This is our third week of readings from the
Sermon on the Mount, and one of the keys to understanding them is to remember
that it is a sermon. Our usual method of preaching it is to divide
it up into manageable chunks, and the lectionary is no different . . . Thus,
the first reading, two weeks ago, covered the beatitudes, the bless day and it
described how things are and how they will be in the just rule of God, which in
Matthew is called the kingdom of heaven.
Last week’s passage described how his followers were supposed to be in that kingdom, they were to be
salt—preserving, flavoring, spicing—and light—illuminating, warming, and enabling
color to be perceived.
And though we didn't talk about it, it ended
with Jesus describing the relationship of his teaching to that of the law—I
come not to abolish the law but fulfill
it—and then a warning: “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes
and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” And though we always think of Jesus standing
on a mountain proclaiming the Sermon—and the Monty Python comedy troop had fun
imagining what folks at the back of the crowd might’ve heard—the entire thing
is to his disciples. Right at the
beginning, he sees the crowds and heads up on to the mount, and his disciples
gather ‘round and he teaches them. The
Sermon is aimed at believers, his disciples, not the crowd, not everyone. It is instruction
about how it is in the kingdom and how to behave
in it.
So in this segment of the Sermon, Jesus is
illustrating (a) what he means when he says he's come to fulfill the law and
(b) how his followers are supposed to live that fulfillment so that they are
more righteous even than the Pharisees, who after all live for that sort of thing.
And to make sure we get it, he uses a formula: you have heard that it
was said X, but I tell you Y. The law says X but I say Y. In other words, the
Y part is how he has fulfilled that portion of the law, and we should keep
fulfillment in mind as we read them.
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.
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 relationships and their healing, provides an
interpretive lens for the rest of the passage . . . “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.” Jesus knew, even before modern-day sexual
harassment laws, that leering at women does not good relationships 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. And as Jesus said earlier in the Sermon, we
shouldn't hide that light under a bush.
In his spiritual masterpiece, Jesuit scientist and mystic Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin describes what it means to live in the kingdom, which he calls The Divine Milieu. He speaks
of our lives as being made up of passivities and activities. Passivities are things that are done to us, things that we must endure, for better or worse. Activities, then, are what we ourselves do, and they can be activities
of growth or diminishment, but Teilhard isn't talking just growth or
diminishment of the individual, but of the Kingdom of heaven, the Divine
Milieu, itself. There are things we do
that enhance the all-encompassing, all-immersive kingdom of God and things we
do that diminish it.
And I think this is a good way to look at
passages like this one. When we refuse
to reconcile, when we take each other to court, or treat each other like
objects—sexual or otherwise—it diminishes the Divine Milieu, it marginalizes
the Kingdom of heaven. When we do that,
we are a light under a bushel, we are salt that has lost its taste. On the other hand, when we reconcile and
settle our differences without dragging one another into court, when we treat
one another with respect, as the children of God that we all are, we are light
and salt, our very presence and actions enhance and advance the Kingdom of
God. Amen
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