"For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)
My eight year old daughter, Ali, is taking piano lessons from a wonderful teacher who is part of our church. Now Ali and I are a lot alike. We are both pretty driven folks at whatever we do. If we are going to do something we are going to do it right.
Ali is a hard working student at school who constantly is doing extra credit and really tries to get her homework done perfecty. She has never once gotten in trouble at school, she’s never had a “ticket” pulled or gotten a “bummer” card or anything else like that. She is alot like her Daddy--a hard working little perfectionist who always wants to get things right.
And so it is with the piano. Ali plays almost every day. And whether we are with her or not, she just sits up there plunking away at the keys, trying to get them perfectly. When I watch her I can see the frustration if she misses a single note. She just starts over and does it again. “Plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk.” She goes into her piano lesson with her teacher and does the same thing: “Plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk.” Over and over again.
But her teacher is so good, so wise and kind. She can see Ali’s frustration and focus on getting each note just perfectly and she’ll gently say, “Oh, you hit every note Ali, but you are not listening to the music. It’s not Plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunk. It’s ‘Twin-kle, Twin-kle, lit-tle Staaaar.’ Don’t just hit the notes, dear, listen to the music.”
You see what the Pharisees did, what people like my daughter and I can do, is that we work so hard at hitting every note perfectly that we miss the music. What Jesus was telling his disciples is that, you can live perfectly and still not get it right.
As a pastor the thing that so troubles me more than anything else that I see in our community is how our striving for the perfect life can actually keep us from living right.
We work hard to have perfect families, to provide a perfect home, we have our kids in so many activities so they’ll have the perfect experience, we drive them to have perfect grades.
We dedicate ourselves morning and night to being as perfect as possible, perfectly hitting all the notes and yet we are missing the music. But, we aren’t listening to the song of the universe, the story of the Kingdom that Jesus has brought into our world and is specifically bringing into our lives. We are so caught up in living perfectly, that we are not living righteously.
The Bible tells the true story of a righteous God’s redeeming love. It is like a musical, a love song, a story that is meant to enter into us, sweep us up into it transforms us from the inside out. Yes, to “play it” well requires discipline. Yes, there are certain “notes” to play and others to avoid. But perhaps the problem with so many of us is that somewhere along the way we stopped listening to the music of the Kingdom being sung over us.
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies.
The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.
The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. (Zephaniah 3:14-18)
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