MT 5:21-37

Matthew in the Margins…6th S. after the Epiphany…Revised 2017 

We’re still on Jesus’ ‘sermon on the mount’. Actually a bringing - together the heart of Jesus’ teaching throughout His ministry as a new Moses. Jesus, as ever, assumes His hearers know what it is from the past He’s building on. Might we sometimes assume too much knowledge of, either Testament, by our hearers? Jesus moves on from the ‘letter of the Law’ as it had been passed down & interprets it anew. Much as one of our jobs as preachers is interpreting how all this applies (or, in some cases, may not, or does not!) today.

At the heart of today’s passage is Jesus’ awareness of the damage done to everyone involved when relationships - family/neighbourly/ community/world - are broken. In Jesus’ new community, what we know as ‘Church’, we’re all family, & suffer, become victims, when relations are broken. Violence of every kind breaks out & keeps on feeding on itself, increasingly damaging or destroying people. None of this can be solved by enacting tougher & tougher laws. All that does is fill more & more gaols. Jesus is offering us a different kind of law here. A different approach to law. Applying a new perspective to an ‘old’ Law, following in the steps of the Prophets to interpret it in a new light for a new day. Is Jesus implying, as well, that YHWH’s honour is at stake, as head of the world family, not simply the  Church, when any member of that family brings dishonour on it in any way?

In an age where ‘data-bases’ have become so vital, perhaps we can see this as Jesus giving us an alternative, very person-to-person, ‘data-base’ to build relations on.

There are many issues here we need to interpret according to where we are in our Church & where our Church is in our world. Someone (Bonhoeffer, maybe?) summarised what’s at stake in all this as: Jesus was crucified so we don’t have to crucify each other.  That’s powerful imagery interpreting a powerful reality!