Through the lens of Ephesians, we see that there are unexpected aspects in our relationship with God that have more and farther reaching impact than we imagine. The countercultural impact of the gospel rocks the world in Paul’s time and in ours, and transforms our daily Christian walk.

Who’s really Great in God’s Kingdom? - a real Saint!

Jesus: "Change your way of thinking, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!" Thinking about Saint Patrick’s day. Also about the growth of faith in Jesus in Asia, Africa, etc. The distinctive forms of churches, music, organization, architecture.

Is St. Patrick a saint? In what sense? Someone canonized? Someone great in Christianity? What does that mean? The word "saints" is used in many NT translations. What does it mean? "Holy" (hagios)! Is that some special achievement in religion? Martyrdom?

Jesus and the Law and the Prophets

Many in Jesus time wanted to be God’s "holy people." Most movements wanted to create a purified people. Especially the Pharisees with Teachers of Law, famous for rigorous obedience to Torah. They condemned Jesus’ lack of rigor - "tax collectors & sinners."

Jesus in Mt. 5:17-19 insists on filling/fulfilling, doing and teaching the Law & Prophets.
He sounds like a Pharisee or scribe! But then he insists they don’t even come close to God’s kingdom. Their rigorism can’t define the Law or God’s kingdom. Then he begins a radical challenge to their entire vision of filling/doing/teaching the Law means!

Anger and reconciliation, desire & control, power over others, truthfulness, resisting evil, loving enemies. Many still would rather be scribes than take on Jesus’ challenge.

Becoming Saints - How do I apply for the Title?

In the NT "saints" is always plural. Paul, Peter are never called Holy/Saint Paul, et al. Being part of the saints is sharing in the challenge of new life given by Jesus, brought to power by his death and resurrection. It is a gift given by Jesus, but the gift is a life- long process of transformation and growth. The saints may yet need a lot of work.

The community, church, is the place of "people made holy" - learning, practicing Jesus’ change of thinking. Often a long, arduous process. Jesus’ gifts are for equipping saints to embody Jesus’ self-giving love in service and grow into maturity defined by Jesus.

Saint Patrick - Was he?

Yes, one of the saints, but not because he was canonized! Not as the Patron Saint of Ireland. Not as a wonderworker. That gets him parades, legends (snakes). But read his "Confession" - no amazing powers except the power of Christ transforming his life.

He was born on the edge of the Roman empire, when (c. 400) Theodosius made it all "Christian" But Patrick grew up a Christian un-believer in Britain. At 16, he was captured and enslaved. As a slave in Ireland he found faith / mission. He lived it in his own time in Ireland beyond the empire in a land of warlord violence when the church was accommodating to imperial violence with new scribal rules and power seekers.

He knew Jesus had given him life, and it transformed his thinking and action - "saints." It’s the same process in NYC or in churches in Indonesia, China, India, Nigeria. Scribal rules always tempt, but Jesus still calls us to be "saints" growing into his own fullness.

Jesus’ Focus on Love. Enemies? Really?

Jesus: "Change your way of thinking, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!" [Mt 4:17] Central and distinctive to this change/repentance is Jesus’ emphatic teaching on love.

The climax of Jesus’ six distinctives ("You’ve heard...") is most striking. It starts with "Love your enemies" and ends with being "perfect." Radical repentance, counter-cultural. It assumes good human love and pushes toward something more, being God’s children.

Healing - Transforming Love

Jesus stresses healthy self-love. I want my life! 2nd command -"as yourself" [Mt 22:35-40]. But he’s very realistic. Self-love often distorted. We’re masters, victims, self-hating / glorifying. 1. Assume we’re broken & need healing. 2. Value God’s work / pearls.
3. Actively ask, seek, knock. 4. God loves us as a true Father his children: Gives Life.

God becomes central-God! I love myself as God’s beloved child. Center of ethical life.

Love as Empathy with God and People

Jesus actually challenges us to think like God. God’s wide-ranging, inclusive love, like sunshine and rain! Really? Image of a loving, self-giving Father. He gives freedom to act, judge, measure. We set our own judgment. But God wants healing, forgiveness.

"You shall be perfect...!" Really?! A command and a promise. You are more than you imagine. God’s image, God’s child. Don’t settle for broken love-hate life. God knows & Jesus shows that real life is in self-giving love that encompasses even enemies!

Start close, go far! Love each other. Love neighbor. Pray for your oppressor. Love enemies. Learn God’s freedom & joy in forgiveness, and make healing, reconciliation possible.

Love as Passionate, Thoughtful, Active

We begin by growing in passionate Love for God - heart, soul, mind. Creator of life, beauty. Loves us when we make ourselves enemies! Comes to give Life. God is Love. A vision that holds everything together, centered in God, active in our daily living.

Jesus’ Golden Rule is his expression of the 2nd Command. Start from your healing self. At your best, what do you want from people? Think! Respect? Help? Honesty? Love? Community? Justice? ... Don’t wait. Go out and do that for them. Seek God’s Life!

What are Spiritual Practices for anyway?

Jesus: "Change your way of thinking, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!" In the Sermon on the Mount he focuses that repentance/change of thinking. He talks about very basic challenges: anger, desire, truthfulness, enemies, anxiety, judging others, etc.

He focuses regular religious practices: alms, prayer, fasting. We often think of spiritual disciplines as a way of self-control, finding centering, peace, authentic self, etc.

Jesus always focuses on a living, vibrant dialogue with God. God who is intimate, hidden, knowing. The Abba who is life-giving creator, who is reality itself. The perennial dangers are self-centered distortion and the temptation to use piety as performance. Jesus’ concern is not my sense of authenticity, often distorted, but reality in relation to a God who knows me, who is and gives life. I save my life only by losing/giving it.

Real Prayer and Fasting and Dialogue with God

We begin this afternoon a period of Shared Prayer. Our community prayers flow from experience of personal dialogue with God. Very practical. Not new rules but focus on real relationship. Fathers in ancient world were often controlling, public-oriented. Jesus remakes "Father" as shared image for creative, intimate, challenging God.

Prayer is seeking to know that astonishing, loving, life-remaking God in intimate terms. Jesus focuses on seeking God’s unity of earth and Heaven, seeing all that I work for and gain as God’s gift, realizing the challenge of forgiveness and reconciliation. Prayer is not to make us calm, but to reorient us, change us toward God’s reality.

Fasting is good, but also vulnerable to dangers. It is a language not of self-control or display, but of dialogue with God who understands the language of all practices.

Embodying the Good News in Spiritual Discipline

Jesus shows spiritual practices in new places. He calls a tax-collector who’s not expecting God’s kingdom. He eats with "tax-collectors and sinners." He challenged disciples to see people through the eyes of God’s love and desire for relationship. Often piety led to exclusivity. Jesus says that God has always desired Mercy (Hesed).

The Good News of God’s Kingdom also meant the discipline of celebration. Fasting had its place, but discipleship was a wedding feast. New cloth, New wine - both changed things. They didn’t fit old containers. Jesus is preparing them for the reality that is breaking in that they can’t imagine. Their Father/Creator in secret and in public is remaking the world. "Let your kingdom come ... as in heaven, so also on earth!"

Walter Edwards leads the congregation in a meditation on Black History and the impact of African Americans on the church. Along with Larry Mudd, Carl Garrison, Mary Joseph, Adolf Everett, and Alva Burton. A vital message of hope, repentance, and racial consciousness.

Simple Reality in a Relationship with God

Jesus: "Change your way of thinking, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!" (Mt 4:17). "Kingdom" points to God’s "Anointed king" - Messiah - Christ. A challenge to every other kingdom: Herod, Rome, myself, the world. But the kingdom is of God’s realm, "the heavens," permeating all reality, but unrecognized. To people, "kingdom" meant power, conquest, glory, taxing. In SoM Jesus shows God’s Kgd: self-giving love, grace, generosity.

Through teaching prayer, Jesus takes us to the heart of a relationship with God - simple, real. It’s heart is the secret place, pointing to the inmost self. God’s heavenly realm is there in secret. "Your Father" is present, sees, knows, and responds. God’s glory is not for show.

But the dialogue of prayer is profound, all-encompassing! We speak our desire to change our thinking to align with God’s will: God’s Kingdom coming on our earth as in God’s heavens. The union of God’s rule with God’s creation becoming reality personally and universally.

Learning to Think and See from Behind Jesus

Mt shows the challenge of all this when Peter affirms Jesus as Messiah/King. Peter’s sure he’s leading Jesus into his glorious future. But when Jesus tells that future in terms of God’s Suffering Servant (Isa 53), Peter hears only death & corrects him. Jesus is better than that!

Jesus tells Peter to get behind him. The possibilities of God’s future are far more powerful than Peter imagines. Let Jesus lead, even into suffering, being killed, being raised. So every disciple must stay behind Jesus to learn the future: deny self / change thinking (not asceticism), take up cross (as rebel to all empire), follow Jesus, God’s Anointed King.

In vv 27-28, Jesus retells the same future in terms of the Son of Man in Dan 7. It sounds so different that we often read it as "second coming," but it’s Jesus’ death, resurrection, & enthronement with all authority (Mt 28:18-20). The King gives fittingly to each person.

The ultimate gift is our life/soul/self (psyché)! We think we know it & can save it. But we can hardly imagine what our Creator can do. Get behind Jesus, follow and experience.

The Quest to Know Jesus and in Him Know Myself

In Phi 3, Paul tells his own experience of this adventure. He had rejected Jesus! But he was confronted by the crucified & risen Jesus. Through Jesus, all of life’s aims looked different:

"The power of his resurrection" - that our fragile human life can be united to God’s eternal life, starting now by his Spirit. "Shaped by his death" - God’s self-giving love defines a life of grace. We’re always behind Jesus, called to gain our life as a quest that he leads!

Shaping People to Learn the Kingdom of God

Jesus challenged people: "Change your way of thinking, for the kingdom of the heavens has come near!" (Mt 4:17). Is it a kingdom rebellion against Rome? A new way to strategize?

But Jesus didn’t gather strategists or theologians, but fishermen! Not purification in the desert but crowds in the towns. His sign was not a Zealot strike force but healing for anyone.

People set Jesus inside their own understanding of life, good, power, justice. They loved him but .... Those closest, like Peter, affirm him as Messianic King! But when Jesus tells what "Messiah" means, "No!" - they think Jesus doesn’t understand his own greatness. (Satan!)

Jesus begins training them/us to a new, challenging way to see / think about everything, a new way to live in the world - Sermon on Mt. To "think the things of God," to see all things human as a gift from God. To love and seek God’s kingdom! God’s love at the center.

Why does Jesus tell Us to Do the Impossible?

Jesus is changing the basic possibilities, hopes of human existence by Life, Cross, Res. Spirit. But Jesus knows it’s nearly impossible for a human not to be self-centered - it’s built in.

We look at stuff and think how much we have, need, want. Generosity is a good tool for gaining approval. Everything can be used for self. Our sense of justice is first self-focused.

Jesus’ teaching takes on our natural understanding of fairness for ourselves and our stuff. He calls us to practice acting in ways that treat everything, including ourselves, as a gift that we hold not as a possession but as something through which we can learn the generosity of the Giver. It takes practice, practice, practice. We never just fall into understanding and living God’s radical grace! I’ve got stuff. It’s mine. I’ve got to protect it (for my family, etc.). It means not being fair. Treating others not by how they treat us but by how God treats us.

We call our offering: "Worship through Giving." It’s in very practical forms of generosity - intentionally living below our means in order to be able to give to others - that we learn to worship the God whose very nature is self-giving love expressed in giving self in Jesus.

Learning to Recognize Grace from God’s Generosity

Paul includes an amazing word-picture in 2 Cor. 8 in relation to gathering help for Jerusalem believers. The Gospel’s effect on Gentile believers in Macedonia under persecution. A miracle of heart transformation - God’s Grace (charis) given to them became their life.

It became focused through their affliction and poverty. Their suffering pushed them to see what was really at stake in their faith - what really matters, lasts. They knew an abundant joy that rose in them from the gift of God’s love/grace/generosity. That joy sustained them in suffering and created a longing to live a life that acted out the same grace they received.

They found themselves part of a new story - God’s kingdom - that made sense of their lives. They had been exiled from true life, without hope. One who was rich beyond imagination came to share their exile and poverty and set them free to share his life and abundance.

Jesus’ teaching breaks our familiar shackles, so we experience the freedom of God’s generosity.

Behold Your King!

Mt has been preparing us to see Jesus as the Messiah (Anointed king) as he brings in God’s Kingdom: New teaching and power (Mt 9:35). 2000 yr genealogy. King Herod (empire and violence) and the infant Messiah (sought by nations, exiled, sharing grief). Faith in God who fulfills promises in unexpected ways. John proclaims repentance and kingdom, but confronts religious leaders. But John points beyond himself. God’s anointing with Spirit at baptism. Like Israel, Jesus is tested in the wilderness by the Accuser, the world’s way of thinking.

Now John is handed over to Antipas’ prison. Jesus takes up his message on one level, but transforms it. He leaves the wilderness for the towns of Galilee, tribes of Zebulun, Naphtali.

A Transformed Vision of Repentance

Mt uses Isa 9:1-2. Light breaking out in unexpected places. Darkness and light: Insight into what is really happening. Isaiah’s 700+ yrs-old vision are filled up by this new/old story.

A vision awaits filling up. Antipas arrests John to stop his Kingdom message. Like is father Herod responded to the infant. The Romans push in with power. How do you fight darkness?

What is real light? Much of Israel wanted violent resistance to violence. Fight Antipas and Rome with their weapons. It’s the only reality. Is there a different way? Can new light really dawn?

Jesus calls for repentance: Changing course. Learning to think differently, act differently. God really is king. Life changes. Jesus teaches that change of thought and action in Sermon on Mt.

Call and Response - How do You Prepare for a Kingdom?

Think about it. You’re announcing a dangerous message of a Kingdom. You want it to work. What do you do? You gather resources: Best advisors, leaders, teachers. Plan strategy of attack. The old kingdom won’t just surrender. Jesus calls fishermen! They’re not ready. They must follow and be transformed into new identity. Leave behind father/normal allegiences.

What if you were a fisherman? Would you follow? This is crazy! A rebel kingdom with no army? Would you risk life, livelihood, family? But they hear something, see something in Jesus. They bring with them their old expectations, dreams, but they get close behind Jesus.

Nobody around Jesus has in their mind a paradigm for what is happening, what Jesus is doing. He’s not recruiting to take over an old kingdom. God’s kingdom’s here, breaking in - by means they can’t yet imagine. Jesus doesn’t seek advisors who already "know," but people who can really learn and live out a new vision. It’s a long process in every human being.

The Crowds and the Sign of Healing

If you’re trying to bring a new kingdom, you don’t want to alert present authorities. But Jesus proclaims the Kingdom as Good News throughout Galilee: "A Great Light" shines in the darknesss. He’s not yet in Jerusalem, but he certainly makes no secret of what he’s doing.

But he doesn’t recruit a guerilla army in the hills (like the Maccabees or Zealots). Healing is the sign of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom! All kinds! People oppressed by everything from pain to seizures, paralysis, and demons. This is a kingdom that frees people freely with a level and kind of authority that not even Rome’s Emperor could wield. An outbreak of life and hope!

And people come with all their needs, not for revenge but for life. From Gentile areas and Jewish. God’s kingdom is breaking in. Totally different! Can we even imagine what the signs point to?

Tempting and Testing - The Coming of the Accuser

God celebrated Jesus and gave a sign of the Spirit’s presence/anointing with him at baptism. That Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be put to the test/tempted (peirasmos). One word for both harsh, negative "testing" and alluring, deceptively attractive "temptation."

Both challenge integrity, commitment, faithfulness. We experience tests and temptations as deeply personal. Here we’re given an external view, like Job 1-2. The Satan, the Accuser (diabolos, slanderer, devil) seems to appear in personal confrontation. God’s voice... Satan’s.

The narrative is stylized, simple, formulaic. It avoids taking us into Jesus’ psychology - like our inner struggles where we experience the core of testing/temptation. Paul and James focus on desire, law, human choice and weakness. Sin personified. Desires from within.

Here, we’re given a glimpse of the coming battle as Jesus "binds the strong man." (Mt. 12:28-29) A curtain is pulled back. Jesus has fasted for 40 days. The Accuser thinks he’ll be weakened.

The Test - Challenge and Response

The first two challenges strike directly at Jesus’ experience at baptism: "If you are the Son of God." Is it true? Use it. Show it. If it’s doubtful, prove it. You can’t trust something that’s not demonstrated. Turn stones to bread for yourself. Force God’s hand, ask for a sign that can’t be doubted. Make God prove himself. He can do it. He’s even promised. Israel after Exodus faced testing in the wilderness and failed. Now God responds, I’ll take it for you.

The third is the fundamental challenge of One God. God and Mammon. It’s faced by all of us on all levels. Can we see God in the face of Jesus? Who are we? Who is God? Can God be Love? We face the challenge every day in ordinary choices that we make, anxieties we refuse.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, "The Grand Inquisitor": He sees these three temptations embodying the whole history of humanity. Humans are too weak to face them. The church, to succeed, chose to reject Jesus’ responses and take the side of the Accuser.

God and the Human Condition

Human choices from Eve to International politics to religious identity to our most private prayers and aspitations all reflect the nature of humans as "tested," "tempted." We go against our own ideals. In Jesus, God joins us in the human struggle and gives us hope.

The Anticipation and Surprise of John the Baptist

In our text we hear the voice of Jesus himself for the first time in Mt. After a 30-yr gap in our knowledge, Jesus comes to John to be baptized and amazing things begin to happen.

John was a prophet like Elijah in wilderness pronouncing God’s coming judgment - especially on Pharisees (Law) and Sadducees (Temple): "brood of vipers" (3:7). He calls all to repent, be baptized to prepare "the way of the Lord" for the in-breaking Kingdom of Heaven.

John proclaims the one who will follow him: his power, worthiness. Beyond plunging in water, he will plunge you in Spirit and Fire. John’s words echo words of scripture in Mal., Isa., etc. The coming one will embody God’s judgment, sifting, gathering wheat, burning chaff. He’s ready.

Then Jesus comes. It doesn’t seem right. He should take over, not be baptized. He should show power, fire, judgment. John expects the Messiah that so many envisioned. Jesus surprises! Not by being more glorious than we expected, but by being one of the crowd of people.

Filling up God’s Faithful Righteousness

Jesus’ first words are to touch that surprise that runs throughout the Gospel. "Permit it ... to fill up all righteousness." Not to rigorously obey commands, but to fill up in a new way God’s faithful righteousness to his people and the world. Jesus is not concerned to establish his glory but to be with his people. In scripture, God delivered from slavery, judged sin by exile and return, created a people. Mt shows the infant Jesus sharing the exile, alienation from home. Now Jesus stands among the crowds confessing their sins, sharing their baptism. He recognizes the struggle, doubt, longing, and misunderstanding, and begins to transform it.

God comes among us, as on the Mount (Mt 5-7). We’re weak and broken, but he never talks down to us. He calls us to be light of the world. Fill up the Law as Pharisees never can. Know the God who’s with you in secret, who leads you not to be anxious, to love your enemies, not to judge. Jesus rejects the old rigorist righteousness. The Law is not God final gift but is aimed toward a goal, the Kingdom of God breaking in in Jesus’ work and teaching.

A Widening Vision of God’s Presence

When Jesus is plunged in the Jordan, humbly like the sinful people, God breaks forth in signs of celebration. Not descending fire of judgment, but a dove, a symbol since Noah of shalom, renewed life. This is God’s Spirit upon Jesus, anointing the Servant for his true but surprising Messianic work. A voice from "heaven" the source of the Kingdom, echoes scripture with joy: Jesus is the beloved Son, the Messiah, the one who embodies God’s delight in love.

In Jesus, God begins to reveal more fully his unity and complexity in Father, Son and Spirit. This is the deep "God with us." The Gospel ends with Jesus’ call for us to share in God by our own plunging/baptism into Father, Son, Spirit. Mt starts the journey: Jesus stands among us sinners for baptism, the God who shows his ultimate love and power in cross and resurrection.