NewCreation

Homily for Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

The Sermon on the Mount Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, and we continue straight on from last time in Matthew's Gospel: the Sermon on the Mount. You remember the first week it was the Beatitudes, or the Radiances as I call them, the Lord teaching us from within the place where we're being ground through out of precariousness into becoming children of God. Then he tells us about being salt and light. And this week he starts to raise questions about the law, and we get the famous antitheses. "You have heard it said, but I say to you" — about which I'll be talking more in a moment. But what he starts with is a discussion about the law. "Do not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill," is what he says. Now, that word "abolish" — we often assume that that means getting rid of the law, or abrogating the law, or derogating the law, some way antinomian, as they say, against the law. But 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. So it's literally: "I don't think that I've come to knock down" — this phrase "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, and that Jesus has not come to knock them down. Others will do that, of course, in the case of the Temple. But to fulfill — what might this mean? Let's remember what the law was. The law is 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 a place of darkness and into the fullness of life. That's the purpose of it. It's a way — a legally structured way. And Jesus is saying he's not come to abolish it but to fulfill it. In other words, the whole reason for God giving this was to help people on their way out of the dark place into the beginning of the land of milk and honey in the Hebrew Scriptures — but what we would then call new creation. He's come to fill the original legally structured way out into its fullest possible form. And in fact he then says: "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away" — in other words, he's referring to the coming into being of the new creation — "until the new creation, not one letter, not one stroke of the letter," or "not one jot or one tittle" in the King James Version, "will pass from the law until all is accomplished." In other words, he's saying there is this whole. This whole is something for the way. It's not in itself the fulfillment, and it's a good thing — it was given to you for a purpose, and now I am going to fill out what it was really about. And 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, a new creation. So nothing will pass from this until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks — and here the term is actually "looses," and here it would be "loosen," abrogate — one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. In other words, anyone who treats this not as a whole that is designed to take us somewhere but something that I can instrumentalize for my ends with other people, that person is basically putting themselves at the very, very edge of belonging to the project at all. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great 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 find yourself on the inside of this legally structured way, boosted by the prophets, that takes you into the new creation, that will make you great in the kingdom of heaven. And of course the moment the new creation is brought in is 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 the law is not abolished; it becomes moot once the reality to which it pointed opens up in our midst. Then he says: "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Now the phrase "the scribes and Pharisees" held together basically just means the religious authorities. And 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 it say, but I say to you." Now I think that if treating them as antitheses — suggesting old law bad, new law good — unfortunately… If we do that, it leaves us within legalism. It's merely a swapping of one law for another. But he's not — I don't think he's doing that at all. "You have heard it said that it was said to those of ancient times, thou shalt not murder, and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you…" Now I suggest that we hear that not as "the old was bad, but now I'm going to give you something better." He's saying that okay, that was the ancient version of this, that was what God was speaking to you. 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…" — and I'm going to read the King James here because the other 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 an Aramaism for fool or idiot — "shall be in danger of the council, but whoever shall say Moreh" — 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 referring to someone as an idiot. What he's bringing out here is that it's one thing to refer to someone as an idiot within your own group. That's still one of us. This person is still one of us, even if a son of a bitch — but our son of a bitch. In that case, you will be judged by your group's judgment. But if you use the foreign term, Moreh — for an Aramaic-speaking person, Moreh would be the outsider language referring to them as a fool — then you shall be in danger, you'll be liable to the hell of fire. Meaning referring to Gehenna, outside the walls of Jerusalem, the place where all the rubbish was burnt and which was therefore constantly smouldering. There was a constant fire going, rather like a peat bog fire, very, very difficult to put out. Once you've got a lot of rubbish that's burning, there's a constant smouldering going on there. But 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. It's what we do to others is what we're doing to ourselves, and not only positively, negatively. This is going to be time and time again in the Sermon on the Mount. Now please notice he started with an example of brother — modern translations say brother and sister — but the people would have heard at the time obviously the two initial brothers who had anger with each other were Cain and Abel, or then Jacob and Esau. The Bible is full of stories of 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." In other words, 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're 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: 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 — that's the only thing that makes the ritual come to life and make sense. Go and do that. Then he continues with the same point that he made before about the insider-outsider, the raka and the more: "Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're on the way to court" — assuming therefore the accuser is 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 please notice 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. And 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 innermost — rather, the innermost accuser — and being thrown into prison. The Jews didn't have debtors' jails; debtors' jails 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 outsider's place. It's the equivalent of the Gehenna outside the city walls. "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's anger; murder turns into anger, and It's how you overcome your desire and seek reconciliation that is at the center of the law. And of course, 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" — almost certainly looks at a wife with lust. The word is the same, but the adultery was understood to be particularly related to married people, not just a general term for lasciviousness or sexual frivolity. It's actually here about looking at someone who is someone else's property, according to their understanding of the time. It's a form of covetousness. "But I say to you that anyone who looks at married women with lust has already committed adultery with their own lust." In other words, again, there is the fact, 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 sin, tear it out and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It would be better to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go to hell." Now, the reference to the eye was understood to be the way of talking about desire, and the hand the way of putting something into practice — hand or foot, for that matter — putting something into practice. So he's saying 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 religious authorities — when you actually find yourself having that singleness of heart to which we alluded a couple of weeks ago during the reading of the Beatitudes, the purity of heart. It's the singleness of heart which means that your desiring and your acting flow from the same source. You are unscandalized by desire and by your being caught out in strange ways of behaving. And then he continues with this: "It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce." And of course this is a famous part of the law — this is in the law, no question about it. "But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." Now, I think it's important here to remember what I said earlier, that this isn't a contrast between two sorts of law, an outer law and an inner 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. So let's start with the difficult little phrase that often causes some concern, which is "except on the ground of unchastity." And this again is not the word Matthew uses to refer to a sexual frivolity, licentiousness, lust. 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 to you: your first cousin, your aunt, your mother-in-law, the variety of different people who are within too close affinity for marriage to be permitted by the law. So he's saying that divorce for that reason is perfectly fine. In other words, because that's a mistake. That's not the sort of thing that's really an ethical question. And there were, of course — it was quite frequent at the time — for people to be married to really quite close family members, whether they were Gentiles or Jews. And this was sometimes simply by mistake, and when it was discovered there was a question: are we married or not? And he said, no, of course — once you discover that you have married someone within too close proximity, then divorce is the absolute proper thing, as the law specifically says. But he's saying it's much more than that. Anything else — other than that — please remember that your attitude towards your partner, and 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 Roman law, 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, putting the wife, into a position whereby she may be obliged to marry, simply for her protection, someone who's unsuitable. And 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 hope you see 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: 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 for others as you would hope they would do to you. This is a notion that actually is well way beyond the law, but a rather richer version of togetherness which of course we've, I hope, learned a little bit about over time as we have become better at understanding equality in this sphere. Now we come to the last part of this week's Gospel, where we have the same distinction being made between the legal command and what it's really all about at the centre. "Again, you have heard it said: it was said to those of ancient times, you shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord." It's a good and sensible thing. Without it, we wouldn't have any systems of justice. "But I say to you, do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is a footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair of your head white or black. Let your word be yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil" — or from the evil one. Now 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, swearing on your mother's grave — there are various things like that. What are all these? These are ways, in the first place, of satanizing God. It makes God into a brutal destroyer who is pursuing debts. But also it involves God in human violence. It means that your need for emphasis is part of you being caught up in a world of blackmail, of bullying, of rivalry and revenge. The whole point of the law is that people should be able to stand up and be human and be free, and not be trying to use God as a way to make themselves better over against other people — to use God in violent ways. So: do not swear at all; let your yes be yes and your no be no. That's how you're going to be sisters and brothers together. 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 oaths and things like that is to produce the habit of trustworthiness in us, so that they can become unnecessary — so that our yes can be yes and our no, no. Well, next week we'll be continuing with more of these antitheses, and I hope until then you have a very blessed week. I apologize for the length of this homily, but the material was lengthy. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.