Matthew 5: 17-37 (links validated 1/23/23)

It is hard to believe that the film Les Miserables was released 11 years ago. This epic tale deals with so many stories that it can be hard to remember all the ins and outs of it. I think the Broadway show was almost 3 hours, and google tells me that the movie was 2 and a half so there’s a lot to digest. But just to refresh your memories one of the central stories and characters is Jean Valjean who is freed from prison after being sentenced to 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his poor family. A kindly bishop takes the freed Valjean into his residence providing him with food and shelter. In the middle of the night, Valjean steals silverware from the bishop and leaves. He is caught by the police who bring him back to the Bishop to confirm this expensive silver couldn’t have belonged to this recently paroled criminal. The Bishop shocks everyone telling the police that he gave the silver to Valjean and then grabs silver candlesticks and says “you left so quick, you forgot I wanted you to have these too.” For most of the students in that discussion group, this was their first time hearing the story – they might have known songs from the musical but had never read the book or seen the show. So it was interesting to hear their critiques and takes on things...

Not long ago, I saw a story in the news about a seventh grader in Buffalo, New York, named Romello Early, who watched with distress as one of his classmates, Melvin Anderson, was picked on at school because of the shoes he was wearing. As one of their teachers noted, “You go to school, and people look at your shoes before they even look at your face,” the reality being that those with more expensive shoes have a higher social status. No, it should not be that way, but too often it is. Melvin was being teased for wearing worn-out shoes, and as he lamented, “It feels bad.” How many times have we heard stories about the effects of this sort of teasing, bullying behavior? How often does such teasing lead to something much worse? But not on Romello’s watch! Deeply bothered by seeing Melvin being bullied this way, Romello came home and told his mother, “Mom, you can take away anything you’re getting me for Christmas, or you could take my allowance, I just want to get [Melvin] some shoes.” So, Romello worked with his mother to pull together $135, including his life savings, so they could get Melvin some new shoes...

The movie “Places in the Heart,” is a movie released in 1984 but is set in the southern USA in the Great Depression in a community deeply divided by racism, sexism, and the extreme poverty brought about by the weather and the economy. The movie shows us the long struggle of the movie’s main character, to harvest the cotton crop after the death of her husband. The last scene shows the congregation, made up of both the dead and the living, passing the elements to one another along with the“Peace of God.” It is only God’s grace that can enable a murderer and the murdered to sit around the same table - without that soul-destroying anger that led to the murders and lynchings in the first place.

Two great men were born in the year 1564 A.D. One man, Shakespeare, lived to the age of fifty-two and became the greatest dramatist of the English language. The other, Christopher Marlowe, perished midway in his life at the age of twenty-nine, because of his anger. Christopher wrote some of the best tragical plays at a very young age. One of his best plays is The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus. Had he lived longer he probably would have become greater than Shakespeare. But he was a man given to anger. He picked up a quarrel with a man in a tavern. That man challenged him to a sword fight unto death. They both fought and Christopher was mortally wounded and later succumbed to his injuries. A great promise was terminated because of anger...

Paul Ricoeur writes about the unique, intended effect of biblical texts: “Parables, paradoxes, hyperboles, and extreme commandments all disorient only in order to reoreint us. But what is reoreinted in us? And in what direction? I would say what is reoriented in us by these extreme sayings is less our will than our imaginations. Our will is our capacity to follow without hesitation the once-known law, to obey without resistance the once-known law. Our imagination is the power to open us to new possibilities, to discover another way of seeing, or acceding to a new way in receiving the instruction of the exception.”...

It’s a sad fact of history that the largest religious community that ever lived together in the same place in the history of the Catholic Church was at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany during World War II. Over 2,500 Catholic priests became prisoners in Dachau, in Cellblock 26, known as the Priestblock. They were from 144 dioceses and 25 countries, and they made up about a third of Dachau’s total population. While they were there at Dachau, the priests ministered to the other prisoners the best they could, and they tried to strengthen each other, and give each other hope. As the days went by, they even held theological discussions to try and make sense of what was happening, not only to them, but to the world. They talked about the holocaust that was happening before their eyes, and the war raging across the world, weapons of destruction worse than any other in history; and all this coming after what had been called “The War to End All Wars.” These 2500 priests considered all of this, and as they pondered, one question kept returning to them. “How could this happen?” But that was not the complete question they asked. The complete question, the full question, included a key phrase at the end. Their full question was, “How could this happen in Christian nations?”...

(includes lots of Greek exegesis)

(always good insights!)

"'For Christmas, I was given a book called Unlikely Loves, a collection of stories of animals who crossed the lines between species, to create bonds of love and friendship: A Great Dane in Canada found an orphaned baby fawn near the house, and took charge of raising it till it was old enough to go back to the forest – but the grown deer came back for tender reunions every now and then...." and other examples

("I met Makoto Toyama in his dorm room in College. He was folding origami cranes under the blue florescent lamp at his desk. There is a Japanese legend that if you fold a thousand paper cranes you would be granted a wish. The story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who had been at Hiroshima, survived the blast and later died of radiation, was already well known in Michael's (Makoto's adopted name) native country..." great story!!)

On August 21, 1986, the villagers of Nyos, in Cameroon, heard a noise coming from the valley near Lake Nyos. The next morning, every person in the village (nearly 1800) was dead. The cattle were dead, the flies that would have been on the animals were dead too. Scientists rushed to Nyos to discover what happened. They finally realized that a build-up of carbon dioxide gas on the bottom of the lake bed caused the tragedy. They say that lakes near volcanoes are prone to have carbon dioxide deposits under the water. Most lakes release carbon dioxide very slowly. That night Lake Nyos released 1.8 million tons of Co2. It sat under the lake bed, continually growing for decades. The gases formed a toxic cloud, and when it reached the surface, a tragedy occurred. No one realized that what was below the surface was more dangerous than anything on top. That’s why Jesus lists all kinds of sinful behaviors, but then he says, “The real issue behind the behavior is in the depths of the heart.”...

Why would anyone choose to give up self-actualization in this culture of “me first”? This is where testimony and storytelling come into the picture. Do you have folks in your worshiping community who embody Jesus’ radical call to discipleship? Might you be willing to share your own call story? If you’re looking for stories to share, consider these: Former NFL center Jason Brown’s life had always revolved around faith, family, and football. At age 29 as the highest paid center in the NFL ($35 million contract with the St. Louis Rams), Brown took a leap of faith and a career change with his wife, Tay. He began watching farming videos, and the couple bought 1,000 acres in North Carolina, his home state. Now he feeds the hungry with harvests from his “First Fruits Farm.” The Salwen family of Atlanta decided to sell their house and give half the proceeds to help families in Ghana become self-sufficient. The house sale came at the request of fourteen-year-old Hannah Salwen, whose heart for the poor moved her parents and brothers to practice radical generosity. Hannah and her father wrote the book The Power of Half to help others envision lives of generosity and compassion. A dollar from the sale of each book benefits Rebuilding Together, a non-profit that helps low-income home owners with needed repairs...

Back in the 70's Jimmy Carter gave an interview where he tried to explain this teaching. Not wanting to appear self-righteous, he admitted that although he had never fallen into adultery, he was guilty of "adultery in my heart". As you can imagine the interview became an object of jokes. Campaigning in the Midwest a farm couple approached him. "Mr. Carter," the man said, "this is my wife but don't go lusting after her in your heart." Carter stepped back, eyed her, a portly middle age gal. With a smile he said, "I can't help it."...

There have been many good and talented comedy troupes throughout the years: Burns and Allen, Martin and Lewis, the original cast of Saturday Night Live, for instance. Of course, there is Monty Python, so good it hurts. But of all the wonderful comedy troupes, from Second City to the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, one of the very best has to be the Kids in the Hall. Active in the 1990s, these comedians are genius, featuring such recurring characters as Chicken Lady, Mr. Heavy Foot, the It’s a Fact Girl, and – who could ever forget – Headcrusher? One of the most memorable of their many sketches featured a preacher. It starts with a preacher weighing the Bible and the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, and marveling that the Bible weighed more. He mentions our need to think about that. Then he noted that preachers must be important because all good comedians have a preacher character. Preacher characters are a solid comedic device. If you have an everyday line like, “Get off the phone,” you’ve got nothing, but if you say, “Get off the phone, sinner!” well then, you’re halfway to a joke. At the end of the comedian’s sermon on the importance of preacher characters, he weighed the Bible in one hand and another book in the other hand, finishing with this thought-provoking question: “What weighs more, the Bible or a collection of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons? Think about it.”...

I ended up sharing with a few students the story of the last Valentine’s Day that was of major consequence for me when I was in college. My girlfriend at the time was a classmate of mine who we had been dating for about 3 months (but we had been friends for about a year and a half) Anyway, I knew that she always loved the music from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and that she had never been to a live theatre production- so when I saw that there was a Broadway production of it touring in Philadelphia (which was about an hour away from where we went to school) and that it was going to be there on Valentines Day, I thought that would be perfect!...

We all know someone whom we could best describe as “an angry person.” They rarely if ever forget anything negative that has happened to them. Franklin Roosevelt’s closest political advisor was a man named Louis Howe. Mr. Howe, with some frequency, would be very rude and cruel to certain people at dinner or cocktail parties. On one such occasion Eleanor Roosevelt asked, “Louis, why did you do that?” “Because,” Howe replied, “he was once unsupportive of Franklin.” “Oh goodness,” Eleanor exclaimed, “I’d forgotten all about that.” “I never forget,” Howe snapped back. And that’s just the way some folks go at life: they nurse old wounds and so allow them to fester into an entire cesspool of resentment and anger.

“No Hard Feelings” by the Avett Brothers, on True Sadness (2016) I could listen to Seth Avett sing all day—and sometimes I do. (Lately I’ve been gorging on his cover of the Tom Waits song “Fish and Bird”!) His light, plaintive, silvery voice moves my soul in a way that producer Rick Rubin embodies in the 2018 HBO documentary May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers, as in the clip below. (He’s the long-bearded guy swaying around with his eyes closed.) “No Hard Feelings” is the crux of the film, and it made me cry when I first watched it. It’s an aspiration to live without bitterness, without malice, without enemies—an aspiration arrived at by contemplating one’s eventual death.

Remember in the musical “Camelot,” when an exasperated King Arthur does not know what to do for his wife Guinevere? He plaintively asks how to handle a woman. “There’s a way,” said the wise old man: The way to handle a woman Is to love her...simply love her... Merely love her...love her...love her. That is what Christ wants of us as we work so hard to serve those whom he has given to us. You see, we naturally focus on what needs to be done. We forget that what matters most to God is a heart clearly choosing to love. Really, if we are not reminded to love those whom we serve, we grow restless and resentful...

Two monks were on a long journey. They came to a ford in a wide river and wanted to cross. There was an exceptionally beautiful woman with a low-cut dress who also wanted to cross. One of the monks picked her up on his shoulders and waded into the river carrying her across. When they reached the other side, he put her down and the two monks continued their journey. When at long last they got to somewhere they could stay the night the other monk berated his companion. ‘How are we going to explain to the Abbot the disgrace you have brought on the monastery? People would have seen you carrying that woman across the river. Had he forgotten that he was a monk? How dare he touch a woman, let alone one so provocatively dressed.’ He went on and on. Finally, the first monk said: ‘Brother, I left that woman on the bank of the river, you seem to have been carrying her all day.’

There is a story of a married couple who argue frequently. They have been married for 38 years. Both of them were known to have strong characteristics s and were quick to temper. One evening they engaged in yet another heated and emotionally charged conversation. The wife, reaching a point of no return, decided to pack a few things and walk away. While packing, she noticed that her husband placed another suitcase next to her and started packing as well. With a huff, she asked him, “Where in the world are you going?” Her husband responded, in an angry tone, “I don’t know. I am going wherever it is that you are going!”...

I woke up this morning at ten minutes to four with a completely different song running through my head. It was a song from my childhood. A country song. Sung by none other than Tammy Wynette. Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man So we spell out the words we don’t want him to understand Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E But the words we’re hiding from him now Tear the heart right out of me. Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today Me and little J-O-E will be goin’ away I love you both and this will be pure H-E double L for me Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote a book entitled Confessions. An autobiography of sorts, he shares that he had rejected Christianity as a child...so...he left the university and entered the social world of Moscow--drinking heavily, living promiscuously, gambling, and he found that did not satisfy. Ambitious for money--he had inherited a large amount, and he made a lot on his books--but he found that also did not satisfy. So he turned to success and notoriety and wrote what the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "one of the two or three greatest novels in world literature." But he was left asking, "Well, that's fine. So, what now?" Then he tried family. He married in 1862 to a wonderful woman. He had 13 children--which, he said, did distract him from his overall search for meaning. He had achieved it all and yet one question brought him to the verge, actually, of suicide. He wrote, "Is there any meaning in my life which will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death which awaits me?"

My friend, Frank, was about eight years old at the time, when he started arguing with his sister. Before long, arguing turned to pushing and shoving, and, soon enough, Frank had his younger sister pinned to the ground with his fist raised in the air. At that moment, his mother came into the room and told him to stop it. In response, Frank – as he described – reared up as only an eight-year-old can and declared, fist still raised in the air, “She’s my sister. I can do anything I want to her.” At this point, Frank’s mom swooped across the room, towered over him, and said, “She’s my daughter – no you can’t!”

Some scholars think that Gehenna was a major rubbish tip where the garbage from the city was incinerated. If so, it would have been constantly smouldering, and you could understand how it developed as a metaphor for someplace hot, smokey, disgusting and scary that you didn’t want to be. But actually, the evidence for the rubbish tip is not conclusive, and we probably shouldn’t base too much on it. There is something else for which the valley of Gehenna was infamous, and there is no historical dispute over this. It’s clearly recorded in the Bible. The people of Jesus’s day knew the stories of their past well, so when Jesus began talking about the fires of Gehenna these words from the prophet Jeremiah would have quickly come to mind. "In Gehenna (Hebrew: Ben Hinnom) they have built an altar called Topheth, so that they can sacrifice their sons and daughters in the fire..."

("At a flower service, everyone brings a bouquet of flowers and places them on a table in front of the pulpit. These bouquets are just a large fistful of flowers from the garden and wild flowers from the fields and woods. Then the minister preaches a sermon on Matthew 5:23-24, stressing the need for harmony and peace in the congregation and reminding people of Our Lord's admonition to make peace with our neighbor before kneeling at the altar to pray to God. After the sermon, a genuinely amazing "passing of the peace" takes place...")

("Early in the 20th century, B.F. Skinner became known for Behaviorism—a branch of psychology that holds more or less that it is easier to behave yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of behaving. Two thousand years earlier, Jesus taught about behavior: specifically how to honor the Ten Commandments. His teaching was intended to build a fence around the Big Ten so people wouldn't stumble into serious trouble before they realized the danger...")

Leo Tolstoy tells of a man in a boat: The opposite shore has been pointed out to him, he has been given a pair of oars and he is left alone. He rows a short distance and the current deflects him. Other boats are in the same stream. Some are struggling valiantly against the current while others are just drifting along. "Is this the way?" the man asks. "Of course it is! What do you think? There is no other way." So our rower takes his ease. But suddenly he becomes aware of a menacing sound––the roar of the rapids. He realizes his peril and recalls what he had forgotten––his oars, his appointed course and the opposite shore. With all his might he rows upstream crying with genuine contrition, "What a fool I was to drift!" Tolstoy interprets his parable––the current is the tradition of the world which sweeps away countless multitudes. The oars are the will of the individual and the opposite shore is God. A person can either acquiesce in temptations or take a firm resolve against them...

("Jerome Groopman, M.D. writes in his article Lives Less Ordinary about a small boy, dying of neuroblastoma, a common cancer in children. In the vignette, the medical melts back into the spiritual. The boy was distressed by what would follow his death. "His mother made it very clear to him that she would see him again in Heaven someday...but he was worried about how he would find her. So they made a plan to meet in the front left corner of Heaven...")

To choose Jesus is to choose life. That was the choice Melvin Trotter had to make. For much of his life Trotter was a hopeless alcoholic. He came home after one ten﷓day drinking spree to find his baby dead in his wife's arms. His child had been deathly ill, and he had not been there to help or even care. "I'll never touch another drop." he vowed. But two hours after his baby's funeral, Trotter staggered home; drunk again. He had taken the little white shoes off his baby in the coffin and pawned them for money to buy drink. In utter despair he headed along a Chicago street for Lake Michigan. He saw no way out of his miserable self but a watery death. But on the way the strong arm of Harry Monroe, Superintendent of Pacific Garden Mission, pulled him inside a hall where the Gospel was being preached. That night suicidal Trotter heard that there was the way to life in Christ. He became a Christian and for the next 40 years served as superintendent of a rescue mission in Grand Rapids, Michigan. From this base he started 60 other gospel missions in U.S. cities, including the one in Fresno where I frequently sang an spoke in my college years. He counseled thousands of would﷓be suicides, putting them on the road to happiness and Heaven. Mel Trotter chose to turn from death to life...

"Isn't it interesting that when we are talking about a ballet dancer, or, if you prefer, a Michael Jordan on the basketball court … we describe them as being graceful – full of grace. Yet anybody who has ever undertaken the craft of ballet or piano or basketball knows how much work day by day by day goes into the cultivation of that gracefulness. In this sense, gracefulness is not simply a process of sitting back and waiting..."

("The Greek word I want to focus on is exousia. It is one of those words that is hard to express in English. It is variously translated as authority, power, dominion and capacity. William Barclay defines exousia as 'the power to add and the power to take away at will'..." and an illustration on Jimmy Carter)

John wondered why the other kids didn't want to play with him. He loved games. But he didn't understand that winning, while fun, wasn't the point of playing them. He wanted to win every game. When he was losing, he would often adjust the rules in his favor...

("The movie 127 Hours is the true story of a young man whose arm got trapped under a rock while he was hiking. After days of trying to get the rock off his arm he decided he couldn't and that he was going to die. Then, he says, he had a moment of clarity, he didn't have to die, but he did have to lose his hand and part of his arm. And with a pocket knife, he cut off his own arm. And lived to tell the tale...")

"But somewhere in his darkness, Gerard Manley Hopkins experienced God's light. Somehow he moved beyond self-reproach to divine mercy. In one of my favorite poems, My Own Heart, he portrays an interior conversation about extending mercy to himself and accepting 'God's smile' upon his life. 'My own heart let me more have pity on; let Me live to my sad self hereafter kind, Charitable; not live this tormented mind With this tormented mind tormenting yet..."

("Years ago, when my daughters were still small, I read them a children's story about a koala bear in a magazine called Your Big Back Yard. This koala and his mother were peacefully moving from one tree to another one day when they were spotted by two men who thought they would make good pets for their children....")

("The characters of Dad and Dave are a well-known part of Australia's cultural history. The writer Steele Rudd wrote a series of novels about Dad and Dave and Mum and Dave's sweetheart Mabel in 1920's that became extremely popular and were turned in to a radio series in the 1930's and then later silent movies...")

("Once upon a time a certain mother was tempted to quit – quit her job, quit her family, quit her parish, quit everything. When the parish priest suggested she read about the temptation of Jesus, she said that she had already and that all the demands which were made on her, presumably with God's approval and even connivance, were about the same as being asked to jump off the parapet of the temple...")

When I recently went home to my sister’s, she had a death in the family, her granddaughter, eighteen years old, died. It was a terrible shock. Everybody thought it was just awful and it was, because death is an inexplicable disaster when it comes for everyone. And then the priest got up and he said, “Blessed are the meek, blessed are the meek and the humble minded, for God will teach them to understand.” And then through those very sad days something very important happened. At her funeral, because she was a cheerleader in the school, all the cheerleaders came. Because her brother was a newly appointed policeman in the village, all the policemen came. And all the people who knew my sister Peggy, who was a ballet teacher all those years, they all came. And, all of a sudden, something wonderful took place, for out of the death of this child, these people came together, broke down all the barriers that existed between them. People, even part of the family who never spoke to each other for many years out of some silly little anger or pain, made up and embraced the gift of this child’s death, because what she had done was to bring them all together in love, in affection. And one little old lady who visited the sick all the time, took my sister Peggy aside and she said, “Don’t worry, Mrs Bisceglie, I talked to your granddaughter just a couple of days before she passed away and, out of her pain, which was terrible, she kind of smiled and said, “I think maybe God wants me. He wants me to come, but I will say yes.” And that is what happened...

("In his novel A Widow for One Year, John Irving depicts a man who lures women into his studio supposedly to model for true art. He begins by taking Polaroid pictures of these women in the nude. His first photos are of the whole person and show the woman smiling and looking lovely....")

("A number of years ago The Banner had an article written by a student at Dordt College. She wrote: 'In my last reunion with Christian friends from high school, five of them were pregnant and single. Two were pregnant a second time and still unmarried. I have been at a church's youth night where I found an infant sobbing unattended while his young, unwed mother laughed with friends in a nearby room...")

("One day Abraham invited a beggar to his tent for a meal. When grace was being said, the man began to curse God, declaring that he could not bear to hear his name. Seized with indignation, Abraham drove the blasphemer away...")

("Once upon a time there was a man who thought that women were inferior. They couldn't be trusted to do any important right because their emotions got in the way. He was discreet about stating this position explicitly in public because his wife and his daughters would immediately denounce him...")

("Once upon a time a husband and a wife had a big fight. No one was quite sure what the fight was about. Each time one or the other told the story of the fight it changed. Then they fought about what the fight was about and what the other person had said the day before about the fight. Technically they were not talking to one another, but they could still talk enough to keep the fight going...")

("When our oldest son, Nathan, was on the cusp of adolescence, at age ten, he discovered that his hero was getting married. His name was Brian Hartlove, someone our son had come to admire in our local congregation. He admired Brian not only because Brian is attractive and a terrific person, but also because Brian was a professional soccer player in Baltimore who inspired and taught Nathan to play soccer..." and other illustrations)

("I would like to tell you a story about a group of ten men who were soldiers. These soldiers had been locked in vicious battles for three years, and in one battle, all ten were killed. All ten went up to the pearly gates of heaven to see Simon Peter. Simon Peter came out and said, 'Good to see you men here today. I have been expecting you although you had not been expecting to see me...")

("An engineering student, a mathematics student and a business student were on an interdisciplinary field trip in Kelowna the other day. They were given a task to find the height of the church steeple using a barometer. They returned and reported to the professor. The engineer said, 'It's about 150 feet high'. 'How did you discover that?' asked the professor...")

("It was the winter of my 9th grade year; I had planned to spend that Friday night at the home of a buddy of mine. In fact, he has come to be a pretty notorious buddy in the years that have passed. Dean Anderson is actually Richard Dean Anderson, who became the star of a television series called MacGuyver. He got rich and I got ordained; what's up with that?...")

("Three Florida teenagers have been arrested in the beating and murder of homeless men in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The beatings, which took place early in the morning on Thursday, January 12, resulted in the hospitalization of two men, and the death of a third. Video surveillance cameras on the campus of the Florida Atlantic University caught the first of the attacks against Jacques Pierre...")

("The writer, Madeleine L'Engle, tells a story related to her by a friend who worked in a day-care center. One day one of the little boys at the center was standing in the middle of a room and suddenly began crying uncontrollably. When he finally calmed enough to talk, he related a home situation where several other adults lived with his parents and his brothers and sisters..." and another illustration)

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("Did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is really for? Is it to be a burden to the animal which wears it? It is just the opposite. It is to make its burden light. Attached to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke the plough would be intolerable..." and others)

("In one of the closing scenes of the award-winning movie Gandhi there is scene where the dreadful tendency of anger and retaliation needs to be overcome: 'A Hindu leader comes to the bedside of Gandhi, pleading with him to end his long fast. Gandhi reaffirms that he will end his fast only when the Hindus and Moslems stop fighting. The Hindu, with hatred for the Moslems burning in his eyes, says he will continue fighting..." and other quotes)