Matthew 5:21-37
Today’s Gospel story continues the lengthy passage in which Matthew shows Jesus laying out the “rules” of the Kingdom. At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turns to the crowds following him and reassures them: “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” [Matthew 5:3] After he teaches the Beatitudes, he reminds his listeners that being all these good things comes with responsibilities. You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world. [Matthew 5:13-14]
From there, Jesus moves on to reassure his listeners that he has not come to turn things upside-down. He has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. [Matthew 5:17] Jesus means that he comes to show us what the law of God, the law of the Kingdom, is really all about. Some of what Jesus then says is frightening, discomforting, hard to live.
In fulfilling, or interpreting, the law, Jesus takes two approaches. For some laws, he says “not only this, but more.” In other cases, he says “you thought it meant this, but I am telling you it really means something different.” Let’s look at what he said.
Committing a murder sends a person to judgment. [Matthew 5:21] But Jesus adds that anger does the same thing. We should not see “judgment” as a negative thing. God judges us only because God loves us, cares about us, wants us to see ourselves as God sees us. It is only through judgment that God delivers us from bondage to sin.
It seems that as Jesus diminishes the seriousness of the offenses, the punishment goes up! The chances that you or I will be tempted to commit murder are very small, and our resistance to that temptation is strong. The chances that we will murder the feelings or reputation of another are much higher. Jesus wants to emphasize that we cannot sit back and congratulate ourselves for not committing murder, when there are so many other ways in which we do grievous harm to our brothers and sisters.
In the new reality announced by Jesus, the old categories are being scrambled. Jesus is saying that life in the kingdom is marked not only by a different way of living, but a different understanding of life entirely. The New Community is not a “new and improved” old community. Rather, it is a reconciled and beloved community in which all people are treated with dignity, not with contempt, and with affirmation, not deprecation. The New Community has better things to do than be occupied with issues of anger—or worse.
Jesus teaches that everyone who looks at another person and only sees an object of desire is committing a sin far worse than adultery. Likewise, people in Jesus’ time could obtain a divorce by a simple legal process. Turning the world upside-down to prepare us for living in the Kingdom of God, Jesus affirms the need to make a marriage work, even by self-sacrifice, because marriage is a mirror of our relationship with God the Father. If God were to walk away from us every time we did something that displeased him, we would cry for mercy and forgiveness. Jesus wants us to see all relationships as more important than our wishes and feelings, all people as more than mere objects of desire.
Jesus then turns to the swearing of oaths. He teaches an important fact: brothers and sisters in the Kingdom do not need oaths or vows in order to honor their word to one another. Oath-swearing is for people who don’t trust each other. Oaths actually serve to underline doubt, not certainty. In the New Community, there is no need for such oaths because reconciled people speak the truth to each other and live in trust with each other.
The Greek philosopher Plato once imagined the spiritual journey as a chariot moving through the wilderness of life, with the soul as the charioteer trying to rein in two powerful horses: the horse of anger or passion, and the horse of reason or order. Plato understood that both passion and reason can be life-giving, but only when they are held in dynamic tension, only when each power neutralizes the potential destruction of the other. In this Gospel passage, Jesus tells us that we must balance the passion of anger with the discipline and reason of love. And he tells us that the law of love can best be fulfilled, not through rules, but through relationships.
Moses laid out a stark choice for his people: “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.” [Deuteronomy 30:15] Two alternatives, two opposites: life and prosperity versus death and adversity. But Moses also made it clear that he wasn’t neutral: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.” [Deuteronomy 30: 19b]
Jesus took up that message and told us clearly how to choose the good, the blessing, the life of the Kingdom. It’s all about relationships—relationships with God and each other. The fulfillment of the law, the only correct interpretation of all laws, lies in this one thing: “in our weakness we can do nothing good without [God]” [BCP, Collect for Epiphany 6] And so we pray for grace, for God’s help, for the power of the Spirit to enter our hearts and minds, enabling us to follow God’s true law of love, reining in the horses of anger and passion, and choosing to live as Jesus taught us. Amen.
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