Summary

Sermon on the Mount – Part 3         Matthew 5:21-32

Jesus speaks in scripture with unprecedented authority that must have been quite unnerving. We have become so familiar with these texts that we lose some of that sense. We are supposed to be unnerved! Unsettled! Startled! And whenever he’s questioned notice how he chooses almost never to answer directly but turns the question back on whomever is asking so that they can go deeper with the issue. There is this provocative quality to his teachings that is intended to make us not only notice what he is saying but to go deeper with our wrestling responses.

But as for our reading today! …whomever feels anger…? Or insults anyone – even privately in their heads? And as for adultery even imagined?

And that whole issue of divorce? Of course we know treating marriage vows with contempt is wrong, but SURELY Jesus isn’t teaching that folks are forever locked into relationships that become soul-destroyingly toxic and destructive? We live in a world where things fail! We fail! Even with the best of our intentions! How on earth is it possible to survive without at times being drawn into any of what he warns against at some stage or other of our lives?

I think the asking of these questions reflects the very human reaction that Jesus was WANTING to generate from within us as his hearers. It’s as if he actually wants us to be stopped by his teachings, to question/wrestle with them and not that we may just mindlessly obey them but that we can go to work on them. We know that it’s in the wrestling that we come to grow in our discipleship and spirituality – not just in our obedience! So let’s wrestle a little with what it is that we are to embrace from this.

As an aside: I understand that there are two different words that Greek uses to describe what Jesus was referring to here – all of which are simply translated into English as ‘anger’. ‘Thumos’ refers to anger as the flame which may come from dried straw: it flares up fast and furious when sparked and dies down just as quickly! We all know that kind of anger, especially when we are tired or provoked. The other is described as ‘orge’: It’s the chronic, (inveterate), ingrained anger that we may choose to live with and worse, to feed.  It is anger brooded over, long-lived. It needs to be nursed in order to keep it alive and hot – and so we do it.

Jesus is condemning the destructive power of all anger in us, but it’s especially that second type referred to here: the type that will not be pacified, that wants revenge! That’s the anger that morphs into prejudice as it calls people RACA[i].We do it! We’re not proud of it, but we do it! And Jesus condemns it! As he condemns so much of what we so easily and instinctively do…

Getting back to our reading and why he would teach these unrealistically idealized things.  He must have known that keeping to the letter of these teachings is virtually impossibly – so why teach them? What’s Jesus’ point? I think that Jesus is wanting us to notice this incredibly high standard of ethical living not in order for us to imagine ourselves ever really getting it right, so much as that we can embrace our own insufficiency EVER to be able actually to achieve it in our own strength!

He wants us to own that the only way we are ever able to live lives that even begin to express the nature of our truest God-given selves is by acknowledging our weaknesses on our own and by allowing Christ to empower us with what we need to transcend our circumstances!

This is a call to what I’m calling TRANSCENDENCE ETHICS[ii]!  Jesus’ point is for us never complacently to decide that we are good enough in and of ourselves! Because we’re not! We may be able to control some of what we say and do some of the time – but as for our thoughts? Christ is implying that instead of trying to be strong and sufficient in and of ourselves we are to look only to Him for everything! He – and he alone – is what is ultimately able to draw us out to be