Jesus said to his disciples: I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment . . . Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5.20-24)
On the night of April 12, 1945, 23-year-old Sergeant Henry Erwin, nicknamed Red because of his hair, was serving as a radio operator on a B-29 named “City of Los Angeles.” The war was in its last gasp and Red just wanted it to be over. His job that night was to send out a phosphorus smoke flare that would indicate to a group of other B-29s behind his plane that they were approaching their target. When the time came, Henry triggered the flare and dropped it down a tube that was to drop it below the plane.
However, there was a malfunction and the flare bounced up into the plane instead of down below the plane, hitting Red in the face. In a split second, Red’s hair was gone as well as his nose and the right side of his face, including an ear and an eye. He couldn’t see out of his other eye. Yet, he knew that within seconds the white-hot flare would melt through the metal floor of the plane into the bay where a bomb rested, blowing up the B-29 and the eleven men on it.
Without clear sight, using his hands, Red felt around for the flare, grabbed ahold of it, and crawled towards the cockpit. When a table blocked his way, he hugged the flare to his chest, and with his other hand he moved the table, leaving on its surface the skin of his hand. “I just wanted to give up and say, ‘Lord, have mercy on me,’” he admitted, “But God’s angel was in there, and he kept saying, ‘Go, go, go.’”
So, somehow, he kept going and made his way to the cockpit with the blazing flare. By that point, the smoke had filled the plane and the pilot could no longer read his instrument panel, causing the plane to go into a nosedive. The Captain had opened a window in an effort to clear the air. Red said to him, “Pardon me, sir,” and reached across the pilot and tossed the flare out the window. Then he collapsed onto the floor of the cockpit.
The phosphorus chemicals had coated his body and burned it so severely that, even after the other men drenched Red with a fire extinguisher, the flame continued to burn. But the pilot was able to pull up the plane when it was just three hundred feet from hitting the ocean. Red remained conscious throughout the three-hour long trip to Iwo Jima. He spoke only one time, asking, “Is everybody else all right, sir?”
Not a man in the plane expected Red to make it. Officers hearing of his deed quickly typed up the facts, woke up General Curtis LeMay for his signature, and wired a recommendation for a Medal of Honor to Washington. Approval came back in record time and a B-29 flew to Hawaii to get the nearest medal. Red received it, as the citation read, “for heroism beyond the call of duty.” He was bandaged from head to toe when the medal was placed on his chest.
He lived for another day, in fact, for many more years. His wife Betty stayed by his side during 43 operations that gave him a nose, an ear, and vision in one eye. He became a dad to four children and worked as a counselor in the Veterans Administration, helping thousands of others who carried the wounds of war. The lesson he learned, he later said, was “that freedom is not cheap.”
His story may be as good as any way for us to seek some understanding of the selection from Scripture that is ours to consider today as we continue to study Rabbi Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, a section of Matthew’s gospel that covers Chapters 5 through 7. The part of the sermon that we have the privilege to study today is often called “the Antitheses,” the title coming from the way that Rabbi Jesus introduces each section.
We hear a part of it today when he says, “You have heard it said,” after which he quotes a part of the Mosaic Law, followed by his saying, “But I say to you,” after which he expounds his own point of view, more often than not extending the Mosaic Law much further and much deeper than the original text, in this way challenging his own students to go beyond the minimal, as students too often are prone to do.
Using that format, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you,” Rabbi Jesus goes through a series of Mosaic laws, each well-known, each important, and instructs his students in this way on how he expects more from them than Moses expected from the Hebrew slaves. Doing the minimal is not going to get a passing grade with Rabbi Jesus.
Of course, we do not want to ignore the opening verses of this section that offers us, not only an introduction, but the cause for Jesus’ rather lengthy exposition of what he understands as a better fulfillment of the law. He says to his listeners, “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
So, in short, that is the theme of this section–to summon his students to surpass the scribes, a group of learned scholars who may know the old scriptures, but who do not practice them. Their companions, the Pharisees, do similarly, the first to quote what the Mosaic Law teaches, but not the first to follow the prescriptions, too often content to follow the letter of the law, less often eager to go beyond the letter. They are, at best, C+ students, but certainly not over-achievers.
So, patiently and pointedly, Rabbi Jesus puts before his own students a series of the Mosaic Laws, six of them in fact, introducing each one with the statement, “You have heard it said,” then reminding them of what the law says. After doing that, he moves on to his own teaching, introducing each exposition with the phrase “But I say to you,” in this way emphasizing that he has more to add.
In this way, Matthew shows his readers that Rabbi Jesus does not contradict the old laws on the books, but expands beyond them, or as Matthew would have the Galilean Teacher say, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill.” And, of course, by fulfill he means to put before his students the intent behind the law, or better stated, the will of God that inspired the law in the first place.
Certainly, this is a lesson that every generation has to relearn because there is something within human nature that lulls us into laziness, tempts us into tepidity, and convinces us to compromise the divine will. For whatever reason, we seem naturally predisposed towards luke-warmness and half-heartedness inside and outside the classroom, never giving our best efforts or expending all our energy in the pursuit of goodness. Much like the student in the back of the classroom who daydreams and doodles, we pass the hour, relieved when it’s over, but doing very little to better ourselves.
Soon enough, we will hear Rabbi Jesus summarize his point of view, telling his students, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” setting before them a standard that is impervious to their opportunistic tendencies and unmoved by their quick rationalizations. Perfection doesn’t allow much wiggle room for coming to class late or cramming for exams at the last minute.
Try as we may, we are going to have a difficult time watering down the challenges that Rabbi Jesus puts before us today, every effort we make to defang his demands failing. The bottom line is he wants our best performance at all times, not just on our good days or when we feel in a good mood. His students are expected to be at the head of the class, giving an example to others, offering a contrast to a way of life that often celebrates “getting by.”
“Getting by” is helping out once in a while. “Getting by” is telling the truth most of the time. “Getting by” is knowing it’s not right for a group of people to be harangued, but not doing anything about it. Unfortunately, “getting by” is more often than not seen as good enough in a world where moral athleticism is dismissed as an impossible standard, reserved for a handful of heroes and a few heavyweights like Mother Teresa.
If anything, Rabbi Jesus’ words should cause some disquiet in our hearts, some dissatisfaction in our minds, and some discomfort in our consciences because, if for no other reason, our attempts to excuse our shoddy papers and our late homework just aren’t going to absolve us from our failure to live up to the standard that Rabbi Jesus puts before us today. Even we know our excuses don’t fly, especially in unguarded moments like late at night when our moral compass seems to wake from its slumber, refusing to let us sleep off a bad day.
Some years ago, a plane crashed and caught fire on a runway in Philadelphia. The flight attendant stood at the door to the plane helping the passengers get to safety. When she thought everyone had managed to leave the plane safely, she heard a woman screaming, “My baby, get my baby!” Without second thought, the attendant rushed back into the plane, never to be seen alive again.
When the burned wreckage was doused with water and inspectors were finally allowed to walk inside, they found the attendant’s body draped over the body of the small child that she had attempted to save. The next week “Time” magazine ran a story on the disaster and the headline read in bold, black letters, “She Could Have Jumped.”
Yes, she could have jumped to safety, but she didn’t. And that is always the same choice put before us in our lives. We could take the easy way out, walk the road more traveled, measure our output by the lowest common denominator, or, or we could do more, do better, go beyond the expected. Rabbi Jesus puts before us today his standards. Are they easy? No. Are they impossible? No.
–Jeremy Myers
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