Putting Our Hearts at Christ's Disposal

Sermon by James W. Crawford

 February 11, 1996

 Matthew 5:21-42

In April, 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, faced terrible turmoil. Martin Luther King, Jr., initiated non-violent action to desegregate the city's public facilities. King's followers encountered threats, brutality, incarceration. King himself was imprisoned. And while he, as he later remarked, "rested in jail," he received a poignant letter from a group of ministers, rabbis and priests. Why, they wanted to know, must the country be exposed to these turbulent demonstrations now? Why couldn't the good citizens of Birmingham work in their own way, at their own pace for the resolution of the racial problems? Why should laws be broken, the community disrupted, the social fabric tattered?

 King's response to those questions, you will remember, prove one of the great documents of the 20th century: "Letter from the Birmingham Jail." The letter is a majestic exposition of the human rights promised every American citizen. In his unique and peculiar way, King combines the promises of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bible into a description of a society where freedom and equality, liberty and justice exist in balance. "We will win our freedom," he writes, "because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are echoed in our demands. . . "

 Dr. King's conflict with the Birmingham religious establishment is cut from cloth similar to that pictured in our passage this morning. Some prestigious religious folk accuse Jesus of breaking the law. In offering a new social order, in his representing and making possible a new quality of life in this world right now, the powers-that-be see Jesus as a social radical, the breaker of community norms. Clergy-types, magistrates, business people, protectors of the public morals perceive in him a wrecker of the current order, a threat to community values. He breaks sabbatarian laws to feed hungry people. He heals others when he should be in church. He says it is permissible for Christians to pay taxes, but never to confuse their loyalties to God with their loyalties to Caesar. "Anarchist!" they cry. "Revolutionary!" they charge.

 And our Lord's answer? How does he deal with these accusations of anarchy and revolution? Well, like Dr. King, Jesus says, "I come to destroy nothing. Rather, I come to build something. I bear with my very being a community functioning not so much on constitutions, contracts, legal agreements, property rights, turf protection, jots, tittles, litigation, crime an punishment. No, I bring a beloved community inaugurated with a new disposition of the human heart. I am harbinger of social order where personal security is rooted not in legal recourse but in simple trust; where human relationships are grounded in the sure embrace of a God who sustains and undergirds us through everything life can throw at us. Anarchist, you say? You know not what true order is. Revolutionary, you cry? To be sure. But it means a revolution of values, an inverting of conventions enabling us to live not in fear or in tolerance of one another at best, but in eager service, concern, care for and trust of one another always.

I

For instance, Jesus continues, you assemble a battery of legislation concerning murder. You define it as murder first degree, second degree, third degree. You design judicial systems, build prisons, set bail, debate punishments. (And the headlines in our morning papers just this week dealing with laws for juveniles and adults, lethal injection or firing squad, the clamor for the death penalty in the current campaign-all this dramatizes a core pursuit of the human condition.

But are these lawmaking, prison building, gas chamber processes enough? Is a human community guarding itself against murder and devising complicated judicial procedures to detain or kill men or women convicted of murder the best of all possible worlds? Is it enough to say to one another, here in church, or in our various social settings, "I am not a murderer?"

Well, is it? "No," says Jesus. He knows we need be healed of violent inner demons no less so than we need tough laws against murder. He knows murder arises from violence within. He knows murder spills out in contempt for life, it explodes from an inner rage, it erupts from chaos, it bursts from fury against our brothers, our sisters, our spouses, our neighbor.

 And our Lord says that seeds of murder can be detected in what is accepted as our everyday routine. . . like name-calling. Yes, he says, "name calling used to demean, diminish, destroy. You know how it is. The crook ripping us off in the car repair shop; the boor making a left turn from the right hand lane, driving his car like he plays hockey; the arrogant fool driving the Green Line car, pulling away from the station as we pound with futility on the front door; or the dweeb in the token booth engaged in some leisurely chat while we stand there freezing and seething; (Oh, what I'd give for a short fuse and a stick of dynamite when that happens!) And on it goes: the jerk stealing our parking space; the slob sliding seven items through at the six item cash register at Star Market; the quack at the clinic robbing us blind and making it worse, the shyster writing our wills; the sanctimonious, hypocritical unctuous, mealy-mouthed, pharisaic, Tartuffian, Elmer Gantry preaching this sermon; moron, stupid, scum and all their contemptuous and obscene cousins inappropriate for repeating in a family setting like this (as if I knew any of them, anyway) words themselves meaning little-but the furious sentiment behind them, aimed at obliterating another human being, fills them with murderous content.

Do you remember saying when you were a kid to someone laying it on you, "Sticks and stones may break my bones. . ." and names?. . . Names can kill us. As one commentator writes,

 We must be linguistically disarmed. The anger expressing itself in the verbal assault is the anger of wounded desire, of frustrated self-interest. It is the anger counting the other as an obstacle to its own goals, as an enemy, as less than human, as meriting no respect and claiming no dignity. It is an attack on one who shares the human race's original role as God's image, and as such is an offense against God. . . The insult hurled at a brother or sister. . . reveals us for what we are: those who seek to hurt and destroy. The person I insult may prefer [my] words to a gunshot wound to the head, but as for what I am revealed to be, there is no significant difference. The insult expresses violence as truly as killing.

Is murder, then, really our problem? My soul, murder surely is a terrible presence in our city and region as we assay the shocking filial and random homicides: babies, neighbors, live-in lovers, spouses, teen-agers-murder is real. No joke! But I wonder if Jesus does not know something about the depths of the issue: in some cases environments breeding rage, frustration, fury. And perhaps right here in this room? Among us? Anger born of a father's humiliations, a mother's abandonment, an employer's scorn, a spouse's betrayal, a friend's denial, a job gone wrong, an accusation misplaced, a public assault? Murder, according to the New Testament, is a violent act of the heart gone haywire. We know how anger may have brutalized us and we know how we can brutalize others from the mayhem and fury within us. Anger wrecks community. Laws against murder are hardly enough. We need hearts surrendered to the love and patience of Jesus Christ.

II

And it is not only our anger that can be healed in this community of peace rooted in the grace of Christ, the skewed, injured, ruptured relationships triggered by our sexuality can be healed, too.

We do not have time this morning to review the particular dynamics of Jewish law regarding divorce and adultery Jesus refers to. What he is saying, however, pictures in his reconciled and restored community the intimate ties we forge from our sexual identities. He promises they can be truly heavenly, a flourishing, radiant, selfless community. We know that is possible. But we know as well that our sexuality can give rise to other elements shattering community, smothering it, draining it, killing it. Adultery and divorce, Jesus says-as much as they represent estrangement, separation, division-adultery and divorce are born of inner distortion, diverted loyalties, urgent desires, misplaced hearts gone cold as stone. The breaking of covenant between people begins-begins!--inside. The legal procedures attendant to divorce, the overt acts of estrangement endemic to adultery mark the course of a long road of inner erosion and brokenness.

Oh friends, I am convinced life in Christ enables us to live differently. It not only seals covenants, binds loyalties, forges commitments, it enables us to live with one another on intimate and grace-filled terms.

I am reminded of a wonderful verse written in the 1670's by one of Massachusetts' first and finest poets, Ann Bradstreet, child of Puritans, resident of Cambridge, Ipswich, and Andover. She and Simon Bradstreet shared a glorious marriage for over 40 years. Out of her love for him and out of her faith she wrote a marvelous tribute to their marriage and entitled it: "To my Dear and Loving Husband." Listen:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
 If ever wife was happy in a man,
 Compare with me ye women if you can.
 I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
 Of all the riches that the East doth hold.
 My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
 Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
 Thy love is such I can no way repay,
 The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
 Then while we live, in love let so persevere,
 That when we live no more, we may live ever.
Hearts given over to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 III

Do you get the picture? Matthew tells us that what counts is the character of our inner life. Again, he insists that when we turn our lives over to Christ we illustrate an integrity binding who we are to what we say. Our words, our deeds, our body language expose truth indivisible from the depths of our innermost being. Oaths, he says, are moot. They are irrelevant because being grounded in Christ is oath enough.

Heaven knows relationships crumble, trust dissolves, community collapses when cynicism and self interest subvert our integrity. I have been intrigued somewhat with coverage of this Whitewater affair. A week or so ago, Mrs. Clinton answered questions before a grand jury at a Federal Court building in Washington. There, said all the observers, "She will testify under oath," as if speaking under oath should be different from speaking without "oath'. I cannot talk for Mrs. Clinton, but the New Testament says it should make no difference. What we say, what we do, who we are in all circumstances coheres. Our "yes" is "yes," our "no" is "no." Our loyalty to Christ makes of our very lives an oath.

IV

And lastly, as loyal followers of Christ we no longer engage in retaliation. It is no longer "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." We are empowered to live through the worst demands others make on us and to respond in a creative, transforming fashion.

Oh, I know it is hard when we are put down to avoid responding in kind. It is difficult to resist even just a touch of vengeance. "Don't get mad; get even."

There are the cheap shots, of course. Lady Astor, for instance, telling Winston Churchill if he were her husband she would put poison in his coffee. And Churchill responding, indeed if she were his wife he would drink it.

It goes from there to the vengeful battles over family fortunes, payback among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, the vindictive scorching of Svrenica, the revenge-dripping IRA bomb in downtown London, the vendetta-driven genocidal slaughter in Rwanda.

Ah, sweet revenge. Can we beat it? On this eve of Lincoln's birthday let me tell you one who did. After the bloodiest war in our history, the terrible division among families, the fierce and uncompromising battles, invasion, massacres; after being mocked, laughed at, labeled a gorilla, a tyrant, a fool, a satanic constitution-wrecker, Abraham Lincoln in one of the majestic addresses of all time, recognizing the violence, the hatred, the terrible cost of slavery and the war, Abraham Lincoln reaches out-remember?--he reaches out in his Second Inaugural Address "with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right. . . to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have born the battle, and for his widow and his orphan…" It is an address aimed at all Americans, not just those in sympathy with the Union objectives. Retaliation must stop!

 Here, friends, lies the mood described by Matthew alive and at work beyond laws and rules and quid pro quos to a bonding rooted beyond justice in forgiveness, beyond treaties in true peace; here we see a heart, if you will, put at the disposal of the grace of Christ.

Let's allow Charles Wesley to sum it up:

Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven,
 on earth be found.
 Fix in us a humble dwelling, all your faithful
 mercies crown;
 Jesus, you are all compassion, pure, unbounded love
 impart.
 Visit us with your salvation, enter every trembling heart.