Brad
Sullivan
6
Epiphany, Year A
February
12, 2017
Emmanuel,
Houston
Sirach
15:15-20
Matthew
5:21-37
Setting the Bar Kinda Low
“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and
the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” That’s where we left off last week in Jesus’
sermon in Matthew chapter 5. At a first
hearing, it sounds like Jesus is giving a major, “you’ve got to be good enough
for God” kind of statement. “You’ve got
to be righteous enough in God’s eyes in order to be good enough for God.” That’s certainly where my teenage brain took
this passage when I read it back in high school. “Man, I’ve got to be even better that the
religious leaders in order to be good enough for God?” Yikes!
Well, I’ve got a few critiques to that particular
understanding of Jesus and the Gospel.
The first is, let’s face it, if Jesus wants us to be better people than
the scribes and the Pharisees, he’s setting the bar kinda low. Just about any time Jesus mentions the
scribes and the Pharisees, he’s saying not to be like them, calling them
hypocrites. So, not too much of a high
standard of perfection there. The second
critique of the “You’ve got to be good enough for God” understanding of Jesus’
sermon is this: “You don’t have to be
good enough for God.” Striving to be
good enough for God, striving to be righteous for one’s own sake is missing the
point of Jesus entirely. Jesus is much
more concerned with people’s well being than he is with people’s
righteousness. That’s the lesson I get
from our story in Matthew’s Gospel today, not reward and punishment, but Jesus’
genuine concern and care for the well-being of people.
Several years ago, I was gently pushing our then three year
old son, Rhys, on a tire swing in the front yard of our house. We were having a lovely time, and then our
neighbor’s granddaughter came over. She
was about six, and she asked if she could push Rhys. To be honest, I had some trepidation about
the prudence of allowing such a young girl to push my son, but not wanting to
be an overly protective helicopter parent, I decided to just let them
play. That worked really well for a
about 20 seconds, after which time, she spun the tire swing too hard, and Rhys
fell off the swing, breaking his collar bone.
Way to go, Dad.
Amidst Rhys’ crying and my checking to see if he was as hurt
as I feared, the little girl began apologizing profusely, the fear in her voice
and face communicating two things: “I’m
sad I hurt Rhys,” eclipsed almost totally by “It was an accident; I’m so afraid
that I’m in serious trouble.” For my
part, I had almost forgotten that our neighbor’s granddaughter was still even
there, focused exclusively on Rhys and what appeared even by looking at it to
be a broken collar bone. I was certainly
not interested at all in my neighbor’s granddaughter being in trouble. I knew it was an accident, and my only
concern was for my son’s well being, not the girl’s being in trouble or
not. Assuring her that it was ok, I
quickly scooped Rhys up and took him to the hospital.
What strikes me about that story is or neighbor’s
granddaughter’s concern about being in trouble eclipsing her concern for Rhys’
well-being. Now, to be fair, she was a
little kid. Of course that’s how she
felt. She didn’t know what else to do or
how else to deal with the situation, so no chastisement of her intended in any
way.
But, now imagine that the little girl was an adult who had
just accidentally hurt someone, and imagine this adult is more concerned with
being in trouble or even worse, being righteous in God’s eyes, than this person
is concerned with the well-being of the other person. That is the situation I find when we hear
Jesus critiquing the religion and way of life of the scribes, Pharisees, and other
religious leaders of his day. Be it the
parable of the Good Samaritan, where the religious leaders pass by on the other
side of the road when they see someone hurt, or be it the actual practices of
the religious leaders in which they are shown to take money from poor widows in
order to pay a temple tax, or pray about how wonderful they are compared to
those around them, we see a group of religious leaders concerned with their own
righteousness before God, worrying about being in trouble, while having almost
no concern for the well-being of the people around them.
Jesus, in his constant healing of people; in his care for
the orphan, the widow, the downtrodden, and the outcast; and in his preaching,
including the sermon of his that we hear today, Jesus showed how much he cared
for people’s well being, and how interested he wasn’t in people being righteous
before God for their own sake. Our being
righteous before God, being good enough to please God, Jesus took care of that
on the cross. Jesus’ desire for us was
then not that we would continue to be worried about being righteous or good
enough before God, but rather that we would love God and love people. From a place of fear about our own
righteousness before God, Jesus sent us on a quest to love God and love people
without fear. That quest of love is what
we hear Jesus teaching about in his words that we heard today, a far more
complicated, rewarding, and beautiful understanding of life than simple reward
and punishment.
In the teaching that we heard today, Jesus was basically
going through the 10 Commandments, saying that on the quest of love, a basic
rule based keeping of the 10 Commandments is not sufficient. Some probably hear his words and are rather
disheartened. “Not only can we not kill
people, we’re not even supposed to hate them?
No fair, that’s way too hard! Not
only can we not cheat on our wives and our husbands, we’re not even supposed to
fantasize about it?” From a trying to be
good enough standpoint, no we can’t live up to that. We’re not perfect. We’re not going to be. Jesus is teaching that the point of the
commandments is not to be perfect, not to be righteous before God for one’s own
sake. Rather, the point of the 10
Commandments is to live in such a way that your life is a quest of love, a
quest of loving God and loving people without fear.
See, the 10 Commandments are a pretty good start to things,
but you can keep all 10 of them and still be a pretty terrible person. Imagine talking to someone who makes sure to
keep the Commandments. This person
worships God, has no idols, goes to church on Sunday and does no other work,
has never committed perjury or lied about someone to get them in trouble; he
doesn’t talk back to his parents; and he’s basically content with what he’s got
and doesn’t steal from others. He sounds
like a pretty good guy. Now let’s say he
then starts talking about how righteous he is, and you call him on it because
you’ve noticed some rather less than wonderful habits of this person.
“So, I hear you saying how righteous you are, but you’re also
kind of a bully. You routinely beat
people up when they anger you, and are constantly insulting and verbally
abusing others.”
“Well, yeah, that’s true, but hey, at least I haven’t killed
anybody!” Check, commandment kept.
“Uh huh. Ok, well how
can you be so righteous, considering how terribly you treat your wife?”
“Hey, I don’t have to treat her well, I just have to not
commit adultery. I haven’t.” Check, commandment kept.
See, there are all kinds of ways we can be really terrible
to each other and still keep the Commandments.
Even in following Jesus’ more stringent code, we can find ways to hurt
each other. “Ok, Jesus, I got it. No adultery, no ogling other women, and no
divorce. Beyond that, I can be as big of
a prat to my wife as I want.” Far from
giving us a more stringent set of rules for us to follow in order to be
righteous before God for our own sake, Jesus is showing us that the whole point
of the commandments, is to care about the well being of others as God
does.
Now, there’s still this part where Jesus says that if we
treat people terribly, we should be thrown into the hell of fire. He’s saying we should be thrown into Gehenna,
the burning garbage dump outside of Jerusalem.
Have you ever known someone who was such a horrible louse that they
seemed like human garbage? That’s what
Jesus is talking about. People matter so
much to Jesus, and so he taught that if you treat people terribly, you’ve
turned yourself into human garbage, good for nothing but the burning garbage
dump, metaphorically speaking. Far from
actually wanting us to cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes, Jesus is
teaching that even small practices of treating others terribly can lead to an
entire life of treating others terribly, so stop with the seemingly
insignificant practices in which you treat others without love so that you
don’t end up living your entire life treating others without love.
Jesus is showing us the heart of God, a heart not interested
in keeping rules for one’s own sake, a heart not interested in fear and punishment, but a heart interested in using
the rules to show us how better to love people and to care for their well being. Jesus really is far more concerned with
people’s well being, fare more concerned with love than he is with people’s self-serving
righteousness.
Jesus is inviting us to follow him in a life that is a quest
of love, a quest to give and receive love.
In this quest, we have our eyes and our hearts open to check in with
ourselves and ask, “am I really living as a loving person? Am I full of anger and resentment? Maybe I’m generally ok, but need some help
with loving right now. Maybe I should
seek that help.” In this quest of love
that Jesus has given us, we don’t go it alone.
Love cannot be a solitary venture.
We’re on this quest with each other, we have our eyes and
our hearts open to the people around us.
Are they doing ok? Do they have
enough? Do I have enough? Do I have more than I need? Is the path that my life is on serving only
myself, or is the path that my life is on also being a light of love for
others? Is the path that our lives are
on serving as a light of love for others.
That is the path of the quest Jesus has set us on, a quest in which we
care not about our own righteousness before God for our own sake, a quest not of
reward and punishment. Jesus has set us
on the quest of genuine concern for the care and well-being of others, the
quest in which we love God and love and serve people without fear, the quest of
love.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.
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