Okay, so now that we’ve thought of some ways we neglect the Old Testament, let’s think about what Jesus is saying in verse 20.

Our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. How do we do that? First of all, we have to understand what that means. And that means answering this question: How righteous were they?

If righteousness mean obeying the laws, and the laws about those laws, then they were very righteous.

If righteousness means being justified by Christ’s sacrifice and reconciled to God because of his death, then they aren’t very righteous.

What definition of righteousness is Jesus using when he tells his followers to be more righteous than the Pharisees?

Anytime you come across a tough saying, look around it for help in understanding it. Right after this passage is a list of ways that Jesus says we can internalize and transcend the law as we tend to understand it. Jesus explains ways that the law is not abolished, but fulfilled in him as a way to be in relationship with God. And I think that his understanding of righteousness was different than either the Pharisees or ours.

The old misunderstanding of righteousness was law-abiding.

The new misunderstanding of righteousness is helpless justification.

In the last few years, it has gotten popular to believe in a lazier version of righteousness that says we are lousy and God makes us righteous. And while that’s part of the truth, it’s dangerously simplistic. Jesus doesn’t talk about righteousness that way. Jesus talks about righteousness that is active and engaged. It means being a follower, not just a listener.

For Jesus, righteousness is obedience in relationship with God. It is a life demonstrated in the verses that follow. It transcends the law. We are not to follow mindlessly, we are to engage in obedience, and by doing so become active members of the “kingdom of heaven”.

For Jesus, the Law was God’s way of God’s people behaving differently than the world. The world said to have many gods. The Israelites were to have not other gods beside Yahweh God. The world said to serve self above family and neighbor. The Israelites were to honor neighbors and parents. But they turned laws into legalism.

The transformative ideas Jesus presents, if followed, would make us stand out as well. This passage shouldn’t be a tough saying because it’s hard to understand. But when you read the rest of chapter 5, you’ll find it’s plenty tough to do.

I thought Eugene Peterson had some really good nuances in his paraphrase, The Message. I’ve heard this chapter so often that I think I miss how much is really going on. These verses describe a kind of people that are not moralistic or legalistic, like this Pharisees were, and like we tend to be. I think the hypocrisy tag we’ve earned as Christians would quickly be shed if we could become the kind of people who act in the transformative, creative ways Jesus spoke of here.

 ^21-22“You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ’stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.

 ^23-24“This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.

 ^25-26“Or say you’re out on the street and an old enemy accosts you. Don’t lose a minute. Make the first move; make things right with him. After all, if you leave the first move to him, knowing his track record, you’re likely to end up in court, maybe even jail. If that happens, you won’t get out without a stiff fine.  ^27-28“You know the next commandment pretty well, too: ‘Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.’ But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices—they also corrupt.

 ^29-30“Let’s not pretend this is easier than it really is. If you want to live a morally pure life, here’s what you have to do: You have to blind your right eye the moment you catch it in a lustful leer. You have to choose to live one-eyed or else be dumped on a moral trash pile. And you have to chop off your right hand the moment you notice it raised threateningly. Better a bloody stump than your entire being discarded for good in the dump.

 ^31-32“Remember the Scripture that says, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her legal rights’? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are ‘legal.’ Please, no more pretending. If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an adulteress (unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity). And if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you’re automatically an adulterer yourself. You can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure.  ^33-37“And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.  ^38-42“Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

 ^43-47“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

 ⁴⁸“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” (Matthew 5:21-48, The Message)

Surely we don’t think Jesus came to abolish the Old Testament, do we? It’s two-thirds of our scripture, so surely we take it as seriously as Christ did, right? Well, let’s ask ourselves some questions.

If we all agreed to start (or continue, if you’re one of those holy few) a quiet time tomorrow in which we picked, blue sky, what we read, how many of us would pick an Old Testament book? Not including Psalms.

In the last year, what percentage of sermons or Bible studies you’ve heard have been from the Old Testament?

I’ll confess, my focus in seminary was Old Testament and Hebrew. I claim it to be my passion. I’ve preached 4 times in the last 3 months. All 4 were New Testament passages.

Surely we wouldn’t claim we want the Old Testament abolished, but wouldn’t we say we at least diminish it?

How else do we diminish the Old Testament?

One way happens around Christmas and Easter. We believe that Christ fulfilled Old Testament expectations and prophecies of a Messiah. But sometimes we use the Old Testament like it’s a pantry from which we pull out ingredients now and then to make some kind of Jesus casserole. Throw in some random Isaiah passages we never refer to otherwise. Maybe a Psalm, or at least some verses taken out of a Psalm. A sprinkle of Job, a dash of some minor prophet, and bam! Pasta de la Passion. Immaculate Cupcakes. However you want to think of it. Then we slam the pantry door and leave it closed until we need to make it again the next holiday. We pick and choose passages without thinking about the encounter with God that generated those prophecies or the people who heard them for the first time, long before Jesus was born. Those people experienced God in rich, personal ways that we neglect because we’ve been trained to do so.

How else do we diminish the Old Testament?

Laws. That’s how we think of it sometimes. We think of the Old Testament as Law and the New Testament as Grace. How many books are in the Old Testament? How many of those are law books? Actual legal lists? Leviticus. Deuteronomy. The Old Testament is overwhelmingly a narrative. It is a collection of stories that tell the larger story of God’s revelation and relationship to God’s people.

I think we tend to forget this, because our habit in reading the Bible is shaped by how we read the New Testament. Back to the quiet time reading. I would guess that most people would choose a New Testament letter, probably one of Paul’s. The New Testament letters are easier to understand, more direct, more instructive. They are where our memory verses come from. We like their directness and simplicity. As a result, we try to make all the Bible just like them. We look for single verses, instead of thinking about bigger-picture stories. The Old Testament stories take time and patience to understand, but they are important to us as Christians.

The Hebrew origin of the Greek word translated as ‘abolished’ is a pretty insightful word picture. It began as a traveling word, meaning to cut short a journey. And though the Greek word grew to mean something much stronger, maybe that’s still a good way to think of Jesus’ relationship to the Old Testament. He did not come to end the journey, but to be its next, biggest step.

N.T. Wright said the Old Testament is like the earlier acts of our current play. The fact we are in the later act is no reason to neglect where our story began.

If we neglect the Bible that Jesus read, we put ourselves in conflict with Jesus. That’s why this is such a tough saying.

That being said, I kind of hope we all find it controversial. A Word that never challenges us is probably not a Living Word after all.

What makes something a “tough saying”?

Conflict. The other party says or demands something we find either difficult to understand, or difficult to do.

So what about a “tough saying of Jesus”? We read throughout the gospels that Jesus came in conflict with religious leaders all the time. But we don’t think of those encounters as tough, because we see what Jesus is talking about and agree. The tough sayings of Jesus are those in which Jesus is not in conflict with an obvious enemy, but with us.

The conflict may take one of many forms. Maybe the conflict is between Jesus and our understanding of Jesus. Maybe the conflict is between Jesus and our expectations. Sometimes, the conflict is between what Jesus tells us to do and what we want to do. Or even between Jesus’ will and ours. But it seems that if we read a story or a teaching about Christ and find it difficult, either to understand or follow, there is a conflict between us and the text.

The conflict in Matthew 5:17-20 seems to have all these conflicts in some form. And yet, if we take some time to think about what Jesus is saying, we find that it’s among the least complicated of the “tough sayings”. And we find that the passage is in fact not a conflict, but a solution.

Matthew 5:17-20 (NRSV)

17 ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

It seems that Jesus was accused of trying to “abolish the Law and the Prophets”, which was a phrase used to refer to the Hebrew Bible. We don’t have the account of that exact claim, but either it happened or Jesus perceived that people saw him as claiming to get rid of the scripture. And we can imagine the religious leaders having that misunderstanding, right?

But what if it wasn’t enemies of Christ that thought this, but his friends and followers? What if they thought that Jesus was getting rid of all their history, and that they could just slide into this new religion? Surely they were tired of Pharisees too. All the tedious details of laws and history and war in the Hebrew Bible must have weighed on them somewhat. Maybe Jesus was a chance to dump all that and be free from tradition.

Imagine a Faith in which no matter how hard you tried to faithful, devout even, someone was there to point out your shortcomings. Imagine people whose role it was not to instruct, but critique. A tiny minority given power over your faith. But not just that. Your national history, legal responsibilities, and religious growth, were all constantly used against you.

Unfortunately, we can relate, can’t we? The purpose of the Church is to be a community of the faithful. But we easily turn it into a court of supreme piety. Instead of a cloud of witnesses, we encounter a line of accusers. I certainly sympathize with anyone who wanted to be free of the hypocrisy of the establishment.

So maybe there were some of Jesus’ committed followers who were tired of it, and thought welcoming the new meant abolishing the old. And maybe, just maybe, we think that too. Perhaps we’re the ones who think Jesus came to abolish what we call the Old Testament. If so, he’s telling us clearly here that we are very wrong.

Stay tuned for some new mothballs.