Sermon:
August 1, 2004
Sunday Night Alive  

Scripture:
Matthew 5:17-48

I believe it was August of 1999. That was the summer when a new phenomenon began to sweep the country. It was something new. Something unexpected. It was just an occasional thing at first. But within a matter of weeks, it was an everyday occurrence. Within a matter of weeks, Americans from every walk of life were tuned in to this new thing. It was being talked about at the office and at the coffee shop with friends. It was an amazing thing, really. You could call a family member who lived in a different part of the country, in an entirely different time zone, and eventually you would be talking about it. It was late that summer and fall of 1999 that it happened. I know you remember it. I guarantee it. In fact, all I have to do is say the one line that is now implanted in the lexicon of our popular vernacular. One line. Are you ready? Here it comes—that one line. One line and you’ll all know what I am talking about: “That’s my final answer.”  

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The game show that made Regis a household name has a simple premise. Answer 15 consecutive questions of increasing difficulty and “voila,” you can take home the big, oversized check for $1,000,000. What made the game so interesting, though, was that the contestant didn’t have to do it alone. They could get some help. Three times during the course of the game, they could use a lifeline: from the producers who would narrow the answers down to two, from the audience who would give you their best guess, or from that buddy on the phone who could give you some solid advice. The player could get by with a little help from his friends.  

Last week we talked about compasses. This week we are looking at lifelines, the practical ways that love is to be lived out in the context of our everyday lives. 

Before we go much further, I want to be clear about the kind of love we are talking about here— the kind of love Jesus says should be our compass, the kind of love that will truly be a lifeline.  This is important because just saying that Christianity is love, just saying that the only thing that matters in living the Christian life is love, could be a dangerous, misleading thing. 

This is especially true in our modern context where love can mean so many different things. I love Bridget. I love pizza. I love the Green Bay Packers. I love my job. And I am called to love my neighbor. All use the same word, but each talk about a different kind of love. Believe it or not, the love I have for Bridget is different, and far deeper, than the love I have for the Green Bay Packers. Love in our culture is often thought of in terms of romantic comedies or Hallmark cards. But to simply equate the gospel of Jesus Christ with a Julia Roberts movie or six rhyming lines and an airbrushed sunset is to miss the very essence of who God is and who we are called to be. That is why we have to be clear on the kind of love Jesus calls us to. Because if Christian love is only soft and sentimental, then it will never adequately be able to deal with sin, injustice and the problems of evil.  

Unlike the English language where we use the same word to mean different things—love of Bridget, love of pizza—in the Greek New Testament, the language of the original text, there are three different words for love. Looking at how the Greeks talked about love can help us understand the kind of love Jesus is calling us to. In Greek, the first word for love is eros. Eros is a sort of aesthetic, romantic love. It is the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. We have all experienced eros. A beautiful sunset, a fantastic piece of art, moving music, a starlit sky, the glance of an attractive person—all can evoke the feelings of eros. Some of the most beautiful love in the entire world has been expressed this way. When I say I love Miles Davis’ jazz, it is eros that I am talking about. 

The Greek language also talks about philia, which is another word for love. Philia is a kind of intimate love between personal friends. This is the kind of love you have for people whom you get along with well, and you love those on this level because you are loved. Philia is root of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. Philia is a vital and valuable love. It is the philia, brotherly and sisterly love, that many of us share with each other when we gather here each week. 

The Greek language has another word for love, agape. Agape is more than romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill toward all humanity. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians have called agape the love of God operating in the human heart. When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor” and “Love your enemy,” it is agape he is talking about. (Notice he does not say “Like your neighbor” or “Like your enemy.” Some people, we will never like. Some people will never like us. Agape says there isn’t anyone we can’t love.)  

When we love on the agape level, we love persons not because we like them, not because their attitudes, politics or religion are appealing to us, but because God loves them. Agape does not recognize value, it creates it. This is the kind of love we are called into. Agape. Radical, neighbor-regarding concern for the other which discovers the neighbor in every person it meets.  

So what does this love look like? How am I to live it out in the midst of my everyday life? Well, today’s scriptures give us three examples and three guidelines—three lifelines, if you will. Here is the first:  

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment….” 

Jesus begins with one of the Ten Commandments. He says, “You have heard it said, ‘Do not murder.’” Pretty obvious. Jesus starts where we all start when it comes to justifying our own goodness. “Hey, I have never murdered anyone.” But as we talked about last week, Jesus pushes us to go deeper than simply obeying the law. Jesus pushes his disciples to see that within us is the anger that gives birth to violence and murder. Where religious types would justify themselves by touting their perfect records in obeying the seventh commandment,  Jesus calls his disciples to a greater righteousness. We are called to right relationship. Anyone who has anger in his or her heart is subject to judgment. Anger can break fellowship, break connection, and break community. 

So if you’re like me, you are probably saying at this point, “Great. I can’t win here. I haven’t murdered anyone. I’m not planning to murder anyone. I was pretty sure I was off the hook. But then Jesus comes along and says that’s not enough. You can’t even have anger in your heart. Well, Jesus, I don’t know what world you live in or where you go to work every day or the stress level of your household. But no anger? Yeah, right.” 

It is true. Jesus sets an ideal that is too high for imperfect people living in an imperfect world. But then he tosses us a lifeline. He tells us how this can be lived out. Jesus says, “You want to know how to live out this love I am calling you to…this greater righteousness? Here is an example: 

“If you are offering your gift at the altar and remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”  

There you have it. Do you want to live into an agape kind of love? Do you want to remove the anger from your heart? Then live like this: make reconciliation and overcoming alienation and hostility central to the way you live. Make it even more important than coming to church. No wonder Jesus was so unpopular with the religious leaders of his time. 

So there is a lifeline we can hold onto. Agape love seeks reconciliation. If we are to live into the greater righteousness Jesus calls us to, we are called to be reconcilers. That means at the office we should not let misunderstandings and frustrations fester. At home we should not let moments when we have had our feelings hurt, or when we have hurt those of a child or spouse, just blow over. Instead, we need to take time to express our feelings and make amends. We need to make time to live into a new future and let the anger remain in the past.  

If I were to ask you right now to think of one person you need to be reconciled with, whose face comes to mind? What is it that you can do, this next week, to move that relationship toward reconciliation? Is it a phone call? A lunch? A letter? Maybe it is just saying a prayer for that relationship. Whatever it is, grab hold of this lifeline called agape, and make a move towards reconciliation. It is one of the ways to greater righteousness. It is one of the keys to abundant living. Remember, agape love seeks reconciliation.   

Jesus then moves to another example of this agape love he is talking about. He goes on to say:

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Just as in his last example, Jesus states the religiously obvious. “You have heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’” Again, we try to defend ourselves: “Look, I haven’t murdered anyone and I don’t sleep around. I am all right.” But again Jesus pushes us to a deeper level. We are not off the hook by our external behavior alone. Jesus wants us to probe the very recesses of our heart. He tells his disciples: 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Where religious types would justify themselves by touting their perfect records in obeying the eighth commandment (“Hey, I’ve never cheated on my wife or anything…”), Jesus calls us once again into right relationship. We need to go beyond the literal sense of the law to its deeper intention. 

To fully understand the radical thing Jesus is calling for, we have to understand something about adultery and the role of women in the first-century world that Jesus was speaking to. In the first century, wives were considered property. Marriage was more a legal matter than it was a matter of the heart. Adultery was considered a violation of the husband’s exclusive right to his wife and assurance that the children born to her were his. In the first-century world, a man who committed the physical act of adultery rendered that woman “damaged goods.”   

It is into this setting that Jesus says it is not enough to just not violate a man’s property. To be truly righteous we must not violate a woman’s humanity. To look at a woman as merely an object of desire—even if it is never acted upon—is to see her only as property, only as an object.  It is to see her as less than fully human and it diminishes the very child of God that she is.  

Jesus begins a radical reformation of the relationship between men and women. Women are to be welcomed into the fellowship of the community as sisters, as partners in mission and ministry.  The new relationship with women among Jesus’ followers required of men a greater righteousness and new kind of self-discipline. Jesus once again throws out this lifeline called agape and asks both men and women to grab onto it and see each other with new eyes—the eyes of God—as full human beings, each made in the very likeness and image of God. Agape love refuses to objectify persons, but rather it strives to humanize each of us in the eyes of each other. Radical stuff. Life-changing, world-altering stuff. Agape is the lifeline of humanizing love.  

And one more time Jesus offers his disciples a glimpse into what it means to live a life of agape love. This time he says: 

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”  

Let me say up front that I will not be able to do justice to everything embedded in this text with the time remaining. This text, and the entire issue of divorce in our contemporary age, deserves a sermon, or a series of sermons, to really understand what God is calling us to. Second, let me say I have no firsthand experience with divorce. I cannot begin to understand what it means to go through one or what it takes to try to resurrect your life after one. Again, these are topics for another time. 

But let us once again consider what Jesus was saying to his first-century audience. It is important to remember again the role of women in the first century because it will shed incredible light on the dramatic reversal of conventional thinking that Jesus is evoking. In the first-century world, women had no rights in the public sphere. They could not represent themselves in court. They could not initiate court proceedings on their own behalf. They could not own property. They could not file for divorce. While they were unmarried, their fathers would represent them in public. After marriage, it would be their husbands.  

In the first-century world, a man could divorce his wife without any restrictions. He could do it whenever and however he pleased. He simply declared his intention to do so. The complete freedom of men to divorce their wives put women in an economically-precarious position. Once divorced, a woman was left without any legal or social representation in the public sphere. Jesus’ tightening of the divorce laws of his day, suggesting that it was only right in the case infidelity, granted women a sense of legal, economic and social protection otherwise unrealized in the first-century world.  

In doing so, Jesus shows another important quality of this lifeline he called agape: Love— Christian love, agape love—does not abandon. Love does not allow for the weakest in our midst to simply fend for themselves. As Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, love (the word here is agape) is patient and kind. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Simply put, it does not abandon.  

In the context of today’s world, this part of the Law of Love must be lived out. I have seen it here in families where divorce has been a part of the journey. I have seen it here in families that have become blended. You have worked to make sure your children do not feel abandoned. I have seen some of the struggle to find ways to make sure that all parents, both biological and through remarriage, have the opportunity to love and to parent so that your children do not feel abandoned.  

In a similar way, when we do acts of service on behalf of the poor and brokenhearted, it should be out of this sense that we do it—out of the sense that God’s love does not abandon. When we serve in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, nursing homes, food pantries or clinics, it is not out of some sense of pity, but it is done to communicate the very core of Christian love. We serve the poor to remind them that they have not been abandoned—not abandoned by God, not abandoned by us. The lifeline of agape has been extended again to us all. And to grab it means to live more fully into a love that doesn’t leave us as people without hope, because we are to remember that God has promised to be with us, even to the end of the age. 

The love we are to live into is agape love. It is a love that always seeks reconciliation, allows us to see each other as fully human, and reminds us that we are to live our lives in ways that don’t make the weakest and most vulnerable fend for themselves. Because our God has not and will not abandon us.  

“So how are we to live in the world, Jesus? Give us your answer.” 

“Agape.” 

“Is that your final answer?” 

“It’s my final answer.”

Note: I leaned heavily on an essay by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. entitled “An Experiment in Love” that was printed in an anthology called A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the different uses of the word “love” in the Greek Testament. 

I am also thankful for M. Eugene Boring’s commentary in the New Interpreter’s Bible for insight into the text.