Janaury 1 - Happy New Year

God bless you and yours during 2007!

Grace and peace,
Trav Wilson

December 31 - Sermon:Who Has Your Eyes?

I was blessed to preach at Crawfordville United Methodist Church in Crawfordville, Florida. This was the first time that I have been invited to preach outside the North Alabama Conference. I think that it had something to do with my father-in-law being a lay leader in the church. Maybe. Anyway, here is the sermon on Matthew 5:27-30 ... "Who Has Your Eyes?" I wrote this as a rough draft for a class in preaching this semester. I plan to rewrite it for the class. I was not satisfied with the sermon. Yet again it is two sermons woven into one. The only saving grace is that this time, both sermons have the same plot. Kind of like the alpha-story and beta-story paradigm in modern television shows. Watch CSI sometime and you'll see this. There's always a main story (alpha) that takes up about 60% of the show. Then there is another story (beta) that takes up about 40% of the show. Anyway, enjoy!

Grace and peace,
Trav Wilson

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Scripture. 27You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman [or man] with lust has already committed adultery with her [or him] in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Introduction. I have often wondered how the first followers of Jesus would have heard this passage. Let us imagine there is a young man in his late twenties from the coast of the Sea of Galilee. His name is Jacob. Jacob has heard that Rabbi Jesus is teaching and preaching near his hometown. Jacob is going out to see Jesus.

Jacob is a carpenter, an apprentice of his late father. He has the rough hands of a handy-man who worked nearly every day in wood and stone. In Jesus’ day, one could make a good living as a carpenter in Galilee. The Romans had conquered the area. They were busy expanding and establishing their empire, rebuilding old cities and building new ones, hiring every carpenter that they could find. There was just one problem. Even at such a young age, Jacob was losing his eyesight, just when he needed it most. What was worse, he felt like he could tell no one. Every month it became worse. More and more he was alone, squinting desperately at his work.

Jacob had heard many things about Jesus. He heard that he was a passionate preacher, that he was a boat-rocker, a bit of a trouble-maker among the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Jacob was curious about Jesus to be sure. But Jacob had also heard that Jesus was a healer. Jacob was going to see Jesus as best as he could. He was going to see Jesus so that he might see.
Jesus at the Mount. Jacob did not know it, but he was about to take part in history. Today was the day that Jesus would deliver the most famous sermon ever: the Sermon on the Mount.

Jacob left early that morning, not waking his mother and father. He was not married yet. There was a young woman named Deborah to whom he was betrothed. But he had not married her yet. Jacob did not want her to marry a blind man who could not care for her or her family. He could not do that. Not unless Jesus could help him see.

When Jacob arrived where Jesus was going to preach, Jacob saw a large crowd on at the foot of a hill. Some were standing, some were sitting. Some were sick, some were healthy. Some were silent and deep in thought, some were talking excitedly. The wealthy sat with the poor. The uneducated sat with the educated. Men and women sat together. In that day, that wasn’t how it was in the synagogue, but that’s how it was in the presence of Jesus.

And suddenly there he was, walking up from the town towards the mount. Jesus was nothing like Jacob or we expect. He was about 5’8” with skin tanned with many sunlit days. He had curly brown hair and the sparse whiskers of a young man barely in his thirties. His eyes were brown, like the rich mud from which God made Adam, the first man. Jesus looked calm, but there was an energy and an enthusiasm around him, a primal kind of leadership. He shook hands among the crowd along his way to the top of the mount. He passed by Jacob. Jesus took his hand: an earnest smile, a warm greeting, a strong, rough hand. Jesus was also clearly physically strong. He looked like he could bench press half a tree, just like Jacob. The rumors were true and Jacob knew it by his rough hands. Jesus had to be a carpenter, too.

The Sermon on the Mount. Jacob watched as Jesus went up to the top of the Mount. Then Jesus sat down. A murmur went through the crowd. This was going to be big. Rabbis only sat down when they were going to say something really important. They were right. Jesus opened his mouth; he opened his heart to the people gathered there. He started speaking slowly, patiently, with the same earnestness Jacob found in his smile. Jesus had the eyes of everyone there, he had their attention.

Elijah and the Monkeys. It is a powerful thing to have someone’s attention, to have someone’s eyes. We were at Disney World this week with our youngest nephew Eli. We went to the Rain Forest Café. They have this restaurant decorated like a Rainforest with plants and animals everywhere. Our nephew was enthralled with the animatronic monkeys swinging and screeching in the trees. They had his complete attention. But in having his attention, they had his eyes. He was effectively blind to all else, like the ketchup. He would take a French fry; negligently dip it in a vast pool of ketchup on his plate. Ketchup got all over his hands; put the fry into his mouth; got the ketchup all over his mouth; dripped the ketchup on his pants; got another fry and the adventure continued. All the time his eyes were glued to the monkeys. It is a powerful thing when someone has your attention. They have your eyes. You are effectively blind to all else. So the question that that Jesus asks of us this morning is who has your eyes? Who has your focus? Is it the Jesus? Or is it something else?

Torah. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus mainly focuses on the intent of the Torah, the Law that God gave to Moses, the religious law of the Jewish people. Jesus’ teaching that day is the barebones of what it means to follow him, what it means to be a Christian.

Scripture, Part 1. 27You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

The Seventh Commandment. Jacob knew what Jesus was talking about. Do we? Jesus was talking about one of the Ten Commandments, one of the original ten laws that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai: you shall not commit adultery. What is adultery? What did people say about it at the time? In Jewish society of the time, adultery was when a man and woman were sleeping around with each other when one or both of them were married to someone else. In the time of Jesus, a woman was supposed to be celibate before marriage and faithful to her husband afterward. If she did not she could be stoned to death and in places still women still are.

For a man the rules after marriage were the same, however, before marriage the man was relatively free to do what he wanted as long as he was discreet about it and did not have an affair with a married woman. King David’s sin with Bathsheba was not that he slept with her, but that he did so when she was married. An affair with a married or betrothed woman would be an infringement on her husband’s rights. However, if a married man did have an affair or a night on the town with a harlot, there was no chance that he would be stoned. Just look again to King David or to the patriarch Judah for evidence of this. For an unmarried man, a relationship with a harlot may not be wise, but it wasn’t against the interpretation of God’s law at the time. But then, Jacob gets nervous because Jesus kicks it up a notch:

Scripture, Part 2. 28But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Jacob’s Lust. You see, here is the tricky bit that made Jacob nervous. Jacob was a young man. Like all young men he had at times been distracted by the lines, the curves and the features of some of young women. Then there was that business with the harlot every year for the last few years when he and his buddies would go carousing on their road trips to the big city. Jesus is making it very plain that if we are going to follow him, the difficultly is not so much adultery, as it is lust, and worse yet the difficultly is the condition of one’s heart. A little bit before this, Jesus had taught about the commandment against murder. He said that the problem was not only murder, but the anger behind it. The problem is not that we break the rules; it’s that our nature doesn’t allow us to follow the rules.

Now, I know what you are thinking. A pretty girl walks by wearing low-riders and a bikini top the average man’s tongue is going to wag. “It’s only natural.” Right? And, ladies, men are not alone in this. You are not as pure as the driven snow. A good looking man walks by and the average woman does the exact same thing. “It’s only natural.” Right? Someone cuts you off in traffic, someone cuts in front of you in line, some one does you wrong: you get angry. Right? And you have Oprah and Dr. Phil, making a buck as always, turn to us and say, “Feelings are neither good or bad. It’s what you do with them. It’s only natural.” Right?

No. This is what is hard about following Jesus Christ; this is why some rejected his teaching. Jesus wants to change our natures. Jesus wants to change what gets our attention. Jesus wants to change what has our eyes. Jesus wants to change our focus. When Jacob heard this, it was like a fog was lifted. Imagine a God who loves us so much that he would call on us to join with him to make us more like him. Jacob had to start going blind before he could see this point. Aren’t we just as blind so often? Jacob had come to Jesus hoping for healing. And, in a way, he was getting it. Jacob’s physical eyesight may have been failing, but his spiritual eyesight was becoming clearer. His focus what starting to change.

Spaghetti Focus. Our oldest nephew is named Rhett. Earlier this year, we had dinner him. Like our younger nephew, he had trouble focusing on his dinner. It seems to run rampant among my nephews. Unlike the trouble with the monkeys with my other nephew, everything had Rhett’s attention. He wanted run around. He wanted talk to all the people in the restaurant. He wanted flirt with all the women in the room. He wanted to do everything but eat. When we insisted that he eat, he insisted that he had more flirting to do. Finally, my patience ran out and I intervened.

Now, I don’t know anything about children. I am an only child raised by two only children. I am the ultimate psychological nightmare. I know nothing. All I had was what my parents did with me. I got out of my chair, put one arm around the child; put Rhett’s fork in his hand with the other. And I said, “Rhett, do me a favor.”

He responded, “Ok, Uncle Trav.”

I said, “Rhett, I want you to focus on your spaghetti.”

And he asked me, “Focus?”

“Yes, focus. Focus on your spaghetti. Eat it up. There is nothing else in the world other than your spaghetti.” And, for some reasons, it worked. He began eating. He wasn’t fiddling around anymore. At one point, his mother even tried to interrupt him, to get him to sing some song she had taught him, “No, mommy, I’m focusing!” Rhett had a clarity of focus that allowed him to nourish himself. This is what Jesus wants for us.

Jacob’s Focus. Focus is important. It was important for Rhett. It was important for Jacob. It is important for us. When Jesus takes us through this commandment, he is calling us to turn our eyes to him, he is calling us to a greater clarity of focus on God’ commandments. If you want proof, listen to the rest of this scripture:

Scripture, Part 3. 29If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Who has our eyes, what we are focused on, has eternal significance. Jesus is not telling us to literally mutilate our bodies, but to use our senses of sight, taste, touch, and hearing to focus on him and his mission in the world. To follow Jesus, the Christian must choose very carefully what to focus on; we must choose very carefully what to give our eyes to.

Think about this: it has been calculated that about 33% of all men in the US use adult material on the internet and 20% of women, too. The men aren’t alone, girls. Forget sexual material for a moment: what about food, what about drugs? What about possessions? Is the accumulation of material goods, the accumulation of more and more sensation, more and more highs, is that actually making us happier? We are many times wealthier as a society than we were 20 years ago, but are we any happier?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor, under constant threat of death, worked openly against Hitler from within Germany itself. Bonhoeffer was eventually imprisoned by the Nazis and hung by his neck until death just before the Allies librated the concentration camp where he was a prisoner. Before he died, about these verses that we have studied today, Bonhoeffer said this, “When you have made your eye the instrument of impurity, you cannot see God with it.” When the devil has your eyes, you cannot see God. Who has your eyes?

Good News. As the crowd dispersed, Jacob and some others hung around because Jesus was wont to heal after he preached. Eventually, Jesus did come to Jacob; same earnest smile, a few words were exchanged. Jacob’s eyes went black as Jesus laid his hands over them and began to pray. Were Jacob’s eyes healed? Did he have enough faith? Maybe. But this I know, behind the warm strength of Jesus’ hands, for the first time in his life, Jacob could really see. He had new focus, a focus of eternal significance. Something else, someone else now had his eyes. Does he have your eyes? You too can give your eyes and heart to him. You, too, can have clarity of focus. That’s the Good News. On what are you focused? Who has your eyes? Amen.