove my suspicions. But my hunch is that nothing disappoints our Lord more than a church building filled with people who make great promises, but who then fail to allow those promises to affect their conduct.
Now I realize that we are treading on uncomfortable ground at this point. Most of us who gather weekly in our place of worship consider ourselves to be religious people, good Christians one and all. After all, we do know all the creeds, and can sing most of the hymns, and can certainly recite all the prayers at the appropriate times, with just the proper voice inflections to suggest we know what we are doing. We attend services, teach classes, drag ourselves to committee meetings, give our money for world mission efforts and endure scolding lectures on the evils of this present society. If they were anything like us, I can imagine those who gathered on the mount to listen to Jesus raise a similar voice of protest: "Hold on Jesus! Be careful. Look, we've been sitting out here in the heat of the day listening to you sermonize and string together this collection of teachings. I mean, we left our homes, our jobs, and food on the table to come out here. Surely that counts for something! What more can you expect? We're only human!"
What more does Jesus expect? Listening again: "Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter… but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven (v. 21)." And again, "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them… (v. 24)." Jesus is pushing us here: pushing us to a point of irritation by calling us to a deeper level of recognition and response as faithful believers. He is asking for more than loyalty in worship attendance; for more than grandiose, dazzling performances of religious fervor and zeal; for more than patiently listening to sermons and studies or attending yet another meeting. Given our contemporary ways of living and scheduling, I am not at all sure I like this invitation. How much more could I possibly give without jeopardizing my comfortable lifestyle?
Twice in these closing remarks, Jesus challenges those listeners -- and us -- not only to profess with our words, but to act; not only to hear with our ears, but to perform. We are here called to respond to the grace of God by doing the will of God. But that is easy to say and difficult to discern. We try to corner Jesus on this one: okay, suppose we take up your challenge. How do we know what to do? What is the "will of God" so that we can know for sure that we are "doing" it? What are "these words of mine" upon which we are to build the structures of our lives? Unfortunately, the answers are not neatly packaged in a box we can pull off the shelf and assemble. Neither can I copy it on a small piece of paper and give it to you so that you might take it home and magnetize it to your refrigerator door.
However, at the risk of reducing this "doing the will of God" stuff to a simple, compact memorization phrase, I believe one statement made by Jesus later in his ministry contains its essence. This word came, you will remember, in response to a question about summarizing the law which had for centuries guided the conduct of ancient people. Jesus put it this way: "You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39)." What is it to do the will of God, but to love God and to reveal that love by loving others.
From beginning to end, the scriptures remind us to love God, and always as a response to God's love for us. We are nudged toward our loving God, not when the mood strikes us, nor when it is convenient, such as when we are in a group of others who are also loving God. But from the depths of our beings, from the innermost recesses of our minds and hearts, our love for God is to flow in visible expressions and concrete actions. It is to be as natural a part of our living, and as vital to our well-being, as breathing.
The clues for the "how-tos" of loving God are everywhere. We are to love the things that God loves, in the way God loves them. Taking our cue from Christ, we are to be makers of peace and workers for justice. We are to share mercy, even as we have been the recipients of God's mercy. We are to earnestly desire, even hunger for, right living, and in so doing point others toward the source of life and hope and wholeness and rightness in their living.
Practicing the love of God is not an emotional response that is either turned up or allowed to cool off depending upon our circumstances. It is not a spiritual "high" we may attain during some particularly moving worship experience. Rather, practicing the love of God is an ongoing way of living and relating. In the same way that many professional persons and career-oriented people speak of "practicing" their line of work (e.g., practicing law, practicing medicine), so the faithful disciple is to practice loving God. Of course, as Jesus went on to highlight, the best way for us to "practice" that love is in our relationships with our neighbors. Or, as John the Apostle would later write, "We love because God first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen (1 John 4:19-20)."
One of the most familiar expressions of such a love is found in the parable Jesus told of a man who met with violence on his way from business in Jerusalem to his home in the suburb of Jericho. Beaten, robbed, and left by the side of the road for dead, the man was an instant outcast to all who walked that road. No one wanted to be bothered with, nor soiled by, involvement with this victim. The sight of blood and the bruises which were beginning to appear, turned the heads of those who hurried on their journeys. All passed by except another businessman and this one from another ethnic group. His actions demonstrate love: binding the wounds, offering up his own means of transportation, and going out of the way to find a room where the injured might recover. Here is a picture of what it means to practice God's love. This Samaritan offers a gesture of love toward one whom society chose to ignore. He then goes one more step, the "extra mile" Jesus would have called it, by promising the desk manager at the inn that he would cover whatever extra expenses which would be incurred during the recovery period. Given the nature of the injustice, I suspect the injured one did not rise and walk the next day. So it is with God's love, for God's extravagant love knows no limits, seeks no boundaries to contain it. Neither should ours.
We are called to love our neighbors, to care for and tend to their needs as if we were minding our own. In our world "neighbor" no longer means the one who is down the street or around the corner or who happens to live in the same community. Our world has become one giant neighborhood, a truly global community where what happens in one corner of the world has an impact on our lives in our little corner of the globe. We can no longer sit in our comfortable pews and ignore the hurts and pains of others. For in reaching out to bind up their wounds, we exhibit God's love and become witnesses to the greater love that renews body and soul.
Loving God and doing God's will may take many forms and expressions, as each one of us responds in our own way. It may mean sharing dollars for missions, or rolling up our sleeves to be in mission, not only speaking but acting. In community after community around our world such love is being expressed through the actions of Habitat for Humanity. What a sight to behold as persons moved by God's love take hammer and paintbrush and touch the lives of persons in need of decent housing. As we witnessed a few months ago people from across our community, from across lines of age, race and denomination, shared God's love. And you could see it in the faces of the children who soon would have a room of their own -- they knew they had been loved and cared for.
Our loving may take other shapes. It may mean recycling items so that God's good creation is not destroyed by our own wastefulness. Loving God may mean spending two hours a week helping someone learn to read and function in this communication-oriented world. It may mean investing time in a world of a child who has no other role model except poverty or violence. Doing the will of God is investing ourselves in the work of God, in whatever form that may take, wherever it may be. For God's sake, in the name of Christ, for the love of God, do something!
Such a brash statement brings me to conclude with the introduction. It's performance that counts, Jesus says. It is not enough to make our grand professions in this holy place unless we back them up with gracious actions in that sacred place we call our world. And for that world filled with lonely, hurting people, the quality of our living is much more convincing than the quantity of our affirmations of faith and belief. It is, finally, a matter of reflecting the love of God not only in what we say, but also in what we do and how we live. So what will you do this week to share the love and to do the work of God?
At one time or another, I suppose, we are all tricked by the slick advertising schemes, designed to create the illusion that this product is vital to our survival. With mega-hype and great fanfare, we are persuaded that this item will add quality to our lives, save us time, or enhance our ability to perform our routine tasks. The gimmicks employed dull our senses and the promises of "satisfaction guaranteed" lure us into the acquisition. Regardless of the size of the purchase -- a house or an automobile, an automatic vegetable slicer or battery-powered fuzz remover -- all the promises in the world mean very little if the performance is not there. It is performance that counts!
I have often heard athletic coaches talk about some young person who has the potential of being a great player of his/her chosen sport. I have also heard teachers brag about their budding piano student who will certainly become a virtuoso. But because of a lack of intensity, or desire, or even sheer laziness, the young athlete or the up-and-coming pianist never fulfills those early signs of promise. The performance never measures up to the potential. In all phases of life, it is performance that counts.
Marriages begin with a sacred covenant, embodied in a wedding ritual that includes several vows and promises. The words verbalized in that ceremony, and the oaths taken during the service are quite specific: honoring one another, comforting one another, forsaking all others and living in a loving relationship until they are parted by death. No matter what may be thrown in their paths, the couple promises to see it through together. It would probably be safe to say that 95 percent of those couples who stand at the altar are serious about their promises and mean every word of them -- at least at that moment. However, the real strength of a marriage is not measured by the dollars spent on launching the couple into the married life. Rather, the crucial test of the marriage is found in those hours invested nurturing the relationship, keeping the vows and performing the promises made during the ritual. Once again, we are reminded that it is performance that counts.
In our text, we can hear Jesus challenging those hillside listeners with this same theme. At the heart of these closing words of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is calling into question all our grand professions which are not backed up with gracious actions. Lip service and verbal affirmations matter little if they are not fleshed out in one's daily life. I have no definitive word, nor do I have a text to prove my suspicions. But my hunch is that nothing disappoints our Lord more than a church building filled with people who make great promises, but who then fail to allow those promises to affect their conduct.
Now I realize that we are treading on uncomfortable ground at this point. Most of us who gather weekly in our place of worship consider ourselves to be religious people, good Christians one and all. After all, we do know all the creeds, and can sing most of the hymns, and can certainly recite all the prayers at the appropriate times, with just the proper voice inflections to suggest we know what we are doing. We attend services, teach classes, drag ourselves to committee meetings, give our money for world mission efforts and endure scolding lectures on the evils of this present society. If they were anything like us, I can imagine those who gathered on the mount to listen to Jesus raise a similar voice of protest: "Hold on Jesus! Be careful. Look, we've been sitting out here in the heat of the day listening to you sermonize and string together this collection of teachings. I mean, we left our homes, our jobs, and food on the table to come out here. Surely that counts for something! What more can you expect? We're only human!"
What more does Jesus expect? Listening again: "Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter… but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven (v. 21)." And again, "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them… (v. 24)." Jesus is pushing us here: pushing us to a point of irritation by calling us to a deeper level of recognition and response as faithful believers. He is asking for more than loyalty in worship attendance; for more than grandiose, dazzling performances of religious fervor and zeal; for more than patiently listening to sermons and studies or attending yet another meeting. Given our contemporary ways of living and scheduling, I am not at all sure I like this invitation. How much more could I possibly give without jeopardizing my comfortable lifestyle?
Twice in these closing remarks, Jesus challenges those listeners -- and us -- not only to profess with our words, but to act; not only to hear with our ears, but to perform. We are here called to respond to the grace of God by doing the will of God. But that is easy to say and difficult to discern. We try to corner Jesus on this one: okay, suppose we take up your challenge. How do we know what to do? What is the "will of God" so that we can know for sure that we are "doing" it? What are "these words of mine" upon which we are to build the structures of our lives? Unfortunately, the answers are not neatly packaged in a box we can pull off the shelf and assemble. Neither can I copy it on a small piece of paper and give it to you so that you might take it home and magnetize it to your refrigerator door.
However, at the risk of reducing this "doing the will of God" stuff to a simple, compact memorization phrase, I believe one statement made by Jesus later in his ministry contains its essence. This word came, you will remember, in response to a question about summarizing the law which had for centuries guided the conduct of ancient people. Jesus put it this way: "You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37, 39)." What is it to do the will of God, but to love God and to reveal that love by loving others.
From beginning to end, the scriptures remind us to love God, and always as a response to God's love for us. We are nudged toward our loving God, not when the mood strikes us, nor when it is convenient, such as when we are in a group of others who are also loving God. But from the depths of our beings, from the innermost recesses of our minds and hearts, our love for God is to flow in visible expressions and concrete actions. It is to be as natural a part of our living, and as vital to our well-being, as breathing.
The clues for the "how-tos" of loving God are everywhere. We are to love the things that God loves, in the way God loves them. Taking our cue from Christ, we are to be makers of peace and workers for justice. We are to share mercy, even as we have been the recipients of God's mercy. We are to earnestly desire, even hunger for, right living, and in so doing point others toward the source of life and hope and wholeness and rightness in their living.
Practicing the love of God is not an emotional response that is either turned up or allowed to cool off depending upon our circumstances. It is not a spiritual "high" we may attain during some particularly moving worship experience. Rather, practicing the love of God is an ongoing way of living and relating. In the same way that many professional persons and career-oriented people speak of "practicing" their line of work (e.g., practicing law, practicing medicine), so the faithful disciple is to practice loving God. Of course, as Jesus went on to highlight, the best way for us to "practice" that love is in our relationships with our neighbors. Or, as John the Apostle would later write, "We love because God first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen (1 John 4:19-20)."
One of the most familiar expressions of such a love is found in the parable Jesus told of a man who met with violence on his way from business in Jerusalem to his home in the suburb of Jericho. Beaten, robbed, and left by the side of the road for dead, the man was an instant outcast to all who walked that road. No one wanted to be bothered with, nor soiled by, involvement with this victim. The sight of blood and the bruises which were beginning to appear, turned the heads of those who hurried on their journeys. All passed by except another businessman and this one from another ethnic group. His actions demonstrate love: binding the wounds, offering up his own means of transportation, and going out of the way to find a room where the injured might recover. Here is a picture of what it means to practice God's love. This Samaritan offers a gesture of love toward one whom society chose to ignore. He then goes one more step, the "extra mile" Jesus would have called it, by promising the desk manager at the inn that he would cover whatever extra expenses which would be incurred during the recovery period. Given the nature of the injustice, I suspect the injured one did not rise and walk the next day. So it is with God's love, for God's extravagant love knows no limits, seeks no boundaries to contain it. Neither should ours.
We are called to love our neighbors, to care for and tend to their needs as if we were minding our own. In our world "neighbor" no longer means the one who is down the street or around the corner or who happens to live in the same community. Our world has become one giant neighborhood, a truly global community where what happens in one corner of the world has an impact on our lives in our little corner of the globe. We can no longer sit in our comfortable pews and ignore the hurts and pains of others. For in reaching out to bind up their wounds, we exhibit God's love and become witnesses to the greater love that renews body and soul.
Loving God and doing God's will may take many forms and expressions, as each one of us responds in our own way. It may mean sharing dollars for missions, or rolling up our sleeves to be in mission, not only speaking but acting. In community after community around our world such love is being expressed through the actions of Habitat for Humanity. What a sight to behold as persons moved by God's love take hammer and paintbrush and touch the lives of persons in need of decent housing. As we witnessed a few months ago people from across our community, from across lines of age, race and denomination, shared God's love. And you could see it in the faces of the children who soon would have a room of their own -- they knew they had been loved and cared for.
Our loving may take other shapes. It may mean recycling items so that God's good creation is not destroyed by our own wastefulness. Loving God may mean spending two hours a week helping someone learn to read and function in this communication-oriented world. It may mean investing time in a world of a child who has no other role model except poverty or violence. Doing the will of God is investing ourselves in the work of God, in whatever form that may take, wherever it may be. For God's sake, in the name of Christ, for the love of God, do something!
Such a brash statement brings me to conclude with the introduction. It's performance that counts, Jesus says. It is not enough to make our grand professions in this holy place unless we back them up with gracious actions in that sacred place we call our world. And for that world filled with lonely, hurting people, the quality of our living is much more convincing than the quantity of our affirmations of faith and belief. It is, finally, a matter of reflecting the love of God not only in what we say, but also in what we do and how we live. So what will you do this week to share the love and to do the work of God?
