Sixth Sunday After Epiphany
Shelagh Balfour

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; Matthew 5:21-37

The people of Israel had spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land. This was not a purposeless wandering. They had been rescued from slavery in Egypt by a God whose power, although on their side, quite frankly frightened them. It was not easy for them to cast off generations of slavery, of subjugation to the power of oppressors. It was not easy for them to put on covenant relationship with this powerful God of their ancestors. So there were those forty years in the wilderness, with the back and forth of trusting and not trusting God, of committing to covenant and breaking covenant. God travelled with them and, though we read that from time to time that God became angry and frustrated and tempted to chuck the whole relationship, God remained steadfast. And all the time, the Israelites were being formed into God’s people.

Finally, the wandering was over. The people were ready, or as ready as they were ever going to be, to enter the land God had promised their ancestors. Moses gathered the leaders of the Israelites, with all the people ranged behind them, and he recited the Law to them, reminding them as they prepared to cross into the land, of the God-given structure for their life together as God’s people.

And this is where we pick up the story in Deuteronomy. As Moses reached the end of this recital of the law, he made it clear that the Israelites’ future, their very lives, depend upon the covenant relationship with God in whom the Law was rooted. He ended the discourse with a summary that included these words - “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. …I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.”

We should pause here a moment and notice that the choice Moses called the people to make was one of relationship. It was a choice to live in a particularly kind of relationship with God and, through that, a particularly kind of relationship with one another. They were not making this choice as disconnected individuals planning to go their own way once they crossed the Jordan, but as a people living together under God’s rule. In the reflection on today’s psalm found in your bulletin, Lissa says it this way “The torah (the law) described Israel’s life in covenant relationship with God – a life that anticipated fullness in both vertical relationship with God, and horizontal relationship with people.”

Now, fast forward 1200 plus years and we find another man with a crowd around him. He gathered those closest to him, not yet leaders but disciples, with the great crowd ranged behind them, and this man, Jesus, began to teach them. We know this section of Matthew’s gospel as the Sermon on the Mount, a collection of the teachings of Jesus which theologian John Howard Yoder calls “a kind of catechism” for the early church, a body of teaching about what it meant to be the new people of God. To live in relationship with God and with one another.

In last week’s reading from the Gospel, Jesus taught his followers that they were to be salt and light in the world; as Donna quoted N.T. Wright in her sermon – they are to embody the way of self-giving love which is the deepest fulfillment of the law the prophets. In this week’s reading, we hear specific examples of what that fulfillment should look like in daily life.

These statements, with their repeated pattern of “you have heard that it was said……. But I say” have sometimes been interpreted to mean that Jesus declared the Law given through Moses to be obsolete. But that is not the case. In fact, Jesus began this section of his discourse by saying “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil”. And this is evident in the text. Jesus had come to bring the law to its fullness, to what it is intended to be in the kingdom of God.

Both Deuteronomy and the Sermon on the Mount, provide instruction for community life that is appropriate to a people of God. One of the challenges we have as we work to understand these teachings is the individualism in which our culture is rooted. We are encouraged at every turn to think of each person, including ourselves as an independent unit, accountable to no one but ourselves. We are told our life is a feast of individual choices – where and how we live, what we buy, eat, wear, and what relationships we want. In fact, the understanding of the word relationship has narrowed to choice of romantic partners, as something we engage in, in specific times and places, with specific people. Hence the expression “Are you in a relationship?”

This is not what Scripture is talking about. Our lives as people of faith are lived within four interconnecting relationships - with God, with ourselves, with others, and with God’s creation. The primary, foundational relationship, the vertical relationship, is with God. None of the horizontal relationships exists without God. Each of these relationships - with ourselves, with others, and with God’s creation - is defined by, and sustained by our primary relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

In the book When Helping Hurts, which the Outreach Ministry Team has been studying, the authors say the following about the four relationships: “When [the relationships] are functioning properly, humans experience the fullness of life that God intended, because we are being what God created us to be.” As followers of Jesus Christ, we strive for this fullness of life, however imperfect the results.

When Jesus said he had come to fulfil the law, he cautioned his listeners that unless their righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and the Pharisees, they would not enter the kingdom of heaven. Now the scribes and Pharisees don’t get negative press from Jesus here because they were evil people. They were trying to be righteous. They were, as J.H. Yoder said, “serious, pious, well-intentioned [people] like ourselves, trying ….. to get the moral teaching of their Scripture out where it could give guidance to [others]”. The limitation of their “righteousness” was that it was external, on the surface. As we used to describe it back when I was a behaviour specialist, the scribes and Pharisees were dealing with “observable and measurable behaviour”, not with what was going on inside people and not with their connectedness to God or to one another.

Yoder goes on to say that it is a lot simpler to work that way, for a couple of reasons. First of all, if I look at someone else, I can’t see what they’re thinking, but I can observe and evaluate their behaviour. Do they show up for church on Sunday? Do they participate in outreach programs? It’s clear, cut and dried. Second, if people look at me, they can’t see what I’m thinking either. So, as long as my outward behaviour appears appropriate, I can think whatever I want. I can hold grudges, call people names behind their back. Whatever.

But what this approach misses is relationship. There is no need here to open our hearts to God or to one another. Think back to the Deuteronomy reading. Moses told the Israelites to choose life, and choosing life meant “loving the LORD their God, obeying him, and holding fast to him”. It was relationship governed, not rule governed. Following the law was not an end in itself but a response to a God who loved them and promised covenant faithfulness. This is the choice we are making in our baptism as we commit our lives to Jesus Christ.

So when Jesus said that his teaching fulfilled the law, he was drawing his followers back to the intent of the law from the first, what the law is in its fullness in the kingdom of God. And what that fulfillment leads to is a way of living in which the four relationships are functioning properly and humans experience the fullness of life that God intended.

In today’s gospel, the first example of this fulfillment addresses the commandment about taking a life. Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said …, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' 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.

This is pretty specific. We discover that murder stands at the far end of a spectrum of behaviour that include petty irritation, name-calling, and criticizing. Will all those things, left unchecked, lead inevitably to murder? Of course not. But they indicate broken relationships and ongoing resentments that lead inevitably to broken community. And broken communities lead to factions and lack of cooperation with others. They lead to increased self-interest and ignoring of the needs of other. The saying is true that the health of a community can be gauged by the way it treats the most vulnerable of its citizens. The more broken a community becomes, the more the weakest members are neglected or exploited.

So, Jesus said, if someone has something against you, go and be reconciled. Come to terms with the person. That is, instead of harbouring anger and grudges, talk directly to the person you have a problem with and do your best to resolve the issue. And, Jesus said, do this before you come to the altar to offer your gifts to God. It is clear that the effect of not reconciling is to harm ourselves, the other person, and our primary relationship with God.

In a similar way, each of the scenarios Jesus presented provided a new look at an established teaching. This new look showed that everything we do, in all aspects of life, exists in relationship with God and with our neighbour. Jesus calls his followers, us included, to a high standard, a self-sacrificing standard of behaviour, one that consistently takes into account the effect of our actions on others. Is this easy? No. In fact, our success at it will be imperfect at best. But Jesus has come to inaugurate the kingdom of God, and he is telling his disciples that this is what living in that Kingdom looks like. This is what the law, filled full, looks like.

More than that, this is what Jesus himself looks like. Jesus himself is the fulfillment of God’s covenant with God’s people. Jesus could ask this high calling of his followers because his ministry, his whole life, modeled it.
As the authors of When Helping Hurts say: “When people look at the church, they should see the very embodiment of Jesus! When people look at the church, they should see the One who declared – in word and in deed … – that his kingdom is bringing healing to every speck of the universe.”

So choose life. Choose your high calling as disciples of Jesus Christ to live in kingdom relationships that bring healing to God’s world. Amen.