If I ruled the world...

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

23^rd February 2014, 11.00am

Matthew 5:38-48   "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'  ³⁹ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;  ⁴⁰ and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well;  ⁴¹ and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.  ⁴² Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.  ⁴³ ¶ "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'  ⁴⁴ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  ⁴⁵ so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.  ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Leviticus 19:1-2   The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:  ² Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.

Leviticus 19:9-18  When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  ¹⁰ You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.  ¹¹ ¶ You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another.  ¹² And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD.  ¹³ ¶ You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning.  ¹⁴ You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.  ¹⁵ ¶ You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.  ¹⁶ You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.  ¹⁷ ¶ You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.  ¹⁸ You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Do you ever find yourself having those thoughts

            which begin with the phrase,

                        'If I ruled the world...'?

It's such a seductive thought, isn't it?

If I ruled the world, things would be different...

If I ruled the world, things would be better...

If I ruled the world, I'd solve this pressing problem,

            resolve that nagging issue,

                        and sort out the other so it stopped causing such trouble.

I've got a list, as I'm sure you can imagine, and it grows daily.

            From the unequal distribution of global resources,

            to the fact that the doors in public toilets open the wrong way,

                        I'm sure it would all be so much better, so much more efficient,

                        if I was running the show.

And yet, I tell myself, others have tried this before, and they've always failed.

'If I ruled the world' is the thought behind every bloody revolution,

            the idea behind every regime change,

                        the drive behind every coup.

It's the motivation behind every political ideology, every party manifesto,

            every general election, every national referendum.

Sometimes, of course, it's true.

            Sometimes I could do it better than them.

Sometimes the revolution is necessary, a good thing, even.

            The deposing of dictators, the overthrow of oppressive regimes,

            the rise of democracy, and the growth in respect for human rights

- all these are, broadly speaking, changes for the better.

This was the quandary facing Dietrich Bonhoeffer

            when he, the pacifist German pastor,

            found himself with the opportunity to participate in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

And his conclusion, that it was better to do evil than to allow evil to continue,

            cost him his life.

It is also the quandary, the dilemma,

            which lies behind our passage this morning from the sermon on the mount.

Jesus was preaching to a people

            whose religion required of them a strict adherence to the Jewish law,

            as interpreted and taught to them by the scribes and the Pharisees.

Now, I know the Scribes and the Pharisees get a lot of negative press,

            but just for a minute I'd like us to try and see things from their point of view.

They had a country to run, and not a easy country at the best of times.

            The Roman occupation required careful management;

                        one wrong move and all hell would break loose.

            The people were anxious, taxed to within an inch of poverty,

                        and volatile to the point of revolution.

The only thing keeping it all in check was the law,

            which was, by and large, obeyed.

Not the law of Rome, but the law of Moses.

            The Jewish religious leaders had obtained a special dispensation from the emperor

                        that the traditional Jewish law could still function within the land of Israel,

            so long as it didn't harm the interests of the empire

            or foment rebellion amongst the population.

It was a situation not dissimilar to the contemporary debate

            around the concessions that may be granted in the British legal system

                        to accommodate certain principles of Islamic law.

            It's a fine line, and fraught with tension, and it always has been.

So the Jewish people lived, by and large, according to the Mosaic law,

            and the Scribes and the Pharisees needed to keep it that way,

            because the alternative didn't bear thinking about.

The law of Moses had as it's basis the Ten Commandments,

            but these we're overlaid with a vast quantity of additional legal material

                        to expand and clarify the key principles of the commandments.

            Some of these were found in the books of the Hebrew Bible,

                        what we would call the Old Testament,

            and some were found in the vast array of other literature

                        that the Jewish religious leaders had generated over the centuries.

Our Old Testament reading this morning, from the book of Leviticus,

            is an example of just such material,

as it takes the command to love your neighbour

            and expands it to include care for the poor and the vulnerable,

            setting forth a kind of Jewish equivalent of the welfare state.

One notable feature of the law of Moses,

            and this was something that the Romans recognised and respected,

            was that it was only ever intended to apply to the Jewish people.

It wasn't given as a universal law-code,

            applicable and enforceable across the range of human societies.

It wasn't some predecessor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Rather, the Law of Moses was an outworking of the call of God

            on the people of Israel to be the people of God.

The Jewish law was exactly what it claimed to be

             - the law for the Jews.

They did not seek to impose it on the gentile nations,

            and only required obedience to it from those people

                        who were inside the covenant that God had established

                        with the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham.

But, and here's an important point,

            the Jewish law was given to the Jews,

                        to be obeyed by them as the covenant people of God,

            so that they might function as a light to the nations,

                        as a blessing to the Gentile nations.

It wasn't given to the Jews for their own benefit,

            so that they could be holy whilst other nations could go to hell.

Rather, it was given for the benefit of all,

            to show the true way of being human

                        that was available through entering into a covenant relationship

                        with the living God.

The quandary that Jesus faced,

            in the first century world of Roman occupation,

was that the law of Moses had become something

            that it was never intended to be.

It had become a tool of nationalist ideology,

            a barrier between Jews and Gentiles which was insurmountable,

            a source of pride, and a motivation for judgment.

So, the command to love one's neighbour from Deuteronomy,

            had become a couplet of judgment:

                        love your neighbour - and hate your enemy!

            Love your fellow Jew, and hate your Gentile enemy.

The lex talionis, the injunction that the punishment

                        for maliciously taking out a person's eye or tooth

            should be no more severe

                        than inflicting the same injury back on the perpetrator,

had ceased to be a guard against overkill,

            and had instead become a mechanism

                        for calculating compensation claims for injuries caused

                        that would make a contemporary ambulance-chasing

                                    compensation-lawyer blush.

The letter of the law still stood,

            but it's spirit had been twisted.

Fairness and justice had given way

            to oppressive and exploitative practice.

Care for the vulnerable had given way

            to exclusion of the marginalised and hatred of the other.

Righteousness had given way to self righteousness.

So Jesus said, love your enemy,

            pray for those who persecute you,

                        forgive the person who has wronged you,

                                    give to the person who has asked for help.

And in saying this, he wasn't simply articulating

            some soft sixties-liberalism woolly-headed love-philosophy.

Rather, he was challenging the very basis

            on which his society's social and legal systems were predicated.

And I have to say that I can see why

            the scribes and the Pharisees got so angry with him.

I mean, if you take what Jesus is advocating seriously,

            you have a recipe for absolute anarchy on your hands.

The philosophy of Jesus, if taken as an articulation of a legal framework,

            is totally unworkable.

The wicked will go unpunished,

            the wealthy will soon become impoverished,

                        the vulnerable will be exploited at every turn.

You couldn't run a coffee morning along these lines,

            let alone a city, a country, an empire, or even a church.

So what did Jesus think he was doing?

            Did he have an agenda for anarchy?

Was he simply inculcating tactics designed to destabilise

            the carefully negotiated status quo?

Well, partly, I think the answer to that is yes,

            but not without cause.

Jesus is very clear in the sermon,

            that he has not come to overthrow the law.

Rather, he says that he has come to fulfil the law,

            to bring it to perfection,

                        to bring it to completion.

His intent in the provocative and challenging words of the sermon

            is to take the law back to its original intent,

away from being a mechanism for oppression and exclusion,

            a tool of the status quo alliance with Rome,

and to rediscover it as the God-given challenge

            to the forces and powers at work among the nations

                        that divide, distort, and demean humanity.

Jesus has a vision of the law

            as the out working of the love of God for the whole of creation,

                        not just one part of it,

                                    not just one chosen land,

                                                not just one nation under God.

And so he challenges those

            who had sought to restrict the role of Israel as a light to the nations

            in the cause of national interest and self-preservation.

He challenges the status quo

            that allows the people of God and the empire to co-exist,

and he challenges especially those who have used the law of Moses

            to keep the people subjugated, impoverished, and oppressed,

                        in order to preserve and protect the national interest.

It’s time for a change, it’s time for a revolution.

            It’s time to start doing it differently.

But this is not Jesus’ moment of revolutionary epiphany,

            this is not the moment when he starts to think ‘If I ruled the world…’

He’s already faced that temptation,

            when Satan offered him all the empires of the world as a gift,

            and Jesus turned down earthly power as the solution to humanity’s plight.

People will not be saved by changing the leadership,

            they won’t be saved by someone else ruling the world.

Rather, the path to salvation, according to Jesus,

            lies in a change of heart, in a change of attitude, in a change of behaviour,

            that starts at the grassroots, with the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalised.

The revolution of Jesus is not one where society is transformed from the top down,

            it’s one where the world is transformed from the bottom up.

So Jesus says to the Jewish peasant,

            that if a soldier offers the the insult of a back-handed blow to their right cheek,

            they should turn and look him in the eye,

                        and then invite him to hit them again,

                        but this time on their other cheek as an equal.

Jesus says to the powerless person who is being fleeced for their fleece

                        by someone who holds all the cards,

            that they should respond by giving their creditor all their clothes,

                        leaving the courthouse naked,

            thereby making the creditor responsible for the shame of their nakedness,

                        and denying them any coverup for their oppressive actions.

Jesus says to the person conscripted by a Roman soldier

                        to carry his pack for one mile

            that they should walk on for a further mile,

                        shaming the power of the soldier

                                    and causing him to break the Roman law

                                    that only allowed him to require one mile of assistance.

Jesus advocates a policy of what is sometimes called

            Revolutionary Subordination,[1] or Holy Mischief,[2] or nonviolent resistance.

Jesus challenges those whom the law has made powerless

            to engage their prophetic imagination in such a way

                        as to generate imaginative responses,

                        where violence and oppression are disarmed by creativity.

I find myself drawn at this point

            to the recent protest activities of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot,

who have sought through provocative but peaceful artistic expression,

            to challenge the oppressive and exclusive practices

                        of a dominant ideology that they have identified

                        as patriarchal, homophobic, and violent.

So far they have been arrested and imprisoned,

            and just this week manhandled and whipped

            for making a video in front of the Winter Olympics flag

            in protest at the recent legislation on homosexuality.

And I think they point us to something important.

            This kind of nonviolent provocative creative protest

                        is never without cost if it is to be effective.

            Jesus himself paid the ultimate price

                        for the path he embarked on,

            and he invites those who follow him

                        to take up their own cross.

But he also invites all who will respond

            to enter into a life lived not in fear of death,

            but in the power of resurrection.

The worst the law can do is take your life,

            and Jesus promises new life

            to those who join him in his challenge to the powers that distort creation.

The fulfilment of the law that Jesus speaks of

            isn’t a vision for an alternative national law,

            because it turns out that Jesus isn’t interested in national boundaries.

If you want a framework for a national legal system, look elsewhere.

Neither will it work as a party manifesto,

            because it seems Jesus isn’t interested in party political boundaries.

If you want a political ideology, look elsewhere.

Neither will it work as a rule

            for any kind of structured, boundaried, disciplined community,

                        because Jesus is interested in crossing boundaries,

                                    in loving the excluded,

                                    and in embracing the marginalised.

Any rule of law that is based on national identity

            will find itself radically challenged

when the poor, the disadvantaged, and the marginalised

            hear the invitation to see themselves as equals.

The world of the twenty-first century

            has much in common with the world of Jesus.

We too have our power blocks, our empires, our nationalistic ideologies.

            We too have our legal systems, our enforcers of the law,

            and some are better than others, make no mistake about it.

In many ways, the foundation of Jewish ethics as we heard it in Leviticus,

            that ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (19.18)

                        remains the foundation for Western society.

From nationalism to national interest,

            from ethnic identity to strategic alliances,

                        from special relationships to entente cordiale,

we still structure society in much the same way

            as that which Jesus encountered in the first century.

We love our neighbours, and we hate our enemies.

But Jesus invites us, as he invited the scribes and the Pharisees,

            to realise that national identity means nothing

                        to the God of the whole earth.

God is not an Englishman, or a Welshman, or a Scot, or an American,

            or indeed the property of any group that might lay claim to him.

He is not a Baptist, or an Anglican, or a Moslem, or a Jew.

            He is not even a ‘he’, come to think of it.

What God is, is love,

            and he calls the people of God to live differently,

not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole world.

Take, for example, Jesus’ rather troubling injunction to,

            give to everyone who begs from you,

and not to refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you (5.42).

Does he intend all his followers

            to give everything away whenever they are asked?

If so, we’re not very good at it, are we?

            I mean, as a church we do indeed give, and give generously, to those who ask,

                        but we have limits, and we have structures,

                                    and policies, and programmes…

            And rightly so, I might add!

But what was Jesus getting at, then?

I think he has in mind the social welfare system outlined in Leviticus,

            that we heard about in our second reading.

This system, of leaving a portion of the harvest for the poor to gather,

            and of paying people on time, and of being a good employer,

was intended to build into the Jewish society

            a basic orientation to the poor and the vulnerable.

It was a recognition that it was the responsibility of the haves,

            to provide care for the have-nots,

            and to use their wealth in non-exploitative ways.

But, by Jesus’ time, the scribes and the Pharisees

            had taken the principle of structural care for the poor,

                        as enshrined in the Jewish law,

and made it into a legalistic framework

            where benefits to the poor were only given

                        according to an ever-tightening framework of entitlement.

It strikes me that this is a situation not dissimilar

            to our own contemporary reduction of the benefits system.

The Scribes and the Pharisees proclaimed their commitment to upholding

            a system which cared for the vulnerable and the poor,

but which actually, under their leadership,

            created poverty among an ever-widening underclass of the needy.

To a society in legalistic retreat

            from its ideological underpinning of compassion for the poor,

                        whether in the first or the twenty-first century,

            Jesus utters his challenge to give to all who beg,

                        and to lend to all who request it.

It seems to me that our world of cuts to crisis loans,

            our world of reduced benefits for the vulnerable

            and diminished social care for the disadvantaged

could do well to hear the provocative and politicised challenge of Jesus.

But it’s not just about calling the authorities to account:

            we who live as the covenant people of God in our time

            are still called to be a light to the nations.

We are called to be those who embody the transformation we believe in,

            and to live it from the bottom of society to the top.

Because unless it is true for us,

            it will not be true for others.

At one level, this will involve strategic choices

            about the way we use our own wealth,

            both individually and as a church.

But it also calls us to consider the deeper divisions and rifts

            that lie within our own souls.

As Richard Rohr puts it:

Until there is love for enemies, there is no real transformation,

            because the enemy always carries the dark side of your own soul.

Normally those people who threaten us

            carry our own faults in a different form.

The people who really turn you off

            are very much like you.

Jesus offers not just a suggestion;

            you’ve got to love your enemy to grow up.

[Rather] Jesus rightly puts it in the imperative form: Do it!

He goes on to observe that often,

what we don’t like about ourselves is our inner enemy,

            in a certain sense.

[So] we must learn to love and forgive that enemy, too.

Sometimes that takes great humility and great compassion,

            but if we learn it internally,

            we will be prepared for the outer enemies.^[3]

The reason the world would not be better if I ruled it,

            is that I, like all of us, need to learn to forgive the enemy within.

And without crossing the boundaries within our souls,

            without facing the enemy we present to our own integration,

            we perpetuate the divisions within the world around us.

But, in Christ, we receive the gift of wholeness and healing,

            as we join ourselves to him in suffering, death, and new life.

And as we learn what it is to find completion in our inner world,

            we become those who bring salt and light to a hurting, divided world.

This is what it means to be the people of God,

            this is what it means to join the revolution of Jesus.

---

[1] J.H. Yoder

[2] Shane Claibourne

[3] Richard Rohr, Jesus' Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, see especially pp. 129ff.

Rublev

This evening's Informal Church at Bloomsbury included the opportunity to reflect on Rublev's Trinity, and also on Rowan Williams' wonderful poem, 'Rublev'. We then invited people to write a poem or draw their response.

Here's mine:

We gathered around the oak:
no leaves; no life;
summer gone;
winter come.
We shared
bread from a harvest long past,
and wine from vines now barren.
Remnants of joy.
Yet there on the dead oak
the tiny buds of hope
gave promise.
And we laughed.

Breaking the law

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

9 February 2014, 11.00am

Matthew 5:13-20  "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. 

¹⁴ "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.  ¹⁵ No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.  ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. 

¹⁷ "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.  ¹⁹ Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  ²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Isaiah 58:1-10  Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.  ² Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.  ³ "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers.  ⁴ Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.  ⁵ Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?  ⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  ⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?  ⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.  ⁹ Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,  ¹⁰ if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 

As I was preparing for today’s sermon earlier this week,

            I found myself following intently the trial of five peace activists

who were arrested in September

            while blocking an entrance to the DSEI arms fair

            at the Excel centre in East London.

One of the defendants is well known to us here at Bloomsbury,

            and regularly worships with us in our evening congregation.

In fact, he spoke to us very movingly just last week

            about the situation that was leading him

            to Stratford Magistrates Court the following morning.

Now, I’m not going to rehearse the specifics of their case,

            and the details of their successful defence

            are well documented online if you’re interested.[1]

But it did make me think, and think quite carefully,

            about whether it is ever right for a Christian to break the law.

Is it ever justifiable, from a Christian point of view,

            to take a course of action that puts one outside the law of the land?

At one level, there is part of me that wants to say a firm ‘no’ to this question;

            after all, we live in a free and fair democracy,

and there are mechanisms for legally registering one’s protest;

            whether it be through peaceful demonstration,

            or by exercising one’s right at the ballot box.

And, after all, didn’t Paul say clearly to the church that met in Rome,

            - hardly a city that modelled the western values

                        of freedom of speech and action! -

that even they should ‘be subject to the governing authorities’

            because ‘there is no authority except from God,

                        and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.’ (Rom 13.1)

However, against this I find myself having to set the lived example

            of many great Christians

who have found themselves imprisoned and worse

            for their commitment to the cause of the Gospel of Christ.

Paul himself faced beatings and incarceration

            for his faithful and uncompromising witness to Christ,

            as he refused to be silenced by the forces of the empire.

And Jesus clearly seems to expect his followers

            to face persecution and trial

            if they take seriously the path that he calls them to.

We can see this clearly in Matthew’s gospel,

            just a few chapters later than this morning’s passage,

where he warns his disciples that they will be handed over

            to the councils and synagogues and flogged;

telling them that when they face trial – ‘when’, and not ‘if’ -

            they do not need to worry about how they are to speak or what they are to say;

                        for what they are to say will be given to them at that time.

Jesus even promises them that when they have to defend themselves in court,

            ‘it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.’

                        (Matt 10.19-20)

Encouraging words I’m sure, if you happen to find yourself at the magistrates court,

            up on a charge of disrupting the powers of violence, torture and death.

And in the beatitudes, as we saw last week,

            Jesus promises the kingdom of heaven

            to those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. (Matt 5.10)

So, should Christians engage in activity

            that places them outside of the law?

We’ll come back to that question shortly…

But first I want us to spend a few minutes

            with today’s passage from Matthew chapter 5.

And I’d like us to focus particularly on verses 17 and 20.

            Let’s hear them again now.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets;

            I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,

            you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The key here, it seems to me,

            is the issue of righteousness,

            and the relationship between righteousness and the law.

After all, in the beatitude, the kingdom of heaven belongs to those

            who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

And it starts to look as if it’s an unswerving commitment to righteousness

            that might lead one to a position of conflict

                        with the powers that be.

This was certainly the case in the life of Jesus,

            as he increasingly found himself, through his ministry,

                        coming into conflict with those who held power in Israel.

In today’s passage, taken from the opening of the sermon on the mount,

            we see the beginnings of Jesus’ conflict with the religious leaders

            that would eventually culminate in his execution as a criminal.

And it all hinges on this concept of righteousness:

            Jesus tells his followers that their righteousness

                        must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees.

Which is, on the surface, a very strange thing to say.

If you had asked someone at the time of Jesus,

            to list the most-righteous people that they could think of,

it’s a fair bet that somewhere near the top of the list

            would have been the scribes and the Pharisees.

You see, righteousness was their thing, it was their obsession.

            It was what they were known for.

And the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees

            was a righteousness built on their passionate commitment

            to observing the letter of the law.

Through detailed scholarship

            they had developed a way of living

            where not one jot or tittle,

                        not one letter, or stroke of a letter of the law was ignored,

and where every command, from the greatest to the least,

            was observed rigorously and with care.

So, when Jesus suggested to his followers that entry into the kingdom of heaven

            was dependent on being more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees

            he was, on the surface at least, setting an impossible target to aim for.

But it all comes down to what is meant by righteousness.

For the scribes and the Pharisees,

            righteousness meant a strict adherence to the letter of the law.

For Jesus, it seems that this is not enough,

            and that there is a deeper understanding of righteousness

            which he wants his followers to discover and live by.

We’ve already met Matthew’s obsession (for want of a better phrase)

            with presenting the significance of the life of Jesus

                        as being in ‘fulfilment’ of scripture.

In the sermon on the mount, he makes this theme even more clear,

            by presenting Jesus as a new Moses.

Just as Moses went up the mountain to receive the law from God,

            which he then mediated to the people of God,

so Jesus ascends the mount,

            and offers the definitive interpretation of the law.

It even begins, as we heard last week,

            with a sequence of short statements

                        that provide a loose parallel to the ten commandments.

In our passage today, the presentation of Jesus as the new Moses is even more clear,

            as he offers a new interpretation on the relationship

            between righteousness and the law.

The righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees

            was a righteousness that led to exclusion;

And they maintained their righteous state

            by ensuring that those who would contaminate or compromise their holiness

            were excluded from the community.

They used the law, which for them was the Law of Moses,

            based on the ten commandments,

to mark out the boundary around their community,

            and if you kept the law, you were in,

            but if you didn’t keep the law, you were out.

The greater righteousness of Jesus, however,

            is a righteousness that includes those at the margins, rather than excluding them.

It is a righteousness based not just on the law,

            but also on the prophets.

Because, for Jesus, the law of Moses could only be understood

            as part of a larger picture,

namely the fulfillment of the entire Torah,

            understood in its broader sense to include the prophets,

            and not just the books of Moses.

There is a strong voice that echoes through the prophetic writings of Israel

            which bears witness to the conviction that religious observance is not enough,

                        however carefully it may be done.

Prophets such as Isaiah,

            who we heard from in our second reading,

shouted to anyone who would listen

            that true righteousness was to be found

                        not in ascetic and rigorous religious practices such as fasting,

            but through paying workers a fair wage, (Isa 58.3)

                        through loosing the bonds of injustice,

            through liberation to those in chains,

                        through feeding the hungry,

            through providing houses for the homeless,

                        and clothing for the naked.

And it’s this greater righteousness that Jesus calls his followers to,

            it’s a righteousness that brings the kingdom of heaven to the earth.

The perspective of the prophets such as Isaiah,

            was that this transformative righteousness

                        which includes the marginalised rather than excluding them

            was actually already inherent in the law of Moses,

                        for those who have eyes to see it.

But the scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus’ day,

            those bastions of law-based righteousness

had become so obsessed with the letter of the law,

            that they had missed the spirit of the prophets,

and had focussed on maintaining their righteousness

            by excluding those that might contaminate it.

And it was to a generation that had been brought up

            to think that true righteousness

            was that of the scribes and the Pharisees,

that Jesus announced that the true fulfilment of the law and the prophets

            was to be found not in the teaching of the religious leaders

            but in the inclusive practices of his own ministry.

In this, Jesus went pitted himself against the exclusive practices of the ruling elite

            in the cause of the greater righteousness of the prophets.

And the scribes and the Pharisees didn’t like it one bit,

            because it challenged their power, and threatened their security.

In Jewish society of the time, upper level priests and religious leaders

            functioned as part of what is known as the ‘retainer’ class

            a segment of society that made up about 5% of the population

                        comprising people who acted as agents of the ruling elite.

The scribes and the Pharisees were Jewish officials

            who exercised religious roles,

            yet were also part of the ruling aristocracy,

                        along with other groups such as the Sadducees.[2]

In this period, Israel was an occupied nation,

            and the Roman empire’s hold over it was consolidated

                        through a series interconnected networks of power:

                                    political power, socioeconomic power,

                                    military power, and theological power;

                        each one intertwined with the others.

So Jesus’ growing conflict with the scribes and the Pharisees

            was never going to be simply a conflict over religious issues

because in his world, religion and politics were inseparable,

            and all religious discussions

            had social, political and economic dimensions to them.

The social status of the religious leaders as part of the retainer class,

            meant that they were committed to defending

            the current social order from which they benefited

            and in which they had a vested interest.

The scribes and the Pharisees had become part

                        of the power structures of the empire,

            and were bound to fulfil the role

                        of representing and defending its interests.

So Jesus found himself in conflict with these representatives of the ruling class

            precisely because they were those

            who wanted to preserve the current social structure.[3]

Jesus’ conflict with an alliance of religious leaders is central to Matthew’s plot,

            and again and again through the gospel

                        he demonstrates that Jesus is not so much in conflict

                                    with the scribes and Pharisees because they are ‘religious’

                        as because they have used their ‘religion’

                                    to enter into an alliance of power with the empire.

Jesus is in conflict with them precisely because they have not done

            what the prophets such as Isaiah would have them do:

they have not used the law

            to reach out to the marginalised, to empower the disempowered.

Rather, they have used the law to consolidate their social, economic, and political power,

            which they have then used to detrimental effect.

            They have not sought justice, mercy and faith (23.23). 

And so they resist Jesus’ claim to be the one who,

                        through his life and ministry,

            will offer God’s benefits to all of society,

                        and especially to those on the margins.

The scribes and the Pharisees have turned the wealth

            of the temple and the religious cult

            to their own advantage,

and in defending the status quo and the alliance with Rome,

            they have hindered people from knowing God’s empire – the Kingdom of Heaven, 

            whilst exposing God’s people to hardship and violence.[4]

And it is into this context

            that Jesus proclaims his new interpretation of the law.

It is in opposition to the ruling elite

            that Jesus claims to be the true embodiment of the law.

He is very clear: he came not to abolish, but to fulfil the law.

However, this fulfilment is not a mere tightening up of the law,

            Rather, it is a re-casting of the law around the victims,

                        a re-focussing of the law in favour of the marginalised.

According to Jesus, it is the victimised and marginalised who become the criteria

            by which the law is to be understood.

Thus the fulfilment of the law that Jesus proclaimed

            was a subversion from within

            of the understanding of the law as taught by the scribes and the Pharisees,

and it was rightly seen as subversive

            by those who regarded themselves as the guardians of the law.’^[5]

The religious leaders, committed to the status quo,

            regarded Jesus as a revolutionary,

                        as one who was seeking nothing less

            than the total overthrow of the established power structures of the land.

And in many ways they were right

            but the revolution of Jesus,

was not an overturning of the law in such a way as to lead to lawlessness,

            and neither was it a revolution which simply replaced one ruling elite with another.

Rather, the revolution of Jesus,

            was one which radically re-interpreted the law

It was a revolution which transformed righteous legalism into merciful law

            it was the revolution of the law of love.

The problem with most revolutions, from the ancient to the modern,

            is that they become revolutions of inversion.[6]

Most revolutions simply result in the switching places of the main characters:

            with the good guys becoming the bad guys, and vice versa.

Revolutions of inversion may see themselves as overthrowing oppressive structures,

            but they always leave the deeper anthropological structures intact.

Even after the revolution,

            the social structures of division between good guys and bad guys remains,

            it’s just that they have changed places.

However, the revolution of Jesus isn’t a straightforward revolution of inversion.

            Rather, it is a revolution of subversion from within,

it’s a revolution which undermines the very mechanism of division

            which makes some people good guys and some people bad guys.

But its not even a simple overthrowing of the mechanism;

            it’s not a manifesto for godly anarchy.

Rather, it is a transforming of society into something else althogether:

            The revolution of Jesus is a revolution of transformation

            which is very different to a revolution of destruction.

Most "revolutions" think they are overthrowing the structures-that-be,

            and in a sense this is what they do;

but they don’t overthrow the deeper structures of division,

            where some are deemed ‘good’ or ‘righteous’,

            while some are deemed ‘bad’ and ‘unrighteous’.

Neither do revolutions solve the problem of scapegoating

            – the mechanism whereby a person or group of people

                        are expelled or executed in the interest of bring the new order into being.

Most revolutions retain the mechanism and structures of division,

            and simply invert the characters within the mechanism.

Take Marxism as a fairly un-threatening, almost dead, example.

            Marxism thinks it’s overturning the capitalist structures;

                        and it is, of course.

But it doesn’t touch the anthropological structures

            of sacrifice, scapegoating, and division.

It simply inverts the characters:

            so that the capitalists, who were the good guys in the capitalist system,

                        are now the bad guys;

            and the proletariat become the good guys.

And along the way, of course,

            some people, sometimes a lot of people, die

Marxism may be correct in its analysis

            that says the proletariat are sacrificed in the capitalist system.

But when the capitalists become those who are sacrificed in the socialist system,

            in the end, all that is achieved is inversion.

The other revolutionaries from around Jesus’ time,

            the zealots and the Maccabees and so on,

had all sought to overthrow the empire,

            but their agenda had simply been one of inversion.

They had wanted the Romans, or the Seleucids, or whoever, out of their land,

            and then they wanted themselves ruling in their place.

This was certainly how the scribes and the Pharisees

            would have interpreted Jesus’ revolutionary talk

                        – just another revolutionary bent on the overthrow of the system

                        and the installation of his own ideology in its place.

And so they said to themselves,

            ‘That way lies death and disaster,

                        we’ve seen it before.

            ‘Better to keep the compromise as it is, surely?’

But in this they misunderstood Jesus’ challenge,

            because Jesus was not seeking to overthrow the system.

He was rather seeking to subvert the injustice that had taken root in the land,

            and to join his voice definitively to the voice of the prophets

            in calling the people of God back to their vocation as a light to the world

                        and as the place where the healing of the nations begins.

And yes, sure enough, someone was going to die.

            Someone was going to be scapegoated.

But the path of sacrifice that Jesus embarked on

            wasn’t the well-trodden path of a bloody revolution of inversion.

Rather, it was the lesser known path

            of a revolution that challenged the fundamental structures

                        of division and exclusion,

            calling people to find a new and different way to be human.

The calling to be salt and light

            was as old as the covenant itself,

but this message and calling had been lost,

            obscured by the legalistic righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

The law had ceased to function as it should,

            as the letter had come to obscure the spirit.

And so I’d like to bring us back to the question that I started with,

            that of whether it is ever right for a Christian to break the law.

Those of us who are followers of Jesus,

            are followers of a revolutionary leader.

We are followers of one who took an uncompromising stand

            against the powers of oppression in the world,

and who sought nothing less than their total transformation.

And there are times, and places,

            where our standing alongside Christ

may well place us outside the law,

            as the powers that be understand it.

But the revolution of Christ come not through the exercising of violence:

            this is no bloody revolution,

unless you count the blood of the martyrs

            whose commitment to the path of Christ-like revolution

            brought them into conflict with the powers that be

                        in ways that reflected the sacrificial death of Christ himself.

Rather, this is a revolution of subversion,

            where the law is taken back

                        from those who have made it exclusive in the name of righteousness,

it is a revolution of subversion,

            where the greater righteousness of the kingdom of heaven

                        replaces the petty power politics of the kingdoms of the earth.

And if we are to take our place alongside Christ,

            in speaking up for the marginalised,

                        and including the excluded,

            and in seeing righteousness for all and not just for some,

then we also take our place alongside Christ,

            in seeing the fulfilment of the law in him,

                        and not in the structures of the governing powers.

If there’s a choice to be made,

            and sometimes there is,

the righteousness of Christ will always trump

            the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.

And if they’re the ones writing the law,

            then, I suggest, we know where we stand.

---

[1] See twitter.com/PutDownTheSword

[2] Carter, Matthew and Empire, p.17

[3] Carter, Matthew & Empire, p.35

[4] Carter, Matthew & Empire, p.81

[5] James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, footnote 11 on p. 122

[6] See girardianlectionary.net/year_a/epiphany5a.htm