For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
| Text: Matthew 5:20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. |
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What comes out of the heart
I think most of us have a love
hate relationship with rules and laws.
One moment we love rules; the next we hate them.
Take this example.
Have you had someone tailgate you?
You are driving along the highway at the speed limit or even slightly
above the speed limit and up comes this big truck that complete fills your rear
vision mirror or a monster four-wheel drive and sits right on your rear bumper.
(Apologies to four-wheel drivers present today – I’m sure I’m not talking
about.) You know they are up so
close deliberately trying to annoy you and send the message, “Move your ….
(backside)”.
At the first opportunity they
roar past, staring at you out the window mouthing something that looks very
unfriendly, giving a wave, the one finger kind.
You try to shake off the whole nasty incident.
A few ks down the road you see flashing lights.
It’s the cops. They have
pulled over that tail-gating, finger waving, unfriendly, impatient person.
How good ... is … the … law.
Getting caught by the law couldn’t have happened to a better person and
you travel on with a warm feeling in your heart.
But it’s not always like that.
You are driving along at the speed limit when you go down a steep hill
and at the bottom of the hill is a cop with a radar gun.
The policeman pulls you over and asks you the usual thing, “Do you know
how fast you were travelling?” You
explain you were travelling at the speed limit but coming down the hill you
could have gained some momentum.
After all that’s plain physics. An
object travelling down an incline will gain speed.
“That’s right, you were speeding,” the officer explains, “that is the law
and here is your fine”.
As you drive off you mumble how
it’s not your fault that a car travelling down a hill naturally speeds up –
that’s plain physics. That’s a
ridiculous place to catch people speeding.
The law is an ass.
So we do have a hot and cold
relationship with the law. When the
rules help, save and protect us we enjoy them; when we feel the rules are in
conflict with our freedom, our rights or even our weaknesses then we have a
strong dislike for the rules. Those
people who have lived under oppressive governments, like the regime of Adolph
Hitler, know what it means to hate the rules imposed on them.
In Jesus’ time, the Jews knew what it was like to live under the
oppressive Roman law. People can
appear to be obedient but inwardly rebel against everything those laws represent
and often become involved in acts of rebellion.
So what are we to make of the extreme rules that Jesus gives us today in the
Gospel reading which are part of the Sermon on the Mount?
Jesus says, “You know you are
forbidden to kill someone. I forbid
you even to get angry with anyone.
Call someone a fool, and you'll go to hell.
Make no attempt at reconciliation with the person you have had a falling
out with or don’t attempt to settle a dispute, and you are putting yourself in
danger of the fire of hell” (Matt 5:21-22).
“You know that adultery is a no-no.
I say, look at another person lustfully, that's adultery of the heart” (Matt
27-28).
“If you remarry after wrongfully divorcing your marriage partner, I call it
adultery” (Matt 5:31-32).
“When you use God's name, don't use it carelessly.
If you are a righteous person who can be trusted there is no reason to
swear using God’s name” (Matt 5:33-37).
“If somebody hits you on the right cheek, the old ways of "an eye for an eye"
must give way to a gentler and forgiving approach.
Offer them your left cheek as well.
It is better to make friends with your enemy” (Matt 5:38-42).
If all that isn’t surprising enough.
Jesus prefaces all this saying, “For I tell you that unless your
righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you
will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
The Pharisees were meticulous keepers of the law.
Jesus acknowledges their uprightness and urges his listeners to an even
greater righteousness saying that unless their righteousness is greater than
that of the Pharisees, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
What is going on here? Has Jesus
lost his mind? Who can outdo the
Pharisees? Doesn’t Jesus have any idea
how hard it is for any of us to even try keeping these laws at even a basic
level let alone get into anything deeper.
Is Jesus saying that getting into the kingdom of heaven is a bit like getting a
camel through the eye of a needle? A
picture of impossibility! If Jesus
is setting the bar so high, then who can be saved – certainly not little
ordinary me with all my weaknesses and hang ups has any hope of squeezing
through the gate into the kingdom of heaven?
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus isn’t trying to discourage us or turn us away
from the Kingdom of God because it is just too hard to follow God’s ways.
He is trying to help us understand who we are and why we do evil things.
And it follows that if we have a better understanding then we have a better
chance of avoiding actions that will hurts others and ourselves.
So instead of focusing of the act of killing someone, seeking revenge,
letting lust rule our lives, he goes to the root cause of these actions, to what
lies in our heart to want to hurt someone, or hold a grudge and refuse to settle
an argument, or call someone a moron or an idiot (to call someone a name like
this in Jesus’ time was a serious offence).
What is the root cause of bitterness, revenge, and hatred?
As an example, murder never begins with murder.
First, there is anger or envy, or jealousy in our hearts,
then we entertain evil thoughts about that person,
then we speak scornfully about them to others or to them directly,
we scheme and plan all the time hatred building up
and finally – we act with physical violence.
Even if we manage to avoid physically hurting the person we can build up a cold
wall of nastiness and separation that we swear we will never tear down.
But it is the same sin all the way long … just different stages.
It doesn’t matter what evil action we want to focus on that pokes up its head in
our lives, you can bet there is a whole lot of stuff happening in our hearts a
long time before the actual physical action.
Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder,
adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matthew 15:19).
Is Jesus suggesting that we might somehow be in control of what happens in our
hearts? Are we in control of our
thoughts? We could say “yes” and
“no”. Probably mostly “No, we
aren’t in control of our thoughts.
They just appear. But the question
is – if they are evil thoughts are we going to dwell on them.
Will we reject them or turn our focus on them, especially if they are
thoughts about anger, envy, revenge, jealousy, sexual immorality, cutting down
another person’s character, continuing an ongoing argument – these are the
thoughts that unchecked, get out of hand?
The evil in our hearts takes control and we think nothing more about it –
it becomes the new normal. For some
stealing cars and bad mouthing those in authority is the new normal.
In fact, Jesus is so serious about this process of how evil begins in our hearts
and slowly develops in our minds like a cancer until it is out of control, he
says if your eye, your hand or any part of your body causes you to sin, cut it
off and throw it away.
Evil is serious; it takes a hold of us; it requires extreme rejection.
This is something we teach our
children. While they are young we
want them to learn to think before acting – it’s about choices – “Do we follow
the natural path of this thought process to its evil end or is there better
way?”
In the end, all Jesus is saying here is that we are to be the kind of people
that God created us to be – made in his image.
He made us to not be hateful but to love;
not to hold grudges but seek reconciliation;
he made us to be faithful and loyal, to honour him and hold him first in our
lives;
he made us to always make love our aim and everything else will fall into place;
he created us to be like him – always patient, understanding, compassionate,
forgiving and full of grace. Jesus
is saying that if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven then be who God
created you to be. In other words,
you need to be better than the Pharisees of Jesus' day.
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Can we do this? No we can’t, well,
not by ourselves. To be like God, to be the people God created us to be, to live
the new life in God’s kingdom as the people of God is a tough call. The
disciples ask, “How is possible for anyone to be saved?”
I like Jesus’ response, “With you, it's impossible.
But with God all things, even saving people like you, is possible.
With God, everything is possible”.
We have nowhere to turn except to God’s saving grace, to the mercy and healing
of the friend of sinners.
At that point we can turn and look longingly at the man who was hailed as
“the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
Without pretext, without evasiveness, we kneel before
the Lamb of God – without any excuses, blaming no one else, just with empty
hands waiting to be filled with his grace and mercy.
Jesus has fulfilled the requirements of the Law for us.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has stepped down from his divine glory, humiliated
himself, become one of us, and then … taken our place. Even on the Cross.
For every shameful thought that we have entertained. For every twisted desire
that our hearts have ever produced. He has taken the consequences of all our
sins upon himself and received the death that our sins deserve, mine and yours.
In the eyes of God the Father, you are as perfect as Jesus is. Now you
are as perfect as the Father.
There is just one more thing
about the law Jesus reemphasises in his Sermon on the Mount.
The commands that Jesus here gives are in fact snapshots, brief examples
of what the new life is like. They
are pointers to the nature of the Christian life.
For Christians, anger with a believer is equivalent to murder.
For Christians, lust is the same as adultery.
For Christians, casual divorce is out of bounds.
For Christians, oaths are not necessary.
Matthew 5 points us toward the will of God, the risky love God at work in every
situation.
If you look at what Jesus says in his
sermon you can see how people of the Kingdom are different and this difference
is what brings light into the darkness of our community.
© Pastor Vince
Gerhardy
12th
February, 2023
E-mail:
sermonsonthenet@outlook.com
