Psalm 119: 1-8 (New Jerusalem Bible)
Matthew 5: 21-37 (CEB)
We often think that morality is the currency of God’s relationship with people and that God has rules about how God works and exists with humanity. One example is that people believe that God directly punishes people not because God wants to, but because God has to, because God is committed to some kind of cosmic law that God must enforce. So the point of life is to learn God’s rulebook so we don’t get punished, in this life or the next, and instead figure out how to get rewarded for our goodness and given bonus points for what we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts. According to this logic, if we do good, then God is good to us and if we do evil, God punishes us. A kind of divine quid pro quo. To think like this about the Ultimate Reality we call “God” turns obedience into a way to achieve our best existence now and get what we desire from God.
All of this imagines God as a cosmic cash register, as if morality is a form of economics, as if ethics is a form of capitalism. We pay God with good deeds, correct thinking and orthodox beliefs and God gives us in return, acceptance, love and blessings multiplied by the hundreds. Morality becomes our money which we use to pay God what we want out of life.
Everything about this type of thinking is wrong. Sorry about your luck, prosperity gospel preachers. This type of spirituality imagines a predictable God that can be manipulated by doing good works and being in the correct religion or even in the correct denomination according to some very narrow views.
Jesus warns against this kind of spirituality in today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel, when he tells the disciples not to swear by anything in heaven or earth because they cannot control or own any of it, it all belongs to God. And Jesus also says, “do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair black or white.” I’m surprised Jesus didn’t say, or prevent your head from going bald. That is more depressing than going from black to white hair. God’s possessions cannot be bought, sold and sworn upon.
Now if you visit one of the more conservative or fundamentalist churches, you would think the only subject Jesus ever preached about would be below the belt issues. I call it gonad issues. But it's only in a few verses in both the gospel of Mark (chapter 10:1-10) and from today’s reading for Matthew, that Jesus goes there. Jesus mentions the sin of lust is already in one’s heart (“mind”) before any action is taken. Lust has caused women to be viewed as a commodity to be used and abused by the male species. It has led to rape, genital mutilation, child marriage and sex trafficking.
Jesus uses some colorful Aramaic idioms as advice. When Jesus says, “pluke your eye out,” it doesn’t literally mean to rip your eyeball out. It means, if you have a habit of lusting after someone, stop it! Same with the statement, “cut your right hand off,” really means stop stealing! And the term “fiery hell” in verse 22 really means mental suffering. Just like when we say, Mike has been through hell this week. It doesn’t mean Mike spent a week in the boogeyland called “hell” or Gehenna (Valley of Hinnom). I just wish someday there is a Bible translation where all the idioms in the Bible were translated into what they really meant in ancient Jewish society. It might cause a real reawakening in Christianity.
Now divorce is a kind of gonad issue, and on this issue Jesus was rather strict. Even stricter than the writers of the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy in chapter 24 verses 1-4. That passage basically says a man could divorce his wife for whatever reason he wanted to. In ancient Israel, only men had the right to divorce. But Jesus says, the only legitimate reason a man could divorce his wife, was if she had been unfaithful. No more flimsy excuses if the wife snored in bed, burnt the dinner, if the wife grew unattractive or if the husband wanted a younger and more pretty wife. Even though women could still not divorce, this was actually a small step forward for women’s rights. No longer under Jesus’ words would women be kicked out of a marriage and home for bogus reasons. So in some ways it would be fair to call Jesus a 1st century feminist.
The Church has had a terrible history on how it has treated women. During the Middle Ages up to the late 19th century, thousands of women were burnt at the stake for supposedly being witches, all sanctioned by the Church, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. And even today women are still being denied rights to the ministry right here in the United States. This prohibition still exists in the largest Protestant denomination in America (Southern Baptist Church). Women in this very county are told how to dress by their male ministers and to be completely subservient to their husbands. I know this is a fact because I talked to a woman who used to attend one of these patriarchal churches in this very county. So, we still have a long way to go yet.
If Jesus were here today, preaching his Sermon on the Mount, what would he say to Christians in present-day America? What higher standard of behavior would he be expecting from us, those of us who say we are followers of Jesus? Would he pat us on the back and tell us what a good job we are doing of bringing his kingdom of God to reality on earth? Or would Jesus say something like this:
You have heard it said that reading a paragraph and a printed prayer from a devotional book will make you a better person, but I say to you that my Father longs for you to cultivate a deep hunger for God’s word and a personal relationship that keep you connected to him through prayer as an ongoing conversation.
You have heard it said that attending church is a good thing, that your presence is enough. But I say to you that you are the Church, and everything you do, say or think makes the Church what it is.
Again, you have heard it said that volunteering brings blessings. But I say to you that volunteers use only a part of their time. The kingdom of God is a 24/7 commitment.
Christ calls us to a higher standard of living into his realm on earth. He calls us to a deeper relationship and a willingness to be transformed into devoted followers of Jesus. To answer that call, we need to reorient our thinking, just as those disciples who heard Jesus speak on the Sermon on the Mount.
In closing, I want to read these words from Psalm 119 and this is from the Message Bible paraphrase - “You’re blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God. You’re blessed when you follow his directions, doing your best to find him.”
AMEN
