Bound to One Another
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Having just described the disciples as both salt and light in the world, Jesus begins to unpack what that means in our Gospel reading for the sixth Sunday after Epiphany. These “antitheses” are famous for their rhetorical construction, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…” Jesus here offers his own interpretation of the Torah, that which he has already affirmed by saying not one stroke of a letter will disappear from it before it is fulfilled in himself. Its fulfillment begins in the constitution of a new community organized around Jesus and held together by the kind of truth-telling, forgiveness, and interdependence witnessed in the Torah as Jesus interprets it here.
Each “antithesis” requires quite a bit of contextual and theological unpacking beyond the scope of this brief reflection. However, we can also consider the connection between each of them, namely the way in which each imagines a particular kind of community surrounding Jesus identified by this interpretation of the Torah. These are not simply new adherences given to the disciples; they are assumptions made about the community’s way of life.
It is no coincidence that, following what might be considered a general introduction to the Sermon on the Mount in vv. 1-20, we arrive first at the assumption that the community will need ways to deal with the conflict that unavoidably comes with life together. The curiosity is not that Jesus assumes there will be conflict, but rather that such conflict must be dealt with directly, in a restorative fashion rather than one based on the retributive and impersonal processes of state justice. The alternative witness of the community of Jesus is the willingness and freedom to confront our conflicts without fear of retribution or fragmentation. Anger must be held in check, not by repression, but by honesty and confronting the conflict toward peace and restoration, lest such anger escalate and expand the chasm between us.
The teachings on adultery and divorce are certainly focused on the male gaze and agency, and the teaching reimagines both of these things within a more egalitarian and mutually responsible relationship. For adultery and lust to be intertwined, and for the recommended “solution” to be dismemberment (an obvious hyperbole to the dismay of Origen of Alexandria) recognizes damage done to a body that suffers the dehumanization of objectifying gaze. It is as if Jesus is saying that members of his body cannot objectify others, men cannot treat women as objects for personal satisfaction, without causing devastating harm to the body itself.
Likewise, Marriage is to be understood in terms of mutual responsibility. It should be said that first century marriage and divorce and twenty-first century marriage and divorce are not entirely the same. And we are all aware of the ways this teaching has been used as justification for the ostracization of those already suffering the pain of divorce, when the church ought to be a community where the loneliness of such pain is met with compassion and companionship. As Stanley Hauerwas says, in his commentary on Matthew’s gospel:
What is crucial is not the question of when a marriage may be dissolved, but given the new dispensation the question should be how Christians should understand marriage. In similar fashion the question is not whether a divorced woman should be allowed to marry, but what kind of community must a church be that does not make it a matter of necessity for such a woman to remarry. If Christians do not have to marry, if women who have been abandoned do not have to remarry, then surely the church must be a community of friendship that is an alternative to the loneliness of our world.
The community gathered around and in the name of Jesus is one characterized by a communion of love that dispels the fear of loneliness and socioeconomic insecurity. But perhaps equally as compelling is the notion that we are morally responsible for one another. That is to say, the emphasis Jesus places on divorce is that the man who initiates it is morally culpable for any subsequent adultery – “…causes her to commit adultery.” Here, Jesus reframes mutual responsibility such that our lives are implicated in each other. It is not enough to consider marriage a contract; rather, marriage is understood to be a witness to the fact that we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, woven into the fabric of each other’s lives and identities without clear lines drawn between “mine” and “yours.”
Thus, in such a community where our lives are so implicated in one another’s and our identities, our personhood, so intertwined so as to reveal the essential unity we share in Christ, there is only truth-telling. As Bonhoeffer says of this teaching in his extraordinary chapter on the Sermon on the Mount in Discipleship,
The oath is proof of the existence of lies in the world. If human beings could not lie, oaths would not be necessary. Thus an oath is a barrier against lying. But in providing this, it also encourages lying, for whenever an oath claims final truthfulness for itself, then at the same time room is also given for lying to take place; a certain right to existence is granted to the lie.
As Bonhoeffer continues to unpack the teaching, he says church community bears witness to our lives being in the presence of God at all times, and therefore we must not distinguish between oaths “in the name of God” and regular speech. As the collect for purity states in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church, “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires are known, and from you no secrets are hid.” Living in unity with both God and one another means living in the vulnerability required of truth-telling. It also means that we are free to expect the truth from one another as those whose fundamental commitment to one another is found in the love of Christ for us. Because our life together is not dependent on our agreement or posturing for the sake of concealing our true selves, we are free to be who we are, confident that the love of God for us (note that I am not saying our common love for God) is the fundamental truth that binds us together.
Discipleship is not an easy way of life, even if it is a simple one. As Bonhoeffer famously argues, it is a costly life, and it is one that requires our whole selves, our souls and bodies. But, as Jesus sets out in these first “antitheses,” it is not a life spent in isolation - quite the opposite. The communion we share as members of the body of Christ means that all conflict, all relationships, all speech are characterized by the vulnerable honesty and mutual dependence characteristic of those whose lives, whose very identities, are inextricably bound to and implicated in one another by the love of God for us.