“You have heard that it was said…” Matthew 5:21, 27, 33
Today the BEST SERMON EVER continues from last Sunday. Jesus remains on the mountain, but unlike Moses who was alone with God, while the people waited below, Jesus’ disciples are with him as well as others, including you and me. He begins by naming our truth and our heart-ache. He blesses that truth with his presence, blessing the poor, the grieving, the meek while empowering the righteous, the merciful ones, the peace-makers and persecuted. His words are transformative – changing us while declaring that they, that we, are the salt of the earth and the light of the world – agents of transformation bringing zest and vision to a world desperately in need of both. And once again, as Amelia Danielle was told at her baptism last Sunday, Evelyn Grace will be told today, to “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
We are to do the same. So how do we do that? How do we let God’s light shine and not our own? How do our actions give glory to God? In a world full of moral ambiguity, where differences between right and wrong are blurred, where truth is deemed irrelevant, where power is all that matters, where tweets divide and conquer, how are you and I, how are Amelia and Evelyn, to let our light, God’s light, shine? To answer this question, Jesus sends us to the law, specifically the Ten commandments. And in this BEST SERMON EVER, Jesus reveals that the heart of the law is always God’s own heart.
When we hear the Gospel today, we probably didn’t feel that way. Take, “You shall not murder.” O.K., that’s doable, but then Jesus tells us “not to get angry with a brother or sister.” That’s downright impossible. I have four sisters. Growing up, any given moment one of us was angry with another. I was, especially with my sister Beth. We shared a room – me on one side by the window and the bookshelf; her on the other with the dresser, closet and door. When my mother got frustrated with our constant bickering, she gave us a roll of masking tape and told us to work it out. Tape, right down the middle – Beth on her side and Me on mine. It was our de-militarized zone and worked fine unless she wanted a book or I wanted to get dressed. Conflict routinely erupted. Why does Jesus make obeying the 5th commandment so difficult?
It’s not just the 5th commandment, Jesus does the same with the 6th – You shall not commit adultery. He says everyone who looks at another with “lust” commits adultery and is to pluck out the offending eye. During the 1976 Presidential Campaign Jimmy Carter confessed to this particular sin in an interview for Playboy saying, ““I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” The other becomes an object – #metoo. Then Jesus brings up divorce, which tears apart two who had become one and even if everyone agrees it is for the best, always breaks hearts beginning with God’s own heart. Next, Jesus turns to the 8th commandment, where “do not swear falsely”, becomes “don’t swear at all,” not even in court. Let your yes be yes, and your no, no. Always truly say what you mean and mean what you say. Beyond all this, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to be perfect as God is perfect. What’s going on? Why does Jesus up the ante so much that obeying the commandments and following him seems all but impossible?
Jewish New Testament Scholar, Amy Jill Levine suggests that Jesus, like other rabbis in his day and even now in our time, is setting up a fence around the Torah, the law. Like a physical fence it provided a protective enclosure around God’s commandments, an extra layer of rules. The theory is that one would have to break the “fence” and only then break the actual commandment of God. When I was living in Trenton, an Orthodox Rabbi friend and his wife, invited me to Sabbath dinner on Friday evening. Obeying the law to Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, at sundown they attended services at synagogue where everyone welcomed Queen Sabbath – the day of rest and renewal. When I arrived at their home, I was invited in. Before the meal I asked to use the restroom where I found little piles of toilet paper all rolled out. I discretely asked the wife about it and she said, “We don’t work on the sabbath” and that apparently included rolling out toilet paper. They shared the other things they didn’t do to on Sabbath like turning on and off lights as well as the oven, doing the dishes. The sabbath was a day of rest and nothing was to interfere with enjoying this gift. It was one of the most peaceful evenings of my life. How would your life, our life together, be transformed if we remembered our Sunday Sabbath, the Lord’s day of resurrection, with such diligence?
Jesus’ interpretation of the law in his BEST SERMON EVER is so challenging that all of us will fail – for who among us hasn’t fallen short? I suspect Martin Luther felt the same way. He does something absolutely remarkable in 1529, when he writes the Small Catechism for parents to use in their instruction of their children. You can find the Small Catechism on page 1160 in the back of the ELW. Please turn to it and let’s take a moment to look at the Fifth Commandment – “You shall not murder” followed by the question: “What is this?” And then the response: “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all of life’s needs.” Do you see what Luther is doing? We are told what not to do, but also what to do. The negative and the positive. As one of our young people once told me the catechism and specifically the commandments, gave him the rules he needs for life. A year or so ago, another told me the catechism saved her life.
In this BEST SERMON EVER –Jesus is with us, blessing the poor, the grieving, the merciful, the meek, you and me when we are down and out. Jesus is in us, empowering us to be salt of the earth and light for the world. Jesus is for us, giving us with the rules we need for life and saving us from sin, death and despair. All of this just in Chapter Five. In Chapters Six and Seven he teaches us give, to pray, to live, to hope, to endure, to believe, to build our house on rock for everything else is sinking sand. Amen.