Righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees may just be illustrated by these verses and those that follow where Jesus seems to be picking up bits of their teaching ['you have heard it said'] and then exceeding the demands; deepening the teaching, if you will, or perhaps 'raising the bar' if you prefer athletic/height metaphors.
To me the interesting thing is the way that Jesus seems to be switching the focus of the matter from external conformity to rules to internal attitudes [which, of course, drive actions ultimately if left unchecked]. So the issue underlying murder is identified as anger with the person or contempt of them. I think that we should be careful to note that anger per se is not necessarily the issue. We do see Jesus getting angry at times but it does seem that his anger was mostly about wrong situations. I may be wrong but I'm not sure that we see him angry with people except, possibly where they have identified themselves with the object or situation of wrongness. I will need to look into that more fully. Anyway the point I want to make is that there may be times when it is right ot be angry and to use the energy of anger to put things right. However, being hatefully angry with other people is risking judgement and contempt of others likewise. These are the impulses that grow into murder. They are about, in our hearts and minds, wishing the other person erased and erasing from our consciousness the awareness that here is someone who could be redeemed, who carries the image of God and for whom God still has purposes to be fulfilled, who is capable of bringing something of God's kingdom into the life of the world. It is an assetion of our own perspective above the bigger picture and a refusal on our part to be corrected by those wider considerations.
What do we do, though, if we find we have fallen into person-centred anger or contempt? First of all we need to identify it; not always easy and so having a community of honest and loving people around us is a big help here.
Secondly we need to recognise it's wrong. Again, this isn't always easy because we have a tendency [don't we?] to rationalise and find justifications for where we find ourselves in life. Commonly these can consist of finding reasons that seem to make our anger or contempt acceptable: 'She shouldn't be allowed to get away with that', 'He deserves it; he forfeits his humanity when he acts like that.' Sometimes we argue within oursleves that we are entitled to be angry, other times we argue that the other deserves to be hurt or punished or eradicated because they have become odious and contemptible. Either way we are dodging the truth that this person is still loved and potentially called by God. Sometimes we are reacting out of hurt: we have been hurt by them or by someone that they represent [or that we identify them with] and so we want to hurt back. In this case we have dehumanised them into a punchbag or a symbol for our retaliation. Very often we have added onto them all sorts of things that don't really belong to them [malice, commonly -mostly people aren't malicious; simply greedy, self-centred or unthinking -just like us]
So we usually need to remind oursleves that they are loved by God and made in God's image. We need to remember that actually for the most part they are pretty like us, that we ourselves might hurt and upset others or act wrongly for largely similar reasons. In other words we need to start seeig them again as fellow human beings rather than punchbags, demons incarnate or monsters. It often helps to distinguish the sin and the sinner. In actual fact it is the wrong thing done [or right thing not done] that has hurt us or someone we love or some principle we hold dear. It may be that the person might repent if they are given space and a supportive context. It may be that the wrongdoer feels bad about how things turned out but your misdirected anger will evoke in them defensiveness, self-justification or rationalisation.
If our attitudes are person-centred anger and contempt then we are simply participating in and furthering the cycle of sin and death. We have stepped out of the cycle of redemption and life; we are contributing to the campaign of the enemy of souls.
So in the background of all this we need to be developing the skills of self-awareness, and self-examination, a healthy dose of skepticism about our justifications and rationalisations, the habit of seeing in others that we don't 'like' the characteristics of humanity and the image of God and even trying to attend to the possible movements of the Holy Spirit in their souls. We need to learn to be slow to identify people closely with their effects on our life. We need to be able to recall that how we have understood something may not be how it was intended.
We need also to recall that we are responsible for our reactions: no-one makes me angry; I interpret something as being wrong and at some level decide to react with anger. I can change my perception or at least question it. If wrong has been done and anger is in some way appropriate, I can decide that my anger is better directed at the situation than the persons in it and I can learn how to use it to make things better. Making things better doesn't happen by dumping all the blame on one person or group of people and hurting or destroying them. We only set ourselves up to become what we hate and often to stir up in others what we have become and so become the objects of their anger and contempt. Sin and death spiral out of control, unless someone dares to stop it.
Blessed are the peacemakers...
Crosswalk.com - Matthew 5:21-22:
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