2023 02 12 Sermon
God’s Love & Compassion in Difficult Situations
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Matthew 5:21-37
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Well. There certainly is a lot of difficult stuff in this part of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is talking about things that are quite painful for many people; even for many of you here. So the first thing I need to say is that whatever you have been through; whatever you are currently dealing with—we have a loving God, who loves you, and looks upon you with compassion. God knows the difficulty of being human and the struggles of your life, because God took on human flesh and lived among us in his Son Jesus Christ. As the letter to the Hebrews describes Jesus: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tested in every way as we are” (Hebrews 4:15). And as the prophet Joel describes the nature of God in the Old Testament: The Lord your God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13).
So that is where we need to begin, before we look at today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount: You are loved by the God who is Love. Another thing that’s helpful to understand is the historical context of the Sermon on the Mount, and how most people interacted with Jesus during his ministry, which was as a rabbi (meaning a teacher of God’s law). And the format Jesus is using to teach here is the basic method of interpretation used by the rabbis; the phraseology of this part of his Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard [this]…but I saw to you [this other thing]”—it was this back-and-forth, this debate and discussion about how to interpret the scripture. The Hebrew word for this method is “midrash”, which means to “penetrate”, or to dig down and uncover the deeper meaning in the scriptures. There are various ways that different layers of meaning can be uncovered beside using “midrash”. For example, our Faithful Innovation “HOP Outside the Box” team has been learning the practice of “Dwelling in the Word”, and they’ve have tried “Dwelling in the Word” with many of you. That’s one way of going deeper into the meaning of scripture. But in the case of today’s gospel, Jesus is practicing “midrash”, and he’s participating in a tradition where rabbis would seek each other out so they could debate and discuss things.
The leads me to another part of the background in this text, that you might miss unless you do some historical digging. And that is: there were divisive social issues back in Jesus’ day. In that way, it wasn’t so different from today. And one of the issues that was especially heated at that time was divorce. For example, the school of Rabbi Hillel taught that a man was allowed to divorce his wife even if she did something like ruining his meal! In contrast, the school of Rabbi Shammai taught a stricter view that permitted divorce only in the most extreme cases.
As Jesus adds his midrash to the debate, he’s saying that divorce is permitted, not for something like a man who doesn’t like his meal, but for something serious, like a breach of trust due to sexual immorality. The church as a whole has continued its own kind of midrash through the centuries on the issue of divorce (and Jesus calls this practice of midrash “binding and loosing” a little bit later in the gospel). At times, the church has been very strict about not allowing divorce, and in more recent years has recognized that marriage is made as a lifelong promise, and when inevitable difficulties arise we want to support spouses in resolving their differences. We know divorce is not taken lightly and is painful for families, yet sometimes in a bad situation it is the option that allows people to find new life. Even though the pain may remain for a long time, healing is possible with the help of God’s love and compassion for you.
So as Jesus was engaging with the differences of opinion about controversial issues, he did so in order to help people live into the abundant life God desires for us. It’s a life-long process, and he recognizes that people of faith can have different opinions about controversial social issues, and yet still remain brothers and sisters in faith. Jesus addresses this in the first part of today’s gospel, talking about coming to worship. He says: If you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, be reconciled to them first, and then come and worship. Don’t divide yourselves into factions, but work toward reconciliation with your brothers and sisters, through faith—and this is actually much harder to do than just kind of ignoring each other, but it starts by trying to understand where they are coming from. Now, you don’t have to agree with each other. You might think that the other is completely wrong. One of you might even be completely wrong. But to worship together you begin by releasing whatever anger or ill-will you may have, and you try to see the humanity in each other.
Another midrash Jesus offers in this part of his sermon is on the 5th Commandment, “You shall not murder.” The way he digs down to the deeper layer of meaning is to say: this Commandment is not simply about avoiding killing people, but it extends to the emotions that motivate us to behave violently, either violence in word or violence in deed. (Our Confirmation students were learning about the 10 Commandments last week, and actually had no problem identifying many ways that the 5th Commandment is broken at school every day!)
But anyway, Jesus says, if you are angry with a brother or sister; if you insult someone; if you judge someone to be a fool—then you have broken the 5th Commandment, because you’ve gone down a path that makes it easier to dehumanize them. But who among us never gets angry? Who has never hurled insults, or called someone a fool? Or worse? We’ve all broken the 5th Commandment. Jesus does not condemn us for being flawed human beings, but he does challenge us to look inside at the disposition of our hearts.
We can’t avoid never getting angry. Sometimes our anger even appears for good reason, like if you’re punished for something you didn’t do. Sometimes it’s anger at the injustices of society. Like when the 37-year-old police offer Peter Jerving was tragically killed last week while trying to make his community safer, and arrest a robbery suspect in Milwaukee. Or like a couple weeks ago, when the Black 29-year-old artist Tyre Nichols was killed during a traffic stop in Memphis while trying to get to his mother’s house. Anger is one of those things where, in certain circumstances it can fill you; it can even consume you—and that’s when it becomes dangerous and can spill out into violence, either verbal or physical.
So to fulfill the 5th Commandment, it’s not about doing the impossible task of never being angry. It’s not about swallowing your anger and letting it fester. It is about learning what to do with it when you are angry. Do you channel your anger towards harm, and get out of control, and hurt other people or yourself? Or do you acknowledge that the anger is there, and then channel your anger towards something constructive and life-giving? As Tyre Nichols’ mom said, “something good must come out of this.” She has every right to be angry that her son was murdered—and now she wants to channel herself towards something life-giving.
Jesus himself refused to let anger take him down the path of violence towards others, either in words or actions. He could have drummed up lots of support from people who were ready to join a violent insurrection against the Romans. But he refused to go that way. Ironically, this made a lot of people angry! So angry that they crucified him. But from the cross, Jesus channeled the violence and anger that was directed at him, and he turned it into something life-giving: the eternal promise that our loving God is always beside us, and he’s beside anyone who seeks divine compassion to forgive their sins, or heal their wounds, or make them whole. Jesus went to the cross to embody God’s disposition towards us: Love and compassion. When we surrender ourselves to God’s love and compassion, which is given to us in our crucified Messiah, he uses his love and compassion to transform us from the inside out, for new life and salvation. Amen.