Sermon for August 9th, 2026

Matthew 5:21-26 (NT p. 5)

21 ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” 22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Higher Education Part II: Moving to the Heart

One day a woman was driving in heavy traffic, and she was getting really worked up, honking her horn at everyone, swearing in the most foul language, and making all kinds of rude gestures to the vehicles around her. At the next stoplight, she heard a tap on her window, and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He handcuffed her and took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a cell. Needless to say, the woman was shocked at this treatment, which seemed a bit over the top for just losing her temper.

After a couple of hours, she was released, and the arresting officer came up to her and said, "I'm awfully sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping the guy off in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at everyone else. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' license plate holder, the 'Follow me to Sunday School' bumper sticker, and the 'God is Love' decal on your back window... Naturally, I assumed the vehicle was stolen."

I think we can all recognize the contradiction here--when the outward signs say one thing, but inside, the heart is filled with anger and rage. In today's scripture reading, Jesus teaches about anger, and what it can lead to. Now I want to be clear at the outset: Anger is a natural, completely normal, healthy emotion. In the Book of Psalms, King David vents his anger in song, and in the gospels Jesus gets angry too, more than once. There are some things in this world that are so wrong, so unjust, that if they don't make us angry, we might be part of the problem. So this sermon isn't about "how NOT to get angry." It's about not letting anger consume you, or the peace and light Jesus calls us to bring into the world.

Last week, we began a series on Jesus' greatest and most profound teaching, the Sermon on the Mount. In his opening words, Jesus spoke to a crowd that probably had a lot to be angry about--many in his audience would have been poor, hungry, dismissed by society, and persecuted at the hands of an oppressive Roman government. But instead of railing against all the very real evils of their world, Jesus paints a picture of a very different kind of kingdom, a world where broken people are lifted up and called "blessed." And in today's scripture reading, he begins to lay out for them (and for us), one step at a time, the long and arduous path to building exactly that kind of world. Spoiler alert: It doesn't start by changing all the horrible people around us. It starts by changing the only thing we really can change--our own heart.

In six consecutive examples, Jesus uses the formula, "you have heard it said..." and then he quotes a key principle from the law of Moses. "But I say to you..." and then he gives them a more challenging (but also more rewarding) take on how to interpret that law. This is actually a common feature of Rabbinic teaching strategy. It's called "fencing the Torah." And the basic idea is that if you don't want to go somewhere you know is dangerous--if you don't want to fall into a hole in the ground, for example--you put a fence around it. If you don't cross the fence, you won't fall into the hole.

Jesus starts, in Matthew 5:21 with the law against murder. That may seem like an extreme case to most of us sitting comfortably here today--you might even be thinking, "I could never murder someone!" But you know who else thinks that? Most people who actually commit murder. Criminological research indicates that between 75% to 90% of murders are not premeditated, but are instead impulsive, spontaneous acts driven by escalated arguments, intense emotions, or situational conflict.

So "fencing the Torah" is kind of like reverse engineering--we start with "Murder is bad." Then, what leads to murder? Well, escalated arguments, intense emotions, or situational conflict. Ok, let's put a fence there--not because those things in themselves are breaking the law, but because they should give us pause, make us stop and assess where we're going, and look out for the hole we might fall into. In verse 22, the hole is literally a "hell-hole," and Jesus actually puts three successive fences around it, each one increasing in danger and severity.

The first fence is simply anger against another person. It's invisible, internal, no one can actually see it but you. It may not even be something concrete--just a feeling or an impulse. But if you stumble past that fence, the next one is insulting another person. That can be done with words or with actions, but either way, it's now out in the open, visible to the other person. And if you keep stumbling past that fence, you get to the third fence, calling someone a "fool" or more literally in the Greek, μωρός (moron). What's the difference? Isn't this just another insult? Not quite. You can insult or slight a person in countless low-level ways--think backhanded compliments, sarcasm, condescending or dismissive behavior. That's dangerous enough, and it tends to become a worse habit if unchecked.

But some insults--telling someone "you're nothing, you're worthless, you're stupid"--those kinds of remarks strip a person of their core humanity. You might not think about it that way in the moment, but that's exactly what your words mean. Of course, no words can "actually" diminish someone's true worth in the sight of God, and half the time when you call someone an idiot, they aren't even around to hear it. But those words, spoken in a careless, angry moment, do something far more subtle: When you call someone worthless (in any of the ways we often do), you dehumanize that person in YOUR heart and in YOUR mind. And if you can convince yourself that a person is sub-human, not worth the dignity afforded to other human beings, you are now capable of doing the unthinkable. From there, it's just one short step, in the wrong circumstances, into that hell-hole of murder. Even if you never go there, you are still tottering on the brink.

It's much safer to stop at the first fence.

John Calvin, writing about this passage, says that when God gave the ten commandments to Moses, he “spoke to the hearts, as well as to the hands and to the eyes.” Jesus isn't changing or replacing that law, but he is calling us to "ascend much higher” (as Calvin puts it). That's what we mean by “Higher Education” in the title of this sermon series. For students of Jesus, it's not enough to ask, “Did I technically break the rule?” We have to ask what is happening further back, deeper down, in the heart--before anger becomes contempt, before contempt becomes cruelty, and before cruelty becomes violence.

But once Jesus has taken us there, once we've looked over the fence and recognized the danger, there's an obvious question: What are we supposed to do about it?

And that's exactly where Jesus goes next.

“If you are offering your gift at the altar,” he says in verse 23, “and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister.”

Jesus is talking to a crowd from Galilee, which is in the Northern part of Israel. And the "gift at the altar" would have been a live animal sacrifice--so birds, sheep, or goats--that could only be offered at the Temple in Jerusalem, a good three-day walk from Galilee. There's almost something comical about this image. Imagine schlepping your birds and your goats all the way to Jerusalem, remembering someone who made you angry, and immediately dropping everything (animals and all) to run all the way back to Galilee. You make peace with the person you were angry with, then run all the way back to Jerusalem. There's a pretty good chance your animals are long gone by now, but the better sacrifice--the one God cares most about--has already been made. That's how important this is to Jesus. And I'll second that: If I see you get up and run out the back door when we pass the offering plates later in the service, I'll just assume you're doing what you need to do to make peace with someone. We'll wait for you. Maybe.

Of course, all this sounds simple enough when Jesus says it. In real life, when your blood pressure is up, when you're absolutely convinced that you're right, when you have already rehearsed the argument twelve times in your head and won every single time--just dropping everything to go and reconcile with someone can be surprisingly difficult.

And that brings me to another one of my favorite teachers: Fred Rogers, the host of the children's television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Mr. Rogers actually wrote an entire song about anger called “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?” And like Jesus, Fred Rogers never taught children that anger itself was bad. He understood that anger is part of being human. You don't have to be ashamed of it. You don't have to pretend it isn't there. The question is right there in the title of the song: What do you do with it?

We're going to let Mr. Rogers answer that question and close out the sermon today. While his target audience is children, I think there's a lot of wisdom in the song for adults, too. In addition to being a children's show host, Fred Rogers was a seminary-trained theologian, and an ordained Presbyterian minister, so near the end of the song when he sings that "there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can" I'm pretty sure he's talking about the Holy Spirit--the promise Jesus made that God would always be with us, and within us, helping us navigate those fences (and those holes) every step of the way.

What Do You Do With the Mad That You Feel? - Fred Rogers