SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY                                           February 13, 2011

 

 

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’  But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say ‘you fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.  So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.  Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.  Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

 

“You have heard it said ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.  It was also said ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.”  But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

 

“again, you have heard it said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’  But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”                 -----Matthew 5:21-37

 

 

And now a special news broadcast.

 

If the president gives a ten-minute speech, the news commentators will sum up that twenty minutes for twenty hours.  That’s kind of the way we have been working on the Sermon Jesus delivered to his disciples and the multitudes that followed him to the countryside.  They came to hear what was later called “The Sermon on the Mount.” 

 

Perhaps the most famous part are The Beatitudes.  Carole preached on that part of the sermon two weeks ago, reminding us that The Beatitudes are both a blessing to us and a chance to strive for a better life. And like the second anchor at the news desk, I picked up the second part last week, as we heard our Lord tell us that we are created to be “salt of the earth and a light to the world.”

 

This third part is really pretty dramatic, telling people to cut off their hands and pluck out their eyes in order to avoid the fires of hell.  The problem in hearing this text is that it is part of a larger sermon, a longer speech.  You cannot take one sentence out of the State of the Union address and understand the point of the President’s whole speech.

 

In this part, Jesus is specifically speaking to the disciples in very harsh language.  Hard words to digest, but let’s take a deeper look.  To understand this passage, we must first look at who Jesus is talking to.  He had been addressing the crowds, and now he is speaking to the disciples (one of those after-church meetings that we are so fond of.)  it was in fact a private conversation.  After addressing the crowds, Jesus turns to the disciples sitting close to him.

 

We have no way of knowing what the disciples were thinking.  We do know that they had left their livelihoods and their families to follow Jesus.  Now it seemed everyone and their mother was following Jesus!  Crowds, huge crowds, Christmas Eve and Easter attendance crowds…

 

The problem was that these crowds were not the kind of people that you would want to be in a crowd with. And Jesus had been blessing these poor, bottom-of-the-barrel kind of people.

 

“You have heard it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’: and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’  But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say ‘you fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” 

 

Wow!  What is He talking about?  Everyone has insulted someone at one point.  If you’ve driven on any major New Jersey highway, you’ve said “You fool” or perhaps worse to another driver. 

 

But Jesus is putting the disciples in the same boat with the worst of the worst, murderers and criminals.

 

Jesus then talks to his disciples by telling them that if they have a neighbor who has anything against them, they are to go to that neighbor and be reconciled.  Notice the language of this.  It does not say “if you have something against your neighbor,’ does it?  Does it say if you have wronged your neighbor, go fix it?  No.  It says if your neighbor has something against you, if your neighbor holds a grudge against you or is offended by you or slanders you, then YOU go fix it.  This is quite the opposite of how we do things.

 

Jesus is not teaching about divorce.  It is a polemic on the way we treat one another.  In a society where women were assumed to be the problem in all broken relationships, the burden of brokenness is now placed on the men in the community.  Jesus leaves no one out.  He includes men in the brokenness that permeates the world.  So if men thought they were superior legally or socially to the woman, again they are put in the same boat as them.

 

It was widely assumed that if you did something wrong, then the community would extract vengeance on you.  Two of the punishments were severe.  One you know about: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  But Jesus says “pluck out your own eye.”  In other words, YOU judge YOU.

 

And then there is the punishment of the severed hand, a punishment reserved only for women who have transgressed in a sexual fashion.  (You can read that yourself in Deuteronomy 25.)  Again the disciples are put on the same playing field as everyone else.

The people normally viewed as blessed (and this is true of the disciples) are the successful, the powerful, the elite.  And what do they know have in their movement?  In their community of believers are all kinds of riff-raff, the hoi polloi. 

 

The point of Jesus addressing the disciples on this is simply telling them how they are to live with one another and the rest of the community.  This starts with realizing this: that they are no better than the people they look down on.

 

Jesus is telling all these people to live together, in all their diversity.  And so it is for us.

Confession and forgiveness are a necessary part of our life together.  We cannot live in relationship if we do not have the capacity to say “I have done this” or “I am responsible for that.”  Confession is not for God.  It is for us.  Judgment is not something for us to do. 

 

It is for God.  What the disciples needed to learn, and what we need to learn is that we are all in this together.  We are all God’s.

 

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program…