Going deep

Matthew 5: 21-37
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
February 12, 2017

            It drives me nuts when Jesus does this.  For the past two weeks we’ve heard his gentleness, his compassion, his pastoral side.  I guess he was softening up the crowd, turning over the hard soil of their hearts, killing them softly with his words, with his beatitudes song.  Then Jesus added some salt and light to the mix, building up the people with a sense of purpose and mission, preparing them for these hard seeds necessary for the Beloved Community.

            But before he directs them down the difficult discipleship road ahead, Jesus assures his listeners that the law of God is not going anywhere; that though he has come to give the people God’s good news, it does not change God’s expectations of us.  In fact, it seems that God’s people were just skimming the surface of what God wanted from them, obeying the letter of the law without going to the heart of it.  Even though they were living in the land of their ancestors, they had made their home in exile.  They had become estranged from God and from each other.  They had treated God’s law as though it were a to-do list, their salvation as check marks.

            Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase The Message tells it like this:  “Trivialize even the smallest item in God's Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won't know the first thing about entering the kingdom.”  When it comes to Jesus and God’s law, discipleship is all about right living, right relationships.  If we aren’t right with God or with each other, how can we do and be what God needs for the Beloved Community, what Jesus calls the kingdom of God?

            We’d like to think that when we’re angry or frustrated, when we’re in conflict, or having any trouble, that it’s the other person, the clique, the other team, the competition, the government, other nations that are the problem.  And sometimes they really are the problem.  But we can’t solve them, what makes them the problem, for them.  Gandhi once said—Gandhi who brought the British Empire to its knees—he said that the only devils running around are the ones in our own hearts and that is where all our battles ought to be fought.  Which sounds difficult to believe these days.  But it also sounds like something Jesus would have said, what I think he is saying as he delves beneath the surface of the law and goes deep into it.

            Many of us, when we were kids, used to say “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” as a way of warding off the sting of whatever insult was being hurled our way.  The truth is, words do hurt.  Jesus is saying that words said in anger have the power to kill.  We know this when we witnessed the media attention given to bullying and from young people who end their lives.  Remember Tyler Clementi and Leelah Alcorn?  For many years now we have been able to find a vast number of resources about how to deal with bullies in our schools, work places, and even in our worship communities.

            Truly, Jesus is making perfect sense when he follows his ‘salt and light’ message with this one.  Often when we shine brightly, when we give our unique flavor to the world, it is then that we can become an object of bullying.  But bullies aren’t born that way.  A bully is someone who suffered some sort of abuse; who couldn’t defend themselves nor did they heal from their wounds.   The thing of it is, we all have our wounds; thus, we all have within us the possibility reacting out of that wounded place, by bullying, by lashing out.  There are times we wish we knew how to be brave and authentic despite our pain and the scars life can give.

            In all these difficult sayings and interpretations of God’s law, Jesus is telling the crowd and us that we can’t treat people as objects:  we can’t act as though it doesn’t matter what goes on in the hamster cage of our minds; we can’t behave as though it doesn’t matter what we say or don’t say.  And we all know at least one person who behaves like this.  Remember though that Jesus was speaking to a crowd of Jewish peasants, who were living under occupation by the Romans, some of the biggest bullies of their time, and yet Jesus is turning the focus back on his listeners.

            We all know from personal experience, from being on the receiving end of a bully, that it does matter.  It does hurt to be treated as if we were made from sticks and stones, not the flesh and blood person we are.

            So what is Jesus’ solution to this problem?  Plucking out our eyes and cutting off our limbs?  Making peace with the person who has something against us?  At first glance it sounds pretty extreme—and focused solely on the victim rather than on the bully.  Jesus didn’t divide the crowd into victims and bullies, telling the victims that they were excluded from this part of the sermon.  Bullies were once victims themselves.  We’re all capable and culpable.  We’ve all had our 15 minutes of bullying.  If we’ve scoffed at or discarded someone else’s opinion, tried to close down a discussion, maneuvered to get our own way, judged someone else’s efforts without offering to help, or taken 10 minutes to say what could be said in two (no wonder it’s called the bully pulpit), then we’ve been a bully.

            It all begins with us:  whether or not we’ll put up with bullying, whether or not we will engage in it.  Ironically, most bullies are met with more bullying, with angry words through clenched teeth, sneering looks behind one’s back, cold shoulders, or by staying away completely.  We tend to interpret Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek as being too kind in the face of injury and injustice, so either we flee or we fight back.

            Actually, when Jesus says to turn the other cheek, in today’s language it means that we need to set boundaries, to clearly communicate what are acceptable behaviors and those that are not.  To turn the other cheek is to say that hitting the first time was unacceptable; the second blow reveals the hardness of heart of the bully and the willingness of the victim to show not only strength of character but compassion.

            The ability to be compassionate and loving toward others is directly related to our ability to accept and love ourselves as we are.  If we’re having problems being compassionate toward those who have hurt us, even from a distance, we’re also having problems loving ourselves.  The poet W.H. Auden wrote in his poem “The Age of Anxiety”:

“We would rather be ruined than changed.

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the present

And let our illusions die.”

            Through his radical—radical meaning “grass roots”—interpretation of God’s law, Jesus is reaching out to save us from ourselves and offering us an opportunity to change.  Trouble is, we have to know we’re in need of saving; that indeed, there is no greater enemy than ourselves.  14^th century mystic Julian of Norwich believed that sin is necessary in the life of faith because it leads us to self-knowledge, which leads to the acceptance of God’s role in our lives.  Here we have the first three of the twelve steps:  admitted we were powerless, that our lives had become unmanageable; came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity; made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

            If we think these steps are only for addicts, we’re right on target.  How easy is it for us to step out of our view of things and consider seeing something through someone else’s eyes?  How open is our mind, our heart—really?   It’s all too easy to be addicted to our own way, and we all have that demon running around inside us.  None of us are immune.  If we think to ourselves ‘that’s not me’, the only person we’re fooling is ourselves.

            How deep are we willing to go with Jesus, both as a person of faith and as a Body of Christ?  Have we ever been hurt by being a part of a church and what part of that hurt are we still holding onto?  To whom do we need to go and come to terms with our accuser before offering our gift at the altar of God?  What opportunities do we give ourselves to make peace by saying we’re sorry and asking for forgiveness?  In what areas of our lives and our life together are we insisting on our own way?  What makes it difficult for us to let go of the outcome and trust God?

            A few years ago, when I was doing some serious forgiveness work, a friend shared a brief, blunt prayer with me that cut like a knife through my ego and it’s this:  “Forgive them.  Change me.”  It takes persistent courage, humility, and serenity to offer this prayer.  It’s the first step toward the healing of this world.

Amen.