Matthew 5:38-48 "eye for and eye" and perfection.

          My wife and I took a short trip up to New York to see my sister. We could not make it all the way out on Long Island so we met in New York City. There was one thing we both wanted to see and that was the 9-11 memorial. It was a peaceful and somber place and I will post some pictures of that on facebook. But, Like all good pastors or maybe it is just quirky ones; we ended up at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It is the place where the cardinal of the New York Diocese resides and worships. When we got there, there was all this construction all over the outside. You know the scaffolding and sheets to catch the debris, water dripping from high above through the cracks.

Then when we went inside we saw even more construction. The sides of the sanctuary had scaffolding that went all the way to the ceiling. Visitors continued to come in and view the station’s of the cross and there was an area of prayer for Pope Francis—to pray for his ministry. We walked all the way to the back of the church, past the altar and there it was, this small chancel area; lighted with the reverence due the Lord’s Table. Much to our surprise, there was a group celebrating 1 O’clock mass. They were worshipping while hammers and wrenches were making this incredible noise. They also celebrated communion and amid this noise of the world and construction went on, this gentle elderly African-American man came and took the elements after communion; he went into the construction zone, put on his hard hat and prepared the elements for the next communion.

This is a wonderful illustration where the secular world intersects with the sacred world. It is the world of the everyday, construction, building, tuning of wrenches and all that comes with society and it intersects, it comes together with the world, of worshipping God, which is the sacred. This is exactly where we are in our Gospel reading. Again today, we hear Jesus telling us “you have heard it said…But I say to you.” Jesus is telling us the ways that we have come to know justice to have been handed out in the days before Jesus. When he says the words “eye for and eye” what is the rest of this saying that we know…”tooth for tooth.” Those are good and biblical words to be used. It is the language of retribution. It is the language of trying to create some kind of balance when it comes to justice.

Jesus is telling us to go deeper than “eye for an eye.” Jesus is telling us his vision for the Kingdom of heaven. We have heard the words “survival of the fittest, only the strong survive, and there are even pastors who will tell you that the whole purpose in this life is to get the best life you can now.” What I just mentioned is called the prosperity Gospel. It is about getting the most you want to get out of this life, because in this way of thinking it is all about you; it is not about anyone else but you and who cares about others.

Jesus vision of the kingdom of heaven is that it is about us all and being in relationship with one another. When Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, he is serious! We can hear those lines (and they are familiar) and pass them off as nice sayings but Jesus means this. These words are some of the most difficult words that we will hear; because it means that we are NOT to let the society norms, “eye for an “eye” be our motto. Ya know why? Because as Mohatma Ghandi once said “if we lived out eye for an eye, we would all be blind!”

Jesus is calling us to a world that does not live by society’s rules. He does not call us to a life where we are to beat people down and use others for the sake of our expense. He calls us to a life of helping one another and taking care of one another. When he says turn the other cheek he is telling us about strength in weakness. In praying for our enemies, he is teaching about love amid hurt and pain. We all have seen this weakness that Jesus talks about. We see it in the life of Jesus when he does turn the other cheek as he is beaten; we see it in the Son of God being lifted up on the cross usually reserved for criminals and he says, “Forgive them father for they know not what they do.” And, we see it in the resurrection, as promised, that God has the last word on ALL things.

All in all, Jesus is teaching us about this one little word in the last lines of this reading; it is the word “perfection..” I looked up the Greek word and it is “Telos” which can mean “perfection.” It may be best described like a tree, let’s say and apple tree, or crops. When these crops, or even cattle, mature they produce fruit. The ultimate goal is not solely to produce fruit; but when they mature they produce this fruit.

That is the kind of perfection that Jesus is talking about. So, as Christians, we mature in our faith, in our learnings and understandings of what Jesus teaches then we produce fruit; when we work with Glade Valley, Community Partners, and when we sit with one another and pray, listen, and worship. It is the kind of maturity when we forgive because anger does nothing gets us spinning our wheels and it gets us nowhere. When we look for someone to blame for this problem or that problem.

Jesus is telling us that this is not easy work but it is hard. It IS difficult. We are just like the people in St Patrick’s cathedral who were worshipping God amid the sounds of all that noise. We are that African-American man who faithfully put on his hard hat to prepare the elements for the next Holy Supper. We see the sacredness in our God while hearing the noise and having the dust attempting to cover up parts of our faith. We are also those who humbly walk in the memorial of one of our most horrific tragedies and hear the peaceful quiet, read the names of those who died and struggle along with the rest of the world in seeing God’s comfort, love and grace through these remembrances of the tragedies.

So Jesus calls us to put our hard hats on and take up the difficult work that it is to be a child of God; Let’s put our hard hats on and praise the God who teaches us forgiveness, and love in our lives so we can live that out in our lives and maybe teach it to others. Thanks be to God: AMEN!