You Bring About What You Think About

A Sermon preached on 2-12-17 at Lutheran Church of the Atonement, Florissant, MO for Epiphany 6 on Matthew 5:21-37 and Deuteronomy 30:15-20

I stayed home with my children for nine years while they were small, and I ran a home business with Mary Kay Cosmetics as a BeautyConsultant and later, as a Sales Director. No, I never drove a pink car, but I did drive a free red Grand Am for several years. In addition to training us on the details of good skin care, make up application, and so on, a large part of the training involved how to think: how our mindset affects our behavior, how our attitude affects our outcomes. We were encouraged to get rid of “stinkin’ thinkin’,” and to start each day with a “check-up from the neck-up” by repeating positive affirmations.

I have never been one for platitudes because I find life to be full of paradox, irony, mystery, and unexpected emotions, but over time, I began to appreciate the wisdom and the truth these teachings contained. My favorite phrase of how our mindset affects our behavior is, “you bring about what you think about.” I tried to teach my children that “you bring about what you think about,” but they were skeptical at first as well. That is, until one day, when my parents were visiting us here in St. Louis.

The bushes in the yard really needed to be trimmed, so my dad thought he would get out the hedge trimmer and give us a hand with the yard work. But before he went outside, he regaled us with the humorous tale from several years beforehand when he was out trimming the hedges. He wasn’t paying close enough attention and the power cord got caught in the hedge trimmer and sliced it in two. We had a good laugh, and out he went to trim the hedge. About fifteen minutes later, he came back in the house—guess what happened?! Yup, he cut the power cord with the hedge trimmer, because “you bring about, what you think about!”

You bring about what you think about. This is a simplified summary of some of what Jesus is talking about in this part of Sermon on the Mount. What we think about matters. Our inner life is important because it manifests itself in our behavior whether we intend it to or not. To justify judgmental thoughts and bad behavior, you have probably heard people say, as I have, “well, at least I haven’t killed anybody,” as if this were the standard of decent behavior. Jesus stops this up short by saying that we have completely missed the purpose of the Law, which is not just to restrict a few choice bad behaviors, but to preserve the well-being of the whole community, all of humanity. Such community well-being begins in our mind and with our thoughts.

Haven’t you had the experience when you’re mad at someone, and you keep thinking about it and thinking about it, it gets bigger and bigger—and you get more angry, not less. What we focus on—what we think about gets bigger. That kind of anger affects all our relationships. We’re mad at someone at work, but make a sniping remark to our spouse when we get home. It always comes out, somehow, doesn’t it? Because we bring about what we think about.

Jesus’ sermon points us to the intention of the Law which is so clearly described in Deuteronomy: to help us choose life. “Be reconciled to your brother or sister and then bring your offering to the Lord”—that’s what it means to not murder. None of us can say, “well, at least I haven’t killed anybody”—yeah, we have—we have damaged relationships and hurt the well-being of our community when our negative or destructive thoughts come out in our words and behavior.

The same depth of understanding applies to the other 10 Commandments. Jesus highlights, "Thou shall not commit adultery." When we look at another person with lust, we commit adultery. When our thoughts are focused on our own desires, we think of the other person like an object. And when we think of someone like an object, we treat them instrumentally—for our own gain—rather than as one who bears the image of God. Thoughts lead to behavior. We must make a conscious effort at this in our culture because “sex sells”—the objectification of especially women in advertising everything from cars to cowboy boots makes lust a profitable marketing strategy.

It is also because of negative cultural attitudes towards women that Jesus expands his teaching on adultery to include divorce. As you may know, in ancient times, women were considered property which was passed from the father to the husband in marriage. Men were within their rights to issue a certificate of divorce for frivolous reasons, including if his wife burned the bread. If there wasn’t a male relative to take in a divorced woman, she would be left destitute. By elevating divorce to breaking the 6th Commandment against adultery Jesus pushes the patriarchal culture to re-think attitudes toward women in order change behavior toward them. “Choose life,” says Deuteronomy, life for the whole community, including women.

Does this mean that there’s no such thing as life-giving divorce? Of course, not. I know many people who are better off for ending an unhealthy relationship. Jesus’ wants our attitude toward our spouse and others, to bring about respect, honor and well-being.

In a poem called, clothesline, Marilyn Maciel* beautifully describes the importance of our thoughts,

...if words could be seen

as they floated out 

of our mouths

would we feel no

shame

as they passed beyond

our lips?

if we were to 

string our words 

on a communal clothesline

would we feel proud 

as our thoughts

flaspped in the

breeze?

So does Jesus then, leave us with the tall order of thinking perfect thoughts that lead to flawless behavior? Is he preaching the expectation of not only works-righteousness, but thought-righteousness? An unattainable goal that none of us can meet in this life? I don’t think so, because he adds this admonition in the middle of our passage: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.”

It doesn’t sound like grace, but I think it is: grace in the form of hyperbole and exaggeration. If we all poke out our eyes for engaging in impure, damaging thoughts, and cut off our hands for doing something we shouldn’t have done, every last one of us would be blind and without hands. In other words, we can’t do any of this on our own. We will all flunk. So while our thoughts and our behaviors do matter to God, Jesus knows we can’t do it alone and we’re not going to get it right all the time. Which is he why he came to be like us in human form. Jesus came to be not only the salvation of our souls, but also the source of our strength, the forgiveness for our sins, and the model for how we are to think and behave. The Apostle Paul in Philippians says is this way: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Step 11 of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous says, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.” Through our own prayer and meditation, we can daily open ourselves to conscious contact with God to receive God’s will for us and the ability to behave that way in our daily life. Knowledge and ability, thoughts and behaviors. Jesus is our source for both those of things, and our forgiveness when we fall short.

This is what Paul meant in Romans when he said “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed through the renewing of your minds.” With the mind of Christ, we can bring about what God thinks about.

*"clothesline," poem by Marilyn Maciel. Published in Patti Digh, Life Is a Verb: 37 Days To Wake Up, Be Mindful, And Live Intentionally.(Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 42.