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Homilies by Rev. Andrew Collis unless indicated otherwise.

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Epiphany 6, Year A
South Sydney Uniting Church
February 12, 2017

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37

‘Deep affirmation’

The Sermon on the Mount sees Jesus engaging with Scripture (reading and re-reading, reforming, underlining, overturning); communing with the Spirit of divine instruction or Torah. One commentator coins the verb “scripturing” as an act of witness to God’s love (D. Mark Davis). The scripturing Jesus communicates entails fulfilment and not annulment or replacement of Torah. “But I tell you …” connotes deep affirmation – the heart of the matter. God be with you ...

“You’ve heard that our ancestors were told, ‘No killing’ ... But I tell you that everyone who is angry with sister or brother is subject to judgement/legal proceedings” (see Exodus 20:13, reiterated in Deuteronomy 5:17).

At the heart of the matter is a certain anger, Jesus says – an anger that shows disregard for another, disrespect, objectification. “Anyone who says to sister or brother, ‘I spit in your face!’ will be subject to the Sanhedrin (religious council); and anyone who vilifies them with name-calling will be subject to the fires of Gehenna (symbolically, the fires of judgement; literally, the perpetual fires of the rubbish dump outside Jerusalem).

Name-calling, the example in Greek is “raca”, which means “fool” or something worse, demeans another, expresses contempt. The hyperbole Jesus employs, here and in the following verses (including the well-known references to plucking one’s own eye-ball and severing one’s own hand), underlines what’s at stake.

The prohibition on murder/killing, like the commandment against adultery (men treating women as possessions) and the counsel to keep one’s promise or vow reveals the infinite worth of each and every creature beloved of God. How we speak of one another, how we speak to one another – with hostility or with hospitality – is of central importance. How we regard others is key.

Not so we can be more religious/spiritual, but so that our simple words, “yes” and “no” – our communications – align with our actions and with the Word of God. So that our words and actions might better reflect the love of God, a love Jesus will soon call “perfect” (5:48). We might use the term “unconditional”.

We could dwell in detail over each and every verse. In short, a certain anger is the problem. A certain religiousness/spirituality (oblivious to relational issues). A certain lustfulness (see Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18). A certain delusion of grandeur or pomposity when it comes to making promises (see Deuteronomy 23:21-22). Perhaps a certain hypocrisy is at issue.

Jesus wants us to be morally minded even as he undermines our moral vanities. “You are salt and light, and you are capable of so much,” he says. “But forget moralism and clamouring for honours. Renounce shaming the vulnerable.” To us in particular, he says: “Be more aware of privilege and the way that privilege fosters a sense of entitlement and a violent disregard (in smaller and wider contexts) for those who resist possession, subjugation, control.

“Focus on love. Begin again to love. Not with a  love that depends on chemistry, feelings or Valentine’s Day mood — not even with a love that depends on the behaviour of others (God knows the history of human relations is blood-soaked – marked by petty quarreling, betrayal and dysfunction). Love one another as equals, equally in need of mercy and encouragement, as brothers and sisters, as children of God.”

There’s an underlying refrain to it all: contemplate the unconditional love of God.

Another mountain sermon. An old pilgrim was making his way to the Himalayan Mountains in the bitter cold of winter when it began to rain. An inn keeper said to him, “How will you ever get there in this kind of weather?” The old man answered cheerfully, “My heart got there first, so it’s easy for the rest of me to follow.”

The gospel teaches that we can meet the demands of love expressed in Torah in one way – if our hearts go/get there first.

The Sermon on the Mount concerns the heart. The heart enchanted, converted by God – again and again.

By way of scripturing, then, Jesus gives illustrations of Torah fulfilled, of the heart open to creativity and conversion, discernment and wisdom. His examples do not aim to be exhaustive (we may even take issue with certain points) so much as to inspire and sustain the heart. The Sermon on the Mount “enshrines a way of life open to reinterpretation and reapplication in the light of a living tradition …” (Brendan Byrne).

Contemplate the unconditional love of God.

“The Scriptures ... do not relieve us of the responsibility of thinking for ourselves … or of rethinking ancient traditions, for the ultimate tradition that is handed down to us is not any particular creed, practice, or institutional structure, but the event of love that was astir in Jesus and then is handed on to the church. [A] genuine tradition is not constituted by any position or positivity but by a deeper affirmation. The task is not to reproduce literally what Jesus said and did ... but to repeat the love with which he said and did them, on the bet that those are the practices in which he would recognize himself today” (John D. Caputo).

When have you received a deep affirmation in communication with a teacher? Have you ever experienced following your own heart? What was that like? Where did it lead you? … Amen.

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