Epiphany 6 A
Hard Words, Kept Words
St. Matthew 5:21-37
12 February 2017 – Redeemer
Sometimes you wish Jesus would keep quiet. Or at least if Jesus couldn’t keep quiet – the Sunday readings would skip over these words recorded by Matthew. And if you couldn’t keep Jesus quiet or keep his Words out of the public readings, then your last hope would be that your pastor would keep quiet, but what’s the likelihood of keeping a pastor quiet?
So what shall we do with these words of Jesus now that your pastor is unwilling to muzzle Him? If we have to hear these words – what shall we do? Well, let me tell you what many hearers of these words choose to do with them. You can listen to these words of Jesus and then contextualize them away. Jesus was speaking to a first century Jewish audience where women were treated as property, where a man could divorce his wife if she burned his toast. This was simply Jesus preaching that women should be regarded as equally and fully human as a man. And since women have come a long way since then we’ve heard the word and we’ve done pretty well.
Or you can take these words and try to keep them. Now to do this you will need to be very selective in your hearing. You can probably take confidence that you have never actually murdered someone, but you’ll have to play deaf when Jesus speaks about hatred and name-calling. Jesus doesn’t use evil and vile names in leveling the murder charge. Calling someone a fool or a moron or stupid (or thinking the same) makes you liable to the hell of fire. You might be able to look down the pew at that broken family over there and say, “Well, at least I’m not divorced,” but then you’ll have to try to cover up the lust in your heart for that woman you saw on your screen last night.
There is another common method for getting around these words of Jesus – just throw up your hands and say, “Everyone sins and God forgives everyone.” About a month ago we had the very solution advocated by an opinion piece in the Saint Cloud Times. This method brings a double solution – you ignore your own sins by pointing out everyone else’s and then you excuse everyone’s sins with a Christ-less and cross-less forgiveness. This method usually works best if you never call anything a sin and then you just say, “God is love” which really translates into “God doesn’t care what you do.”
The problem with these common solutions to the difficult words of Jesus is that they have their source in the human heart – a heart tainted by sin and rebellion toward God. These solutions are no different than a teenager trying to avoid the clear word of his parents by using all sorts of twisted logic and obscure definitions. By the time that rebellious teen is done he has changed his parents warning against staying out to late into permission to stay as late as he wants.
Let me give you some pastoral counsel this morning – listen to these words of Jesus and take them to heart in the clear and plainest sense that they are recorded by Saint Matthew. Remember, these are the Words of Jesus – God’s only begotten Son. Remember we are called by His Name, Christian, and our hope is tied to Him and Him alone, so we really don’t want to soft peddle His Word. The One who speaks these Words loves you and cares deeply for you – listen to Him.
Listen to His Word and repent. You are a murderer for you have hated. You are an adulterer – flesh or heart – before God it makes no difference. You have made promises you didn’t intend to keep. Some you even swore by God’s name – your confirmation vows, your wedding vows. Some you simply promised and you failed to deliver and that makes you a liar and if you dragged God into it you’ve given Him a bad name – you’re a blasphemer. While it is true that everyone is a sinner that’s not really helpful, because your sins are yours alone and the devil will never hesitate to bring that up. You did them – no one else.
Christ Jesus didn’t come into the world so you could feel good about your sins by ignoring them, excusing them, or by changing the definition of sin to fit whatever you happen to be doing. Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners and He wants you to know with His very clear word – you qualify for His salvation because you are a sinner.
There isn’t much good news in today’s text. The good news is finally found only in the man who is speaking these Words. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, and the Son of Mary, true God and true man speaks these Words. Right before this text Jesus said, “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. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” (5:17-18) What is the answer to God’s Law? Not rewriting it. Not ignoring it. Not trying to excuse yourself out of it. God answers the Law with the righteous life of Jesus. Jesus never killed, never hated, but gave His life as a ransom for many, for all – for the woman caught in adultery and self-righteous Pharisees who wanted to kill her. Jesus was faithful to His bride always – He gave His life for her, for you. He kept His Word – what He said He did – everything, crossing every “t” of God’s Law and dotting every “i” of God’s promises with His life, death, and resurrection.
I think the text even hints at what Jesus does to save us from our sin. That hint for me comes in that most troubling passage – “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” (Matt. 5:29–30, ESV) Jesus has a point here – better to enter the resurrection to life missing a limb or organ, then to miss out on entering it at all. Once again Jesus’ Words serve as severe warning against sin, but they also give us a hint of the very thing He would do.
Jesus Christ came into the world to be cut off for us. The only begotten Son of God became man, and not just any man, but the Second Adam, the One man who stood for all men, the head of His body the Church. Not only did Christ, the Second Adam, perfectly fulfill God’s Law, but He also fulfilled God’s demand for justice, that the sinner die, that you be cut off from the Lord. Jesus is cut off from the land of the living, cast off by God at the cross into the outer darkness, forsaken by His Father, so that your sin is finished, your death is finished, your hell is finished. This only One who has seen the Father, the Eye if you will, is cut off, that you might see God face to face. God’s right Hand, His only Son, is cut off, that you might sit in God’s presence. Jesus, this One who is not any member of the body, but is its very head, is cut off. God thought better of you than of His Son – so He loses this One member so that the whole body – that you might be saved and enter life. Jesus who gives you this hard Word, does the hard and wonderful work of keeping and answering this Word for you.
There is one final way to hear these Words of Jesus – hear them seriously, as baptized children of God, as members of the body who have been saved by Christ. These Words are some serious Law – and we ought to strive to live by them as sinners who are forgiven. We should not murder others with hatred or name calling. We should not commit adultery by seeking divorce, by remarrying quickly, by looking with our eyes upon all manner of indecency on the screens of our lives. We should say what we intend to do and do what we say, that includes especially our marriage and confirmation vows – promises we made in God’s Name and before our brothers and sisters in Christ. These Words of Jesus convict us so we flee to Him for forgiveness. But the very fact that Jesus has delivered us from our sin creates in us a heart that doesn’t want to sin – and these very words guide us in Godly living. So hear these Words preached for you, to you. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm