“THE RIGHT ONE RIGHTS YOU”
Saint Matthew 5. 20-26
Sixth Sunday after Trinity: 11 July Anno Domini 2010
Fr J.W. Watson S.S.P.
The Lord IS the Strength of His people - - of YOU!
His arms carry, build, and hold. His face smiles, nods in understanding, and speaks gently with reassurance. His feet travel and go where the Word must go to do what It must do. And His heart beats for yours, giving transfusions for your sin-bread anemia. His Blood is your life and His Water is your refreshment and purity.
The Lord punctures the laugh-worthy and cockamamie views of the Pharisees. The Lord smack down your own high view of your capabilities to be right! You are NOT right. You are wrong. But the RIGHT ONE "rights" you.
Your being "good" and "right" would have to be totally perfect before God before it would do you any good. Do you feel perfect? Do you look perfect, act perfect, think perfect, speak perfect, and have a perfect life, emotions? Are you God's perfect companion and advisor?
Where Isaiah, "Mighty Seer" feel on his face before the awesomeness of the Lord; where Saint Peter "Prince of the Apostles" fell on his face before the miraculous power of the Redeemer, do you stand and regale the Trinity with your own stories, anecdotes and examples of your "rightness" and perfect accomplishments?
When the Lord talks about a "righteousness" a perfect rightness before the Blessed Trinity, exceeding that of the Pharisees and Scribes, He is referencing the Law God gave to Moses on STONE TABLETS. The Pharisees did not have a clue. Your old Adam doesn't have even a glimpse or bare understanding of the "righteousness of God!" You are not called to be a "Bible expert" but to be like Adam before He fell!
The Pharisees (and your sinful self) were hypocrites and memory geeks. They thought they were perfect, or near perfect, or close enough for "extra-credit." But, if you think you, yourself, are already in "first-place," then what need is there for a substitute runner. If you can take care of Calvary by your praying, by your faith, by your devotion, then you don't need the atoning Lamb. Christ rode the ass into Jerusalem to keep you from making a bigger ass out of yourself than your sins have already made you!
Using but two examples, the Christ's stone Law smashes flapping self-congratulatory lips and gums. Simply refraining from murdering someone DOES NOT KEEP the Fifth Commandment. Even pagans know not to end the biological functions of their fellow mud-men.
Pharisees, (one and all) it's not about only NOT causing physical death, it's about helping and promoting Life in its fullness in all your fellow men (and in your adversaries). It's not about keeping ceremonial, legal, and traditional amendments and codicils of "Johnny-come-lately" Bible bureaucrats; IT IS ABOUT KEEPING GOD'S RIGHTEOUS LOVE BY BEING RIGHT!
Sure Jesus loves your lungs breathing and your veins and arteries flowing… but it is the SOUL and the eternal GLORIFIED BODY that Christ seeks to preserve.
Do not hate a person. If (by yourself, apart from His remission) you hate: you are damned.
Don't fixate about "externals" and "ethics" and having a "Christian America world-view." Oh Israel! This is about your own sin of the heart. Do not be angry with your brother. Your hands don't kill people your fallen nature, your sinful heart kills people.
Before Cain slew Able with his hands (from outside), he hated his brother with his heart (from inside).
But, The Lord is the Strength of His people! The Righteous One "rights" you. Like some poor turtle laying on its back in the middle of the highway as the trucks and cars bear down upon it; The Savior comes and rescues you while you lay prone, upside down (inverted; looking at your own navel) and helpless on Satan's highway to hell. Jesus is RIGHTEOUNESS in flesh & blood, and He "rights" you. He carries you away in His tender hands.
The question this morning is not "How do I carry out acts of reconciliation with my fellow man?" The answer to the Pharisee is BE PERFECT! The answer to your works-righteous nature is the Nike answer, not the Christ answer, "JUST DO IT!"
Yeah, right. Wrong!
Making fun of the government, whether it be Pharisee/Sadducee or Democratic/Republican may well get you hauled in front of the "council," but judging your brother to be empty headed, foolish in not believing in God, outside of Grace by your own royal hypocritical pronouncement would mean that you yourself don't believe, confess and hold on to Christ.
Christ is clear when He pronounces: I desire MERCY and not burnt sacrifices.
You need NOT bring your gift to the altar dear children.
Jesus brings YOU to the Table of Blood to give YOU gifts.
And by His gifts to you He not only makes you His gifts to the Father but He also makes you gifts to your neighbor as well.
For Christ FIRST went to a different altar than the stone table of Abram's abortive sacrifice of Isaac. It was not to be a ram caught in a thicket that would save but the Passover Lamb caught, entangled, barnacled, and encrusted with your thorny trespasses. It was not to be Absalom son of "a" king hanging between Heaven & Hell, stuck through with darts and spears that would save anyone, but the greater Solomon, the True Prince of Peace and only beloved Son of THE KING, Who would be hung between ground and sky, not by His hair but by His hands and feet, to be pierced through by the Spear of your sin. This is the Righteous One doing right to make you right.
He stepped in front of you as a Shield, in front of all you: lawbreakers, murderers, adulterers, liars, gossips, whiners, vengeful, spiteful, ungrateful prodigals, and offered up His Own Gift to the perfect RIGHTEOUS (RIGHT) Wrath of God against Sin, Death and the devil. His gift was not gold or silver but His own Innocent Body and Precious Blood.
The reconciliation between you and the Father (the sublime Three-in-One) has been done. The reconciliation between you and your fellow creatures has been accomplished. You are free in Christ. You are free and constrained by the Spirit to be what He has liberated you to be!
He has paid the last penny, farthing, drachma and denarius by shedding the last drop of His Holy Blood, by giving the last convulsion of His Precious Body, by uttering the last gasp from His Sacred Head and Lips. It is finished.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost