The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack Sermon
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The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
February 9, 2014
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
Matthew 5: 21-37
Sometimes I wonder if Father Don likes me. As one of a privileged group of preachers, I sometimes feel I get more than my share of the really, really hard Gospel readings. For example, in the last year or so, I’ve been given two lessons with readings about the sun ceasing to shine, the moon turning to blood, stars falling and basically the end of creation. Sounds exciting, but ever try to preach about it?
Now, after today’s lesson, I know he doesn’t like me. This morning all I have to do with the text assigned is to wade through Jesus’ sayings on anger, lust, adultery and divorce. I mean, give me a good old cosmic explosion any time!
If you were in church last week, you heard read a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And, if you come for the next 2 weeks, you’ll hear more from this Sermon. My complaining aside, to me, there is no purer insight into the core of Jesus’ teaching than the Sermon on the Mount. This said, his teaching can be very hard to digest.
In fact, some say, the Sermon contains such impossible ideals that we can safely ignore them. That anyone who lives by these sayings will be trounced in the world of commerce, not to mention family relations. “Turn the other cheek to that person?” Are you nuts?
So, here we are. This morning we’re going to look at four subjects about which Jesus wants to have the last word: anger, lust and adultery, divorce and oath-taking. My job, my main job, is to somehow let Jesus convince us that his teaching, however seemingly idealistic and God knows usually impractical, is indeed the way, the truth, the life.
Let’s start with anger. We heard read how the NRSV renders Jesus’ words. I think it may be helpful for us to read these words in a more modern translation like the Message by Eugene Peterson.
Jesus says, “You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.”
Now, don’t read into what Jesus said about anger that it’s a bad thing. After all, anger is a God-given emotion for one’s well-being. Try to make yourself not be angry and you’ll end up at the least very depressed if not physically ill not to mention prone to untimely outbursts and destructive behavior. If I am hurting you in some way, your anger helps you tell me to stop it. This is good anger.
As you may know, on several occasions, Jesus modeled this good anger. For example, good anger was his response when he saw how people were profiting from Temple activities. Remember how he tossed their tables upside down, scattering coins all over the place and sending animals loose into the streets?
Good anger or righteous anger is when we’re angry because justice is not being served, when God’s great mission of love is being thwarted or we as a child of God are being threatened. Without such anger, bad things would happen, nothing would change!
Unrighteous anger, however, is something else. Unrighteous anger hurts people. Unrighteous anger comes from a whole different place. Instead of seeking justice or fairness, it seeks self-advantage and always at the expense of another.
Accordingly, in God’s future and ours, there will be no bad anger, no hostility between people. Not even between family members! We will not even think of calling someone stupid or jerk or other words that can maim or kill or harm self-esteem. Well, you say, Jesus never met so and so.
But, here’s the deal about Jesus and what he is showing us about God in the Sermon on the Mount and in everything he does and says. And, to explain this deal best I want to remind you of an African word you may have heard on the lips of Nelson Mandela or by those who memorialized him a month or so ago. The word is Ubuntu. Ubuntu has to do with the realization that my life is inextricably tied up with yours. Ubuntu is at the core of Jesus’ teaching about the world God is trying to fashion.
Bottom line, Ubuntu is Jesus saying on another occasion, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Not love your neighbor as much as you love yourself; that misses the radical nature of his teaching. Rather, love your neighbor as yourself. There’s a huge difference.
Loving my neighbor as I am loving myself means there is never a disconnect between considering my welfare and my neighbor’s welfare. It’s as if there is a solid link between us. As if I were you and you were me. So that I could never do to you what I wouldn’t do to myself. Never say even a word to you that I wouldn’t say to myself.
For me, Ubuntu is a fresh way of visualizing what Jesus meant when he said “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” The reality being that in this world that God is fashioning, there are no winners if there must be losers. In God’s world, all our destinies are tied together.
Let’s carry this thought into what Jesus says about adultery and lust. Again, hear this from the Message: “You know the next commandment pretty well, too: ‘Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.’ But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices – they also corrupt.”
In Jesus’ time, according to what we call the Old Testament, which was the Bible for Jews of course, adultery could only be committed by a married or engaged woman who would have sex with a man other than her husband. It was a grievous transgression punishable by death.
Men could technically commit adultery, of course. But because there was no punishment for it, men’s adultery wasn’t considered serious. It was a man’s world, to say the least.
Jesus was trying to change this. No wonder so many men ended up trying to kill him!
But Jesus isn’t through. We’ve got lust to consider. Lust, Jesus implies, is the pre-cursor to adultery. But, it’s more. The kind of lust Jesus is pointing at is not merely sexual attraction which is God-given. Rather, it’s a disordered understanding of oneself and others. It’s about body parts and not the whole person. It’s about self-gratification more than other-love. It’s about me more than you.
Leads to adultery, yes. But, on its own it can be toxic for all concerned.
Since we’re having so much fun, let’s move on to divorce. Many among us know the pain of divorce. If we’re average Americans, 50% of us know the pain of divorce.
In Jesus’ day, divorce was very easy to obtain – for a man. A woman, however, could not divorce her husband for any reason. All a man had to do, however, was declare himself divorced in the presence of a witness. Common causes were burned food or refused sexual relations. This is how much of a man’s world it was.
To make matters worse, a woman without a man was considered little better than a household animal. In fact, a woman who had been divorced often had to turn to begging or prostitution to make a living because her father usually wouldn’t take her back.
Now along comes Jesus. No more divorce for burning food and the like. Now, Jesus says, divorce is acceptable only for unfaithfulness. Meaning, that women had a far greater sense of economic security than they had before Jesus. Granted, a woman still couldn’t divorce a man, but the change proposed by Jesus was nonetheless astonishingly radical.
So, what’s the bottom line for us given differing cultural settings where marriage is no longer only between a man and a woman?
Here’s something to think about:
- For Christ-followers, marriage is a sacred relationship helping two people grow into Christlikeness, glorifying God and thus in community with other Christ-followers, loving God’s world all the better. To enter into such an intimate relationship without a lifetime commitment is to miss the point of it.
- Still, stuff happens. There are reasons, like but not limited to unfaithfulness, when divorce is the best solution, the most loving thing humans know how to do.
Nonetheless, Jesus’ words need to be taken with utmost seriousness: a marriage covenant taken in the name of Jesus and the church is a profound covenant for the couple and for the Christ-community of which they are part.
This said, please never forget: God’s mercy is always boundless.
Lastly we come to oath taking. For time’s sake, I want only to summarize what Jesus was getting at in talking about one’s yes being yes and one’s no being no.
The import here is that in the kingdom that God is inaugurating which shall last forever, truth shall be at its heart. So, begin even now, Jesus is saying, and let your yes be yes and your no be no. Don’t fudge. For love, Jesus style, is unconditionally truthful.
That is, in Christ, we don’t need to speak in such a way as to try to appear to be something we’re not. In Christ, we don’t need to personally fear the judgment of the truth being known. In God’s ongoing and everlasting community, no one should have to wonder about who I am and what I mean by what I say or don’t say.
Well, it’s important that we conclude bearing in mind this notion of God’s community, God’s peculiar community where your welfare and my welfare aim to be seamlessly linked together, Ubuntu style, Jesus style. For, really, it’s absolutely impossible to grasp the parts of this Sermon on the Mount without a firm grasp of the central truth and point Jesus is trying to make.
That is, Jesus is not just focused on individual sins, trying to help us keep our daily total at a minimum. Rather, Jesus is trying to shape a new community where love – Ubuntu style, Jesus style – is at the core.
For the world that God is working 24/7 to build even today depends on community. Depends on expanding, ever larger communities embracing the love-ethic that begins within families, between friends, then churches and eventually including every living being on the planet with the goal of embracing our farthest neighbor with the compassion of our nearest loved one. A community where everyone in the inner circle; no one outside. A community shaped by Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount, abounding in mercy and forgiveness, forged for God’s use in the ongoing mission of transforming the world.
This is why the bar is set so high. Not that we always carry a load of guilt around because of our shortcomings. But that we have a vision, a God-sized vision to energize us for a life worth living. A life worth living for God’s sake which is to say for the world’s sake. And even – though we’re usually the last to figure it out – for our own sake as well.