It almost appears Matthew has gone out of his way to find women who contaminate Jesus’s bloodline, who tarnish his pure Jewish ancestry.  In order to own land in Israel you had to show public documents concerning your genealogy to prove you had a right to own a piece of the Holy Land. Even more importantly people expected the Messiah to come from the pure kingly line of David.  Yet curiously there is no record in the gospels of any disputes over Jesus being a descendant of David.

Some day in this already but not yet future of Christ’s Lordship, all things in heaven and earth will be united.  That means no more discord, all things will be brought into a meaningful relationship, no more fragmentation,  no more frustration, no more divisions and no more derision.  Things don’t add up right now, but in the future they will all be summed up, they will all be brought together in unity.  The lion will lay with the lamb, racial tensions will disappear and yes even the democrats and the republicans will embrace across the dividing walls of hostility.

This coming unity, according to Ephesians, was preceded by God choosing us in Christ and adopting us into His family.  This was not for our individual benefit but as a corporate one – “for the benefit of the church” (Ephesians 1:22).  In other words the church should not only be a model of unity but a catalyst for unity in the divided world in which we live.  Our first allegiance is to the Lordship of Christ who has guaranteed us a future unity of all things.  That optimism should call us to walk in that unity and not participate in disunity.

The church at Corinth had become seers instead of believers, they were seeing others from a human point of view.  They were measuring “them” based on the distinctions of their world – male and female, Jew and Greek , slave and free.  Paul writes “that those who become Christians become new persons.  They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone.  A new life has begun!”  This new humanity was only made possible by the grace of a God who shows no partiality and the blood of His Son who hung out with women, Samaritans, lepers, tax collectors and an assortment of sinners.

When we  bring our yardsticks to church and ask God to bless them we nullify God’s grace.  No wonder so much of the unbelieving world has stopped responding to us.  Instead we should bring our dueling yardsticks to the cross and ask God to crucify them.  From the world’s point of view life is about control but at the cross we surrender our control, especially our control over the measurement of others.   The way out of the garden of evaluating others by what the world thinks about them and into the new humanity of God’s kingdom is surrendering our yardsticks.

I wonder how much of our recent lack of neighbor-loving dialogue over racial, social, economic and  political issues, is really our need for control, power, comfort or approval.  A need that finds fulfillment as we obsess over and find comfort in our racial or social group and our political or economic ideology.  We love the comfort and control of being right and the power and approval of those who agree with us.  But without an honest and graceful conversation with those who differ with us we can become blinded to our idol worship.

Pastor Tim Keller says “worship is pulling our affections off our idols and putting them on God.” It is seeing God for who He is, pondering His worth, treasuring Him and then doing something about it.  Through creation, scripture reading, exhortation and sermons we are shown what God is worth.  We respond to God’s worth through our praises, prayers of confession and thanksgiving and the giving of our time, talent and treasures to the advancement of God’s Kingdom and the common good of our neighbors.  It is in loving those neighbors, even those who disagree with us, that we are helped further to identify our cultural and ideological idols.

Every Sunday’s worship should lead us to Monday’s work of neighbor loving.  Loving God and loving our neighbor – there is a reason Jesus called them the two greatest commandments – they pull our affections off our idols and put them back on God.

The apostle Paul taught that we are to pay all our debts except the debt of love for others and according to Jesus that would include our enemies.  But we don’t like to be indebted to anybody.  We want to pay back injuries from our enemies or even pay back favors from our friends.  We desperately want to keep things even with either revenge or recompense.

This is often the preferred method of the proud, a justice that we control ourselves so that no one can get the upper hand on us.  However it is a method that exalts ourselves above God rather than gives ourselves away like God.  Jesus’ wondrous works and wise words are not as much the focus of the gospel as is his life and death – his selfless love for us.  We can not claim the benefits of a crucified Christ and reject his way of self giving love.

So many of Jesus’ parables pointed to this self giving love: a lovesick father who runs to meet his prodigal son, a landlord who cancels a debt too large for anyone to pay, an employer who pays 11th hour workers the same as the first hour crew, a banquet giver who goes to the highways and byways in search of undeserving guests – all stories of an unnatural self-donation.  This self giving love steps over the need for gratitude and affirmation, it steps over the wounds and wrongs suffered at the hands of our enemies.

Jesus not only stepped over our sins, he paid for them while we were his enemies, donating his life in an unnatural act of love so that we might become sons and daughters of the God most high.  Jesus is simply asking us to show ourselves as his Father’s children by loving our enemies.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount brings a new and deeper understanding of what it means to be a Kingdom Christian and it is unnatural.  It is much more natural to abide by the principles of the kingdom of this world which at best encourages us to ignore our enemies.  But God’s Kingdom calls us to an unnatural love – a love of enemies – a self-donating love.

Jesus points out that His heavenly Father loves His enemies everyday.  He gives sunlight and sends rain on the evil and the unjust.  He has every right to withhold that common grace to the unrighteous but instead He shows mercy and patience.  Anyone can love a lover, even corrupt tax collectors do that much.  It’s natural.  So Jesus asks us, what more are you doing than that?  How are you different than the pagans who are kind to their friends?

The one thing that sets Christianity apart from all other religions is the love of Jesus Christ who went patiently and obediently to the cross.  The cross is the peculiar, extraordinary, unnatural hallmark of the Christian religion.  A distinction that is displayed in the self-donating love of enemies.  A love that prays for  those who persecute us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God….so long as we pray for them, we are doing vicariously for them what they can not do for themselves”.  Can we imagine how things might be different if the politicians who claim to be followers of Christ prayed for their opponents, if pro-lifers prayed for Planned Parenthood, if our soldiers prayed for the Taliban, if Blacks and Whites prayed for each other?  It would be unnatural but this self-donating love, this acting like true children of our Father in heaven, just might allow the world to see more of God’s coming Kingdom.

Most people would prefer to agree with the philosopher Immanuel Kant who argued that a person should only be loved and forgiven if they deserve it. Let’s be honest it is hard enough to love our brothers and sisters in Christ never the less someone who is an enemy.  Love the thugs and drug dealers poisoning our neighborhoods, love that neighbor who parties too loud and too late, love the Islamic terrorist who kills innocent people, and love that political ideologist on the other side of the aisle – it’s just too unnatural.

We all have our enemies, someone who has hurt us, hates us, persecutes us or just disagrees with us.  Someone we have walled off for protection or excluded for convenience.  These are the people Jesus requires us to love – an unnatural act that goes against our primal instincts.  So what makes loving our enemies such a priority that it becomes central to our faith?  Jesus gives a simple theological answer to why we are to love our enemies: “In that way you will be a acting as true children of your Father in heaven.”  A simple answer but an unnatural act.  Yet in my lifetime there has never been a more needful time for children of the Kingdom to act like our heavenly Father.  For that reason I want to take us a little deeper into this unnatural act of loving our enemies over the next few weeks.

After learning God’s word on the Lord’s Day, Monday is for doing God’s word – loving people and repairing our relationships.  In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the command “do not murder” and intensifies it, deepens it, and clarifies it.  The root of killing is anger.  This kind of anger is not like a flame that burns dried straw – it flames up and burns out quickly – like my anger in the Squirrel Hill tunnel at rush hour.  The anger that commits murder is like a burning coal that continues to produce heat.  It attacks the mental intelligence and moral character of a person calling them an idiot and a liar.  This carried anger not only hurts others but it diminishes us.

God’s surgical method of dealing with this source of murder is to scare the hell out of us.  He confronts our bitter pool of anger with a more bitter pool of divine judgement – the fires of hell that burn longer and hotter than our little lump of coal.  Even cloaked as a humorous hand grenade, our murderous anger that hurts others is liable for God’s judgement.

The good news is that while every command of Jesus first humbles us it then lifts us up.  We learn the full extent of not murdering and then we learn how we can keep the command.  We seek reconciliation with those we have hurt, with those we disagree and with those who are disagreeable.  Jesus even instructs us to be reconciled first before bringing our gift to him, show Monday morning mercy before retuning to Sunday morning worship.  We learn that when we put Jesus first, He instructs us is to put others first.  It may seem impossible to never carry a grudge but it is possible to make amends, to heal a relationship, and to win a friend by losing a fight.

My blue basketball shorts matched Carl’s and swished around my legs as I dodged Flay dribbling a basketball out of his reach.  They let me win.  I patted their warm backs, not noticing how my hand seemed whiter than a seashell tossed about rough waves, sanded down and drained of color, against their coca skin.

Gilbert grinned, his teeth white as snow against his mocha skin.  I leaned against the stone wall with blue paint peeling, and I screamed his name. Sweat dripped from his face, soaking his shirt as he was gasping for breath.  My brothers play hard.

We ate greens and fried chicken; they let the grease stain my white T-shirt that hung down to my knees.  We laughed and talked loud, smashed next to each other on an old sagging couch like mashed potatoes, as the football game played like thunder into the night.  Hot Cheetos were dipped in ranch along with pizza, as fries found hot sauce again and again.

Duct tape held our sneakers together that were piled at the door and tripped on every time someone entered.  No one moved them, it wasn’t something to get rid of, but something to add to.

As my Dad added to the pile of shoes, someone laughed, “Pastor Matt, you the blackest white man”.  He laughed and slapped skin with them all.  It was said in love, that I knew.  But what did it mean?

I am white.  My brothers are black.

(An award winning poem by our 15 year old granddaughter, a freshman at CAPA.  She doesn’t think it is her best but she doesn’t see it through the eyes of her proud Pap.  I share it in honor of Pastor Matt, who was my partner in ministry and Maddie’s Dad and brother Carl.  Both who have been with our Lord for the past several years.  Matt from cancer and Carl from bullets intended for another, a week before leaving for college.)

In His infancy and simplicity, Jesus is worshipped and the Magi are changed.  The Magi had finally found the true meaning of life.  A life that begins by giving oneself to the honor of Christ.  To worship Christ is to desire to give Him our goods and services because worship takes us into God’s presence and God’s presence causes us to walk home a different way.  You see the Magi not only worshipped  Jesus they acknowledged His right to direct their lives.

When we read the Christmas story it calls for a response.  It calls for a fresh perspective on Christmas.  It not only challenges our prejudices and preferences, it changes them and changes us.  Truth and humility reveal that we all have a little Herod in us, looking to an earthly king for our help, and a little elitism, thinking we have an inside track on God.  Yet it is only by the same grace that invited the undeserving Magi to Jesus’ first birthday party that we have been made right and well in the presence of God.  The Christmas story calls us to worship the new born King and go home another way, all be it a narrow way.  As the psalmist writes, “May all kings fall down before Him and all nations serve Him.”  (Psalm 72:11)