Enchanted, I'm Sure - A Sermon
This is the sermon I preached on February 20:
It’s about a girl named Ella who is under a spell which forces her to be obedient: She must obey any direct order given to her. If you tell her to “wait right there,” she is glued to the spot and cannot move, even to save her life. If you tell her to “stop talking,” she is unable to say anything.
As you can probably guess, Ella is not happy about this enchantment. Almost everyone who knows about it uses it to bully and take advantage of Ella.
“Do the dishes.”
“Clean the floors.”
“Give me your late mother’s pendant.”
And much worse.
It’s not much fun to feel used and not valued. And sometimes obedience can feel like being used. Anyone who’s had a boss they didn’t like, or, even sometimes a boss they did like, knows that obedience is not always a fun choice. A lot of people aspire to be president; few people aspire to be a buck private in the army.
There are exceptions. If you know how to end poverty worldwide, and you can prove to me you do, then I’ll gladly let you tell me what I need to do to help. An airplane pilot wants the air traffic controller to tell him which runway to use, not ask him what he thinks. We’re usually OK with being obedient to someone who we think has a better grasp of what’s going on than we do.
Even so, I think one thing that turns a lot of people off about the Bible is that God keeps trying to get in your face and tell you what to do. I mean, the Bible starts off well enough with all those great Genesis stories, but then, once we get into Exodus, a whole lot of rules and commands start cropping up, until soon God’s telling us what to eat and how to run our business and how to treat our family. Pretty soon, we read about God’s prophets either giving more commands or whining about how no one listens to them. I mean, come on!
When people hear about Jesus, who died for us,
is our friend,
is loving and kind to children,
tells nice stories about forgiveness and love,
I don’t think they want to hear him giving orders. It’s not my favorite thing about Jesus, I’ll tell you. And yet, just when Matthew starts getting into the swing of things, that’s just what Jesus does: starts telling us how to live.
And when I read Jesus’s commands for us, right here in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, I kind of feel like Ella. Jesus seems to be commanding us to be doormats, taken advantage of by every two-bit bully or megalomaniac that comes along. I mean, come on, Jesus, show a little common sense!
Turning the other cheek, in my experience, gets you slapped again.
If we really gave our coats to everyone who asked for our cloaks, we’d soon go bankrupt buying winter apparel.
If we really went the second mile with everyone who forced us to go one, lots of people would be force-marching us, and we might never go where we wanted again.
If we really gave to everyone who begged us, we’d see nothing but beggars, until we were beggars ourselves.
But this is the Sermon on the Mount, remember. None of it makes much sense.
It starts with the Beatitudes, and Jesus saying we’re blessed by God when we mourn and when people lie about us. Yeah, Jesus, that’s just how it feels: like I’m blessed.
We’re told that if we’re going to enter the kingdom of heaven, we’ve got to be more righteous than the people who get PAID to be righteous (the Pharisees and teachers). Really? Come on!
Not only can’t we murder each other (which is actually pretty sensible, I think), we can’t even be angry. It’s not enough to avoid adultery (again, pretty sensible), but we can’t even be physically attracted to other people. We’re not even allowed to swear out an oath. In other words, it looks like we’re supposed to be these first class wimps, never getting mad, never getting romantic, living in some kind of Fantasy Land where lollipops and sunshine are all around and money just appears in your pocket when you need it.
Who can do all these commandments, Jesus? Who even wants to? Isn’t this just switching one set of impossible to follow rules (the ones the Old Testament keeps going on about) for another set, this one even outside the realm of common sense?
This has to be a misprint in the Bible. These commands are ludicrous! Jesus MUST have had something else in mind. Someone must have heard him wrong.
I mean, we all know what Christianity means: go to church, say your prayers, write some checks and make a decision about who your Lord and Savior is. Maybe help out at a homeless shelter or give blood when you’ve got the chance, or do a mission trip or something now and then. There’s nothing wimpy in that. In fact, it’s taking control of your life. YOU decide who your Lord and Savior is. YOU say the prayer, write the check, get up on Sunday. This is what we keep hearing Christianity is: a way for you to take control of your life, get in good with God, and get yourself a nice house in heaven when this life is over, and a nice house on earth before then.
Now, it’s tempting to reason our way out of this. We could say that turning the other cheek was a form of defiance, forcing the attacker to slap us with his palm, rather than the back of his hand. We could say that walking the second mile was a form of service to the next poor schmo who would get forced to walk. We could say that Jesus clearly didn’t mean that we should lend money to anyone, just the people who’ve demonstrated to us that they have a good credit rating. We could turn these commands into suggestions, little tidbits that might help us as we go on our journey toward respect and success.
But what if Jesus really meant every word of the Sermon on the Mount? What if Jesus is telling us that it’s not enough just to sit around and talk about how we believe in God and how we’ve said the right prayers? What if Jesus is telling us that following God’s intention is more than claiming that we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior? What if it’s more than putting on a show? What if being a Christian means actually doing something that seems incredibly stupid?
What if being a follower of the risen Christ means not calculating a return on investment of everything in our life? What if being “saved” is not about being safe?
What if being “saved” is not about being safe?
I think Jesus is telling us that our whole idea of the world is wrong. The Fantasy Land is the world we think we live in. The commands Jesus give seem absurd because our understanding of the world is just plain wrong. We look at the losers of this world and call them winners, and we look at the winners and call them losers. We think being a loud-mouth who can shoot three-pointers is better than being a humble man who can’t. We think a vain, shallow woman who has great hair and a nice figure is better than a thoughtful, kind woman who has neither.
We think the way to free a country from a dictator is with a 4-star general, and not with a facebook page. And we’re wrong!
Trust is for suckers, we think, and we’re wrong.
Faith is for the blind, we think, and we’re wrong.
We act like being powerful is more important than being merciful, and we’re wrong.
We act like being responsible is more important than being caring, and we’re wrong.
We act like being smart is more important than being compassionate, and we’re wrong.
We act like being strong is more important than being generous, and we’re wrong.
We act like being safe and secure and happy is the ultimate goal of life, and we’re so wrong that doesn’t even seem like the best word any more.
We’re so certain that everyone who talks to a child is a kidnapper or pedophile, that everyone who asks for a dollar is a drug dealer, that every teenage boy is a shoplifter. We’re so sure of the worst possible scenario that we’ve built little walled gardens to live in, gardens where all the plants are dying. A walled desert.
At the Blaze youth leader conference last month, I found myself in a workshop that was supposed to be about building community in youth groups, but instead seemed more about how to draft an appropriate set of laws and by-laws for the group. (Only call them a “covenant” so that you can teach the kids a word in the Bible.) A three-page single-spaced typewritten covenant reviewed by a lawyer.
The message seemed to be to keep yourself safe from lawsuits and avoid being accused of criminal behavior at all costs, and that the worst thing that could happen in a youth group is for the leader to lose control.
After the workshop, I talked over dinner with a fellow youth leader named Amy from the Atlanta area. I don’t think we’d met before. After a bit of small talk, we started talking about the workshop. Amy wasn’t at that particular workshop, but she is a preschool teacher as well as a volunteer youth worker. She had a little different perspective, but the idea of avoiding risk at all cost bothered her too. The rules are that she should hardly ever touch the children in her class. She had protocols and guidelines to use to avoid being accused of despicable crimes that would cost her her job, her reputation, and possibly her freedom.
But Amy said that she could not be the kind of preschool teacher the world needed and still abide by those rules all the time. When a kid falls and cries, she takes him in her arms and soothes him, even if the rules say she shouldn’t.
She’s a preschool teacher, and to her, that means something. She and Tom and Abby and Garet and I are youth leaders, and to us, that means something. We are all Christians, and to us, that means something, and it’s often terrifying to live into that meaning.
The thing is, as Christians, we're not called to safety. We're called to the loving service to others that is obedience to God. Sure, if you can be loving AND safe, you should, and if you can minimize the risk, you should, but if you have to choose between being loving and being safe, then we Christians HAVE to choose love, even when that love is anything but safe. When we spend so much time worried about being safe, worried about what could happen, building our little walled garden, we aren't being faithful.
To be honest, I'm horribly frightened by this line of thought. It means that there is an awful lot on the line every time I take a breath as a Christian. I’m even more frightened when I see Jesus telling me pretty much the same thing.
Now, please get this straight. Jesus loves you with all his being, and God loves you with all God’s life, and the Holy Spirit loves you with everything the Spirit has, and nothing you do or don’t do will change that. We’re not talking about going to heaven or hell when you die. We’re talking about right here and now, and how it is because of God’s love that Jesus works to break our enchantment.
Yes, it’s not God who is enchanting us. We’re already enchanted.
You see, just like Ella in the story, there are commands that we find ourselves powerless to disobey. Those commands do not come from God.
We hear that we must value our worth by our wealth, and we hasten to obey, believing somehow that billionaires are worth more than school teachers or janitors.
We hear that we need to buy more stuff to be pretty enough, or handsome enough, or tasteful enough, and we hasten to obey, and pull out our credit cards.
We hear that we must keep our nation and family safe at all costs, and we hasten to obey, doing whatever it takes to intimidate and even kill anyone who might in any way be considered a threat.
We hear that the fires of damnation await those who don’t believe certain things, and we hasten to obey those who tell us stand at attention and march off to war against the infidel, whether the infidel is Muslim, Jewish, or even a fellow Christian who doesn’t interpret the Bible as we do. We are told that this is how we prove our love of Jesus, and in our enchantment we say, “Your will is my command!”
Now I’m under this spell too. I worry about my job,
my kid’s college education,
my church’s future,
my health.
I come from a long line of very proficient and prodigious worriers.
I want you to like this sermon.
I want you to trust me with our kids.
I don’t want to lose the respect of my colleagues, my family, or my church.
None of that is wrong in itself, I guess, but it often gets in the way of my being a loving, faithful disciple of the Christ, and then, it is wrong.
So, maybe I’m not the one to tell you how to break the spell.
Maybe Jesus is, though. I think Jesus is telling us as plainly as he can how to become, well, disenchanted. Jesus is telling us to act as if the enchantment were already broken. As much as we are able, we should get free of the comfort of our spell and show love even if showing love is stupid. When we care for each other even when there is no reward, and maybe even a punishment, the spell weakens. When we stand up to injustice, even when it isn’t popular and doesn’t seem to do any good, the magic lessens.
Instead of feeling threatened, and then angry, when we see that our adversary is more like us than we thought, and pray for them, and even try to forgive them, the sorcery decreases. Instead of fearing that we will die alone an childless, that we are ugly and unlovable, and treat people of the other sex as tools to abate those fears, when we try to see that our fears are unfounded, that we are beautiful and loved already, the black art fades and we see the world for what it is.
Living this way will seem pointless almost all the time. This is a broken world, broken far beyond what any of us recognize or even can imagine.
But this is God’s world, and it will be healed. It will be freed from its spell because God will free it. God will free us. And Christ has promised us that when we follow him, when we obey his commands, we become a part of that freedom, even when we’re still under the spell.
What would the world be like for us if we could truly see the starving Mexican woman with the same eyes as we see the sick co-worker in the hospital? What choices would we make if we could somehow get past the idea that it’s either us or them? What kind of people would we be if we really saw the world as Jesus does, as it really is?
Maybe we can try and find out.
Peace be with you.
Enchanted, I’m Sure
Text: Matthew 5:38-42
A while back, I read a book called Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. Emily suggested it. They made a movie of it later, but, as usual, I think the book is better.It’s about a girl named Ella who is under a spell which forces her to be obedient: She must obey any direct order given to her. If you tell her to “wait right there,” she is glued to the spot and cannot move, even to save her life. If you tell her to “stop talking,” she is unable to say anything.
As you can probably guess, Ella is not happy about this enchantment. Almost everyone who knows about it uses it to bully and take advantage of Ella.
“Do the dishes.”
“Clean the floors.”
“Give me your late mother’s pendant.”
And much worse.
It’s not much fun to feel used and not valued. And sometimes obedience can feel like being used. Anyone who’s had a boss they didn’t like, or, even sometimes a boss they did like, knows that obedience is not always a fun choice. A lot of people aspire to be president; few people aspire to be a buck private in the army.
There are exceptions. If you know how to end poverty worldwide, and you can prove to me you do, then I’ll gladly let you tell me what I need to do to help. An airplane pilot wants the air traffic controller to tell him which runway to use, not ask him what he thinks. We’re usually OK with being obedient to someone who we think has a better grasp of what’s going on than we do.
Even so, I think one thing that turns a lot of people off about the Bible is that God keeps trying to get in your face and tell you what to do. I mean, the Bible starts off well enough with all those great Genesis stories, but then, once we get into Exodus, a whole lot of rules and commands start cropping up, until soon God’s telling us what to eat and how to run our business and how to treat our family. Pretty soon, we read about God’s prophets either giving more commands or whining about how no one listens to them. I mean, come on!
When people hear about Jesus, who died for us,
is our friend,
is loving and kind to children,
tells nice stories about forgiveness and love,
I don’t think they want to hear him giving orders. It’s not my favorite thing about Jesus, I’ll tell you. And yet, just when Matthew starts getting into the swing of things, that’s just what Jesus does: starts telling us how to live.
And when I read Jesus’s commands for us, right here in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, I kind of feel like Ella. Jesus seems to be commanding us to be doormats, taken advantage of by every two-bit bully or megalomaniac that comes along. I mean, come on, Jesus, show a little common sense!
Turning the other cheek, in my experience, gets you slapped again.
If we really gave our coats to everyone who asked for our cloaks, we’d soon go bankrupt buying winter apparel.
If we really went the second mile with everyone who forced us to go one, lots of people would be force-marching us, and we might never go where we wanted again.
If we really gave to everyone who begged us, we’d see nothing but beggars, until we were beggars ourselves.
But this is the Sermon on the Mount, remember. None of it makes much sense.
It starts with the Beatitudes, and Jesus saying we’re blessed by God when we mourn and when people lie about us. Yeah, Jesus, that’s just how it feels: like I’m blessed.
We’re told that if we’re going to enter the kingdom of heaven, we’ve got to be more righteous than the people who get PAID to be righteous (the Pharisees and teachers). Really? Come on!
Not only can’t we murder each other (which is actually pretty sensible, I think), we can’t even be angry. It’s not enough to avoid adultery (again, pretty sensible), but we can’t even be physically attracted to other people. We’re not even allowed to swear out an oath. In other words, it looks like we’re supposed to be these first class wimps, never getting mad, never getting romantic, living in some kind of Fantasy Land where lollipops and sunshine are all around and money just appears in your pocket when you need it.
Who can do all these commandments, Jesus? Who even wants to? Isn’t this just switching one set of impossible to follow rules (the ones the Old Testament keeps going on about) for another set, this one even outside the realm of common sense?
This has to be a misprint in the Bible. These commands are ludicrous! Jesus MUST have had something else in mind. Someone must have heard him wrong.
I mean, we all know what Christianity means: go to church, say your prayers, write some checks and make a decision about who your Lord and Savior is. Maybe help out at a homeless shelter or give blood when you’ve got the chance, or do a mission trip or something now and then. There’s nothing wimpy in that. In fact, it’s taking control of your life. YOU decide who your Lord and Savior is. YOU say the prayer, write the check, get up on Sunday. This is what we keep hearing Christianity is: a way for you to take control of your life, get in good with God, and get yourself a nice house in heaven when this life is over, and a nice house on earth before then.
Now, it’s tempting to reason our way out of this. We could say that turning the other cheek was a form of defiance, forcing the attacker to slap us with his palm, rather than the back of his hand. We could say that walking the second mile was a form of service to the next poor schmo who would get forced to walk. We could say that Jesus clearly didn’t mean that we should lend money to anyone, just the people who’ve demonstrated to us that they have a good credit rating. We could turn these commands into suggestions, little tidbits that might help us as we go on our journey toward respect and success.
But what if Jesus really meant every word of the Sermon on the Mount? What if Jesus is telling us that it’s not enough just to sit around and talk about how we believe in God and how we’ve said the right prayers? What if Jesus is telling us that following God’s intention is more than claiming that we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior? What if it’s more than putting on a show? What if being a Christian means actually doing something that seems incredibly stupid?
What if being a follower of the risen Christ means not calculating a return on investment of everything in our life? What if being “saved” is not about being safe?
What if being “saved” is not about being safe?
I think Jesus is telling us that our whole idea of the world is wrong. The Fantasy Land is the world we think we live in. The commands Jesus give seem absurd because our understanding of the world is just plain wrong. We look at the losers of this world and call them winners, and we look at the winners and call them losers. We think being a loud-mouth who can shoot three-pointers is better than being a humble man who can’t. We think a vain, shallow woman who has great hair and a nice figure is better than a thoughtful, kind woman who has neither.
We think the way to free a country from a dictator is with a 4-star general, and not with a facebook page. And we’re wrong!
Trust is for suckers, we think, and we’re wrong.
Faith is for the blind, we think, and we’re wrong.
We act like being powerful is more important than being merciful, and we’re wrong.
We act like being responsible is more important than being caring, and we’re wrong.
We act like being smart is more important than being compassionate, and we’re wrong.
We act like being strong is more important than being generous, and we’re wrong.
We act like being safe and secure and happy is the ultimate goal of life, and we’re so wrong that doesn’t even seem like the best word any more.
We’re so certain that everyone who talks to a child is a kidnapper or pedophile, that everyone who asks for a dollar is a drug dealer, that every teenage boy is a shoplifter. We’re so sure of the worst possible scenario that we’ve built little walled gardens to live in, gardens where all the plants are dying. A walled desert.
At the Blaze youth leader conference last month, I found myself in a workshop that was supposed to be about building community in youth groups, but instead seemed more about how to draft an appropriate set of laws and by-laws for the group. (Only call them a “covenant” so that you can teach the kids a word in the Bible.) A three-page single-spaced typewritten covenant reviewed by a lawyer.
The message seemed to be to keep yourself safe from lawsuits and avoid being accused of criminal behavior at all costs, and that the worst thing that could happen in a youth group is for the leader to lose control.
After the workshop, I talked over dinner with a fellow youth leader named Amy from the Atlanta area. I don’t think we’d met before. After a bit of small talk, we started talking about the workshop. Amy wasn’t at that particular workshop, but she is a preschool teacher as well as a volunteer youth worker. She had a little different perspective, but the idea of avoiding risk at all cost bothered her too. The rules are that she should hardly ever touch the children in her class. She had protocols and guidelines to use to avoid being accused of despicable crimes that would cost her her job, her reputation, and possibly her freedom.
But Amy said that she could not be the kind of preschool teacher the world needed and still abide by those rules all the time. When a kid falls and cries, she takes him in her arms and soothes him, even if the rules say she shouldn’t.
She’s a preschool teacher, and to her, that means something. She and Tom and Abby and Garet and I are youth leaders, and to us, that means something. We are all Christians, and to us, that means something, and it’s often terrifying to live into that meaning.
The thing is, as Christians, we're not called to safety. We're called to the loving service to others that is obedience to God. Sure, if you can be loving AND safe, you should, and if you can minimize the risk, you should, but if you have to choose between being loving and being safe, then we Christians HAVE to choose love, even when that love is anything but safe. When we spend so much time worried about being safe, worried about what could happen, building our little walled garden, we aren't being faithful.
To be honest, I'm horribly frightened by this line of thought. It means that there is an awful lot on the line every time I take a breath as a Christian. I’m even more frightened when I see Jesus telling me pretty much the same thing.
Now, please get this straight. Jesus loves you with all his being, and God loves you with all God’s life, and the Holy Spirit loves you with everything the Spirit has, and nothing you do or don’t do will change that. We’re not talking about going to heaven or hell when you die. We’re talking about right here and now, and how it is because of God’s love that Jesus works to break our enchantment.
Yes, it’s not God who is enchanting us. We’re already enchanted.
You see, just like Ella in the story, there are commands that we find ourselves powerless to disobey. Those commands do not come from God.
We hear that we must value our worth by our wealth, and we hasten to obey, believing somehow that billionaires are worth more than school teachers or janitors.
We hear that we need to buy more stuff to be pretty enough, or handsome enough, or tasteful enough, and we hasten to obey, and pull out our credit cards.
We hear that we must keep our nation and family safe at all costs, and we hasten to obey, doing whatever it takes to intimidate and even kill anyone who might in any way be considered a threat.
We hear that the fires of damnation await those who don’t believe certain things, and we hasten to obey those who tell us stand at attention and march off to war against the infidel, whether the infidel is Muslim, Jewish, or even a fellow Christian who doesn’t interpret the Bible as we do. We are told that this is how we prove our love of Jesus, and in our enchantment we say, “Your will is my command!”
Now I’m under this spell too. I worry about my job,
my kid’s college education,
my church’s future,
my health.
I come from a long line of very proficient and prodigious worriers.
I want you to like this sermon.
I want you to trust me with our kids.
I don’t want to lose the respect of my colleagues, my family, or my church.
None of that is wrong in itself, I guess, but it often gets in the way of my being a loving, faithful disciple of the Christ, and then, it is wrong.
So, maybe I’m not the one to tell you how to break the spell.
Maybe Jesus is, though. I think Jesus is telling us as plainly as he can how to become, well, disenchanted. Jesus is telling us to act as if the enchantment were already broken. As much as we are able, we should get free of the comfort of our spell and show love even if showing love is stupid. When we care for each other even when there is no reward, and maybe even a punishment, the spell weakens. When we stand up to injustice, even when it isn’t popular and doesn’t seem to do any good, the magic lessens.
Instead of feeling threatened, and then angry, when we see that our adversary is more like us than we thought, and pray for them, and even try to forgive them, the sorcery decreases. Instead of fearing that we will die alone an childless, that we are ugly and unlovable, and treat people of the other sex as tools to abate those fears, when we try to see that our fears are unfounded, that we are beautiful and loved already, the black art fades and we see the world for what it is.
Living this way will seem pointless almost all the time. This is a broken world, broken far beyond what any of us recognize or even can imagine.
But this is God’s world, and it will be healed. It will be freed from its spell because God will free it. God will free us. And Christ has promised us that when we follow him, when we obey his commands, we become a part of that freedom, even when we’re still under the spell.
What would the world be like for us if we could truly see the starving Mexican woman with the same eyes as we see the sick co-worker in the hospital? What choices would we make if we could somehow get past the idea that it’s either us or them? What kind of people would we be if we really saw the world as Jesus does, as it really is?
Maybe we can try and find out.
Peace be with you.
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