"A Statement of Intentions" February 16, 2014

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Matthew 5: 21-37 This is the Day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad as we enter it! We all know that it has been snowing since Halloween, that the skies have been gray and dreary, and according to Puxtehude Phil there is at least a month more of winter. This is the Day of Resurrection! This is the Lord's Day! Choose this day: Life and Good or Death which is decay. According to Tradition, Centuries ago, getting married was not a one day event, but instead three! The focus was not upon the Reception, the Cake, the Video, the Flowers, Gown or Bridesmaids. What we think of as the Wedding, was actually the couple making their vow to each other before God. Marriage was a sacred religious occasion, totally focused on the blessing of their vows. Years later, when they could afford a gold band for the bride, the couple returned to the church for a “Blessing of the Bands” and if they had children for baptism of these. Men did not wear Wedding Bands as a custom until WWI, because in farming and pre-20th Century factory work a ring would be dangerous. But going over seas, brides wanted to brand their husband with a ring on their finger. The commitment of vows, the blessing of bands, but before all of this came the Statement of Intentions. While in the Eastern Orthodox Churches there were no pews, and all the men stood on the floor throughout the worship of God, while women were in a balcony or behind a sheet from the men; in Protestant Houses of worship in Colonial Days in America, all the eligible single men sat on one side of the Sanctuary, while all the single women sat on the opposite side, so as to not distract each other in worship. Between the two sat all the families and married or widowed individuals. Prior to people always sitting in the same pew, prior to the era of “renting” your pew, there were differing seating sections. Dating was a serious, public and monogamous matter. Dating was a matter of the Church. When a man wanted to court a woman, he came before the Session of the Church and her father or family representative came to present dowries and discuss what bringing these families together might mean for the community. Marriage was not a matter of love or desire, but of the union of families for the benefit of the community and the church. The idea of small towns being concerned with what other people do has long and deep roots. If both families agreed, a chaperone would be assigned, to guide the couple through their courtship, until she determined they were prepared to commit to their sacred vows. That decision in the hypothetical abstract, the commitment of dowry, the commitment regardless of the individuals themselves, not knowing what the future holds... fits with our Scripture readings this morning. According to Deuteronomy, after 40 years of Israel wandering the wilderness, sinning, complaining, falling away from God, only to be brought back again, Moses was about to die. Moses' passing was one of the last vestiges of the Exodus, before a new era in the Promised Land. The people of faith knew nothing of what the Promised Land would be except promise. Behind them lay generations of regrets in the desert, ahead, across the river lay the future. Crossing over Jordan was not only crossing from one geography to another, from one context to another, crossing over was theologically laden with who we want to be and whether we are ready to become that identity. After forty years of struggle and failure, do any of us believe that the People, Moses or God, imagined they would suddenly be perfect? Changes in faith, changes in identity, changes in relationships take time. Even more, the beauty of this passage is that there is a permanent link between the past and the future. We do not suddenly graduate from High School, we do not give birth ex-nihilo, neither do we fall in love or commit to a future without having our own past. But still there is the choice, filled with hope and promise and imagination, “What is your intent?” Choose this day, whether you will be a people of faith, a people of God, or not. In part, this is also a question of values. Will you be pessimistic, convinced you cannot do better, or will you commit to hope, to believe? The core of the Book of Deuteronomy is whether the people will be governed by their past, or live into a new present and future, “dependent” upon God and God's promise. The difficulty we always have with the Bible, is that Scripture is not abstract historic events written down by a reporter at the time, but the text points both backward to memory and ahead to similar events. These may well have been the words and circumstance of Moses, as he prepared to die and the people prepared to enter the Promised Land... In that this represents God fulfilling the Promise, this commitment echoes the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Now that you have what you have wanted for generations, do you still want what you have and will you commit to being faithful? And, we know that the words of Scripture were not written down in this way until the return from Babylon. So what would it mean, to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land a second time, to choose to commit to God knowing that previously we failed? In many ways this makes the choice even more difficult... Choose this day: not only Promised Land or Wilderness, but Home or Exile, Life or Death, recognizing that Home and Life require following the Commandments, loving the Lord and obeying. Increasingly, I am convinced, the content of what we teach at Confirmation, or Graduation from HS, or Graduation from College, or in Engagement, or in a first Job, or when children are born, or when they are weaned and potty-trained, or when we Retire does not matter, SO MUCH as that we stop in Sabbath at those times in our lives. STOP and ask what do we intend? If all we are doing in marriage is wearing jewelry, then we have missed the point. If, as phenomenal as music has been, but if it is only a concert, we have missed the point. What Jesus describes in this part of the Sermon on the Mount, addresses what lies underneath all the words. What are our intentions? If you hate someone, if you are so angry as to wish them harm; then in our mind, in our hearts, in spirit, we have committed murder already. Before you dismiss this as the painkillers rattling the preacher's brain realize that in the last few weeks, Grandfathers, people like us, have shot and killed another for texting in a movie theater! Another, for playing their car radio too loud at the Gas Pump! Adultery is not about love. Adultery is a desire for personal gratification devoid of caring, devoid the commitment of making love. The point of all of this is not legalism, not in any way to establish different commandments, but bluntly and directly to realize our motivation and the brokenness in our relationships. As human creatures, we perpetuate our problems from one relationship to the next for ever, until we stop and change. I wish I could tie all this up with a pretty bow and assure each that everything is going to be all right... The fact of the matter is that all of us have been traumatized by crisis after crisis, indiscriminate cancers, accidents, bitter cold, unending conflict, to where the separation between feeling and action is a very gray line. Because we live with so much stress normally, because we have accumulated so many wounds, it does not take a great deal to move us from thought to action, to flip us from imagination to reality. SO think through your intentions, and choose this day.