A sermon wrestling in the Sermon on the Mount

A sermon by Jamie Howison on 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 and Matthew 5:21-37

It was probably nine years ago when the three-year lectionary cycle brought this gospel reading before—us as it always does—that someone came to me just prior to the liturgy to say that she had almost not come to worship that evening. She was a divorced person, and one who really hoped that she’d have a second chance at building a new marriage that would last, but she was just afraid that Jesus wasn’t leaving her any room for anything but loneliness and judgement. Those words that filled her with sorrow were, of course, these ones:

‘It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

There seems no room here for much aside from seeing divorce as being adultery, and it left that person in a place of pain. Divorce—a breach of all of the hopes of marriage—is a source of pain, no doubt. I know this, and I know it first-hand. You don’t stand in front of a community of friends and family and avow yourself to another person “so long as we both shall live” and not mean it. Sure, a wedding day can be fraught with nervousness and a sense of the gravity of it all, but it is also the celebration of a new beginning for both partners and a sign of hope even in the face of an unknown future. We say that we embrace this person, this beloved partner,

for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish
for the rest of our lives,
according to God’s holy law,

and we end by declaring, “This is my solemn vow.” This is my solemn vow, which is another way of saying that I will put my everything into this marriage, right through thick and thin.

But then sometimes something goes sideways, and that couple gets in trouble. Maybe one person has decided that they didn’t really know what they were doing on their wedding day or that they’ve changed and moved in another direction. Maybe there has been a big betrayal—perhaps an adultery—or what seems to be a series of small betrayals that just gnaw away at the covenant. One partner’s life spirals into addictions or they become manipulative or abusive, and things simply can’t hold. There are quite sadly any number of variations I could list, many of which indicate a serious breach of the covenant by one of the partners, and sometimes things just reach a point where the other partner has to back away from the broken covenant for the sake of their own safety or sanity, or maybe for the sake of their children.

Anyone who has honestly committed themselves in love and sincerity to another person in marriage can never see it all dissolve without knowing full well the heartbreak and disorientation of a marital breach. As the vast majority of you here will be aware, I know those things first-hand from the collapse of my own marriage almost seven years ago now. It undid me—badly—and I had to lean hard into the support of friends, family, and this community to keep putting one foot in front of the other. In the end it was the counsel and love of a very wise spiritual mentor who set me on a five-week intensive retreat in the context of the chapel community at King’s College in Halifax that helped me begin to really find my feet.

But I still get caught up a little short when a passage like this one comes up in the lectionary. It is hard to not read these words and again wonder, have I failed? Am I someone who has committed adultery? Have I breached one of the most important vows I could ever have made?

And those words about divorce and adultery come as part of a flurry of very challenging teachings. “But I say to you,” Jesus says, “that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire.” Or how about that piece that says that if you look at another person with desire, you’re essentially in the same place as someone who is already sleeping with them?

Or how about this: If your right eye causes you to sin, or your right hand causes you to sin, tear it out or lop it off and just throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Now N.T. Wright is rather clear that, “Plucking out eyes and cutting off hands are deliberate exaggerations, but they make the point very forcibly.” Wright actually draws a parallel here to the business of not offering a sacrifice at the temple until you’ve fully reconciled with your neighbour, noting that the Galilean Jesus has someone heading into the temple with the sacrificial gift when they suddenly recall they still have a grudge with someone. They’re to leave the animal right there, go home and reconcile, and then return, which, as Bishop Wright observes, is probably a week-long task given that where Jesus is teaching in Galilee is a three-day journey to the Jerusalem temple. There are, Wright maintains, some very intentional exaggerations at work here, but those aren’t meant to downplay the force of Jesus’ message. In fact, they’re probably meant to add some extra emphasis. This is very serious business.

Here Amy Oden comments,

No longer do the teachings on murder and adultery apply strictly to acts of murder and adultery. Instead, they become doorways into the examination of many internal dynamics as well as external behaviors of one’s life: anger, derision, slander, false generosity, litigiousness, arrogance, lust, temptation, alienation, divorce, and religious speech.

And then she is quick to add a comment that says, “Jesus’ reframing of righteousness exposes the easy truces we make.” They expose the easy truces we make, which is quite a statement, as she continues,

We can pat ourselves on the back for not committing murder while we ruin the reputation of a co-worker through our words—we even call it “stabbing someone in the back.” The notion that we must reconcile with anyone who has something against us before we can give our gifts to God, stops us in our tracks. There is no easy, private relationship to God in these words. Resentment, alienation, and estrangement from others, prevent me from even giving my gifts to God.

To which Bishop Wright adds a significant insight:

Throughout this chapter, Jesus is not just giving moral commands. He is unveiling a whole new way of being human. No wonder it looks strange. But Jesus himself pioneered it, and invites us to follow.

“He is unveiling a whole new way of being human… and invites us to follow.” And I believe that is very much the case. We are meant to do all we can to live into the mandates that Jesus sets forth in the Sermon on the Mount. Our vows matter, our relationships to others matter, what we do with our anger or resentments matter, and as Amy Oden points out, our speech about one another matters. That’s all just true.

Still, we do live under the extraordinary grace of Christ’s cross, of which Paul writes in the epistle to the Colossians that, “through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” That doesn’t mean that I can arbitrarily choose to ignore the powerful challenges of the Sermon on the Mount. No. But it does mean that even my failures are counted in the all things of Colossians. It means that after something so devastating as the collapse of a marriage I can trust that friends and church folk and even the angels of God will gather round, pull me up from the ground, dust me off, and direct my sight yet again to the horizon that is both Christ’s cross and Christ’s resurrection. It means that a spiritual director can help me to have the courage to look my failings straight in the eye, and then say to me “The Lord has put away all your sins. Go in peace, and—here is where it becomes most poignant, as the spiritual director says—and pray for me a sinner.”

It means that we can wrestle yet again in hard biblical texts, and walk away with something new or renewed.

It means that our sins and fears and failings will not have the final word, because Christ is the final word.

It is simply true.