Matthew 5:21 „You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‚You shall not murder‘; and ‚whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.‘ 22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; 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. 23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25 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. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. 27 „You have heard that it was said, ‚You shall not commit adultery.‘ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 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. 30 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. 31 „It was also said, ‚Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.‘ 32 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. 33 „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.‘ 34 But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let your word be ‚Yes, Yes‘ or ‚No, No‘; anything more than this comes from the evil one.<\/em><\/p>\n Impossible Obedience<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been hearing a lot about the \u201cTen Commandments\u201d lately.\u00a0 No, not the movie with Charlton Heston.\u00a0 The ancient words, honored first by the Hebrew people and now attached to the Judeo-Christian tradition.\u00a0 Within the past month I\u2019ve seen:\u00a0 A Facebook post suggesting that everything would be right with the world if people would just obey the \u201cTen Commandments,\u201d\u00a0 A blog post suggesting that it is time for us to post the \u201cTen Commandments\u201d in every school classroom so that children will somehow read the posted commandments, understand them, and live by them, or at least know why they are being punished if they don\u2019t,\u00a0 A couple of my relatives arguing about politicians and their public behavior, each of them invoking one or another commandment to bolster their argument.\u00a0 I asked the posters of the Facebook post and the blog if they could, without looking them up, list the Ten Commandments for me.\u00a0 Neither one could.\u00a0 But they still insisted that they were important and everyone should know them and follow them.<\/p>\n Jesus, as an observant Jew of the First Century, clearly knows these commandments.\u00a0 He quotes a number of them in our text for today.\u00a0 But he doesn\u2019t just leave them for us to ponder.\u00a0 Each time he follows a patter in which he takes the commandment to an extreme that has dropped jaws from his own time to today.\u00a0 \u201cYou have heard it said\u2026 But I say to you\u2026\u201d\u00a0 By doing so Jesus is challenging those who would use these commandments as a kind of \u201cVirtue List,\u201d including the posters that I encountered in the last month.\u00a0 In a sense, Jesus is saying that if we want to be virtuous and use commandments as our guide, the standard is high, perhaps so impossibly high, that we cannot possibly win.\u00a0 It reminds me of Ben Franklin\u2019s quest for Virtue, in which he realized that he could never fully achieve all of the virtues on his list, and declares his moral experiment a failure.<\/p>\n Why would Jesus do such a thing?\u00a0 Is it wrong for us to want to be \u201cgood\u201d to one another, however that good is defined.\u00a0 Clearly not.\u00a0 Jesus commands us to love one another on numerous occasions.\u00a0 It is wrong to seek virtue for its own sake?\u00a0 No and Yes.\u00a0 Jesus seems to be saying that as a pathway to relationship with God and one another, following the Ten Commandments will fail us, as it has failed so many people over the years, as it fails me almost daily.\u00a0 My nature is such that I cannot win God\u2019s affection and favor through my virtue.\u00a0 The best I can do is hide my failings from others for a time, in order to appear virtuous, all the while knowing that it is a lie.\u00a0 So, no, obedience is not a pathway to God.\u00a0 But, yes, virtues can serve us and our relationship with God in a different way, as they were intended to do from the start.<\/p>\n What most people who tout the morality of the commandments do is they take them out of the context in which they were originally given.\u00a0 That context is the covenant YHWH\/God made with the people of Israel.\u00a0 This covenant is much bigger than these commandments.\u00a0 It begins with God identifying Godself.\u00a0 \u201cI am the Lord your God\u2026\u201d\u00a0 It continues with God recounting the mighty acts that have saved the Children of Israel from bondage.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of slavery.\u201d\u00a0 It then continues with the commandments, followed by the good things that happen to those who remember and keep the covenant, the bad things that befall those who fail to do so, and finally provision for the covenant to be recited and remembered in the future.\u00a0 This ancient covenantal form is the context into which Moses received the commandments.<\/p>\n The commandments are not given to earn YHWH\/God\u2019s love and favor, but rather as a way for the people to respond to it.\u00a0 God\u2019s love comes first, and it comes free of charge.\u00a0 We call this grace: the gift of God\u2019s love without strings attached.\u00a0 So, the commandments are ways in which people are invited to hear God\u2019s love and respond to it.\u00a0 The blessings and curses are not reward for obeying and punishment for disobeying.\u00a0 They are the natural consequences that eventually come to those who obey and disobey.\u00a0 And, importantly, the covenant, the whole covenant, God\u2019s part and our part, is to be remembered and renewed.\u00a0 If we see this section of Matthew\u2019s Gospel as part of a greater whole, something we call \u201cThe Sermon on the Mount,\u201d we begin to understand that more portions of the covenant are discussed in detail.\u00a0 The \u201cBeatitudes\u201d that begin Chapter 5 are part of the \u201cblessings\u201d section of the covenant.\u00a0 (And if you note the retelling of these in Luke\u2019s Gospel, we find that Luke also includes the \u201ccurses!\u201d)\u00a0 So of course, we also must look outside of this passage for things that identify God (and the Messiah) and what God is doing.\u00a0 Later in the Gospel we see that the covenant is renewed every time we gather in Jesus name, especially as we gather for the covenantal meal of Communion.<\/p>\n Paramount to this understanding is that Jesus points out the absurdity to the use of commandments as a way to God\u2019s love and favor.\u00a0 We already have God\u2019s favor.\u00a0 He chose to dwell among us in the flesh, to endure life and death as we do, to be a presence of healing and life for all.\u00a0 In Jesus, God is choosing to make a lasting and living covenant with us.\u00a0 We are loved, healed, and forgiven prior to the giving of any \u201ccommandments.\u201d\u00a0 We cannot try to earn what we already have.\u00a0 I am convinced that\u2019s why Jesus does what he does in this passage.\u00a0 It cures me of any notion that I can do the virtue thing on my own.\u00a0 It drives me back into the arms of a loving and merciful God.\u00a0 And having been given love and mercy, I am sent back into the world as a loving and merciful child of God, giving what I have already been given.\u00a0 Perhaps we cannot see that message in just this passage alone, but in the context of the whole Gospel of Matthew, it is clear and present, written in the life and death of Jesus himself.<\/p>\n So, in my own life, and I would hope in the lives of others so redeemed by God, the Ten Commandments are not meaningless.\u00a0 They are one, among many, ways in which God has expressed a desire for us to respond to God\u2019s love with our love for one another.\u00a0 It is in the context of a covenant that is rich and always being renewed that God calls us into a mission for the sake of all people.\u00a0 Does posting commandments in classrooms and courthouses help us to further that mission?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, but my instinct tells me that it does not.\u00a0 It just produces a large cadre of people trying to fake righteousness when all this time God has given it to use as a gift (where righteousness doesn\u2019t mean we always do the right thing, but that God has given us the gift of a right relationship of love and forgiveness).\u00a0 But God, in Christ Jesus, has written love onto our very hearts, implanted it into our very being, and thus freed us to live for one another.\u00a0 My failure to be virtuous always sends me back to God.\u00a0 God\u2019s love always sends me, healed and renewed out into the world only to return again.\u00a0 It is a dance that will continue until I die.\u00a0 But it is a dance in which God ever, always, and only takes the first step:\u00a0 Love.<\/p>\n