As I am sure Jessica will attest to, I am horrible about remembering the lyrics to songs. Now, I maintain that part of this is not my fault but the fault of the artist. If they cannot enunciate well enough for me to understand what they are saying, then how can I be held responsible for learning the correct words? So I will, on occasion, make up the lyrics for a song. If it sounds close enough, who is going to be able to tell the difference, right?
There is one song by Brad Paisley, one of Jessica’s and my favorite country artists, that includes the phrase “and we’re lost but holding hands.” But right as he sings the line, the music picks up and he kind of runs the words together. So, for the longest time, I had no idea what this phrase actually was, so I would sing the phrase that I thought it was—“and we’re lost before we ask” every time the song came on the radio. It does not make any sense, I know, but it worked with the rhyme scheme… sort of… and it fit the tune of the song, so if I sang it with enough confidence, hopefully no one would ever realize I did not actually know the words!
Well, one day I was driving a friend of a friend on an errand and the song came on the radio. We were both singing along, and when we got to that line, I sang what always had sung. Now this girl was one of the people with whom I was really more of an acquaintance than anything else, and honestly, she annoyed me to no end. This particular occasion is one example of why. When she heard what I had sung, she turned to me and said “Umm… those are not the words. It’s ‘and we’re lost but holding hands.’ You really shouldn’t sing songs if you don’t know the words.”
Now, this took me aback for two reasons. The first was because I was I was doing her a favor by giving her a ride and here she was actually critically evaluating my singing! Only Jess is allowed to do that. The second reason was because she was right. I had been unknowingly singing this song wrong for years. I felt like her little quip had shaken me to the core. I really didn’t know the words to this song that I’ve loved for years? If I was wrong about that, what else in life am I wrong about?
Now, obviously, I might have over-reacted about the implications of not knowing a line from a song. I mean, it is just a song, right? The world would have continued turning, my life would probably be exactly the same, even if that song had never been written. So what if I had a line wrong. But none of like to hear that something that we know to be true is in fact false. None of us like to hear that we’ve been doing something wrong for years—maybe our whole lives—without ever actually knowing it. It’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating. It can even sometimes truly hurt to hear.
And yet this is exactly what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount. He is taking laws given from God and recorded by Moses and He is reinterpreting them for the people of God, showing them that over the years they had greatly skewed their understanding of the Law. The Jewish people had strayed far from their covenantal relationship with God, had lost the ability to see the truth of the Torah and the real message behind God’s laws. They had been singing the wrong lyrics for centuries, millennia. And Jesus comes in and corrects them, saying to God’s people that they had been singing the wrong words all along and then working to teach them the right ones.
Today, I want to focus with you on the first topic that Jesus discusses with His listeners. The first thing that Christ brings up is murder. Now, “thou shalt not kill” is one of the ten big ones, right? And it sounds pretty straightforward. Don’t kill. But you see, Jesus knew his target audience. He knew their hearts. I mean, He was one of them, and He was the Creator of all of them. Jesus knew that the Jewish people were an actively oppressed people under Roman rule. And before that they were under Greek rule. And before that Persian. And before that Babylonian. And let us not forget about all of the years they were slaves in Egypt! They longed for freedom, and many of them wanted it no matter the cost. How many of them had looked at a Roman centurion, sitting so proudly on top of his war horse, and thought “If only God hadn’t forbidden it, I would kill you now where you sit”? And so Jesus throws down the truth: even the malicious thought towards your neighbor is a sin. Holding that grudge, carrying that anger, should be seen as just as bad a sin, for it keeps the individual from being able to truly minister to that neighbor and it mars the individual’s soul. That anger and hatred go so far as to interfere with one’s relationship with God, for how can you love the Creator and yet hate something fearfully and wonderfully made in His image? Therefore, get right with your neighbor before you come to the Lord’s table, otherwise you won’t be able to get right with God.
My friends, what would happen if we ascribed to this in our lives? What if, before we came to the communion table each month we took the necessary time to seek out those whom we had wronged or who had wronged us and we worked to seek reconciliation with them? I know that this is obviously not an easy thing to do all the time, and yet our Savior requires it of us.
One of the times that I really struggled with this was my last semester at TLU. Someone that I considered to be a friend turned his back on Jess and me over a misunderstanding that led to Jess having to find someplace to live for a couple of months and me feeling guilty and betrayed. I wanted to confront him. I wanted to yell at him. I wanted him to feel the emotional pain he had caused me. And after feeling angry and bitter about it for a month or so, I talked to a pastor friend of mine about it, asking if he thought I should confront the guy. My friend read this section of Matthew to me and asked what I thought I should do to get right with God about it?
So I ended up writing my estranged friend an email, apologizing to him and asking if we could meet up to patch things up. And even though his response was unkind and not what I had hoped for, I felt much better about it. I had done everything I could to clear things up, and my heart was finally right with myself and with my God.
So is your heart right with God in this way? Is there anyone with whom God is telling you that you should seek reconciliation before you come again to the table?
Jess and I now play a little game in the car when we listen to music. When one of us sings the wrong lyrics or messes up the song in some way, we start the song over and sing it until we both get the entire song right. I remember one car ride that we started a certain song over 15 times before we sang it right! It was extremely annoying, but I must say that we sure do know all of the words to that song now!
I think that sometimes following the teachings of Christ requires the same process. We have to be ready to try and try again until we get is right, rejoicing in the fact that Christ is urging us onward. I pray that we will answer the call to follow Jesus’ true interpretation of the Law. I pray that we seek true reconciliation with our neighbors. And I pray that we will keep trying to be better and more faithful followers of Christ, no matter how long it takes us to learn the lyrics.
Amen.
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