WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.940 Chuck DeGroat, who has a background as a pastor and as a therapist and as a seminary professor, 00:00:05.419 --> 00:00:10.700 and he spent a lot of time thinking about and walking with people through the ideas that we've 00:00:10.700 --> 00:00:15.419 been considering this weekend around wholeheartedness. And so it's our delight to welcome him here to 00:00:15.419 --> 00:00:26.740 preach today. Thanks. Thank you. Can we pray together? Let's pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 00:00:26.739 --> 00:00:34.879 you see us. You see us in the midst of our hiddenness, and you know us. You see us in our 00:00:34.879 --> 00:00:43.119 shame, and you long for freedom within us. You see us this morning as we come, some of us full of joy 00:00:43.119 --> 00:00:51.320 and anticipating a word from you, and others of us full of doubt, having had conversations that 00:00:51.320 --> 00:00:55.459 perhaps bring things up that are uncomfortable, and wondering, is there a word for me? 00:00:56.740 --> 00:01:02.160 Wherever you find us this morning, Lord, remind us of your profound love. Remind us that you 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:10.620 pursue us, that you love us, that you died, and you were raised for us. In the name of Jesus. Amen. 00:01:12.079 --> 00:01:16.760 Well, once again, it's so good to be with you. This has been a good weekend, hasn't it? 00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:23.300 Have the conversations been good for you here and there after yesterday morning? I mean, 00:01:23.299 --> 00:01:28.939 I've talked to a number of you throughout the day yesterday and yesterday evening, and it just feels 00:01:28.939 --> 00:01:35.359 like there's something churning, and that's a really good thing, and I hope you leave with that, 00:01:35.420 --> 00:01:43.459 and the conversations continue. And I really like this crowd. Today's the feast day. Do you know 00:01:43.459 --> 00:01:49.679 what feast day is? Do we talk about feast days? Of course, you're Anglicans. You love your feast days. 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:56.280 Today's the feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, the great 16th century reformer. And she once said, 00:01:56.940 --> 00:02:04.060 from silly devotions and sour-faced saints, Lord, deliver us. And I feel like I've been delivered. 00:02:04.300 --> 00:02:11.600 I'm with people who are joyful in the Lord, and they know that joy both in Christ and with one 00:02:11.599 --> 00:02:18.699 another. And so this has been a real blessing to me to be with you all. So thank you for that. 00:02:19.759 --> 00:02:27.699 I want to introduce very briefly the brother of the legendary Jane Olson, my friend Andy Bast here. 00:02:28.819 --> 00:02:34.519 Andy Bast and I are colleagues at Western Theological Seminary. Andy is kind of like, 00:02:34.900 --> 00:02:39.219 he's got so many talents that we don't know what to do with him. He's like a strategic initiatives 00:02:39.219 --> 00:02:45.520 leader, sort of envisioning the future, and he raises money for the seminary. He was recently 00:02:45.520 --> 00:02:51.159 involved in a worship project called Porter's Gate, a faith and vocation project. He wrote one of the 00:02:51.159 --> 00:02:59.060 songs on it. So he's a legend, and you have him here today. And so I'm really grateful to have my good 00:02:59.060 --> 00:03:07.379 friend and colleague here this morning. That's it. Anything else? Did I miss? No. This morning, 00:03:07.379 --> 00:03:12.199 I want to reflect on Matthew chapter 5 as a way of coming full circle to this conversation on 00:03:12.199 --> 00:03:19.879 wholeheartedness. Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, present a vision for flourishing in the world, 00:03:19.979 --> 00:03:27.460 a vision of the kingdom of God, as N.T. Wright says. And I believe that they sort of bring us 00:03:27.460 --> 00:03:34.579 to the conversation that we've been hovering in and around over the last 24, 36 hours. And that's, 00:03:34.580 --> 00:03:39.540 how do we move from a life of hiddenness to a life of wholeness? How do we move from a life of 00:03:39.540 --> 00:03:46.020 fragmentation to a life of wholeness, wholeheartedness? And I believe that there's a vision of this 00:03:46.020 --> 00:03:51.980 right here in these Beatitudes. I've spent a lot of time with the Beatitudes over the years. I used to 00:03:51.980 --> 00:03:58.300 teach on some of this stuff. I did a sermon series about 15 years ago on this, and I had an inkling that 00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:03.260 it was sort of moving in this direction, and I've been preaching in and around this. And then a few 00:04:03.259 --> 00:04:08.879 weeks ago at the seminary where I teach, a scholar named Jonathan Pennington came in. Jonathan just 00:04:08.879 --> 00:04:14.840 wrote a book called The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing. And so I was a little bit nervous 00:04:14.840 --> 00:04:18.839 with this guy coming in because I thought he could just sort of debunk everything that I've thought 00:04:18.839 --> 00:04:25.199 about the Sermon on the Mount. And so came in, shared some time with us over lunch. There was a Q&A, 00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:31.139 and at one point he said, I believe that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes in particular, 00:04:31.139 --> 00:04:36.680 are a vision of wholeheartedness. Like I almost jumped out of my seat, you know? And like, 00:04:36.839 --> 00:04:41.419 you got to imagine now, like eight-year-old Chuck is active at this point inside, like, 00:04:41.639 --> 00:04:47.620 notice me, notice me, you know? And he hasn't read the book or anything like that. And so then a 00:04:47.620 --> 00:04:52.219 colleague of mine says, well, tell me what you mean by wholeheartedness. I'm not familiar with that 00:04:52.219 --> 00:04:59.680 language. And I'm like, dang it, you're my colleague, Han Luen. And so then I got up the courage to say, 00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:03.900 well, here's how I would understand it. It's the experience of our oneness and worthiness in Christ. 00:05:04.139 --> 00:05:09.560 And Jonathan and I got talking, and there was such a symbiosis. Is that the right word? 00:05:10.660 --> 00:05:17.519 And it was really gratifying to know that I think some of the work that I've done is so rooted in 00:05:17.519 --> 00:05:23.879 a vision of flourishing that we see playing out in a way that you might not automatically see if you 00:05:23.879 --> 00:05:33.000 read the Beatitudes from 1 to 10, right? These are situated in a kind of series of chapters that 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:38.240 recapitulate the Exodus story. And I don't want to go through all of that right now, but you probably 00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:46.120 remember King Herod, much like Pharaoh back in the day, anxious about this Messiah who's come along. 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:52.379 King Herod, who orders all children, I believe, under two years old to be murdered, right? And 00:05:52.379 --> 00:06:00.040 Jesus' family takes him, and they flee to Egypt. Sound familiar? And out of Egypt, Jesus comes. 00:06:00.480 --> 00:06:06.519 He's baptized, in a sense, through the Red Sea, right? There's the imagery there. And then goes out 00:06:06.519 --> 00:06:12.819 into a wilderness where he spends 40 days and 40 nights. Does that sound familiar to you? Isn't it 00:06:12.819 --> 00:06:16.639 interesting how the Bible does stuff like this, and you're reading along, you don't even see it? 00:06:16.639 --> 00:06:22.740 It retells, it re-narrates the Exodus story. And then we get to this point of Jesus calling 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:28.279 the disciples, and in a moment, what we're going to find is that Matthew 5 is this movement to a kind 00:06:28.279 --> 00:06:35.019 of new Sinai, a new law, a new vision of life together. But first, in Matthew chapter 4, Jesus calls 00:06:35.019 --> 00:06:39.699 these young disciples. Now, what you need to know about the disciples that you probably already know 00:06:39.699 --> 00:06:46.979 is that these are just teenage boys. These are teenagers. When we accept students into seminary, 00:06:47.060 --> 00:06:51.319 they're generally in their 20s. We end up doing psychological testing. We put them through the 00:06:51.319 --> 00:06:56.980 Enneagram. They're in groups. Like, I'm thinking, what are you doing, Jesus? No vetting process at all? 00:06:57.680 --> 00:07:02.339 You know, and he calls these young men to himself, and he says, follow me, and I will make you fishers of 00:07:02.339 --> 00:07:08.939 men. Can you imagine how they must have felt? Can you imagine what must have been stirring within them? 00:07:08.939 --> 00:07:14.300 These young men who probably would not have left their father's trade. These young men who probably 00:07:14.300 --> 00:07:20.100 would never have left their father's town, now being called by Messiah, who we've been waiting 00:07:20.100 --> 00:07:25.560 for for literally hundreds of years. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And then right 00:07:25.560 --> 00:07:32.439 on the heels of that, we read about the public ministry of Jesus, some of the biggest public 00:07:32.439 --> 00:07:38.560 ministry that Jesus does in Matthew 4, 23. Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:42.920 synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every 00:07:42.920 --> 00:07:49.040 sickness among all people. And so his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:55.879 the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniats, epileptics, paralytics, 00:07:55.920 --> 00:08:02.699 and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, 00:08:02.699 --> 00:08:10.339 and from beyond the Jordan. Can you imagine how these young men must have felt at this moment? 00:08:11.659 --> 00:08:17.879 Walking alongside Messiah, Messiah who's healing and preaching and teaching with power. These young 00:08:17.879 --> 00:08:23.539 men who never thought they'd leave their hometown, let alone see people from exotic places like the 00:08:23.539 --> 00:08:29.419 Decapolis. And maybe I'm reading into the text, but I'm thinking about conversations that they might 00:08:29.420 --> 00:08:33.340 have been having with one another. And maybe with some folks who are coming along, like maybe some 00:08:33.340 --> 00:08:38.659 young women who had sort of strolled along, like, yeah, we're with them. Sooner or later here, we're 00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:42.980 going to get the Jesus juice, you know, we're going to have the powers. We're going to take on Rome. 00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:47.879 We'll have our victory, but do you have a phone number? Like, can I look you up when I get back? 00:08:47.879 --> 00:08:54.519 You know, they're young men. That's the point. They're young men. And so Jesus then does something 00:08:54.519 --> 00:09:01.699 that no pastor has ever did before or since. It says in Matthew 5, 1, when Jesus saw the crowds, 00:09:02.059 --> 00:09:07.240 he went up the mountain. When he saw the crowds, like if Tommy saw the crowds, if I saw the crowds, 00:09:07.340 --> 00:09:14.500 if Dan saw the crowds, we'd run to the crowds. You know, that's what pastors do. But when Jesus sees 00:09:14.500 --> 00:09:23.220 the crowds, something's going on here. Maybe I need to take these young men, maybe this larger group of 00:09:23.220 --> 00:09:28.620 disciples who are following him at this point, and ascend up this hill and talk to them about the 00:09:28.620 --> 00:09:34.060 nature of the kingdom. What is this life of the kingdom? What is this life of flourishing? 00:09:34.420 --> 00:09:39.019 What does this life of wholeheartedness really look like? And Jesus says to them, 00:09:39.019 --> 00:09:44.399 blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs are the kingdom of God. Blessed are the poor in spirit. 00:09:45.100 --> 00:09:51.379 The patokos is the word, the poor. Blessed are the broken, you might say. Blessed are you when you've 00:09:51.379 --> 00:09:58.639 come to the end of yourself. Again, can you imagine what these young men must have been thinking? 00:09:59.159 --> 00:10:05.439 Are you talking about someone else? Blessed are the broken? You should be saying, blessed are the 00:10:05.439 --> 00:10:09.879 winners. We are the winners. We won the lottery. We're your disciples, and we're going to take on 00:10:09.879 --> 00:10:15.559 Rome together. Blessed are the broken? What are you talking about? It's sort of like, to my mind, 00:10:15.559 --> 00:10:21.639 the modern day equivalent of, accept Jesus and your life will go completely well. It'll all be good for 00:10:21.639 --> 00:10:27.819 you. But Jesus was suggesting something else. Sort of like where Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics 00:10:27.819 --> 00:10:33.659 Anonymous started. That in a sense, wholeness begins with your experience of powerlessness. 00:10:35.079 --> 00:10:40.259 Wholeness begins when you come to the end of yourselves. Yesterday, we talked about fragmentation, 00:10:40.259 --> 00:10:46.779 inner division, and finding our enoughness in all sorts of different things. Our achievements, 00:10:47.480 --> 00:10:53.299 our accomplishments, our relationships, our spirituality. But I think that what Jesus is 00:10:53.299 --> 00:10:57.460 saying is you've got to be broken of these things. You've got to be broken of these strategies, 00:10:57.700 --> 00:11:02.960 these things that you find yourself enough in. Blessed are the broken. Blessed are you when you come to 00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:08.460 the end of yourself. Okay, well now the disciples are thinking that's one doubt, but that's only one. 00:11:08.460 --> 00:11:13.060 Surely there are more beatitudes, and they've got to be a lot happier than that one. And then on the 00:11:13.060 --> 00:11:18.480 heels of that, Jesus says, blessed are the mourners, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the mourners? 00:11:18.940 --> 00:11:25.120 Are you kidding me? Are you following this right now? Blessed are the mourners? We've been waiting 00:11:25.120 --> 00:11:31.900 hundreds of years to celebrate, and now we're being invited to mourn? What are you talking about? 00:11:31.899 --> 00:11:40.860 The word here for mourning is a word that, well what it gets at is like taking all the gunk and yuck on the 00:11:40.860 --> 00:11:50.559 inside and bringing it outside into the light for God to see, so that the gunk, the junk, the pain, 00:11:50.679 --> 00:11:56.860 the brokenness can be healed. It's about opening up yourself. It's about revealing what's really going 00:11:56.860 --> 00:12:01.519 on in the inside. You see what's going on here? It's about wholeheartedness. It's about ending the 00:12:01.519 --> 00:12:07.899 inner divisions, the incongruency, the hiddenness. Take what you've hidden and bring it out into the 00:12:07.899 --> 00:12:14.060 open. In the Old Testament, this is called lament, right? This is called lament. It's about mourning. 00:12:14.200 --> 00:12:20.480 It's about grieving before the Lord. It's an invitation to a profound honesty before God. 00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:25.860 And they weren't living out of honesty. In fact, when I think about the four main Jewish groups 00:12:25.860 --> 00:12:32.200 during that time, they all had their own unique security strategies, you might call them, to deal 00:12:32.200 --> 00:12:37.899 with the ache of living in exile. The Sadducees with their political strategies, and the Pharisees 00:12:37.899 --> 00:12:43.580 with their moralism, and the Zealots who wanted to take up arms and march on Rome, and the Essenes who 00:12:43.580 --> 00:12:50.980 went out to the desert and just thought, well, let's just be morally pure. And into those movements, 00:12:50.980 --> 00:13:00.580 into those security strategies, Jesus says, no, come and mourn. Mourn the loss. Mourn the fact that you've been 00:13:00.580 --> 00:13:05.320 living out of these strategies, and there's a different way. There's a way of life. There's a way of flourishing 00:13:05.320 --> 00:13:10.500 offered to you. So he goes on, and he says, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:17.659 Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the meek? Like, shouldn't he be saying, blessed are the powerful? 00:13:17.659 --> 00:13:24.519 Don't we get that power that we just saw on display? Blessed are the meek? Now, oftentimes when people 00:13:24.519 --> 00:13:30.579 read this, they think meek sounds like weak, but that's not really what's going on here, actually. 00:13:31.319 --> 00:13:38.679 Meek is actually a word that gets at, in that culture, in that time, a wild horse who's sort of chaotic and 00:13:38.679 --> 00:13:44.980 going in all sorts of different directions, being tamed, not losing its strength, but its strength being 00:13:44.980 --> 00:13:51.080 devoted in a singular direction. Does that make sense? You know, so blessed are the meek is blessed 00:13:51.080 --> 00:13:56.980 are those who've been broken of their chaotic strategies for getting their needs met, for finding 00:13:56.980 --> 00:14:02.560 life in all sorts of other places, and whose heart is moved in a particular kind of direction. 00:14:03.320 --> 00:14:09.700 It's a movement toward wholeheartedness, a single-heartedness in life. Blessed are those who 00:14:09.700 --> 00:14:14.840 hunger for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Yesterday, we talked about scarcity and the way 00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:21.200 that we satisfy ourselves in the midst of scarcity. We try to be enough and do enough and consume 00:14:21.200 --> 00:14:31.580 enough and acquire enough. And into this, Jesus says, long more deeply. You've been satisfied for 00:14:31.580 --> 00:14:35.980 smaller things. I want you to be satisfied in bigger things. I mean, again, you can imagine 00:14:35.980 --> 00:14:42.340 these young men saying, Jesus, I thought that this would be the end of hunger. I thought this would be 00:14:42.340 --> 00:14:46.700 the end of thirst. I thought this would be the end of longing. And instead, Jesus says, no, you've been 00:14:46.700 --> 00:14:52.500 seeking the satisfaction of your longings in all sorts of smaller ways. Hunger more deeply for a 00:14:52.500 --> 00:14:59.180 righteousness and a justice that will come in a way that you could not have imagined. He goes on, 00:14:59.240 --> 00:15:05.180 blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the merciful? I thought we were 00:15:05.179 --> 00:15:11.120 going to be shown mercy. Like, it's our time to be shown mercy. You ever feel that in life? Like, I've 00:15:11.120 --> 00:15:16.019 been, like, the bargain that we play with God. I've been doing it. I've been reading my devotions, 00:15:16.219 --> 00:15:21.559 Jesus calling every morning, you know. I've been going to church. I've been listening to Tommy's 00:15:21.559 --> 00:15:28.539 sermons, both on Sunday and online. You know, I tithe. Come on, it's my time to receive mercy. 00:15:29.500 --> 00:15:32.240 But blessed are the merciful. What could he be talking about here? 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:39.340 I think that when we move toward others with compassion, something happens. And the word here 00:15:39.340 --> 00:15:45.940 literally means sort of like a movement toward others that actually moves you in the process. 00:15:46.919 --> 00:15:52.159 I had a friend in town, I think it was last week, maybe two weeks ago. His name is Paul Trudeau. He does 00:15:52.159 --> 00:16:00.000 justice and mercy work in San Francisco. Paul moved there in 2005, and he did the slow work of moving 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:05.820 toward the Tenderloin District in San Francisco. Addicts, people in pain, people who are incarcerated 00:16:05.820 --> 00:16:11.759 now trying to find a life, oftentimes on the streets. And Paul did the slow, beautiful work of building 00:16:11.759 --> 00:16:17.080 relationships with these folks. And now there's a community center, and there's a hotel which provides 00:16:17.080 --> 00:16:22.539 a kind of halfway house for addicts, and opportunities for our students to go out there 00:16:22.539 --> 00:16:27.779 and do this kind of work alongside Paul. It's a beautiful thing. But the most memorable thing that 00:16:27.779 --> 00:16:33.419 Paul said to the seminary students that week is, he said, your lives must be shattered. 00:16:35.019 --> 00:16:40.059 For you to do the kind of work you want to do, your lives must be shattered. And he told his own story. 00:16:40.179 --> 00:16:44.439 He said, when I first started doing this, I felt pretty good about myself. The very first man I worked 00:16:44.440 --> 00:16:51.060 with recovered, he stopped drinking. He got sober. And I thought, I'm pretty good at this. You know, 00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:56.280 I got my master of divinity, but I'm also pretty good at doing this whole sobriety thing with people. 00:16:56.980 --> 00:17:04.580 And then he gets a phone call one day, and the guy relapsed. And he died. And Paul's life was 00:17:04.580 --> 00:17:10.740 shattered. His sense of enoughness was shattered. Do you see what's going on here? There's a work that's 00:17:10.740 --> 00:17:16.640 being done. There's a process that's going on within us where God is stripping away everything 00:17:16.640 --> 00:17:22.000 that isn't Jesus to give us more and more and more of him so that we can live in oneness and worthiness 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:27.859 in Christ. But we've got to confront these inner divisions. And that's what Jesus says next. 00:17:28.019 --> 00:17:33.980 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the pure in heart. And I think maybe 00:17:33.980 --> 00:17:40.160 the disciples, as they heard this one, they said, oh, good. Finally, one we can do. We know purity. 00:17:40.740 --> 00:17:45.960 Like we can do the right thing, you know. Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? He who has clean 00:17:45.960 --> 00:17:50.519 hands and a pure heart. We know how to do the right thing. We know how to clean ourselves up. We know how 00:17:50.519 --> 00:17:57.839 to make sacrifices. But really the word here, katharos, is blessed are those with an undivided heart. 00:17:58.740 --> 00:18:05.660 They will see God. Blessed are those with an undivided heart. You can't see very well if your eyes are 00:18:05.660 --> 00:18:10.579 turned in a thousand different directions, right? If you're trying to keep your eye on the road, but if it's on 00:18:10.579 --> 00:18:17.619 your phone and on your radio and on your spouse, it's very hard to see the road, right? And so there's 00:18:17.619 --> 00:18:23.779 a singularity of vision that Matthew is getting at here, that Jesus is inviting us to hear. Blessed 00:18:23.779 --> 00:18:28.359 are those with an undivided heart. And that scholar who was in town a couple of weeks ago said there 00:18:28.359 --> 00:18:33.960 are two words that trick people up in the Sermon on the Mount, katharos and teleos. Katharos, the word 00:18:33.960 --> 00:18:40.539 we're talking about right here, purity, and teleos, which is later on in Matthew 5, which is be perfect 00:18:40.539 --> 00:18:45.420 as your heavenly father is perfect. Have you heard that before and thought to yourselves, well, that's 00:18:45.420 --> 00:18:53.400 weird. Like, how do I do that? And he says both have been mistranslated. He says if you take both as 00:18:53.400 --> 00:19:01.940 you hear them, you think of this Christian life as a worthiness game, as a climbing up the ladder to 00:19:01.940 --> 00:19:08.100 God, but rather katharos, blessed are you when your heart is undivided. And teleos, which actually is 00:19:08.100 --> 00:19:14.280 wholeness, be whole as your heavenly father is whole. Seventy years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter 00:19:14.280 --> 00:19:20.060 and in it he translated it, be whole as your heavenly father is whole. This is not about climbing the ladder 00:19:20.059 --> 00:19:25.500 up to God. This is about being stripped of everything that is not Jesus, that is not saturated 00:19:25.500 --> 00:19:31.839 in Christ in your lives so that you can become more wholehearted. Blessed are the peacemakers, 00:19:32.299 --> 00:19:37.359 for they will be called children of God. Blessed are the peacemakers. And I think maybe when the 00:19:37.359 --> 00:19:42.839 disciples heard this, they said, okay, good, good, good. I like peace, but can we just like take down the 00:19:42.839 --> 00:19:48.779 Romans first and then do the peace thing? You know, like the preemptive strike, you know, I'm in 00:19:48.779 --> 00:19:53.279 Washington, D.C., so this language should be familiar to you. You know, let's just take down 00:19:53.279 --> 00:19:58.539 our enemies and then we can have peace. Or maybe for some of you, you hear this and it's like, ah, 00:19:58.619 --> 00:20:05.480 blessed are the peacekeepers. I'm an Enneagram 9. I love my peacefulness. You know, I'm going to sit 00:20:05.480 --> 00:20:13.599 in my Zen. No, that's not what's going on here. Blessed are the peacemakers, the ambassadors of Shalom. 00:20:13.599 --> 00:20:19.919 These are people who don't go in, so just trying to make it better. These are not conflict-avoidant 00:20:19.919 --> 00:20:26.159 people. These are people who speak into pain. These are people who speak into sin. These are 00:20:26.159 --> 00:20:31.419 people who speak into idolatry. I'm thinking now as I'm standing here of Isaiah chapter 30 when 00:20:31.419 --> 00:20:37.559 Isaiah sends ambassadors back to Egypt, reversing the course of the Exodus, and the prophets are angry 00:20:37.559 --> 00:20:42.199 about it. And they go out and they say to these ambassadors that Hezekiah said, don't go back to 00:20:42.200 --> 00:20:47.460 Egypt? Don't. Don't go back there. That's not good. You revert. We're not trusting God in this. 00:20:48.059 --> 00:20:52.980 And the response of the ambassadors was, prophesy illusions. Tell us what we want to hear. 00:20:53.900 --> 00:20:59.400 And that's so often how we respond, right? When ambassadors of Shalom come to, I don't want to 00:20:59.400 --> 00:21:05.120 hear that. Give me something that's more palpable, more easy to hear. I don't want to do the hard thing. 00:21:05.779 --> 00:21:11.700 And yet if you notice the Beatitudes continually being pushed to do the inner work, to do the hard thing, 00:21:12.200 --> 00:21:17.880 and then finally, blessed are the persecuted for righteousness sake, for they will inherit the 00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:24.779 kingdom of God. You may die on this journey. That's the word here. You may die on this journey, 00:21:25.059 --> 00:21:32.019 but as one theologian says, you have the choice to die before you die. That's the invitation of the 00:21:32.019 --> 00:21:38.460 Beatitudes, to do this work in such a way that if and when the opportunity in this day, the opportunity 00:21:38.460 --> 00:21:43.799 of martyrdom was a real thing, if the opportunity comes, you won't be saying, no, no, no, no, no. 00:21:44.440 --> 00:21:51.059 But you will say, I've died. I've died in Christ, and I'm ready to be raised in Christ. I can do this. 00:21:51.840 --> 00:22:00.340 Death has lost its sting. The Beatitudes, this picture of flourishing that requires us to do this 00:22:00.340 --> 00:22:05.819 inner work that breaks us of our old stuff and invites us to something new. It kind of reminds me, 00:22:05.819 --> 00:22:10.720 can I tell a story real quick? It kind of reminds me of the butterfly garden that we had when we 00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:16.720 lived in Florida. My daughters were young. We had a beautiful pool screened in porch, and then outside 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:23.159 of the screen in porch, we had all these butterfly plants. And so we'd sort of watch, we'd sort of watch 00:22:23.159 --> 00:22:27.119 the action out there, and then we'd take a branch or something like that with a chrysalis on it. 00:22:27.339 --> 00:22:32.339 You know what a chrysalis is? And we sort of watched the process happen. There's not a whole lot to watch, 00:22:32.339 --> 00:22:38.740 right? But we knew that there was something going on in there. I did some studying on the butterfly 00:22:38.740 --> 00:22:45.779 sort of cycle. And do you realize that butterflies start out as worms or caterpillars, right? And that 00:22:45.779 --> 00:22:51.819 these are basically consuming creatures. They consume, and they consume, and they consume. 00:22:52.619 --> 00:22:57.019 And I think that's kind of where we start out. You know, even sometimes when we come to church, 00:22:57.079 --> 00:23:01.279 we consume, we consume, we consume. Tommy, can you preach on this? Can we do this program? Can we 00:23:01.279 --> 00:23:05.200 have this thing? Can we read this book? We consume, and we consume, and we consume. 00:23:06.279 --> 00:23:11.619 But then what I've learned about this, and there's a thing called leopardologists, I think is what 00:23:11.619 --> 00:23:15.559 they're called. People who study butterflies. That's right, right? Okay. I just sound intelligent 00:23:15.559 --> 00:23:21.160 saying it probably. But leopardologists who study the life cycle of butterflies, and they say at some 00:23:21.160 --> 00:23:28.200 point there's this like dormant imaginal cell that sparks within the life of the caterpillar. 00:23:28.200 --> 00:23:34.140 And it says something like this, you were made for something more. You were made for something more. 00:23:34.680 --> 00:23:42.860 But to get there, you're going to have to die. Ouch. And these imaginal cells multiply within the life 00:23:42.860 --> 00:23:47.460 of this caterpillar, and eventually the caterpillar realizes, no, I've got to go through the death 00:23:47.460 --> 00:23:53.059 cycle. So it weaves its chrysalis. And within that, there's something magical that happens, 00:23:53.059 --> 00:23:58.359 something transformational that happens. And then you know the rest of the story, right? You see 00:23:58.359 --> 00:24:03.779 this butterfly trying to break free, and you can imagine what's coming next, what my daughters tried 00:24:03.779 --> 00:24:09.579 to do, right? My daughters tried to help the butterfly get out of the chrysalis. You know, 00:24:09.720 --> 00:24:13.960 daddy, daddy, he's trying to push his way out. Can I get him out? You know, and they're trying to pull 00:24:13.960 --> 00:24:19.819 it away, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. But eventually, the sun is shining. Inevitably, 00:24:19.819 --> 00:24:25.960 later on one day, we walk outside, and we see this butterfly with its arms raised, free, 00:24:26.439 --> 00:24:32.000 and ready to fly. And what's extraordinary to me, and I'm going to end with this, is at the very end 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:39.939 of Matthew chapter 5, we move immediately into, you are the salt of the earth. Verse 14, you are the 00:24:39.939 --> 00:24:45.039 light of the world. A city built on the hill cannot be hid. You see the purpose of this journey of 00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:51.859 wholeheartedness. It's a movement from the inside out, from brokenness to givenness for the sake of 00:24:51.859 --> 00:24:57.319 the world. I talked about this yesterday, the Eucharistic life, that our lives are no longer 00:24:57.319 --> 00:25:03.259 led by the liturgy of acquire, consume, digest, and be dissatisfied. That's the liturgy of the world 00:25:03.259 --> 00:25:08.980 that we live in. Acquire, acquire, acquire, consume, digest, and then we're just never, ever satisfied. 00:25:08.980 --> 00:25:16.839 But instead, this table marks our life together. We're taken. Jesus calls his disciples. We're 00:25:16.839 --> 00:25:22.259 blessed. Become my followers. We're broken. You've got to go through this life cycle, this 00:25:22.259 --> 00:25:27.519 transformational life cycle, where everything that is not Christ within you is purged so that you could 00:25:27.519 --> 00:25:33.059 live into Christ, so that your lives would be hidden with Christ and God, as we read from Colossians 00:25:33.059 --> 00:25:41.579 chapter 3, so that you can be given for the sake of the world, your light and your salt. And so that's 00:25:41.579 --> 00:25:47.019 why we come to the table this morning. As I said yesterday, oftentimes we come to the table with all 00:25:47.019 --> 00:25:54.159 of our baggage, right? And the invitation today is to, as you're coming to the table, be mindful, 00:25:54.159 --> 00:26:00.359 what is that baggage? What have been those strategies of enoughness that I've looked toward 00:26:00.359 --> 00:26:06.039 to appease, if that's the right word, the scarcity of my life, to make me feel just a little bit 00:26:06.039 --> 00:26:12.779 better, to dull the ache? What if I just left them behind, come to the table with hands open, 00:26:13.500 --> 00:26:19.579 believing that this is where Jesus meets me, saying, everything I have is yours. 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:23.899 In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.