Solid Food
1 Corinthians 3:1-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48
February 20, 2011
On this particular day when Tunisia and Egypt, now Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Algeria are all in turmoil and upheaval, we should keep in mind that we are all Peoples of the Book. If People of the Book, then we read words, words exploding with meaning and consequence - and do these words in our Book give us problems!
Jesus ends up this first chapter in the Sermon on the Mount insisting that “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” What smells trouble here is that when most of us try to be perfect we try to be God, and that becomes a perfect mess both in terms of relationships with all other less-than-perfect human beings, and that isn’t what Jesus meant by being “perfect.”
Being perfect is like being a perfect vegetable or fruit, a ripe tomato, a mature being making best use of one’s talents through a full commitment to God. Yet even a perfect tomato does not have a perfect shape or taste, and tomatoes and human beings who are ripe too long become rotten. The problem with words in Jesus’ day and in ours is that these words project ideas and directions that shift over time and place and culture. We lose the drift of what Jesus was saying because we no longer listen to his sentences and paragraphs, instead making idols out of the ink of his individual words. When Paul talks about giving milk to infants in the faith and solid food to mature Christians, that is what is happening when we listen to Jesus’ odd and disturbing sermon. We drink in the individual words, thinking we are being fully nourished, nevertheless depriving ourselves of the full nutritional benefit of what he is trying to get us to understand.
The Beatitudes started off the Sermon on the Mount, rhythmic, poetic maxims that have enchanted and driven us nuts at the same time, we who are the meek about to inherit the earth. He then goes on a rant because he too has heard and seen the commandments of Moses adhered to rigidly and lifelessly. “You have heard that it was said to people of old…” begins the first part of his refrain as he engages murder, adultery, divorce, lying and telling the truth, revenge for insult and injury, and then the matter of enemies. Quickly, Jesus turns those old commandments upside down, “But I say to you …,” and proceeds to advise impossible advice. If you get angry it’s the same as murdering a person’s soul. Looking lustfully at another person is all but adultery. Divorce and remarriage are in fact another form of adultery. Don’t swear at all, and keep your answers simple. Turn the other cheek to those who wrong you, don’t fight back, and love your enemies, not hate them. There are no statistics floating around, but I would hazard that more people have lost their faith or had their faith crushed by the flurry of ideas and commandments propositioned in these 28 verses than have had their faith strengthened and renewed. That’s tragic, because if we can catch the drift of Jesus these may be the best keys to an authentically deeper faith.
Jesus was nurtured in the Law, the Ten Commandments and all that stuff, but like so many of us saw that there was a rigidity in them that reflected human stubbornness rather than divine severity. We hear still the loud hurrahs for the Ten Commandments - remember that judge who tried to place a huge monument of the Commandments in the Alabama Legislature? Some have used the expression “solid food” for these tough, no nonsense rules to counter all the milquetoast types of permissiveness they believe rampant in our societies. But there are some critical things missing in the Law and Commandments that Jesus recognized long before we did.
The Law is based upon actions and important as actions are, they are usually just the minimum requirement for ethical and moral behaviour. Actions often shield us from what goes on in our minds and souls, and most of us relish the difference. If someone performs a service for you correctly, yet grudgingly without a smile or comment, as if you are doing them a favour, then you know that simply following the commandments leaves much to be desired.
It sounds at first like Jesus is turning the screws on us even tighter, making it well nigh impossible for any person to fulfill the commandments, to be a good person. Despite the publicity in the papers and on TV, there are really not many murders in our city. So you and I can be smug: we have fulfilled the commandment and have not murdered anyone, lately. Maybe they give out medals for that or will construct statues to our virtue.
Murder, killing, comes out of hate and hatred kills more aspects of human relationships than any genocidal massacre. Are there any of us who can say that we have not hated? Jesus knows that, yet he is pointing us towards an inner way of life that matches our outward behaviour so that we are a whole, mature, perfect person. What you see is what you get. When you are offering your gift before the altar of God, Jesus points to the dilemma. If you are being good and religious and think that will earn some long term good in heaven, but you have some dispute with your brother or sister, then being religious is not being religious – are you following me? – until you drop everything and go be reconciled with your antagonist. Only then can you really worship.
If all of us would go and do exactly that, we might not be in church worshiping for weeks, maybe months or years. That wouldn’t serve our attendance well here, so don’t go overboard with it. Yet if you did earnestly become reconciled, what a different place this would be, what a more powerful kind of worship would we experience. Jesus goes on to adultery and divorce, again as a way to lead us beyond a mechanical satisfaction with our milquetoast righteousness.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth keeps extending do not kill and do not hate. Originally, this law was a moderating, rational influence – don’t destroy or maim the property of a person who has insulted you. It still goes on today in Regina, around the world, in this congregation. Turn the other cheek and go the extra 1.6 kilometers defuses the situation, and creates a new human being who has the ability to love where love has not gone before, a love that will not let me go. Loving those who hate you changes the world, not quickly to be sure, but nothing is the same.
What the commandments of old seriously lack is love. There’s no place for love in them, but this is where Jesus pushes us to make sure that what we do is saturated with love, not self-righteousness, but a humility that innately loves and respects other people. He is coaching us to rewire our souls so that we do not hate, but reconcile, that we commit ourselves wholly to one another for the best and worst of times, that we let go of smoldering revenge and create a new world in which we struggle to protect and nurture love for all people. The commandments are never enough, for they need love. How else will you be perfect?
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan