Laptop Woes: A Sermon on Matthew 15:1-20
A sermon on Matt 15:1-20 given during Morning Prayer on December 10th.
Last week I experienced an event that many of us dread: my laptop had an (apparent) catastrophic failure. I was there, merrily watching a YouTube video, when suddenly, and without warning, the screen froze. It was entirely unresponsive. CTRL+ALT+DEL would not work. Nothing. Eventually I turned it off, but it didn't respond to any amount of cajoling for 24 hours.
We have come to depend on our technology and it is a scary thing when it fails!
Think of the joy of of opening a new laptop: everything runs so smoothly. Apps open at the click of a button. The boot-up speed feels like a nano-second.
Fast forward a few days, weeks, or months and we might tell a different story. We might find our laptop slowing down. Lagging. Maybe even a shadow of its former self. Now, I’m no tech expert, but I do know that unnecessary software, apps that I’ve installed, plug-ins and extensions—those things designed to improve my user experience!—eventually they can accumulate and become counter-productive. What was supposed to help now hinders.
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This morning I invite you consider whether this might be a help way to thing about Matthew 15. In this chapter, Jesus exposes where the Pharisees and the scribes had created many ‘add-ons’ to faithful Torah observance. In fact, they had added in so many extras that Jesus accuses them of “making void the word of the LORD”. They had become hypocrites.
The first example of this that Jesus gives is how they have corrupted God’s command to honour and care for ones parents, Instead of directing people to follow God's instruction, the Pharisees and scribes ratified man-made oaths where people would devote their property and wealth to God. In doing so they were excused from their God-given obligation to honour and provide for their parents.
In the next breath—in the second half of the reading—Jesus takes aim at the Pharisees' man-made customs around ritual washing and, quite probably, food laws as well. Again, Jesus speaks plainly and pulls no punches. Those who endorse these human traditions are the "blind leading the blind." They are cultivating plants not made by God—therefore they are plants God will uproot (v.13).
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So what's the solution to this religious hypocrisy? Jesus' answer is found in a wholly different place.
At the end of the reading Jesus draws attention back to what matters: the heart that drives our behaviour. Our insides. The centre of who we are. In v.19 he lists a number of actions—murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and blasphemy—all of which come from that centre of our being. In saying this Jesus challenges them—and us—with the reality that real spiritual work is an inside job. It is found in addressing our anger, lust, envy, and pride. Not because the outside don’t matter, but actually because they do!
When the external religious customs of man get in the way of the work of God in our lives, gets in the way our obedience to Him, our obligation to those around us, then we are at risk not just of a sluggish spirituality, a slowdown in religious performance, but maybe even a catastrophic failure.
No amount of software add-ons or plug-ins will compensate for our defiled hearts. We are in need of new spiritual hardware. A RAM upgrade or new graphics card (I realise I'm stretching my metaphor thin). And that’s a work only God can do. But that’s exactly the work He wants to do. And exactly the work He has made possible in sending Jesus.
So today, as you head into class and as you head into the rest of Advent: what you more concerned with? Your user experience and religious add-ons and customs that you or your church or denomination are so proud of, but may be dragging down your spiriutal life? Or are you attending to the work God needs to do within you and the need for a spiritual hardware upgrade?
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