Sermon on Matthew 5:21-37 – Discipleship in Community

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The Sermon on the Mount is starting to get real.

Jesus started out by calling people blessed, happy, greatly honored, then he drew out the salt and light in his community of followers.

But now, he’s starting to talk about how to actually live it. And it’s tough.

I’ll be honest: when we were planning this sermon series, and I realized I was up for this passage, I was dreading it.

Murder, adultery, divorce, vows—they make for an exciting novel but are not what one hopes for in real life.

And Jesus takes the instructions in the Law regarding murder, adultery, divorce, and making vows and interprets them in a way that intensifies them.

So instead of “stabbing someone to death is bad,” Jesus says, “if you let your anger get the better of you and you insult someone, you’ve essentially murdered them.”

Many people can pat themselves on the back for never having physically murdered anyone, but I would be very surprised if anyone here can, in good faith, say they’ve never been angry with anyone and called them a name.

Sometimes we can get a hippie, “love is all you need” image of Jesus. But here Jesus keeps us accountable. And it’s not comfortable.

It feels like this passage is an impossible checklist of “dos and don’ts.”

Why this sudden shift from “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “You are the salt of the earth”?

If the Beatitudes are about who the disciples are (the marginalized and those aligned with the marginalized),

and Jesus was drawing out the salt and light that were in his disciples so that the world could see the loving God he was pointing to,

then these teachings are showing Jesus’ disciples how to be his followers in community.

And community is hard, as anyone who’s ever had roommates or planned an event with a committeeor worked on a group project in school knows.

And the Beloved Community that Jesus is calling his followers to is so much harder.

It’s so counter-cultural that it’s counterintuitive. It goes against our egos and sometimes even our survival instincts, teaching us to think of others first. It calls the poor and marginalized “blessed” and the rich and elite “last.”

Jesus is calling for people to be “right-sized”—calling for those who don’t have to consider others to instead love and serve their neighbor, and letting those who are considered nothing by society know that they are valued members of God’s family.

Jesus is calling for people to be “integrated”—to align their actions and their attitudes to the love of God and of neighbor. The word “integrated” is related to the word “integer,” like the whole numbers we learned about in math class. We don’t want decimal points in our identities. We want to be whole numbers. They’re easier to deal with in math, and being wholehelps us live as the salt and light we are.

So, Jesus teaches that our words and attitudes toward our neighbor can be death-dealing or life-giving.

Then, he teaches that objectifying someone dehumanizes them and breaks the relationship.

And he discourages men (the ones with power in the relationship) from divorcing their wives at a time when women were dependent on the men in their lives for survival.

Then, he encourages people to be integrated in their words and actions. Most agreements were verbal in those days, so oaths worked like contracts do today. So, Jesus says, “Don’t use fancy language for emphasis. When you follow through on your words, your yes can mean yes and your no mean no.”

Jesus has two more instructions in this list, but you’ll have to wait until next week to hear about those.

But all of these add up to so much more than a list of “dos and don’ts.” They are the building blocks of Beloved Community.

And they so often get used to bully, exclude, and judge people, which is the opposite of Beloved Community.

When we turn the sermon on the mount into an individualistic, moral yardstick, we are misusing it and hurting ourselves and our neighbors.

How many people have been told they’re a sinner and they’re going to Hell, when Jesus here warns against calling others hurtful names?How many LGBTQ kids have been kicked out of their homes by parents who call themselves Christian, when Jesus himself says to be reconciled?

How many times have women been told to dress modestly so they don’t cause men to sin, when it’s men who are instructed here not to look at women lustfully?

How many people have been encouraged to stay in lifeless or abusive marriages because of these verses? Or have gotten a divorce and then been shunned and shamed at the very time they most needed their community’s love and support?

How many people have been told not to cuss because the Bible says not to instead of having their hurts really listened to? Besides the fact that that’s not the kind of swearing Jesus is talking about here.

How many people have looked at their own lives and feared damnation because they don’t measure up to these impossible standards?

Shame and fear, whether from others or from within oneself, is not what Jesus is trying to create here.

First of all, these standards are impossible. We can’t measure up perfectly to these instructions. That’s why we need God. That’s why Martin Luther said that we are both saint and sinner. We can’t do this on our own.

And that’s why Jesus is forming the Beloved Community. We need each other. Christians aren’t meant to be in a vacuum—we’re made for community.

And that’s why the sermon on the mount isn’t a yardstick for us as individuals to measure up to. That’s not what it’s meant for. The sermon on the mount is a vision of a community of disciples of Jesus.

When we view these teachings as a precise code of behavior—rigidly, where people are either in or out, either measuring up or not—then we’re misusing them and hurting the very Beloved Community Jesus is fostering.

For example, let’s look at the divorce teaching. If we look at it very strictly and at face value, we read, “you shouldn’t ever get divorced unless your spouse cheats on you.”

And this was very much the way the dominant US culture used to view divorce. I remember watching the movie with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers The Gay Divorcee. It’s a fun Fred and Ginger romantic musical from 1934. The basic premise is that Ginger’s character wants a divorce from her husband who’s gone most of the time anyway. Her lawyer sets things up so that she’ll look like she’s having an affair so that her husband will want a divorce. There are mix-ups and shenanigans, of course, and her husband doesn’t believe her, but it turns out he was having an affair the whole time, so Ginger’s character is free to get a divorce and pursue a relationship with Fred’s character.

So, fun, comic, dance-filled movie. And also, it’s based on the premise that people have to lie and manipulate each other to get out of a loveless marriage. That’s not what Jesus is going for here!

Jesus does not want people to stay in abusive marriages or marriages that are causing people harm.

There are times when it is good to work to repair a marriage and times when it is better to end it. And looking to the sermon on the mount as a checklist is not the way to discern which is better for you.

Instead, read deeply into the sermon on the mount. Look at the attitudes it fosters and the actions that come from that. Look at the way the instructions build community and provide protection for the vulnerable.

It says:

Don’t hold onto anger or call people names.

Be bold in your reconciliation efforts.

Don’t objectify other people, especially not those with less power than you.

Don’t give your word lightly—be so whole-hearted that people believe what you say.

It all comes down to the way Jesus summarizes the law: love God with everything you are and love your neighbor as yourself.

When we pick apart these teachings, trying to live to the letter of them, we sometimes miss the intention behind them and the goal of building community and a whole-hearted life together.

I invite you to set down any baggage you’ve been carrying around the teachings of Jesus we read today. There’s potentially a lot of it—I know I have more than a little.

Now, take a deep breath, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Roll your shoulders if that feels good.

These teachings are not meant to instill shame or fear. We won’t fulfill them perfectly—we’re fallible human beings, and God knows that and loves us (yes, you!).

To the best of our ability, we can live whole-heartedly, seeing the image of God in the people around us and treating them as such. And that, along with the power of the Holy Spirit, is how Beloved Community is created. That is discipleship in community.

Beloved children of God, release the weight of fear and shame.

Feel the freedom of the whole-hearted life Jesus invites us to.

Go, beloved, be the community of God.