Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

You may have noticed an unfamiliar book of the Bible in our first reading. We heard from Sirach, a book in what’s known as the deuterocanonical books or the apocrypha. Those are perhaps also unfamiliar words! The short version is that there are a handful of books in the middle of the Bible that Protestant Christians do not regard as canon, while Roman Catholics and our Orthodox siblings do. The who/what/when/where/why of that is a story for another day!

Sirach is also known as the Wisdom of Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus. It is a book of ethical teachings similar in vibe to the more familiar-to-Lutherans book of Proverbs. Sirach is, like Proverbs, as well as Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Psalms—as well as other deuterocanonical books—part of a genre called Wisdom Literature.

I took an entire class in seminary about Wisdom Literature, which was so popular that it was basically only available to students in their final semester of coursework, and there was always a waiting list. It was taught by a Dominican Sister, who was barely five feet tall but whose severity was far outsized. I loved going to her class, and so when I saw Sirach as an option for this morning’s texts, I jumped on it. An adventure into the apocrypha!

The standard reading for this morning is from Deuteronomy, and has about half the same words as this Sirach reading does, so it is not a significant departure from the themes of the day. We’re talking about the law today. We’re talking about Torah, about the law that came to Moses from God on Mount Sinai, and we’re talking about how Jesus is regarded as a “New Moses” by the author of this gospel, because of his preaching on the law. We’re talking about the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

I am, by no means, a scholar of the Law of Moses. Fortunately, I have my trusty friend Dr. Amy-Jill Levine to turn to. As I mentioned at the meet and greet we did before y’all called me to serve as your pastor, Dr. Levine is one of my favorite preaching conversation partners. Her formal titles are University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies as well as Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Sciences. Her work has influenced me significantly, especially in understanding and preventing the latent antisemitism that is present in a significant amount of Christian scriptural interpretation and preaching.

As a Jewish scholar of Jesus, who was himself Jewish, Dr. Levine helps me understand Jesus as a person and as a member of his community and society. She knows what his listeners would have known and what they would have expected him to say and do and be. Today will not be the last time you hear her name from me, and several sections of this sermon will be paraphrases of and quotations from her book Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thus far in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has proclaimed blessings on those who society rejects. He has declared us salt of the earth and light for the world. Next, he is digging into the law, letting us know just how central it is in our lives together.

There’s an adage that “God gave us the law because God loves our neighbor”. These rules are in place to help us build the kind of community that has no need for them, because our instinct is to treat each other with the kind of respect the rules demand.

Let’s dig in. “You have heard that it was said to those in ancient times,” Jesus begins, “‘you shall not murder’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’” You may recognize these phrases from the Ten Commandments and the laws laid out in the book of Leviticus. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He’s not just reciting the law.

He continues, “But I say to you, that if you are angry with a [member of the community], you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a [member of the community] you will be liable to the council” (Matthew 5:21-22a). And it isn’t just in the court of law that our behavior is managed, but also before God. Jesus lays out another hypothetical, that if “when you are offering your gift at the altar, you remember that [a member of the community] has something against you, you leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to [them], and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24).

Jesus is not contradicting the commandment “you shall not murder” by any means. Dr. Levine says that he is “extend[ing], intensify[ing], and gloss[ing]” the commandments. It is not enough to forbid murder. All the violence that leads to murder, all the hatred that leads to violence, all the fear and ignorance that leads to hatred, and all of the separation that leads to fear and ignorance—those things are also affronts to our neighbor and to God. The community that Jesus is building, and by extension the beloved community that we are all called to build throughout time, will “walk as if they already have one foot in the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus treats the other laws similarly. He explains that it is not enough to forbid adultery, but the lust that leads to adultery, and the objectification that leads to lust, and the patriarchy that leads to objectification are all an affront to our neighbor and to God.

His teaching on divorce is similar, though it must be noted that this is far removed from our current framework for marriage and divorce, and it is not literally divorce that is prohibited, but the social and economic abandonment that can result from divorce in a society that affords women no agency or franchise. In a marriage that is legally sound but emotionally, physically, or spiritually unsafe, divorce is not only permitted but essential.

What Jesus is doing here is what the Rabbis of old called “building a fence around the Torah.” Dr. Levine explains that “as a fence around a house protects what is inside, so the fence around the Torah protects the commandments by creating the circumstances that make violation more difficult.”

These extensions of the law make it easier to follow the law, by insisting on alternative ways of being that will lead us away from even approaching violations of the law. When our communities are healthy, rich with mutuality, committed to liberation and justice for all, it is far simpler to adhere to the commandments. When everyone has what they need, coveting what belongs to others is unnecessary. When relationships are solidly built on trust, lying and cheating are unthinkable.

In this portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, “moves several traditional commands beneath outward actions to the deep places where life-giving relationships are grounded. Do not simply refrain from murder, Jesus announces, but avoid anger and insult, and seek reconciliation with your enemy….Do not just refrain from adultery, but treat others as persons of value, rather than mere objects”. We are called to always regard other people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.

As we approach the season of Lent, a time of self-reflection and repentance, consider the ways in which you are following not just the letter but the spirit of the law of God. As you engage with one another here in this community, as you interact with your family, your neighbors, your coworkers, your classmates, your supervisors or those you supervise, customer service professionals, acquaintances on Facebook…how grounded in these commandments are your behaviors?

As our friend Ben Sira has said, “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. [God] has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given” (Sirach 15:15-17). As beloved children of God, blessed with free will, we have choices to make. Amen.