May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each of our hearts be acceptable to you this day, our Rock and our Redeemer. During the past week, I have mulled over the Gospel many times, trying to figure out how I was going to preach on it. Several of the groups I belong to have been having similar problems, and I know that some people decided to preach on something else entirely. After all, it is not unheard of for us to preach from the Old Testament reading, or from the Epistle, or even from the Psalm. But being a kind of stubborn person, and also thinking that maybe God wanted to challenge me a bit, I decided that the Gospel would provide our text for today, with maybe a little jump into the other readings.
The Jesus who is preaching today – continuing the Sermon on the Mount – is not the one we have come to expect. You know, that gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who encourages us to love one another, and assures us of forgiveness. Today, he hits the hard topics – anger, adultery, divorce, taking oaths. And if we had read a few more verses, we would have heard about retaliation or vengeance and loving our enemies, not just our friends. I suppose I could do a hell-fire and brimstone kind of sermon, but I am not that kind of preacher. I don’t think that there are too many of those in this day and age.
So let’s get started. I will begin by using something from Fred Craddock who shows how Jesus reinterprets the law. If you will remember, at one point, he assured his followers that he had not come to get rid of the law. In fact, he assured them that he had not come to abolish it but to fulfill it. And he went on to say, “Truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” That seems pretty clear to me, and tells me that we are meant to follow the ten commandments, which, of course, are included in the two great commandments which Jesus left for us.
As an English teacher, I recognized that this part of Jesus’ Sermon is antithetical in nature, which means that after Jesus named the law, he elaborated on it to apply it to a current situation. This is what most preachers try to do every week – apply Scripture from many years ago to the lives we are living today. Craddock said that “the teaching on each of the six subjects will consist of the work of the law, the word of Jesus, and the interpretation and application of the teaching to a particular circumstance.”
The first commandment that Jesus talked about was ‘You shall not murder”. That seems pretty straightforward, and one which would be easy to keep. I know that I have never murdered anyone – even though there have been times when I was tempted. But then Jesus went on to talk about being angry, and he was quite blunt about it, saying that if you are angry with your brother of sister, you will be liable for 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. Now, that’s carrying it to an extreme, isn’t it? But if we think about it, this is really about relationships. You see, the people in Jesus’ time knew that murder was wrong, as do we. But the people in Jesus time, like us, also got angry with each other. And Jesus was pointing out that we need to consider how we treat others, and how we value them. There are many times when my temper flares – often over little things, unimportant things. As some of you know, we have a new cat, and when I am sitting at the computer, she loves to jump on my lap, and from there to the keyboard. This often results in odd things happening, and I frequently yell at her. And you know, what? It has absolutely no effect on her. It makes more sense to gently lift her off the keyboard, and either put her on the floor, or back on my lap.
If we look at the rest of what Jesus said about anger, we will see that he also dealt with reconciliation, which is crucial in relationships. In the Presbyterian Church in Canada, we are going through a difficult time, a time which has the potential of destroying the church as we know it. But that doesn’t have to happen, if we treat each other with respect, and if we realize that this is the church of Jesus Christ, and not the church of any particular individual. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he addressed this very issue, reminding us that we are God’s servants, working together. More than that, we are God’s field and God’s building. This, I think, is something we need to remember now perhaps more than ever.
The next section is often even more of a challenge for preachers and for members of a congregation. The commandment, as usual, is very clear. You shall not commit adultery. And we all know what that means. However, what modern people often forget is that – in those days – women were objects, property to be possessed, and not people to be treated with care and respect. Jesus made it clear that this was not the way it was supposed to be, and that we are all responsible for the way we treat other people. So again, this is about relationship. I don’t know if you remember that, years ago, then-President Jimmy Carter made a comment about lusting after another woman. He was quite serious, but the media had a field day with it. I often think that it would be a good idea if more of us took this more seriously, if more of us controlled our eyes a bit. Because, if we are in a relationship with someone, should we not treat that relationship with respect and NOT allow our eyes to stray? Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t appreciate beauty. After all, that was given to us by God. But again, it harks back to respect – respect for the other, and respect for ourselves.
I was particularly struck by Jesus’ interpretation of the commandment not to swear falsely. In our version, he said, “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’” And in my childhood, I learned that as, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” But Jesus added to that that we should not swear oaths at all, but to let our yes be yes, and our no be no. Quite simple, really. For if we do that, then our word will always be enough.
What Jesus was doing, throughout this part of his sermon, was to call for an entirely new way of viewing human relationships. And that is something that we still have not accomplished. We still do not treat everyone with respect. We still have justice issues that need to be corrected. We are still struggling with ecumenical relationships and reconciliation. So what we are being called to do – just as Jesus’ listeners were called to so – is to examine ourselves closely and honestly, in the light of his reinterpretation of the law, in the light of his expanding of the law.
See, it is fairly easy for us to keep the skeleton of the ten commandments. Just think about it for a minute. I know that I haven’t killed anyone, but there have been times when I have thought that someone was a fool. How about you? The last time you became angry with someone, what did you say to that person? What did you think about that person? If you haven’t committed adultery and felt good because you have resisted the temptation to do so, consider what you may have wanted to do. Are you still holding a grudge from long ago? If so, according to Jesus, you need to make that right. Or maybe you hurt someone long ago, and have not apologized. In the Twelve Step Programmes, the eighth step reads: Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
What promises have you made and then broken? And I’m not talking about New Year’s resolutions here, although I suppose we could. I used to tell my children that, if I promised them something, then it would happen. I promised very few things, and they realized that I didn’t use that word lightly. So often, we make promises without thinking, and then life interferes, and we break the promise. We can justify it, I would imagine, but it weakens our promises to others forever after.
On Facebook, I often see posts from people criticizing immigrants for taking jobs away from Canadians. I sometimes react to these posts by reminding the posters that they also likely descended from immigrants. We have been instructed to welcome the stranger, and so often we don’t do that.
Often we are selfish and self-centered. We say hello to people who say hello to us. We do good to people who are likely to do good to us. We lend money to people who will pay us back, and we welcome people into our homes if we are likely to get invited back. But for everyone else – we usually have a reason for what we do, and an excuse for what we do not do. So from today, let us aim to break through the limits imposed by our excuses, and to destroy all reasons we think we have to treat one person as less than another person so that we can enter into relationships with everyone that are passed on our relationship with God. Let us remember that, in God’s eyes, we are all equal; that there is no hierarchy.
I thought that it was really appropriate that this text came up so close to Valentine’s Day, that day on which we celebrate love. Because that is what it is all about, loving each other. But this is more than the love that depends on chemistry or mood. It is not a conditional love, which so often depends on the behaviour of other people. It is the kind of love that shows grace to others; the kind of love that helps heal hurting people; the kind of love that values others regardless of who they are or what they may have done or not done.
I am sure that most of you have heard of the comedian W. C. Fields. One day, someone saw him reading the Bible, and asked him what he was doing. He replied, “Looking for loopholes.” Well, guess what? There are not loopholes. Our love for others must be total and unconditional, or it is not love at all. And that is what Jesus explained to us today. So I want you to surrender your hearts to God, and to love him and each other as deeply as you can. Thanks be to God.
Saint Andrew's, Quebec City 