Text: Matthew 5:21-37, Epiphany 6 A
Today’s Gospel kind of makes me wish the disciples hadn’t been listening so carefully that day. Maybe they would have missed some of the incisiveness of this part of the Sermon on the Mount. ‘Seems like Jesus has just gone from preachin’ to meddlin’! Why couldn’t he have just stuck to “religion” instead of getting into all these “little things”, which turn out to be the nitty-gritty of everyday life?
But the Sermon on the Mount turns out to be an amazing teaching in which Jesus instructs us on what it means to be a disciple, in the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives. As his followers, Jesus wants something really BIG for us. He wants us to live our everyday lives to the fullness that is possible. He wants us to have abundant life! And he wants us to choose life!
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus interprets the Law, handed down from Moses, in a new way. Jesus’ way does not negate Moses’ Law. It gets inside it! Jesus’ way takes the Law to a deeper level of compassion. ‘Gets at the real Spirit of the Law, which is Love.
For example, instead of being just concerned that we don’t externally murder, commit adultery, or swear oaths, Jesus is also concerned with what our inside motives are behind murder, adulterous behavior, and swearing oaths. To follow him means we need concern ourselves with the powerful, God-given, human emotions we all have, because these emotions can lead to our acting out in ways that can be devastating to ourselves and the people around us…our Neighbors.
So, here we are, several weeks before Lent begins, and we’re talking about sin!
In his Confessions, St. Augustine writes, “Sin arises when things that are a minor good are pursued as though they were the most important goals in life. If money or affection or power are sought in disproportionate, obsessive ways, then sin occurs.
And that sin is magnified when, for these lesser goals, we fail to pursue the highest good and the finest goals. So when we ask ourselves why, in a given situation, we committed a sin, the answer is usually one of two things. Either we wanted something we didn’t have, or we feared losing something we had.”
What a great “rule of thumb” this is, just to ask ourselves, “What do we want or what are we afraid of losing that somehow has become more important to us than our higher values?” ‘Probably at least as effective as and maybe even faster than, that I-Phone app that came out this week that helps people prepare for Confession. (BTW, I join with the Roman Church in reminding you that app is not instead of going to confession, it’s just a preparation tool!)
Jesus wants us to go to a deeper level of compassion in our lives. That’s the real Spirit of the Law. He wants us to get inside our powerful feelings to help us avoid acting out uncompassionately and forgetting our higher selves.
So, for example, let’s think about anger. Imagine a wet, hungry toddler who, understandably, flies into a rage. The rage is natural and self-preserving and expressed unselfconsciously. It doesn’t need to be repressed. If we try to suppress it, it can do emotional-spiritual harm to the child. Now big people, even followers of Jesus like us, will get mad, as children do. It’s natural, normal, and not sinful in and of itself because anger is a God-given emotion that helps us know when we are threatened or in danger. However, we are called to feel the anger (as Jesus did in the Temple at the money-changers), express it (if there’s a way to that’s not harmful), then let it go. Give it to God. And then move on…to the highest good
and finest goals. The more we can do this, the more we come to see: We human beings are more alike than different, and then forgiveness really becomes possible. This is the Spirit inside the Law about not committing murder. It’s the antithesis of nursing grudges. It’s not letting “hot” anger turn to “cold” anger, which freezes into hate and takes years of unthawing and healing (and psychotherapy), and sometimes the hate never unthaws. When anger freezes into hate, we’ve missed the inner Spirit of God’s Law, and our lives are not abundant. We are not free. We have chosen Death, instead of Life.
I read an amazing story this week about the way one woman dealt with her feelings of anger and fear. (Story by Joe Slevcove in The Sun, 8-07 as quoted in Synthesis) The story was written by a man about his wife, Beth. In the midst of her anger, I think Beth really got inside the Law and found the Spirit of compassion and love. Beth and her husband had moved from the suburbs to a warehouse loft in a big city. Beth embraced the urban life-style, even the sirens, the parking problems, and the car alarms that went off in the night. The husband admitted the homeless people made him uncomfortable, but Beth always talked with them and learned their names.
The only thing that really bothered Beth in their new neighborhood were the guys who ran the tattoo parlor across the street.
They were noisy, got into fights. harassed women on the sidewalk and intimidated men. They were the reason Beth never walked on that side of the street. For two years Beth glared at them out her window—That row of men who sat in the front of the shop shooting out people’s tires. Well one day Beth called her husband at work and announced she was getting a tattoo. He thought it was a bit odd, since she’d never wanted any body art. When she got home, she called him again and happily reported, “I did it!” When he got home she excitedly showed him the delicately inscribed words on her wrist, “Love thy neighbor”.
She told her husband she had marched across the street and gone in the shop.
She saw walls covered with drawings of skulls, bloody knives, naked women, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Manuel, the owner, was working on someone when she arrived. Beth introduced herself as his neighbor across the street. After awhile she went outside and sat down to wait with the guys in front of the shop. The guy next to her asked what she was getting done. “Love Thy Neighbor.” “Why that?”
She explained, “Well, you guys are my neighbors, and I’m having trouble loving you. You kind of scare me—you know, with all the loud music and fights that break out over here and all.” He ushered her back into the shop and announced with complete sincerity, “Manuel, dude, we’re scaring our neighbors! We’ve got to stop fighting.”
At first Manuel was defensive until Beth explained she didn’t want to change him, she just wanted to get this tattoo. Manuel showed her a picture in a magazine of “Love thy neighbor”. It had bloody knives in the background. Beth told him that wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. After they settled on the design, Manuel began to do his art on her wrist. Then he stopped, “How do you spell THY?”
He explained shyly, “I didn’t go to school”. The other tattoo artist piped in, “Dude, it’s not because you didn’t go to school, it’s because you don’t read the Bible!”
After that Beth always waved to the tattoo artists as if they were old pals.
The music from across the street was not so grating to her nerves. No more fights broke out. The sidewalk felt safe.
Four months later, Beth took the car in for an oil change and saw Manuel having a friendly chat with the repairman behind the counter. As she started to remind him
who she was, Manuel stepped forward and gave her a warm hug.“Hey,” he said to his friend behind the counter, “This is my neighbor, the one I was telling you about.” Amen.
Parts of this sermon were adapted from Synthesis, Epiphany 6A, 2011
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