Preached at Gentle Spirit Christian Church
Reading: Matthew 23:29-36 

“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.

“Snakes! Cold-blooded sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation — and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.

“You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.”

Six diatribes

In today’s reading, we’re getting the last of six diatribes Jesus aims at the scribes and pharisees — each one of which begins with Jesus saying, “You’re hopeless!”

In the first one, he mocks their evangelism, basically calling it pointless.

In the second one, he rejects the notion that only the things that happen inside the temple — in this case, promises — matter more to God than the very same things if they happen outside the temple.

In the third one, he turns the idea of “the basics” on its head, saying that fairness, compassion and commitment should take priority over meticulous record-keeping over tithes.

In the fourth one, he makes a statement about integrity, couching it in the symbolism of goblets and dishes that sparkle on the outside but are rotten on the inside from their greed and gluttony.

In the fifth one, he makes another statement about integrity, this time couching it in the symbolism of a grave plot that is well-tended on the surface but full of rot and decay underneath.

And finally, in today’s reading, he accuses them of revisionist history, saying that they’d have harmed just as many souls in the time of their ancestors as they’re doing in their present lives.

Then he ties it all together in a great big bow, saying that this generation will be the one to pay the price for all the spiritual violence that’s been visited on generations of prophets and believers.

Yikes!

What in the actual heck is happening here?

Is Jesus trying to get killed?

No. But we know that where he is in his ministry at this point, the forces that will lead to his sacrifice are well in motion, and there’s almost nothing he can say or do by now that will reverse that course.

So what we’re given here is a really vivid image of him telling the religious leaders the business one last time.

Now, did it really go down like this?

I mean, all in a single scene, like a Hollywood screenplay, like the scene in “Jerry Maguire” where the protagonist delivers the big “please believe in me” speech and the girl he’s desperately trying to win back simply answers with “You had me at hello,” and all of a sudden you feel the plot turn, and all the dramatic tension that’s been building up to now is magically, cathartically released because you know the guy just got the girl — that you knew from the beginning he was going to get — but you let the movie carry you along anyway, and you suspended your disbelief anyway because you identified with the protagonist and felt his anguish as he despaired that he just might lose it all, and that it all will have been for naught — but in the end, thankfully, blessedly, it wasn’t?

Probably not. Probably what we’re being given here is a composite scene of sorts, a roundup of things Jesus said at different times. But they probably had no less impact, because no one dared talk back to the religious authorities even once the way that we know Jesus talked to them quite often.

Arigatou gozaimasu

So, why this passage, what’s it all about — and what is the Spirit calling us to do about it?

I think part of the answer is in the first 12 verses of the chapter, where Jesus turns “to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them.”

In that scene, we see Jesus telling anyone who will listen that the scribes and pharisees actually do know a thing or two about God, and that their teachings aren’t necessarily the problem.

The problem is what happens when they start to position themselves between God and the children of God. Instead of being joyful revealers of what we today call the Good News — that God not only loves us, but God also likes us (let that one sink in) — they can’t resist the very human temptation to become gatekeepers.

Gate-keepers, not gate-openers.

That concept of being a gate-opener makes me think of something about Japanese culture that blew me away when I visited. From the moment we arrived at the airport, we experienced a level of helpfulness that I’d never seen anywhere in America. There were scads of people everywhere I turned, eager to help point us in the direction I needed to go — and seemingly at every step of the way.

It happened at the airport, at tourist venues, and in stores. Anywhere you’d expect to get a little bit of help, in Japan there was generally a LOT of help. And it was always accompanied by a phrase that I think most of us know, or at least have heard, even if you don’t know exactly what it means.

Arigatou gozaimasu.

It means thank you, but in the most polite way. For instance, to a friend you would just say arigatou — but the gozaimasu takes it to a whole extra level of politeness and deference.

In other words, where you or I might say “please,” the average Japanese person in a customer service role actually says “thank you” — or maybe even something more akin to “thank you kindly.”

In that regard, I think of arigatou gozaimasu as Japan’s “aloha” — a phrase that gets said a lot, and means a lot of things at once, and literally seems to be on the lips of everyone you encounter.

It wasn’t long before I was saying it to everyone for everything, and in that context it felt completely natural. In a society that defaults to extreme politeness, it felt rude not to even try.

I don’t know that we have anything even close to this in America, but for many years I found myself quite naturally saying “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome” — and of course, I got made fun of because that phrase is associated with Chick-fil-A, a brand that’s generally controversial with the types of folks I tend to hang out with.

But I don’t care, because “my pleasure” is actually how I feel whenever I say it. It was my arigatou gozaimasu before I even knew what such a thing was.

The other thing about Japanese service culture is that many of the people I encountered in these customer-service situations often proudly wore matching uniforms that I could only describe as a little bit corny. I couldn’t even imagine the average grown American coming close to wearing some of these uniforms with the same level of crispness and pride. Pride in the role. Pride in the work. Arigatou gozaimasu. Right this way. Thank you kindly. My pleasure.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, there’s a backlash brewing over an attempt by McDonald’s to update their uniforms to something more hip, sustainable and gender neutral. Take the logos off, and they do look sorta like today’s casual wear. But maybe the whole point is that a uniform is supposed to make you stand out as someone who’s set aside to be helpful. Arigatou gozaimasu. Right this way. Thank you kindly. My pleasure.

Religious fashion shows + frauds

Were the religious authorities of Jesus’ day wearing their fancy robes with pride? Absolutely.

Was it an arigatou gozaimasu kind of pride? Probably not.

Jesus himself says it in the first few verses of Matthew 23, when he’s warning his followers to follow the teachings of the authorities but be wary of their behaviors: “Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next.”

Sounds like hypocrisy to me.

And what’s the opposite of hypocrisy? It’s integrity.

And how would we define integrity?

One definition of integrity I like is that your insides should match your outsides. In other words, your actions should reflect your deepest beliefs — and vice versa. Otherwise, you risk being called a hypocrite.

This is what Jesus is warning his followers about — and then he turns his withering gaze to the scribes and pharisees, whom he soundly denounces with six rounds of vivid imagery before putting it all in a generational context.

We’ve been studying this passage as the centerpiece of our Lenten discipline, and we somewhat cheekily titled the study “What if Jesus really meant what he said?” as an attention-getter — but the real question here isn’t whether Jesus was serious. Everyone knows he was serious. It’s what got him killed.

Rather, the bigger question still facing Christianity today is whether we take Jesus seriously. And for anyone who emphatically answers yes, the next natural question becomes: What are you going to do about it? And that’s where most people get stuck.

So let’s get unstuck.

Have you ever driven in winter weather and gotten your car stuck by spinning your wheels in the snow, just enough to create a nice ice cradle that allows your tires to spin as fast as they like while you go nowhere?

What’s the key to getting unstuck in that situation? Laying on the accelerator isn’t the answer. Rather, it’s rocking the car back and forth until it has just enough momentum to roll out of that nice ice cradle you just made and back onto a patch of snow, which offers just enough friction for you to be on your way.

You’re breaking the car out of a situation that initially seemed hopeless.

Breaking bad

Walter White found himself in a seemingly hopeless situation. Diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer after turning 50, he decided to make and sell meth as a way to ensure his family’s financial future after his death. That single decision, and his inability to turn back from that decision, propels the plot of the popular TV series “Breaking Bad.”

Across five seasons, we see Walter devolve from being a talented chemist frustrated by his life as a financially struggling high school teacher into being a drug lord, liar and murderer. And even after the cancer fades as a threat, we see that his real motivation is his resentment of the fact that the tech company he co-founded made his partners billionaires not long after he accepted a small buyout.

Walter White broke bad, and he continued to break bad, taking his whole family with him and assuring his own destruction.

Along the way we see all the reasons Walter actually had to “break good,” as it were, instead of breaking bad. A loving wife and son. A second child. And the skills and acumen to make a product, bring it to market, defend his trademark and provide for his family.

Walter’s fundamental mistake came from defining his happiness as having what he wanted, not wanting what he already had. After he broke bad, his insides had no choice but to match his outsides.

Breaking good

We, of course, have the choice to break good. Easier said than done, though. We’re fallible humans, and we can be just as imprisoned by our nearsightedness and our petty jealousies as Walter White.

But the author James Clear offers a way out. In his bestselling book “Atomic Habits,” he proposes a 4-step system as an alternative to traditional goal-setting and the disappointments that go along with it.

The idea is that you enter into a “habit loop” that activates the 4 Laws of Behavior Change: Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.

Here’s how it works:

• Make it obvious: Make it part of your daily habits, and append the new habit onto an existing one. For me, anything I associate with my morning cup of coffee is going to get done, every day.
• Make it attractive: Create attractive behaviors while doing something you really enjoy. Join a culture where the desired behavior is the normal behavior, and where you already have something in common with the group. I think of Alcoholics Anonymous as a great example of this.
• Make it easy: Focus on repetition rather than perfection, reduce friction, keep it to less than 2 minutes, and automate it if you can.
• Make it satisfying: Add a little bit of immediate pleasure. “What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided.” Here I think of a Jewish mother giving her child a spoonful of honey after they’ve finished their schoolwork and saying, “Learning is sweet.”

The idea is that you get one percent better every day.

Alternatively, how do you break a bad habit?

• Make it invisible: Reduce exposure to the cue that causes a bad habit.
• Make it unattractive: Reframe your mindset, highlighting the benefits of avoiding your bad habit.
• Make it difficult: Increase friction by increasing the number of steps between you and your bad habit. For me, this would be like putting the Girl Scout cookies in the attic.
• Make it unsatisfying: Create a contract to make the costs of your bad habits public and painful.

But James Clear’s not the first person to understand the power of small changes over time. Aristotle himself said, “We are what we repeatably do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”

The philosopher Epictetus said, “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

More recently, Mark Twain said, “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”

In a world where we’re all beginning to understand what a micro-aggression is, I’d like to suggest that its opposite — the atomic habit that begins the healing of the world — is a micro-affirmation.

Nature’s atomic habits

You know who has amazing atomic habits? Nature. And this time of year, I always find myself in awe of what God’s creation is able to accomplish through the slow accretion of minute changes that happen minute by minute, plant by plant, hour by hour, day by day, until a barren field of twigs is suddenly a lush canvas of greenery stretching toward the nourishing light of the sun.

Spring has always been my favorite season. I’ve learned to love fall, but there’s something about what happens in nature this time of year that I just can’t take my attention away from. All the buds on the trees, the bushes, the plants. The undeniable power of nature, and how all that possibility that lay dormant through winter comes bursting forth once those spring temperatures start to arrive.

Digging around in the dirt the other weekend, I was reminded of a poem by Theodore Roethke, whose imagery often centers around nature — a reflection of his upbringing by his father, who owned a large local greenhouse.

Cuttings, by Thedore Roethke

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it —
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

It’s exactly how I feel when I admire all that power, energy and miracle. It’s what makes this season so special to me.

Every year, like clockwork, God’s creation breaks good with a million-quadrillion atomic habits that repopulate the trees with new leaves, the bushes with new flowers, the fields with new blades of grass.

If nature can do it to the tune of a million-quadrillion things, could we humans do it to the tune of… a handful? And if we can commit to that, who could we possibly be by this time next year?

Another one of my favorite poets is Mary Oliver, whose poetry is also very nature-centered. I had the chance to hear her read a couple decades ago, and during the Q&A after the reading, someone asked her what she’d be doing if she hadn’t become a poet. She replied that she’d probably be leading marches and demonstrations.

The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

How will we break good this season? What will be the impact? And how will we know that it matters?

Jerry Maguire got his answer in the famous living room scene, where he’s come home to seek redemption from his estranged wife. He’s been in the valley of personal and professional despair, and he’s just experienced a glimmer of professional redemption. Now he’s looking for a redemption of the heart. In the scene, he walks into the living room of his old house, where his wife is with a bunch of friends, all of whom are giving him looks.

Jerry: Hello? Hello.

I’m lookin’ for my wife.

Wait. Okay… okay… okay.

If this is where it has to happen, then this is where it has to happen.

I’m not letting you get rid of me. How about that?

This used to be my specialty. You know, I was good in a living room. They’d send me in there, and I’d do it alone. And now I just…

But tonight, our little project, our company had a very big night — a very, very big night.

But it wasn’t complete, wasn’t nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn’t share it with you. I couldn’t hear your voice or laugh about it with you. I miss my — I miss my wife.

We live in a cynical world, a cynical world, and we work in a business of tough competitors.

I love you. You — complete me.

And I just had —

Dorothy: Shut up. Just shut up.

You had me at hello.

You had me at hello.

Similarly, we’ve got God at hello, whether we’ve closed the deal, gotten the girl (or boy) or micro-affirmed God’s creation — or not.

We’ve got God at the moment of repentance. With every atomic moment, every micro-affirmation, we turn our attention back to God — and the same God whose Creation is coming back to life all around us with more power and might than all the bombs we’ve ever built or used — that God hears that “hello” as though it’s only been a second — even if it’s been a year.

We’ve got God at the moment we break good.

I’ll leave you this morning with another of my favorite sayings, this one attributed as a Chinese proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

God bless you.