How Do You Create a Safe Place for Everyone? It Begins With This

There I was cruising down 595, and then I saw it, that state trooper lying in wait.  I looked down at my speedometer.   Then I breathed a sigh of relief.  I’m only going five miles over the speed limit, no problem.  I love that. 

Here I was breaking the law, but it was totally ok.  Why?   They don’t say it, but everyone kinda knows.  With the speed limit, you get a little wiggle room.  As long as you are traveling somewhere in the vicinity of the limit, no trooper is going to pull you over.   Heck, sometimes in South Florida, it seems you can go even 20 miles above the speed limit, and they don’t touch you!    Not that I’ve ever done that.  No, that’s only what I’ve observed about others not me.   I like those sorts of expanded definitions of the law, but the one we’re looking at today that bugs me.  

Here is the command.   You shall not murder.  That’s perfectly clear isn’t it?  The Hebrew language even had a special word God used here, retsack.   Retsack doesn’t mean all killing.  The word doesn’t refer to capital punishment.  It doesn’t refer to war.  It doesn’t even mean accidental killing.  God deals with that type of killing later in Deuteronomy.  No ratsah means the cold-blooded, premeditated killing of someone.   You can’t get more specific than that.  And you don’t need to expand on it either.  That says it all.   

But well, Jesus didn’t think so.  He took this perfectly clear commandment and expanded it all over the place.   If Jesus hadn’t said the words we’re about to hear, I’d have been perfect on this commandment.  I’ve messed up in lot of other areas, but murder.  I am good there.  I haven’t murdered anybody ever.  You’re probably glad to hear that.  It’s a good thing to know about your pastor.  But Jesus did expand it.  Why?  

Jesus knew.  There is more than one way to murder someone.   Sometimes, you can kill someone, and leave them walking around.  They might be breathing.  They might even be smiling.  But in a very real way, they’re already dead.  So, Jesus said those words to save those lives, to protect people from not simply destroying each other’s bodies, but destroying each other’s souls.  And in this hyper-connected world, those murders are running rampant.  How do you stop them?  How do you make sure you don’t fall into the trap of committing them even?  In these words, Jesus shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.

Matthew 5:21-22

Talk about expansion!  Sheesh!  The commandment gives Jesus an inch, but he takes a mile.  How does he get from bludgeoning someone to death to calling them a fool?  It seems like such a stretch, but is it really?

First, the commandment, You shall not murder, doesn’t just prohibit the act alone.  It also prohibits the thought process that leads to the act.  You don’t have to actually physically murder someone yourself to violate the commandment.

One day, King David, the great King of Israel was hanging out on the roof of his palace.  He happened to look over the side, and see a beautiful woman taking a bath on her roof.   And he thought, “She’s really beautiful, and I want her.   And hey, I’m the King, and what the king wants, the king gets.”   So, David ordered this woman, Bathsheba to sleep with him, even though she was married to Uriah, one of David’s own soldiers, who was out fighting for him while he was sleeping with his wife.  But the unexpected happened.   Bathsheba got pregnant.   But if Uriah was out fighting, where could the baby have come from?   People would ask questions.  It would come out what the king had done.   So, David tried to cover it up.  He called Uriah back from the front.  He got him drunk and tried to get him to sleep with his wife.  But Uriah wouldn’t.  Uriah wouldn’t do that when his buddies were still out fighting the enemy.  So, what did David do?   He told his top general to set Uriah up.   He told him to send Uriah’s company close to the wall of the enemy.  Then when the fighting got bad, pull everybody but Uriah and his men back.  David knew what would happen then.  Uriah would die.  

But David never lifted a hand.   David never even mentioned the word kill to anyone ever.   No Israelite lifted a sword to so much as scratch Uriah.   Yet when Nathan the prophet confronted David, Nathan said these words:

“You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.”   Was Nathan wrong?  No, David had killed Uriah just as if he had held the sword himself.   In fact, in God’s eyes, from the moment David created this plan in his mind, he had already violated this commandment. Murder always happens in the mind first.  Now you can’t prosecute it there, but long before the act, you have the thought.  

Still Jesus is going way beyond just prohibiting us planning a murder in our minds.  Jesus says if you even get angry at someone else, in God’s eyes, you’ve violated the commandment.  If you insult someone or speak unkindly to another person, you’ve violated God’s command.   Why does Jesus expand it so drastically? 

Because Jesus understands why God gave the commandment in the first place.  God gave the command to say more than don’t kill your neighbor.  God didn’t mean, “Ok, you can demean your neighbors, humiliate them, destroy their souls, even pummel their bodies, but you can’t kill them. You do that, we’ve got a problem.”   God was saying to the Israelites, “This community I’m forming will be a safe place.  In this family I’m forming, no one is going to worry about getting attacked by their neighbor.  Here, things will be different.”  That is the vision that lies behind the command.  God wants a community that is safe, that is safe in the deepest and most profound sense of that word.

It’s not enough for you to not simply physically kill each other.  God has a much bigger vision than that.  God is calling you to not even start on the road that ends with murder.   Don’t let anger rule your relationships.  Don’t let insults or demeaning words pass your lips.  When you do that, you may not be physically murdering, but you’re on the road.    And your words, your anger, they have power to hurt, to injure, to even kill.  After all, Uriah’s death began with a few words from the king.   But you don’t have to be a king, to kill with your words.

Has someone ever spoken a cruel word to you that still haunts you, years later?   Or maybe, you had someone in your life whose harsh words just wore you down.  You like to think you’re recovered but if you’re honest you know.  The wounds remain.  Are you walking around carrying wounds that nobody may ever see, but they are still so painfully real?  That old saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.”  It’s not true.  Here’s the truth.. “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can rip your heart out.”  

Do you get what Jesus is saying here?  It’s not enough to not physically kill someone.  It’s not even enough to not mentally think about killing someone.   You and I have got to stop killing each other with our words and our anger.   When you do that, when you let that sort of abuse happen, do you have a safe community.  No, that’s the farthest thing from what you have.  And you are violating the very vision of community that God’s command is all about. 

Yet how many times has it happened.  How many times have you cherished angry thoughts and then lashed out with those words to people around you, even people you love?   How many times have you demeaned another person or let someone else do it, and yet never lifted a finger?  How many times have you hurt others even as you’ve been hurt?    

How do you and I stop murdering each other, if not in physical action, then with our cherished anger, and our hurtful words?   You can leave here with a renewed commitment to do better, to be better, to use words to heal and not to hurt.  But then a car will pull in front of you on the freeway.   You’ll have a long day, and your tiredness and impatience will come out in words you’ll be shocked you said or maybe texted.  Or maybe someone will come at you with their anger, and you’ll respond in kind.    Or you’ll see something online that enrages you, and lash out with words sometimes at people you don’t even know. 

And even if you don’t respond, inside it still eats away at you.  You tell yourself you’re ok but you’re not.  Then the anger returns.  You realize the resentment and even rage that still lies inside of you, to which you still cling.   You may not be murdering anybody else, but you sure may be murdering yourself.

How do you free yourself from this, from these murderous, angry hearts?  You don’t.  You don’t have to.  In Jesus, God let himself be murdered to destroy the power of such murderous hearts forever.  On that cross, God took your anger and hurtful words, your brutality and your violence, and turned it into your salvation.  In the power of that love, he turned to the very ones who nailed him to a cross and prayed for them.  And what did he pray?  He asked this. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”   And in that love and forgiveness, he showed the hollowness of such violence.   And he defeated its power forever.

And as you let the power of that love live within you, as you experience how deeply Jesus loved you, how profoundly he forgave you, how radically he has freed you, Jesus will free you from your deepest hurts, from the words whose wounds still remain.   He will free you from your rage and fear.  And you’ll discover the freedom to let go of the anger, the resentment.   When others hurt you, you’ll find the boldness not to tear down but to build up, to speak the truth, but to speak it in love. Why? 

You’ll realize, those hurtful words don’t define you.  God’s love does that.  And that love has gone to death and beyond for you.   And as you rest secure in that knowledge of your ultimate value, of your infinite worth, then peace will come not only in you, but with your friends, with your family, and in this community here.  When people come into a community of faith, they need to know.  Here they are safe.  Here they are safe to face their fears.  Here they are safe to share their hurts.  Here they are safe to be themselves and not fear being condemned or shunned.   Here, they will feel invited and welcomed, and above all loved.  And so when followers of Jesus say to them.  God loves you no matter what.  They won’t believe become they simply hear the words. They’ll believe because they’ve seen the love, they’ve felt it in the people around them.  In the name of the God who loved you first, who in Jesus gave his life for you, and who can do more in you than you could ever ask or imagine. Amen.