The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

It’s a tough assignment: “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of Heaven”.
It is not that Jesus undervalued the conduct of the scribes and Pharisees; he clearly found their tendency to self satisfaction irritating, but I sense that he admired their dedication in their observance of the Law. The problem was that  it was essentially misdirected. The Law in the hands of the Scribes and Pharisees had burgeoned into an immensely complex set of rules, expanding like all legal codes to cover every eventuality and close every loophole.  For Jesus all this detail was superficial; it did not get to heart of our relationship with God. That relationship should depend on an understanding our true nature as human but made in God’s image; dependant on our creator and tasked with fulfilling his creative purpose through love. Fulfilling that purpose requires, no doubt, some principles and rules but they are mere guidance; directions and sign-posts, programmes and procedures for how we behave. They are not the essence of the relationship because they are concerned with what we do; entry into the kingdom of heaven is a matter of being not doing. It is a matter of understanding and accepting who we are. It’s our nature, our self awareness and our disposition that matter; if these are properly understood, then good behaviour will naturally follow. And not just good behaviour by reference to a moral rule book, even a rule book written in stone and handed down by God to Moses. As we are aware of our nature we shall take on, as it were divine qualities; among them an ability to pass on God’s creative love and to heal and to forgive. These of course go well beyond any conventional morality.
 The point is drawn out in the ambiguity in the meaning of righteousness; at one level being righteous is simply keeping on the right side of the law- something the Scribes and Pharisees did well; but righteousness also means being in a right relation with God; the scribes and Pharisees thought that would achieved by obeying intricately complex rules, ones which one suspects, like most rules and regulations were rather easier to observe (and possibly easier to avoid) if you were well off, but for Jesus what matters is trusting in God and understanding your position as a creature made in his image and loved by him. It is this righteousness that is the foundation for the Kingdom of Heaven. 
We should not think that the Kingdom is some other place; the hereafter of somewhere beyond our physical experience. Jesus gives three examples of how righteousness will affect our conduct and they are each down to earth.
 First, he tells us that anger and even fairly mild mockery (the odd word “Raca” is tame insult) are tantamount to murder; this is not I think so much because such attitudes may lead to violence (although that would certainly be true) but rather that they show disrespect for our fellow creatures. To be angry, to hate and even to laugh at another is to treat that person as less human than oneself, and to be less human than the righteous citizen of the Kingdom is to be dead; it is to fail to be fully alive. As we have the power to bring full life to others, we equally have the power to kill by failing to exercise those abilities. This full life if the life that Paul is talking about when he says we must die with Christ in order to be resurrected to everlasting life with him. Paul associates the Law with death and sin in a way similar to what I think Matthew is also saying. We must go beyond the law and beyond death to find true life.
But righteousness is not perfection; we shall fail to live up to our potential but Jesus’ next example tells us what we can do about it. So the man who would bring a gift to the altar and so come close to God, must settle his grievances with his brother creatures first; it must have been this passage that Cranmer had in mind when he put our confession today so close to communion. It is what the authors of Common Worship had in mind with the giving of Peace and the exchange of handshake or kiss.
There is something a little puzzling about the last example; what Jesus seems to be proposing appears to be only common sense; seeking a settlement quickly is simple prudence in the circumstances described. I think the emphasis should be on the quickly- Matthew’s Jesus, like St Paul, is very conscious of second coming and the Last Judgement; there is an urgency bringing about the Kingdom and no time to lose in setting our affairs straight, accepting the life giving love which we are offered, realising the righteousness that is in each of us. We, nowadays, perhaps feel less of that impending threat, but we too should not delay in seeking the reconciliation we need to live our lives to their full potential and thereby bring new life, light and love to the often dark and broken world around us. Because that world’s  needs are indeed pressing urgently on us. Amen