Context

Propers: The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, AD 2023 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Context is key; context and tone; both of which are notoriously difficult to derive from plain text, let alone text from a foreign language and culture, a text from the ancient world. We tend to read the Scriptures to our own time and place, and thus we are often wounded, offended, confused, or quite possibly enraged.

But the Bible did not descend from heaven engraved on golden plates. First century books must be translated, placed in their proper context, for twenty-first century Christians. We must read our own stories with wisdom and with charity. Some think that this twists the Bible, but I very much disagree. The Bible must be interpreted, using not only tradition and history but also modern scholarship, philosophical and theological lenses. Anything less is a refusal to take the Scriptures seriously.

Readings such as our Gospel today hit like a shot to the gut; because it sounds like Jesus is just rattling off lists that we have to check and lines that we cannot cross. That bit about divorce and adultery in particular always sticks in my craw because whenever it comes up in our cycle of readings, I have to preach on it. I have to address it, because it’s all that people will hear. We get stuck on it, because it affects so very many of us, and so many of those whom we love.

So here’s the context: We are still in the Sermon on the Mount. That is, in Matthew’s account, how Jesus inaugurates His ministry. It’s His mountaintop moment. As Moses descended from Sinai with the Ten Commandments, so Jesus pronounces His Beatitudes atop the mountain, as well as His interpretation of the Law.

And this is key for any rabbi, mind you, any teacher. The Law here, or the Torah, are the Five Books of Moses. We might better translate them as the Teaching. And these are the most sacred Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible, the story of God and Israel. The Law teaches Israel how to live according to wisdom, according to God’s will for their flourishing, in righteousness and holiness. They are a chosen people, liberated from slavery in order to become a blessing for all of humankind.

The heart of the Law, of the Torah, consists in the Ten Commandments. As the Constitution provides the core law of the United States, and most everything else in our legal code is case law, trying to live out the ideals of said Constitution, so are the 613 Commandments of the Hebrew Bible all interpretations and instantiations of the Ten Commandments, trying to live them out in daily life.

And just as our secular law necessitates lawyers and judges to interpret it, to apply it to real world situations, so does the sacred Law of the Israelites necessitate rabbis to teach and to interpret it within the framework of a chaotic and changing world. I mean, by the time of Jesus, the Law is a millennium old—at least parts of it are. The ancient Kingdom for which it was written has fallen. Times change. What the Law means for the time of David may not be the same as what it means for the time of Jesus, let alone for our own day and age.

I mean, look at how much our own Constitution has changed in the last 200 years. Now imagine 3000. Interpretation was important. Teaching was important. Even in Jesus’ day, most Jewish people did not speak Hebrew anymore. The fact that He could read from the Prophets and speak to the Greeks proves His education.

Back then, as today, most rabbis taught the Law by presenting the opinions of great thinkers over the centuries. The Talmud is an encyclopedia of interpretation and debate, with rabbis of every age literally writing rings around each other. People would expect Jesus to interpret the Law of Moses in just this way—“Well, Hillel says this about the text, but Shammai says that”—yet that’s not what He does. “You have heard that it was said to those in ancient times,” proclaims Jesus, “but I say to you—!” This is a new teaching, one with authority.

Jesus throws down the gauntlet. He does not present His teaching as one opinion among many. He does not even present His teaching as the definitive interpretation of Moses. Rather, He goes beyond Moses. “But I say to you—!” That takes guts. And it shocks people; it truly does. Jesus is speaking as if He were God; which either makes Him crazy, or something much more frightening than that.

Now, just to clarify, again, I am here talking about the Law as the Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. I say this because a couple weeks ago I preached on the Lutheran interpretation of Law, and in that context, Luther’s context, “Law” means something very different. Law for Luther means whatever calls us to righteousness, and convicts us when we fall short, whether found in the Old Testament or the New. That’s the sort of Law that drives us to the Gospel. But here I’m speaking to Jesus’ first-century context. Savvy? Context matters.

Now then, Jesus takes a metaphorical machete to the thicket of rabbinical interpretation. His pet peeve, His bête noire, is any form of religion, any interpretation of the Law, that oppresses and leads to death. He calls this hypocrisy, play-acting. That kind of religion, Jesus says, is like whitewashed tombs full of bones inside. The Law of God is a vision of human flourishing for Christ. It is life and liberation. And any legal contortions that would elevate the rich above the poor, the powerful over the weak, the fashionably religious over the societal outcast, are simply drek.

It’s poop. That kind of religion, for Jesus, is poop. And mind what He’s saying: for Jesus is not condemning Judaism. He Himself is Jewish. Jesus is not condemning the Law. He loves the Law. He just preached about not one jot or tittle passing away. But here is what the Law is, He says. Are you ready? This is how Jesus sums up the entirety of the Law and the Prophets: “Love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

But wait, hold up, we might say. If that’s His whole deal, if that’s how Jesus interprets the Law of God, the Law of Moses—“Love your God with all you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself”—and He has no patience for oppressive legalisms that turn the Law into a matter of lists and lines, of slavery and death, then what is with today’s reading? I mean, it sounds pretty legalistic to me. Kind of kills me.

“You have heard it said, ‘Do not murder,’” Christ proclaims, “but I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. You have heard it said, ‘Do 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. You have heard it said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give to her a certificate of divorce,’ but I say to you, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife, except on grounds of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery.’”

That’s all tough stuff, isn’t it? Very strict, very harsh. Luther would say that here the Law convicts us, that it drives us to the Gospel, and that would be for him Jesus’ entire point: to show us here what we cannot do, and to drive us to His mercy. And while, as a Lutheran, I do believe that to be a valid interpretation in our reading of the Scriptures, nevertheless I do not believe that that’s what Christ was getting at.

For Jesus, the Torah lays before us the way of life and the way of death, the choice between enslavement and liberation. The Law must always be a Law of liberation and of life, a Law of human flourishing, otherwise it isn’t the Law of God at all. Jesus holds us to a higher standard, not because He’s strict and harsh, but because the Law exists to set us free. And this purified Law, this love of God and neighbor, is the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ our Lord.

A theme in early Christian teaching, in Jesus’ teaching, is that he who is faithful in a little will be faithful also in much. That’s why it’s not enough to refrain from murder; we must refrain from anger and slander as well. We train ourselves with little acts of charity, little acts of forgiveness, in the same way that an athlete trains with weights—so that when the trial comes, when it matters most, we will be strong and free and ready to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And as for His teachings on adultery and divorce: these were ways in which men abused and discarded women in the first century. They would abandon them, legally, with no support and no recourse, just a piece of paper, a writ of divorce. This was a hot button issue of His day, and Jesus would never condone it. He isn’t talking about divorced and remarried couples today; that’s a different conversation. Jesus is calling all of us to liberate and love the most vulnerable people in our society.

In short, whenever we read a teaching of Jesus, we must ask ourselves: From what is He here liberating us? That’s the Way of Jesus Christ. That’s the Law of love.

Anything less is hypocrisy.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.