Do you make lists?
I always have.
Lists of names and places.
Things to do, lists of ideas, turns of phrases.
My problem is that I usually lose them, those piles of sticky notes are eventually buried and forgotten.
Right after college I started making lists of virtues and vices and I discovered a whole tradition of study that surrounds these lists of virtues and vices and the study of wisdom. They all eventual find their origins not in an abstract school of philosophy or theology but rather in the stories of people’s lives, in biography.
What are the things that ruin a life, a family, a community, a people, a nation?
What are the things that make a life worthwhile? Fruitful? Creative? Fulfilling? Inspiring? Good enough?
In studying the lives of people eventually you start to pick up the patterns of destruction and the patterns of construction.
The ways of folly and the ways of wisdom.
The ways of misery and the ways of healing.
The ways of resentment and the ways of forgiveness.
These can all be seen in the lives of others and in ourselves.
Often the stories and the people are forgotten and the lists of virtues and vices are left behind, something dry and forgettable, like piles of sticky notes that are slowly buried and lost.
But when the people are remembered, the stories of their lives, then the virtues and vices come alive and connect with the story of our own lives and our ancestors speak to us.
There are so many lists of virtues and vices, religious, secular, philosophical, many overlap, many contradict.
For Jews and Christians the list of all lists is the Ten Commandments. They really don’t mean much when posted on the wall of a court house, or a church or on a sign in some ones front yard.
But when they are remembered as part of the story of the people of God and their struggles to both live in this world and worship the God who is Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of the Heavens and the Earth, then we start to find something of value, something that speaks to the lives of real people.
Chapters five, six and seven of Matthews Gospel are called The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is depicted as the new Moses, the new law giver, who fulfills the law and the prophets.
In today’s Gospel reading Jesus digs into the sixth and seventh commandment, the commandments to do no murder and to not commit adultery.
But Jesus doesn’t leave it there, some say he makes those two commandments even more strict, even more demanding and difficult, so that it is no longer enough to literally not commit murder and adultery, now anger and lust as just as bad.
Suddenly something that was merely difficult has become impossible!
But I think Jesus was doing something more than making things more difficult to please God.
He was digging into the truth of the commandments so that they were no longer merely a stagnant list of virtues and vices that we can check off as achievements, that is shallow legalism. Jesus saw the commandments as so much more, they are a window into our souls and into the heart of God.
The roots of murder lie in a life that is taken over by anger, anger that has been allowed to fester or that has been deliberately stoked like a fire. Be aware of that anger, address it, respect it, know where it comes from, seek reconciliation, forgiveness and healing. It eats us up, it eats up families and societies and countries. Beware of those who seek profit by stoking anger in others. Do not trust them.
Jesus is going to the root of murder and anger, and the roots are always the story of someone’s life. Know your story, take it seriously the commandments tell us.
It is the same thing with adultery, the betrayal of the covenant of marriage begins long before the act, and often its roots begin in lust, and lust is ultimately the loss of perspective that comes from seeing others as a means to satisfy our own ends, lust is about using someone, rather than loving them.
This isn’t saying sexual desire is a bad thing, it is saying pay attention to that desire that may be expressed in affection and commitment. Beware of fickle commitments that are only about using others or about being used. The further we go down that road of using others the more and more difficult it is to be able to see who other people really are, and what they are is the image of God, revealing the radiance of the holy one, living revelations.
The root of the problem is ultimately about worshiping God.
Murder and adultery, anger and lust, they are the result of the failure to worship God and love God, the failure to see the image of God present in each other.
When we are in worship and love of God then we carry a reverence and awe for the people in our lives, all of whom bear the image of the Holy One, including our selves.
The root of the problem is a life devoid of worship and love and awe and fear of the Lord God, and that splendid beauty that orderest all things.
The root of the problem is that we forget the story of God in the world, of God in our lives, and we turn the beauty of God’s holiness into dry lists of morals and laws that are soon forgotten.
So we are reminded of the relationships that bring life rather destruction.
Jesus is the living reminder that God desires us and has affection for us, that God has fascination and awe of us and longs to be with us.
Jesus is the affection of God caressing the world wooing us away from the ways of folly and destruction that we may live, that we may be raised from the dead, raised from all that twists and destroys, that we may be free indeed. This is the power of the resurrection in our lives; this is the story of God in the world and for the world.
This isn’t about making a list and checking it twice, a list that is eventually lost and forgotten. This about a relationship, the relationship that sets us free, it is about biography, literally life writing, the story of life, the life that dances and sings.
I conclude with the words of St. Chrysostem, “Let no one mourn that they have fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave.”