Deuteronomy 30. 15-end, 1 Corinthians 3. 1-9, Matthew 5. 21-37
There is a starkness and even violence in the language used by God and spoken by Moses, (in Deuteronomy 15, not Ecclesiasticus as we heard read; the mistake is entirely my fault) as there is in Matthew’s account of Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Both Moses and Matthew are binary thinkers; the world is seen in black and white, morality in life and death. Superficially, well perhaps rather more than superficially, this is uncomfortable. We do not tend to think of the world or how we should conduct ourselves in such a cut and dried way. Ethics are not so easily analysed as just right and wrong. The simplicity of the analysis ignores the complexity and subtlety of relations with each other; marital breakdown, for example isn’t only the result of adultery.
One reason for this over simple analysis is that both Moses and Matthew are concerned with judgement; for Moses the judgement is in the choice the people are to make of the alternatives placed before them. Matthew is looking to the judgement we are face at the end of our physical lives. Judgement is necessarily black or white, for or against. In each case judgement is the consequence of choice, as it must be (we cannot be guilty of things we did not choose to do): the choice in Deuteronomy is made by the people as a whole; in the Sermon on the Mount, it is individuals who are asked to choose.
The real point, I think, of the stark choice between life and death, so vividly put before the Israelites, is more a contrast between the mortality of the flesh and the world about us and the possibility of eternal life, the life we enjoy if, or when, God abides in us. Human beings must die, and equally the values of the world are built on human appetites and desires which must eventually fade. In this sense the choice before us, too, is life based on living out the existence God has destined for us, or giving into the temporal world- following only its desires and ambitions or, which is as bad, being too depressed by its disasters and disappointments.
The distinction, however, between physical and spiritual spheres is not, fortunately, quite as clear as Moses and Matthew would have us think. The promise of life is described as real in geographical and historical terms; a land flowing with milk and honey. This is partly a metaphor for spiritual well being, but a promise of real prosperity too. The prophets develop this link between physical and spiritual thinking as we heard as in the passage from Isaiah last week, describing how true righteousness is a life of service and love of God’s other creatures. This is not inconsistent- indeed it may be the primary manifestation of the spiritual life.
In Matthew’s Sermon the emphasis has shifted from the communal psyche of the God’s people, the nation of Israel, to individuals. Matthew is concerned with the inner self, the true person, distinguished from the outer being which is governed by lust and anger, motivated by its desires. Matthew’s language is as stark and more violent that Moses’ but on a personal plane it is making the same point, that true life and lasting fulfilment and growth, happiness in fact, come from allowing ourselves to live a life of spiritual values. Brutally and, I think, somewhat unrealistically, black and white though Matthew’s language is, he does recognise a need for compromise in the slightly implausible description of early dispute resolution on the way to court.
The move from the Old to the New Testament is not only of the community to the individual. Alongside that shift is a parallel move away from the observance of ritual and tradition as the way to follow of God’s commandments and live the righteous life. The Gospel emphasises the rather harder dictates of individual conscience. The roots of this shift are to be found in the Old Testament itself, where, as we have seen, the Prophets , especially Isaiah see God as requiring not burnt offerings but a genuine and deep love for one’s neighbour. These ideas were no doubt encouraged by the new Christians in the young church who had no experience of Jewish tradition (and that tradition had anyway suffered a terminal blow in the destruction of the Temple and the consequent end of sacrifice). Some of these early Christians, or the more intellectual among them, may have been, more at home at home in contemporary philosophies with their emphasis on individual virtue, an idea which translated quite easily into the spiritual, sometimes ascetic, but public spirited, life.
This emphasis on the inner life and the subordination of physical and worldly passion has had the effect of placing much greater responsibility on the individual and this increased responsibility is I think at the heart of some of our contemporary troubled moral thinking.
It’s not that there is more evil about; I don’t think we are worse or better than our forbears but we do seem to have a different attitude to sin. We have so far emphasised the importance of the individual and so much encouraged the right to choose, that we have ignored the corollary of choice that is that every choice has a consequence, a judgement, whether immediate or distant in time or place.
A bit like the Early Christians moving away from the traditions and ritual of Judaism, we have lost the more rigid social framework, and for most, any sort of religious instruction and logistic that used to guide moral thinking. We are expected to be independent and free, to come to our own decisions, and as the Sermon suggests, it is what we really think that matters. But we don’t as the original audience did, have such strong social and family bonds and traditions to contain and guide our decision making. In many ways this is good, and I wouldn’t want to return to the straight- jacket morality that we associate (probably wrongly) with the Victorians. I’m wary of the call for stronger moral guidance from the church, because as often as not, I disagree with what churches seem most concerned to teach.
But this freedom does have an unfortunate corollary in that the concept of sin has come close to disappearing; the crucial question in wrongdoing is so often not what have you done but have you been caught? So politicians caught in flagrante, do not confess to having done something wrong, but complain about their mistake of being caught. Their fault is not sin, but lack of care in avoiding detection.
The worst consequence of this prevalent attitude is that it denies wrongdoers the release and healing of forgiveness. Anyone with some strength of character can forgive; but to be forgiven requires the strength and courage to acknowledge that one has done something wrong, not merely made a mistake. This means acknowledging that there is a real “you”, a permanent personality that could and should lead a better life, the life that is which God has destined for you. That is much harder.
Paul, writing to the Corinthians adopts much calmer language; his message is that we are all capable of living a spiritual life and as we can grow out of childhood so we can grow out of the domination of our senses, our enslavement to our appetites and lusts. Like the Israelites promised a Promised Land, way may grow with God’s help, watering and nurturing us , into the adulthood of a spiritual life, that is Eternal life, real life and not the doomed, corruptible and decaying life of the flesh. For Matthew that holy life implies, or may require, the violent rejection of the world, the cutting off of hands or tearing out of eyes. We needn’t, I think, hold such binary views and we needn’t reject the world quite so violently, but I do believe that to find the moral strength to live good lives, and to enjoy the forgiveness and prosperity promised to us we shall need to be capable of acknowledging sin and accepting forgiveness and that means an acceptance too of our spiritual nature and sometimes the management and curtailment of our physical selves. Amen.