SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

February 12, 2023

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Ecclesiasticus 15:11-20

Psalm 119:9-16

I Corinthians 3:1-9

Matthew 5:21-24, 27-20, 33-37

 

Today’s appointed Scripture readings invite us to reflect on the place of God’s commandments in our individual lives and in our life together as the Church. The Collect of the Day asks that in keeping God’s commandments we may please him in both will and deed. The Old Testament reading from Ecclesiasticus affirms that God has created us with the ability to keep his commandments if we choose to do so. Psalm 119 sings of God’s commandments as a source of joy: “I have taken greater delight in the way of your decrees than in all manner of riches.”

 

In today’s reading from the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel, moreover, Jesus gives us his unique interpretation of God’s commandments. He repeats the formula, “You have heard that it was said to the men of old … But I say to you …”

 

These sayings have traditionally been called the “antitheses,” contrasting the old teaching of the Jewish Law with his new teaching: “You have heard that it was said … ‘You shall not kill …’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment … You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart… Again you have heard that it was said… ‘You shall not swear falsely …’ But I say to you, ‘Do not swear at all …”

 

The Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine argues that it’s more accurate to call these sayings “extensions” than antitheses. Jesus is neither contradicting nor negating the earlier commandments, but rather hedging them about with even stricter prohibitions. She points out that the true antithesis to “You shall not kill” is not “Refrain from anger,” but “Lock and load.”

 

Levine further suggests that here Jesus is engaging in the rabbinical practice of the time known as “building a fence around the Torah.” That is, the best way to avoid breaking a big commandment is to avoid the little infractions that can lead up to it. For someone with an alcohol problem, for example, it’s more effective to avoid that first drink rather than to try to figure out whether you’ve had enough after two or three. In the same way, it’s best not to take that first step down the slippery slope towards murder or adultery by willfully indulging feelings of anger or lust. Just don’t go there, Jesus is saying, and you probably won’t get there.

 

Easier said than done! Down through the centuries, Christian ethicists and teachers of moral theology have struggled with the seemingly impossible idealism of what our Lord teaches here. After all, most of us manage to refrain from murder, adultery, and perjury most of the time. But how realistic is it to expect everyone to remain innocent of those occasional angry or lustful thoughts? How does the prohibition on killing apply to members of the armed forces whom we may ask to kill enemy combatants on our behalf in a just war? And doesn’t the prohibition on oaths undermine the entire fabric of our financial and legal systems which rely on signed contracts, sworn testimony, affidavits, and the like?

 

The Church proposed different solutions to this problem at various times in its history. The medieval Western Catholic Church maintained what was in effect a double standard by which the highest ideals of the Sermon on the Mount were held to apply to monks and nuns who had taken the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but not to ordinary Christians living in the world. Vowed religious were called to lives of genuine holiness; for the rest of us it would do to obey the Ten Commandments, come to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, and make our confession at least once a year before receiving Communion at Easter. In this way, we could just about make it into heaven if only by the skin of our teeth.

 

At the time of the sixteenth century Reformation, Martin Luther argued that the Sermon on the Mount’s main purpose was to convict us of our sinful condition by setting before us standards so unattainable that we’d realize that we can only be saved by casting ourselves on God’s mercy and accepting in faith the forgiveness Christ has obtained for us by his sacrifice on the cross. The twentieth century American theological ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr suggested that the Sermon on the Mount constitutes an “impossible ideal” that nonetheless has the value of spurring us on to ever-greater moral and spiritual effort even though its perfect fulfillment always remains just beyond our grasp in this life.

 

Rather than a double standard or impossible ideal, however, I’d like to propose that the Sermon on the Mount represents the goal or end point that we can spend our entire lifetimes growing into. The decisive clue in today’s readings comes in the passage from First Corinthians where Saint Paul speaks of Christian maturity as a process of development. He writes that as yet he can address his readers only as babes in Christ: “I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready …” The good news comes at the end, where, after pointing out some of the community’s very real failures and shortcomings, Paul nonetheless concludes: “you are God’s field, God’s building.”

 

The promise conveyed in these words is that the field will yet bear fruit, and the building’s construction will yet be completed. Think about that promise in relation to this parish community of Christ Church, Woodbury. We are God’s field, God’s building: a work in progress, and God isn’t finished with us yet!

 

To return to the beginning, today’s Collect reminds us that God is the strength of all who put their trust in him, and because of the weakness of our mortal nature we can do nothing good without him. Nonetheless, with the help of his grace we can please him both in will and deed by keeping his commandments.

 

“In will and deed.” Notice that’s exactly what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel: not just doing what’s right in our outward actions, but also willing the good in our inmost hearts. So, by the movement of the Holy Spirit, our Lord is gradually refashioning us into the very people he describes in his Sermon on the Mount. All we need to do is yield to his grace, and go with it!