Epiphany
6A 2014
Father Adam Trambley
February 16, 2014 St.John’s Sharon
In today’s gospel, Jesus is continuing his teaching in the
Sermon on the Mount. He is drawing on
the Old Testament, but doing something different with it. In the Torah, the first five books of the
Bible, God gave commandments, statutes and ordinance of how to live in a community
of God’s people. Some of the
instructions were based on a recognition that life is messed up, that nobody’s
perfect, and that we need a reasonable rule of law to keep society
working. Jesus is not providing
guidelines for good government, however.
Jesus is laying out the principles for the eternal Kingdom of God.
These ethics of the Kingdom that Jesus lays out, prepare us
for eternal life in two ways. First,
living into Jesus’ instructions turns us into the kind of people that can be
eternal citizens of the Kingdom of God.
Nobody wants to spend eternity with somebody walking around calling
people names, staring, and ending every conversation by offering a pinky
promise. Second, only by living out
Jesus commandments will we become people who could actually be happy living in
an eternal community. Unless we want to
feel that we are trapped in heaven with a bunch of idiots, prostitutes, and
liars, we have to stop seeing people that way, and begin to look upon people as
the glorious, beloved creatures of God that we all are. Trust me -- people who we avoid as
unbelievably annoying today aren’t going to get less annoying when we get to
spend eternity with them unless one of two things happens. Either we leave the heavenly courts and go
down to another floor because we’d rather be in hell than deal with them – and,
if we’re honest, we’ve all felt that way about somebody sometime – or we learn
to see them in a different light. The
Sermon on the Mount instructs us how to live like citizens of the Kingdom of
God now, so that we can manage it when we experience it fully.
The first item Jesus addresses in today’s reading is
murder. Certainly unlawfully killing
people is wrong. Jesus says that just as
wrong are the anger and scorn arising in the heart that are the internal states
equivalent to the outward act of murder.
Attacking people with words, or even with glares and attitude, can be
hurtful. At the same time, all of those
actions demonstrate an attitude of the heart which says we are somehow entitled
to judge people. We decide, based on
whatever criteria are in our best interests at the moment, that we are better
than other people. We divide humanity
into two groups – ourselves, and maybe a few people like us, and the vast multitude
of fools, idiots, morons, goober-brains, doofusses, incompetents, slow drivers,
frustrating coworkers, and, of course, people too stupid to figure out how to
use a cash register correctly when we are in a hurry. The more we write people off as somehow
beneath us, the less we are able to love them, and the more we allow our own
frustrations and resentments to overcome our peace and joy. Psalm 1 says “Happy are they who have not…sat
in the seats of the scornful” for a reason. When we look upon people with
scorn, we trade the fruits of the Holy Spirit for the barrenness of our own
selfishness, and we have placed ourselves outside the community of the Kingdom
of God.
Just to be clear, Jesus is talking here about a certain kind
of anger. Anger in the face of injustice
is a virtue that provides motivation to correct wrongs and protect the
weak. Virtuous anger is always directed
toward the creation of a just order, however, and not towards revenge or
retribution against individuals, and is never about me getting my way, however
right I know that I am.
From murder, Jesus moves onto sex. From Old Testament times, and almost every
other time, people accepted that committing adultery was wrong. Jesus goes beyond that, however, to say that
looking at people with thoughts of committing adultery is pretty much the
same. When we stop looking at people as
God’s beloved children and instead look at them as means to our own pleasure,
we’re not ready for membership in the Kingdom of God. Our sexuality is designed to draw us closer
in love to other people and to bind together a marriage. Leering glances, dwelling on sexual thoughts,
and the entire industry devoted to pornography drive wedges between marriages
and twist the focus of our sexual energies inward onto ourselves instead of
outward in love and service of others.
Here we aren’t just talking about a thought or feeling that leaps
through the mind. Jesus’ discussion is
more about whether we choose to dwell on and even act on lustful feelings, or
if we strive to see people and treat people with the love that God has for
them.
Jesus uses an exaggerated example to show how essential he
sees this purity of heart. “If your eye
causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.” Church teaching is pretty clear that we
aren’t supposed to take this passage literally – and having met no Christians
recently with a self-inflicted eye-patch, even the most Bible-thumping of preachers
can see Jesus’ metaphorical intent. But
Jesus does want us to see how far we are supposed to go, even when it is
difficult, to do the right thing, even when the right thing is in our hearts
and minds, and even when we could hide those sins pretty effectively from
others, at least for a time, if we tried.
(Of course, hiding our sins, even private ones, instead of confessing
them does cause us problems and makes us put up barriers between ourselves and
others.)
Then Jesus talks about divorce, and he compares divorce to
adultery. We need to note what Jesus is
saying here. He is saying that divorce
causes the same kind of damage that adultery does. Divorces destroy families and relationships,
cause significant pain and suffering to those involved and to those around
them, and can result in the same social and economic difficulties, especially
for unmarried women in Jesus’ day, as adultery does. But Jesus is not trying to set up some sort
of rule here, or making church laws about when people can get divorced or
remarried. He is saying that if you are
married, you are supposed to do whatever you need to do to stay married. Certainly marriage is hard. Certainly marriage requires sacrifice. Certainly marriage is meant to be until death
do us part.
But Jesus is also not saying that marriages never die. He recognizes that sometimes something has
happened that ends a marriage, and he gives the example of unchastity. This provision isn’t meant to be a legal
requirement that people have to prove in order to get a divorce. Instead, Jesus is acknowledging the painful
reality that sometimes a divorce doesn’t destroy a marriage, but merely recognizes
what has already happened. While not
meant as an easy excuse not to fight for a marriage, and many marriages are
worth fighting for even when there has been infidelity, these verses are also
not meant to add to the pain or burden of divorced people, or to keep them from
redemptive second marriages. God is
against divorce because of the pain and harm it causes, and most divorced
people understand how horrible divorce can be.
Once a marriage has died, God wants to bring healing, redemption and
growth, not further punishment, to those involved.
The final topic of today’s portion of the Sermon on the
Mount deals with oaths and vows. Jesus’
instruction is simply to avoid them, for two reasons. The first reason is that we don’t really have
control over the future, so when we swear by things we are making promises to
God that we can’t necessarily keep. In
Jesus’ day, people came up with things that sounded important to swear by, but
left them some wiggle room. Instead of
swearing by God, they might swear by heaven or by Jerusalem or by the hair on
their chinny chin chins. (OK, scripture says “by your head” but same
difference.) Jesus assures us that all
creation has some relationship to God, so don’t invoke him when we can’t
guarantee what will happen. The second
reason not to swear is that swearing erodes our integrity. Everything we say should be true, whether we
swear or not. If we say “yes” we should
mean “yes”, and say “no” if we mean “no.”
If we are only trustworthy when we cross our hearts and offer to die and
let someone stick a needle in our eye if we lie, we’re in trouble already. Or, as Shakespeare has Juliet say: If thou shalt say aye, then I will take thy
word, yet if thou swearest, thou mayest prove false.
Of course, sometimes in court we may need to swear to tell
the truth, or to take an oath of office for a position of public service. These acts are, again, the imperfect legal
requirements of a broken world, and we do them when necessary. But we should never be in a position that our
character would make someone believe they need to require that of us.
So if Jesus wants us to change our hearts in these rather difficult
ways, how do we do it? Truly living into
the Sermon on the Mount is the work of a lifetime, but these three steps can
help.
First, we have to decide we actually want to live like
citizens of the Kingdom. We could just
get by in life. Our culture is certainly
awash with insults and swearing and sexual imagery. We have to decide that being decent people
isn’t enough – we want to do the hard work to be saints. We want to be the people that bring God’s
light into the world. We want to be
citizens of the Kingdom of God that is arriving today. If we don’t make an internal commitment to
living a godly life, we will never be able to do the work to transform our hearts
and create new habits.
Second, we need to pray.
On the one hand some kind of prayer that lets us sit in God’s quiet
presence each day will invite the Holy Spirit in. The Holy Spirit will then work at easing our
anger and turning our desires toward God.
On the other hand, prayer in the moment for other people will help us do
what we need to do when we face temptation and difficulty. If we are feeling angry or annoyed with
someone, a prayer for them is better than an insult. If we find our eyes lingering where they need
not be, praying for that person is a good way to remember that they are a child
of God. If we find ourselves about to
slip up with our tongue, a quick silent prayer like “Thy word be done,” can be
most helpful.
Then third, we can confess when we mess up. No matter how hard we try, we will sometimes
fail, and God’s grace and forgiveness are always available. If we ask someone to be an accountability
partner for us, we can help keep ourselves from going too far of the rails, as
well as getting back on them quickly when need be. If you are interested, please talk with Deacon
Randy or me about finding accountability partners. Knowing that someone else is with us in the
struggle, and we are going to tell them when we find ourselves falling, often
provides the support necessary to do what God wants us to do when we get
weak. Christianity is not a religion
that can be lived alone. We need to
trust each other not only with our strengths and gifts, but also with our
weaknesses and failings. God gave us
each other because we need each other.
Jesus has a better way of life for us than the least common
denominator of decency. Jesus wants us
to be part of a loving, life-giving, eternal community in the Kingdom of
God. Let us make the decision to live
into it, while praying and supporting one another until we reach it.
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