I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live

One of the great sports movies of all time – and there really aren’t that many great sports movies, so it’s a short list – but one of the great sports movies of all time is Kevin Costner’s golf classic, “Tin Cup”. In it Costner’s character, Roy McAvoy, describes the reality of the golf swing: “I tend to think of the golf swing as a poem. Lowly and slowly the clubhead is led back. Tempo is everything; perfection unobtainable . . .”

Perfection unobtainable.

A great description of golf, one of the things I like about golf is that I can fail to obtain perfection better than most people, it’s a gift. But it is also a great description of life, the way that faithful Christians are called to live it.

Perfection unobtainable, and yet always sought.

We know that no one is perfect, we know that we are all flawed. In our liturgical theology we can’t worship as a Reformed Church without confession made and forgiveness assured, it is one the things that sets us apart from other traditions. And yet we seek it.

This ever-elusive perfection is what we are, or should be, looking for in our living, in our relationships, in our faith. Nowhere in scripture is that more clear than in the Sermon on the Mount.

The call to perfection is pretty obvious and pretty impossible?

If you are angry with someone it is the same as murder – that means that everyday, when I sit down with my newspaper I ignite a wide scale massacre.

If you insult someone and call them a fool, you are doomed to hell – I drive in New Jersey, I am by definition surrounded by fools. If you look at a woman or a man with lust, it’s the same as adultery – our culture has built an entire economic/advertising industry on not only tempting us but encouraging us, to look around with lust. I’ve never understood the ridicule that former President Carter took when he aligned himself with me and every other adult married person I have known in his confession of adultery, by the standards of Jesus.

And on it goes.

So if it’s all about guilt, then I am guilty.

I cannot achieve the perfection that God requires, no matter how much I seek it.

And that’s the point.

That’s the point that Christ was trying to make, not only here in the sermon on the mount, but three quick years later when he hung on his cross on that other mount and lived the sermon out.

He is saying to me “Jack you can’t do it. You can’t live a perfect life. And you can’t enter into th perfect place – the Kingdom of God – unless you do lead a perfect life.”

And there is a pause, about 3 days worth of pause, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday and he concludes “But I can. And you can latch on to my perfection by your faith alone.”

Wow.

And he’s not just talking to me, you know that even if I forget it sometimes.

He’s talking to you, just as he was talking to Peter, James, John, Judas and the others.

“You can’t do it. You can’t live a perfect life. And you can’t enter into a perfect place – the Kingdom of God – unless you do lead a perfect life.”

“But I can. And you can latch on to my perfection by your faith alone.”

It is like the joy they knew last Sunday night in Green Bay.

None of those people won the game, but the Packers did and so those who loved them reaped the benefits: the joy and pleasure of the victory.

Perhaps we need to re-read the Sermon on the Mount from a different angle, perhaps we need to put aside our legalistic vision of unrealistic laws that we can never fulfill and read it as a vision of what life in the Kingdom of God is like. A life without murders, but without anger as well.

A life where people are respected and honored, not ridiculed and abused.

A life where promises are made and kept and our love for each other is so perfect that we can’t even conceive of being disloyal. The Ten Commandments are often pointed to as the model behind our legal system and behind the Sermon on the Mount. And I think that is a fair way to view them.

But we need to see and understand that those commandments are not punitive, they are instructive, they relational in nature: How will we relate to God? How will we relate to each other? All of the commandments are concerned with answering one or the other of those questions. How will we relate to God? How will we relate to each other?

Neither the commandments nor the Sermon on the Mount should drive us to bring accusations against anyone, except ourselves. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live

Living, really living, is a choice that we make each day.

What Moses was saying here, and what Jesus would echo centuries later, was this: The essential things of life, the values and priorities and fairness and affection, all start within us as individuals. The choices that we make are the things that define us, when we answer the core questions of our identity, who we are, what are we meant to do with our lives, then those answers are manifested in our actions.

That’s not easy to do.

There is a fundamental conflict between that whole culture out there that is encouraging us to “live the good life” as they define it, and the still, small voice of God who is calling us to “have a good life” as it was created to be.

Those external voices tell us what to eat and what to drink and what to wear and what to watch and how to be cool and hip. And we listen to them too much, we take all of our cues on how to act and talk and think from that “live the good life culture”. We try to build our lives from the outside in.

We settle for little sips of water, when whole pitchers are available to us, we imitate life as we see it rather than live life as God gives it.

And each week the Commandments and Christ call us to build our lives from the inside out, to be the authentic “us” that God created us to be.

That’s what it means to choose life.

One writer described the “good life” of the law in this way:

“There is, of course, a legal dimension to the law – it is what holds us accountable for our actions toward each other. But that is a by-product of the law, not its essential character. Law is given to guide us in the way God would have us honor, respect, and care for each other. If we want to play the legal angle of the law, we can and all-too-often do. We do so, however, at our own peril, as before long our only resort is to count, and accuse, and litigate, and punish, and before you know it we are all cutting off our hands and plucking out our eyes to avoid the weight and fate of the law. In the world of "an eye for an eye," as Ghandi said, "all become blind."

??”Law understood primarily in legal terms, you see, ends up being a moral and all-too-often self-justifying check list: No murder today; check! No adultery; check! Jesus wants more from us. Actually, Jesus wants more for us. He wants us to regard each other as God regards us and thereby to treat each other accordingly. Jesus is . . . calling us to look beyond the law to see its goal and end: the life and health of our neighbor! In this way Jesus calls us to envision life in God's kingdom . . . not by obeying laws but rather by holding the welfare of our neighbors close to our hearts while trusting that they are doing the same for us.?”

That’s what the Church, the Christian community, is here to do.

To choose life is not a one time, “when were you saved?”, moment. It is an every day, every hour, every decision, every conversation relationship experience.

It requires a continual re-orientation of our hearts outward from ourselves toward others and to God.

And our hearts will lead us to the words and actions and prayers and futures that God has planned for us.

Each week, each day, I hold the welfare of so many of you individually and all of you together, close to my heart and I know and I trust that there are those who are doing the same for me.

That’s what the Church, the Christian community, is here to do.

We are seeking perfection, knowing that it will only come to us by faith in Christ’s promises to us.

I know living from the inside out, taking responsibility for our lives, isn’t easy.

It’s easier to live with rules and laws and consequences. It is much easier to accuse people and blame people then it is to love people and trust people and support people.

But if we choose life, if we re-orient our hearts, if we define ourselves from the inside out, if our words and actions find their roots in the imitation of Christ rather than the imitation of the latest celebrity sensation, then we will discover our authentic self.

It is hard work, it is a lifetime full of hard work as we pass through all of the seasons and roles of our lives, but it is good work, an abundant and eternal lifetime full of good work, God’s good work being done through each one of you and through us together.

And, in the end, the perfection that we seek is ours.

Back to golf for a closing thought.

I am not a great golfer, not ever pretty good. But in any given round of golf, there is always at least one moment when the swing and the ball and wind and the grass combine and there is always that one shot that is pure and perfect. And in all of the sports that I ever engaged in there is no feeling quite as satisfying as that moment in golf when you can stand and savor and admire that shot.

And in each day, amidst all of the stresses and strains that you all live with, in your jobs and your families and your faith, there is that one moment that is pure and perfect, that one moment when everything comes together, and as you savor it and admire it, recognize that at that moment you are fully and sacredly alive, that you have, in that moment, chosen life and that life has chosen you.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live