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.