Moral Authority

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Morning, everyone. Will you pray with me, please? God of light, illuminate your words so that we might know your truth and see you more clearly. Change us moment by moment, word by word, truth by truth, drawing us into the fullness of your image. Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Scripture today comes to us from Matthew 5, 17, 20. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill. 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. 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. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The this is the word of the Lord. [00:01:23] Speaker B: There was a movie from back in 1979 I really can still remember seeing for the first time. [00:01:29] Speaker C: It was called Breaking Away. [00:01:32] Speaker B: Breaking Away won an Oscar that year for best original screenplay. And it told the story of four teenagers living in Bloomington, Indiana. And they're pictured here. You can see the time period, can't you? [00:01:48] Speaker C: Late 70s haircuts. [00:01:50] Speaker B: Can't miss them. [00:01:52] Speaker C: They were all 19, had just graduated from high school, and they were trying. [00:01:56] Speaker B: To figure out what they were going to do with their lives, what their next step might be. [00:02:02] Speaker C: And for at least one of the characters, the characters on the bike, Dave, we had an idea of at least one trajectory. [00:02:09] Speaker B: He might well be a competitive cyclist. [00:02:13] Speaker C: He loved bikes. He had won a host of bike competitions and had a large collection of trophies. He was obsessed with one bicycle team in particular called the Italianos. They were his idols. He saved up enough to get an Italian bicycle. He would blast Italian operas on his stereo, much to the consternation of his father. He would want to eat Italian food. He'd learn Italian Italian phrases and words. He even pretended to be an Italian exchange student at the nearby university in the hopes of romancing a particular female student there. And then one day, he learned his. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Heroes, the Italianos, were coming to town. [00:03:04] Speaker C: He was thrilled. They were participating in a local bike race and invitational. And he was able to participate and. [00:03:11] Speaker B: Actually race with his heroes, the Italianos. [00:03:16] Speaker C: Dave was a strong enough biker that even though these Italianos, these four, were way ahead of the rest of the pack, Dave could catch up to them. He was that good a biker. And when he finally reached them, he yelled out, buongiorno. And then starts to talk with them about the weather in Italian. [00:03:36] Speaker B: And they mock him. [00:03:40] Speaker C: They put him down. Then one of the members of the Italianos comes up to his bike and switches the gears. So he's suddenly pushed back and he has to fight to catch up. And as he falls back, they laugh. Then he tries again. Dave again catches up to them. Again he greets them. And this time, one of the members of that Italiano bike team takes the their pump and shoves it between the wheel and the spoke of Dave's bike. He crashes on the side of the road in a heap, looks up, dirty face and bloody, and one of the Italianos looks back, makes a crude gesture. [00:04:24] Speaker B: And then heads off to win the race. And I still remember seeing that scene. [00:04:32] Speaker C: And along with Dave and feeling the. [00:04:35] Speaker B: Shock, the disillusionment of that. These were my heroes, these people I thought of as champions. And then suddenly, their behavior, the way. [00:04:49] Speaker C: They acted toward him, somebody who looked. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Up to them just made them crash down. [00:04:57] Speaker C: They might have won that particular race. [00:05:00] Speaker B: But were they winners? [00:05:02] Speaker C: Were they champions? [00:05:05] Speaker B: No. No, they were losers. Dave had been chasing an illusion. In sports, as in all aspects of life, morality, the right, the good, it matters. [00:05:25] Speaker C: Back in 2013, the world champion bicyclist Lance Armstrong confessed that throughout his career, he had used president performance enhancing drugs. [00:05:34] Speaker B: And he'd often demanded his teammates do so as well. [00:05:40] Speaker C: And when some of his former teammates revealed that doping had gone on, Lance had called them liars and worse. [00:05:49] Speaker B: Hearing that confession from Armstrong, I thought again about that scene from breaking away. Morality matters in sports, as in life. But what is morality? How do you judge what's right and wrong? What behavior is reprehensible and what's acceptable? What makes for a champion and what makes a loser? [00:06:21] Speaker C: Is morality purely an individual thing? If it was, it'd be pretty hard to function as a society, right? If each person had their own notion that there would be no way to come together, to interact with each other. [00:06:34] Speaker B: With common cause, is the moral simply what the powerful say it is that doesn't seem right or just or good? [00:06:48] Speaker C: And if there are social norms regarding what is good, like you shouldn't cheat. [00:06:53] Speaker B: Or behave cruelly or make racist statements or pursue a racist agenda, who or what forms the basis of those standards? [00:07:06] Speaker C: How can we truly say individually, communally. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Or globally, what is right and wrong, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable? [00:07:18] Speaker C: Well, philosophers have, of course, wrestled with these questions for centuries, and at least one way that philosophers in the Western tradition have spoken about morality has been with the Greek term dikaiosune. Dikaiosune, it's a hard word to translate precisely into English. It's sometimes translated as justice. In today's passage that Jess read, it's translated as righteousness. But at least one way you could translate dikaiosune is with the English word morality. [00:07:54] Speaker B: It points to what is just and good and right. [00:07:59] Speaker C: Plato saw dikaiosune as the basic structure. [00:08:03] Speaker B: Of both the state and of the human soul. [00:08:07] Speaker C: The subtitle for Plato's great work, the Republic, was in Greek peridikaion, which means. [00:08:14] Speaker B: Essentially about dikaios or about dikaiosune. [00:08:22] Speaker C: Aristotle devoted a whole book to dikaiosune. He saw it as the highest virtue, the virtue that speaks of the application of all the other virtues. [00:08:33] Speaker B: Well, in Jewish thought, dikaiosune, or morality, was inextricably connected to the law since. [00:08:42] Speaker C: The time of Moses, since the time when God gave a people commandments and statutes. [00:08:50] Speaker B: The good, the just, dikaios sune was. [00:08:54] Speaker C: Revealed by God to a people in the law. The law, the commandments and statutes of God that held the rules of right and wrong, not just in worship practices, but in all aspects of human life. For the Jewish community, the prophets in Scripture would often draw on the precepts of the law, like the command to. [00:09:17] Speaker B: Defend the widow, the immigrant and the. [00:09:20] Speaker C: Orphan, and a host of other commands as well, to challenge the people when they were going astray because the law. [00:09:28] Speaker B: Showed what was right, good, moral in God's eyes. [00:09:35] Speaker C: And for us today, when we think of the right and the good, the appropriate, we think of rules to govern such things, don't we? [00:09:45] Speaker B: Take the game of football, today's Super Bowl Sunday. After all, football, which has been called. [00:09:52] Speaker C: Not merely a contact sport, but a. [00:09:55] Speaker B: Collision sport, football, which consists of enormous. [00:09:59] Speaker C: Grown men clashing violently into one another. [00:10:03] Speaker B: Football still has an elaborate set of. [00:10:07] Speaker C: Rules of laws governing the sport. And if you don't believe me, watch the super bowl today, and I guarantee you a lot of the is going to be people in black and white garb who've thrown down a flag and then confer with another to talk about whether a player broke the rules or didn't break the rules and whether a particular penalty is going to apply to them or not. [00:10:34] Speaker B: We might even hear there's a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. [00:10:40] Speaker C: Whole teams can be guilty of breaking the rules. Remember Deflategate 11 years ago? The New England Patriots and their quarterback Tom Brady were accused of deflating their footballs to gain an unfair advantage. Now, whether or not you believe these allegations, and there's a whole lot to that case that you can look up on the Internet if you're interested, the reason it rose to such prominence is because rules matter. If we learn that a team or. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Was cheating was not playing by the rules, then, well, we can't really think of them as victors anymore. Morality matters. [00:11:24] Speaker C: And it matters off the field too. If we learn today that members of one or one of the Patriots or the Seahawks had made cruel remarks about. [00:11:35] Speaker B: Members of their opponents families or made racist statements about their opponents, how could we cheer for them? [00:11:44] Speaker C: They will be like the Italianos in. [00:11:47] Speaker B: Our eyes, having left Dave bruised and disillusioned by the side of the road. Morality matters. [00:11:56] Speaker C: They even matter in international competition. At the last Winter Olympics, you'll recall, Russia was barred from competing because they broke the rules as a nation when. [00:12:06] Speaker B: It came to doping. [00:12:08] Speaker C: This year, the Russian team is barred. [00:12:10] Speaker B: From participation for actions off the field, specifically Russia's invasion of Ukraine. [00:12:18] Speaker C: It's like the Olympic Committee is saying as a nation, that is behavior so. [00:12:22] Speaker B: Unsportsmanlike, so morally problematic, it's disqualifying. Now that disqualification this year in particular. [00:12:34] Speaker C: Raises complex and thorny questions in the wake of our own country's recent invasion. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Of Venezuela, doesn't it? What invasion is allowed or not? [00:12:47] Speaker C: As nations and as a global community, we need some kind of rules, guidelines, laws to function, don't we? [00:12:56] Speaker B: Even if there's vibrant debate about them. [00:13:00] Speaker C: Or how can we hope to interact. [00:13:02] Speaker B: With each other as nations and between nations. [00:13:06] Speaker C: How can you play a game like. [00:13:08] Speaker B: Football or hockey if you don't have some agreed upon rules? [00:13:15] Speaker C: Well, in Jesus time for the Jewish. [00:13:17] Speaker B: Community, the law, that was the rules. [00:13:22] Speaker C: That was how you discerned dikaiosune, righteousness. And there were two groups known in Jesus time for being experts in the rules. The scribes were specialists in the law, teachers of the law, the first century Jewish equivalent of what we might call today lawyers. And some of you will remember from the sermon series back in the fall. [00:13:44] Speaker B: On the book of Ezra, Ezra was a scribe. [00:13:48] Speaker C: And so when Ezra went to the Jerusalem community, that community of Jewish returnees who had rebuilt the temple, what concern does Ezra bring to that community? Obedience to the law, especially when it came to marriage. [00:14:06] Speaker B: That's what scribes were trained in, that's what they lifted up. [00:14:11] Speaker C: And according to the Jewish historian Yosephus, the Pharisees were famous for their strict. [00:14:16] Speaker B: Adherence and interpretation of the Law. [00:14:21] Speaker C: And so in Matthew's Gospel, they're the ones we see frequently throwing down a yellow flag like referees and saying to. To Jesus, nope, nope, you and the disciples are breaking the law. You are healing on the Sabbath, or the disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath, and that is against the rules. [00:14:40] Speaker B: And we've got to have rules. And yet, in today's passage, Jesus makes a startling statement. [00:14:48] Speaker C: He says to his listeners during his. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Sermon on the Mount, unless you're dikaiosune, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the. [00:15:00] Speaker C: Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter. [00:15:03] Speaker B: The kingdom of God. [00:15:05] Speaker C: It's like Jesus is saying, you might think these scribes and Pharisees are champions when it comes to the law. They might hold positions of honor and prestige in the marketplace or in the synagogue, but unless your dikaiosune is greater. [00:15:20] Speaker B: Than theirs, you'll be failures. [00:15:25] Speaker C: Now, the scribes and Pharisees might well have thrown this criticism back at Jesus. They might have said, this guy is throwing away the law, not just in his behavior, but in his words. He's trampling on it, disobeying Sabbath regulations, encouraging others to do the same. And here he is criticizing us, the. [00:15:46] Speaker B: Very champion of the law. This guy is a law destroyer. And how can you have righteousness, morality, justice without that law? And it's like Jesus is ready for. [00:16:03] Speaker C: That criticism in advance. For he says this, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I've come not to abolish, but to fulfill. In fact, I tell you that until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever breaks the least of these commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does and teaches. [00:16:32] Speaker B: Them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. [00:16:38] Speaker C: And then Jesus goes on in his teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, to cite a couple commandments specifically, like thou shalt not murder and thou shalt not commit adultery. But Jesus goes on. He says, it's not just enough that you refrain from murder. [00:16:53] Speaker B: If you even mock another person with cruelty or anger, then you will have failed or on the side of adultery. [00:17:06] Speaker C: It's not just enough not to have or to have avoided intercourse with another person who's not your spouse. Even more than that, if you look, even with lust in your eyes at another, if you objectify that person created. [00:17:21] Speaker B: In the image of God, you too have failed. [00:17:25] Speaker C: It's like Jesus is not only arguing for the ten Commandments he's pushing even deeper to a kind of righteousness that. [00:17:33] Speaker B: Is higher and harder still. And then he says, I've not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Well, what in the world does he mean by fulfill? [00:17:54] Speaker C: That question has captivated commentators as it raises the question of what kind of. [00:17:59] Speaker B: Fulfillment Jesus might be speaking of. [00:18:03] Speaker C: By fulfill, does he mean fulfill the prophetic expectations of the Hebrew scriptures, of. [00:18:10] Speaker B: The law and the prophets? [00:18:12] Speaker C: He will, of course, fulfill the promise. [00:18:15] Speaker B: Of Emmanuel, God with us. [00:18:18] Speaker C: And there are ways. Jesus, as he is portrayed in Matthew's Gospel, is clearly lifted up as the. [00:18:24] Speaker B: Messiah, the promised One. [00:18:27] Speaker C: But having read the book of Romans, we might wonder too, might this reference to Jesus fulfilling the law and the prophets be an allusion to how the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. [00:18:40] Speaker B: How God did in that what the law could not do? [00:18:46] Speaker C: Might it be a reference to how Christ would fulfill the requirements of the law, freeing those in Christ from sin. [00:18:52] Speaker B: And inviting them into life in the Spirit? [00:18:56] Speaker C: Lots of questions surround the meaning of fulfill. But it seems to me there's at least two clear ways Christ can be understood not as abolishing, but fulfilling the law in its entirety. [00:19:10] Speaker B: Every stroke and letter. One, he fulfills what the entire law. [00:19:17] Speaker C: And prophets, every word taken together, is. [00:19:19] Speaker B: Pointing to in the coming of a Messiah, God's anointed one, the deliverer of God's people. But two, Jesus fulfills the law and the prophet's true intent by revealing God's will at the heart the law. [00:19:38] Speaker C: And he reveals it more fully than it had ever been revealed before in Jesus words and actions. [00:19:45] Speaker B: He reveals the dikaiosune, the righteousness of God, the justice of God that led. [00:19:53] Speaker C: God to give a people a law in the first place. And Jesus in his teaching, will go even deeper than the letter of the law, getting at the heart of a person, the heart of a people, and looking at whether or not that reflects. [00:20:08] Speaker B: The heart of God. [00:20:12] Speaker C: Now, for Christians in the reformed tradition, especially like we Presbyterians along with Jesus, call to his disciples to a righteousness higher than that of the scribes or Pharisees, we want to be sure to. [00:20:25] Speaker B: Hold with that the notion of imputed righteousness. Imputed righteousness? [00:20:33] Speaker C: When John Calvin read the words of Romans 5:19 that spoke of believers made righteous or dikaiosune on account of Christ's obedience, Calvin wrote this. [00:20:45] Speaker B: What else is this but to lodge our righteousness, our dikaiosune in Christ's obedience? [00:20:53] Speaker C: Because the obedience of Christ is reckoned. [00:20:56] Speaker B: To us as if it were Our own dikaiosune, morality, goodness is in Christ in his gift of grace. [00:21:09] Speaker C: Dikaiosune before God is not found in our obedience to the law. This was the apostle Paul's frequent refrain, and we want to take it to heart. [00:21:19] Speaker B: And yet, as people to whom righteousness. [00:21:22] Speaker C: Has been imputed through Christ by faith, our Savior calls his disciples. We remember from the passage just before this one. The call is to be salt and light, to display to the world that dikaiosune. [00:21:38] Speaker B: Christ has given us an even deeper dikaiosune than merely refraining from murder or adultery. And if people don't see the justice. [00:21:51] Speaker C: The righteousness, the morality of God as it was made known in Christ in. [00:21:57] Speaker B: Us, how can we be salt and light? [00:22:00] Speaker C: Or, as Jesus puts it in his Sermon on the Mount, if salt has. [00:22:04] Speaker B: Lost its saltiness, what is it good for? [00:22:07] Speaker C: Or if you've got a light, what. [00:22:09] Speaker B: Good is it if it's hidden under a bushel basket? [00:22:13] Speaker C: Let your light shine before others. Jesus says that they may see your. [00:22:18] Speaker B: Good deeds, your morality, your dikaiosune in action, that they might glorify your Father in heaven. Whether it's in our workplaces, in our families, in our most intimate relationships, whether. [00:22:38] Speaker C: It'S on the football field or the. [00:22:39] Speaker B: Tennis court or the ski run. [00:22:42] Speaker C: In every aspect of our lives, may. [00:22:45] Speaker B: The world see dikaiosune. May they see justice, rightness, morality. [00:22:53] Speaker C: May they see it in the laws we champion and in our actions, not just obeying the Ten Commandments, but obeying. [00:23:00] Speaker B: The deeper, harder, fuller call of Christ. [00:23:05] Speaker C: May people see in us not a member of a team who injures or. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Mocks, a bike rider lying broken and beaten on the side of the road. Maybe a rider who once looked up to us and saw so much potential in that Christian community and then was disillusioned. May they see instead a hand reaching out to lift them up. A hand and voice that says, you matter. You might be on the opposing team, but you matter. You have dignity and respect, and I am going to treat you that way. And when people see that in us, may they see the light that shines in us, the decayosune that came down from God in Christ our Savior. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.