Slime in the Ice Machine
Preacher: Tim Jenkins
Passage: Matthew 5:21-37
Growing up in Houston, there was a reporter on channel 13, the ABC affiliate, that was a local celebrity. He appeared on the Friday night news and hosted a regular segment; his name was Marvin Zindler. His whole brand was consumer advocacy, and he did more than just the evening news on Friday, but the thing he was most famous for was the catchphrase at the end of his segment each week. You see, Marvin Zindler hosted the Rat & Roach Report, which profiled eateries around town, reporting on the health conditions of their kitchens. He even infamously reported on the ABC13 cafeteria, his own station’s cafeteria. As you might imagine, for local evening news, while sometimes places received good reports, most of the time the reports were pretty terrible, and by the time I was old enough to be aware of them, every bad segment on the Rat & Roach Report eventually built into the final crescendo where Marvin Zindler would look at the camera and say, “and there was slime in the ice machine!”
The value of such a report, as a means of consumer advocacy, is pretty clear: you never know if a restaurant’s kitchen is as clean as the dining room. Appearances can be deceiving.
When I look at our Gospel reading today, and I see Jesus’ teaching on anger and adultery and more, I feel a kind of similar energy to Marvin Zindler’s reports. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “you have heard it said that you shall not murder, but I tell you be wary of anger in the ice machine.”
In these verses, Jesus does great violence to the notion that we can be getting by just fine because of what we’re not doing, regardless of how we feel toward others on the inside. The inside, the heart, matters. It matters a lot. And the more I’ve thought about that, the more it has made sense to me, (1) because of who Jesus is and what he is doing, and (2) because of who we are and what God is doing.
To contextualize this moment a little bit for you, Jesus is teaching these new disciples of his at a very early point in his ministry. And when I say disciples, I mean disciples with a lowercase d. There are some of the 12 here, Jesus has called some of them, Andrew, Peter, James, and John, to be specific, but there are also these other people who have latched on because of his growing notoriety as a great teacher. He gives this sermon, called the Sermon on the Mount, to them, these people who really don’t know who and what he is yet: specifically, the Incarnation, God and man. And after this sermon finishes, it goes all the way to the end of Matthew 7, it’s 3 chapters long, Jesus is going to head down the mountain and start performing miracles. So, one of the things he is trying to do here is try to get these disciples to understand that all the amazing things they are about to see with their eyes is not as amazing as the thing about Jesus that they can’t see. God is here, and through Jesus, namely his death and resurrection, he will reconcile man with himself.
That’s the first thing: who Jesus is and what he is doing.
Now, another thing that is going to happen when Jesus goes down the mountain and begins performing miracles is that he is going to keep bumping up against the religious leaders and teachers of his time. The contrast of their outward religious personas versus their inward spirituality, the “slime in the ice machine” of their heart, if you will, will be a flash point over and over and over again.
You see, the dwelling of God in the human heart—not the outward appearance of piety—is what the Christian faith is all about. And God cannot dwell in the heart of one who allows vices that the law cannot reach.
Let me say that again.
The dwelling of God in the human heart—not the outward appearance of piety—is what the Christian faith is all about. And God cannot dwell in the heart of one who allows vices that the law cannot reach.
And so we must allow the law to touch our hearts. This is the thing we see Our Lord preaching on this morning. We must radically alter how we deal with conflict and how we value others. We must be willing to exorcize those things from our lives that lead toward and not away from sin. For only in cleaning the “slime” out of our hearts do we make a dwelling place fit for God to dwell.
This, ultimately, involves the giving up of our all. For the only fitting response to Christ’s sacrifice is the sacrifice of ourselves to God. It is the most valuable thing we have to offer: all of us for all of Him.
If this makes you uncomfortable, it’s working as intended. “You should feel uncomfortable,” is what I imagine Jesus would tell us. It’s like finding out Marvin Zinlder is going to be taking a look at your heart for the Friday evening news.
No one ever wanted to be found between Marvin Zindler’s crosshairs, their dirty laundry and dirty kitchens being put on blast. But, even being found there, the situation could be turned around. An ice machine can be cleaned. It was through neglect that slime formed, but the situation can be fixed. Jesus tells us the same about our hearts. As uncomfortable as his words are, he says them so we will stop and look inward. That the discomfort might cause us to take stock.
As Lent approaches, friends, let me extol you to examination. Use the season. Find the things in your life that should be removed, and add in the things that draw you closer to God. Make yourself a fitting dwelling place for the Lord, that in your heart he may dwell.
