The Sixth Sunday After Trinity (July 27, 2025)

Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

This past week, Caroline, the boys, and I were eating dinner together. Some nights, they are slower than others. This week, dinner was dragging on and on. Caroline and I had seconds and then finished those seconds and the boys were still working on their first, especially those vegetable, distracting themselves by talking and talking and talking. So finally, Caroline and I had enough and we told them, you have to stop talking or else we’ll all be here past bedtime. At first, they were pretty good and Caroline and I started cleaning up dinner. We come back into the room and what are the boys doing? They’re not talking, but they’re not eating either: they’re mouthing words to each other. The problem with the situation is that while they were technically being obedient—they weren’t talking—did their behavior reflect hearts that were intent on obeying mom and dad and doing what was requested? No, it did not. This highlights a larger problem with the Law: sin isn’t just or primarily a legal reality; sin is an impediment to acting fully human. Sin cuts off the connection to God, others, and ourselves. Sin impacts our hearts by killing it; it makes us dead. It turns our hearts into stone. The work of Jesus on the Cross is about freeing us from the grip of sin and shows us how to live. The core of Jesus’ teaching revolves around integrity, wholeness, consistency. If we take what Jesus says seriously, then our goal should be for our outside behavior to match the inside of our heart; and the inside of our heart should match our external actions.

If you read the Old Testament, one of the common phrases that the law the prophets use to describe this lack of integrity is hardness of heart. The Israelites outwardly worshipped God and gave him lip service, but still grumbled and complained, ran after other gods, exploited the poor, and reduced the sacred ritual God gave the people to meaningless motions. Looking at the spiritual state of Israel, the prophet Hosea concluded: “Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty.” Ultimately, that hardness of heart impedes our ability to apprehend God’s love for us. Speaking of one of the evil kings of Israel, 2 Chronicles 36:13 notes, “he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel.” This posture of heart prevents us from hearing God, as confirmed by Zechariah 7:12 “Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, And the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets.” Not only does hardness of heart prevent us from hearing God, it also prevents us from being heard by him, as the Psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear me:” And of course, if we find our heart disconnected from the source of all love, then it’s not a surprise that we can’t love others. The Deuternomic Law warns against hardness of heart when dealing with one’s neighbor: “If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.” So hardness of heart cuts us off from God, it cuts us off from others, but it also cuts us off from ourselves so that we can’t even know who we are. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer 17:9). When we don’t know ourselves, we can’t possibly walk wisely, which only paves the way for disaster, as confirmed by the Proverbs: “He that hath a froward heart findeth no good: And he that hath a perverse tongue falleth into mischief.” This problem of hardness of heart leaves us unmoored, restless, and adrift. We’ve all been there—it’s hell. Literally. But God doesn’t leave us without hope. The prophet Ezekiel anticipated a day when the hardness of heart endemic among the Israelites would give way to something better: “And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezek 11:19-20).

Jesus begins this morning’s Gospel reading with a rather ominous saying: “except your rightesouness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no way enter into the kingdom of heaven.” What exactly was lacking in the Pharisees? They knew the Mosaic Law, they went through great pains to publicly show that they followed it. The problem is that their outward form of law observance lacked the internal motivator of love. Because the internal motivation was skewed, their external actions were also problematic: it’s what caused them to reach anti-human challenges like not healing on the Sabbath, and mob violence directed against the woman in adultery. Jesus’ ethical teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is all about the full integration of the human person ;it’s all about integrity. St. Paul picks up on this in 1 Timothy 1:5, “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:” St. James puts it more succinctly, “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” Our righteousness exceeds scribes and Pharisees when we participate with God’s grace, when we allow the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside-out.

Jesus takes this posture of change from the inside-out and applies it to a specific issue: anger. The Greek word there for anger is orge. That word isn’t always negative. In Ephesians 4:26, St. Paul uses it to tell us to “Be angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:” Anger can be a fitting response to the reality of injustice and sin. But we are warned not to allow anger to cause us to sin. We can’t let our anger consume us; we can’t make it turn a sinner in need of a Gospel into an enemy; we can’t proleptically condemn the other to Hell because it makes love impossible. But on this topic of anger, we see the limitations of the law. The law can only manage outward manifestations of anger: thou shalt not murder; thou shalt not assault; thou shalt not gossip. Could someone obey these laws and still be guilty of anger? Absolutely. The Law can’t really regular our resentment against others; it can’t really regulate our pugnacity against others by preventing us from quarreling, bickering, contradicting, nagging, being rude, or snubbing others; it can restrain, but not necessarily, preclude us from retaliating against others through disdain, uncooperativeness, boycotting or ignoring them. The law can’t make us forgive. “Whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.” The Gospel has to be a renovation of the heart: it’s not just about controlling anger, but changing it into reconciliation. The goal is to match the fact that we have been brought into a new kind of humanity; our actions should reflect that we have been transferred from Adam’s line of death into Christ’s line of life. The good news is that the transfer began at baptism; the not so good news is that there’s still a long way to go.

One obvious takeaway from our reading this morning is that we should give God our anger. If it’s a righteous anger directed against injustice, then we need to ask him how he wants to address the problem? We should also give it to him so that it doesn’t become bitterness or hatred. But maybe anger isn’t the sin you find yourself grappling with today. I would argue that Jesus’ words are still valuable for you because they provide a map for dealing with sin in a way that goes beyond simply “managing” our symptoms. We do this by engaging in serious self-examination: what is my pattern of behavior? What does that behavior say about my heart? What is the root cause of that behavior? And so of course, we fight to change that behavior. We fight anger, envy, gluttony, lust, pride, sloth, or greed. But we also need to realize that we have to address the full problem and that means going beyond “behavior management” into the spiritual. The goal is integration: the inside and outside must match. For that, we need to exclusively depend on God’s grace. We receive his love and, as we receive that, we need to give it to others. In that love, we find ourselves. We find our humanity. God wants all of you. Give it to him.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.