6 Epiphany – Sermon
The Rev. Deacon Maureen Otwell
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Minneapolis
February 16, 2014
Our readings today are all about following the Law that God has given to humanity.
 To love God wholly and freely;
 To love our neighbors;
 To follow the commandments God has given us.
Even our psalm this morning exalts God’s Law and the delight one can have in
keeping true to the commandments. In Jewish tradition, the Law is the summary of
all wisdom, both human and divine. It is a guide to a right relationship with God.
From Moses to Jesus, God’s chosen people have persisted in following the covenant
made with God to be in a right relationship with God. According to Matthew, Jesus’
teachings do not contradict the Law that has lead the chosen to this point in time,
but he does have something to say about how that Law is to be interpreted.
The Gospel reading today follows the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon we hear
Jesus proclaim who is blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the
meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure of heart,
the peacemakers and those who are persecuted for God’s sake. These are the
people who will inherit the Kingdom of God. They are the salt of the earth; the
flavoring that makes God’s touch available to all. God wants us to be those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness.
The Sermon on the Mount outlines a rather idealistic set of qualities to live up to.
What qualities describe the people in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians? They are
bickering among themselves. They are busy creating divisions within the
congregation. They are making claims that one group is greater than another. They
are a far cry from those who will be blessed and rewarded with the Kingdom of
Heaven. They seem a lot more like the human communities I know. Paul chides
them as a father might reprimand a child. He calls them infants not yet ready for
solid food. They are not growing into a spiritual maturity. They may have been
baptized into Jesus’ saving message, but they have not matured into its
ramifications. Instead they have turned back to those things of the earth –
competition for status and the expected rewards of an unequal society. These are
not the qualities that will bring them to spiritual maturity.
The covenant that God wishes humans to grow into is one that is in direct conflict
with the foundations of our human societies where some are rewarded and others
are not. A passionate willingness to be open to the message of Jesus isn’t enough. It
is the details embedded in our everyday human communities that trip up the
faithful.
This is the fundamental message of our Gospel today. The sections following the
Sermon on the Mount are called the “antitheses” mainly because of their literary
structure. “You have heard it this way…. but I say to you it is this way. There are
three of these in this morning’s Gospel. Although their structure leads us to expect a
contradiction, each one actually expands on the original Commandment given to
Moses and delivers a more detailed exploration of what is needed to follow the Law
faithfully; to live a mature spiritual life. They are not a contradiction of the original
commandment but a clarification or a deepening of its meaning.
As Matthew says, Jesus did not come to repudiate the commandments of Moses but
to fulfill them. Matthew’s text compares and contrasts the Israelite Law and the
teachings of Jesus. In these passages Jesus clarifies the Laws as received over the
centuries and preserved through the scribes and Pharisees – those sects who follow
the Law most literally.
In the first one, Jesus expands on the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Jesus
includes being out-of-harmony with others and harboring bad feelings towards
others as the same spiritual predicament as murdering another. These thoughts can
lead to action. It is the lack of kindness, compassion, and love towards others and
toward each other that matter as much as the actual action. We are to love our
neighbors as ourselves because God loves us all equally. To be out of harmony with
another, to wish bad things on another, is to be out of harmony with God. Why offer
sacrifice to God, when you cannot say you are in a right relationship with God. Don’t
bother to go through the motions of following the Law that requires sacrifice;
instead go seek out the one you wish ill to and reconcile your relationship with that
person. Then you will be able to worship God with righteousness.
Jesus’ comments on adultery are about compassion and love as well. These words
are directed more at men than women since in his society women could not initiate
a divorce. In paternalistic societies such as existed throughout most of history in
almost all cultures, women and their children are particularly vulnerable to the
capricious desires of men. Matthew has Jesus weigh in on divorce - one of the most
contentious issues among various Judaic sects at this time. Who is harmed by
divorce, Matthew asks? If a married woman were put aside for any reason other
than the most serious reason – infidelity – what would happen to her? Who would
be responsible for her? If her family is not wealthy, if her brother refuses to take her
into his house, she is alone and cannot care for herself. Jesus claims that women are
so economically and physically threatened by divorce, that divorce should not be
permitted except under extreme cases.
These comments on divorce reminded me of this “un-coupling group” I was in the
1970s as I went through my first divorce. The group was run through the Women’s
Center and its goal was to help women make a transition from married to single life.
It was only after I joined this group that I began to understand that marriage in our
society (as in Jesus’ time) is as much about economics as it is about love and
promises. In this group I met other middle-class, mostly white women who had
been married for over 25 years; who were in their 50s and who had never worked
outside the home. Some had married before finishing college. They had bought into
the “Father Knows Best” version of the American Dream propagated in the 1940s
and 1950s to encourage women to move out of the WWII generated workforce.
Because of all the returning servicemen in need of employment after the War,
women were actively encouraged to return to the home. The culture assumed that
middle-class people would return to an economic structure that they had enjoyed
before the War and before the depression. Middle class women and men would
return to that lifestyle where the wife raised the children and the husband earned
the money to support the family unit. The women I met in my group who had
followed these unspoken assumptions were facing a precarious economic future.
These women were economically hurt by their divorces; unprepared to make their
way in the labor force. They were limited by the choices they had made, not
realizing they were making economic choices they might regret. They were
betrayed by a cultural shift about the nature of marriage in our society. No one
could have foreseen that this middle-class lifestyle would disappear through both a
rising divorce rate and the depreciation of the value of a family income. Nor could
anyone have predicted that it would eventually take two-working partners to
support a family and that the choice to stay home to raise the children would
become more and more limited. But these women did have hope and choices.
This choice – to enter into the workforce -- did not exist in the 1st Century. Those
women who were divorced by their husbands would have to rely on their physical
attractiveness to remarry, a highly unlikely possibility, given the values of the day in
which men preferred a young virgin. Most divorced women would return to their
families of origin; they would rely on the charity of their family members and accept
a life close to that of a slave in order to survive. The alternative was the streets and
almost certain a slow, starving death. Divorce was a devastating action for a woman
in the time of Jesus. Even if her husband brutalized her, divorce could be worse.
Even though women were accepted as disciples along with men in those
communities that followed Jesus, their prospects without a husband were limited.
Jesus, Matthew explains, came down on the side of those who opposed expanding
the accepted reasons for divorce. Compassion for the place of women in patriarchal
social systems, Jesus argues, requires strict restrictions around the social constructs
of marriage and divorce. Divorce should be granted only for infidelity.
“Thou shall not bare false witness,” is the next commandment on which Jesus
comments. In this instant Jesus claims that those who live a fully righteous life do
not need to swear at all because they are incapable of telling an untruth. It is from
this passage that some Christian faiths believe they cannot swear an oath in our
courts of law – among the righteous “yes” or “no” is enough. It is not enough to
follow the rule; it is just as important to form an honest character within us so that
the followers of Jesus are incapable of untruth.
Taken altogether these first three antitheses we heard today are cautionary lessons
that to follow the literal interpretation of the Law is simply not enough. God wants
more from us. One must follow the spirit of the commandments in order to live a
righteous life and to follow Jesus faithfully. The impulses that may lead to sinful acts
are as important to eradicate as those acts themselves. Compassion and love must
be weighted heavier than our fleeting desires. The bar for honesty is set so high that
oath taking is no longer necessary to guarantee that one will be truthful. Jesus’
teachings move the requirements to be faithful to the Law from actions into the
hearts and thoughts of human beings. We are responsible not only for our actions
but for our thoughts and hearts as well. Thoughts become desires; desires become
passions or obsessions; which in turn become actions. The continuum is to be
considered and avoided among those who seek to follow Jesus. We must be
intentional in all our choices. We must follow the spirit of the commandments in
order to form ourselves into the people God desires us to be.
As Father Lee reminded us last week we can choose to be salt and light – the salt
that adds the savory to this existence; the light that illumes the way of God. Our
reading from the Old Testament today reinforces those words and tells us to live
intentionally. “…to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. [God] has placed
before you fire and water… life and death.” “Stretch out your hand for whichever
you choose.” We know which choice God wants us to make. God loves us and
desires that we will love God and others human beings in return. In the words of the
philosopher, William James:
“…in an unfinished world, we write some lines of the play, and our choices mould in
some measure the future in which we have to live. In such a world we can be free; it
is a world of chance, and not of fate; … and what we are or do may alter everything.”
Place your life in the footsteps of Jesus and reach out with your entire spirit to be
one of those who seeks a right relationship with God – one who might alter
everything.