Sermon on Matt. 5:20-37
Sometimes, people who talk with a pastor about some problem or even when they are just visiting with him, try to justify themselves to the pastor. I think some people see pastors as God's policemen, and so they might say things like, "I think I've lived a petty decent life" or "There's people far worse than me." It's as if they think God grades people on a curve. When people think like this, they usually believe that God looks at everything people do and then He takes the best person's actions as the top score or the A+. Just as long as you get close to that score, you're OK; just as long as you live a pretty good life, God will be happy.
However, in our Gospel lesson today, Jesus tells us that God's grading curve starts with the best that humans can do and says that's the lowest score! We must do better than the best that man can do! How can we respond to this Impossible Mission?
Well, there are only two responses. The first is the natural human response of trying one's hardest to earn one's way into heaven--after all, our effort has to be worth something. This way of thinking is as old as religion itself. Jesus himself, ran into two versions of these people. The first type tries to earn God's love by working harder--or seeming to do so! They believe following the letter of the Law is the way into heaven. Throughout the Gospels, we find that the Pharisees believed they were good enough to get into heaven--in fact, they believed God had no other choice but to let them in because of their exemplary life.
In order to understand how they could think this way, we must realize that the "Law" during Jesus' day did not refer primarily to the 10 commandments but to the interpretations of the OT commandments (these oral interpretations were later written down in the Mishnah, which even later was interpreted by the Talmud). So, by following the literal meaning of the interpretations of the "Law," the Pharisees actually softened it. They made it possible to keep God's Law by spending all their time qualifying it and redefining it. For example, [Rabbinic Judaism today followed the Pharisaic example of defining the letter of the Law.] The commandment, "remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy" required that no work was to be done (Exod. 20:8-10). Work was defined by how much of each activity you could do to constitute work. So on the Sabbath, you could write one letter on a page but not two, for that would be work and be a sin (Barclay p. 129). You could not take a journey on the Sabbath which was defined as walking a hundred steps or so. If you walked more than that, it was considered work and was a sin. However, if you lived in Jerusalem and had relatives on the other side of the city, you could walk further than the prescribed number of steps on the Sabbath, because they also defined a journey as a certain number of steps beyond one's home, and they enlarged the definition of home to include the whole city of Jerusalem.
Before you sit back and think this just applies to those people in Jesus' day, listen to what Jesus is saying. He is condemning the same kind of thinking found in modern day Pharisaism that's still around us. Jesus attacks our modern day definitions which try to get around the sin and seriousness of things like hatred, divorce, and swearing. Jesus connected these things with sins that were more obviously wrong. But the world still tries to justify itself by changing the definitions: Crushing a business competitor no longer has anything to do with hatred--it is called "Free Market Economics;" Divorce has become so common that it is hardly thought of as a sin, let alone adultery--it is more of a "Lifestyle change" for some; and swearing is not thought of today as a concern to God, when there's so many worse people in the world--it is just a means of expression. We're in the same boat as those Jesus was speaking to when we make such definitions our own.
The second version of those who tried to earn their way into heaven is the minimalist. Some just want to get by with the least amount of work possible. Like the man in Matt. 22:34-39 who asked Jesus, "What must I do to have eternal life?" He might as well have said, "What's absolutely necessary to go to heaven--don't give me anything more than the bare bones way!" Trying to get by with the least amount of work to get to heaven makes faith an insurance policy. It's like saying, "I'll do what ever I want and go to church as little as possible because it cramps my style. Just as long as my name's on the church roster, I'm safe."
To those who want to earn their way to heaven, Jesus sounds the wake up call. He tells us that the "natural human response" is a Mission Impossible--there is no maximum way of getting into heaven by being so good that God has no choice but to let you in, nor is there a minimum way by which you can keep on sinning and still just make it in. While it may be conceivably possible to never outwardly commit the deeds forbidden by the 10 commandments, who can say their thoughts have always been pure? Even if you have never struck another person, who can say he's never wished to hurt somebody? Even if you have never committed adultery, who can say they have never desired forbidden pleasure? Right here, Jesus sets up God's real grading scale and it is nothing short of demanding perfection!
Yet there is still that second response to God's Mission Impossible. It is a God-given response that stops trying to earn salvation and in humility simply accepts the salvation Jesus has already won for us! The only way to heaven is through faith in the perfect life of Jesus who died and rose again for our sake. Jesus breaks God's grading curve, making humanity look bad, but the Good News is, He's on our side! He gives us His A+ so that in God's eyes, we are perfect! Christ's way to heaven is the one "in which He brings those who believe in him to salvation."
Yes, Jesus demands a Mission Impossible in our text this morning, but He obeyed God's Laws for us when we could not--He completed God's Mission to make it possible for us to respond to our salvation in love instead of trying to earn heaven on our own. Through the gift of salvation and the gift of faith to accept it, we have a new outlook on life--a new attitude.
I'd like to close this morning by comparing this God-given attitude to that of the Pharisees. The very name, "Pharisees," means "Separated Ones" because they separated themselves from the world in order to focus all their time and effort on keeping what they thought was God's Law. Their goal was limited to satisfying the Law of God (Barclay p. 133). As Christians, we are also to be "Separated Ones," for God separated us from the world in order to make us his children through faith in Jesus. Through baptism we are made holy and perfect in God's sight, not by what we have done, but by what Jesus did on the cross--not by our misguided efforts to keep the Law but by how Jesus did what God's Law intended for us--that is to love God and your neighbor. Now our goal is to strive to satisfy the Love of God as our response! This goal has no limit. We can never love too much, and love never wants to stop giving. Jesus freed us from thinking solely about ourselves to thinking about and loving others. Responding to our salvation in love, then, is now our Mission Possible. Amen.