The Heart of the Matter: SALT's Commentary for Epiphany 6
Epiphany 6 (Year A): Matthew 5:21-37 and Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Big Picture:
1) This is the third week in a four-part series walking through one of Jesus’ most famous sermons, often called the “Sermon on the Mount.” As we saw last week, Jesus has just signaled that his teachings — including the ones he’s about to deliver now — may ostensibly seem to differ from the law. But in fact, he insists, they actually show us how to “fulfill” the law, embodying its essential meaning, spirit, and substance.
2) In this week’s reading, Jesus focuses on four subjects drawn from Exodus and Deuteronomy (murder, adultery, divorce, and oaths), reframing each one in a way that goes straight to the heart of the matter.
3) In first-century Palestine, “the heart” was considered the central organ of a person’s thought, intention, and moral life. Accordingly, later in Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus is asked to name the “greatest commandment,” he puts it this way: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Mt 22:37-40; compare Deut 6:5-6, Lev 19:18).
4) This “greatest commandment” is the key to unlocking this week’s section of Jesus’ sermon. For if “all the law and the prophets” hang on the twofold love of God and neighbor, then we should interpret any particular law as a way of living out that love — and doing so, please note, “with all your heart.” That’s precisely what Jesus is up to here: not “ratcheting up” or “internalizing” the law, much less creating a new one, but rather expounding the law in light of the heartfelt love that is, after all, the point of the law in the first place.
5) In both Exodus and Deuteronomy, the Ten Commandments culminate the story of God graciously, dramatically delivering the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. And this deliverance happens, please note, for the sake of living a new life of tangible, everyday intimacy with God, a new community for which the law serves as an ongoing framework. Far from a dour, punitive list of “thou shalt nots,” then, the law is a gift and a guide; a positive portrait of what healthy life in relationship with God and neighbor looks like; a vision of abundant, dignified, fully human life in community. In short, the law lays out before us a life-giving path, and summons us forward. In his climactic appeal to the people, Moses declares that by presenting the law, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life!” (Deut 30:19).
Scripture:
1) To understand Jesus’ teachings on the law, it’s essential to bear in mind the law’s purpose as a guide for healthy communal life with God and neighbor. Jesus begins with the commandment, “You shall not murder” (Mt 5:21; Ex 20:13; Deut 5:17). It’s as if he says: When God gave us this commandment, do you think the idea was that we would form a community in which we constantly antagonize each other, hate each other, abuse each other, wound each other — and then, at the very last moment, refrain from murdering each other? Of course not. The spirit of “You shall not murder” is that your bearing toward your neighbors — both in your actions and in your dispositions, your hand and your heart — should never be enmity. Think of it this way: when you’re angry at your brother or sister, when you lash out with hateful words, isn’t that, too, in its own way a kind of violence, a lesser form of “murder”? Isn’t that, too, in its own way a violation of the commandment, an act of ruin against the healthy community the commandment is meant to help us create?
2) In this way, Jesus goes to the root of murder, the underlying disposition that gives rise first to antagonism, then to hatred, abuse, injury — and finally to homicide. And what is that underlying disposition? I say to you, if you are angry with your brother or sister, or insult them, or even say “you fool,” you are liable. Not all anger leads in this hostile, dehumanizing direction, of course, but much anger does — and when it does, Jesus contends, it violates the inner spirit and substance of the commandment. Rightly understood, “You shall not murder” prohibits the entire range of hostile, destructive behavior, the whole row of dominoes, from anger to insult to homicide. And in its place, Jesus continues, we should live out not just the absence of enmity but rather the presence of its opposite: friendship. The Greek word the NRSV translates as “come to terms quickly” is eunoeo, “to be disposed kindly toward,” or “to be friends with” (Mt 5:25). On the way to court, Jesus says, make friends with your opponent!
3) Jesus takes a similar approach to “You shall not commit adultery” (Mt 5:27; Ex 20:14; Deut 5:18). When God gave us this commandment, do you think the idea was that we would form a community in which we constantly leer and lust after each other, objectify and sexually pursue each other — and then, at the very last moment, refrain from adultery? Of course not. “You shall not commit adultery” prohibits the entire row of dominoes, including adultery “in the heart” (Mt 5:28).
4) It’s striking that Jesus frames the roots of adultery here as acts of lascivious objectification and pursuit, not enticement. The remedy he recommends is not, for example, to have women wear more modest clothing, but rather for men to take responsibility for their own dispositions and actions, rigorously “cutting out” whatever distorted ideas or habits cause them to sin (Mt 5:29-30).
5) On divorce, Jesus likely has in mind Deuteronomy 24:1-4, the central point of which is to prohibit people from remarrying each other for a second time, after a marriage to someone else in the interim. But along the way, that passage conjures up a world of common and capricious divorce, with men simply deciding that “she does not please him,” or finding “something objectionable about her,” and then ending the marriage — putting their wives and children, if any, in an acutely vulnerable position (Deut 24:1). To this patriarchal ethos of divorce on-(male)-demand, Jesus objects. The healthy community the law is meant to help us create has no place for such callous abandonment. (For more on Jesus and divorce, see SALT’s commentary here.)
6) Finally, Jesus boils down the law’s injunctions against frivolous, blasphemous, and unfaithful oaths this way: Don’t bother with oaths at all (Mt 5:33-37; compare Ex 20.7,16; Lev 19:12; Num 30:2; Deut 23:21-22). Let your “yes” mean “yes,” and your “no” mean “no.” That is, let your word stand on its own strength, without any need to “swear” by a higher authority.
7) What ties these four teachings together? The disposition of the heart. Don’t let anger or lust turn your heart against your neighbor; instead, incline your heart toward friendship and respect. Don’t let callous disregard turn your heart against your spouse; instead, incline your heart toward kindness and responsibility. And don’t bother with oaths at all; let your word, the integrity of your heart, be strong and trustworthy. This is the true meaning, spirit, and substance of “you shall not murder,” “you shall not commit adultery,” and so on. These are the contours of the healthy community that the law, properly understood, helps us make: a community of friendship and respect, kindness and responsibility, humility and integrity.
8) Likewise, in this week’s passage from Deuteronomy, Moses describes the law as a pathway of life, and the Israelites’ decision as a decision of the heart: “But if your heart turns away and you do not hear… you shall perish” (Deut 30:17-18). Not that God punishes disobedience with death, but rather that if we turn our hearts away from the law — thereby turning away from the friendship and respect, kindness and responsibility, humility and integrity at the heart of the law — we effectively set out on a self-destructive and community-destructive pathway of death. And so Moses implores us: Choose friendship, and kindness, and humility! Choose respect, and responsibility, and integrity! Choose life!
Takeaways:
1) In this section of Jesus’ sermon, despite what some Christian interpreters say, Jesus is not “raising the bar” of the law, or “radicalizing” the law, or “internalizing” the law, or “broadening” the law, or otherwise “altering” the law. He has just said, after all, that he intends to change “not one letter, not one stroke of a letter” of the law (Mt 5:18)! Rather, he’s expounding the true meaning, spirit, and substance of the law, the same law given at Sinai, the same law intended to provide the ancient Israelites with a tangible, everyday framework for “loving God, walking in God’s ways” (Deut 30:16).
2) In short, like Moses, Jesus insists that truly following the law isn’t only about outward actions; it’s also about the inward dispositions of the heart. We should refrain from homicidal murder, for example, and also from the lesser forms of “murder” that can and do happen through attitudes, words, and actions that are murderous in their own way. “You shall not murder” is thus a kind of shorthand for this whole range of behavior, the Way of Enmity — which should be replaced at every turn, Jesus says, by the Way of Friendship (eunoeo, Mt 5:25).
3) Reading Jesus as “raising the bar” or “radicalizing the law” risks participating in the longstanding Christian tendency to separate Jesus from Judaism, and implicitly maligning Judaism as following a law with a “lower bar.” On the contrary, the idea Jesus is articulating here — that the law pertains to both actions and dispositions, both the hand and the heart — is as indigenous to Judaism as it is to Christianity. The Shema (the commandment in Deuteronomy that Jesus cites in his summary of the entire law) appears immediately after the Ten Commandments, explicitly linking them with both “love” and “the heart”: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart...” (Deut 6:5-6; compare Mt 22:37). What Jesus is doing, in a nutshell, is reclaiming this fundamental, distinctively Jewish unity between loving action, “the heart,” and healthy communal life. For Jesus and Moses alike, the law is a way to love both God and neighbor — and accordingly, any particular divine command always has to do with the whole human person: heart, soul, mind, and strength.
4) But isn’t this holistic picture of the law too stringent a standard to achieve? Can anyone ever really hope to refrain not only from murder — but also from anger? Not only adultery — but also lust? Martin Luther thought not, and so interpreted the law primarily as a humbling instrument meant to confront us with the fact that we cannot save ourselves by perfectly “following the law.”
5) But at the same time, Jesus’ advice in this passage seems quite down-to-earth and practical: Leave your gift at the altar, and go reconcile with your brother or sister! Befriend your opponent on the way to court! Drastically change your ways if they cause you to sin! In each of these (rather extravagant) examples, Jesus evokes a gritty, psychologically realistic portrait of the world, a place full of striving for righteousness and also full of conflict, discord, and sin, including among his followers. He seems to think of the law not as a tyrant demanding flawless obedience, but rather as a guiding ideal worth continually striving for, a steady North Star to steer by, with as much bold, decisive rigor as we can muster.
6) Like loving God and neighbor, truly following the law is a life’s work, a winding road with plenty of setbacks and successes along the way. And as we go along, Jesus says, the important thing is that we strive, and succeed, and fail, and strive again — always thinking not only of our own lives, but also of the wider community the law is meant to help us make. And above all, that as you endeavor to love God by “walking in God’s ways,” you aim to do so not only with all your action, but crucially “with all your heart” (Deut 30:16; Mt 22:37).