Loading...Sermon for the 6th Sunday after the Epiphany
12 February 2017
The Rev. Matthew Rowe
Matthew 5:21-37
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Today we spend the third of four Sundays in the Sermon on the Mount, which is more than the Beatitudes we heard on the first of these four Sundays. The Beatitudes are simply the introductory remarks to the rest of the sermon, which might be described
as Jesus’ Manifesto of the Kingdom of God.
Last Sunday we heard that we who follow Jesus are in the world as Salt, a valuable mineral that adds flavor to life and is a preservative of the Good; and as Light, shining with the Light of Christ, pointing others to Christ. Now Jesus begins to describe the ethics of the kingdom, ethics that challenge us to, as Moses challenged the people of Israel in his farewell address, “Choose life.”
The ethical standards that Jesus introduces are an “ante up” on the Law of Moses. For some reason, there seems to be a misinterpretation of Jesus to think of him as saying, “All that stuff in the Old Covenant, you’ll just have to excuse my Father. He gets in a bad mood sometimes, becomes very bossy, and lays down the Law, but he doesn’t really mean it. I’m here to carry you around on a pillow, to assure you that you’re fine just the way you are, and that there’s no expectation that any change in attitude, behavior, lifestyle, or worldview is expected on your part. Just enjoy God’s grace
as it rubber stamps all your inclinations and looks the other way if you need some “me” time.”
Any such misinterpretation of Jesus cannot stand up to the standards of the Sermon on the Mount. I wish the lectionary were going to take us through its entirety, but we shall stop next week at the end of chapter five. I encourage you, in these weeks leading up to Lent, to spend some time in Matthew 5-7, the full text of the Sermon on the Mount. Coming face to face with the high ethical standards of the kingdom of God is certainly the means to discover good reason for Lenten repentance, renewal, and amendment of life.
After telling us encouragingly that we are Salt and Light, Jesus starts to “up the ante” on the Old Covenant, in regard to six covenant obligations. and we hear four of the six today. Each begins as Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said. . .”
The first topic Jesus addresses is anger. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder.’” On the surface it seems to be that Jesus is upholding the proscription
against the wrongful taking of another human life, but Jesus goes beneath that obvious precept to the underlying venom that gives rise to it, saying that it is in not allowing that venom to course through our spirits that we “choose life.”
It is not to say that we are never to be angry. That would be like trying to tell a summer day in Texas not to be hot. We know it will be hot come July and August, so we take steps to prepare for it and make it as tolerable as possible.
We can also prepare to effectively deal with the flame of anger by not allowing our first response to everything to be anger, or by falling into the habit of constant criticism, saying, “You fool” to everyone, sneering and calling others insulting names,
because allowing that fire to spew from inside will make us like Gehenna, the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem where trash was always being burned. It was such a scene that it became for Jesus a metaphor for hell. Here he is saying, “Give others hell, and you’ll experience it for yourself.”
Not only are we not to be given to the knee-jerk angry response or the habitual belittling and insulting of others, we are not even to succumb to the occasional satisfaction. I learned a hard lesson in such restraint in 10th grade. I was putting stuff into my gym locker one day after cross-country practice. My locker was on the bottom row, so I had to lean far forward to access it. While in that vulnerable position,
someone walked by and gave me a little shove, which sent me down to my knees,
looking into the darkness of the locker, taking in the aroma inside created by stinky running shoes. Without looking up to see who shoved me, I responded to the insult by saying, “You jerk.” “You what?” came the reply of a voice I knew to be one of the best
and toughest members of the wrestling team. The next thing I knew I was pinned to a wall in the locker room and his fist was about to flatten my face into that wall, but then I was saved when a door opened and one of the football coaches stepped out
and asked, “Is there a problem, gentlemen?” How thankful I was on my walk home that day that the wrestler was not posted along my route, waiting to finish me off.
Jesus says that to let an angry thought about a brother or sister linger is as good as committing the act of murder. All through the night after almost having my face rearranged, I thought about what had happened in the locker room that day. It was just a little prank. I blew it out of proportion, so the next day at lunch I approached the senior quad and caught the wrestler’s attention, and he walked toward where I was standing, outside the senior quad. Sophomores don’t enter the senior quad. I told him that I knew he was just kidding around the day before and that I was sorry for blowing it of proportion and calling him a jerk. He said not to worry about it and that he was sorry for almost beating me up. Then I said, “Thanks for coming over to talk to me,” and he said, “No problem,” and that was about it. I don’t think I was contemplating high theology in that moment, but it was an exercise in “first be reconciled to your brother or sister.”
“You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery.” Jesus takes the Law of Moses beyond a discipline of just the physical into a discipline of the intentions. “But I say to you, whoever looks upon a woman with lust has already committed adultery
with her in his heart.” The lustful look, the moment spent pondering another who is not one’s spouse, undermines the mutuality, the partnership, the exercise of sacred relationship that makes marriage a sign of the union between Christ and his Church,
as the Prayer Book marriage service teaches us. While what enters the mind may be beyond our ken, what happens to that thought, whether it is explored or constrained,
is an exercise in resolve to keep a vow made “until we are parted by death.”
“You have heard that it was said.” This next one concerns grounds for divorce. If marriage is to be a sign of the union between Christ and his Church, as the Prayer Book teaches, and even “a sign of Christ's love to this sinful and broken world,
that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair,” for which we pray in the marriage service, then the commitment must be strong, the vows made with the most serious of intention.
Given the patriarchal culture that Jesus spoke to and dwelled within, these words could be heard by husbands as exhortation to be not so much the “master of the house,” but a partner in a holy enterprise that is intended to be a sign that God’s kingdom is breaking into this world, and if that is the case, Neil Young nailed it when he wrote, “It’s gonna take a lotta love, or we won’t get too far.” The “lotta love” needed is the love of God, displayed in Christ, a love that, as the Apostle Peter wrote in his first epistle, “covers over a multitude of sins.”
“You have heard that it was said.” The fourth teaching is about taking oaths. Jesus says that we don’t need to say, “I swear to God,” or “I swear on a stack of Bibles,”
but that as those who embrace the ethics of the kingdom, our honesty is to be such
that when we say “yes” or “no,” people can trust that we mean what we say.
What about a situation in which we find ourselves asked to “solemnly swear” to tell the truth, such is in a court of law? Our Anglican tradition informs us on this matter.
In the back of the Prayer Book is a collection of Historical Documents, among them the 39 Articles of Religion, which set out the position of the Church of England at the time of the Reformation. The last of those Articles is entitled, “Of a Christian Man’s Oath,”
and says that one “may swear when the Magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done according to the Prophet's teaching in justice, judgment, and truth.” This teaching makes room for “raising your right hand”
or placing it on a Bible as a sign of promise in truth-telling.
“You have heard that it was said. . .But I say to you.” The ethics of the kingdom that Jesus teaches are high, and raise a standard against which we are measured, and we most certainly fall short “in thought, word, and deed.” How are we to live up to these high standards?
In recent weeks there has been around Emmanuel a revival of sorts of some 1980’s politics, in the calling to memory of a comment by President Reagan about nine terrifying words, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The one calling us to remember that aphorism is our new Sr. Warden, who is turning it into a non-terrifying slogan by saying, “I’m your Sr. Warden, and I’m here to help.” He really is off to a good
in keeping that promise, don’t you agree? I would assert that there is someone else we know who would spin those Reagan-esque words into a positive. That someone is God the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, “God at work in the world and in the Church even now,” as the Catechism teaches us, who is saying to us, “I’m from Eternity, and I’m here to help.”
The Holy Spirit is the gift poured upon us at Baptism, strengthened in us at Confirmation, nourished in us in Holy Communion. The Holy Spirit is the life of God flowing through us, “leading us into all truth, enabling us to grow into the likeness of Christ.” We have within us, through the waters of Baptism, the laying on of apostolic hands, the Real Presence of Christ received under the shadows of Bread and Wine,
the very life of God living in us, bringing us into harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all of God’s creation. That life comes to us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God’s first gift to those who believe.
The Spirit is there, within each of us, as a gift. But, in order to be accessed, a gift must be received, and that is how we begin to live into the ethics of the kingdom, by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit that has been poured into us, allowing that life force, the eternal, perfect, and endless life of God to be the animating force that propels us along in this journey of life.
We have also the choice, because the will of God is not forced upon us, to draw on our own resources for this journey. Moses had some things to say about that choice. It leads to death and adversity, and not to live long in the land of promise. I know from experience that Moses was right, for I know the wreckage left behind from those scenes in my life where I chose to do it my way.
The ethics of the kingdom are a high standard, the highest, unattainable on our own power. But, we do not have to try on our own. We have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit, to live within us, to take up residence in our hearts, to guide our minds, to redeem every thought, word, and deed.
Receive the gift, and choose life.
