Last week I went to have lunch with some friends of ours. They have a little boy called Samuel who is just being weaned. His mum, Jordan, had made up a bit of baby rice and mixed in some squished up carrot or something like that, had put him in a highchair and was feeding him this goo. It was going in OK, but Jordan needed to help get the rest of the food ready for our lunch so I was volunteered for baby feeding duties. Oh, how I\u2019ve missed trying to get babies to eat. I\u2019d forgotten the way in which you get a spoonful of this runny gunk and put it in their mouths, and you think it\u2019s going down, but then it starts dribbling down the chin and you have to quickly scrape it back into the baby\u2019s mouth with the spoon. It\u2019s amazing how skills come back to you, isn\u2019t it. Over the next few months Jordan and Ben will introduce different bits of food into Samuel\u2019s diet, different tastes and textures. They\u2019ll give him things he can chew and bite as more of his teeth come through. He would probably survive if they only ever fed him on baby rice and mashed carrot, but he\u2019d miss out on the experience of so many different foods and the enjoyment of sinking his teeth into things, chewing them over and getting out all the flavours.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that these are some the ideas that Paul probably had going round in his head when he wrote to the Christians who lived in Corinth. The church there is going through a difficult time. There are all kinds of issues bubbling up, but the main reason that the people there are failing to deal with them is that they lack maturity. Paul wants to give them the solid food that they need to build up the strength to sort out these problems, but they are not ready for it. They still need spoon feeding and have not put in the effort that is needed to chew over and digest things that aren\u2019t easy straight away.<\/p>\n
I have to say that sometimes I fall into this temptation. If something seems to be too difficult, or if I think that I\u2019m not going to succeed, rather than persisting and giving it a good go, I\u2019ll give up. I remember as a boy going to visit a friend, and my friend had devised a coded message for me. I don\u2019t believe that it was a particularly complicated code, but I couldn\u2019t break it straight away. Rather than apply myself to working it out, I just nagged and nagged and nagged to be told the solution. In the end my friend told me what the message said, but I\u2019d missed the point. I\u2019d robbed myself of the benefit of working it out, of chewing it over. <\/p>\n
This morning we have heard some of Jesus\u2019 teaching that seems to me to challenge us and that challenge means that we have a choice to make. On the one hand we can hear it, and decide that it\u2019s too difficult for us, much too chewy, and decide not to engage with it. The trouble is that doing that will stop us from growing as we are meant to. We will miss out on the nutrition, on the flavour, on the exercise. We will not mature as God intends us to.<\/p>\n
On the other hand we can choose to really get stuck into it. It might make us choke a bit. (I seem to remember coughing fits from my two when they tried to swallow down something they hadn\u2019t really chewed properly.) A bit might stick in our teeth and we\u2019ll spend the next few hours trying to work it out with our tongues. But, most importantly we will be growing in our understanding of God, and of the life we are being called to lead. We will be growing as followers of Jesus.<\/p>\n
In the reading that we heard Jesus talks about several different issues. I don\u2019t have time this morning to go into them all in detail. This is a good thing, because the whole point is that if I were to stand here for a few hours telling you what they mean, then I would be doing all the work. It would be like me putting it all in a blender, mushing it up, and offering it round on a spoon. What I hope to do this morning is give out some tools and some pointers for thinking about what Jesus is saying, why he\u2019s saying it, and what difference that should make to our lives. We will then need to take responsibility for working it out, chewing it over. We might do that on your own, or by talking it over with other people.<\/p>\n
So , to begin with, let\u2019s think about what Jesus is saying.<\/p>\n
The first thing to notice is that this reading breaks down into four sections. Each section has a part where Jesus talks about some teaching or a proverb that the people have heard somewhere else. \u201cyou have heard it said …..\u201d then Jesus goes on to give his ideas and teaching, introduced by the phrase, \u201cbut I tell you….\u201d Once you see this pattern, then other things might start to emerge. When you read the four, \u201cyou have it heard it said…\u201d parts, what do they have in common? It seems to me that one thing they have in common is that they all focus on things you do on the outside. Don\u2019t murder; don\u2019t have sex with someone who isn\u2019t your spouse; if you divorce, make sure the paperwork is in order; if you make a vow make sure you\u2019re seen to keep it. <\/p>\n
When you read the four \u201cbut I tell you….\u201d parts, what do they have in common? It seems to me in all these cases Jesus extends the teaching from the outward behaviour to the inward heart. He attacks the destructive and sinful behaviour at its roots before it has time to grow. Don\u2019t harbour hatred but be a peacemaker. Don\u2019t dwell on lust but be innocent. Be a person of simple integrity who keeps promises without having to make a big show of it.<\/p>\n
So we\u2019ve thought a little bit about what Jesus was teaching, but why was he teaching this? To get a handle on this, I think that it helps to understand something of the background of this teaching. It is comes pretty early on in Matthew\u2019s book. So far he has told us a load about Jesus\u2019 birth and childhood, about John the Baptist and Jesus\u2019 baptism and temptation, and about the call of the first few disciples. This is Jesus\u2019 first big speech in Matthew. It sets out the program, the manifesto of what he\u2019s all about. It kicks off with the big ideas, the values that drive what Jesus is going to do, and why he\u2019s going to do it. You can read those at the beginning of Matthew chapter five. <\/p>\n
Having described the big picture, Jesus is now getting to the nuts and bolts of how those values will work out in real life. Jesus took part in our creation and has known humanity for as long as there have been people. He knows what we are like. He knows that we have a great talent for putting on show of keeping the rules whilst on the inside we\u2019re frantically trying to work out how to bend them, or finding reasons for why they don\u2019t apply to us. <\/p>\n
Based on this and on what we\u2019ve discovered about what Jesus said, moving the focus from the outward behaviour to the inner heart, it seems to me that one of the reasons why Jesus said these things was to encourage his followers to learn to exercise self control over their thoughts and feelings as well as over their actions.<\/p>\n
So we\u2019ve looked at what and why Jesus taught. But what are we actually meant to do about it? Some of the practical things that Jesus says seem reasonable if challenging, like actually talking to people we\u2019ve upset about the way that we upset them and making up with them before we come to worship. Some of the practical things seem to be completely nuts. I have to say that if I\u2019d taken the part about chopping of the bits that cause me to sin literally I\u2019d be speaking to you in a much higher voice. The first type might be difficult, but it doesn\u2019t seem to me that we can duck them \u2013 we have to rise to the challenge. The second type is fairly obviously exaggeration for effect. We don\u2019t need to be chopping bits of our body off but we do need to cut out of our lives the things that tempt us to sin. That might be a friendship with someone of the opposite sex that has the potential to fall into unfaithfulness. It might be books, magazines or TV programmes that leave unhealthy thoughts or images in our minds.<\/p>\n
For me the most challenging one is where it isn\u2019t easy to see whether the practical application is to be taken literally or metaphorically, where there are harsh words about marriage after divorce. This is made more difficult because it has been understood in different ways in Christian history. <\/p>\n
The things that we have been thinking about this morning are not easy. They are not meant to be. If everything about life was easy then it would be like eating baby rice for every meal. Jesus told us that following him wouldn\u2019t be easy. He wants us to grow and to mature, and that means learning to eat things that need chewing over. Having said that, there\u2019s no point giving ourselves indigestion by taking on too much at one sitting. So, I\u2019m going to stop now and we\u2019re going to have a few minutes quiet. During those few minutes I\u2019d like us to look back over the gospel reading, and ask the Holy Spirit to bring to the front of our minds the one thing that God wants us to chew over this week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I went to have lunch with some friends of ours. They have a little boy called Samuel who is just being weaned. His mum, Jordan, had made up a bit of baby rice and mixed in some squished up carrot or something like that, had put him in a highchair and was feeding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[361,366,36,365,362,371,367,370,22,363,368,360,364,17,369],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shelton","tag-1-corinthians-3-1-9","tag-anger","tag-discipleship","tag-divorce","tag-ethics","tag-faithfulness","tag-hatred","tag-honesty","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-teaching","tag-lust","tag-matthew-5-21-37","tag-maturity","tag-perfection","tag-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}