St. Andrews’ Pictou, January 30^th 2005

 

Overturning Assumptions

 

Micah 6:1-8

Matthew 5:1-12

 

Every day of our lives and all through our lives we struggle between two worlds as it were: what we know… and what we don’t.

 

Whether it comes to knowing ourselves, someone else, work issues, health issues, national or international issues, we are always torn between the two: what we know and what we don’t.

 

Sometimes when we get presented with a new and different situation, either we don’t know what to do, or we can surprise ourselves with our reaction.

 

We hear something about an individual and it challenges our assumptions we had about that person, and we don’t know if we are right, or if there was a side to this person that we didn’t know.

 

We have a belief or understanding about a political figure and then they react or say something that confounds our assumptions about that person.

 

Who of us really knows what to do about Iraq now that the troops are there?

 

What human beings like ourselves usually do is that we try to make rational assumptions about life and experience and accept that as our understanding.

 

Then, life happens and our assumptions are overturned.

 

Time and time again, all through history, our rational assumptions are overturned.

 

What we might rationally conclude is that it is irrational to be rational. What we might conclude is that there is even something higher than rationality… like the mystery of God for example.

 

Because we can say the word “God” does not mean that we can explain God to another person does it? We can say that we know another person, but that person may disagree and boldly say that we don’t know them. At the men’s breakfast last week a few of the men disclosed things about themselves that others who knew them for years never knew. Assumptions were overturned.

 

In ancient times the prophet Micah was speaking to the people and was overturning one of their assumptions.

 

These self satisfied people think that as long as they made their sacrifices on the altar (and even the occasional child sacrifice) that they are right with God. The people assume that everything is OK, as long as these legal obligations have been met.

 

But the prophet says, “the Lord has a controversy with his people.”

 

The prophet goes on to speak of God’s anguish in trying to understand his people, that in spite of all God has done and all of the prophets God has sent, the people just don’t seem to get what it is that God wants.

 

Before the prophet states his version of what God wants he gives an exaggerated litany of what the people have incorrectly offered:

-does the Lord want burnt offerings of year old calves?

-does God want ten thousand rivers of oil offered to him?

-does God want your firstborn as a trade for your sins?

-does God want the fruit of your body in trade for the sin of your body?

 

In spite of all the offerings that people have made the prophet Micah gives us the bottom line in this shattering conclusion of one of the most beautiful and favoured verses in the Bible:

 

He has told you, O mortal, what is good:

and what does the Lord require of you…

but to do justice, and to love kindness

and to walk humbly with your God.

 

Of all of the worship they have done and the sacrifices they have made, assumptions are overturned; the Lord requires of us, “To do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with (our) God.”

 

God doesn’t want empty rituals, the death of your firstborn, self mutilation, and guilt offerings, God wants justice, loving kindness, and humility.

 

Their assumptions were overturned.

 

Jesus Christ, by his life, death, resurrection, his wisdom and his love, overturned all human assumptions about life, God and humanity.

 

There is no way in one sermon on one day I would have the ability to explain the wisdom of Christ that he gave us in “The Sermon on the Mount” that we find in “The Beatitudes.”

 

We have clues to help us. Jesus didn’t gather the people together, he responded because the crowd gathered to hear him. When he uttered these universal phrases they were for all humanity: for Jews, Buddhist, Christians, Moslems, Hindus, for anyone who wants to experience the divine rules for eternal living.

 

The Beatitudes are not rational statements, they are deep truths that need more to be absorbed than learned. These truths paint a picture of life that overturns our rational assumptions of what life is all about.

 

Our rational assumptions tell us that:

-the meek do not inherit the earth, they are eliminated,

-those who show mercy are dismissed as being weak,

-those who are poor in spirit are regarded as ineffective,

-those who might described as pure in heart are interpreted as being naïve, unsophisticated or at worst, puritanical.                     (O’Driscoll p. 92)

 

Sitting where you are and what you have experienced, you have to remember that the people who first heard these sayings 2,000 years ago left the field that day to return to a much harsher life with starker realities than any of us could ever dream, but by divine design, these sayings were absorbed into the spirit of believers who have opposed tyranny and the destruction of life ever since.

 

I was writing these words on January 27, 2005, the 60^th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Could you go there? Could you visit the place where over one million innocent human beings were systematically, cold bloodedly slaughtered? Could you walk on the ground over their graves? Could you even begin to feel such monumental grief? What would be the rational human response to such a massive desecration of God’s sacred Creation?

 

I heard once about two men (survivors) who returned to Auschwitz, the place where they lost their families, their friends, their hope for the future, and almost their lives. What would they say? What would they do?

 

They stood together and one of them repeated: “Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is One Lord.” Known as the Shema, (from the word “Hear.”) Deut. 6:4

 

Nothing in the last two thousand years or beyond can over shadow our need for God and God’s peace in our lives and our calling to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.”

 

No matter how smart we are, no matter how rational we might be, we are continually going to have our human assumptions overturned until our lives are dedicated to a better way of living by doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with our God.

 

Jesus called this better way of living, and that day as “the kingdom of Heaven.”

 

Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven…

 

AMEN                Rev. Alan Stewart