On the Inside

Reading: Matthew 23.1-38

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The little Negro boy didn’t have much money to spend, but he went to the fair anyway. What fascinated him most was the balloon man. He had a handful of helium-filled balloons. Whenever there was a lull in his trade, he would release a balloon and the boy would watch as it went up and up – a white one, a red one, a yellow one…

“Say, mister,” he said at last. “If you let a black balloon go, would it go up too?”

“Yes, sonny,” replied the balloon man, releasing a black balloon. “You see, sonny, it’s not the colour that makes it go up, but what’s inside!”

We certainly have a whole series of external criteria by which we evaluate a person’s worth – race, education, age, beauty, state of health, bank balance…

Debates on abortion or euthanasia tend to centre on “quality of life” – instead on “value of life”. When we value a life, we will do all we can to provide the best quality of life possible.

When my Mother was slowly deteriorating in St Luke’s Nursing Home Chermside – to a point where she was scarcely able to speak or respond – we kept visiting for the sake of the person who was there. The interface with the outside world wasn’t functioning well, but she was still a person of worth, not just because of what she had been, what she had achieved, shat she had done for others. No! There she lay in her helplessness, still a person of value.

I feel very much with relatives who find it difficult to try to maintain contact a loved one when there is little or no response. However, we must never undervalue a person to whom the lord will shortly say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your Lord!”

We look at the externals, but God looks on the heart!

The Play-Actors

A famous actor was out in a restaurant. Someone spotted him and asked, “Are the real so-and-so?”

Actors have a problem in becoming so identified with a particular role that people begin to believe that is who they are. Generally in private life they endeavour to separate themselves from their role.

The Greek word from which we get our English word “hypocrite” was commonly used for a “play-actor” or “impersonator” – a person who isn’t really what he seems to be, who is just pretending.

It is the word Jesus uses to condemn the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees. They are just play-actors, pretenders. The whole of the last section of Matthew 23 is about them – we have read just a few examples. They “lock the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces” – not going in themselves, nor letting others do so. In their self-righteousness they didn’t admit their own need of forgiveness and change, nor did they allow others the possibility of the change Jesus was making possible to people through the Kingdom. So when they made converts they were quite unable to make them children of God.

They were so particular in a show of keeping some parts of the Law – even to a foolish extreme – but were lacking in its important teachings such as justice, mercy and honesty. In an example of divine humour, we hear Jesus saying of them, “You strain a fly out of your drink, but swallow a camel!” So their religion was all about looking right on the outside – cleaning the outside of the cup and plate “while the inside is full of what you have obtained by violence and selfishness.” So he likens them to “whitewashed tombs, which look fine on the outside but are full of bones and decaying corpses on the inside.”

For all their outward show of honouring the prophets of old, they show themselves willing collaborators of those who killed the prophets.

Yes, the Saviour had come! But so many of that day were rejecting him and would face punishment because they have not received the forgiveness offered. Jerusalem itself will be destroyed.

If with all your heart…

We are called to a response of the heart to Jesus our Saviour and Lord. We have been challenged by the word of testimony from Exodus to offer the gospel and the possibility of change to those caught in homosexual attitudes and practice. The Uniting Church has a very real danger today of being self-righteous about ourselves – shutting the door of the Kingdom in people’s faces, not going in and not letting others go in.

It is not self-righteousness but truth to God’s word that calls homosexual acts sin – or anger, or selfishness, or slander, or drunkenness… It is self-righteousness that condemns and refuses to offer the divine grace of forgiveness and transformation.

Jesus has opened the door of the Kingdom to all who will believe in him. He died on the cross to bear the penalty of the sins of every person. Forgiveness is offered and freely available – it only needs to be received. And the Holy Spirit is waiting to take that redemptive work of Christ and apply it in terms of the transformation of our lives.

Listen to Dt.4.29. If they disobey the Lord, they will be scattered among the nations – “There you will look for the Lord your God, and if you search for him with all your heart, you will find him.”

From Jeremiah’s letter to the Jews in exile where the Lord says, “You will seek me, and you will find me because you will seek me with all your heart” (Jer.29.13).

And from Isaiah 55.6-7, “Turn to the Lord and pray to him, now that he is near. Let the wicked leave their way of life and change their way of thinking. Let them turn to the Lord, our God; he is merciful and quick to forgive.”

The Lord calls us to that change on the inside and to offer the gospel freely to others so that they too may experience his gracious changes from the inside.

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