Matt 5:21-37 Epiphany 6 Feb 13, 2011

The Way of Life Matt 5:21-37 Epiphany 6 Feb 13, 2011 In today s sermon our Lord will be speaking to you of the way of life not a way of life, but the way, stressing the word the. This is the way to be truly alive. He wants you to hear it. I want to stress again the point that He wants you to hear it. You have already heard the Gospel lesson. You know what it said. You know my situation. I would bet you started thinking about it as soon as you heard the lesson. You know I could preach on one of the other readings. That would be perfectly acceptable. I could easily avoid a topic that has potential to be uncomfortable, possibly for you, most definitely for me. I could do that, but it was only two weeks ago at my installation that I heard these words, Preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season. God doesn t want you to hear just the things that are easy to hear, or for me to speak just the things that are easy to speak. If that was the case, He wouldn t have bothered to inspire the writers of the Gospels to record what Jesus said. But He did, meaning He wants you to hear it and He expects me to speak it. I m sure you get my point. To get us started, a first century Christian document called the Didache, starts off by saying, There are two ways: one of life and one of death. Our Old Testament lesson is Moses wrapping up his public ministry and it says pretty much the same thing, See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. Jesus is giving you today the way of life. Let s get this straight. You don t live because you follow the way of life. That is, you are not made alive because you follow a certain pattern of living. Make sure you don t get this order mixed up. You are already alive. You were made alive in your baptism. In the faith you were given in your baptism, you have always been alive. You do not make yourself alive. He does that. You don t keep yourself alive. He does that too. That s what this is all about (gesture around the room). His Supper here for you. But you can choose to reject His life. Many of those who were once His do this. They choose the inferior way. They choose to cut themselves off from His gifts. They choose to accept a worthless substitute for what He had planned to give them. He wanted them to have life. He had already given them life, but they didn t want it and choose death. Sometimes they don t even realize it. Sometimes they are so deceived by the evil one they think they are living the way of life, but rather than living in the life the Lord has given them, they have chosen to live the life they design for themselves. It looks like His way of life. They make God s commands guidelines for their life. What s wrong is that, rather than letting these commands do what they are supposed to do, which is convict them of their guilt as sinners, they take them and make them more manageable, less

challenging, more attainable. Doing this, they find they may be able to admit they are a sinner, but they can t actually admit the sin. Yet, aren t we all there? I was noticing this about myself. My mom was pointing out how I had grossly neglected my family when my kids were younger and I resented it. Even now, I hesitate to admit it was neglect I couldn t justify. I had my priorities all wrong. My first calling was to my family. I said that; I acted like I knew it, but when it came to acting on it, I didn t. But if anyone were to remind me later of what I am saying now, repeating back to me the very words I am saying now, I would resent it. Why? Because I want to justify myself. I don t really want to be a sinner, not because my sin hurts others, brings shame to God, and is what caused Jesus to suffer, but because I can t stand the idea of admitting I was wrong. Am I lost for this? I would be, if it were not for God s grace. That s my only defense. He knows how weak I am, and yet how strong my resistance can be, and gives His blood to cover even my unwillingness to admit I am a sinner. Are you there? Perhaps more than we would like to admit. But what would we do, if we didn t believe His grace covered that? We might talk about God s grace and say all the right things, but we would choose what is actually a way of death. We would soften God s commands, and make things so that we aren t ever really wrong. Take for example, murder. We would never commit murder. But hatred toward someone, abuse of them, holding a grudge or not forgiving them. We would excuse ourself for that. That s all natural. We can t help that. We may do that, but God would not hold us accountable for that. We might tell ourselves that; we might tell ourselves all of this, but that s not what He is saying. I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, You fool will be liable to the hell of fire. Anger? Insult? A thoughtless name? Ohhh, God wouldn t hold me accountable for that. These come so naturally. Exactly. They are natural. You are not held accountable so much for what you do, but for what you are; for what is your nature. You remember the list of seven deadly sins? Anger, sloth, pride, greed, gluttony, lust and envy. Why are they deadly? Because they are not thought to be sins. We want to treat them as natural tendencies we have; like something we can t help. We tell ourselves God wouldn t judge us for it because we can t control them, and hear that He does indeed judge us for them. Yet, in all of this, He doesn t so much want us to control them, as much as to simply admit we can t. On the other hand, to allow these tendencies to thrive by protecting and justifying them, we can t help but hurt our relationship with our Lord. Do you justify a grudge you hold against a brother or sister in Christ? Don t come to the Lord s table to receive forgiveness. You won t be given His forgiveness. You will instead invite His judgment.

You can t say, God has reconciled Himself to me, His enemy, but I refuse to reconcile myself to my brother. You have nothing on your brother compared to what God had on you, and yet in Christ s death and resurrection, He has erased that debt. If you continue to hold your brother s debt against him, the Lord will hold his debt against you and you will never be able to pay it off. And now I would like to break in and make an appeal: If you are struggling with this, if you find it difficult to forgive someone, please come talk to me. This is one of the reasons why He gives His people pastors. Let s go on. How about sexual sins? We all know sex is wrong when it s with a person other than our spouse. That s adultery. When you re not married, it s called fornication. Fornication seems to be less clear as we look around us and see the popular attitude toward it. God hasn t changed His attitude toward it, though. Sex is reserved for married couples because it makes them one and keeps them one. But if you re still not sure what God thinks about fornication or pre-marital sex, hookin up or a host of other terms you can pick up if you just keep your ears open, then consider the sexual sin we would consider less serious, like lust. Wait a minute, now! Who can help that? It comes so easily. You look at someone and you desire that person. No big deal. God made us that way. No He didn t. This is the sin in us. He made us originally to want to serve, to love, to give to another, not get what we want for our own pleasure. That s what lust is. Yeah, lust may be glamorized, but that s nothing new. There s never been anything glamorous about it. It s the way of death. We dress it up. We laugh about it. We even encourage it by saying certain things about it, but God doesn t. 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 for your whole body be thrown into hell. You think I think it s no big deal? Think again. I would rather you would lose your eyes, than to misuse them in sin, a sin you might be inclined to take so nonchalantly. You don t have to literally pluck them out, but I don t want you to be nonchalant about it either. Instead, I want you to use the recognition of your weakness to show yourself clearly you are a sinner, and in need of mercy, the mercy that comes in my death in your place. I want you to see I came to live and die for you. But lust, left unconfessed, left justified and excused, and St. James, Jesus brother, lays out the resulting pattern of development. Js 1:14, Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Lust becomes adultery, and adultery leads to the destruction of what God has brought together, and with it all kinds of pain for everyone involved. As you can see, by what James says, it makes perfect sense that Jesus would next talk about divorce. This is clearly the way of death. Anyone who has gone through it or has seen a loved one go through it which is every single one of us knows how it is death.

Some may have found their situation improved when they got divorced, but that was never God s intention. When He brings a couple together, He brings them together for their lifetime. Divorce breaks the oneness the sexual union creates. But what has become our attitude toward it? About as bad as it was in Jesus day. MN is a no fault divorce state. That means no reason needs to be given to destroy the unity God established. But we ll give reasons anyway, We ve grown apart. I m no longer in love. We re better as friends than as a couple. I need someone better for me, someone younger, wealthier, more socially skilled. These are all frivolous and inexcusable. Some, on the other hand, may find themselves in an intolerable situation. Abuse comes to mind and we might be able to think of some others. But you might say, Jesus gave adultery as the only reason for divorce. That s true. Paul said desertion as well as adultery in another place, but Jesus didn t mention desertion. Does that mean Jesus and Paul aren t in agreement? For that matter, between these two, can we build a codebook for every situation? That s not Jesus point. He wants to preserve the unity established by the sexual union and does not want to see it broken for frivolous reasons. Is abuse a frivolous reason? I would hardly say so, but forgiveness has to have its place. At the same time, the abuser or anyone creating an intolerable situation for his or her spouse needs to repent for the sake of their own soul. Can a spouse in a situation like this stay? If he or she can, they should, to avoid all the other damage that comes from divorce. If divorce is chosen, however, then they have to face the fact that this is breaking the oneness God created. Is there forgiveness? Of course. Is there forgiveness for a divorce for frivolous reasons? Of course, even for this. When one of God s children come to Him humbly acknowledging they have broken what God had put together, Jesus suffering is applied to that sin. It s not like divorce is the unforgivable sin. It s just that it is often the unforgiven sin. It remains unforgiven because it is not acknowledged as sin. A person who divorces is usually so busy justifying himself or herself, they can t allow themselves to admit they broke God s oneness and they have sinned, even if they hardly had a choice. Now, why is it so hard to admit sin? Because we still mistakenly think we need to be good enough that is, to never sin in order to be saved. Meanwhile, Jesus point is to say preserving the oneness He created is the way a Christian lives the way that marks life. But the main point is protecting the unity, which will take us to the last point. When a couple get married they stand before God, in a setting God has designed whether a church or even a courthouse, officiated by a pastor or someone else recognized by the state. This same couple, in front of witnesses, take an oath to continue the oneness to be created by the sexual union. They say, for the rest of our lives. Their words mean something. Just about every couple acknowledges the weightiness of their words when they speak them.

But is this the only time words are to be considered weighty? Can we make promises and have no intention on keeping them? No. Our words do mean something. When God makes promises He keeps them. He doesn t want us to be frivolous in our promises or when we speak of truths. Therefore, the way of life, the way that marks life is to simply speak what you mean. Let your yes be yes and your no, no. Anything else finds its source in the evil one. Will we always do this? No. Some of us are worse at this than others. Some of us are worse at something else than others. Will we sometimes treat our word as meaningless and lead others to not trust it? Will we lust? Will we become angry when we shouldn t? Will we struggle with grudges and unwillingness to forgive? Will we break the unity God has established? To all of these we must admit, yes, we will. Will our motives be pure? Never, on our own. Is there hope for us? Of course. That s why we are gathered here. That s why our Lord spreads out His body and blood, so that we can be given forgiveness. That s why He speaks His words of forgiveness, so we can truly be forgiven, and so we can know we are truly forgiven. The way of life isn t a matter of never sinning. It s knowing where to turn when we do. It s living according to God s grace. It s knowing that when we sin, mercy in Christ s death and resurrection is freely given to us so we might truly live. AMEN