Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (A) – Matthew 5:21-37
I can remember hearing today’s Gospel passage when I was a child, and feeling very worried. See, my brother and I had a very challenging relationship when we were little. Which I suppose is probably pretty typical, but that didn’t stop me from feeling the acuteness of Jesus’ words for us. Adam and I loved each other, of course, and we had our good moments. But we were also two very different people. I was the kind of child who couldn’t really spend more than thirty minutes doing one thing. I know it’s hard to believe, but I was easily distracted, and my ability to really focus was minimal. I would be done with whatever game we were playing long before he was.
But Adam would get totally focused on something, devoting hours and hours to one punctilious interest. He built a model train set in the basement, which he never, ever, actually ran or played with, because he was always trying to get the setup and layout just right. He’d get excited about a music album, usually something I hated, and play it over and over again until I went mad. There was a period when he was into airplanes, and would be able to discuss a plane’s make and model and engine type and maximum speed at a glance. And he did. Whether I wanted to hear them or not. And then he’d pick up his trumpet and I’d have to listen to it for hours so that I wanted to scream. I suspect that he did some of these things with the sole purpose of trying to drive me nuts, because after all… There were plenty of things I did in order to drive him nuts. Like singing and dancing to the radio in the grocery store.
The thing is, we would let our anger escalate until, sometimes, it would come to blows. And then Mom would bring us to church on Sunday mornings. And Jesus says, “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,’” which was nothing in comparison to what my brother and I would say to each other sometimes, “you will be liable to the trash heap of fire.” And Jesus tells us not to come to the altar without first reconciling with our brother, yet there we were taking communion together, still mad at each other from the night before. Were we quietly committing ourselves to eternal damnation?
Fear is a tool that religion sometimes uses, much to our detriment. From all sides, we constantly get the message that if we’re not good enough, if we don’t do the right things, if we don’t chase after God’s rules, we’re not going to earn eternal life, or God’s love, or something. This is often the foundational story of Christian ethics, which is odd, because it goes against everything else that our Lutheran faith tells us. We proclaim that God’s grace comes to us unbidden, that we can in fact do nothing to earn God’s love, that despite all the things that we do to actively reject God, God comes to us anyway. But then we get to a passage like today’s Gospel reading, when Jesus clearly tells us what he wants us to do, and seems pretty threatening if we don’t follow his instructions. Next week, when we hear the continuation of this passage, Jesus will conclude with the words, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Could it be that Jesus really expects us to be perfect? I usually think that Jesus really means what he says. Even at times like this when it’s difficult to hear.
Jesus takes the commandment, “You shall not murder,” and does it one better. He suggests that when you’re angry with someone, it’s as if you were to murder them in your heart. Any anger or insult toward another is grounds for the greatest condemnation. This is so true, that for Jesus, reconciliation with others is more important than the act of worship, and than offering a gift to the Lord. Can you imagine what it would be like if we interrupted worship so that we could all go and make up with people we’ve unintentionally hurt this week—or who have hurt us? That, I suppose, is what passing the peace is really for. But there was a time, in certain strains of Lutheran piety, that confession and forgiveness—that is, ritual reconciliation—was required before you could receive Communion. I’m glad that day is gone, but still, God values the health of our relationships with one another much more highly than even worship!
And then we have the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” and Jesus steps this up, too. Even looking at a woman with lust is akin to committing adultery with her. (Strangely, looking at a man with lust isn’t mentioned, so about half of you don’t really have to worry about this commandment.) Some commentators on this passage note that it sounds like Jesus is telling us to reject a biological function that was created by God in the first place. There’s some truth in that, but it’s interesting: The only people we can look at with plain lust and no other feeling are people we don’t know, with whom we have no relationship, whom we can treat simply as objects. We deny a person’s humanity when we treat them as something we want, something we can obtain. This is not true when we feel desire for someone we also love; then our desire affirms their humanity. And Jesus says it would be better for us to lose our limbs than to treat others objectively.
Jesus then turns to divorce. His instruction here is too difficult. Where Moses allowed divorce, Jesus objects. Even the gospel writer, Matthew, seems to feel this is too difficult, because as a concession he adds, “except on the ground of unchastity,” which you won’t find in Mark or Luke’s version of this teaching. We can’t help but find Jesus to be idealistic here. Sometimes, marriages must dissolve. It would be a greater sin to force people to live in abusive or hateful relationships. And yet Jesus still sees disaster in the brokenness of divorce, and those that have experienced it can attest well to the pain it causes, and that causes it. Unlike his other teaching, Jesus doesn’t make a comparison, telling us it would be better for the heavens and the earth to pass away or something like that than to divorce, but we can still hear in his words the extremely high value he puts on reconciliation and faithfulness.
Jesus takes these things that seem rather small and common—anger and lust and broken relationships, things everyone has—and elevates them to the most exacting regulations for the life of the faithful. How can we possibly fulfill Jesus’ instructions to be perfect? Only our heavenly Father is perfect. We are not.
There’s something striking about that image of coming to the altar and stopping to go reconcile with your brother or sister. An altar is a piece of furniture where an offering is made to God. But in Jesus’ time, we’re not talking about an envelope with some cash tucked in it. An offering made in the temple in Jerusalem was an animal to be slaughtered, whose flesh, they believed, would provide food for God, and whose blood would stand in as a substitute for the blood of those guilty of sin. The offering would become the means by which a person was reconciled with God. When Jesus says that we should leave our offering and go reconcile with our brother or sister, he’s telling us that it is more important to repair our relationship with each other than our relationship with God.
This altar, too, is a place where offering and sacrifice take place. But notice: Our money offering won’t be presented at this altar; it will be collected, brought forward, and placed off to the side. And while we bring forward the bread and the wine, these are not really things that we are giving to God. Instead, they are things that God is giving to us. Jesus takes the whole system of reconciliation and turns it on its head. God comes and offers his own body and blood on this altar, to feed US and nourish US, and to reconcile US with Himself. It turns out that repairing our relationships isn’t something that happens before we get to the altar. Instead Jesus sacrifices himself to reconcile us. The meal we share at this altar becomes the means by which God repairs our relationships with Him—and with one another as well! When we receive these grains of wheat that have been gathered to become one bread, so we too are gathered into one people in Christ Jesus, and the relationships between us are reconnected, repaired, mended, and made whole. Those foolish Christians who, in good faith, refuse to share Communion with certain people or certain groups of people, because of the differences they have between them! If only they knew that the greatest thing they could do to heal those differences is to come together at the sacrament! This is no mere sign of our union; it is the gift from God that creates that union in the first place.
There have been lots of joyful moments in my life, but one moment outshines them all. The greatest happiness I have ever known was just this November, when I sat on the floor in a hallway at the University, and talked for an hour with a young man who is one of Adam’s students. He absolutely beamed when I told him who I was, and launched into a long accolade which described how much Adam’s work meant to him and his life. About the new career he was heading for as a music teacher, to provide a better life for his wife and child. About the way Adam’s personality made learning with him a joy, and how Adam seemed always to put his students first, even above his own career aspirations. This young man knew he wasn’t the greatest musician, but he still took great pride in the growth he’d made under Adam’s teaching, and took great pride in claiming him as his teacher. And you can imagine the pride I felt for him, too. Adam and I may have been at loggerheads 90% of the time as children, but it’s also in him that I found my greatest joy.
And that’s only because of the reconciliation that God works in each of us. This is what I think Jesus means when he says he is here not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. It’s not that Jesus raises the Law to new heights. It’s that in him, personally, is the completion of the Law; not just the teaching that drives us to do better, but the righteousness he bestows on us that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees and everything we ourselves can do even on the best of days. He is not the one who demands we be perfect. He is the one who IS perfect. In his perfection, we are reconciled with God. And reconciled with Him and with one another, he makes us perfect too. Amen.