“Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones but Words Kill” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on February 12, 2023. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 35:26.
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Scripture Text:
Matthew 5:21-26; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9
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Today in Jesus continues his Sermon on the Mount in our Gospel reading for today.
In this sermon, Jesus starting by sharing with his followers the Beatitudes, or all the ways in which the people are blessed. He continued by telling them that they are the salt of the earth and light of the world, roles that they must commit to in order for the world and the very community the disciples are part of to be a better place. And he ends with what is now referred to as the Antitheses.
In his same sermon that talks of blessings and community, Jesus also teaches the disciples on several topics that uphold the Law, which Jesus also held in the highest regard. The Sermon on the Mount continues with several teachings: on murder and judgment, adultery, divorce, and vow-making. While we just read from the section on murder and judgement today, we are to understand that in each of these teachings, Jesus is saying to commit any of these infractions: murder or adultery, you sever the trust within a community. He is encouraging his followers to uphold this trust by intentionally upholding the laws given to them as God’s chosen people to their highest standard.
The passage begins with the most outrageous example of severed trust: the ending of another human’s life with murder. By starting with an example at which most members of his audience would not likely take offense, Jesus paves the way for his audience to follow him through a progression of increasingly smaller infractions against others within one’s community.
In other words, Jesus’ rhetorical technique here is to create agreement with his audience on the easiest points first before moving to those points where it is less likely that there will be widespread agreement.
In each example that Jesus provides, Jesus notes the minimal requirement of the law before articulating an ethic that exceeds that most basic obligation. In each case, this ethic appears to be informed by the values of trust and compassion within community.
As we heard today, Jesus tells us “You shall not murder,” which reminds us and Jesus’ Jewish followers on the mount of the ten commandments. I believe that all of us, like the majority of Jesus original followers, hear Jesus’ words of “You shall not murder” and wholeheartedly agree that our community is so much better without murder in it.
But that’s the minimal requirement of us.
Jesus says murder violates trust and compassion within a community, to which we all agree, but when we agree, Jesus pushes the teaching to a deeper, more complex level.
Jesus boldly states, “But I say to you…” Anger. Judgement. Name-calling. Gossip. All of that is equal to murder.
Anger. Judgement. Name-calling, and Gossip also violate trust and compassion within a community. Do we still agree? I bet we do. But do we agree that name-calling is the same as murder? I bet we struggle a bit with that teaching.
Especially if we are fully honest about our own moments of anger, judgement, name-calling, or gossip. We don’t need a show of hands to reveal most of us would be found guilty of at least one of those four at times throughout our lives, or perhaps even just in this last year. I am. I admit I have been guilty of anger and its consequences.
You know the short children’s rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” We teach it to children as a defense against name-calling and bullying.
Well Jesus, in his sermon on the mount, would say “Sticks and stones may break your bones… ‘But I say to you’ words kill.”
“But I say to you!” Words kill.
When Jesus is preaching his sermon on his mount, he is asking his disciples to recall and reinvest in their community through their ancient, trustworthy laws and traditions. He is asking them to remember their faith in God, their values in life, and their vision as a community.
And when he does, he is asking them to follow something they already value, such as the ten commandments, or the Law. He is not replacing any of their values, but rather, Jesus is emphasizing them. He is intensifying them. He is expecting his followers to be better than the bare minimum.
“You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’”?
Yes! We don’t murder! We don’t kill! We’ve never ended another’s life!
“But I say to you… The simple moral fact is that words kill.”
Oh… well I may have called my sibling stupid… and well I did call neighbor an idiot… oh, I also called that person evil because I disagreed with them. You’re saying I can’t do that anymore? Oh boy…
Jesus is expecting his followers to be better than the bare minimum because he knows we can better. The community Jesus calls us to be is better than the bare minimum. Wouldn’t you agree that is true about First Presbyterian? We are better than the bare minimum. Would you even join a community that only does the bare minimum? I mean, I want to surround myself with like-minded people of faith who are also trying to better their lives and the world we are a part of. It’s why I accepted this call in the first-place, because our community values our community and the people in and around it.
Jesus is always challenging us to dig deeper into our call to righteousness, to align our lives with divine values, and to commit ourselves to the transformative power of God’s law and commandments.
So here, Jesus teaches, it is insufficient to avoid murdering someone. Certain kinds of anger and insult are a bad enough form of violence. If any of us commit this infraction, we collectively have broken the Law. And when God’s law is broken, God calls for reconciliation.
Jesus’ sermon continues by saying reconciliation is a prerequisite before we even come to church and honor God in worship. Broken relationships within a community are not just social obstacles among us but also hurt our relationship with God. So if any of us have committed murder to one’s Spirit with our hurtful words, we must repair that relationship first before we try to continue our relationship with God. Hear that again. It’s that important. We must repair any broken relationship firsts before we try to continue our relationship with God.
The command give to us “not to murder” extends even beyond the taking of life. It is also the command to reject the deterioration of someone’s character. Jesus’ words tell us that name-calling or insulting holds the same abusive power as murder. And with this in mind, what is the opposite of murder? If Jesus tells us to “Do Not Murder” and that “Words Kills”, what must we do as the opposite to not only follow the law but to embrace it?
If hurting someone’s spirit through insults or gossip is equivalent to murder, raising someone up through genuine affirmations and support is equivalent to life-giving.
There is love, compassion, and trust within a community when the relationships are life-giving.
And communities will be divided and fall apart when the relationships within them are not.
Local church division is a recurring theme in the Corinthian correspondence. The Corinthian believers were splitting into factions along the lines of their favorite leaders or preachers. Specifically, the Corinthians tried to place Apollos and Paul in competition with one another, giving preference to their styles of teaching or display of human wisdom.
In opposition to this, Paul corrects their misplaced loyalties for himself and Apollos by reminding them they were both mere servants of the Lord fulfilling their call. Nothing marked either Paul or Apollos as extra special for who they were or what they did. Paul goes on to explain this succinctly by employing a farming metaphor: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth”
With this agricultural insight, Paul diffuses all talk of giving greater prominence to any of the Lord’s servants. Since neither planting nor watering on its own could bring forth fruit, it follows that Paul or Apollos’ continued preaching or teaching is of greater value than the either. Instead, since ultimately God is the one who produces the growth, God is the only one worthy of all admiration, glory, and praise.
And to criticize one leader over another simply only stunts the growth of the individual, because it hurts the relationship between the individual and that leader, therefore it hurts the relationship between the community and God.
Alternatively, Paul gives the Corinthian church a vision for how leadership should work together in the cultivation of God’s field. As co-laborers, both “the one who plants and the one who waters” participate in the common task of building up God’s church. Instead of quarreling over who is the better leader or who preaches better, Paul invites us to rethink the nature of church ministry as a collaborative effort by all those who are called to be God’s servants. This is the beauty of the farming motif closely followed by Paul in this passage: laboring in the church is a group effort and, in the end, God gets all the credit. But we get all the reward.
Let us reap the reward of our community by emphasizing the very relationships we are gifted within this community. Every leader, every member. Our life-giving relationships draw us nearer to the God we worship.
In our community, what obligations are Jesus’ sermon calling us to embrace?
In short, Jesus centers the construction of a particular kind of community, one organized around love and not power. It is also a community that values trust and the deep commitments God’s children make to one another.
In the end, why did God give us the commandments and why did Jesus intensify them? They are not a checklist of morality but rather a guide to flourishing in life. They are not a baseline to human decency but rather instructions to embodied, relational, transformative encounters with all whom we meet. They are not hurdles to righteousness but rather a path of wholeness for all of us. These are the values for God’s community, and these are the values of our community.
Sticks and stones may break our bones… or COVID and transitions may tear us down to death, but words and our relationships with one another bring us up; they give us life. And in this Christian community, we know: life always triumphs over death.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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