Candid Church: Sermon on Matthew 5:33-37

I have a confession to make. I have a hobby that really excites me. It's called 'reading.' I know, I know: people who know me never guess! But it's the truth! I love to spend my leisure time with a good book. Especially a history book. And especially-especially an obscure history book from the Middle Ages. 

So lately, I've been reading this, the works of Liutprand – he was a bishop in the tenth century, and wrote a cranky and wonderfully biased story of the chaos of recent decades. So I've been reading it this week, and there was one story that shocked me so much, I can't help but tell you this morning. It's the story of the Babenberg Feud. 

I'm sure you can't even walk into town without somebody reminding you of the Babenberg Feud, but just in case, let's turn the clock back eleven hundred years, to the land of the Eastern Franks that would someday be called 'Germany.' Those first generations after Charlemagne were a wild and woolly time, and two noble Franconian families were bent on grasping after power.

On one side were the Babenbergs. They were led by three brothers, all sons of Duke Henry, who faithfully served the German king Charles the Fat. Charles loved them. But after a reign spent trying to bribe the vicious Viking warriors of the Great Heathen Army for peace, Charles' renegade nephew Arnulf booted him from power. And King Arnulf wasn't so fond of the Babenberg kids. On the other side of the fight were the Conradines – the family of Duke Conrad the Elder, a close relative of Arnulf's queen. 

To make room for Conrad to take power, King Arnulf gave the boot to Henry's brother Poppo. And so centuries and centuries before the Hatfields and McCoys, thus began a family feud that outlived Arnulf and lasted into the reign of his son, King Louis the Child. The Babenbergs and the Conradines struggled for power. Years of fighting led to the big climax: the Battle of Fritzlar, February 27, 906.

The Battle of Fritzlar brutalized both families. Two of the three Babenberg brothers died; so did Conrad the Elder. And in the wake of the horrid loss, the last of the Babenberg brothers, Adalbert, knew his days were numbered. And so he withdrew into his castle. He hunkered down. Try as they might, his enemies couldn't lay their hands on him. He repelled every siege, every attack. The barely teenaged King Louis summoned him to stand trial, but Adalbert wouldn't leave his castle.

And then one day, Adalbert received a very prestigious visitor. A man named Hatto. Now Hatto was not just any man. He was the archbishop of Mainz and guardian of the boy king. And he came, he said, as a messenger of peace. As the story goes, Hatto made his way to the castle – who refuses an archbishop? – and said to Adalbert that he should lay aside his rebellion and take an offer of mercy. “Take my advice and accord me your trust,” said the bishop, “Accept an oath by which you may without any hesitation leave the castle and return. If you don't believe the promises of my priesthood, at least don't distrust my oath, since I will arrange it so I will lead you back here, just as I will lead you safe and sound from this castle.”

Hatto swore a solemn oath to ensure Adalbert's safe passage and safe return to the castle. And Adalbert was incredibly relieved. Can you imagine how relieved he was, to think that a plea agreement was in the works, that he'd be set free by the king to return home in peace? So he accepted the sworn promise and asked Archbishop Hatto to eat with him. Hatto declined; he wanted to get on the road immediately. And so he started out, and Adalbert couldn't afford to stay behind. And so off the two went, hand in hand.

After they'd gone a small distance, Hatto turned to Adalbert. Hatto said he regretted not having gotten a meal while he had the chance, because he was awfully hungry. Adalbert felt bad – his castle wasn't so far behind them – and suggested they go grab a quick lunch. And so they did, hand in hand. No sooner had they finished the meal than they traveled to go see King Louis that very day, Hatto leading Adalbert all the way. And immediately, the king summoned the judges, and they put Adalbert on trial. Finding him guilty of treason, they sentenced him to lose his head. And as guards dragged him away in chains, he saw Hatto and called on him to keep his promise.

You can almost see the smirk on Hatto's face as he says, “I promised you would be led out from your castle just as hale and hearty as you would be led back; and I perceived I had done that when I led you back into the castle safe and sound right after having led you out!” 

Hatto was a corrupt, self-serving archbishop. His promise had been a ruse, designed only to trap the hapless hero and abuse his trust. Adalbert had been tricked. And soon Adalbert was dead. It was a millennium, a century, and a decade ago this very month – September 906.

Nearly nine hundred years before that, the Lord they both claimed to serve sat on the mountainside and spoke words of life – words that, if obeyed, would have blessed the Babenbergs and the Conradines and even Hatto. We've been learning these words of life for over a month now. 

We've listened to Jesus declare us – misfits by the world's standards, misfits by the Pharisees' standards – to be the target audience of his kingdom. We've heard the call to a mission of being salt and light for the world around us. And Jesus has started opening up the Law to us – clearing away the misconceptions, showing us where the Law's aiming at, and offering us the Spirit to get us there. Jesus showed us that when the Law condemned murder, God's heart for us was to dig out our anger and contempt and replace it with peace and forgiveness. Jesus showed us that when the Law condemned adultery, God's heart for us was to dig out our lust and replace it with holy desires in chaste marriage or celibate singleness.

And now Jesus turns to another teaching of the Law, about oaths and vows. But this one, he paraphrases. What the Law actually says is, “You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:12). Forget about the 'falsely' part for a minute. What does it mean to “swear by his name” at all? What is an oath for? 

The whole point of an oath was to call a god to bear witness to the truth of what you were saying. You were getting the god involved. And by implication, you were inviting them to curse you if your words proved untrue. “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye” – literally, that phrase means calling the crucified Jesus to witness the heartfelt sincerity of your words and saying that, if you're lying, then may you be tortured to death. Not exactly a kid-friendly rhyme, now, is it? But that's what it means. Because an oath means getting the god involved, staking a divine reputation on guaranteeing your truthfulness by punishing you if you fall short.

But people could use oaths to manipulate, especially if they didn't take them that seriously. In all sorts of times and places, people would use oaths to drive home a point. After all, people should take you pretty seriously if you're willing to get a god involved and put your life on the line, right? So in a Greek marketplace, you'd hear, “Of course these jugs will hold up, I call Zeus as witness!” In Babylon, “By Marduk, you'll never find a better price than this.” A Philistine merchant might swear by Dagon that you can trust him about the quality of his goods or the fairness of his price, or any number of things. It became just a normal bargaining tool. It became a mundane fact of life. People used it flippantly, lying and stapling their god's name to it. 

We do it still today. “I swear to God, if you kids don't stop fighting back there, I will turn this car around!” Instead of, “I swear to God,” the people of ancient Israel would say, “As surely as the LORD lives.” And they often did so... falsely.

And in the Bible, the LORD has some pretty strong objections to that. He tells us not to use his name falsely, because that makes a holy name – his very reputation – like some common thing, to do with as we please. We drag his name through the mud, so to speak, for our own gain – and he is not okay with that. It's a serious sin. In fact, this is a big part of what he meant when he said, “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain, for the LORD shall not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). Taking his name in vain means attaching it to our own agendas – playing the 'God card' to serve our purposes, just the way we're prone to.

The LORD tells us that we aren't supposed to invoke his name frivolously, the way pagans did with their gods. The children of Israel were to be very careful with how they used his name. They weren't to attach anything false to it. They weren't to prophesy their own imaginings – pretending the LORD endorsed a message he didn't speak. 

But of course we see that today plenty, too. How many so-called “prophesy experts” get away with calculating the end-times over and over again without losing any fans? How many televangelists jump on any disaster to explain their personal gut-instinct to why God sent it? How many politicians have figured out just where in any speech to mention God so as to flatter one more key demographic? How many Christians dress up their demands and requests in extra-'religious' language to try to get their own way, leveraging God in service to their own interests?

That's why it's written in Ecclesiastes, “It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear” (Ecclesiastes 5:5-7). In other words, if you keep making flippant oaths or vows, if you keep taking the name of the LORD in vain, he won't hold you guiltless – now there's an understatement. In fact, he'll be “angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands.”

But the children of Israel were a lot like us. They heard the LORD say not to use his name in vain. A good way to do that, they thought, is not to say his name out loud at all. Let the priests have a monopoly on that. Instead of calling him “Yahweh,” we'll gloss over that by saying, “the LORD,” or simply, “the Name,” HaShem. For some people, that was enough. Avoid those sacred syllables, and you've dealt with the problem and can say whatever you want. The rabbis said that wasn't quite good enough. Any time you said, “the LORD,” or “God,” or “the Name,” you were still invoking him, still calling him to witness.

So what do the people do? They turn into lawyers. They wrangle over technicalities. They start hunting for more loopholes. They do exactly what Archbishop Hatto did: they find ways to make it seem like they're giving an oath, but leaving themselves a handy escape clause. One way to do that, they figured, it the way he did it: by using misleading terms in the oath. Seem to promise one thing, but actually promise a lot less. Or put in there a condition nobody notices. Make the terms and conditions so long, so convoluted, that people get lost. That's how the game is played, right? And so Archbishop Hatto could leave himself a loophole and think that he didn't do anything wrong. After all, he kept the letter of what he said; what fault is it of his if Adalbert took it the wrong way, if Adalbert expected more than Hatto's words literally offered?

But there was another trick that people used in the time of Jesus. And that was this. They noticed that the Law talked a lot about what they vowed “to Yahweh your God” – and they knew that anything they vowed to the LORD, they had to follow through with. So far, so good. That's why Jesus quotes the paraphrase of the Law. What the crowd had heard wasn't the Law itself, straight from the source; it was the Law as twisted and distorted by their teachers (Matthew 5:33). And they put emphasis on that phrase, “to the LORD.” “Oh,” they decided, “it's just what we swear to the LORD that the Law requires us to make good on.” They found that way of putting things awfully convenient.

“Aha, a loophole,” they thought. “So then, what if we swear on or to other things? What if we swear on heaven? Or on earth? Or on Jerusalem? Or on the temple? Or on the altar? Or on our own head, or our own heart? If we do that, surely we're in the clear. Because,” people thought, “if an oath depends on invoking a god, getting him involved by mentioning his name or title, then if we avoid that, we're in the clear. We haven't literally mentioned him, so we can say whatever we want. Best of all, we can find ways to say it that make people think we're super-serious, but without bringing God into it or putting anything at risk!” 

So the scribes and teachers had to sort through which things carried how much weight. Don't swear by God, because he's holy; swear instead by heaven or earth, which aren't. Don't swear by the gold of the temple, but you can swear by the temple itself. Don't swear by the sacrifices on the altar, but you can swear by the altar itself (Matthew 23:16, 18).

And it's exactly this kind of reasoning that Jesus is rejecting here. Jesus says that we've been thinking about it all wrong. Our fatal assumption is that God is only involved when we explicitly say so – when we mention him by name, or by a title like 'LORD' or 'God.' Our fatal assumption is that the default is for God to be uninterested and unconcerned. In other words, our fatal assumption is that everything that isn't explicitly 'religious' is just 'secular.'

Jesus disagrees – and strongly. If you swear by heaven, God has an interest in that – after all, he lives there! He has his throne there, so if you say, “I swear by heaven,” you're swearing by God anyway (Matthew 5:34; 23:22). If you swear by earth, God has an interest in that – after all, if heaven is like God's throne, earth is like his footstool. God has constant contact with the earth; so if you say, “I swear by earth,” you're still swearing by God. The same with Jerusalem. If you swear by Jerusalem, God has an interest in that, because God loves Jerusalem – it's “the city of the Great King,” it's his city, so you're swearing by God anyway (Matthew 5:35). 

And the same goes for what's in Jerusalem. If you swear by the gift on the altar, it's the altar that makes it holy anyway, “so whoever swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it” (Matthew 23:20). And if you swear by the temple and avoid mentioning the sacred gold, well, the temple is what makes the gold sacred, not vice versa, Jesus says (Matthew 23:17). And why is the temple sacred at all? Because it's God's dwelling place. So of course God is involved if you mention the temple: “Whoever swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it,” Jesus said (Matthew 23:21).

In light of all that, some people retreated into just swearing by their own head. But Jesus effectively asks, “Who owns your head? It's not you. If you owned your head, if you had power over it, you'd be able to change black hairs to white and white hairs to black – not just in outward appearance with dye, like you do today, but you'd be able to speed up or reverse the effects of age and time. You don't have power over your head. God does. You can't make even one hair change what it is” (cf. Matthew 5:36). So even swearing by your own head is to mention something where God has a concern. In other words, Jesus is saying, even when you keep things as personal and secular as you can, God is still already involved.

Today, we have a new trick we've invented. We've stopped mentioning any objects at all. In court, we don't swear to God; we swear to... well, we don't specify; we just ask God to help us be truthful. We do it in everyday life, too. We say, “Honest, I swear!” We leave off the object. Or we use the words, “I promise” – get rid of the outer shape of the oath altogether. And so we start thinking that saying, “I promise” is less serious than “I swear,” and “I swear” is less serious than “I swear to God.” We think that God is less concerned with what we promise than what we swear, and less concerned with what we swear generically than what we swear to him. 

But Jesus has news for us: That isn't true. God is concerned with every word that comes out of a mouth he created, using sound he invented, with sound waves promulgating through air he owns and operates. What we call 'secular,' 'mundane,' he calls his.

Jesus bids us ask some hard questions instead. Why did people have to invent this thing called an oath – why did we ever feel the need to try to call God to witness and enforce some of our words in the first place? Because we speak words that might be false. We make statements that are untrue – maybe lies outright, maybe exaggerations meant to mislead. And because we exaggerate, because we lie, because we play fast and loose with the facts, we reduce the trust between us and our neighbors. Our own mere say-so isn't good enough. That's why we invented oaths – so we'd have more than our mere say-so; we could enlist God's say-so to back us up. And it's why we invented promises – as if to say, “I know I say things that aren't true, but I'm singling this one out as special and different!” That's what an oath or a vow or a promise does: it singles out one statement as truthful and serious, amidst all the nonsense we otherwise try to get away with. And because the human heart is so bent on doing that, we've had that whole history of seeking loopholes, watching God close them, and then trying to dig new ones.

Jesus aims, not just to close the loopholes, but to remind us what the tapestry looks like. Where does all this untruthfulness come from? We just said it: the human heart. Like Jesus said, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19). It isn't something we can regulate with rules, any more than the age-old rules against murder and adultery have cured anger and lust. That's not to say the rules were useless – they did much to limit some of the social damage that unchecked anger and lust had. But the rules in themselves didn't eliminate the problem. They couldn't. They warned against the problem's biggest fruit, and they were meant to point us to the problem's deepest root.

So when God kept closing loopholes – telling us not to take his name in vain, and so forth – what aim was he trying to accomplish? What kind of people was he trying to make? A people with new hearts – honest hearts. Instead of spelling out a new set of guidelines, Jesus tells us, “Do not take any oath at all” – or, maybe we should take it, “Do not take oaths for just anything” (Matthew 5:34). Jesus then goes on to say, “Let your 'Yes' be 'yes' and your 'No' be 'no'; anything more than this comes from the Evil One” (Matthew 5:37).

In other words, be people who say clearly what they mean – no wiggle room, no trickery, no lies. Be people whose every word carries as much weight as a sacred vow. Be so honest, so truthful, that those around you will learn that they can trust you without any verbal enhancements; they can learn to take you at your word without fearing they overlooked a loophole in what you said. When you mean yes, say yes; when you mean no, say no. 

All our hedging, all our loopholes, all our contracts full of legalese, all our fine distinctions – that comes from the devil, who's been a liar and thief and murderer from the first day we met – “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). And whenever we bend the truth and look for ways to deceive and manipulate, we become imitators of Satan rather than imitators of God. Because God said, “You shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another” (Leviticus 19:11).

The past few Sundays, we've imagined what it would look like if the church were a community without anger, where we always treated our neighbors as bearing the image of God and each other as fellow priests and kings in Christ. We've imagined what it would look like if the church were a community without lust, where we always valued God's design for marriage and learned to be content with relationships God's given us. 

But the truth is, throughout history, the visible church has often betrayed Jesus' ideal. Where Jesus urged us to be set free from anger, people calling themselves Christians went forth in war. In the course of the Crusades, entire communities were slaughtered in God's name – perhaps the vainest way it can be taken. Where Jesus urged us to be set free from lust, so-called Christian Europe was filled with prostitution and adultery – so much so, Pope Alexander VI fathered numerous illegitimate children while pope! And, we have to admit, where Jesus urged us to be set free from untruthfulness and trickery, the visible church has often turned its back on that, too. Remember: Hatto was an archbishop! And yet he was rash with his mouth – and so, often, are we, as well.

And the vast gap between the history of the so-called church and the Sermon on the Mount has become one of the greatest reasons non-believers cite for not wanting anything to do with the gospel. Which is a great shame, because Jesus is describing what a healthy church should look like, how a kingdom-ready people behave. And there have been times where we've succeeded, where we've resisted temptation, where we've followed the Spirit and been salt and light in the world and actually changed the culture so much that so-called post-Christians take for granted the common assumptions of a gospel-touched world.

But what would it look like if the church were a community that had no need for oaths and promises? What if we were a people who always spoke the truth in love, or who learned to let our words be few (Ecclesiastes 5:2)? What if we didn't just avoid intentional falsehood, but accidental falsehood? 

Because remember, Jesus said, “On the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matthew 12:36). That includes all the cruel jokes we make at the expense of public figures. It includes all the rash, hot-tempered wishes for violent retribution against criminals accused in the newspaper. But it also includes all the rumors we pass along, all the gossip we repeat about our neighbors. It includes all the distorted news and propaganda, all the conspiracy theories and fabrications we repost on social media. It includes all the ideas we just didn't bother to check out before repeating them to others. All that careless talk comes from the same place as oath-breaking.

Because what God is looking for is hearts that value the truth – so much that they won't betray it, so much they won't distort it, so much they won't ignore it. Those are the hearts the Spirit wants to grow and cultivate within each one of us. And a people defined together by those hearts – that's a powerful force in the world. 

That's who God wants us to be: not just a conciliatory church freed from anger and for forgiveness, not just a chaste church freed from lust and for contentment and joy, but a candid church freed from oath-breaking and for love of truth, for trustworthy honesty. That's where the Law has always been aiming: at the heart of the God of love who is himself the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth. 

May God help us, by his Word and his Spirit, to speak no careless words but to be fully devoted to the truth always. Amen.

Chaste Church: Sermon on Matthew 5:27-32

As we've been exploring the Sermon on the Mount in the past few weeks, Jesus has invited the crowd to live the blessed life – to be ready for the kingdom of God to arrive. He's reminded them that the kingdom people are the real Israel – they make a difference in the world, like salt and light. And they haven't abandoned the Law of Moses. But he's come as the New Moses to take us deeper. He's signing us up for the new covenant, where God will take away our hard hearts and give us soft hearts inscribed already with the Law. 

And he gives us the Spirit of God. The Spirit lets us race to the Law's goal faster than the Law gets there, because the Spirit gives us that power. So although we glance back to the Law to make sure we're going the right way, we don't live under it; we live ahead of it, in the Spirit. So where the Law told us not to murder, Jesus shows us that the Spirit will cure our anger, which is the root of murder – and if we follow the Spirit, we can't fall afoul of the Law.

So now Jesus turns to the next greatest crime after murder: “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery'” (Matthew 5:27). And few people have any objection to that. Certainly the crowd that day didn't. They knew that was the Law, and they respected it. And they knew it was the main sexual sin any of them faced, since most people in Jesus' day were married in their teen years. And even today, most of those who commit adultery will usually agree that adultery is generally wrong, even if they think their case is something special. But Jesus drives us deeper than the words of the Law; he wants us to see what it reveals about God's heart and God's vision for healthy life in his kingdom.

But Jesus forces us to ask, “Why? Why not commit adultery? What's so special about marriage that adultery is a problem?” And so we have to know what marriage is, and what our impulses for love and intimacy are for. 

Jesus isn't shy about telling us, either. Elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew, he gets into a debate with the Pharisees about this topic. They're interested in wrangling about the rules; he's interested in what God's plan was from the very beginning: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4-6).

Our culture is dreadfully confused about marriage – even more than the Pharisees ever were. We know that. But Jesus tells us what we need to know. He explains marriage by pointing back to the first one. Marriage is a special kind of union created by God. It isn't something we came up with. It isn't an invention like the car or the telephone or the electric guitar – something we can redesign at will, something we have authority over, to do with as we please. Marriage is a divine creation, not a human invention. So he sets the definition and the rules, not us. And because he created it, we're meant to think of it as a gift, not a burden. It's something he gave because he loves us. It's a gift from our Creator, and it reaches back through time to those first hazy memories of a world without sin.

Jesus tells us next that marriage is built on difference – the union of complementary people. Marriage is built on the fact that some of us were created male and others of us were created female. That's just what marriage is: a union that involves man and woman. Jesus said it. And God defined it. No matter what the courts or the laws say, a union without both man and woman can't be a marriage. That's not unfairness; that's just the way it's defined. Marriage is meant for something that only a man and a woman can do.

Jesus goes on to tell us that marriage is important – so important that God said it takes precedence over the next greatest bonds in society, those tying a person to his or her parents. A man departs from his parents in order to be bound to his wife. Marriage becomes the primary human commitment for those who enter into it, so it has to be something pretty serious.

And then Jesus makes clear: there are two people involved in this. Not one. And certainly not three or four or five. Polygamy was never God's design for marriage; it was tolerated for a while, but that 'while' is done and over with. Because marriage involves two, just two. Now, the word 'two' isn't in the original Hebrew. By the time Jesus is having this conversation, some Jews had been noticing that, when Noah brought animals onto the ark that were 'male and female,' the same words God used earlier in defining marriage, it was 'two by two' – and that meant that marriage should be two, too. Jesus agrees: marriage is for two, one man and one woman.

But these two don't stay merely two, the way a business partnership between two people does. Jesus explains, again quoting Genesis, that the two – the man and the woman united in marriage – become one flesh, a new creature that's meant to last as long as the people who make up its parts do. In marriage, we become one new thing, an organic unity. And in that one new thing, that one flesh, is the one and only setting where God's good gift of human sexuality was meant to be celebrated. Outside of that, it turns rotten and dangerous – fast.  Jesus' messenger Paul later clarified: “The body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord” (1 Corinthians 6:13).

If Jesus had needed to, he could have gone on. He could have pointed out how the next verse showed that one of the reasons for marriage was “to be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Marriage is the setting where that's meant to happen; no other will do. Marriage is what all those desires were meant for. It's where our physical parts work together like one body, one compound organism, for a common goal: the creation of new life. That's not all marriage is for, of course. Eve was created because it wasn't good for Adam to be alone; he needed companionship, he needed an equal who'd be 'bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh,' he needed a helper suitable for him.

Jesus also could have reminded us that marriage is a living parable. Paul talks about that, and so did the ancient prophets. They said that, when God gave the Law at Mount Sinai, he actually had a wedding with the nation of Israel (e.g., Ezekiel 16:8). He rescued the damsel in distress in Egypt, and at the mountain he married her. Paul takes that up and speaks of the relationship between Christ and his church as a marriage, or leading to a marriage, like we see in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 19:6-9). That's what every marriage is meant to point toward. Every marriage, Paul shows us, is created as a parable pointing to that reality of God and his people (Ephesians 5:31). And that's what makes marriage so holy, so sacred, so important.

And that's what makes adultery so equally dreadful. Adultery is unfaithfulness to your spouse, or accommodating some other person's unfaithfulness to his or her spouse. It's an infringement, not merely of the rights of the victimized partner, but of the sacredness of marriage itself, which concerns the rights of the God who sanctified it from the beginning. If marriage is a parable of God and his people (and that's exactly what marriage is), adultery is then a parable of idolatry – which is exactly the way the prophets talk about it (e.g., Ezekiel 16:15-34). Adultery is a betrayal of sacred trust, a violation of sacred oaths, a demeaning of what's prized and precious, a curse against what's holy and blessed; adultery is a crime not merely against another person (though it always is that, too) but even against God the Creator, God the Lover of his people, God the Marriage-Sanctifier. It's a horrible misuse of the gifts God has given us. And that's on top of all the harm it causes in real flesh-and-blood human lives – not just of the betrayed husband or wife, but friends and family torn asunder when the 'one flesh' gets stuck to other flesh in ways it never should (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:15-20).

And so now that we understand what marriage is, Jesus can ask us, “Where does adultery come from?” And the first answer has to be, “Desire for another.” It comes from the eyes, and ultimately the heart. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality” (Matthew 15:19). Before adultery is ever a body issue, it's a heart issue. And so Jesus tells us in this morning's passage, “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). 

Jesus is warning us that lust – which many people in that day and age, and in ours, too, thought was harmless – is what you'll see in adultery's baby pictures. Lust is where it begins. Lust isn't innocent, like many people back then believed. Lust is a hankering for what isn't yours to have, yours to dream about – Jesus uses the same word that you find in the tenth commandment, “You shall not covet your neighbor's wife” (Exodus 20:17). And, it deserves to be mentioned, premarital sex was widely viewed as a sort of adultery in advance, which Jesus took quite into account when he discussed the subject – so lust is a problem between two singles just as between people otherwise attached.

Note, by the way, who gets blamed for lust. In many Jewish circles in those days, if a man lusted after a woman, the blame was placed mainly on the woman – maybe she didn't have her hair wrapped up in a headscarf, or maybe her arms were bare, or maybe she was talking to a man besides her husband. But Jesus says, no, the blame for lust falls mainly on the one doing the lusting.

And when Jesus talks about lust, he isn't talking merely about attraction. As one commentator says, “Jesus refers not to noticing a person's beauty, but to imbibing it, meditating on it, seeking to possess it.” The intent is what matters. Lust is about intentionally cultivating the temptation – looking with that intent, not just to appreciate beauty in an aesthetic sense, not just being attracted to in a way that can rightly lead to marriage, but intending to dwell on someone in ways inappropriate to act on in the real-world present, so as to fuel one's illicit imagination. 

Jesus isn't advocating being repressed; he's talking about keeping control of your desires, stopping them from latching onto forbidden things. He's teaching us to avoid reducing people to objects – physical objects for our sexual desires, or emotional objects to fulfill our wistful longings. He's teaching us to treat people as whole people, with an intimacy in thought and in action kept only in proportion to our commitment.

Jesus says that lust is serious – so serious it carries eternal consequences. So much so that you should be ready to go to any lengths to avoid it – better to live without eyes or hands than to surrender to lust and perish in hell (Matthew 5:29-30). Now, he isn't literally telling us to rip out our eyes or cut off our hands – because that isn't where lust comes from, anyway. It comes from the heart. And it's the heart that needs cured. Which, thank God, is exactly what he offers the Spirit for – to train us to avoid lust so that we won't even need the Law's rules on adultery. And the Spirit brings us together with other mature believers who can help keep us accountable.

And while Jesus is on the topic of marriage, he takes aim at another challenge: divorce. The Law had said, long before, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce” (Matthew 5:31; cf. Deuteronomy 24:1-4). Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus gets into a debate with the Pharisees about divorce (Matthew 19:3-9). 

See, in Jesus' time, there were two main groups of Pharisees, called the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel – Paul studied, before his conversion, under Hillel's grandson Gamaliel, maybe you remember. They agreed about plenty. They agreed, for instance, that marriage vows involved a commitment to provide food, clothing, shelter, and intimacy. 

But one difference between them was how they read the passage in Deuteronomy that Jesus is quoting. It explains that one basis for divorce was 'a matter of indecency.' Shammai said that that's one unified phrase that denotes a single basis for divorce, and the thing meant is some kind of sexual sin, of the sort laid out in Leviticus. Hillel, on the other hand, interpreted the phrase as actually offering two different reasons: 'indecency,' on the one hand, and 'any matter,' on the other. So they offered 'any-matter' divorce – just any reason a man can think up.

And believe you me, they came up with a lot of reasons. The early rabbis recorded in Jewish writings list plenty of reasons why men divorced their wives, or why wives asked courts to make their husbands divorce them. Various opinions entered into the record said he could divorce her if he decided her head was the wrong shape, or her nose was too big or too little, or she had missing teeth, or she was too tan, or if her eyebrows were too bushy, or if she caught certain diseases, or if she didn't cook, or if she burned supper, or if she didn't leave the house clean, or if she yelled at him, or if she couldn't have children, or if she visited her parents, or if she spoke to another man, or if she did anything he'd told her not to do, or even if he just saw somebody prettier. The rabbis list all those reasons and plenty more as fair grounds for divorce. That's what they meant by 'any-matter' divorce – and our country practices much the same today, under the label of 'no-fault divorce.'

That's why the Pharisees asked Jesus, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” – just any matter at all? (Matthew 19:3). But he put a stop to all their legal wrangling, all this making of excuses to find ways out of marriage. He said no – only the biblical reasons like adultery, desertion, emotional neglect, or material neglect would be acceptable, anything that persistently broke marriage vows without repentance. 

He went further, then – further than anybody else – and said that God would not look on an 'any-matter' divorce as valid. And all the Jews agreed that remarriage after an invalid divorce was a form of adultery, technically speaking (Matthew 5:32). 

That's a hard thing to hear. Maybe some of us here this morning have sought out divorce, and maybe for reasons that Jesus says don't pass muster. Maybe some of us have remarried after that, and Jesus says that's technically adultery – the act of remarriage, not necessarily the rest of the marriage. That's not a comfortable thing to hear. But Jesus offers grace and forgiveness for all who repent, even adulterers and technical adulterers.  If you've been in those shoes, there is ample forgiveness and complete cleansing available for you in Jesus – grace greater than all your sin. “If we walk in the light, as [God] is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” – our past sins, misdeeds, and faulty judgment cannot impair the persistence of our unity in love – “and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  Concealment, secrecy, and self-justification are a fool's errand.  But “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” – no exceptions even for sins like these (1 John 1:7-9).  There is wholesale cleansing on the offer, without cost and without price – not so that we can keep living in the sin we already died to, but so that we can receive a higher righteousness and higher wisdom to live by and flourish (Romans 6:2).

But still, even so, the Pharisees had an objection to the way Jesus was talking about marriage. They thought that there were circumstances where God commanded them to divorce, thought they saw such cases in the Law delivered by Moses, and so they reasoned that marriage just can't be what Jesus says it is (Matthew 19:7). 

In response, Jesus reads the Law differently. Jesus says that God allowed them to divorce, on these specific grounds (Matthew 19:8-9). A divorce wasn't the command; giving a certificate in the event of a divorce was the command – and that's because, in other ancient cultures, a first husband could reclaim a wife any time he pleased, even if she'd been remarried for years! That's why Moses wrote what he did. So as to put some limits on the inventiveness of human injustice and on the imposition of perpetual burdens, God regulated how to divorce, but that doesn't mean they (or we) should do it.

Jesus called for total forgiveness wherever possible, so long as the person repented. Divorce was the last resort in case of an absolutely hardened heart, but even then, it was never mandatory, so far as Jesus was concerned – and neither was marrying again. Divorce is against what God designed marriage for, and that's what's important to Jesus here – because God gave us marriage as a gift to bring life. Almost never is divorce something that God wants us to do – in cases of abuse, certainly, and some other unrepentant and persistent betrayals like continued adultery, but otherwise not – and so divorce isn't a decision to make without counsel from God's word, God's Spirit, and God's people. 

That's what Jesus is telling us – we should not look at marriage and think about divorce as an option, because we should see marriage the way God sees it: as exclusive, lifelong loyalty with body and soul between a man made in God's image and a woman made in God's image, joined as one new flesh made in God's image to invite new life that, if that gift is received from God's hand, will be fearfully and wonderfully made in God's image.

When his disciples were shocked at how extreme Jesus' teaching on divorce was, they complained that, if they couldn't even have the threat of divorce to keep spouses in line, it'd be better for a man not to marry (Matthew 19:10). And Jesus shocked them more by saying that, if they couldn't handle it, maybe they shouldn't marry after all!

That's a shocking message to find there, because most Jews in first-century circles believed marriage was mandatory, that it was one of God's commandments. There were people who couldn't marry, of course – those who were eunuchs from birth or by human action – but Jesus added a third choice, another option: staying unmarried “for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,” for those given the gift to receive the demands of that lifestyle (Matthew 19:11-12). Historically, the church often treated that as some higher calling for monks and nuns, and said that married life was second-class; these days, the church often treats singles as second-class, in practice. But Jesus is saying that the paths are equal in dignity, with neither to be denigrated or despised.

And thank God, he gives us the Spirit. The Spirit makes us run to the Law's goal faster than the Law can catch up. If the Spirit changes our hearts and makes us so committed to our marriage that we fulfill all the vows we make, if our first instinct becomes forgiveness, if we cultivate a healthy relationship with our spouse... then you don't need to even know all the reasons the Law lets you divorce, you don't need to know all the loopholes. Those are for the people trying to get by as conveniently as they can. Those are for legalists who live down to mere legality. But we are called up higher, called out farther, on the wings of the Spirit.

See, the Law doesn't have to tell us when we can divorce, if we're too enraptured by God's vision for our marriage (or for holy singleness) to ever need or want to, even when most deeply hurt or grossly betrayed. And the Spirit nurtures within us the true antidote to both lust and groundless divorce: contentment, whether with your gift of singleness or with the spouse God has provided for you, and above all with the adventure of living for God's kingdom.

Maybe you're wondering this morning what all this means to you. Some of us here are perhaps past the age where our passions are beyond our control, or you've disciplined yourselves to live out Jesus' calling to marital faithfulness. Some of us here are happily married; others are widowed. 

But realize that on both of these fronts, what we believe and are called to practice is against literally everything in our culture. Lust is one of the great defining factors in American life – and acting on it is portrayed as normal in virtually every book, every movie, every TV show, every commercial, every billboard. And that's what people hear from their friends, their neighbors, their classmates and co-workers: that the private whims of consenting adults are a law unto themselves, accountable to no one and nothing. Modern American culture, as much as any other, is an empire of lust. Even our images of restraint tend to involve serial monogamy – regarding marriage as a light thing, to be entered into with one partner after another, more frivolously than people ratify and nullify mundane contracts in the business world.  We not only have at-will employment; we have at-will family life. And that is not the beauty and wholeness God designed for us; he has offered us so much more – not a burden, but a blessing.

You may not be sure how to put Jesus' words into practice in your life context any more than you already do, but for your sons and daughters, your grandsons and granddaughters, your neighbors and friends, this is likely to be a real struggle, and a difficult one. They'll need all the loving help, support, and gentle guidance they can get. Do they see why Jesus' teaching on marriage and sex is so much better than what the culture is offering – so much healthier, so much more joyful? Help them. It's not enough to just tell your children, “Don't do this, don't do that, cut that out.” Rules and regulations are never enough. The hardened human heart is relentless in finding pretexts to defy the rules. Pray for a heart change and give them wisdom instead.

What Jesus says here is radically relevant to us here this morning. The broader culture is absolutely obsessed with normalizing lust, adultery, and divorce. You hear people say that they can't believe the Maker of the universe would care about their sex lives or their personal relationships, much less what goes on inside their heads and hearts. And I'll tell you two things about people that say that. 

One: they don't know that God loves them. Because if they knew that God loved them, they'd know that the details of their lives are something God cares about. If he knows and thinks about even the hairs of your head, which Jesus himself told you his Father had numbered (Matthew 10:30), surely he knows about and cares about what you did with his gifts of sexuality, marital union, and all their delights; and surely he has “discerned [your] thoughts from afar” because it matters to him what you cultivate in your mind and heart (Psalm 139:2).

And two: people who don't think God cares are people who trivialize sex and marriage far beneath their real importance. Because while they don't define us, it's because they're too important, not too unimportant. It isn't just a physical, animal act; it invariably involves the human soul and points to the human destiny, and it doesn't get much more significant than that. And that's why normalized lust, adultery, and divorce are so dreadful – because that isn't how we were made to live, and it's killing our culture, and it's killing our neighbors.

And these sins cause havoc in the church, too. Maybe some of you can relate. I used to go to a church that was scandalized on numerous occasions by adulterous affairs between assorted pairs of people in the church – seemingly good, upstanding, active church members, who nevertheless nursed in their minds, hearts, and bodies what was knowingly contrary to God's will. And the damage was dreadful. In one case, just such an affair came to light between the assistant pastor and one of the women of the church. He had to leave, and the damage was utterly catastrophic. Dozens of people abandoned the church; and everyone else was deeply hurt. 

And that local congregation was not unique. You know that; you've seen it. How many people are out there – how many people do you maybe know personally – who have abandoned the fellowship of God's children, whether in one place or (worst of all) altogether, because of a chain of events that can be traced directly back to the fruit of a church member's lust?

And what's more, you might be surprised at the statistics on divorce in the church, or even adultery in the church – it's not quite as high as some scare statistics might have you believe, but certainly far higher than Jesus called his people to live. And then there's pornography use in the church – when I was in seminary, I counseled several friends who were going into ministry and who still wrestled with those addictions. It's an epidemic in the world today, and the church is far from immune. This isn't something we can ignore. This is something we must address with light, truth, mercy, and grace.

Jesus' teaching on marriage and sexuality is relevant to us, because he wants to make us into a different kind of people. What if we were a church that held marriage as profoundly sacred, even while affirming celibate singleness as a healthy option? What if we cultivated pure hearts to resist lust and forgiving hearts to resist divorce? What if we were to actually live out Jesus' vision of marriage, as best as we redeemed sinners can? What if we were committed to helping each other – providing the time and attention and love to support one another? What if we were a welcoming refuge for those hurt by the culture's misguided distortions of sex and marriage – not judging people, not condemning them, but welcoming them in and showing them the beauties of a better way, God's plan for healthy human life? 

That's the kind of people Jesus wants to make us, if we'll listen to his words and receive his Spirit. May we ever be just such a chaste church. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Conciliatory Church: Sermon on Matthew 5:21-26

Once again, here we are, gathered at the foot of the mountain where Jesus is preaching the Greatest Sermon Ever Preached, the Sermon That Built the Church.  In this sermon, Jesus is outlining his plan for a new society, a new Israel, a new fellowship of believers. He'll gather them from the misfits and bless them, because it's this motley crew who are really kingdom-ready – not the Zealots and not the Pharisees. 

But this blessed group have a mission to be salt and light in the world, to help it get ready for the kingdom, too. And to do that, they need to be righteous in a way only the Spirit can bring. Jesus' instructions aren't canceling the Law; but he's opening up the Law and showing us where it aims and how to get there in the Spirit's power (Matthew 5:1-20). So for the next few weeks, Jesus will be giving us examples of how he wants us to read the Law and live toward its goals.

And the first commandment Jesus tackles is one of the ones we think of first: “Thou shalt not murder.” Jesus reminds the crowd, “You have heard that it was said of old, 'You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment'” (Matthew 5:21). That's the old standard. I mean, the Law says pretty clearly, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). It says, “Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 24:17). 

And it goes on to explain murder in more detail – there are some great passages in Numbers and in Deuteronomy. And what the Law says is that murder is killing that's predatory and violent: striking with an iron or stone or wooden tool, or a fist, or a shove, or any kind of blow that deliberately results in death (Numbers 35:16-21) – and once found guilty “on the evidence of witnesses,” plural (Numbers 35:30), such a person was deemed a murderer and turned over to the 'avenger of blood,' who “shall himself put the murderer to death” (Numbers 35:19).

The murderer can't buy his way out of it; he's guilty of death, liable to judgment (Numbers 35:31). A murder happens when “anyone hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he dies” (Deuteronomy 19:11). That's what the Law says. 

But before all of that, the Law explains why murder is such a problem. It's not just because it causes chaos in society, though it does. It's not just because it pollutes the land, though it does. It's because “God made man in his own image” that the blood of man is so sacred, and because God holds us sacred as his image-bearers, he takes very seriously any crime against us or our neighbors: “From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man” (Genesis 9:5-6).

We tend to approve of the verse “Thou shalt not murder.” I mean, who could object to that? Without that, every society would fall apart. And most of us don't commit murder, right? So it's great for justifying ourselves. How many of our neighbors think of themselves as basically good people because they've never murdered anybody? It sounds silly, when you put it like that; but that's what happens when you divide the world into 'good people' and 'bad people' based on a surface reading of the letter of the law.

But these words were never meant to be just a rule. Jesus is not content with the letter of the Law. He aims for the spirit of the Law. So Jesus cracks these words open and lets us peer through the Law, behind the Law, into God's heart. Because God didn't give the Law merely so we'd be a bunch of boys and girls who just obey the rules and pat ourselves on the back. God gave the Law, and now gives the Spirit, to make a people, a whole community, whose heart looks like God's heart.

So when Jesus reads the verse, “Thou shalt not murder,” he make us ask the question, “Where does murder come from? What kind of heart makes murder?” “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder,” and so forth, he says, and that's what really makes a person unclean: what comes out of their heart (Matthew 15:18-19). 

So what kind of heart makes murder? A heart that's full of anger. A heart that's full of contempt. A heart that looks at other people and doesn't see the image of God – or, worse, sees it and disregards it, sees it and despises it. We see it from the very beginning, the first murder that separated two brothers: “Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him” (Genesis 4:8). Why? Because first, “Cain was very angry, and his face fell,” and he refused to keep that anger under control as the LORD told him (Genesis 4:5f.). “We should not be like Cain, who was of the Evil One and murdered his own brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous” (1 John 3:12).

So Jesus gives a new, deeper instruction on his own authority: “Whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever says 'Raca'” – the word means 'empty-head,' 'dimwit,' 'numbskull' – “will be liable to the council. Whoever says, 'Fool!' – this word is worse than Raca, this word, more, means reprobate, unsaved, outside the kingdom – “whoever says 'Fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:22). 

Jesus is not kidding around. God will judge a murderous heart with all its fruits, even if the actual murder is never acted out with the hands. Any of these offenses, especially against a fellow believer, a 'brother,' are serious. They come from the same place as murder and are crimes in God's sight just like it. His disciple makes it plainly clear: “Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:14-15).

But maybe you're thinking, “Whoa, slow down here. Is all anger bad? I mean, didn't Jesus get angry?” You're right. By one count, there are as many as fifteen different scenes in the Gospels that show Jesus as angry. And certainly he got angry with the Pharisees, and even used the harsh language, calling them fools. (When Jesus or Paul calls the disciples or the Galatians 'foolish,' they're using a different word that means 'thoughtless; but Jesus does use the word moroi for the Pharisees, because it fits.) Does that mean we should be angry? 

The real question is, what kind of anger? Jesus was angry and strict with the Pharisees at times. But Jesus' anger was never the sort of anger that even could have led to murder. Jesus' anger was never sinful anger. Whenever he was angry, he was the only one angry, which tells us he wasn't motivated the way most people are – Jesus' anger was more like super-heated, vocalized grief. He passionately opposed their sins, not for his sake – it was never about a personal offense – but always for their sake, and for the sake of those the Pharisees might harm or mislead. 

His anger was not something selfish; it was selfless. His anger was not something rash; it was patient, because Jesus as God is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13). His anger was not unreasonable; it was thoughtful and targeted. His anger was not something enduring; it was perfectly measured. And his anger was not hateful or violent; it was peaceful and loving, to the point that his ultimate expression of anger toward the Pharisees' sin and their very real foolishness was not to kill them but to die for them, to subject himself to their murderous anger and to the very wrath of God against their anger. That's what Jesus' anger looked like.

Our anger is so rarely like Jesus' anger. Because our anger is usually not godly anger, not righteous anger. Our anger is natural anger, personal anger, cultivated anger. It's unavoidable to experience anger; those first flashes of anger are a perfectly natural human emotion. And that's the way it should be, because sometimes anger is the right reaction, if it's godly anger and kept under the Spirit's control. 

But more often than not, we let our anger get the best of us, or we're angry for the wrong reasons. And in those cases, our anger can turn into the kind of wrath Jesus warns us can lead to so much trouble – the kind of anger that would be murder, if not nipped in the bud. This kind of anger is enduring, continual; it keeps bubbling beneath the surface. And this kind of anger is destructive – it wants to be vented, it wants revenge, it wants to tear down and destroy. 

And our fallen nature has a knack for taking natural anger, or even godly anger, and perverting it into wrath, by filling it with personal motives and stoking its flames. “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. … Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:26-27, 31-32).

So what is there to do? I mean, it's one thing to warn us about the dangers of anger. But actually to get rid of anger – that's a whole 'nother story, isn't it? How can we be angry and not sin, in the case of godly anger or righteous anger? How can we put all bitterness and wrath and anger away from ourselves, in every other case? 

I think there is a way to do it, though. I believe the gospel offers us a cure for the sort of anger Jesus warns us leads to hell and misery. And as best as I understand it, there are six major steps.

First of all, the Christian cure to murderous anger has to begin in the Holy Spirit. There's no other way. If we want to get deeper than the letter of the Law, if we want to outrun the Law, if we want to get to the heart of the problem, we can't do it effectively in the power of our flesh. We just don't have it in us. That's what the story of Israel shows. We must be born again through the Spirit. And not just that, we have to be practically open to the Spirit. We have to be actively relying on the Spirit.

The second step is to admit our anger. If we can't identify when we're angry, then we won't be able to deal with it, will we? So we have to admit it. We have to own up to it. We have to look at ourselves and say, “Yes, this reaction is anger. Yes, this is contempt.” Admit it. Tell the truth, even if just to yourself. That's the only place to start. There can't be any resolution without confession. Admit your anger.

The third step is to reflect on the root. Ask yourself: “Why am I angry? And how does my soul get from there to being angry?” Tim Keller, the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, once said, “What makes you angry is not what's happened to you, but what you tell yourself about what's happened to you.” Say you're angry because you're running late and stuck in heavy traffic. Take a deep breath and think about it: then you're really angry because you expected to be at your destination at a certain time; you see that expectation as being unmet; and you fear the consequences – maybe you fear looking bad, maybe you fear the loss of productivity; and you have the belief that it's important for you not to look bad, for you to be productive. 

Or, let's say you're angry because someone antagonizes you – calls you names, insults you, pulls power-plays against you. Perhaps you're really angry because you feel disrespected, and you fear losing face; perhaps you're really angry because you feel victimized and you have the belief that you should be respected and that the world should be fair. Like James said, “You desire and do not have, so you murder” (James 4:2). That's where it comes from – our expectations and fears, our unfulfilled desires viewed with a worldly eye.

The fourth step is to adopt kingdom vision. If our anger is usually stimulated by the stories we tell ourselves about what happens to us, if our anger has a lot to do with our unmet expectations and fears, then the antidote to a bad story is a better story. Maybe you're angry because you fear looking bad. Remind yourself that God is your Father; that he made you in his image; that he loves you; that his love for you, his opinion of you, doesn't depend on how good you look. 

Maybe you're angry because you fear that if you aren't productive, you'll fall short, or necessary things won't get accomplished and your corner of the world will be worse off as a result. Remind yourself that God values who you are above what you do; that he's already pleased with you in Christ; and that he's in charge of the world and can take care of it with or without you. Remind yourself that you are never alone; that Jesus is in control, so you don't have to be; that he will overcome any mistakes you make; that he gets the last world, not the unfairnesses of life; and that he accepts you as you are and patiently walks with you to become more like he is.

The fifth step – really, every step – is to pray through it. All this admission, all this reflection, all this transformation – it happens best through prayer. Pray for God to take your anger away. Pray for God to cure its causes. Pray for God to heal you of its roots. Pray for God to convince you of his better truth. And friends, if you're angry at someone, the best cure for it is to pray for them. 

It's hard, I know. I mean, maybe it's easy to ask God to change them. It's harder to take someone you're angry at, someone you're furious with, and ask God to bless them, ask God to be kind to them and gracious to them. That is hard. But we were given the Spirit to do hard things. And I'll challenge you: if there's someone who's crossed your mind while I've been preaching this morning, somebody you're angry with or somebody who's angry with you, I'd challenge you to try this. Really try praying for them, the way you'd pray for your best friend. You may find that that's what it takes for God to set you free.

And the sixth step is to actually practice anger's opposite. That's the giant leap forward Jesus offers us here in this passage. To beat anger, be proactive in seeking reconciliation. If you're angry with your boss, your co-worker, your friend, your neighbor – own up to it and overcome it with acts of kindness. Be the answer to your own prayer for God to bless them.

But Jesus doesn't leave it there, does he? Jesus actually gives us illustrations that go beyond the sixth step. It's good to cure ourselves of sinful anger. But if it's good for us to cure our sinful anger, it's good for us to cure their anger, too – the anger we cause in other people. Cain asked if he was his brother's keeper. And the answer is yes. Yes, we are our brothers' and sisters' and neighbors' keepers – we are responsible for one another. I know that goes against a culture that says every man for himself. I know it undercuts the pride that tells us we aren't responsible for anybody else's burdens or problems. But Jesus tells us otherwise.

In fact, Jesus tells us two radical stories about how far we should go to conquer anger in others, to guard and protect them from sliding down this terribly slope on our account. First, he tells the crowd to imagine this: you've gone to the temple in Jerusalem to worship God, and you've brought a sacrifice to the altar as a gift for God. But at that moment, you remember that someone – specifically, your brother, as in, a fellow follower of Jesus – has a grievance against you, a real reason to be angry with you (Matthew 5:23). What should you do? Jesus tells us: “Leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:24).

That must have shocked everybody who heard Jesus say it, for at least two reasons. First of all, worship at the temple was only supposed to be interrupted in an emergency – pretty much, a life or death situation. And so Jesus is telling us that our relationships with one another as his people are that serious – this is life or death, this matters that much – it matters more to God than our sacrifices, our worship songs, or this sermon. 

And second, the crowd here knows that Jesus doesn't just mean somebody down the road. He's preaching this message in Galilee, which was about eighty miles from Jerusalem. And odds are, if anybody listening to Jesus ends up in this situation, the brother in question is a fellow Galilean. So Jesus is saying, leave the animal there, tied up at the altar; walk eighty miles back to Galilee; deal with the problem, be proactive in reconciliation; and then you can walk eighty miles to Jerusalem again to finish the sacrifice.

But Jesus knows the Law, and the Law always put confession and restitution before sacrifice (Leviticus 6:1-7; Numbers 5:5-8). So must we. Even the rabbis agreed that worship was pointless if tainted by unreconciled relationships and unrepented sin; they said that atoning sacrifice only covered sin between two Israelites, two members of God's people, if they restored good will between them through confession and restitution. 

If you know that another believer has cause to be angry with you – if you realize you've done wrong to someone and given them a reason to be angry, a reason to risk going down this path – then it's more important for you to deal with it than for you to be here right now. Don't waste time.

But Jesus tells one more story. “Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny” (Matthew 5:25-26). It's an especially meaningful story this Sunday, since unless our church vandal changes his plea to guilty, Wilmer and I will be testifying in court two days from now. 

But the reason Jesus tells this story is that we aren't just responsible for fellow believers. Even our enemies, when they have a legitimate grudge, are our problem. And Jesus reminds us that there are practical consequences. If we're too bitter and stubborn to try conciliating our enemies, too bitter and stubborn to admit we've done wrong and try to fix it, then we'll pay the price. And he already hinted at the ultimate price we might pay. So come to terms quickly, he says. Doesn't necessarily mean make a friend – though Jesus sure isn't against that. But even your enemy, even the person who brings you up on charges – come to terms, try to cure them of their anger as much as it's within your power. Show care even for your accuser.

Jesus has a pretty radical vision. I felt pretty challenged as I read and re-read his words in preparation for this morning's message. And if you aren't feeling convicted this morning, either I got in the way of God's word for you, or you're perfect, or you may want to take a closer look at yourself. But the point of Jesus' message isn't just to give each isolated individual some advice on how to take care of his or her individual soul. Soul-care is important, but Jesus is outlining his plan for all Israel, for his whole community of believers. He's trying to shape their life together, trying to form them – form us – into the right kind of people, the right kind of church.

So let me ask you: what would a church look like if they lived like this? If they went to such lengths to guard against anger or contempt; if they looked at one another as brothers and sisters, if they bent over backwards to avoid anger, if they viewed all people as made in God's image and worth protecting, if they really embodied the gospel of love and dignity and reconciliation. 

Actually, I think one of the healthiest things about our church is that we've made a true commitment to doing this, at least in our life together. Sadly, most congregations aren't quite there. But maybe you have grievances or broken relationships outside this fellowship – and certainly, there are people who have absented themselves from our church because of nursing a grudge two or three decades old. That's a tragedy. That's exactly the sort of fractured fellowship Jesus was trying to prevent. 

What would it look like if we lived this out more fully? A window on the kingdom of God, I think. May the Lord preserve us from anger, may the Lord bring us together, may the Lord make us a people of peace in heart, head, and hands. Amen.