Fourth before Lent A

Last week’s gospel reading didn’t seem to afford us much relief. We were told that unless our righteousness surpassed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, then we would never enter the kingdom of heaven. We were also told that not one jot or tittle would pass from the law until all was accomplished. No pressure there then! One of the criticisms that some clever atheists level against the Christian understanding of God is that he sets us such very high standards, but doesn’t provide us with the wherewithal to meet those standards. Failure is built into the very system God has designed. Judgment is inevitable. And yet Christians claim that God is a loving god. Come off it!!

It would therefore be worth providing a little bit of background. I have said before that Matthew is presenting Jesus in a particular way. For Matthew, Jesus is the New Moses, the one who is greater than Moses. And he devotes his whole gospel to showing us how that is the case. The new Moses is somebody who is going to take the Law seriously, as Moses did. In fact, Moses was the giver of the law, or rather the one who delivered it. But the new Moses, is, well, ‘new’, so he will deliver a ‘new law’ that will throw light on the old law, and that is what Jesus is doing in this part of his Gospel which is known as the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. We can see at a glance, that Jesus is giving us his ‘take’ on the Ten Commandments.

Most people are in favour of the Ten Commandments. They take them for granted. When we bewail the wretched state of today’s youth, many cry ‘‘bring back the 10 commandments, and for good measure, bring back the birch as well. At a distance of over 3000 years, we have lost sight of how radical and progressive the Ten Commandments were in their day. Israelite society then, as it was in Jesus day, and like many societies in the Middle East, was what is called an ‘honour-shame’ society. In such societies, the pivotal social value was honour. It was fundamental; it was the core, the heart of society. Honour was about your public reputation, your status or standing in the community. It was something you had to preserve at all costs. It you were dishonoured in anyway, you needed to retaliate. The concept of the ‘honour-killing’ has an ancient pedigree. The trouble was that honour-killing was not just ‘tit-for-tat’ but would very quickly encompass the group of which you were part, potentially leading to group annihilation.

So the Ten Commandments and the law in general were there to set limits to otherwise profligate and uncontained violence in an honour-shame society. The Ten Commandments supply clear injunctions and prohibitions and the law supplies fixed penalties and remedies for breach. The trouble with the law of Moses was that it didn’t get you out of the impasse of honour-shame because it addressed what was on the outside of a man and a woman, not what was on the inside. It didn’t stop the in-group feuding.

Jesus wants his own community to be different. And in our Gospel passage, he offers a way out of the honour-satisfaction impasse. For a start, the Jesus community is to be a surrogate family. “Brother” (and presumably “sister”) is the characteristic way in which members of the Jesus community refer to each other.

Relationships within this new family are to rank above relationships within the traditional family. This should be noted by those who use the Bible to reinforce traditional family values. After all, Jesus said in his family’s presence, pointing to the crowd of disciples, “these are my brothers and sisters and mother.” “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you, that if you are angry with a brother or sister you will be liable to judgement.”

Reconciliation with your brother is to rank higher than you obligations to conventional Temple worship:”if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go’ first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” The path to reconciliation is often a very short one but when it isn’t taken it has devastated lives and ministries.

Jesus says also that to suffer dishonour in the service of community peace is infinitely preferable to the act of dishonour that would disturb that peace by dishonouring another. To commit adultery was to dishonour a male of community by having sexual relations with his wife and to cross another’s family boundaries with impunity. This could lead to interminable wrangling, feuding and death. So to “pluck out” your right eye, which means to suffer dishonour, is the prophylactic for the adultery which dishonours the cuckold

Divorce is the symptom of a feud between families. And the injunction about swearing an oath was usually a sure sign that dodgy goods were being purveyed.

Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not swear falsely. These are three commandments which Jesus reaffirms, but also redraws. If you want to be perfect, if you want to fulfil the law and the prophets, if you want the righteousness that surpasses the scribes and Pharisees, then be generous to your brother and sister, treat women with the respect they deserve, not as pawns in a game of power and status, name a price that reflects the true worth of what you are selling.
This is not the gospel of a God who wants to set us up for failure in order gleefully to subject us to punishment when we do fail. This is the gospel of a God who wants to create a political, social and moral ecology in which we can all thrive as humans and realise the fullness of life that Jesus came to bring. This is costly work and it cost God everything. Because Jesus himself took on himself the shame – the utter loss of public reputation – when he died the death he did. And yet it was precisely there that he was glorified and raised to the place of honour.

AMEN.