Matthew 5:21-37

Our Gospel lesson this morning continues with Jesus’ teachings in what the church has come to call the Sermon on the Mount. You may remember from a few weeks ago that some Biblical scholars have suggested that we think of this sermon, as a sort of “Constitution” for the church – Jesus laying out for us what it means to be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. To participate in life as God’s people now that this new realm, this different kind of Kingdom, is breaking into the world in the life and person of Jesus Christ.
In the last two weeks, we heard Jesus’ “preamble” of the Beatitudes, his exhortation to his followers to be light for the world, and his description of his relationship to the Law of Moses. Jesus tells his followers that he has come not to abolish the sacred Law that God gave to the Hebrew people on Mount Sinai, but to fulfill it, to bring it to its final form. And so we come to our text today, where Jesus shows us what this “fulfillment” looks like by giving we who would be his followers a set of concrete, practical teachings.
And let us be clear, they are not easy teachings – to read in worship or to live by! Apparently, fulfilling the Law means turning the Law up to 11! In each set of teachings, Jesus starts by quoting the Law of Moses: “You have heard that it was said ‘You shall not murder’” and then expanding it, “But I say to you, ‘Do not be angry; do not insult your brother or sister.’ “You have heard that it was said ‘You shall not commit adultery’, but I say to you ‘Don’t even give your eyes a chance to wander up and down…’”
In each of Jesus’ teachings that we heard this morning – on anger, on lust, on divorce, and on oaths – Jesus holds up the Law and then takes it one step deeper. He digs into the intent of each of these commandments, finds the very heart of them. And then he says to his disciples, “This deeper reading of the law is how you who are the children of God, you who are the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, are called to live. This is a Kingdom where you do not murder or commit adultery, to be sure, but even beyond that, this is a Kingdom where you do not harbor hatred or ill-will against your brother or sister, where you do not view your brother or sister as a sexual object.” This is a Kingdom where not only our actions matter but also our intentions as we relate to our fellow human beings.
I don’t know about y’all, but by the time I get to the end of this text, I am about ready to run for the hills. I may not have killed anyone today, but I think felt anger twice before I finished breakfast! Yes, I’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with Jesus here because while I don’t doubt that this is good teaching for how we should live, who among us can really live with this kind of moral and ethical purity? I mean, come on, Jesus! Cut a sister a break!
Of course, I’m being playful and joking around with you all and with the text, but in many cases, this is not a joking matter. Some of these teachings have been used as what a professor of mine calls “clobber texts”: passages of Scripture that those who consider themselves particularly “holy” throw bricks at certain people in order to shame, ostracize, and condemn them. People who are divorced, people who have had affairs, people who have been raped, etc.
Some of our fellow Christians have used texts like these to construct a list of people who God is sending to hell – look, right there in the text, it says the hell of fire! Perhaps you have heard the condemnations from the pulpit – I know have. So, before I say anything else, I want to say, from the pulpit to those of you – those of us – who have been angry, who have taken someone’s life, who has had an affair, who have lusted after someone, who have been divorced,
who have lied or failed to keep our promises – you are not going to hell. Not if the God of heaven and earth – and all that is above and below! – is the God revealed in Jesus Christ?
This is Jesus, after all, who is giving us these commands. Jesus who, about twenty chapters later in Matthew’s Gospel, will be so overcome with anger at the moneychangers in God’s Temple that he will turn over tables and drive them out with a whip! Jesus who, in John’s Gospel, stops the crowd from stoning a woman caught in the act of adultery, looks her in the eyes and tells her he does not condemn her. Jesus who chooses the Samaritan woman at the well, who has been married five times, to be his witness in the land of Samaria. If there is anything that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection witnesses to, it is the persistent reality of grace and love that is stronger than any other force in this world.
But if these teachings are not a blueprint for what to do to stay out of hell, what are they? What was Jesus trying to teach his disciples that day on the mountain? What is Jesus trying to teach us, his disciples today?
I’ve wrestled pretty hard with that question all week, actually, and I am particularly indebted to a scholar named Ronald Allen, a New Testament professor in Indiana, who points out that what ties these four particular teachings together – Jesus’ teachings on anger, lust, divorce, and swearing oaths – is that they all focus on relationships – on our intentions and actions in the context of living in community with one another. Just like in our passage from Isaiah last week, none of this is just about “Jesus and me.” This is the life that is oriented outward. And with that in mind, I think these four teachings reveal something of how we ought to live when, inevitably, those relationships get broken, or distorted, or estranged.
For, after all, God created us to live community. To live in mutual support of one another. Remember, in the book of Genesis, in one of our Creation stories, God creates Adam, and then looks at him and says, “It is not good that man should be alone. It is not good that humanity should be alone.” And so, as the story goes, God creates Eve, and keeps on creating humankind, more and more, of all different races and genders, shapes and sizes, from different nations, speaking different languages, with different talents and gifts and griefs and weaknesses, all in God’s image until God created you, and me, and God is still creating! Because God is still looking at us, at all God’s precious children, and saying, “It is not good for my people to be alone.”
I’ve been reading a book these last few weeks that looks at how we as the Church relate to groups of people who have traditionally been marginalized in American society – people of color, women, people who are elderly, or poor, or the LGBTQ community. I was particularly struck by one chapter about people living with disabilities. You see, the author’s overall claim is that if, as our faith teaches us, we are all made in the image of God, then we have something to learn about God from every person and group of people under the sun.
And when it comes to people living with disabilities, the author points out that one of the things that people in the disability community have pointed out, one thing they are trying to teach us about God – and about the people God created us to be – is that we are never truly independent. We are always in community, leaning on one another, learning from one another, giving to and receiving from one another. Independence may be valued in our culture, but ultimately, our faith reminds us, it is a myth. We were not made to be independent. It is not good for humankind to be alone. No man, no woman is an island – we are all connected to each other, a part of the main. God created us to be not independent but interdependent. To live together in community.
But living in community is difficult. And as humans, we are guaranteed that we will get it wrong, and go off course from time to time. And so Jesus teaches us, as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, as members of the Christian family, how to go about healing those relationships when they are broken. When we get angry or even express hatred toward one another. When we treat someone as a sexual object instead of the child of God they are. When we make a promise to someone and then we break it – whether it’s an oath we’ve sworn or a covenant of marriage in which we come to find that the only grace-filled option left is for us to break that covenant. Jesus teaches us how to still treat others with reverence, and respect, and value, and love when we go astray. How to heal and put the community back together.
And so friends, I ask you this morning, how might we go about doing this? How do we live in community here at this church? How do we support one another, lift each other up when we are sick, or broken, or grieving, or seeking guidance and hope? What does it look like for us to be a community of trust, and of service, and of vulnerability? What might it look like for us to reject that myth that we are entirely independent, autonomous beings and take to heart what we learn from Jesus? That our actions – and even our intentions, as we relate to one another – are never entirely our own. That no one is an island. That it is not good for humankind to be alone.
And how do we do that knowing that, try as we might, there will be times when we will fail? For we are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, yes, but we are also just people. People who get angry. People who experience lust – for sex, or for power, or for material comfort. People who make promises and sometimes break them.
And so my challenge to you this week – and if you are anything like me, it may be a challenge – is to try to practice what is at the heart of these teachings in three different ways.
First, have the courage, one time this week, to acknowledge your vulnerability, your need. Face your pride, or your fear, or your shame, or whatever it is that makes you – that makes us – cling to that myth of self-sufficiency. And ask for help where you need it. Whether it’s reaching something on the top shelf or coping with a deeply painful experience. Accept your interdependence, and ask for help.
Second, offer to help someone. Look at the people around you – in your family, at work, in this church community, in the community of Taos – and notice where someone else might have a need. Offer them your help, your service, free of charge or any strings attached.
And third, perhaps most difficult, think of a place in your life where a relationship has been broken and needs healing, and take a step forward to participate in that healing. Offer an apology. Release a grudge. Offer forgiveness. Or even simply pray for that person. Pray for their well-being, or for the wisdom of how to go about healing that relationship. Pray for the strength to love people that, sometimes, can be very hard to love.
Try these three things out this week – whether these are actions you take regularly or things you have not done for a very long time. For friends, it is through actions, and intentions, like these that we build a community of mutual love and support. Because we were not meant to live alone. And if we keep building our communities, we may just look up one day to see that Chris has built the Kingdom. Thanks be to God. Amen.