Sermon: Insults, Anger, Murder

Lectionary: Year A, Sixth Sunday After Epiphany

Text: Matthew 5:21-24 (partial lection)

Anyone here want to admit to murdering someone? Likely not. Murder is a crime and generally frowned upon, socially.

How about anger toward someone? Or saying something insulting about someone? Or making derogatory comments about someone? There aren’t any specific laws against these things to make them crimes, and in some cases, they are socially acceptable and possibly even encouraged.

I’m nearly certain I’ve never murdered anyone. But I’m far more certain that I’ve been angry with someone, insulted someone, and called someone a fool.

In today’s media and social media saturated world, it is tempting and even encouraged to score points with “my team” by making comments and posting memes and such that puts down “the other team.”

While the world of the Bible is far distant from ours, perhaps the admonitions and life principles contained within it aren’t so foreign to today’s issues.

We need to back up and review the paragraph immediately preceding today’s Gospel Reading. It offers the context and an introduction to today’s reading.

Matthew 5:17-20 reads:

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The remainder of the Sermon on the Mount, including today’s reading, gives examples of what it means to fulfill the law and the prophets and what true righteousness looks like.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew pictures Jesus as the new Moses, the new Lawgiver. In some Christian interpretations, this has been taken to mean that Law of Moses and the Old Covenant has been superseded by Jesus. The technical theological term for this is supersessionism. But that is not at all what Matthew and Jesus is describing. What Jesus is doing here is going beyond mere surface and very literal applications of the law. Jesus is digging into the deeper meaning and underlying intent of the laws.

In the historical setting of first century Judaism, Jesus’ words are in line with the tradition of rabbis that came before and were contemporary with him. The Jewish practice of doing theology was to take their writings and traditions and debate what they meant and how it might apply to new circumstances that they were facing. The original sayings were considered “fixed” — “I have come not to abolish… not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law…” (Jesus) — but the interpretation and application could change and mold to fit new needs. This might be an area where Christians could have something to learn from our faith cousins, to recover the kind of interpretive practices that Jesus himself used. We as Christians have a fixed canon but we also have tended to fix our interpretations and applications in stone, and perhaps it might be good for us to be more flexible in recognizing that how we interpret and apply should be open to change.

Returning to today’s reading we find four examples of hot issues that were being debated within Judaism. (There are in fact two more that follow today’s reading, for a total of six in this section of the Sermon on the Mount.) Each of them could be en entire sermon (or more). I’ve chosen to focus today on just the first one that speaks to the issue of anger.

The first thing to note is that Jesus likens anger to murder. Reading from verses 21-22 again,

… ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 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.

We see a repeating pattern:

An offense that is ‘liable’ to potentially punitive action

·        Murder -> judgment

·        Angry with someone -> judgment

·        Insulting someone -> taken before the council

·        Calling someone a ‘fool’ -> hell of fire

Notice that murder and anger are liable to incur identical responses. Notice also the increasing severity of action from anger, to insult, to calling someone a ‘fool’. Judgment is likely something that is handed down by a local authority, of a town, for instance. The council is most likely understood in this passage to be the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews located in Jerusalem. And the hell of fire is more literally “the fire of Gehenna”, the place outside of Jerusalem where rubbish was disposed and burned until they were no more. So, the progression could also be seen as local judgment, to national judgment, and finally to a place where things were left for dead, no longer fit to be among the community of the living.

We might expect the murderer to be in the last, most severe place, but in this passage, Jesus places them in the least severe position.  This begs the question, “Why?”

Perhaps it is because murder is obvious. When someone is killed, there is no getting around the fact that a life has been taken and relationships destroyed. And anger is somewhat similar. Anger tends to be obvious, and it too, destroys relationships.

But insults and name-calling are far more socially acceptable and can be simply excused as, “I was just joking,” “They/You took it the wrong way,” “Everyone thinks and says it,” or, “They deserved it.” Perhaps insults and name-calling are far more insidious, and they can continue for far longer than might murder or anger.

Or looking at the sequence from a different perspective, perhaps name-calling and insults are considered worse than anger and murder because what appears more severe and violent are symptoms of attitudes that begin with what seems more harmless — mere words. Perhaps what Jesus is pointing out is that attitudes toward and how we perceive our fellow human beings is far more of an issue than the action that eventually derive from them. One of the commentaries I used offers this observation, “While verbal abuse is certainly less violent than murder, Jesus teaches that such language dehumanizes other persons, making it easier to mistreat them.” (Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1)

The next couple of verses read,

23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

Notice that the subject/object (grammar-wise) relationship has suddenly shifted 180-degrees. It is no longer the one harboring anger and malice that is being addressed, but rather the one who realizes that someone is holding a grudge against them.

Jesus points out something here that goes against most of our natures. Most of us, when we are wronged, we believe that it is the person who wronged us that must take the first step to make things right. And some (many?) of us might even relish the feeling of superiority that we have as we wait for that person that wronged us to come to us to apologize and beg for our forgiveness. But that isn’t Jesus’ way. According to Jesus, whichever party first realizes that something is wrong is responsible for taking the first step toward making things right.

Which gets to the definition of ‘righteousness’ as used in the Sermon on the Mount and what Jesus meant when he said, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Western Christianity, particularly in the last century or so, has defined righteousness as mostly an individual concern, having to do primarily with morals and piety. But when we go back to what Jesus’ hearers and Matthew’s readers would have read, righteousness would have mean right-relationships. And that is impossible to do on one’s own. The same commentary writes about it this way:

This kind of righteousness is impossible for those who are focused merely on their own standing before God or their personal sense of merit in comparison to other people. There is no way to achieve this righteousness as an individual in isolation from others, for the very attempt to establish one’s own (self-) righteousness leads inevitably to the alienation, divisiveness, and even violence that Jesus ascribes to those who oppose his way. This is as hard a lesson for modern Christians to learn as it was for the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’ audience. (Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1)

This issue of anger and dehumanizing attitudes toward another is such a serious issue for Jesus that he said that if we realize our human relationships are not right, we should stop worship and make things right first. Is that to be taken literally or metaphorically? How many of us would get up and leave this moment? If I were to be honest, I’d suspend the sermon right now and go out to make sure things were right with everyone I thought I might have something against or with those I thought might have something against me. So maybe Jesus was using a bit of hyperbole, but perhaps not entirely. The same commentary says regarding this part of the text:

The priority here is clear: right relationship with God is predicated upon having a right relationship with your neighbor(s). Jesus’ teaching challenges not only the scribes and Pharisees of his day, but religious people, even Christians today, who focus exclusively on their personal relationship with God to the neglect of others, as if we could have a relationship with God apart from our relationship with our neighbors. Here Jesus teaches us that the relationship with one (God) is predicated upon the relationship with the other (neighbor). (Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1)

The world generally doesn’t care if professing Christians have correct doctrines and beliefs, or if they are pious in religious observance. But they are watching us and how we treat other people. They are watching what kind of attitudes we have toward others. They are watching to see if we are as gracious, compassionate, and forgiving as we say Jesus is. Do our words match our attitudes and actions – especially towards the kinds of people with whom Jesus kept company? With those whom the religious and powerful of Jesus’ time, and the religious and powerful of our time, regard as sinners and unworthy?

When we accept into our midst those whom the world has rejected, and those whom the morally self-righteous have condemned, our righteousness rises to what is expected by Jesus from his community of disciples. Our worship then becomes a truly communal expression acceptable to God, rather than a mere individual show of piety.

It is my prayer and hope that we, myself included, become the kind of faith community that exemplifies the love, grace, compassion, and forgiveness that Jesus has offered to us; a faith community that prioritizes being in right-relationships with one another.