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2001
1st April (pm) - A Christian's Religion
Matthew 6:1-8,16-18
Since next Sunday morning will be Communion, we are using this evening's service as a Preparation Service for Communion - the old Presbyterian tradition of taking time to think about our lives, about what Jesus has done for our lives by his death and resurrection, and about the response that faith in Jesus should produce in our lives - both in the religious part of life, and in the everyday business of living.
Pre Communion is meant to guard us against treating Communion as an isolated, stand-alone, ceremonial religious activity, which doesn't have its roots in real Christian faith and its outworking in real living as a Christian.
I think that the part of the Sermon on the Mount that we we've arrived at is actually very suitable as preparation for Communion. In the first part of Matthew chapter 6 Jesus begins to speak about the sort of 'religious' behaviour which faith should produce - the sort of activities which should be of great importance to anyone who is a Communicant or who is thinking about being a Communicant. In Matthew 6:1-18, Jesus speaks about 3 clear activities in life:
Giving to the needy
Prayer
Fasting
These 3 activities were seen as absolutely basic religious duties in Jesus' day - essential expressions of faith.
Jesus doesn't challenge that assumption in any way - he endorses it, and recommends these activities of faith as good things to do - even fasting as we shall see!
The issue for Jesus is not 'Should his followers do these things? Rather it is, How should you do these things? and he has some pretty clear things to say.
As a new chapter in the sermon begins, we can detect that Jesus seems to have finished what he wants to say at the moment about everyday moral issues like marriage and adultery and divorce; about compensation/punishment for injuries, and confrontation with enemies - and he is now he turning his attention from these moral matters to what were seen as more directly religious matters. Therefore, we can probably take it that, for Jesus, both of these areas of life were very important for anyone who wanted to take faith seriously as his follower - both what we do in our ordinary lives and what we do in our religious lives - it all goes together!
To break down what Jesus says in this section, I'm going to do 2 things.
We'll keep what Jesus has to say about Prayer, and especially the Lord's Prayer, mainly for next week.
However prayer is also included in some main points that Jesus makes about all 3 activities -giving, prayer and fasting.
I am going to offer you 5 short headings tonight, which I think help us to identify the gist of what Jesus wants us to hear - not least at Pre Communion - the main parts of the jigsaw, even if we don't manage to deal with all the details. 5 'D' Words:
Danger
Delight
Discipline
Denial
Doing
Danger!
Jesus begins with a warning - a warning that he applies clearly and strongly to all religious activities. He saw a terrible danger for 'religious' people - he says so at the very beginning of chapter 6; vs.1 Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them - 'acts of righteousness' is a term which Jesus used to cover all the main religious activities and duties of life - be very careful, says Jesus, that your religion is not being seriously motivated and subtly manipulated by a desire to make yourself feel good or to make other people feel good about you.
It's not about boosting your own ego, nor is it about enhancing your reputation as a religious person.
That warning comes repeatedly in this section:
vs.2 announcing your generosity with trumpets ...... to be honoured by men - in our generosity and giving to the needy, making sure that everybody knows what we have done, so that we feel great that they feel that we are great.
vs.5-6 praying in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men - the most basic activities of faith, prayer and worship, being subtly misused to impress other people with our piousness.
vs.16 disfiguring their faces to show men that they are fasting - making themselves look as haggard and miserable as possible, so that everyone would know that they take their religious obligations very seriously!
The same warning, repeated over and over!
And we might say, how foolish - who in their right mind would do things like that - who would go to such lengths to make other people feel that they are doing all the right religious things, 'religiously'. There aren't many 'Brownie points' for that today, not much mileage in terms of 'street cred.'
And yet maybe we do need that warning - especially within the church - maybe it is still possible to be doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons - for our motivation to be a bit mixed up and for it to be subtly manipulated. Maybe it is possible to care too much about our image among other people.
We certainly live in a less religious world than in Jesus day, less religious even than a generation back - it sometimes seems as if nobody cares whether we go to church or not - nobody notices - and yet maybe this is still not an irrelevant danger.
- sometimes it does suit us to be able to say that we are a member of such and such a church, that we are involved in it in particular ways - even that we are a full communicant member.
Sometimes, in certain situations, we may be tempted to use our church membership for our own benefits.
- or sometimes we may feel the temptation to feel good about ourselves because we are the ones going out to church on a Sunday morning, while in most of the houses near ours they are still sleeping - we give into an unhealthy feeling of religious goodness and moral superiority!
Jesus says that, in these issues of religious life, our left hand shouldn't know what our right hand is doing - we should hardly tell ourselves that we are going to church!
- or the danger of making a great song and dance about something that we are doing in church life, so that we get properly recognised. Of course its good to be appreciated - it's not good when people take our bit for granted - but sometimes it can be a way of feeling good about ourselves and making others feel good about us.
Be careful..... says Jesus! Danger!
Discipline.
Here's a popular word!
That in our faith and the in the religious activities of life there should be a discipline that 'makes' us do things, even when we don't really feel like it - certain activities that are non-negotiable in our lives - they are to be done!
I think that is the point of the word that Jesus uses in vs.2, vs.5, vs.7 and vs.16 -
When - when you give money away, when you pray, when you fast - not if, not when you feel like it - just plain When.
Now, I think that we have to make a distinction here, between on the one hand, the discipline that is a duty of drudgery - merely going through the motions, and, on the other hand, the discipline which is good for us, even if it doesn't always feel like it.
The former is not to be recommended - and hopefully the religious activities of life never become like drudgery.
However, I will not be persuaded that the other, proper sort of discipline should not be a feature of faith as a Christian person - that if faith in Christ is real in our hearts and lives, then we need to learn the non-negotiable disciplines of Worship, Bible Reading and Prayer, Christian Work and Christian Giving - and that even though we sometimes feel like forgetting about them at times, we need to think about them as the essentials of life as a Christian - to persevere, to stick at them, even on the days when we could easily feel like doing other things!
Jesus says when, not when you feel like it - discipline is a word that never goes out of date.
Mind you, I think that it is sometimes an unpopular word nowadays - we sometimes put too much emphasis on doing things because we feel like it at the time, because we can manage to fit it in - rather than marking out our lives and our weekly activities in terms of these essential Christian activities - with a disciplined approach.
- therefore it is not to be, Will I go to church - but rather this is Sunday, therefore it is Church.
- it is not to be, Will I bother with Bible Reading today, or Personal Prayer, or Home Group - I don't know whether I feel like it - but rather I will!
And often, when we establish a measure of this discipline in our lives, we find that on the very days that we didn't really feel like going to church etc, we were taken by surprise in terms of Christian encouragement and enrichment.
- it's not, can I afford to fill my envelope or to make that special offering - but rather here's the money that I have ear-marked for my giving - the regular 'habits' of giving are good for us - the discipline of the envelope system, the practice of tithing and budgeting ahead for what I plan to give.
And in all of these things, says Jesus, doing it quietly and without great fuss - either in terms of feeling good about ourselves as if we have made some great sacrifice, or in terms of making sure that others notice that we are there or that we are doing something in particular.
Discipline can be mere drudgery - or it can be a real source of steady faith and faithfulness - something that is immensely good for us - a lesson that many Christians need to learn more deeply today.
When you ....... not when you feel like it .....
Denial Very attractive words these, aren't they - Discipline .... Denial - and yet they need not be negative words of discouragement. They can and should be good for our faith and our lives as Christians.
Denial seems to me to be a good word for helping us to understand what Jesus is saying, especially about fasting.
Fasting is not something that many of us probably go in for!
Fasting hasn't got a very big history among modern Presbyterians - and yet we read about fasting in the OT, and we read about Jesus fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, and Acts speaks of the apostles having times of prayer and fasting.
I suppose the nearest many people get to fasting is the tradition of staying off certain foods during Lent etc.
In the Bible, fasting is associated with special times of sorrow for sin, with times of special prayer for God's guidance and help, perhaps as a means of developing Christian self discipline.
Maybe the actual practice of fasting would be good for us - not just for dieting purposes, but in terms of some of the things I have mentioned - not in some kind of vacuum where you just don't eat for a time, but rather so that you can devote special time and attention to God and to the ways of God for your life. - a way of testing and expressing and deepening our seriousness about faith and about God's work.
Mind you, I've never fasted, so I wouldn't want to sound pious, and fall into the very trap that Jesus warns us of here.
Maybe we can also think of fasting in the more general sense of self denial - that it is good for us to have to give up what we would naturally choose to be doing, in order to deepen our own faith or to give some form of Christian service - that when we have to give up watching our favourite TV soap or miss a big football match in order to be at the Home Group or the Prayer Meeting; or we have to organise our week-end in such a way that we can be at church as well as visiting family, or we commit ourselves to some activity or organisation in church life at a certain amount of cost/sacrifice in our weekly schedule - maybe this is rather similar to actual fasting - it is denying ourselves in a small way, in order to give priority to our faith and service - as a part of our faithfulness - in a serious and consistent way.
I think that this is a very important part of Christian faith that needs to emphasised and stressed very strongly - a lesson that we all need to learn, again and again - but especially in the climate of our modern age, where there is great emphasis on doing things if you feel like them and when it suits you.
Didn't Jesus say that those who recognised his importance, his Sonship, his Lordship must deny himself, take up his cross and follow ...?'
So we have Danger, Discipline, Denial....
Doing
When you give to the needy ....... and I think that we can understand this to include all kinds of giving away out of what we have got, for the benefit of others - whether that means individuals we know, appeals for disaster situations, overseas missionary support, or indeed giving for the work of our own church, - anything from which we ourselves will not benefit directly - when you give ......
Obviously this can be one of the big areas of life where we might still feel we get a good deal of kudos - good image - if we are seen to be generous givers. We need to remember Jesus' very clear warnings of Danger.
However, having said that, Jesus clearly assumes that our faith will mean giving - he sees it as one of the essential aspects of our religion - faith in Jesus is to be a religion of Doing, of Deeds - as well as of talking and believing in theory or mere words. We can remind ourselves of Jesus' parable of the rich man who didn't even seem to be aware of the beggar, Lazarus, at his gate - or indeed the parable of the Good Samaritan, who gave the much needed, practical help, which cost him something, in contrast to the religious people who walked by on the other side.
We always need to be asking ourselves at least 2 questions about our giving:
Are we giving of ourselves, and our resources in life, in a way that we would notice, in a way that is, to any degree, proportionate to what we have at our disposal in life?
As the Communicant question asks - a fitting proportion of our time, our talents and our money for the Church's work in the world.
That's a searching enough question isn't it - especially when we think of the Bible study from James about wealth that the Home Groups thought about this week.
The second question, we might put like this: Am I doing and giving because I am concerned to make as much of a difference as possible, or because I am subtly motivated to make as good an impression as possible?
The danger of this second question needs to be very carefully recognised, but it must not be used as a reason/excuse for not doing anything useful with out time, talents and money - we are to be people who 'do' and who 'give' - all the time watching that we are not doing it for the wrong reasons.
Delight
When I was preparing this sermon I couldn't decide whether to put this point first or last - for it is necessary in both places.
If there is to be proper Discipline, Denial and Doing in our faith, it can really come out of a fundamental Delight in our faith - a delight in our God - that it is good to be able to trust in him, and therefore good to do the things that will help us to trust him better - It is this kind of Delight that will help us to fight against the dangers of egotism and pride and wanting to make a good impression on others ..... it is this delight will make us want to be people of Discipline, Denial and Doing.
And Jesus does give us the grounds for the delight that we ought to feel, over and over in this passage.
This Delight comes knowing that God is our Father in heaven who sees us and knows us and loves us so much; with whom our lives are safe and secure. he refers to that source of delight and assurance over and over again in our passage:
vs.1 your Father in heaven.
vs.4 your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. (The same in vs.6)
vs.8 your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
vs.18 your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
What a delight to know that God our Father loves us so dearly, notices every aspect of our lives, no matter how small or how unnoticed by others.
What an encouragement to know that even when we feel as if we are just plodding along in his service - not seeing much achieved, not seemingly appreciated, not recognised by many others - he sees and appreciates and rewards us.
He surely doesn't mean some actual reward in earthly terms - he doesn't mean, for example, that those who give generously receive back even more, as some American, TV type, Christianity has sometimes seemed to teach.
He surely means the reward that matters - the reward of his acceptance, his encouragement, his promise of heaven - in one way not a reward at all, because we could never deserve it or earn it - and yet in another way, a real reward:
- that to those who take Discipline and Denial and Doing seriously, there is the reward of a far deeper assurance of God's love and hope in their lives.
- that there is the reward and satisfaction of knowing that we have, humbly, given of our best in seeking to do something worthwhile in the life of Christ's Church - the reward, promised by Jesus to his followers: Well done, good and faithful servant.
Here is the source of delight when we feel like saying to ourselves, I can't be bothered! Let that be our motivation.
So maybe these 5 words beginning with D will help us in the coming week as we prepare for Communion, but will help us at all the times when we need to get our faith and our lives refocussed clearly:
Danger .... Discipline ..... Denial ...... Deeds ...... Delight.
Let's be very aware of the Dangers and very often thinking of the Delight of knowing the security and the assurance that comes from trusting God as our Father.