Rev. Debbie Cato
Matthew
5:21-37
Fairfield Community Church
February 12 , 2023
O God, what the world says and what you say are often at odds. Set before us now your truth as we hear your Word and as we respond in faithful trust. Amen.
It Means
More Than You Think!
These are
the kind of passages that a preacher would like to skip over! I wanted to look and see what else could I
preach on this week rather than these tidbits that Matthew has put together
here in the middle of Chapter 5 in the Sermon on the Mount.
Murder, adultery, divorce, and oaths. Besides being topics I’d rather avoid, these are probably topics you may not feel very relevant to you or our congregation. After all, I don’t know that we have a lot of murderers in our midst. I don’t know the status of adultery in our community, and honestly, I probably don’t want to! Views on divorce have changed in the last 2,000 years. And oaths, well how we finalize contracts and business deals have changed dramatically since Biblical times. But if you listen, you will learn that these passages mean more than you think! As usual, Jesus is teaching more than what appears on the surface. And they apply to us today as much as they did to Jesus’ original hearers.
We know that murder is wrong. I can say that without worrying about any backlash. The sixth commandment says, “Thou shall not kill.” None of us would dispute that. But Jesus takes it further in his teaching here. He says, “I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister,[a] you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult[b] a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell[c] of fire.”
That stops me in my tracks. Who of us does not get angry! Who of us has not insulted someone! Jesus is speaking to us, my friends.
You see the problem with anger is it spreads. Look what is happening with our political system. Our elected officials fight amongst themselves/ between the parties and are not accomplishing what we elect them to do. Then we fight amongst ourselves over politics and our beliefs. We get angry enough that we cut people out of our life that believe differently than we do because anger has taken over our ability to have reasonable conversations and disagree amicably. These disagreements bleed into our families and our dinner conversations and we become angry all the time just because we are so upset about one aspect of our life. We feel like we are tense and stressed all the time. Our public anger has infiltrated all aspects of our life and we have lost valuable relationships in the process.
Jesus is calling us back to be the light of the world. How can anger be defused and prevented from spilling out into volatile behavior that impacts others lives and our own life in the process?[1]
It all begins with smoldering anger against someone. Your anger may not result in murder, but the point in the commandment against murder is that you should never get near to the point where you wish someone dead. When we close someone out of our life because we are angry with them, they are as good as dead to us. Every time we allow our anger to smolder against someone, we become a little less human. Eventually, our anger will take over and we will become an angry person who always sees the negative, who always sees fire, who is always ready for the fight.
Jesus is asking us to be a reconciler. To get off the pedestal we put ourselves on when we think we are always right, abandon our position of superiority over the person we are angry with. Jesus is challenging us to let it go. It’s a costly decision. It’s hard to do. Very hard. But if we are genuine, we belong on the ground; on the same level as everyone else – not on a pedestal where we are always right.[2]
Just like murder, Jesus teaches that it isn’t enough not to actually commit adultery. You must not commit it in your heart or your mind. It’s natural to look at someone attractive and think, “Wow, he’s really good looking.” But if you go further and think about what you would like to do with that good looking person, then that’s lust and it is the same as if you were committing adultery. We must deal ruthlessly with the first signs of lust because that’s what leads to further sin. Jesus warns us to avoid allowing our imaginations to go unchecked. And even more, he teaches us how important it is to be truthful and tell a spouse or significant other about our feelings. Honesty gets those thoughts and images out of the darkness of our mind into the open. This is how we can be the salt of the earth and the light of the world!
From adultery, Jesus moves to the topic of divorce. The topic of divorce was a particularly fraught one in Jesus’ time. Remember, women had no rights in Biblical times. Without marriage, they were almost always destitute – they owned no property and had no rights. It was men who could divorce women. Women could not divorce their husbands. Two of the leading teachers of Jesus’ time, Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai, were famously divided over the issue of divorce. The school of Hillel favored a more permissive approach to divorce that allowed a man to divorce his wife even if she ruined her husband’s meal. The school of Shammai, however, upheld a much stricter view that only permitted divorce in the most extreme cases. In other words, the conflict over this particular issue was especially heated in Jesus’ time.[3]
Although there is no exact parallel in modern religious settings for how the issue of divorce functioned for Jesus and his contemporaries, any number of hot button issues today might compare: abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, or the church’s position in relation to other political issues. Jesus ultimately upholds the values of trust and compassion within human community. In this case, by encouraging the continuity of marriage, except in those cases where trust has already been broken through infidelity. Jesus underscores the need for trust and compassion within human relations.[4]
Finally, Jesus talks about oaths, a topic we don’t encounter very often. But, when set within an ancient context where most dealings occurred orally rather than in writing it makes a lot of sense. A person’s word would have carried the same weight as our signature on an affidavit or contract today. It seems nearly unimaginable to be able to engage in business today without signature, contracts, and piles of paperwork. But in Jesus’ day, business practices would have been nearly incomprehensible without the presence of verbal vows. A person’s word was everything. It was all that was needed.
Jesus says, let your “yes” be “yes”. It is essentially an encouragement to ensure that spoken word is so authentic and so in line with our intentions that it is already above question just on its own, even without an additional strengthener. Jesus is calling for his audience to demonstrate the highest possible level of trustworthiness and integrity.[5]
Murder, anger, adultery, lust, divorce, oath-keeping – these may seem like unrelated topics. Yet Jesus has a way of weaving them together. For him, they are all about relationships and community and cultivating trust and compassion. They are about protecting the most vulnerable in our relationships and upholding our commitments. They are about being genuine when we say we will do something and being as honest and true in our hearts and minds as we are in our actions. It’s about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world in all that we do and all that we are. It's hard stuff. It’s stuff we are going to fail at some point in our walk – honestly, at many points. But we get back up and we start walking again, in community with other believers who understand what it’s all about. And we remember that the encouragement to cultivate trust and compassion in community never goes out of style. Because these teachings of Jesus, well, they mean more than we think. Amen.
[1][1] Matthew for Everyone, Part I. N.T. Wright.
West Minster John Knox Press. 2002/2004. P. 43
[2]
Matthew for Everyone, Part I. N.T. Wright.
West Minster John Knox Press.
2002/2004. P. 43 - 44
[3]
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-521-37-5
[4]
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-521-37-5
[5]
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-521-37-5
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