Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 16, 2014
15See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. 16If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. 17But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, 18I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. 19I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 20loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. – Deuteronomy 30:15-20
21“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
27“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
31“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
33“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ 34But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one. – Matthew 5:21-37
There are people who like to talk about how great Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is. Those people never had to proclaim these words of Jesus to a congregation of people he loves and cares about. Seriously. These are some harsh words from Jesus, so I’d like to enter carefully into conversation with them, and to enter that conversation through our first reading from Deuteronomy.
Let me set the context: the people of Israel have been wandering without a permanent home in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years. Yes, years. They are about the enter the place they will call home. Moses has traveled with these people but he will not make the final journey to the new home with them. So Moses reviews with them God’s instructions for living in community together. And the end of it all, he gives them a choice: You can choose life and prosperity and blessing or you can choose death and adversity and curses. Pretty clear choice.
But I’m not convinced that choice is always such a great thing. Now some choices are great – like mint chocolate chip ice cream or peanut butter cup ice cream. As far as I’m concerned you can’t go wrong. Some choices are challenging, but still wonderful, like, for instance, choosing a baby name. Other choices are just annoying, like when you just want a box of corn flakes and you have to sort through 100 cereal choices at the supermarket.
But some choices are those that are easy to make but hard to do. These are often the most important choices. Like choosing to eat healthy or stop a bad habit. Easy to say hard to do. That’s the kind of choice Moses is laying out for Israel. Life or death. Easy for most of us to decide that one. We can sit in church and talk about all the ways we want to choose life, but then we’ll go home and make choices that lead to death, adversity, and curses of one kind or another.
That’s where Jesus’ words come in – addressing the brokenness that is obvious in the world – the brokenness that was a part of Israel’s life despite Moses’ impassioned speech, that has been a part of all our cultures before and since. Jesus reminds us of some of those life or death choices we have to make all the time in our lives. There are four of them in this reading:
1. The first choice is what to do with our anger: Life or death. Build others up or tear them down. Mend broken relationships or let them get worse. Now Jesus himself got angry. Anger is natural. Anger is something to pay attention to. But we have a choice about how to direct our anger.
This week saw a verdict in the Michael Dunn case – a case in which actual murder resulted when he got angry over loud rap music in a gas station parking lot. And then he wasn’t convicted – a whole other reason for us to be angry.
But for all our protesting about those who are brutal bullies on the world stage or on the local playground or in gas station parking lots, we, too, let our anger get the best of us. Most of us don’t kill people; I pray most of us don’t use physical violence to solve our anger. But we still choose death over life. We find a way to hurt ourselves or our community. We know it’s wrong, we choose to do it anyway.
2. The next choice is what to do with the fact that God created us as beautiful and sexual beings. The life and death choice here is between honoring that gift or abusing it. We acknowledge that misuse is rampant. There was another report this week about professional athletes and their abuse of women. On some channels there is constant news about celebrity hookups and who’s dating whom. We know that our world is full of misuse of God’s gift of sexuality.
And yet Jesus acknowledges that for all those worse offenses out there, we are all people who misuse and abuse all of God’s gifts to us, including the use of our bodies in relationship to one another. Choosing death over life.
3. But in case you weren’t already overloaded, Jesus is not done! The next choice is, at the heart of it, about what to do with our broken relationships. Jesus moves on to divorce.
This is worth a disclaimer: This passage too long used to perpetuate abuse and unhealthy relationships. Jesus elsewhere expresses God’s longing that we have life abundant, and in a broken world sometimes the only way for that to happen is through divorce. It is painful for all but it sometimes is a necessary course of action.
But we all have brokenness. If it isn’t a marriage, it’s some other relationship or aspect of our lives. We all make choices about how to handle that. Sometimes we do better than others. The choice is whether we honor the ways in which we are called into community with each other or whether we treat our relationships lightly. Choosing life or choosing death.
4. And as if those big considerations were not enough, today’s reading includes this bit about swearing oaths. I’ll be honest I’m not sure exactly what to do with this one. But I wonder if at the heart of is what underlies all of this: Our choice about what do with our very ability to choose. That fact that we don’t always carry out our better choices leads to a need to add extra statements to our oaths. We can choose integrity or we can try to puff up our words and our deeds with extra padding to avoid facing just who we are and owning our good choices and bad. Life or death?
After all that, anyone still think having all this choice is such a good idea?
But the question remains, what does God do with the way in which we choose death over and over again? In an age where the church is once again reclaiming a sense of God’s forgiveness and grace, I still talk to far too many people who think that God’s response is one of condemnation. That somehow God is sitting around counting our bad choices and shaking a finger and sending people off to scary places, some of which are referenced in our reading.
But if you keep reading the gospel, that is not God’s response. No, God makes a different and surprising choice. If we are going to keep choosing that which leads to death, then God chooses death with us. God says, “Fine, if you are going to choose death, then I choose death with you.” God chooses death with us, that we might have life together.
So there it is, in our anger misused, in our sexuality abused, in our communal living broken, and in our integrity falling apart, God chooses death with us. God chooses us.
Today’s harsh words remind us that we live delicately in fragile relationship with one another, that our desire to choose life does not always trump our choices moment to moment. And yet the words from Jesus’ mouth indicate to me an intimate knowledge of what it is like to be a human being. Words that understand what it is to be in human skin, words that acknowledge who we are and the choices we are capable of. Which simply makes it even more amazing to me that God chooses with us, that whatever our choices, we are accompanied always by the one who is life itself. Amen.
-Pastor Steven WIlco
Stewarding the Word 