No Body Should Do It
The Rev. Dr. John Judson
March 27, 2011
[Matthew 5:21-30] ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; 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. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
[Exodus 20:1-17] Then God spoke all these words:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lordyour God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.
So how many of you would like more rules and regulations in your lives that would tell you what you could not do? I thought not. I think that there are a couple of reasons for that. First we only like rules and regulations when we get to make them and not when others make them for us. Second as human beings we just have this thing about rules. We push up against them. They crowd us. And we really have a hard time obeying them. Consider the opening stories of this book (the Bible). God has created a perfect place. In this perfect place are two people, Adam and Eve. One day God calls a meeting. The conversation goes something like this. God, “I guess you are wondering why I called this meeting.” “Sure boss,” say the perfectly tanned couple. “Well I needed to let you know that in this wonderful garden there is only one rule.” “What’s a rule?” “A rule tells you what you cannot do.” “So there is only one thing we cannot do?” “Right,” replies God,” and here it is. See that tree over there?” “Yep.” “You may not eat of its fruit. You can eat the fruit of any other tree, just not that one.” “That’s it?” says the couple, “You mean the only thing we cannot do is eat from that tree?” “Yes, “says God. “No problem,” they reply. The next day they meet again and God asks, “How many rules?” “One.” They say. And this goes on for a while until one morning God can’t find Adam and Eve. “Where are you,” he asks. We are hiding because we ate the fruit,” they say. And you can hear God mutter under God’s breath, “I only gave them one rule.”
We don’t do well with rules, which is why I think we like Jesus more than we like Moses. We like Jesus more because he was not the rule giver. While the life of Moses may make for a more dramatic movie, in the end Jesus is our favorite because rather than talking about rules, he speaks of love, grace and forgiveness. In fact Jesus seems to be always breaking the rules by healing on the Sabbath and that sort of thing. Which is why we are so very, very surprised and disturbed by the end of the passage that Amy read last week and that continues into our mornings text…where Jesus tells us that not only is none of the law, meaning God’s rules, going away but that we have to live better than the rules require. Not only are we not supposed murder we are not even supposed be angry or call someone a fool. Not only are we not supposed to commit adultery but we are not even supposed to look lustfully at another person. So what happened? How has this man of grace suddenly become a man of super rules? What are we supposed to do?
Well we could do what the church has always done with this part of scripture, we could ignore it. Yes, that is right, the church has just ignored it. Here is why I say this. If we were to have continued reading we would have heard Jesus say that while the Law of Moses says that a man can divorce his wife by giving a writ of divorce, Jesus says that anyone who divorces his wife except on the grounds of adultery causes his wife to commit adultery. I realize that this is a disturbing text for many of us, but here is my point. The church, almost from the beginning has made this no divorce passage a critical part of their message. Many countries that are mainly Roman Catholic still do not allow divorce because of this text. But as far as I can tell being angry, and lusting are seldom if ever the focus of any great church teachings. In other words being angry and lusting seem to be so much a part of us that the church has been loath to speak about them in any meaningful way…so we have ignored them and focused all of efforts on divorce, which is a much easier opportunity to point fingers and go tsk, tsk.
If then, we are not going to ignore this hyper legalism, what ought we to do with it? What I would like to offer this morning is that we take it seriously but not literally. Here is what I mean. I don’t believe Jesus wants us to take it literally. If we were to take it literally we would have a world filled with eyeless and handless people because their eyes or hands had caused them to sin. We would have a world filled with nothing but people who were all going to hell because most of us at one time or another have in the heat of the moment either said, or thought, that someone was a fool. No, Jesus is using hyperbole. Hyperbole means exaggeration. He is exaggerating the use of the law in such a way to make his deeper and more meaningful point. So, again, we are not to take this literally…which means, by the way, that the same is true for his statements about divorce, which is why we in the Presbyterian Church, believe that while divorce is difficult decision, there are times when it is the appropriate option.
What then does it mean to take it seriously while not taking it literally? It means that we are to look behind the hyperbole to Jesus’ deeper message, which is that what the Kingdom is about is not about following rules but about transformed lives and transformed communities. In other words, the Kingdom which Jesus is bringing is about humanity becoming a new kind of body in which people love God, neighbor and creation itself. And…here is the point…one cannot love God and neighbor if one is angry, hateful and lusting after others. For you see love sees the other as child of God deserving of love, grace and forgiveness. When we are angry, hate and lust we turn the other into something less than a human being. They become an object; an object of scorn, destruction and misuse. In this way we break the human connection which is required for loving one another. This individual breaking also breaks the community. Since we are all part of one another, to break relationship with a brother or sister is like, well cutting off our nose to spite our face. We are cutting off part of the body. This means then that simply following the rules won’t do. We are to go beyond that by not doing what breaks the body.
Last week Amy talked about what everybody should do…and that is be what God created us to be, Light and Salt. We are to be those people who are useful to the world because that is what God created us to be. This week we have heard what we are not supposed to do and that is to allow our anger, hate and lust to diminish our effectiveness as salt and light…which I will admit is a very difficult, yet essential thing we are called to do. So here is the challenge that is before us. Are we willing to ask ourselves this question, “Am I willing to be conscious of the way I think about other people, in order to see them as children of God and not as those objects to be scorned and used?”
