Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Psalm 119:1-8
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Matthew 5:21 – 37“Christians aren’t perfect – just forgiven.” So the bumper sticker proclaims the good news, the gospel in a nutshell to those shackled by guilt over the slightest failure. Or, better yet, consider how this quip responds to those who enjoy reminding rather sorry Christians, such as myself, how we fall short. I can’t count how many times my own hot-headedness and quick tongue get the better of me. How many of you, like me, have been a jerk to another – especially a family member who may not be so “into” the faith – and get the sarcastic response, “Oh, so that’s how Christians act, eh?” or “Boy, your hypocrisy is really inspiring me to follow Jesus!” And thus this short phrase challenges anyone – Christian or not – who doubts that the heart of our faith is about grace freely given.
And then we read the lectionary readings for today. Beginning with YHWH’s almost humorous begging of Israel to obey the commands (or die – up to you!) to the lauding of the blameless keeper of every command in the psalm, this theme of obedience ends with Jesus’ seemingly brutal exactitude in Matthew. Indeed, one might read Jesus’ words here about anger as diametrically opposed to the offer of reconciliation he supposedly brings. How are we to comprehend this juxtaposition of grace and obedience, including the clear warnings in all three texts that to ignore God’s statutes means destruction and death, damned and separated from the One who gave us life for eternity? Most Christians simply ignore these texts and fail to wrestle with “how they mean” within the larger narrative of God’s offer of forgiveness.
When I teach such texts (especially from Matthew), the majority of evangelical students simply can’t brook Jesus’ words about the law. Their resistance stems from an inability to make any sense of all this: the Scripture’s evident expectation that we can be obedient, the language of judgment if they are not, past preaching about grace, and their own bent, sordid lives. Like me, they are not “perfect;” they did not sign up for such a thing when they came forward at the youth meeting or found refuge in Christ from a brutally exacting and punishing culture. How then is this, too, the good news?
Consider how the commands of God work. In Deuteronomy, the people of Israel’s most recent memories, habits, and formation have been within the Pharaoh’s land. Pharaoh not only used them as chattel. Woven into the fabric of society was Pharaoh’s fear, particularly around the scarcity of resources such as food or power, resources that must be procured from sometimes begrudging and inconsistent gods. The people of Israel lived there, enslaved not only in body but also in mind and habit to the idolatries of Egypt and its rule.
Deuteronomy explains how to re-habituate the people of Israel away from such enslavement of body and soul toward a new way. The prescribed practices touch not only on intimate spaces such as how to trust YHWH in their eating or sexual life, but also how to treat those they may be tempted to despise or fear as competitors, such as other ethnic groups or migrant farm workers. By the end of a book set out to re-form a people, YHWH recalls that living freely through these patterns of restraint and indulgence tries the patience of human beings; thus he beckons them to remember that he has made them for a deeply – not cheaply – good, joyful life. He cajoles and pleads: “Keep the faith, hold fast, walk a long way in my direction. For I am the God who made you and know what you need; I have provided these laws so that the land and all peoples flourish through your faithfulness to me and to one another.”
And what could be more graceful than to be offered concrete ways of living against a world that often mocks such discipline and would rather create solidarity through oppression of the strange and the stranger? We are embodied beings whose patterns of daily living either disentangle us or reinforce chains of fear and self-centeredness. But this proves difficult for humankind. So Jesus comes along, unencumbered by chains forged by the rejection of law (e.g., the Roman empire) or by those produced by our fixation on our own putative fidelity to it (e.g., the religious of his day).
Like YHWH, Jesus recalls that grace freely offered must be taken in, welcomed in the daily warp and woof of our lives in order to ransom us from sin and death. Rather annoyingly he includes those who, like me, have mouths that open quickly and temper that runs hot. How do you think of, speak of, or talk to other people, whether they hear you or not? Despite ways we have trained ourselves to hear this as “harsh” and therefore as “graceless,” this judgment serves as all judgment does in Scripture: as a clarion call back to the ways that make for a good and full life. He does this throughout the Sermon as YHWH does in Deuteronomy, touching all sorts of mundane activities, habits of heart, body, and mind; he prescribes practices to get us out of such destructive ruts.
Like a sign to those barreling heedlessly toward a cliff, Jesus calls out to us to form habits that prevent disaster, that keep us from danger: Attend to your thoughts and words; pursue truthful relationships with others. Otherwise, you strengthen the bonds not to the kingdom of YHWH in which forgiveness and just relations thrive but rather to a world that cannot brook another’s’ supposed weakness or failure. There is no neutral patterning of our lives, so choose life.
The psalmist like all the wise rightly envisions the “blameless” as one who is thus diligent in daily living: She walks along a set path, tends to the LORD’s commands about dangers along the way. Focused, she seeks him and establishes patterns that please him. She prays for God to continue to teach her faithful living in the now, so that her life might not be one of shame but rather of blessing. How like Christ’s opening to the Sermon on the Mount, in which he claims that YHWH continues to bless those whose lives resist the patterns of the world around us!
The freedom God’s forgiveness brings remains a hook in a culture convulsing with accusations and pettiness. That’s the allure of bumper sticker grace. Yet we cannot forget that such mercy also comes to us with God’s re-forming commands. Without obedience, we actually remain enslaved by daily habits of heart, body, and soul; without difficult training, we cannot witness to those who seek a path to a deeply good, true, beautiful and – yes – “perfect” life.