READINGS

1. Matthew 5:17-37

HOMILY

We continue straight on from last time in Matthew's Gospel, The Sermon on the Mount.

Under the first week, it was the Beatitudes or the Radiances.

The Lord teaching us from within the place where we're being ground throughout precariousness into becoming children of God.

Then he tells us about being Salt and Light.

This week, he starts to raise questions about the Law, and we get the famous antitheses.

What he starts with is a discussion about the Law.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

We often assume that the word 'abolish' means getting rid of the Law or abrogating the Law or delegating the Law - some way anti-nomian, as they say, against the Law.

In fact, the word here is not to 'abolish', it's to destroy as of a building.

The only other place in Matthew's Gospel where this word is used is of the destruction of the Temple, towards the end of the Gospel.

It's literally 'I don't think that I've come to knock down straight to the Law or the prophets treating that as a sacred whole', perhaps to be linked to the Temple.

The notion that, between the Law and the prophets and the Temple, they come across as a sacred whole that is just there.

That Jesus has not come to knock them down - others will do that of course in the case of the Temple -, but to fulfill it.

What might this mean?

The Law was the legally guaranteed or the legally structured way of life that the people of Israel were given on their way out of Egypt to the Holy Land.

The notion is that it's part of what takes people out of the place of darkness and into the fullness of life.

That's the purpose of it.

It's a legally structured way and Jesus is saying that he's not come to abolish it, but to fulfill it.

The whole reason for God giving this was to help people on their way out of the dark place into being of the land of milk at honey in the Hebrew scriptures.

What we would then call New Creation, he's come to fill the original legally structured way out into its fullest possible form.

In fact, he then says:

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Because he's referring to the coming into being of the new creation.

He's saying: the Law is something for the way.

It's not in itself for the fulfillment.

It was given to you for a purpose.

And now I am going to fill out what it was really about.

This is not so as to destroy it.

In fact people who think they can work out what the Law is for themselves make themselves judges of the Law.

They use the Law to judge other people rather than seeing that there is a whole here, which is designed to enable you to come to live together well as sisters and brothers and enter a new land and New Creation.

Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands ...

Anyone who treats this not as a whole that is designed to take us somewhere, but something that I can instrumentalize for their ends with other people - that person is basically putting themselves at the very very edge of belonging to the project at all.

... and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

So here it's the putting into practice first and then the teaching.

You don't teach and then fail to put into practice (as I'm afraid that I and most of us do).

You do and then teach.

It's as you'll find yourself on the inside of this legally structured way, boosted by the prophets that takes her into the new creation that will make you great in the kingdom of heaven.

Of course, the moment the new creation is brought in his crucifixion when all of this will be accomplished and, from then on, the possibility of living the fullness of what the Law always intended to bring out will become available to us.

In that sense, they're always not abolished; it becomes moot once the reality to which it pointed opens up in our midst.

Then he says:

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.

He's saying that there is something much much richer than merely adhering to what religious authorities think this is about.

There is a whole project of being brought into being by God and that is what I'm here to fulfill and I am now going to show you some examples of what I mean by this.

So he starts with the one concerning anger (and here are the first of what are sometimes referred to as the antitheses).

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’

I think that, if treating the antithesis suggesting you know old Law bad; new Law good.

Unfortunately if we do that, it leaves us within legalism, a swapping of one or another, but he's not 'I don't think he's doing that' at all.

But I say to you ...

I suggest that we hear that not as the old was bad, but am I going to give you something better.

He's saying:

Okay that was the ancient version of this; that was what God was speaking to.

God is now saying what I really wanted - by that included something far more than appears in that -, which is your heart.

It's your pattern of desire.

This is what is really the point of the Law and that's what I'm going to be teaching you about.

so but I say to you if you are angry with a brother or sister you will be liable to judgment and if you insult a brother or sister 

If you literally - and I'm going to read the King James here, because the original translation misses the point:

whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment and whosoever shall say to his brother 'Raca' (which is a an arabism for fall or idiot) shall be in danger of the council. 

And whoever shall say *mωρός* (móros, which is the Greek term for fool) shall be in danger of Hellfire 

Now I don't suppose that Jesus is particularly interested in the different grammatical words for refried someone as an idiot.

What he's bringing out here is that it's one thing to refer to someone within your own group: this person is still one of us even if he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.

In that case, you will be judged by your group's judgment.

If you use the foreign term mωρός - an Aramaic speaking person mωρός would be the outsider language foreign - then you shall be in danger, you'll be liable to the hell of fire.

This refers to Gehenna, outside the walls of Jerusalem, the place where all the rubbish was burnt and which was therefore constantly smoldering.

There was a constant fire going rather like a peat bog fire.

It's very very difficult to put it out once you've got a lot of rubbish.

So there's a constant smoldering going on.

The point is it's the outside of the city, so you're being thrown completely outside, because you yourself are referring to someone in the outsider term.

If you're treating them as so much of an idiot that they're actually not part of you at all, then you are effectively throwing yourself outside there.

It's the pattern of desire and the reflexive nature of our desire.

What we do to others is what we're doing to ourselves.

Not only positively, negatively, this is going to be time and time again in the time and in the Sermon of the Mount.

Notice you started with an example of brother - modern translations of the brotherhood, sisterhood, but the people would have heard of the time obviously the two initial brothers who had anger with each other were Cain and Abel or then Jacob a Esau.

The Bible is full of stories and brothers being angry with each other.

In fact, the Book of Genesis is about little else.

Then it says:

So when you're offering your gift at the altar if you remember that your brother has something against you leave your gift there before the Altar and go first be reconciled to your brother or sister. 	

The business of offering gifts to God is wonderful when you're giving thanks for being reconciled, but it is not at all appropriate when what you're doing is trying to get God to show favor to you over against your brother with whom you are not reconciled, using God to make you good over against someone else.

That in fact is the complete denial of what it's all about.

So saying first go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and make the offering.

So again he's not dissing the ritual.

He's saying there is a pattern of desire and that's the only thing that makes the ritual come to life and make sense.

Then he continues with the same point that he'd made before about the Insider-Outsider, the Racca and the Móros.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're on the way to court assuming therefore the accuser of someone reasonably close or your accuser may hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you will be thrown into prison.

Now just noticed the acceleration of rejection.

You're getting worse and worse getting further and further away from that accuser whom it is your job to turn into your brother.

The notion is that the judge might or might not be Jewish, the guard might or might not be, but the prison was certainly not.

In other words, you were effectively turning yourself into an outsider by not relating to the inside, most rather the inside most accuser.

Being thrown into prison - the Jews didn't have debtors jails, which was a specificity of pagan Roman and Greek societies.

So there's no question at all that they're going to be ending up in a place that is the outsiders place

It's the equivalent of the Gehenna - outside of this world.

Truly I tell you you will never get out until you've paid the last farthing. 

Again a Greek coin - it's the inside outside of things.

There a murder turns into anger and it's how you overcome your desire and seek reconciliation that is at the center of the Law.

You remember the Cain and Abel story is about exactly this.

In other words, he's taking them straight back to the beginning, talking about fulfilling the Law.

Then we hear about adultery.

You've heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery'. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery without himself.

The word is the same, but the adultery was understood to be particularly related to married people.

Not just a general term for a fuller seriousness or sexual frivolity.

Here it's looking at someone who is someone else's property, according to their understanding of the time.

It's a form of covetousness.

In other words, again there is the fact of the external act and then there is the heart and the fulfillment of the Law is to do with the heart.

The Law makes sense in as far as the heart is following it.

If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. 

It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 

And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. 

It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Now the reference to the eye was understood to be the way I've talked about desire and hand the way of putting something into practice and (or foot for the matter).

So you're saying that the desire and the practice go together, the whole purpose of following the Law, going further than the Law, having the righteousness that is beyond that of the justice that is beyond that of the roots authorities is when you actually find yourself having that singleness of heart to which we alluded during the reading of the radiances.

The purity of heart, it's the singleness of heart, which means that you're desiring and your acting flow from the same source.

You are unscandalized by desire and you're being caught out in strange ways of behaving.

It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’

This is a famous part of the Law - this is in the Law no question about it.

But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for unchastity, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Remember that this isn't a contrast between two sorts of Law - and old Law and a novel Law.

This is a contrast between what fulfillment looks like as it's coming to life and what the simple facts as described in the Law look like.

Let's start with the difficult little phrase that often causes some concern, which is 'except on the ground of unchastity'.

This again is not the word Matthew is to refer to a sexual frivolity licentiousness.

This is the technical term from Leviticus 18 concerning marriage within the wrong degree of affinity.

In other words, being married to someone too close - your first cousin, your aunt, your mother-in-law, the variety of different people who are within ground within two close affinity for marriage - to be permitted by the Law.

Is he saying that the divorce for that reason is perfectly fine, because that's a mistake.

That's not the sort of thing that's even really an ethical question and it was quite frequent at the time for people to have to be married to a really quite close family whether they were Gentiles or Jews and this was sometimes simply by mistake.

When it was discovered, there was a question 'are we married or not?' and he's saying no.

He's saying it's much more than that.

Understanding here the great inequality between the male and the female figure - the woman had no rights for divorce in Palestine, but they did in Greek and Rome, but not in Jewish Law.

So he's saying effectively much much more than what is legal or not the question is what sort of position are you putting other people into.

You're putting the woman and putting the wife into position whereby she may be obliged to marry (simply for her protection) someone who's unsuitable.

You're putting that bloke into a position as well.

In fact, you're spreading impurity around, which means that none of us can ever judge anybody on the basis of purity, because we are all within some degree or other impure.

Now I perceive that this is part of Jesus's use of the tightening of the Law to make it impossible for any of us to judge anyone else.

That's the important thing here is above all 'don't treat divorced people as somehow secondary or somehow impure, because even what you call righteous divorce can in fact produce immorality'.

And that's the thing that's to be avoided.

Learn how to treat others well and how to make sure that you follow the consequences in charity of the others as you would hope they would do to you.

Now we have the same distinction being made between the legal command and what it's really all about in the center.

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’

It's a good and sensible thing - without it we wouldn't have any systems of Justice.

But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 

And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.

If an oath takes the form may God strike me down.

If I don't do this or takes the form, may Jerusalem be destroyed.

If I don't do this - you know the equivalent of putting your hand on the Bible or swearing on your mother's grave -, but there are various things like that people have.

What are all these?

These are ways in the first place of satanizing God that makes God into a brutal destruction, a brutal destroyer, who is pursuing debts, but also it involves God in human violence.

It means that you're emphatic need for emphasis is part of you being caught up in a world of a black mile of bullying, of rivalry and of revenge.

The whole point of the Law is that people should be able to be stand up and be human and be free and not trying to use God as a way to make them better over against other people.

All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

This commandment is very similar to the one about being reconciled with your brother before making the sacrifice.

The point is the same involving God in our violence is blasphemy and the real point of others and things like that is to produce the habit of trustworthiness in us, so that they can become unnecessary, so that a yes can be yes and a no can be a no.