I’m always struck by the somewhat slippery nature of biblical interpretation. Now, hold your cards and letters … I mean slippery in a good way, of course. Down through the ages, these texts have been interpreted by very different people using very different methodologies, and they continue to be a comfort and a blessing to the people of God.
Of course, misinterpretation,
and over-interpretation, of Scripture has led to some ridiculous understandings
over the years . . . and this is at least partially because the way any given
of passage is heard depends on the location—not only geographically, but
historically and socially—of the one who is doing the hearing.
And nothing
illustrates this point with more clarity than today’s passage . . . it contains
four seeming injunctions, two of which are positively embarrassing. It says everyone who looks at a woman with
lust has committed adultery . . . didn’t Jimmy Carter get into trouble taking that one literally in the pages of Rolling Stone? And then there’s the follow-up: “If your
right eye, presumably the one you looked at the woman with, causes you to sin,
tear it out and throw it away?” Really? If every guy who looked at a woman, ah,
lustily got his right eye pulled torn out, the eye-patch makers couldn’t keep
up with the demand.
And what about
swearing? Jesus isn’t talking about
cussing here, but the swearing of oaths . . . are we really supposed to not
take oaths of office, or swear before a judge, and et cetera? Only a few
sectarian groups retain this injunction in
toto as listed here, and maybe that’s one reason they’re sectarian. How are we supposed to get along in secular
society without swearing affidavits, or without putting our old hands on the
Bible?
Hmmm . . . let
us investigate further, brothers and sisters . . . maybe Jesus isn’t talking
literal proscriptions here, just like he probably
doesn’t want us to not do nothing to make a living, like the lilies of the field,
even though that’s what a literal reading of a later statement from the Sermon implies. Maybe he’s talking a bit more generally here
. . . maybe he’s painting with a broader brush.
First, let’s
look at the context of this passage, specifically about four verses earlier
where he says “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the
prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” Next, notice the structure of these
admonitions. First he quotes a piece of
the Hebrew Law, then gives them his
take on it: “You have heard that it was said X, but I say Y.” He reads the law,
then interprets it, like any good preacher does. Now:
remembering what Jesus said just a few sentences earlier—about fulfilling the
law—do you think it’s a coincidence that not five verses later he begins
quoting and interpreting it? Neither do
I.
So maybe we need to keep the word “fulfill”
in the back of our heads when reading this passage . . . how does his version
of a law—which in every case seems to make it more strict—in actuality
“fulfill” it? Let’s look at his first
example: “You have heard that it was said: ‘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.” If we put aside the
hyperbolic “hell of fire” thing—suffice it to note that Jesus is probably not referring to what we think of as
Hell—putting that aside, you can see that he’s made it seemingly more stringent.
Not just murderers are subject to judgment, but those who are angry with
a fellow Christian are as well, or those who insult another . . .
Again we need
to put aside that “judgment” thing, except to say that he doesn’t specify (a)
what the judgment will be, (b) when the judgment will occur or (c) who the
judgment will be by. And if we do, maybe we can notice that Jesus
doesn’t make it tougher so much as he broadens
it, or makes it more full. It may be
that he “completes” it, which is one of the constellations of meaning of the
Greek word pleroow, translated in the
Sermon as “fulfill.”
And how does
he broaden it? He includes more than
just killing someone . . . he extends the Ten-commandment proscription against
murder to unresolved anger and enmity.
He gives an entire mini-discourse on relationships
between members of the body of Christ.
If you are angry with a brother or sister, and insult a brother or sister, and say “you fool,” you will be subject
to judgment. This is about
relationships, and everything he quotes damages
them. They damage personal
relationships, making it harder for folks to get along. But of equal importance is that they make it
harder for a community to
function. Animosity and bad blood impede
the mission of the Body of Christ.
Here’s
the upshot: if you’re offering your gift at the altar, which is an ancient way
of saying “if you’re at worship,” and you know that your brother or sister has
something against you, leave your gift there before the altar—in other words, stop your worship—and first be
reconciled to that person, and then
come to worship. Enmity between members of a congregation spoils worship, it
poisons it, and worship is the food-source, the nourishment of the body of
Christ. If you think about your own
experience, you can see it’s true: if there is bad blood between you and
another member, it can be hard to even show up on a Sunday morning, much less
worship with any integrity. But if we
make it up with him or her, our souls are cleansed, and we can enjoy our time
with God once again.
And notice
that Jesus doesn’t say if your sister or brother has something against us and
it’s our fault, in fact he lays no
blame at all . . . he just says to do it.
It doesn’t matter whose fault
it is, we’re just supposed to do it. There
is a strain of humility needed here, as there is in all of these examples. We are to reconcile with one another not only
for our own good—everybody knows how
good that can feel—but also for the greater good of the worshipping
community. Again, we’ve all been in
worship where you can feel the enmity, feel the division in the air . . . well,
Jesus is implying, you might as well not even bother if that is the case, you
might as well not do it, because it is not doing you or the body of Christ any
good.
Then Jesus
makes an interesting move, as we preachers say: he expands it to outside the community, telling his
followers to settle with an accuser—is it the same brother or sister from the
previous verse, or an outsider? At any
rate, Jesus tells us to settle on the way
to the courthouse, presumably in front of the entire community. Not only does this make sense from a personal
viewpoint, keeping one out of jail, but from a witness viewpoint as well. Remember that “don’t hide your light under a
bushel basket” line a little earlier in the Sermon? If we settle our disputes, whether in the
community or outside of it, without
being drug into court, it is a witness to others outside our circle of faith.
Well. This first example, about interrelationships
and their healing, provides an interpretive lens for the rest of the passage .
. . “You have hear 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.” Jesus knew, even before modern-day sexual
harassment laws, that leering at women does not a good relationship make. Or a good workplace, or a good community of
faith. We are not to treat others as
objects, to objectify one another, whether the opposite sex or not.
Note that he
treats it as one-sided . . . then just as now, the power balance was tipped
decidedly in the male direction, in the direction of the patriarchy. It’s not an accident that he targets men . .
. men are the ones with the power. And
in a relationship based on an imbalance of power—one which I believe Jesus came
to rectify—staring openly at the less-powerful is a sign of that power, a sign that one does it because one can get
away with it.
I find that
peoples’ views of this passage are clouded by hazy notions of what Jesus meant
when he said “adultery. Adultery in the
biblical world was defined as extramarital sexual intercourse between a man and
another man’s wife. It arose out of
the property laws in ancient Israel, where the wife “belonged” to her husband,
and the extramarital relationship violated the rights of her husband. A man
could have such a relationship with an unmarried woman and not be guilty of
adultery, but if the woman was married, both he and she were guilty. Note that this was not because of some abstract notion of what was “moral” and what
was not . . . it was based upon the very concrete notion of women as property,
or chattel. One which we do not hold
today.
As such, the
whole basis for the divorce passage is invalidated, but it still is instructive that Jesus seemed to consider normative a
loving relationship between marital partners.
And it is not an accident that
Jesus addresses the divorce problem from the male perspective \ only. Note that in his saying, it is the man who causes the woman to sin. Is this not a significant turn-around from
Genesis, where Eve corrupts Adam, not the other way around?
Finally, we
come to the proscription on swearing . . . in a community of faith, or in any community, for that matter, a
person’s word should be her or his bond.
Simple honesty is what Jesus calls for, both within and without the
community. Relations within are strengthened
thereby, and we are a light to the rest of the world if we model these things
outside.
Brothers and
sisters, this can be a hard passage, even with our observation that it’s about
relationships. It is hard for two people
to reconcile, it is difficult and scary, and it requires a subsuming of our
egos that can be foreign to those of us brought up in today’s culture, where
we’re taught that self-promotion—taking care of old number one—is the path to
success. It is hard to go to a person
who has wronged us and reconcile . .
. everything we see, everything we read, from television to popular fiction
screams about fault, and that the one who is to blame is the one who must make
amends.
But as Paul
points out in Second Corinthians, perhaps picking up on this important theme,
we have been given a “ministry of reconciliation” and we are to proclaim a
message of reconciliation to the world.
And what better way to proclaim it than to be examples ourselves? Our communities and our lives are better if
we live in harmony, in peace with one another.
And f we, who have Christ on our side, who have power of the Holy Spirit
on our side, cannot do this, who can?
If you’ll
remember a couple of weeks ago, we noted that although we think of Jesus as
addressing a huge crowd of onlookers, if you look carefully at the very start
of chapter five, the whole Sermon on the Mount is preached to his disciples, not to the crowd. And that is the word of hope here . . . it is
only in the context of our relationship with Christ, and the power of the Holy
Spirit that comes upon us at our baptisms, that we will ever be able to live it
out. God does not ask impossible things
of us, but provides us through the Spirit the power and grace to put it into
practice. Hallelujah! Amen.
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