With Intention

Matthew 5:21-37

‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you 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. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall 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. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

‘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.

‘Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

So over the past couple weeks during our time with the gospel of Matthew, we’ve read the lovely and inspiring Beatitudes, blessed are the meek, the peacemakers, we talked about the real meaning of shalom; then last week we discovered we are the salt and the light of world; now this week, without skipping over any verses, we’re starting right where we left off last week, there is quite a change in tone here! All of a sudden we’re being lectured on anger and murder and adultery…. Today’s passage takes quite an unpleasant turn!

But— before we really get going, I want to address what I see as two elephants in the room here—those elephants are that of hell, and that of divorce. Now I, I’m guessing like a good chunk of us here in this sanctuary and on Zoom, have a hard time with the concept of hell, with the idea of a God who would torture folks for all eternity—and I’m not all-knowing, I can’t say whether or not the hell that we think of when we think of say, Dante’s Inferno is real or not—I’d like to believe not—but what I can tell you, is that in the case of this passage, hell is literally translated as Gehenna. Gehenna was a real place—it was a valley located in Jerusalem, and it had the unfortunate reputation of being a place that took part in child sacrifice. So it was sort of a cursed place, a place of really bad vibes… it was a place that was sort of haunted by its own history. And over time, over history, this idea of a haunted, cursed place transformed into that idea of hell that we think of today. So—do with that information what you will. And second, divorce—Jesus’ comments on divorce sound incredibly harsh here, and I’m not going to get into it too much, because I preached on it Mark a year or so ago, and Jesus goes into more detail in later on in Matthew in chapter 19— but just quickly, Jesus was against divorce in a very of-his-time way; when a man divorced a woman in these ancient times, he could pretty much do so for any reason—dinner wasn’t warm enough, she wasn’t beautiful to him anymore—and then that woman would be destitute. There were no protections for divorced women. So as usual, Jesus was protecting the vulnerable with this new, very harsh-sounding order on divorce.

So—elephants are out of the way!  Now onto the rest—so despite the kind of aggressive tone of this passage, it actually works quite well with what we’ve read in previous weeks. Because remember last week, Jesus let the crowds know that they must be more righteous than the learned scribes and Pharisees—if you recall, he wasn’t say you need to be more educated, more well-read, than them—he was saying you need to be more genuine than them. He was saying you need to have some real intention and action behind your faith and your knowledge of the law and scripture. Well Jesus is really just expanding on this idea of intention in this passage.

Now, it seems absolutely wild that Jesus would say that just being angry with someone else makes you liable to judgement, even hell, whatever that really meant at the time. I mean, anger is a very naturally occurring emotion; sometimes it’s valid and rational, other times not so much; but it’s likely that what Jesus is saying here, is that it’s not just that murder is bad; I mean, we know murder is bad. But it’s not enough to understand something so simple. We have to think about what drives someone to commit murder, or simply to become physically violent. The vast majority of killers don’t just wake up one morning and decided, “I’m going to commit and heinous crime today.” Some kind of horrible anger drives them to do that awful thing. And when we’re not taught to deal with our emotions, we can snap. So I believe what Jesus is saying here, is that when we start feeling some of those negative feelings, we need to stop for a minute, we need to take a step back, we need to take a deep breath and really think about why we feel this way, and what we can do with those feelings—the thing Jesus advises us to do about these feelings or whatever actions led to these negative feelings— be reconciled and come to terms with your accuser before making a whole thing of it and going to court, or doing something you might regret. And Church, that takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot to really stop and think about why you feel a certain way and then engage someone with whom you’re at an impasse.

(Now—one caveat here—if you feel there’s a possibility of being harmed by engaging with someone you’re not getting along with, like, say, if you’re the victim in an abusive relationship, a victim of some kind of bullying, this is not a suggestion to confront that person).

But the thing is—that ultimately, Jesus is very much about interpersonal relationships. Jesus is about engaging with one another and calmly and peacefully working out our differences before it gets to the point of no return. Jesus is about looking inward and then really connecting with people about why things are broken, and what can we do to reconcile things, or at the very least, come to a place where you’re not longer harboring feelings of extreme anger that could possibly lead to some kind of violence.

On a national scale, I sadly think we’re seeing this kind of unchecked and misunderstood anger when it comes to the horribly harmful laws being enacted against trans folks, or even in the epidemic of book banning and censorship we’re seeing in public libraries. I think we’re seeing people who aren’t stopping to think about why they’re so angry or scared; they aren’t stopping to think deeply about what their intentions are. Because I think if they did, they would realize that their intentions actually are harmful, conscious or not. And I truly believe that even the most radical-seeming of people don’t really want to harm anyone. But we live in such a broken world where angering people helps TV news ratings, helps website clicks and traffic, that it’s hard to get out of this rabidly angry mindset and really sit and think about our feelings and the intentions behind them. Is the intention of banning books that showcase the trials and tribulations of people of color, of queer and trans folks, is that really going to make the world a better place? No, that comes from a place of misunderstanding and anger about what one doesn’t understand. And if more people would just stop and really think, and then really engage with their fellow humans about what they don’t understand, I think we’d be doing a lot better right now.

And that’s just it—we need to engage with our fellow humans for that very reason— simply because we’re all human. This is, essentially, what Jesus is saying when it comes to his equally as harsh sounding tirade against adultery. Again, on the surface, it sounds incredibly puritanical, a little over-the-top right? That even looking at someone else with lust means that you’ve already cheated on your spouse. But again, this is all about recognizing the intention behind our thoughts and our desires. If we stop to think about why we’re looking at someone, we’ll be able to move away from our more base instincts and realize, simply, that that person is human and they deserve respect. Jesus is simply telling us here, don’t look at other people as sex symbols, at simply a piece of meat. Because when you do this, you’re dehumanizing someone. And when you dehumanize someone, it may lead you to believe that they are less-than, that they are less than human—and that leads to thinking that they are worthy of oppression; that they aren’t worthy of the same rights and freedoms that you are. And that is a deeply dangerous place to find yourself.

And these hyperboles that Jesus uses here of tearing out our eye, cutting off your hand—yes, they are hyperboles—is Jesus making it clear how important it is that we are aware of the intention behind our thoughts and desires. It’s Jesus emphasizing how harmful and damaging it is to harbor these feelings of dehumanizing lust, anger, violence. And it’s also Jesus making it clear that it takes some serious work and maybe some serious sacrifice to keep those emotions in check. Again, we live in a world that commodifies anger and outrage, a world that encourages shallow outage, anger for anger’s sake—no real thought or intention behind it. So no, don’t cut off our hand or poke out your eye—but maybe seriously cut out some rage-bait internet time. Maybe block some especially click-bait-y websites, give yourself a long respite from CNN or Fox News. Maybe just take a minute away from the crush of the modern world as we talked about last week, and stop and think about the negative feelings you’ve felt recently, why you’ve felt them and what you can do to turn them into something positive and productive. And then be truthful with yourself and with your God.

That’s what this last section that Rebecca read for us is all about. Jesus is once again expanding on a Jewish law that says don’t swear falsely, don’t swear in vain— today that might mean trying to lay off colloquialisms like “I swear to God, I’m actually going to clean today—” that’s a common oath in vain for me, which is why I’m using it as an example. But Jesus, once again, is taking this further, by saying even if you’re oath or what you’re swearing to is totally legitimate, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t swear or make oaths at all. Just say yes, or no. Jesus is saying—just live truthfully. And we can live truthfully when we are honest with ourselves, when we are intentional about our actions. We can live honestly and truthfully when we stop to think about where our negative and angry thoughts and beliefs come from. And that’s hard to do. It’s hard to confront your own biases or your own irrational fears and anger. It takes some serious reflection. But when we do, when we work through those toxic thoughts and harmful misunderstandings, we’ll, God-willing, come to a place of recognition. We’ll come to a place where we can recognize the intention behind those thoughts as harmful, and we can transform those intention into something positive, something that will make us better people in the world, something that will help us to make this world better, by spreading that positive, intentional truth, as Jesus told us to do last week by spreading our salt and shining our light on all we see.

So much anger and violence in this world comes from simply not understanding. It comes from not understanding someone or something, and then just leaving it at that—leaving that misunderstanding to simmer until it builds to confusion to anger, to full-on dehumanization of those we don’t understand. And that’s when we get to a place of harm and violence.

So as we inch towards Lent, I hope we can all start thinking about the intention that arises from behind some of our negative thoughts of beliefs, and I hope we can all start to work through those unpleasant feelings by unplugging for a bit, by praying, by meditating, by walking in the woods, whatever works for you— and I pray that we can all find a place of peace and truth—a place of peace and truth in which all are respected and safe from harm: an earth as it is in heaven. Amen.