It seems to be imbedded in human nature that we love the whole idea of cause and effect; maybe because so much of what we see and observe in the natural world operates through cause and effect. Cause and effect is predictable, it makes sense, and it provides a useful framework for how the world works. Plant a seed, get a flower. Touch something hot, get burned. Walk in the rain, get wet.

In fact, cause and effect is the implicit understanding behind the speech Moses is giving to the Hebrews as they are poised to enter the Promised Land, in the reading we heard from Deuteronomy. Do good and you will be rewarded. Do bad and you will be punished. Follow the law, and you will be blessed. Ignore the law, and you will be cursed. God loves those who do good; God punishes those who do bad.

This cause and effect way of understanding the divine and human relationship, Moses says, is so important and so vital that it needs to be ingrained in our brains, imprinted on our souls, bound to our hands, fixed to our foreheads, taught to our children, and displayed in written form all over our houses. Don’t forget, Moses says, to follow the law that God has given you. Law is the cause, obedience in the effect. It’s the key to life in abundance, life with God, life with each other in freedom and prosperity.

The only problem is, it doesn’t work. The people forget the law, the people try to work around the law, or the people get so obsessed by the law that they make laws about the laws. That’s pretty much the story of the rest of the Old Testament. The religious framework of cause and effect, of “here’s the law and you follow it” ended up being a disaster. And so the centuries go by – from the time of the entrance into the Promised Land to the time of Jesus in the first century.

By the time that Jesus begins his teaching ministry, the people of Israel have experienced centuries of religious failure. Jesus basically throws the whole notion of cause and effect, of “follow the law and be rewarded” out, and starts with something brand new. The portion of Matthew’s gospel we read today comes at the tail end of what he is proposing as a new framework – we call it The Sermon on the Mount.

The shorthand, Cliff Notes summary of the good news Jesus has to teach is encapsulated in one small but significant word – grace. We’re saved from ourselves by sheer, flat-out, undeserved, unmerited, unwarranted grace. God’s amazing grace means we can’t work our way into heaven, we can’t worm our way into God’s love and affection through feats of remarkable ministry, and we can’t earn our way into eternity no matter how obedient we are, or aren’t.
Grace is a good thing. Grace is a gift given without strings. Grace is a good definition of the good news. Bestowing lavish love and the gift of unmerited grace upon us human beings is what God chooses to do. The apostle Paul writes about grace every chance he gets and no wonder, for God’s gift of grace changes everything and turns the notions of how things work upside down.

The trouble is that we still like cause and effect religion, even if we’re not very good at it. We like grace, when it’s given to us as a gift, but we’d still much rather see someone else who we consider undeserving of such a fine gift get punished. That’s the trouble we’re in. We live in a grace-filled, love-soaked, forgiving relationship with God ourselves – but we find it hard to extend that same graceful generosity to others.

God loves us with gracious abandon; we love others with measured calculation. God forgives us our mistakes and cherishes our good efforts; we hold others’ mistakes against them and hope they’ll get the right punishment. God loves us in spite of our faults and failings; we love others only as they do what’s pleasing in our eyes. God extends unconditional love and compassion towards us; we extend conditional love and measured compassion towards others.

It’s that kind of measurement that Jesus is getting after when he says towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, “not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Our growing edge is always and evermore to want the same grace we’ve been given ourselves to be extended to others – and perhaps most of all those we don’t like and those we think are especially undeserving of receiving unmerited grace.

Think back to the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s gospel – there is no better story that portrays God’s gift of unmerited grace than that story. The problem is that more often than not, we find ourselves (if we’re honest) not in the role of the prodigal son, but in the role of his older brother. We grumble in the background, still trying to let God know that we’ve been good – that we feel our good behavior should have earned us God’s special notice and favor, while our younger brother – the scummy one – the one who is a liar and a cheat and a good for nothing son of a gun – gets off scot-free. That’s our problem with grace, and that’s (I believe) what Jesus is getting at in our gospel passage today.

What we’ve received as unmerited, unearned, undeserved pure love we must wish and want for others. Even more, Jesus tells us that we’ve got to not just want others to accept God’s gift of grace, but we’ve got to extend the gift of grace ourselves. Oh, so hard. In the teaching of Jesus, every bit of our desire to keep score has to be laid to a permanent rest.

Paul says that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God – that none of us can ever earn God’s special favor. The playing field has already been leveled. All that’s required is for us to accept the gift of God’s saving love in Christ. We are to entrust ourselves to a loving and forgiving and graceful God.
Jesus says that it’s the will of his Father in heaven that we extend that same love and forgiveness and graciousness to other human beings – whether they deserve it or not. “Everyone,” Jesus says, “then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”

But God being God and us being us, we have to pray daily that God’s will for us and for others might be accomplished. Your kingdom come, your will be done. The kingdom is love, God’s will is love. And it takes our daily commitment, our daily prayer, and daily practice to make it so. Jesus created a charter for a very new world – a world that has the potential to be a peaceful world, a loving world, a forgiving world. Jesus says that God’s love is big enough, wide enough, and gracious enough to include us all – Pharisee and fisherman, Roman and Jew, sinner and saint, friend and enemy. What a wonderful, lovely, loving world that would be. Jesus names it the kingdom of heaven. May God’s will be done.

Amen.