Last week we emphasized Jesus’ opening “You have heard it said, but I say…” Today let’s examine some of the six categories of scripture that he listed.

Jesus said “you have heard it said, do not murder, but I say anyone who is angry at a brother or sister is liable to Judgment.”

Jesus said “you have heard it said do not commit adultery.c But I say that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in their heart”

One might be inclined to see Jesus’ correction of interpretation as even more strict than the original intention, but that would overlook the original intention of the law itself.

The law was designed to organize a new community of people who had just been freed from slavery in Egypt for over 400 years.

They are to become a new nation and to do that they would have to purge themselves of the influence of Egypt that had been seared into their psyches for hundreds of years from generation to generation.

Therefore, the law was to begin in the heart which was/is the seat of the soul. In other words, it is not enough to just do good one must want to be good.

God intended not just blind obedience but the willingness of the heart to want to treat people with respect, dignity and compassion.

That is why in Jeremiah God promises that when they are released that God would do something intimate and passionate to show the people how much God loves them.

Jeremiah 31:33 says, “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Dr. King once said, “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”

The law was originally to do what Dr. King and others believed impossible by literally changing the heart of a person to want to please God by treating others as humans and as Dr. Obery Hendricks profoundly said to want to “treat the people’s needs as holy.”

Jesus’ words say it is not enough to not murder but one must not allow anger, bitterness, rage and resentment to poison the soul and spirit so that despite not committing the act one ends up becoming the act of murder.

To commit murder on another person one must first reduce that person to less than a human, less than one made in the image of God, reduce them to a thing to be crushed or manipulated and tortured.

That’s how the settler colonial white supremacist who came to this nation from Europe first saw the natives, the indigenous people who only tried to help them adjust. They saw them as things to be subjugated and eliminated with no thought of their humanity.

That’s how those same white nationalist conquerors saw African people. They saw them as things to be used and not people to be loved. They allowed rage and the obsession with power to poison their spirits to the point that it was nothing to strip babies from their mothers, and butcher their fathers before their families, but go upstairs from the holding pens of Goree Island and have worship above the excrement filled cells they placed Africans in.

It is also how so-called religious people can turn away from and excuse how many people have been slaughtered in Palestine, or how many people are being murdered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo financed by tech companies from Silicon Valley and how America and France have literally destabilized and punished Haiti for overthrowing France’s grip on the people of Haiti.

Jesus is actually saying even though a person may not commit murder if they harbor anger and bitterness in their hearts, they have by that fact allowed themselves to diminish a creation of the holy.

The same goes for adultery. It is not enough to not commit the act of adultery but if one literally lust, objectifies and becomes consumed with having a sexual encounter with someone else’ spouse they have actually already done it because they have forsaken all remnants of righteousness to desire what is not theirs to have.

They have objectified a person who is made in the Imago Dei and made them a thing to be used for one’s own personal gratification disrespected their spouse to the point that they no longer see them as a person but someone to be gotten out of the way to fulfill their lust.

Such is the experience of King David when he lusted after Bathsheba to the point that he had her brought to him and raped her. Remember as the King, Bathsheba could not refuse him, therefore she could not authentically give consent.

And then he had her husband placed in danger to be killed to cover up his lustful deed.

Jesus is aiming at the heart of things. He is lifting up a standard for the new community to live by that nurtures life and respects ethical decisions based on one’s love for God as lived out in one’s relationships with neighbors and other people.

Jesus is setting the stage to organize an alternative community that truly lives a God centered life that honors God in the interacting with all people and not just the people in your family, ethnicity, race, social identity or nation of origin, all people.

Look at all the interpretations of scripture that Jesus list and see in each one Jesus is convicting the heart, because the heart is where true belief is and where true belief is behavior will follow.

Uhuru Sassa, beloved.

Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by email at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.