A PRAYER TO START
The apostle Peter, in his first letter and quoting Leviticus, says “You shall be holy, for I am holy”. This is not merely a command but a promise. When we recognize ourselves in relation to God, we will indeed live as ones who are set apart to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Pray with your faith family today…
Father, holy is your name. And yet you say that I am to be holy like you. You say that I am to be set apart as your own. Sacred is my life because I am yours. I am to be different with a purpose, that those who see me, recognize you. Father, forgive me for those times today when I will be more associated with the patterns of this world than with your way. Father, help me today to recognize myself in relation to you, and to live as one who is clearly yours for my sake and my neighbors. Thank you Father, for making holy what is often not so through your Son’s loving sacrifice. May I be willing do to the same for others. Amen.
GETTING THOUGHTFUL
The Pharisees get a bad rap in Christian history. Yet, in Jewish context many are credited with helping keep the faith grounded and God oriented instead of being completely infiltrated and overtaken by the winds and ways of the various people groups who governed God’s children for generations. These were the faithful, and they were devoted to the God who gave them the Laws and the Prophets, the very ones who spoke and wrote the words that Jesus said he had come to fulfill (5:17). So why do the Pharisees react to Jesus in the manner that they do?
Perhaps the answer is in their name. The word Pharisee comes from a Hebrew root meaning “separate” or “separatist”. These are people who saw the world in which they worked and where raising their kids in opposition to the faith of their fathers, and saw even their own kin and religious leaders compromising with the culture, so they separated themselves in order to be: holy. Thus they created a set of rules to help them be distinct. 613 to be exact, modeled after what they believed to be the heart of God in the Old Testament.
The problem is, that while God’s heart is for his children to be distinct, it has always been so that in their distinction they and others may come to know him. And, knowing God and showing God to others is difficult to do when your mentality, and name, is to separate. Thus, when Jesus came preaching that holiness is not separation but sacredness—not detachment but rather divine relation, and relating divinely—the Pharisees’ concept of God and his kingdom was dramatically confronted.
It is no wonder that they reacted the way they did. What they believed about God and how the world works in relation to God was being turned up-side-down by this Jesus. In fact, it would be this concept of being one who is related to God and thus relates God to others, as opposed to the separatist mentality, that our faith family would take their most common name for one another: saint.
REFLECTION
Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 was to show that God’s heart for the law had always been to help his children live differently, for their sake and for the sake of those who they even feel are against them. God’s role for you and I hinges on us loving the way we have been loved. Re-read Matthew 5:20-48, looking for how Jesus encourages a way of life that requires us not to separate but to be sacred.
Use these questions to help you prayerfully reflect individually and/or discuss as a DNA group
- Simple question, no tricks, yet one that needs to be asked explicitly to penetrate our consciousness: Where do you see in these six statements of Jesus any hint at separating, dividing, or ending relationships with others?
- Why then is separation easier than being sacred (a means for God and others to relate through you)?
- In what ways do you, and especially other Christians, tend to separate themselves for “the world” and even one another?
- How would you describe the intensity of the division in the relationships Jesus describes in this passage?
- Why do you think Jesus uses such forceful examples to demonstrate the heart of God and the nature of the life he gives you and I to live?
- What might the implications be for the intensity of how we should seek wholeness or sanctification in our relationships (including with our Father)?
- The primary way we are salt and light is through our relating to God and others. How well are you relating to God...and others?
ECHO
Wendell Berry’s poem rehearses in our minds the beginning that the way of Jesus awakes us to strive towards with each new morning; while also reminding us what desiring a different way will ultimately bring. May his exhortation echo in your mind, in your heart, and into your actions this week.
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To sit and look at light-filled leaves
May let us see, or seem to see,
Far backward as through clearer eyes
To what unsighted hope believes:
The blessed conviviality
That sang Creation’s seventh sunrise,
Time when the Maker’s radiant sight
Made radiant every thing He saw,
And every thing He saw was filled
With perfect joy and life and light.
His perfect pleasure sole law;
No pleasure had become self-willed.
For all His creatures were His pleasures
And their whole pleasure was to be
What He made them; they sought no gain
Or growth beyond their proper measures,
Nor longed for change or novelty.
The only new thing could be pain.