Ten Words That Matter: Making Up Is Hard To Do
Dr. Tom Pace
July 16, 2017
Exodus 20:1-2, 13; Matthew 5:21-26

We’re continuing our series of sermons on the Ten Commandments and we’re dealing today with “You shall not murder.” In Hebrew it’s actually the shortest commandment and it’s two words. It just says, “Murder. No.” That’s actually what it literally says.
So we’re going to talk today about what that meant for them, but then we’re going to see how Jesus reflected on that commandment and maybe what it means for us.
So listen now as we hear the Scripture read from Exodus and then again from the Sermon on the Mount.
Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; … You shall not murder. Exodus 20:1-2, 13 (NRSV)
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; 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. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if 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, and then come and offer your gift. 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. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. Matthew 5:21-26 (NRSV).
Let’s join together in prayer as we consider our message today. O God, open us up. You have something for every one of us. You have something for us as a community here. You have something for each one of us individually to hear. Open our eyes that we might see, our ears that we might hear and open our hearts that we might feel. Then O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
Dean Smith was the coach of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball team for 36 years. He died a couple of years ago. He was legendary. Perhaps maybe the most famous basketball coach of the modern era.
He practiced and coached by something he called “The Carolina Way.” In fact, I think he wrote a book about it. And it has these basic principles: “Play hard, play together, play smart.”
But out of that grew this whole set of practices and rules in a sense that if you wanted to play for him you would practice. He called it “The Carolina Way – this is what we do.” For example, if you make a basket you acknowledge whoever gave you the assist, whoever passed you the ball. So if you shoot and make a basket, you turn to the person who passed you the ball and you acknowledge him. You point at him as you’re going down the court again. If somebody gets substituted out of the game, everyone on the bench gets up and claps for them as they come by. Clap for them. There was a whole host of these.
Even the fans were involved. You weren’t allowed to bring props in to distract during free throw shots. That’s kind of the practice now, and they even hand them out when you get there now. But not for Dean Smith. The Carolina Way was that we don’t treat other people that way. That’s not who we are.
At this time he was recruiting the top talent in the nation, and all over the country there were those who wanted to play for the University of North Carolina. He’d go and see them, and tell them, “Look, this is how we play. If you want to come play for me, that’s how we’re going to play. There are lots of other schools you can go play for and they’re awesome, too. But we’re different. This is the Carolina Way, this is how you’ll play for me.”
Now that’s the approach, the thought pattern I want you to think about as we have this conversation at Mt. Sinai. What God is saying to the Israelites is, “I have rescued you from bondage and I do that with a purpose. You’re not going to be like the rest of the world. You’re going to be different.”
In Exodus 19, just before the Ten Commandments are given in Exodus 20, in fact God says, “Indeed, the whole earth is mine. But you (speaking to the Israelites) will be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. You’re going to be different.”
So one of the ways that they were different from the rest of the world was they put an incredibly high value on human life. That the human being was created in the image of God and that human life was to be taken very, very seriously.
So the Commandment says, “Don’t murder.” Now the word that’s used here for murder is the word in Hebrew ratsach and what that means is it was the intentional shedding of innocent blood. It didn’t really apply to war, or apply to punishment, it was the intentional shedding of innocent blood.
Over the years, what happened was over the centuries this whole sort of legal framework developed about what counted as murder. What counted as ratsach Sort of the foundational one was - Cain killed his brother Abel and the Scripture says, “His innocent blood cried out to me from the ground.”
So that was clearly murder. But what about Moses though? Moses has been raised in the Pharaoh’s court, he comes across an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. He kills that Egyptian taskmaster and buries his body in the sand and he runs away, not to come back for decades. Does that count as murder?
What about King David? He sends Uriah the Hittite, the husband of Bathsheba, away to the front lines of war so he’ll be killed so David can cover up his adultery with Bathsheba. Is that murder? I mean, he didn’t kill him with his own hands, just kind of put him in danger’s way. Does that count as ratsach?
There grew up this whole notion of what was called bloodguilt. That meant that if someone killed someone in your family and shed their innocent blood, then they carried with them bloodguilt and you had the right to avenge that murder. Unless they went to a city of refuge, which was designated throughout the kingdom, and they could hold on to the horns of the altar and stay in the city and they’d be safe. Safe from the murder being avenged until there was a trial.
It was this huge legal conversation saying, “Does it count?” or “Does it not count?” What’s so interesting is that that’s still what we do today. What about war? Does war count? What about capital punishment? Does capital punishment count? What about suicide? Or what about euthanasia? What about abortion? Where to those things fall?
We get all concerned about the letter of the law. What really constitutes this commandment, “You shall not murder”?
So Jesus came along and he says, “Look, I think you all are missing the point. Here’s the ‘Jesus way.’” He takes his disciples apart and in the Sermon on the Mount he actually goes to the mountain, and it reminds you a lot about Moses on the mountain, doesn’t it? He gathers the disciples around him, calls them apart from the crowds and says, “You’re going to be different than the world around you. Here’s the Jesus way if you want to play for me. Not only will we not murder, but we’re not going to be angry.”
Actually it could be translated just as easily “do not stay angry at a brother or if you stay angry with your brother you are liable for the judgment.” “We’re not going to insult others, we’re not going to call them ‘fools.’ But we’re going to be different. It’s not about the letter of the law, there something more central than that.”
Two ways he lifts up. He says, “We’re going to have a deeper standard.” Listen to what the Scripture says, literally. “You’ve heard it said to those in ancient times, you shall not murder. Whoever murders shall be liable for the judgment. I say to you, if you stay angry with a brother or sister you’ll be liable to judgment. If you insult your brother or sister you’ll be liable to the council. If you say, ‘you fool!’ you’ll be liable to the hell of fire.”
He says, “We’re going to move beyond that behavior and we’re going to go deeper and we’re going to get to the root of the problem. We’re going to get to the heart of this issue.”
If I want to get the weeds out of my garden I can’t just cut them off at the stalk. I have to get them out by the roots. You have to address the root.
One of the privileges of being the pastor at St. Luke’s is that I’m on the Board of Directors at Houston Methodist Hospital. And every few months the management comes to the Board at one of their meetings and presents a report on what are called “Sentinel Events.” These are really bad things that happen at the Hospital. And there’s a list of what constitutes a “Sentinel Event.” It’s things like a medication error, a sponge or something left inside a patient after surgery, or a patient gets lost. And the good news is that at the hospital they were well ahead of other hospitals almost anywhere around the country in terms of the fewest number of Sentinel Events based on how many hundreds of thousands of procedures happening.
But every time there is one, they present it in very specific ways to do what’s called a “Root Cause Analysis.” It’s not just that this happened and that we don’t want to do that again, it’s why it happened. What led to it? What was messed up in the process? What is the root of this issue that we need to get fixed?
I would say that that is what Jesus is saying to his disciples. Look, it isn’t just about whether you murder or not, but where does that come from – that desire to kill your brother. Where does that grow out of? Go into the anger and dig deeper into the hurt that leads to the anger. Get to the cause of the problem.
N.T. Wright in his commentary on Matthew tells this great story. He says that he was in the Middle East and he stopped walking along and he bought a candy bar from a vendor by the side of the road as he was walking along he opened the candy bar, bit into it and on the inside it was full of worms.
I love to tell you that story, just to watch your faces! In every one of the services everyone winces and goes, “Oooo!” It’s hard to hear that story without wincing. Then he said that when he got back home to England he was so glad that he could buy a chocolate bar, as he put it, that was “Chocolate all the way through.”
So what Jesus is saying to his disciples is “I want you to be chocolate all the way through. We’re not going to deal with just what’s on the outside and what your behavior looks like, we’re going to go down to the heart. And we’re going to address the very root, the very center of this.” It’s a deeper standard.
Now second, he calls us to a higher standard. Not just “Don’t murder” but “Reconcile with your brother.” “When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go and first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
I love the way he says it because it’s so real. You know that feeling in your stomach that you experience when you have a broken relationship with someone you care about? It’s right there and you want to put it aside and go on about your business, but it won’t let you. You remember your brother has something against you.
It’s funny; he goes on to paint a pretty graphic picture of it. “Come to terms quickly. Go deal with that issue, or while you’re on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, the judge to the guard and you’ll be thrown into prison.” There is nothing that feels more like bondage than that broken relationship and the anger that you just can’t seem to let go of. It’s got you. You have to deal with it.
Not interested in just the center of your heart, not just to the issue of your heart, but he’s interested in the character of the community. Not just the character of the individual, but the character of the community. The sense of relationships within the community. That’s why we sing, “Let There Be Peace on Earth” – it’s a sense of community and this is how we treat one another. God’s interested in that.
Tertullian was a Biblical writer and scholar around 200 A.D. when the church was growing fast in the pagan world. The pagans were talking about the Christians and they were saying, “There’s something weird about these Christians. There’s something different about them. There’s a problem with them. They must be doing weird things when they gather together to worship.” And all these rumors would fly around about what the weird Christians were doing. Tertullian wrote in one of his essays called “Apology” and here’s what he writes: “It is mainly the deeds of love that lead many to put a brand on us. ‘See how they love one another,’ they say. ‘How they are ready even to die for one another, they say.’”
There’s something about us that’s to be different, that the world around will look at those who follow the Jesus way and say, “See how they love.” Do you think that the world looks at the Christian church today and says, “See how they love one another?”
In 1956 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon at Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery, and it sort of introduced a concept that he then kept reintroducing over the years of his preaching. I’m going to read just a passage from that sermon. You might recognize the concept, and there’s a quote that’s actually more famous and very similar.
He said, “Peace is not just the absence of some negative force, war, tension or confusion. But it’s the presence of some positive force. Justice, goodwill, the power of the Kingdom of God. Jesus says, ‘I will not be content until justice, goodwill, brotherhood, love, yes, the Kingdom of God are established on the earth. This is real peace, a peace embodied with the presence of positive good. The inner peace that comes as a result of doing God’s will. That sense of saying, ‘We as a community are going to reach out and reconcile with our brothers and sisters.’”
So the standard isn’t “don’t murder.” The standard has to do with the purity of heart and integrity of relationships.
Now, you say, “Pastor, well, that’s swell, I don’t think you can do that. That’s idealistic – Utopia. It’s not the way it works in the real world.”
I just want to offer some practical thoughts about how you might deal with those things that arise within you. Anger is a human emotion. The issue isn’t “Do you ever get angry?” The issue is, “What do you do with that?” What is that about?
I want to give you three thoughts. When you begin to deal with that, the first thing is refrain. Refrain.
Listen to what he says – he’s pretty straight-forward. “Whoever insults a brother or sister will be liable to the council. If you say, ‘you fool’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Stop and don’t insult your brother or sister or your wife or your neighbor or anybody else. Don’t call other people “fools” – just stop.
Somebody this week sent me an article that mentioned that Houston is number three in the country in terms of road rage incidents. I’ve had one or two. And sort of on the other side no one’s shot me yet, although I’ve been scared. So here’s what the advice is about how to deal with road rage. Don’t. Don’t engage, don’t look them in the eye. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t get out of your car. Don’t roll down the window. Don’t do anything. Don’t make an obscene gesture. Don’t honk your horn.
Here’s what I do, this is what’s going to get me in trouble someday. Someone cuts me off, I act exasperated. What’s the deal? One of these days someone’s going to turn around and shoot me. Because the idea is to just stop a minute. You don’t need to do anything. It’s the old “take five deep breaths and count to ten.” Just refrain and stop immediately.
The second thing is that we’re called to acknowledge. When we experience that kind of anger, frustration, we can’t just pretend it’s not there. You can’t just sort of wish it away because it’s real, it’s telling us something. It’s like a fever that is saying something is going on at the root that needs to be dealt with.
There’s a practice I use in prayer sometimes. When there’s something that just has me wrapped around the axle and I just can’t figure out, I will pray, and in that prayer I’ll visualize myself walking into a darkened room in my heart. And Jesus is there with me and turns on the light. Then all of a sudden I can see what I couldn’t see before, and I say, “What are you showing me? What is it in my heart that’s leading to this anger?”
I’ve shared with you before that I have a therapist I see and when that’s the case, when something comes up in my life that I’m struggling to deal with … It’s awesome. We have an employee assistance program for United Methodist clergy so a visit costs me fifteen bucks. It is worth it. You sit and visit with someone who begins to ask you, “So what’s going on? What’s down there that you need to deal with?” It’s why we created the Nick Finnegan Counseling Center. It’s because we believe that the church wants to be about the root issues and bring healing at the very core of what’s going on with us.
So here are the telltale signs for me. When I find myself wanting to avoid people, and hiding away in my room, or in a book, or in my office. When someone I love tells me they don’t want me to become an angry old man because I snap at the waiter. What’s going on, Pace? Look inside and acknowledge that this isn’t how you want to be or you’re supposed to be. If you find yourself angry at the world around you much of the time take a look and sort of see what’s going on.
Now the third component is maybe the most Biblical picture of it. What do you do then with that which is down there. And you can’t just sort of stifle it? Jacel did such an excellent job of describing what happens when it’s inside you. What are you going to do with all that energy that’s there? \
Listen to what it says in I John 3: “For this is the original message we heard. We should love each other. We must not be like Cain who joined the evil one and then killed his brother. The way we know we’ve been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn’t love is as good as dead. Anyone who hates their brother or sister is a murderer. And you know very well that eternal life and murder don’t go together. And this is his command, to believe in his personally named Son Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other.”
What do we do with all that energy? We don’t ignore it, we don’t push it down we transform it. We redirect it to love. Let me give you some examples. I ran across a fellow just over a year ago and he came to visit. He was talking to me about the difficulties he has with his ex-wife. Difficulties dealing with their children, vacation time, weekends, all that stuff and how it goes. Some of you may be familiar with that. And the animosity that he felt and all the fighting that they were doing.
We talked and we prayed together. He saw me a little later and he said, “Here’s what I’ve decided to do. I have decided that I’m going to approach her with this mindset – what would be best for you? How can I make this work best for you? What would be most convenient for you right now?” Then he said, “I’m going to work at that as hard as I can.”
I saw him a few months later and asked him, “How’s it going? Is your ex-wife responding positively to that?” And he said, “No, not really, but it’s a whole lot better for me. I’m not upset or angry all the time and wrapped around the axle. It’s a whole lot better for my children, and who knows where we’ll end up. I still have hope.”
You take all that stuff inside and you reform it and redirect it towards love.
One of our staff people told me that when she gets mad at her husband she tells him so, and then she does something nice for him. She makes food for him, or does one of his chores around the house. Something nice for him. That’s such an easy, simple little thing. Just sort of a simple way of thinking about, “How am I going to transform this into love?”
Maybe you have been a victim of a crime and that just eats away at you. What would it be like if you signed up to be a mentor for a reVision program dealing with kids in the juvenile justice system? To take that painful place and direct it to love?
Now you say, “Pastor, I don’t think this is really possible. That’s really hard.”
Yes, it’s hard, you probably can’t do it by yourself. But isn’t that the whole message of the faith? That Jesus was murdered and took that very murder and turned it into reconciliation. Reconciled the whole world to him through that event.
We sang at the beginning of the service, “Christ is the world’s life, sold once for silver, murdered as our brother. He who redeemed us.”
That very event was used to save the world. And that is the Christ that lives within us. That can take hold of who we are and redirect that anger, that hurt, that fear, all of that which is within us. And redirect it towards love.
Gracious and loving God, we confess that this isn’t easy for us. We suspect it wasn’t easy for your son Jesus Christ either. But as he lives within us, we pray that you might empower us to be different. To be a priestly kingdom, a holy nation. That we would not only value human life, but put an even higher value on human love. We pray in the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.