Scripture/Sermon of the Day. February 12, 2023
Matthew 5:21-37
Murder
21-22 “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.
23-24 “This is how I want you to conduct yourself in
these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an
offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your
offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and
only then, come back and work things out with God.
25-26 “Or say you’re out on the street and an old
enemy accosts you. Don’t lose a minute. Make the first move; make things right
with him. After all, if you leave the first move to him, knowing his track
record, you’re likely to end up in court, maybe even jail. If that happens, you
won’t get out without a stiff fine.
Adultery and Divorce
27-28 “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 ogling looks you think nobody notices—they also
corrupt.
29-30 “Let’s not pretend this is easier than it really
is. If you want to live a morally pure life, here’s what you have to do: You
have to blind your right eye the moment you catch it in a lustful leer. You have
to choose to live one-eyed or else be dumped on a moral trash pile. And you have
to chop off your right hand the moment you notice it raised threateningly.
Better a bloody stump than your entire being discarded for good in the dump.
31-32 “Remember the Scripture that says, ‘Whoever
divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her
legal rights’? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and
whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are ‘legal.’ Please, no more
pretending. If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an
adulteress (unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity). And
if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you’re automatically an adulterer
yourself. You can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure.
Empty Promises
33-37 “And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This
counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you
lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never
doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your
words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound
more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you
manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.
Reflection/Sermon:
I. Well — this is an important day in our Christian
calendar, because it’s the last Sunday of Epiphany, which is more commonly known
as Super Bowl Sunday. Here at Dunbar, we celebrate this important day with our
own version of a Tailgating Party, our Annual Women’s Fellowship Soup-er Bowl
Luncheon where the proceeds go to HOPE — Helping Other People Eat.
II. This year’s Super Bowl commercials, which cost
seven million dollars for 30 seconds, will include ads for Bush beer, Bud-Lite
and Downy Unstoppables Laundry Freshener. There will be two ads from the “Jesus
Gets Us” campaign, which has spent over one hundred million dollars to market
Jesus Christ. The other night on his show, the comedian Bill Maher said Jesus
would probably have preferred that the money was spent on feeding the poor or
providing housing for the growing number of homeless. But aside from that — I
think most people already know that Jesus Gets Us. The problem is — we don’t get
him. If we read about Jesus in the gospels, we’d see that he often told the
people he healed or from whom he just cast out demons, “Don’t tell anyone.” Yet
we spend millions to tell people.
III. Jesus doesn’t want us to market him. But what
DOES he want? He wants us to love one another. So no name-calling. Don’t call
someone an idiot or a fool or a loser. And just being angry with someone is as
bad as murdrer, Jesus says. And thinking about adultery is as bad as doing it!
IV. We are not to hold onto a grudge or be angry with
someone. If we have an issue — we need to fix it now. But — what if we want to
go to church instead? What if we want to “pray about it.” No. Unless we
understand prayer as communicating with God who is in the person we have a
problem with and talk to God who is in that person — that must be our prayer.
Healing a broken relationship is the prayer Jesus wants us to do.
V. The guidelines for Christian living that Jesus
presents in the Sermon on the Mount are — guidelines. They are not humanly
possible. Jesus raises the bar for our behavior so high, we can’t reach it.
He wants us to look at someone attractive but not have
any desire or attraction to them. Come on! Even saints can’t do that. Even Jimmy
Carter can’t do that!
Jesus sets the bar for our behavior higher than we can
reach — yet he wants us to keep reaching.
Anyone who reads these words of Jesus will have to
become more humble — and more compassionate toward others. If we don’t, then we
are missing the point. Of course Jesus gets us. The real challenge of our
Christian faith is for us to get — to understand — him. And a hundred million
dollars and commercials on the Super Bowl won’t do that. But God’s grace will —
God’s grace — and the slow, daily, humbling practice of loving each other as
Jesus loves us.