The Churches of

Hipswell Parish

Sunday Sermon - 13th February 2011

A sermon given by Reader Anne Cowan

'Choices'

Today’s readings are about choices and above all about the well-being of the community. They have much to say to us for they challenge the ways in which we live today and the importance of the choices we make as individuals within our communities. How do we choose wisely and well the way we think and speak and behave towards others? Each reading has built upon the one before to bring us to Paul’s concerns for the Corinthians and to Matthew’s account of the teaching of Jesus on the subjects of murder, adultery, divorce and the taking of oaths.

Jesus’ teaching is my starting point. In the verses immediately before our reading Jesus has assured his listeners that he has not come to abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfil them. Keeping God’s commandments is the best way to live wisely and well. These are the foundation. However the meaning within each commandment needs to be understood, ‘For I tell you’, says Jesus, ‘Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

Tessa talked to us last week of our calling to be the salt of the earth and a light to the world. In today’s Gospel, Matthew gives us a report of a discussion in which Jesus interprets four cases from Hebrew law. It’s really interesting because we know from people who have studied the life and times of Jesus that these were cases being regularly debated in Jesus’ time amongst other Jewish teachers.

Matthew’s concern is to write his Gospel to support and protect the community in which he lives. He tells how Jesus took the Jewish teaching about murder and adultery, divorce and oath-taking and expanded them. Each case addresses a threat to the well-being and survival of a new, small community. In confirming the commandment forbidding murder, Jesus warns against anger and the danger of brooding on feelings of resentment. Recent tragedies not so very far from here confirm the same dangers in our time. Jesus’ interpretation of the Jewish law lies on us the responsibility of avoiding conflicts by respecting each other and resolving disputes as soon as possible.

Paul, in his first letter to the Christian house groups in Corinth, advises against the quarrelling that is going on. What is happening is that people from a house group taught the gospel of Jesus by Apollos, feel that they are a cut above another house group taught by Paul. Relationships have become so bad that they are constantly being really nasty to each other and we know that a lady called Chloe, who was leader of yet another house-group, went from Corinth across the sea to Ephesus to see Paul and ask for his advice. Well things can’t be left to go on like this, so Paul writes to the Corinthians and tells them, ‘Apollos and I are only two servants of God, through whom you came to believe. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.’ Paul tells them that whilst they continue bickering jealously over such matters, they are still people of the flesh. He has therefore to continue nurturing them on milk rather than the solid food suitable for spiritual people, for they are choosing to have favourites and forgetting Jesus’s call to love one another as he loves them. They are behaving in a way that is ‘merely human’ and not like Jesus at all. If they are to grow in faith, in-fighting has to stop! The value of 1 Corinthians is that so much of Paul’s teaching is as true now as it was then.

The needs of each community are very important.  Therefore everyone must try to behave well and not cause trouble. It is for this reason and because uncontrolled desires lead to sexual relationships outside marriage, that Jesus wants us to always to be in touch with what’s driving our hearts. Then we won’t run out of control and hurt others. This teaching is all about protecting the family so that fathers can be certain that their children are theirs. Jesus specifically warns the men amongst his listeners against lust. ‘Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ Using the language of Leviticus with its stark and horrible images, Jesus seeks to drive home this message in the minds of his listeners.

In the Synoptic Gospels and in Paul’s letters, remarriage after divorce is forbidden. This early and widely accepted teaching, which probably came from Jesus, again safeguards the well-being of the first Christian communities, which could so easily have been destroyed by divorces amongst members.

And then comes the question of oath-taking and vows, which were common in legal, religious and personal relationships in Jesus’ time, and are, more and more in our time. These can cause problems when people fail to keep their promises. Jesus resolves these anxieties by advising his followers to be honest and faithful in all their social interchanges, as a way of preventing strife in the community. Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No’.

Then, as now, Jesus’s call is for transparency and open-ness in our relationships, so that our witness is trustworthy and reliable.

The writer of Deuteronomy speaks of the word of God being very near to us, ‘in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” That ‘word’ says, “See, I have set before you ….life and prosperity, death and adversity.” To enjoy life and prosperity, choose to keep the commandments of the Lord your God. Know that “if you turn away and bow down to other gods, you choose adversity and death”.

The Psalmist (119) also knows how important it is to keep in touch with God and to ask for God’s help in keeping the commandments. (v.5)

His prayer must be ours: 

“O Lord, our God, do not utterly forsake us whilst we learn your righteous laws.”

Thought, speech, behaviour: each aspect of our human existence has the potential to be creative and inspirational or destructive and lethal, to the communities, both small and large, in which we ‘live and move and have our being.’ When I was a child, we used to sing a rhyme in the playground. I expect some of you did, too:

Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me!  By the time I was 7, I knew at first hand that this was not true: Name calling can be very hurtful. Too soon, thoughts can turn to speech and speech comes with what my Mother used to call a friendly warning: ‘Words said cannot be rubbed out’. This warning was followed, if we continued to snipe at each other, by the command: If you can’t speak kindly to each other, don’t speak at all!

Today’s readings have challenged the way we choose to think and speak and behave. They have taught us that the choices we make will affect the communities we live in and our personal growth in faith. May God be with us as we live to grow - and become - spiritual people in Christ our Lord, rather than ‘merely human’: in computer speak, WYSIWYG folk: ‘What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get’ followers of our Lord Jesus Christ in all our ways.

Amen

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