Epiphany 6A
February 12, 2023
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Matthew 5:21-37
INTRODUCTION
Today we will hear once more from the Sermon on the Mount, but I warn you that where the last two weeks were full of obvious blessings and affirmations, today’s section is… less so. In fact, it can feel like a gut punch, with triggers a-plenty. Jesus will move today into instruction, teachings on anger, and holding grudges, and divorce, and adultery, and lust, and lying. Anyone here ever experience any of those, maybe once or twice? Yeah, me too. Get ready to squirm.
But these teachings, though they seem on the surface to offer all judgment and no hope, require a deeper look – one that is contextual, and one that keeps in mind that always and forever, ours is a God of life. In fact, I like to read all these laws through the lens of Moses’ exhortation in Deuteronomy today: “Choose life!”
Speaking of Deuteronomy, a bit about Moses: after all that he had done to lead the Israelites through the wilderness for forty years and to the edge of the Promised Land, God told him he would not get to enter that land. Bummer, right? He would die and be buried just outside of it. The entire book of Deuteronomy, then, is Moses’ farewell speech. In it, he reminds them of who God is, who they are, and of the covenant God has made with them. What we’ll hear today is the culmination of that speech, including that most important lens for understanding God’s law: “Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.”
Hold that phrase, “choose life,” as you listen today. What do you hear in these texts that brings life, or could? What in your life the other six days of the week causes you to experience life, as opposed to death and despair? Let’s listen.
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| Károly Ferenczy, 1862-1917, "Sermon on the Mount" |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Remember last week, how I told you about how Jesus was making sure we were thoroughly blessed and affirmed – “the salt of the earth,” he called us, and “the light of the world” – before he moved into the instruction part of his Sermon on the Mount? Well, this week, I’m really glad he did that, because I needed that boost and that reminder of God’s love and blessing and hope for me in order to be able to receive the tough instruction he offers us today. I mean, yowzers.
Jesus begins ticking off various commandments, various hot-button issues of the day, and interpreting what the laws mean, and what it would look like truly to fulfill the law – not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law. At first reading, his teaching comes off as, well, pretty convicting! It starts off okay – I’m definitely safe from being called a murderer! – but by the second sentence, I’m already doomed: “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (uh-oh), “and if you insult a brother or sister… and if you say ‘you fool’…” Okay, okay, I get it. It is pretty easy to read these teachings as a bludgeon, beating us down for all our human shortcomings, even after he went to such effort to bless us just moments before!
But if we take a step back, out of the minutiae of these instructions, a theme emerges. Jesus has been, from the start of this sermon, painting a picture of the kingdom of heaven, showing us what the beloved community of God can look like. And now he is getting into some specifics. In these very concrete examples of the stuff you deal with in your everyday life, he say, here is how God’s beloved community lives and acts. And over and over again the answer is clear: God’s is a community in which people treat each other with respect, compassion, integrity, and above all, love.
Here's how Jesus approaches his painting. You no doubt picked up on the formula he uses: “You have heard it said…. But I say to you…” He is referring to what is written in the Torah, the law of Moses outlined in the first five books of the Bible. You may even recognize some of the 10 commandments in there, which are part of Torah. The teaching in the Torah was always meant to be a way toward life – just look at the love song the Psalmist writes about it for today’s Psalm! At its best, in its fulfillment, the law is life-giving and brings great joy to our lives! But often it is read in black and white: “you have heard it said…” Not, “The law says,” but, “You have interpreted the law as…” And that interpretation reads as the very bare minimum for civil society.
For example: “You have heard it said, do not murder.” Ok, good call. And yet, simply refraining from killing each other is the absolute minimum for a loving and respectful society! It’s not inaccurate, it just isn’t everything. Because even if we can refrain from taking each other’s lives, think of all the other ways we damage relationship and community: by rage and resentment, by grudges, and judgment, by dishonesty and spite. What is loving about letting a person live and breathe, while harming them and our relationship with them in a dozen other ways by our refusal to love as radically as Jesus shows and teaches?
And so, Jesus says, strive for more than the bare minimum. That person you’re in a fight with? Don’t kill them. But also, strive to love them, by seeking forgiveness, and even reconciliation if that is safe to do so (which in some cases, of course, it is not). Don’t let grudges sit there on your heart, eating away at your life and theirs, or you surely will, as Jesus graphically suggests, “be liable to the hell of fire” – not of the eternal sort, necessarily, but of the hell we create for ourselves when we are riddled and burdened with resentment, anger and fear.
Jesus moves then to our most intimate relationships – the ones we have with our partners, our spouses. At their best, these relationships should be a beautiful model of the beloved community Jesus is shaping and building. In healthy intimate relationships, there is honesty, trust, respect, dignity, commitment, mutuality, and love. But we know all too well that this is not always the case. We get angry, or bored, or hurt, or somehow unsatisfied… and our eyes, hearts and sometimes bodies stray toward others. We sometimes even exploit others for our own pleasure. On its surface, the law urges physical faithfulness, and this is a good thing, but Jesus says that this, too, is the bare minimum for the beloved community. How much more life-giving it would be if we also committed to honoring human dignity by refusing to cheapen or objectify other people in any way for our own pleasure or satisfaction? What if we helped people to succeed in their marriages, lovingly supporting them in keeping their vows which, we know, can sometimes be difficult to uphold? In the Lutheran wedding ceremony, after the couple declares their intention to wed, the pastor asks the congregation a question as well. She asks if they will “support and care for [the couple], sustain and pray for them in times of trouble, give thanks with them in times of joy, honor the bonds of their covenant, and affirm the love of God reflected in their life together?” And the assembly response is a hearty, “We will!” So, do we do that well? How does that look? How can we do that for each other?
Of course, sometimes even the most supported and best-intentioned partnership doesn’t make it – about half of the time, they don’t. Jesus addresses this, too – though keep in mind his 1st century Jewish context is much different than our modern, Christian one. This was a hot issue in his day, and there were two main schools of thought. One was that a husband could divorce his wife for basically any reason at all, even for ruining dinner. The other held a much stricter view, that divorce was only allowed in extreme cases. Remember that a divorced woman was left with no resources and significant stigma; a divorce rendered her very vulnerable. Here Jesus acknowledges that there are some situations in which a divorce may be necessary – his example is unchastity, in which trust has already been broken and it might be too difficult to rebuild. But in the beloved community he is shaping, we still have a responsibility to uphold each other’s dignity; even when the nature of the relationship may have changed, and that particular spouse relationship comes to an end (and sometimes this is for the best), our responsibility to each other as fellow members of the community endures.
Finally, Jesus mentions oaths. Basically, here he is saying that not only should we not swear falsely, but rather, we shouldn’t have to swear upon anything at all for someone to know that we are telling the truth. Imagine a community in which we trust each other to tell the truth, simply because we speak in the presence of God, and have respect for one another. What a beautiful thing, to be able to trust one another’s word!
Over and over again, you see, Jesus paints this picture of a community characterized by trust, care, compassion, integrity, respect, honesty, and love for one another. This is the life of discipleship to which he calls us – not one in which we fulfill the bare minimum for civil society, but one in which we strive for something more. He shows us that God cares for us and our relationships with each other enough to draw us into this way of life – in which we experience the fullness of divine love, grace, mercy, and generosity, through our relationships with each other.
And isn’t that the life that we want, too? We may think holding that grudge feels good and satisfying. We may get a hit off that perfectly worded insult, or whatever intimate adventures we can conceive of. But it is not the real, abundant life that God wants for us, that Jesus died to make possible for us. This text is not meant to condemn; rather, it reminds us of a truth we already intuitively know, and directs us down the path toward a life that we already long for. It isn’t easy, of course. It is hard, and costly, and requires us to swallow our pride and dig in our heels for the sake of love, rather than for the sake of our self-satisfaction. But the alternative is indeed a sort of hell – a place we create for ourselves and one another when we choose what is easy over what is radically loving.
Jesus came that we may have life, and have it abundantly – not only in the life and world to come, but in this life, this world. Let us walk, stumbling though we may be, away from the hell our sinfulness might create for us, and toward the life of dignity, respect, and love that Jesus shows, teaches, and makes possible for us.
Let us pray… God of life, we want to live a life that truly is life, yet our own sinfulness draws us from that path. By your gracious hand, lead us in your way, and empower us to choose the way of life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Full service HERE.
Image credit: Ferenczy, Károly, 1862-1917. Sermon on the Mount, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56296 [retrieved February 13, 2023]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Sermon_on_the_Mount_K%C3%A1roly_Ferenczy.jpg.
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