You Have Heard It Said

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 5:38-48

February 19, 2017-02-14

“But we’ve always done it this way!”

Or, as they say, “the seven deadliest words in the church are ‘we’ve never done it that way before.’”

It is not too hard to imagine this refrain in response to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. “But Jesus, we’ve always had an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That’s just the way things are.” Or, “But Jesus, we’ve always held our enemies in disdain, think of Moses and Pharaoh. Hating our enemies is just the way things are.” And, “Jesus, there’s no way I’m lugging that Roman centurion’s gear a second mile. I hate those guys with a perfect passion!”

Yes, everyone around Jesus had heard it said the same way, over and over, from all directions. Their sacred texts instructed them. Their religious leaders told them. Their culture assured them. What they had heard said was the Truth – with a capital T.

And yet. And yet here was this Jesus saying, “I know what you’ve heard, but I tell you it’s really the other way ‘round.”

Sometimes, of course, what you have heard said is true. But even when it’s true it can mislead you. Let’s take something as simple as the eternal truth that the sun sets to the west. Now add in that map truth: the Pacific Ocean lies off the west coast of the continental United States. With me so far?

These are truths that I have pretty much always taken as self-evident, or, at least, as correct. Which is why visiting our eldest in Santa Cruz messes with my mind. Santa Cruz sits right on the California coastline. It’s beautiful: the Redwood covered hills running right down to the beach just up the coastal highway from town; the Santa Cruz wharf jutting out into the beautiful water.

But then you sit in a restaurant on the wharf at sunset, and the sun doesn’t set over the water. It sets over the place where those redwood covered hills meet the coast just up the highway. Your east-coast liberal elite educated brain tells you, “wait a minute; that’s the Pacific Ocean I am looking out across. The sun has to set over there.”

But the sun doesn’t listen because it’s busy setting in the west, as it always does, while you are looking south because Santa Cruz actually sits on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, and even though you know this because you have been told and you have looked at maps to confirm it, your brain still says, “hey, I have heard it said that the sun sets in the west and the Pacific Ocean is on the west coast.”

And then I know just how the disciples felt. I do not understand reality any better than they did, and I’ve got satellite imagery to confirm it for me.

We carry around these ideas we believe so firmly that even when confronted by clear evidence that contradicts the ideas, we cling to the ideas rather than reform them.

Moses must have understood this problem well. Even having liberated the captives from bondage in Egypt he heard, over and over again, “it would have been better for us to have remained pharaoh’s slaves than to wander lost in this wilderness.”

When he set before them “life and death,” it would come as no surprise that many would choose death. Death was what they knew. Death was familiar. Death was what they had learned. To choose life was to choose something new. Choosing life required getting a new mind for a new time.

The earth shifted beneath their feet and they looked south to see the setting sun.

It’s the same direction the disciples were looking when Jesus stood on the hillside and pointed out another way. He might well have stood up there and said, “today I set before you life and death; choose life.” Today I set before you violence and hatred on the one hand, and on the other hand, difficult, perhaps costly love and, with it, a way beyond the cycles of violence and death within which you are trapped.

Given that, how many of us take the familiar route and choose death? Most of us, to be honest. Costly love is, well, too costly. It’s too hard. It’s asks too much of us and yields nothing to our control.

It promises only a slender reed of hope standing against a raging tide of memory and history that tell us that there is no other way than the way things are.

Moreover, we only catch a glimpse of that hope if we reorient our gaze entirely because experience has taught us to look only one way.

We still haven’t learned the basic lessons Jesus sought to teach there on the hillside, so it should come as no surprise whatsoever that we haven’t come close at all to learning anything about the underlying shifts of mind that he invited his followers into. That is to say, we’re really no closer to loving our enemies today than the Jews of Jesus time were to loving the Romans. We’re no closer than they were to learning how to turn the other cheek, to give up our sweaters and coats, to going an extra mile.

And we’re certainly no closer to understanding what was at stake when Jesus said, “you have heard it said … but I say to you.”

Consider how long it has taken and how difficult it has been to make so many basic changes. Think of what you have heard said from so many quarters over so many years on so many matters.

After all, you have heard it said that women should be silent in the assembly, but I say to you that the co-moderators of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are women and the whole assembly should give ear and heed what they have to say. You have heard it said that homosexuality is an abomination, but I say to you that the most profound and faithful weddings I have been privileged to lead have been between same-sex couples and that gay men, lesbian women, and assorted queer folk have been among my most important teachers and guides in the faith. You have heard it said that humankind shall have the responsibility of dominion over the earth, but I say to you that we are bound up with our fellow creatures in a single garment of destiny and that we humans beings are unraveling the whole thing because we have mistaken responsibility for domination.

When I stand at the edge of the ocean and face the rising sun, I think I know what’s what, but then I face that same sea on a different coast and am reminded of how small I am, how little I truly understand, and how desperately I need to hear a new word that I might get a new mind for a new time.

By way of closing – but now of concluding – this morning I want to pose a question. As I have noted often over the past two months, this year marks the 500^th anniversary of the beginnings of the great reformation that fundamentally reshaped life in Western Europe. The Reformers had heard many things said about the church, about God, about the human condition, and into their time they spoke a new word. That new word resonated only because they asked the right questions. That is to say, they new “what they had heard said,” and, therefore, to what received truths they needed to speak a new and unsettling word.

So, my question this morning is, what have you heard said that needs to be said differently, or to be unsaid? In other words, what received and culturally approved word should we be calling into question as we live into the age of reformation?