Parking on Grace

The Rev. Robert P. Travis

Epiphany 3rd Sunday Sermon  – 8:00am and 10:30am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN

RCL Epiphany 6 Year A 2/16/2014

Scripture Text: Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Psalm 119:1-8, 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, Matthew 5:21-37

Sermon Text:

We have a bit of a parking problem here at Ascension.

So those of you who get here early each week

might not realize it,

but those of you who are like my parents,

who came last week,

and were about 10 minutes late for the 10:30 service

and struggle to get places even on time,

much less early,

know that many Sundays our parking lot fills up,

it’s a good problem to have,

and our vestry and leadership have been working

on the options for a while,

but one thing that I and other staff members do,

to help alleviate the problem,

is park elsewhere on Sunday mornings.

I for one, love to park just across Agnes,

on the Avenue called Grace.

And a while back it struck me as a good thing,

that I park on Grace.

I thought to myself,

I wonder if that will come up

in a sermon,

if I’ll get to preach on parking on Grace,

and sure enough, this week it has, and I will.

Last weekend, as many of you know,

we had diocesan convention,

and the preacher at the closing Eucharist

was the bishop of our companion diocese, South Dakota.

I was inspired by his sermon,

and one image in particular stuck with me this week.

He described what he was doing as midrash,

on the Sermon on the Mount,

and it helped me to understand what Jesus is doing in our Gospel today.

You see,

the bishop told us to imagine,

that as people gathered by the sea of Galilee

to hear Jesus preach

among those thousands of people,

there would have been religious leaders.

Probably standing around in back,

with all their fancy clothes, and cynical looks,

listening to every word Jesus said,

and judging every sentence to see whether

this new teacher was teaching the law of God

as they believed it must be followed.

(I’m glad when we preach up here,

that it’s only our ushers who are standing around in back,

and I hope they’re not judging everything I say that way!)

But most of the people Jesus was teaching,

were just regular folks, trying to live a good life,

trying to get by and make it to the next day.

So the “blessed are those” lines,

the beatitudes, as they are called,

would have been very comforting to the regular people,

but certainly would have given the religious leaders pause, maybe even caused them to murmur,

that Jesus was being too easy on people,

that he did not know the law.

Then Jesus gets to the part of the sermon we hear today,

where he takes on some very practical parts of the law,

and Jesus takes the law so seriously,

that I imagine the religious leaders would have just started shaking their heads, and saying

“he just doesn’t get it.

How could anyone possibly follow a law like that?”

Look at some of the things that Jesus says

are necessary to be right with God,

“you heard it was said . . . you shall not murder;

and whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.’

But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister

you will be liable to judgement.”

Well, I’m certainly liable to judgement then,

and so is everyone in my family.

“You have heard it was said ‘you shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Some of you may remember that when President Carter

was interviewed in Playboy,

and asked if he had ever committed adultery,

he quoted this scripture.

I wonder if any man can honestly say that they have never done the same in their heart.

Then there’s the divorce teaching,

a teaching with which a large percentage of our congregation

has struggled and is probably still trying to figure out.

As a married man, I can say, I am terrified of that teaching,

because I know a lot of good people who are divorced

and remarried.

And it’s hard to believe,

that all of them are breaking one of the 10 commandments.

So Jesus is taking the law of the God of Israel,

and rather than make it easier to follow,

he makes it harder.

Now some scholars I have read,

even some I learned from in seminary,

said that Jesus was using hyperbole here,

that he was exaggerating for effect.

And who knows, maybe he was?

Maybe he was joking around with the religious leaders.

We don’t have the benefit of hearing the way he delivered these words.

(Sometimes I really wish YouTube was available in the time of Christ.)

But even the greatest comedians I have listened to,

are funny because what they say is true.

Sometimes comedy is so true that it makes us laugh,

because it pushes the limits of our comfort.

I had a seminary professor like that,

Don Armentrout,

who taught us Church History,

which as you can imagine can be incredibly dry and boring.

But the way he told it,

the story was always interesting,

and sometimes hilarious.

He would make these statements that seemed so outrageous.

And all we could do was laugh at them as if they were jokes.

But as I reflected on his teaching,

and knew him as a person,

I came to realize that every word he taught us,

he believed to be true,

and he just came to accept our laughter

as part of the course.

As a follower of Jesus,

I would prefer to believe that everything he said was true,

even if it makes us uncomfortable,

and so I struggle to teach without belittling,

or writing off in anyway what we have heard from Him,

even though I’ll tell you,

it is tempting to do so.

It is always tempting to belittle the truth,

and make it more comfortable.

And the smarter we are, the easier it is to do that,

to find a way around the rules that are so hard to follow.

But given the truth of what Jesus is saying,

what hope is there?

How can we possibly hope to follow Jesus,

and become right with God,

when the standard of righteousness is so high?

The standard of righteousness is our very hearts,

the thoughts of our hearts and minds.

Can you control your thoughts,

your hearts, and your very attitudes towards others?

The psalm today says

“happy are they whose way is blameless,

who walk in the law of the Lord! . . .

who never do any wrong,

but always walk in his ways.”

Have you ever met a person like that?

I wonder who can really be happy by that standard.

Let’s be honest

We can all try, and some of us do better than others,

in some areas of our lives.

But we all fall down, we all sin,

and even if it is not open,

the psalms say “our sin is ever before us.”

What Jesus does, in making the law so hard to achieve,

is leave us no alternative

but to rely on God’s grace.

Look at how Paul puts it,

Paul who understood the law like a good Pharisee,

was and could have been one of the religious leaders

judging Jesus, but learned intimately about his sin.

Even though he helped build up the church of Jesus,

more than almost any other early Christian,

he writes,

“So neither the one who plants, nor the one who waters

is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

And what God helps us do, is learn to love.

The law that Jesus teach, that is impossible

for us to learn without God's grace,

is Love.

Jesus’ law is love,

that’s what Jesus was teaching,

and his whole teaching is based on it.

If you strive to love people, God, creation, life etc.

That is how you can appreciate God’s grace.

If you’re so concerned about being perfect,

so concerned with your own sins,

with following the rules,

just for the sake of the rules themselves,

it becomes self-centered,

and essentially hurts others because

when you focus exclusively on the rules,

you end up ignoring others, other people, and God.

The law of love is always other-centered

and that is how God makes our hearts right.

We have to stop focussing on ourselves,

and rely entirely on God

to save us from our sins,

to make right our very minds,

to teach us each day how to seek Him with all our hearts!

That is the nature of God’s grace,

that in spite of our weakness, and our tendencies towards evil, deception, and even self-deception,

God’s grace is sufficient to save us,

and to make us right with God,

and we cannot do it ourselves.

So that’s why I park on Grace,

literally, and metaphorically.

And I invite you to do the same,

metaphorically of course.

Park on Grace in your own life,

and reflect on the greatness of God’s grace,

that God is the source,

the beginning,

the means and the end,

of a grace-filled life.

And it is only by his grace that we can hope

to choose life and live abundantly.

Amen