Welcome friends, today’s sermon will focus on the passage of Matthew chapter 5 verses 21 through 26. It says,
“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. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell. "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there 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. "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny (NIV).”
This is a hard passage for us to contemplate because most, if not all of us, have been angry with another person. We have been angry with our parents, siblings, co-workers, and even people in this church. Sometimes we can be hard on ourselves when we are angry, because as a Christian we are supposed to love everyone and never be angry…ever. Well friends, today we are going to try to figure out this passage together and try to make sense out of it.
First, we must look at our example, Jesus. Did Jesus ever get angry with anyone? Let’s take a look at John chapter 2 verses 13 through 16.
“When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market (NIV)!”
Here we see Jesus getting angry about the selling of sacrifices in the temple. The temple was supposed to be a place of worship, but it was changed into a marketplace. So the Jesus who said, if we were to be angry at our brother or sister will face judgment, is the same Jesus who got angry with those in the temple. If we continue to read this passage in John, we do not see Jesus reconciling with those men. In fact, the bible does not say if he did or not. How do we view this? There are two ways we can go from here. One way we can see this is that Jesus contradicted himself or the other way is that we have been misinterpreting Jesus’ preaching on murder.
Looking at different English translations of this passage, most of them are similar to the NIV. However, the ones that are different have the words, “without cause” in regards to anger. It made me think that sometimes we get angry at someone and there is no cause for the anger. When I was younger, I had anger issues. I can remember times when I would get mad at a classmate and try to pick a fight with them without recalling any reason why I was mad at them. Sometimes I would get mad at someone because a friend was mad at them or I just did not like them. If we look back to biblical history, God would get angry at the Israelites because they would worship other gods and would not recognize God as their one and only god. Jesus got angry at those men selling sacrifices in the temple because they turned a place of worship into a marketplace. I think that it is okay to get angry as long as there is a legitimate reason for the anger. However, there is the second half to this teaching.
When we are angry at someone, it is extremely important to be reconciled with that person. The writer of Matthew wanted to emphasis that believers must strive to be reconciled with fellow believers so that the church can be a community of love.[1] Imagine a church where everyone was angry, frustrated, and hurting one another; would this be a Christian community that you would want to be a part of? The church should be a safe place for believers to worship God and to be comfortable with each other. It is also important that we reconcile things with those who are not Christians. One day, my dad was at work and had a heated conversation with another co-worker. During that conversation, he said some unkind things to that person. After the conversation my dad was working and realized what he had said and felt bad about them. He went to the co-worker’s office and apologized and asked for forgiveness. The co-worker though it was weird that my dad wanted forgiveness from him, but he forgave him anyway. I believe that it is important to reconcile things with both believers and non-believers because it shows the love of Christ to them.
Some of us in this room has been hurt or has hurt someone. Maybe it was another believer. Maybe it was someone who does not know Christ. If you can relate to this then you must reconcile things with that person. If not, then God will judge you, plus you will also store up a lot of negative feelings in you which could damage you physically, mentally, and spiritually. So while the music is playing, I want you to ask the Holy Spirit to search you and help you reconcile things with someone you have affected.
[1] Reginald H. Fuller, Matthew, Harper’s Bible Commentary, James L. Mays, Gen. Ed. (San Fransico: Harper & Row, 1988), 957.
I think you are definitely on to something. One thing that I have come to find about the event of Jesus turning the tables, is that he acted not out of spontaneous rage, but rather, he recognized something was not right (that being that the temple was not just a marketplace, but it was a robber's den! The money changers, I will propose, were doing no wrong selling the doves and other animals in the temple, as was normal, but they were most likely using weighted scales to make unfair profits in God's name—something completely unacceptable.),and he took some time to think about what he was going to do about it. Some of you are probably wondering what in the world I am talking about. I will attempt to explain.
ReplyDeleteThe event of Jesus overturning the tables in the temple is also recorded in the book of Mark chapter 11 verses 12-19. This is where Jesus actually says the temple has become "a den of robbers." It should be recognized that we must always read Scriptures with the whole picture in mind. So, when we read a passage, we must ask the questions, "what happened before this event/passage?" and also "what has happened following the event/passage?" This will give us a better picture of the event as a part of the bigger story within the gospel narrative. For the purpose of this blog, I will point out the passage that presupposes this event and suggest that Jesus did not act out of spontaneous rage, but rather out of an internal meditation of the wrong that took place. And then looking at the text in Matthew, Jesus teaches his hearers about the correct place of anger in the life of the faith community.
So, if we read the passage in Mark directly before 11:12, it says that Jesus was actually in Jerusalem and at the temple the day before he overturned the tables. Verse 11 says that "he looked around at everything," he left, and he came back the next day (v 12). Jesus saw the theft and corruption that was happening in the temple. It says that he saw everything; and what does he do? He is patient, he leaves them and his heart is turned with grief for an entire day before he does anything about it—but he knew that serious correction was needed to restore the reality that worship is the way we live out life; and you can’t be a thief and worship God at the same time, even if it is in the temple. Rather, especially when it is in the temple of the most Holy.
Jesus’ anger was not an act of raw emotion, although he was obviously quite emotionally troubled by the event. He thought overnight about what was the best way to express his deeply troubled heart; he came back and he expressed a righteous anger. Jesus anger was righteous because he was expressing his wrath not directly against the sinners, but against the sins that they were committing against the Father and against their neighbors. The fact was that they needed to know that God was taking them seriously, and perhaps this was the only way that Jesus could truly get through to them and make them realize that they needed to take God more seriously.
Now consider the passage following the turning of the tables in John. Let’s start with the John account. Immediately after Jesus turns the tables, he is questioned about the authority he has to do such things, and of what kind of sign would he show them to prove it. Jesus responds by saying, “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The people in the temple are perplexed and find it odd that he would say something like that; after all, it took them decades to build the temple. But then John says this, “But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” Jesus calls his body the temple, and the miracle is that it cannot be destroyed. According to the gospel, Jesus was God in human form. He was and always has been in perfect communion with the Father and in accordance with the Holy Spirit, and so his life was representative of what it meant to worship God. Because the temple is the place where God was thought to have dwelt; and so that is where people went to worship him. Jesus tells them that the God was in the flesh, as John says in chapter 1.
ReplyDeleteSo what does something like that say for us? Well Paul says the same thing about those who follow Christ. He says that “you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you” (1 Cor. 3:16). While we are not God himself, as Jesus was, we are the place where God dwells and so God is among us and worship happens inside of us as we are moved by the Spirit to live grateful lives that are evidence of the love and grace that God has given us. Now, we can see that Jesus’ anger was certainly righteous because he was concerned about correcting the corrupt lives of those who were to be bringing God’s blessings to the world; but instead they were speaking words of worship in the temple, and living lives of deceit the rest of the time.
ReplyDeleteSo what does Jesus say about when we get angry? Can we be righteously angry like he was? Well, I don’t know if we can be completely righteous in our anger as Christ; but, we can at least listen to what he has to teach us about our anger. Jesus certainly does not tell us that becoming angry is sinful. Perhaps what he is saying is that carrying anger with you is what is liable for judgment. I am going to suggest that we use the term anger differently than it is used in the biblical text. We consider anger simply to be an emotion or, better put, a feeling. Anger is deeper than that though. Anger is when we carry that feeling or emotion with us everywhere we go and we allow it to build up to point where we would act out against someone. Anger is the sort of thing that leads to the external acts of murdering or calling your brother or sister a “fool.”
So, with that said, there are two things that I think are important to point out about this “anger” passage in Matthew if we desire to reconcile our anger: 1) When we are upset or emotionally angry with someone, we ought to take a step back and consider, as Jesus did, what we are feeling and what we ought to do about it—then act accordingly. I find the next point to be way cooler than the first point though. Get this: 2) the passage that Jesus mentions does not deal with the one who is angry. Jesus says that the person with whom another is angry ought to be the one to confront and reconcile with the angry person. It is like Jesus is saying, “stop thinking about yourself, and consider the person who is emotionally and maybe even spiritually inept right now, and unable to make any kind of rational decision. It is your responsibility to save them from judgment! Then, after you have gathered together in my name (offering your life as an act of worship), come and offer your sacrifice at the altar.” The reality is that we are responsible for lifting each other up in love; and sometimes we get angry with those whom we love or the ones we love become angry with us. This is not to be feared, but rather it is to be embraced. Because when we love those who have wronged us, we are becoming more like Christ. And when we are forgiven by those whom we have wronged, we both are set free. –Amen.