I.
There are three types of people.
The first are those who think that no law applies to them, that they can make their own law.
These are the true offspring of the serpent who beguiled Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, and, taking the law into their own hands, deciding for themselves what was good and what was evil.
The second are those who acknowledge the law (whether civil or divine) and who manage to avoid the major crimes while rationalizing the minor ones.
These are the people Jesus is speaking to in today’s gospel.
Finally, there are those who love the whole of God’s law, every jot and tittle, and love God and their neighbor perfectly. There aren’t many of them, but they are the true offspring of the woman, who was called Eve, because she was the mother of the living.1
This is an important distinction to make.
The Bible views the first group of people as dead. Spiritually dead in this life, and dead for all eternity to come.
The second group, the vast middle, or muddle, because we can call them muddlers, simply want to do what is right, and will follow any religion or leader who promises to keep them safe and the sheriff from coming after them (or, in Jesus’ example from the reading today, the council).
Last, there are those who are called out from the first two and reborn into the third.
It is to this group that we want to belong. The Bible calls this group the “camp of the saints.”2
II.
These past few weeks we’ve been reading through the Sermon on the Mount. The law was given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai.
Jesus gives His recapitulation of that same law, also on a mountaintop.
Jesus is concerned that the law has been handed over to the regulative and enforcing power of the Judean-Herodian State.
The moral order fused with the political order to establish outward conformity, but it had lost its spiritual application.
The law was no longer applied where it mattered most: to the human heart.
So, for instance, when Jesus says, “‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment,’” He is speaking to those who count themselves law-abiding citizens just because they have never killed anyone in cold blood.
However, Jesus links anger, which is a spiritual matter, with murder, a deadly physical act:
“But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
You belong to the first group, the spiritually dead group, if you are angry without a cause.
You are also spiritually dead if you slander, libel, gossip, and insult. In short, if you are part of what today is called the “cancel culture,” you are guilty of murder.
A textual note. Matt. 5:22 in the NRSV omits a key clause in this sentence.
It reads, “if you are angry with a brother or sister,[a] you will be liable to judgment.”
It should read (as it does in the KJV) “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.”
Modern translations have modern agendas and so I always tell people to read the KJV as well, and not just because of the beautiful English prose, but so as to better get at the truths the Church has always held and taught.
Jesus is not saying there is no such thing as good and righteous anger. He Himself got angry. But this modern translation downplays the passion that should be stirred up in us when God’s law is violated.
David asks:
“Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?”3
This grief-for-cause is consistent with Jesus’ teaching a few verses later about divorce.
Marriage is a covenant relationship that is neither to be entered into lightly nor gotten out of easily.
There needs to be a reason, something that breaks that covenant.
Jesus mentions fornication because it so obviously destroys the trust that is required, but we know, given his definition of adultery as just “look[ing] at a woman with lust” a few verses earlier, that the marriage covenant can be destroyed from deep within the heart, before, or even in the absence of, any external act.
III.
When I read the Sermon on the Mount, I feel convicted. A better word would be guilty. I suspect you might feel that way too.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
First, if you are feeling this way, that’s a good sign. Imagine waking up in the hospital after an accident and the doctor or nurse is tapping your foot, asking, “Can you feel that? Can you feel this?”
And, unfortunately, you can’t.
That would be a bad sign. It would mean paralysis, whether temporary or permanent. What you want to be feeling is pain because it means your legs still work.
If you’re feeling guilty, it means that you’re not morally and spiritually paralyzed. Your conscience still works. Better still, you are not morally and spiritually dead. Your soul is still alive.
The second reason this sermon is difficult is because Jesus is calling us out of the second and third groups and into the first.
This means He wants to move us from a place of “just muddling through” to perfection.
IV.
Now, that move is impossible to make on your own. Christ alone embodies this third group perfectly. In fact, He’s in a category by Himself.
He alone truly deserves to be called “blessed” and “faithful.”
But that’s why we are called Christians. We put on Christ. We bear His name and set aside all other names, and the guilt that attaches to those names, including our own name, and our own guilt.4
V.
There are three stages to putting on Christ.
The first is conversion.
Conversion happens when we finally decide we are sick of living our lives in the first group, with the serpents and sinners, or when we find ourselves exhausted by the pretense of living in the second group, of convincing ourselves and the world around us that we are muddling through, that we are, in fact, “making it.”
That’s conversion. Another word for it is repentance, which is to stop walking in the direction you are going, turn around, and start walking towards someplace better.
How many of you have made this choice?
Actually, it’s not one single choice, but a whole series of them. Making the choice to change again and again leads to the second stage of putting on Christ.
The second stage is called sanctification. This is the process of becoming holy. This is the process of learning to love God and His commandments.
The primary school for this is the church, where the law is taught, and God is worshipped.
The secondary school is the world, where we rub shoulders with each other and learn to live and love, even the ones who hate us.
It’s hard to do this if you do not see yourself, at least on some level, as deserving of judgement. People may be judging you unfairly in the moment, but one thing is for certain, you are not innocent. Admitting this means you can’t skip the first step, repentance and conversion.
The third stage is glorification. This is the promise that we will one day be like Jesus.5 We can catch glimpses of this in ourselves and in others during this earthly life, though we should always remember that Nature is God’s “first sketch.”6
Jesus says:
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”7
That is why the law remains so important. It is God’s word. That is why Jesus took such pains to explain it to us, hoping that we would want to live by it.
In this life the law calls us to holiness and reminds us that we are not there yet.
In the next life, God’s law will be so much the habit of our hearts that the only word for it will be grace. Amen.
Preached on February 12, 2023 at St. Peter’s Lithgow, Millbrook, New York.
Epiphany 6, Year A
Deuteronomy 30:15-20; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
See: Rev. 2:17, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”
See: C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” (1941), 7.