Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 2010

Text: Matt. 5:20-26

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Murderers Not Welcome”

“Thou shalt do no murder.”

I think if we were to apply our Gospel lesson today with typical evangelical enthusiasm and in the best American tradition of overstating the obvious and exaggerating the elemental, we’d hang a big banner over the Communion rail which would read, “Murderers Not Welcome.” Thank the Lord for those long exhortations in the Communion service so we don’t have to have something that tacky. But if we were to apply what Jesus says in our lesson in that typical evangelical over-zealousness there might be a big sign hanging down this morning, reading “Murderers Not Welcome.”

For Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said by them of old, ‘Thou shalt not murder…’ But I say to you, even if you’ve been unjustly angry with your brother or have verbally abused him, you’re guilty of murder and are liable to the flames of hell.” That’s what His words boil down to, don’t they?

Offending against your brother even in thought or word is murder according to the One who wrote the commandment to do no murder. It’s a violation of the heart of the commandment. Think a hateful thought against your fellow Christian: you’ve committed the capital murder of him or her in your heart. Speak a spiteful word: you’ve broken the sixth commandment and so you’re guilty of the whole law.

Now how many of us are not murderers? How many of us have not committed murder every day of our lives? Every one of us is guilty of breaking the sixth commandment. Even if we’ve not actually taken up a knife or a gun and drawn blood, there’s still blood on our hands for violating the spirit of the commandment, which is that we must love our brothers more than we love our own lives.

We’re murderers, and none of us is alone in this. We’re all trespassers of the commandment. But do you take comfort in that fact? Do you take comfort in the fact that everybody around you is equally guilty of murder as you, as if the mere commonality of our offense releases us from any radical action to deal with it. That’s sort of like saying, “Everybody else stinks, so why should I go out of my way to take a bath?” You take a bath because you stink, regardless of how anybody else smells. But we fall into the trap of feeling at ease with ourselves because we’re no different than anyone else.

Jesus, however, does call for radical action in dealing with our murderous thoughts and spiteful words. He says, “Therefore” - that is, if you have indeed breached the commandment through unjust anger or abusive, hurtful speech—if you’re in that state and you “bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has [some legitimate claim against you], leave your gift there at the altar, and go and first be reconciled to your brother, and then come [again] and offer your gift.”

Now imagine the situation He’s describing. In ancient Israel there was only one place you could go to perform the greatest act of personal piety and worship you could possibly perform: to present a free-will offering, a voluntary burnt sacrifice to the Lord as a sign of total consecration to him. And that place was the holy temple in Jerusalem. They didn’t have local temples. You couldn’t just go down the street to the nearest synagogue and offer your sacrifice to God. The synagogues were for hearing the Scriptures and prayer. But if you wanted to perform your spiritual duty in giving thanksgiving for some special blessing, or for having successfully fulfilled some special vow, you had to go all the way to Jerusalem to do it.

This means that for the average Israelite maybe only once in a year, or if he were a Diaspora Jew—a Jewish person who lived far away in another country—perhaps only once or twice in a life-time, did a person have the opportunity to offer his gift upon the holy altar in God’s house.

And when the person came to the temple, he was to bring his sacrifice—a sheep or a goat or a dove—to the door that opened to the court of the temple, where the laver and the huge bronze altar stood, and where the choirs of Levites sang. And facing the westward toward the Most Holy Place, where the glory of God resided above the Mercy Seat, the man would place his hands heavily upon the animal’s head, and would verbally and publicly confess his sins. The words of that confession are still extant. He would say, “I entreat Thee, Adonai: I have sinned, I have done perversely, I have rebelled, I have committed (these particular sins. And he’d name them); but I return in repentance, and let this [sacrifice] be for my atonement.” And then with his own hands he’d cut the throat of the animal as he faced God’s dwelling place. Next he would skin and flay the sacrifice.

It’s just at this point, when he’s standing there with his sacrifice, waiting for the priest to take it from his hands and offer it upon the altar, just at the moment when he is to cast himself upon the divine mercy, that Jesus says that, if his conscience suddenly convicts of having murdered his brother in his heart or with his mouth, he is supposed to drop everything, leave his sacrifice un-offered, return home, wherever home may be, and first be reconciled to his brother before he can come all the way back to the temple and finish offering his sacrifice.

Now isn’t that just a bit unreasonable? Why couldn’t Jesus have said that a person could go ahead with his sacrifice as long as he fully intended afterward to be reconciled to his offended brother? Why so radical a prescription? Why? Because murderers are not welcome at the holy altar of God.

The word of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?.. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle… When you come to appear before Me, Who has required this from your hand, To trample My courts? Bring me no more worthless sacrifices; … I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. … When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. [Because] your hands are full of bloodshed.”

Murderers are not welcome.

The Lord requires mercy above sacrifice. The offering of ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto him, which is what the burnt offering symbolized, cannot be true, and therefore cannot be pleasing to the Lord, if we stubbornly hold back obedience to his commandment not to murder our brothers even in thought or word. In that case, the Word of God says we offer our gift with blood on our hands.

Looking at it from another direction, true repentance before the Lord is more than offering pious, self-effacing words. True repentance issues forth in action. It produces fruit in keeping with the confession of our mouths. We are not truly repentant towards our offended brothers unless, as St. Paul says, we strive with everything that is in us to make peace with them, and that might even require that we offer some form of restitution for the injury we’ve inflicted. The repentance of Zacchaeus is a model for us, for when he turned from his old ways he did not forget the ones he’d wronged, but restored the money he’d stolen from them fourfold. And Christ was pleased with his repentance.

“Leave your gift at the altar, and first be reconciled to your brother, and then come again and offer your gift.”

Now Jesus spoke these words to people under a different covenant than us. They were still under the old covenant, and so he spoke to them about offering their sacrifices upon the altar in Jerusalem. But the early church applied the principle of our Lord’s instruction - and I believe rightly so - to our participation in the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, because it is here that we not only receive the heavenly gift of the body and blood of Christ for our spiritual nourishment, but it is also here that we do in fact offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a living sacrifice to the Lord.

Communion, if it’s to be com-union, is always a two-way street. We receive Christ, but we also give ourselves. And therein lies the reason why we can’t come to the Lord’s table as murderers with blood on our hands. Our gift is unacceptable if we come without true repentance. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that it’s dangerous to our souls if we should even try.

Now you say, “If that’s the case I’m never going to come to Communion again,” because, as I said before, we all know that every one us has been guilty of murdering our brother in our hearts. Somehow I don’t think that’s how Christ intended us to respond to His words—in fear of ever taking the sacrament again. Christ is the one who invites us miserable sinners to partake of his meal, of himself, for forgiveness and strength against the sin of murder.

But I think His words do mean that we’re to take our piety very seriously, and that if, at the point that you come forward and kneel at the altar, your conscience suddenly pricks you so that you remember that you’ve spitefully mistreated your brother or sister and caused a breach in the relationship, you ought to refrain from partaking of the supper until you’ve gone and done everything in your power to make peace with him or her. Better yet, be reconciled with one anther even before you come to church that you may come to sacrament of union, the sacrament that unites the body of Christ in the right spirit.

Think of the grace of this. Think of the grace of Christ’s words, not the fearfulness of them: God does not exact your instant death for being a murderer which is what you deserve, but gives you the opportunity to reconcile and to restore to life the one you’ve killed in your heart, and then to come and kneel together, and offer your gift at his altar. Isn’t that fantastic grace!

But if you’re unrepentant, that means if you know you’ve injured your brother, but you’re unwilling to reconcile with him, then you’re a murderer, and you’re not welcome to the table of the Lord. There’s blood on your hands.

I want to close with the words of one of the exhortations to Communion found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer: As the Holy Communion is “so divine and comfortable a thing to them who receive it worthily, and so dangerous to those who will presume to receive it unworthily; my duty is to exhort you, ….to search and examine your own consciences, and that not lightly, and after the manner of dissemblers with God; but so that ye may come holy and clean to such a heavenly Feast, in the marriage-garment required by God in holy Scripture, and be received as worthy partakers of that holy Table.

“The way and means thereto is: First, to examine your lives and conversations by the rule of God’s commandments; and whereinsoever ye shall perceive yourselves to have offended, either by will, word, or deed, there to bewail your own sinfulness, and to confess yourselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life. And if ye shall perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God, but also against your neighbours; then ye shall reconcile yourselves unto them; being ready to make restitution and satisfaction, according to the uttermost of your powers, for all injuries and wrongs done by you to any other; and being likewise ready to forgive others who have offended you, as ye would have forgiveness of your offences at God’s hand: for otherwise the receiving of the holy Communion doth nothing else but increase your condemnation. Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of his Word, and adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime; repent you of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table.”

“Murderers not Welcome.” Beloved, wash your bloody hands, and come to the altar of God. +