First things first

 This week's verses are Matthew 5:21-26

“You have heard that it was said to an older generation, ‘Do not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders will be subjected to judgment.’ But I say to you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subjected to judgment. And whoever insults a brother will be brought before the council, and whoever says ‘Fool’ will be sent to fiery hell. So then, if you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your gift. Reach agreement quickly with your accuser while on the way to court, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the warden, and you will be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will never get out of there until you have paid the last penny!

 These verses are about priority in the conflict between inconvenient love and the constant pull of religiosity. Which impulse do you favor? Do you do what looks right but is actually wrong? Or do you do what looks wrong, but is actually right? It's the sort of question that only seems easy if you don't try to bring what you read in the Bible to the real world. We all know the right answer, but do we live it?

Jesus starts off talking about religiosity. "Do not murder." Simple, right? If murder is where you draw the line between what you should and shouldn't do, that gives you a lot of room to maneuver in your (dis)obedience. You can beat someone half to death, just not all the way. You can break their windshield, slash their tires, try to get them fired and deplatformed, and so on. You can threaten them, slander them, shun them, or even make fun of them behind their back. A lot of these things you can even do in church! You can do every one of those things and tell yourself that you're not sinning, because you haven't actually murdered anyone. That's religiosity.

Would anyone actually advise someone to live like that? Who tells people that it is OK to live in contempt of our fellow Christians? Nobody I know would come out and say it explicitly, but implicitly we act as if it is OK. We encourage people when they have a grudge. We cater to factions and even form them ourselves. We allow things to divide us for too long, even stupid things. But at least we're not murderers, right?

But now Jesus talks about love. Love doesn't wait until a murder takes place. Love draws the line where things are not OK between you and someone else. Jesus says it's bad enough if you're just angry. Who here hasn't been angry at someone for awhile? It's even worse if you call them names, and worse still if you have contempt for them! And that's not even getting to where we might draw the line, which probably starts around the time people get violent. ("Oh that's fine if you say all kinds of mean things that could scar someone for life, and slander them in front of their friends and family, but don't you dare hit someone. Because that's wrong!")

Love is sensitive to the issue itself, not the worst symptom it can present. If things aren't OK, love wants to make them OK. These two impulses, religiosity and love, can come head to head at times, and we have to know which one to favor.

So Jesus describes a scenario. You're in church. It's offering time. Everyone's looking at you putting your money in the hat, or scanning your QR code, or whatever it is the cool folks do in church these days. But then you remember your friend who you know was really upset by something you did. Do you stop now, and go take care of that, or do you put it on your to-do list to sort out later in the week? Jesus says to forget the money and go take care of love.

But that's embarrassing! What are your friends going to think if you just walk out in the middle of church?? Especially during offering time! Is it really that important? Is it really so important that you can't at least take care of church business and leave after you've offered your gift? Jesus implies that it is.

Our religious side is in an uproar over the idea of it. Leaving in the middle of church? What could possibly justify that? Even the idea of having to take care of a relationship problem that urgently probably seems shocking to us. Can't it wait? Can't I just buy a card later? And yet Jesus says that this is The Most Important Thing in the World Right Now for us.

Elsewhere, God says he desires mercy, not sacrifice. In other words, the church isn't some country club you pay your dues to so that you can look down on everyone else. What you give isn't as important as how you live, and how you live is shaped by how closely you mimic Christ in your way of seeing the world.

How many things in your life are important enough that you would walk out of church over them? Or out of an important meeting at work, for that matter? Jesus is saying that our relationships with the people around us should be that important to us. If conflict and hurt are allowed to take root, they cause other problems serious enough to land people in Hell. And if we're callous to that, we're probably callous to other things God wants of us too.

But it's a good question to ask yourself this week. How much do you value the relationships you have with people? Not just your close circle, but the church itself? How far would you go to make things right for them if something was off? Be reconciled with whoever you can, and make it your first priority.