“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” – Deuteronomy 6:5
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, our Lord and redeemer. Amen
For twenty five years I lived in a house with three women. In that environment Valentine’s Day is the “Day of Mandatory Chocolate.” Overlooked anniversaries and birthdays could be forgiven (well, eventually) but failure to provide dark chocolate hearts was an unforgivable sin. Looking at this teaching from Jesus about anger, adultery, taking oaths, and the careless destruction of marriage, I wonder if Jesus is really asking us to take a look. What’s in your heart?
Jesus’ teachings today extend his blessings and woes from the Sermon on the Mount. We are also told before this that our righteousness in following the Law of Moses must exceed that of the Pharisees. That’s a tall order. Sometimes Jesus gives us a teaching where the metaphor is stretched beyond achievability, such as a camel going through the eye of a needle. The exaggeration is intended to wake us up and make a point. But in this case, Jesus is not stretching things to make a point. He is completely serious. Our righteousness flows from the attitude of our hearts AND our courage (a word whose root means “heart”) in carrying things out.
Why should our outward actions exceed the actions of people deemed to be the most studious followers of the law? Put in a more modern context, why should our behavior towards our brothers and sisters be BETTER than the behavior we observe with bishops, clergy and seminary ethics professors? Because outward behavior is just the first step of peeling the onion. Jesus is really focusing on what is in our hearts. Even righteous action is not foolproof because it is possible to do the right things and still have your heart in the wrong place. For example there are some people who give but inwardly they give grudgingly. Scripture commends a “cheerful giver”, not a grudging giver.
Developing good moral behavior and good communities is kind of like going to the gym to work out. Sometimes we don’t want to. Sometimes we are too tired or distracted to go. We can make all kinds of excuses. But we know the right thing to do is to eat healthy, go to the gym, and get those muscles pumping. In the same way, as individuals AND as a community we need to build our moral muscles. When a community of faith such as Grace Church fails to go to the moral fitness center, we become overweight, lazy, and complacent. After a while we begin to look not like a community of faith, but instead we begin to look just like the community around us.
Let’s get something straight about Jesus and moral behavior. Moral behavior is NOT primarily about sex or sexuality. It is about the attitude of our heart. Our Gospel today contains teachings about anger, adultery, divorce, and the taking of oaths. Let’s focus on anger since it is the root of all the others.
This is one of those uncomfortable subjects. We are all prone to some kind of anger. Perhaps we would prefer a nice academic sermon about the other three issues Jesus raises? The Greek language has two different terms for the English concept of anger. One is the kind of anger that flares up and goes away quickly. I am thinking here about my thoughts lately when I observed other people’s driving abilities in the snow.
The other term for anger implies a smoldering, long term, just beneath the surface kind of anger. Healthcare experts will tell you that this kind of anger is what leads many people to heart attacks, ulcers, and possibly autoimmune diseases. In some respect we literally eat ourselves up from the inside. Jesus takes aim directly at this kind of anger and tells us (my translation):
“But I tell you, that everyone who smolders with simmering anger towards his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whoever shall say to his brother, “You moron!’ shall be in danger of judgment by the Sanhedrin; and whoever shall say, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of the fire of Gehenna.”
(Gehenna, or “hell” in some translations, was the garbage dump outside the city walls of Jerusalem.)
There is a helpful qualification in this that needs to be pointed out – “without a cause.” (See the KJV) Jesus assumes that if you are angry because your brother or sister has actually done something to harm you, then you need to seek recourse through the courts or even through the councils of the church. What he is talking about here is the unjustified expression of anger towards others – the calling of names, swearing at others, malicious gossip, and other harmful behaviors. Psychologists sometimes call this “gunnysack behavior”, because the angry person takes all the offenses, hurts and transgressions he or she has received from others over a long period of time, and stuffs all that into a gunny sack. Later when the slightest provocation comes along, such as a two wheel drive car fishtailing in the snow, a disappointment, a misinterpreted motive, a missed appointment, and so forth, the provocation is met with the emptying of the gunnysack by the angry person. The confrontation is often shocking and ugly.
While there may indeed by some provoking, annoying, disappointing or untoward behavior by one party, the response of the angry person far outweighs the stimulus of the offending person. After nearly a year together we begin to get real for one another. I have seen this process unfolding inside of families, between individuals in our parish, and between parishioners and members of the wider community. I have seen people dump their gunnysacks at others by electronic communication.
We all have our gunnysacks because in some ways we are all victims of someone else’s hurtful behavior. The world out there is full of people venting themselves on others without real cause. Business schools call it the “Law of the Jungle.” But Jesus wants Christian believers and Christian communities to distinguish ourselves from the world out there. What are we to do?
He gives us some very concrete advice about the process. The passing of the peace in our liturgy is the formal expression and reminder that we are ALL to engage in this process because we all have a brother or sister who has something against us. We have all been on both sides of the coin as victims and oppressors.
If you believe in Jesus; if you want to follow his teachings; if you want to become a better person, then YOU need to take the initiative. Chances are you have offended or hurt someone else. Chances are that someone else has offended or hurt you. That’s what happens inside of marriages and families and communities. It is unavoidable.
Regardless of whether you are the victim or the oppressor YOU need to take the initiative and go to that person. Screw up your courage. Build up your heart. Go to them. It is not about groveling. It is about love. Jesus is calling you to love even the people that cause you pain. This is the high calling of Christian faith. In this process of sharing the peace that passes all understanding, your gunnysack will slowly empty. You will probably live longer. You will certainly live better. Your life will be a greater blessing to you, your spouse, your family, and your community. This is the life that Jesus calls “eternal life.”
People out there in the world think Christians are wimpy because of this process. They laugh at this love and think it is just an excuse for weakness. They prefer to live in the law of the jungle – “Take advantage of others before they do that to you.” Jesus calls you to a love that is stronger that the world out there. They will know we are different. They will know we are Christians by our love. Some of the people in the world out there will be powerfully attracted to that love.
As an alternative to hard work of taking the initiative, Jesus gives us an image of the world out there: Gehenna. It was a steep ravine filled up with human and animal waste and all the organic matter from a thousand years of settlement. It was an enormous compost pile. Occasionally in the desert heat, large bubbles of methane or natural gas would well up from the compost and ignite spontaneously. The burst of flame must have been spectacular. The world out there? It’s hot, unpredictable, and not a pleasant place to be. I’ll take my chances with Jesus.