Do Not Be Deceived

A sermon for Sunday, August 30, 2020

Would you pray with me?

God whose love reaches out to both the foolish and the wise, thank you for bringing us to this time and this place. By your Spirit, make your presence known among us here and now. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

So I used to work for Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill, as most of you know, and while I was there, I wrote, managed, and taught science summer camps, among other things. And it was always so fun, getting to see all of the LEGO projects at the end of the week or hearing kids identify the bugs they saw in the botanical gardens or seeing a kid’s face light up when they understood something for the first time. But it was a challenge, too, because there are some concepts that are just hard to communicate. Take atmospheric density, for example. Our atmosphere is made of mostly nitrogen, with some oxygen and carbon dioxide, and other things, and even though it’s a thin, thin layer of gases surrounding the Earth, it’s much thicker, than, say, Mars’ atmosphere. Plus, Mars’ atmosphere has a much different composition. It’s 95% carbon dioxide. That matters when you’re trying to land robots on Mars and it also matters when you’re teaching a camp about space robots.

So I found this demonstration where you give the kids these beans and you assign say that, like, the kidney beans are nitrogen and the lentils are carbon dioxide and navy beans are oxygen and you have them guess the ratios and then you show them the real ratios and it makes this esoteric thing tangible for the kids. They get that the atmospheres are made of different things. But me, thinking that I would be the cool camp curricula editor, decided that we should use jelly beans instead of regular beans. That way, the kids would be excited about learning because they could also eat the science. Plus, I scheduled this activity for right before the afternoon break, so they could run off all that sugar.

I thought this was all brilliant planning and I was pretty pleased. I went to order the supplies for camp, I did the math and I tallied up how many jelly beans I would need, and I bulk ordered them online, because I was ordering for, like, fifteen camp sessions that would do this activity. And you know how sometimes, it’s hard to tell what it is you’re ordering when you’re ordering stuff online or in a catalog? Sometimes, things aren’t exactly what they look like? Well, turns out, I calculated that I needed twenty bags of each color of jelly beans, which was true, but when I clicked on the picture of a bag of jelly beans, I instead ended up ordering twenty pounds of jelly beans. The delivery man insisted on helping me move the boxes from the delivery bay to my office.

Yeah, not my finest hour.

I bet they still have bags of red, green, yellow, and blue jelly beans floating around the outreach office to this day.

But stuff like this happens all the time, right? There’s a little bit of misleading advertising, or even false advertising, and suddenly, you’ve got a problem on your hands. You’ve got to slow down, pay attention, maybe even read some reviews, or you’ll end up swimming in jelly beans.

Now, this is a silly example, but I think it points to a larger truth, a truth that Jesus’ followers were wrestling with. There were a lot of voices speaking out in Jesus’ day, telling people what to believe and what to do. We know that many people were listening to John the Baptist before they were listening to Jesus. We know a lot of people were listening to the Pharisees and Sadducees. And the reason John the Baptist and others questioned whether Jesus was the Messiah is that there were a lot of Messiahs around in those days, each one with different hopes and dreams and plans and teachings. People then were hearing a lot of different messages, just as we are today. And in the cacophony of different voices and choices, it’s hard to know which one is right.

Which is why Jesus tells his followers to pay attention and read the reviews, as it were, because otherwise, they’ll end up in some trouble.

Now, this is at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has spent a lot of time teaching over the past few chapters of Matthew, culminating in his message of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” which we read last week. But then he adds in this little addendum about wolves in sheep’s clothing and knowing trees by their fruits and how not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven. Instead, Jesus says, be doers of his teachings and not hearers only. Hearing Jesus’ words but not acting on them is like building a house on sand. The firm foundation of the followers of Jesus is acting on Jesus’ teachings.

This is something I appreciate so much about Jesus, because I think it shows us that Jesus understands how we humans work and accounts for that. We love something that grabs our attention and Jesus here is grabbing our attention. He’s speaking to some of our deepest hurts and deepest concerns and is telling us that there’s a better way to live. I mean, I hang on every word of the Sermon on the Mount because it offers me something new and exciting each time I turn to it. These words flood into my spirit, washing away the things that don’t matter, that things that aren’t eternal, the things that don’t shape me to be more like Jesus, and I love that feeling, that renewal, that newness I feel in my spirit. The word of God makes us new and I don’t know about the rest of you, but in times like these, I long to be made new.

But it’s not enough to hear or say words that make us feel like new. The words are an important part of it, sure, but anyone can say something that feels renewing, that feels good. It’s the actions that matter. It’s the fruits that matter. You can call on the name of Jesus all day long, but if you’re not doing what he told you to do, you’re building your house on shifting sands.

And what does Jesus tell us to do?

Jesus tells us to be salt for the earth and light for the world. Jesus tells us to be righteous, in the ways that matter. Jesus tells us not to insult our family in Christ, but to reconcile with one another as quickly as we can. Jesus tells us to see others as human beings and to care for them, not discard them, to keep our promises, to love our enemies so that they too might be renewed, to be complete in love, to do all that we do for God, to serve only God, to trust God, to treasure eternal things, and in all things, to love others as you would be loved; that is, to love others as God loves them.

Paul continues in this same vein in our passage from Romans 12 this morning. Let your love be genuine. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Rejoice in hope. Show hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Leave room for God’s work. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Do these things, and you’re solid. The storms of this world will rage about you, but they will come and they will go, and you will stand firm, because the word that goes out from the Lord does not return empty. If you hear Jesus’ teachings and if you act on them, you can trust that you have been planted deep into the soil by the One who taught gardens how to grow. Follow Jesus and you are rooted. You will bloom.

And, by the same token, if you’re looking to discern which voices in this world to listen to, this list is it. Pay attention to what the voices say—do they sound like Jesus? Watch their actions—do they do the things that Jesus calls us to do? Read the reviews, pay attention to their fruits—do they show things like patience, perseverance, hope, goodness, justice? Do they love others? Can you see the fruits of their love? Because we humans, we’ve got plenty in common. We were all made by the same Creator. And while we might bloom in an abundance of different ways and at different rates, growing a variety of different fruit, all our good fruit has a fundamental trait in common: love.

Friends, we are not living through easy times, and what we give our time and treasure to, what we pay attention to, has a much bigger impact than accidentally ordering eighty pounds of jelly beans. It is so important, maybe now more than ever, to pay attention to the reviews, to read the fine print, to think about what people are saying, and to know people by their fruits. Our decisions must be based in love, love that produces real, good fruit. Otherwise, we’re going to watch the ground slip away beneath us.

Now, I’m not saying that this is easy. I’m not saying that following Jesus won’t cost us anything. But on the day when we come to stand before Jesus, I don’t want to be a stranger. I want Jesus to know that I listened to all he said and I did my best to follow him.

And I’m sure you want to do the same.

Amen.