The Gospel: Matthew 5:21-37
Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, `You shall not murder'; and `whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, `You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, 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. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. "You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell. "It was also said, `Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. "Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, `You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.' But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be `Yes, Yes' or `No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one.
Well, isn’t THAT a cheery little Gospel?! I read this early in the week and thought, “Oh, gee, thanks. I REALLY wanna preach on THAT!” Of course, I was reading the lesson online while on another window I was watching Al Jazeera English and had CNN on the TV. I’ve spent any free time this week glued to the television watching the story unfold in Egypt. I’ve found it fascinating, at times quite moving and at others just downright profound.
As I’ve watched the demonstrators in Liberation Square being interviewed I realized that, if one doesn’t know what’s going on, one could think these people are stark raving loonie. They scream and they yell and they sound hysterical. But then I had to remember that people in the Middle East talk that way. They speak in hyperbole which is rich, flowery, sometimes intense language used to say what we say in brief, direct language. They think we’re rude. We think they’re nuts.
I remember back twenty-odd years ago when the First Gulf War began. When war had been decided upon, Saddam Hussein screamed, “This will be the Mother of all Wars!!! We will defeat the Great Satan and drive him into the sea!!! We will be victorious!!!” Now, Saddam was many thins, including nuts, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew very well that his military couldn’t defeat the United States. And had we been willing to do so, we could’ve chosen to understand what he was really saying using Middle Eastern hyperbole: “You’re going to attack us. We’re going to defend ourselves. And it’s not gonna be pretty.” Instead, we chose to ignore Saddam’s presentation and attacked with both barrels - taking him quite literally.
I’m married to a Jewish person who long before we met had converted to the Episcopal Church. But when we first got together, I thought his family was insane. All they did was scream at each other. I thought they all hated each other. Turns out, they’re a very loving family. My spouse bought me a book on how to translate Jewish. It helped a lot so that when my mother-in-law screamed, “Oy! It’s d’ end of d’voild! Nobody’s suffahed like I’ve suffahed!” I knew she actually just wasn’t feeling well that day.
And Jesus was a Jew. And he spoke in hyperbole just like Jews have for millennia. And his audience knew that but we sometimes forget. So, in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus sounds rather intense and off the wall, but he had no expectation, nor did his audience, that they would all go home, gouge out their eyes and cut off their hands. He also knew that just looking lustfully at a woman who wasn’t one’s wife wasn’t really adultery. But he was trying to make a point.
And Jesus also was pretty clear about the consequences. HELL! FIRE! DAMNATION!!! Well maybe.
Actually, the historical Jesus had no concept of hell. Neither did he seem all that concerned with the afterlife. It seems to be a given that eventually all would be reunited with the Divine. And when he speaks about the Kingdom of Heaven, he’s not talking about the next life. He’s talking about this life.
Hell wasn’t a concept for Jews of Jesus time nor does present day Judaism. Actually, the ancient Hebrews had no sense of afterlife at all. When you were dead, you were dead. Case closed. Let’s move on. It’s not until after the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai and Hebrew religion morphs into Judaism that the idea of Sheol starts to take form. Everybody went there: the good, the bad and the ugly. It was a place of shadows. There wasn’t any suffering but it wasn’t much fun either. It was like living in a low ceilinged cave with bad lighting or like being stuck in Tacoma in November.
Some substantial time before Jesus, the Pharisees came on the scene. They believed in Sheol but also that at the Last Day God would raise the righteous from the dead and the rest would just go into oblivion. By the time of Jesus, all three concepts were popular as well as a lot of mixing of all three. There was no central doctrine at all nor was it a great topic of conversation. Neither was there a sense of hell in the Church until the Third Century when the Church started to get too big to manage and the Bishops had to find some form of crowd control. But it wasn’t until St. Jerome came along in the Fourth Century and translated the Bible from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic into Latin that things got firmed up. Jerome, a political animal as much as a scholar, chose to use the word “inferno” to translate the Aramaic word “Gehenna.” And Gehenna wasn’t hell. Gehenna was Jerusalem’s version of Waste Management. We don’t often think about it, but people in every time and culture have had to figure out how to get rid of their garbage. Jerusalem was no exception. Gehenna was outside the city walls and consisted of huge fires which burned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for years and years and years. So, when one went into town, one put their garbage into their little, white plastic grocery bag and while out and about stopped by Gehenna, gave the bag to the attendant who then put it on a cart. Eventually, the cart was tossed on one of the fires and that was that.
Using hyperbole, Jesus in this morning’s Gospel is very definite and firm about one thing: human relationships. He’s saying that we are to treat each other with respect, compassion, mercy, advocacy and forgiveness. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. There are no exceptions. And he uses the only way he knew how to get the point across. And his audience knew what he was talking about. He wasn’t telling them that they’d burn for eternity because of an angry, petty deity. He was telling them that living a life of abusing others cuts one’s self off from God. God isn’t cut off from us. God is always there. But if we choose to live abusive and coercive lives, we distort our relationship with God and to the real meaning of life. And such a relationship is just as painful as sitting in the middle of the fires of Gehenna.
This seemingly hideous Gospel reading is actually a diatribe about hope because the reason Jesus insists that our relationships be honest and compassionate is because that’s how God is with us. One could use hyperbole and say, “God’s compassion and love for the human race is so great that no one could ever imagine it. It’s beyond any human comprehension! If one sat and thought about God’s eternal mercy for all time, one couldn’t begin to comprehend it!” OK. Maybe it’s not hyperbole. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the truth!
As I watched Al Jazeera this week, I was moved on Sunday when the Copts showed up. The Copts are the ancient Egyptian Christians who’ve been there since around the Sixth Century and make up about ten percent of the Egyptian population. They’re Eastern Orthodox of sorts and, while one can recognize the same basic structure of the liturgy as our Mass, it’s really weird! All sorts of strange customs and the like which seem very odd to us. On Sunday, several priests showed up with an Altar and all the paraphernalia to celebrate the Eucharist for the Copts in Liberation Square. And as the liturgy got underway, they were surrounded by a huge mob of Muslims. But these Muslims weren’t there to heckle or endanger the Copts. They were there to protect them. They understood that what was going on was holy and, while they might worship God in a different way, they all worshipped together. These folks understood what Jesus was saying. It was an instinctive reaction. They may look at Jesus differently than we do, but they knew deep inside the message that he preached. And in that brief moment, a moment of mended and caring relationship, the Kingdom was in full swing.
So, when you get home this afternoon, don’t go taking a meat cleaver to your body parts, although I’ve heard stories of some of our Fundamentalist brethren and sistren doing just that. Understand what the Bible really says. Understand what Jesus really means. Live lives of mutual respect and love. Care for each other with no strings attached. Love wastefully and lavishly especially the unloved and the lonely. Advocate for the poor and the homeless. Work for racial and ethnic equality. Embrace the outcasts because they really aren’t. They’re us. Remember how important our relationship is to God, the God who took on human flesh and became one of us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
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