Epiphany 6A; Matthew 5:21-37; St. Paul’s 2/12/2017

Jim Melnyk: “It Might Be God Trying to Get Your Attention”

So here we are, just barely into the Sermon on the Mount – the pinnacle of Jesus’ teaching.  I’m wondering if Jesus can already see by the looks on people’s faces that his words aren’t connecting with his listeners the way he had hoped.  So he suddenly lets loose with some pretty wild hyperbole – some wild exaggerations – to get their attention. He decides it’s time to slap them upside the head a bit, and he starts talking about eye-ball plucking and hand chopping – and we’re all, “Eww, that’s gross,” and, “I’m not signing on for any of this, Jesus!  Please – leave my eyeballs out of it all!” 

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not too keen on the idea of self-mutilation as a way of avoiding sin in my life.  To be honest, I’m not really sure that Jesus is holding that out to us as a valid option. 

And I don’t think too many followers of Jesus – even the most literal-minded of them, back then or now – take the plucking and chopping to heart – simply because I’ve never seen an over-abundance of self-imposed empty eye sockets and handless limbs in any church I visit. 

I can imagine Jesus chuckling a bit at the wide-eyed, jaw-dropping, reaction by those who actually hear what he’s saying.  There seems to be a bit of playfulness on Jesus’ part as he tries to get his listeners to distinguish between some whole-hearted literalism on his part – I really want you to take these teachings seriously, folks – and the mind-boggling hyperbole designed to capture our attention, and help us see just how seriously Jesus takes the hallmarks of the coming kingdom of heaven.  Talk of plucking out eyeballs and chopping off hands is Jesus trying to get our attention: “I want you to take my teachings about how you treat one another as seriously as you would take losing an eye, or a hand!”

Homiletics professor Jason Byassee reminds us that literalism in the Bible is a tricky thing.  “Some of Jesus’ most dramatic turnarounds of existing tradition are here in Matthew.  You have heard, but I say. It’s where we get Christianity’s most distinctive teaching: that we shouldn’t hate our enemies, but love them. Throughout the history of the church, we have had sophisticated strategies to avoid reading these passages literally. But Jesus seems to mean it...” (Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, 2/12/2017).

And although we don’t get to the “love your enemies” part of the Sermon on the Mount until next week, we see where today’s lesson is leading us – and we know how those words, when we hear them, will feel just like a slap upside our heads or a kick in our guts.  “You want me to love who, Jesus?  Are you out of your mind?”  And that’s what today’s gospel lesson is all about, really.  It’s about how we are to love and live with one another, within our own communities, and within the boundaries of this world.

And while all the eyeball plucking and hand chopping may be overly exaggerated suggestions meant only to capture our imaginations, there is a significant amount of literal-mindedness behind Jesus’ amendments to the tradition – a literal-mindedness that calls us to pay attention.  In this part of his sermon, you have heard it said – but I say to you, Jesus was doing what his contemporaries called “building a wall around Torah.”  These antithetical additions mean that commands such as those against murder and adultery are so important to Jesus that he adds additional commands to function as a protective fence, insuring his listeners don’t violate Torah.  Basically, whoever avoids the internal act of harboring anger toward another person will more than likely also avoid acting out violently toward them. Jesus emphasizes the importance of Torah by building a wall around it as an extra layer of protection.  

As the late Anglican priest John Stott once said, “Every Christian should be both conservative and radical: conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it” (John R. W. Stott, Synthesis Today, 2/8/2017).

Are you angry at someone, or are they angry with you?  Be reconciled before you bring your offering before God.  Do you remember that we attempt to practice this command every Sunday during Holy Eucharist?  That’s what The Peace is supposed to be all about – the only reason it comes immediately after the confession.  We have heard the word of God proclaimed.  We have affirmed our faith using the words of the Nicene Creed.  We have prayed for one another and we have confessed our sins – our brokenness – and received God’s promise of forgiveness.  And then we have the opportunity to seek out anyone with whom we have struggled, and be reconciled with them by wishing them God’s peace.  As Episcopalians, we are challenged to take the fifth chapter of Matthew seriously. 

Jesus offers a command against our holding anger against someone because when we harbor anger toward someone, and let it grow unchecked, that anger could lead to verbal and then physical violence against someone – and in extreme instances, even to death.  Likewise, Jesus reminds us how lusting after someone – and allowing those feelings to percolate and take hold in our hearts and minds – could lead to one finally acting upon those feelings, causing the violation of one’s marriage vows. 

It all comes down to how we choose to relate to one another as fellow human beings – each and every one of us created in the image and likeness of the Divine.  In essence, our obedience to Jesus and the gospel “must become internal if it is to bring genuine life” (Synthesis, 2/12/2017).  How do we choose to follow Jesus, who commands us to love one another as he loves each of us?  It’s the Word inscribed on our hearts rather than the words scribed on a page that shape who we are.  Following Jesus is challenging even in its own simplicity.  As Jayson Byassee remarks, “To have no truck with evil, not even a glance, not even an inner curse, not even the tiniest oath? Sounds like more than an impossible possibility. It sounds like the gospel” (Sojourners).

In the end, Jesus builds a wall around Torah so that we might not build walls around one another – so that we might not separate ourselves from one another – so that we might take within our hearts the commands to love God and love our neighbor, rather than leave those commands safely on the pages of our Bibles or bulletin inserts.  As Pope Francis said the other day, the Gospel is about building bridges rather than walls.  Our world today is so fraught with insecurity and anger that we fear talking together about issues of faith such as refugees, health care, human sexuality, racism, gender inequality, or immigration – you name it. 

We build metaphorical walls – often with hurtful rhetoric – to avoid hearing one another’s views, and we build both communal and physical walls to shut one another out.  But that doesn’t have to be the way.  As we heard in the reading from Sirach today - we can choose to do good.  We can choose to live this way!

An unknown Hasidic Master – and eighteenth century Jewish theologian – wrote about prayer in a way that also speaks to Jesus’ teachings on the mountainside, showing how building a foundation of prayer can make a difference for us, and for the world.  And the Good News is that all this is possible! 

“What a great wonder that we should be able to

            draw so near to God in prayer.

How many walls there are between [humanity] and    God!
Even though God fills all the world,

            [God] is so very hidden!

Yet a single word of prayer can topple all the walls

            and bring [us] close to God.”[1]

And in doing so, bring us each closer to one another.

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[1] (Your Word Is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer, Arthur Green and Barry W. Holtz, editors and translators)