When my kids were first learning how to read and write, the elementary school they attended was using a method called “Inventive Spelling.” The idea behind “inventive spelling” is the belief that children can express themselves in writing, even if they do not yet know how to spell all of the words they want to use correctly. Children who are taught through the “Inventive Spelling” method are encouraged to stop worrying about spelling things correctly when they write. Teachers encourage kids to write the word how they think it should be written. Over time, these children learn more of the rules of spelling–like which letters tend to be silent, and which spellings create long vowel sounds or short vowel sounds. “Inventive Spelling” suggests that the rules are learned by doing, rather than by memorization and application.

I’m not a trained teacher. I have not attempted to teach a child to learn how to write, other than helping my own kids hone their writing skills at home, so I cannot speak to the merits or disadvantages of this method. But I can speak to what I witnessed as I watched my kids learn via the “Inventive Spelling” method. They had completely opposite reactions from each other. One child embraced the freedom of not having to worry about doing things the right or wrong way. They wrote pages and pages of stories using the “Inventive Spelling” method, and they found a tremendous amount of joy and freedom at being able to express themselves in such a powerful way. 

My other child found “Inventive Spelling” to be so frustrating that homework sessions often ended in tears. They knew there were right and wrong ways to spell words, and they felt like all of the adults around them were keeping accurate spelling a secret. For this child, being told to write however they wanted to write was like a punishment instead of a gift of freedom. 

For those of us who want easy answers or just want the grown ups in the faith to tell it to us straight, these teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5 feel profoundly uncomfortable. Is Jesus saying that anger is always a sin? Or, that any time we find someone attractive, we’ve committed adultery? Is it true that every time we make an oath, we’ve broken the rules? Or that any time we’re tempted to take revenge, that we’ve missed the mark? For those of us who find comfort in the rules, these teachings might feel like a burden. They feel impossible. And, if we remember Jesus’s words from last week that our righteousness needs to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, we might feel doomed before we even get started.

This morning, we are continuing our sermon series “Chosen | Choosing.” We’ve walked through the story of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. We’ve observed the way Jesus called his first disciples, and we’ve marveled at his works of healing as he traveled from place to place. At each step along the way, we’ve wondered how we might choose to respond to God choosing us. We’ve wrestled with how to live faithful lives as people chosen by God to be salt and light in the world.

 Now, as Jesus begins teaching his followers with the words of the Sermon on the Mount, I imagine some of the people in his audience found freedom and joy, while others felt perplexed, angry, or maybe even hopeless. They might have worried that the rules were changing, or that the grown-up people in the faith were keeping the secret of faithfulness from them.

The trouble is, we want to view these words of Jesus as new rules, as more specific rules, about how to live our lives. We want to view them as additions to the commandments God has already given. Instead, Jesus offers us these teachings as a way to help us understand the spirit of the law. Professor of New Testament Carla Works puts it this way: “It is in this most anticipated first sermon that we encounter the antitheses (5:21-48). Repeated again and again is the formula ‘you have heard it said … , but I say to you … ‘ In this section we meet not a new list of rules, but the intentions of the law.”

Jesus pushes the people–and us–-to think beyond a list of do’s and don’ts, and to listen for the real heart of the law. Jesus gives them—and us–the opportunity to be people who can hear the heartbeat of God.

In the church year, we are one week away from Transfiguration Sunday. On Transfiguration Sunday, we remember the story of Peter, James, and John going up the mountain with Jesus. While they were there, Jesus was transfigured before them, and they saw his glory. They also saw Moses and Elijah, arguably two of the most influential people in the Jewish faith–their presence confirming to the disciples that God is truly the God of both those who are still living, and those who are now living with the Lord.

After Transfiguration Sunday, we journey back down the mountain and undertake the journey of Lent. We watch as the disciples struggle to follow Jesus, and we watch as Jesus remains faithful, both to his disciples, and to his own calling. We marvel at the depths of God’s love that spared nothing, not even his only begotten Son for us. But, right now? We’re in the week before the hike to the top of the mountain. We’re the week before we catch a glimpse of the glory of God in Jesus Christ. We’re in the valley looking up at the mountain and wondering how on earth we can manage to make such a trek.

 Let’s imagine that we are preparing to climb the mountain. We’re going through all our gear and supplies and deciding which things will be necessary, and which things will just be too much weight in our packs. I am reminded of the time I took a backpacking trip with my family and with some other people from my church. After an eleven mile hike, we stopped to set up camp for the night. One of the teenagers in our group opened her backpack, and at the very top, she had packed a curling iron. One of the adult leaders asked her why she brought a curling iron, and she said she brought it along so that she could curl her hair. “But, where will you plug it in?” the leader asked. Suddenly, she realized she had carried the weight of this curling iron all the way up the hiking trail, and she had absolutely no use for it. 

As Jesus taught his disciples during the Sermon on the Mount, he was inviting them to see what really mattered. He was showing them the heart of what it meant to be a disciple. Everything else was just extra weight that would need to be put to the side before the tough part of the journey really began.

Jesus uses six antithetical statements, or six “You have heard it said, but I say to you” statements. Four of those were included in our reading, but the other two are just as important. Let’s take a closer look at each of these as we think about what we need to bring with us on our journey up the mountain with Jesus.

First, Jesus teaches about murder. He tells the people that it’s not enough to refrain from murdering people. What good is it if we can say, “Hey, at least I never killed anyone,” but we still hate others. Jesus says we took the letter of the law, “You shall not murder,” and then set the bar really low for ourselves. The heart of the commandment not to murder is the conviction that every person is made in God’s image and is worthy of human dignity. And so Jesus pushes the people farther than they wanted to go. He urges them to pack in their discipleship bags RECONCILIATION. If someone in your life has something against you, go and make it right, whenever it is possible for you to do so. Don’t just avoid murdering someone; prioritize the connection between all human beings. We all matter to each other, and each one of us matters to God.

In your discipleship bag, pack RECONCILIATION. Jesus then teaches about adultery. Again, he pushes them past the low bar they’ve set for themselves. He says, “It doesn’t matter if you say you haven’t committed adultery if you are still in the business of diminishing the image of God in others by objectifying them.” The people in our lives are not here for us to use them. They do not exist to please us. Along with RECONCILIATION, Jesus tells the disciples to pack RESPECT in our discipleship bags. As disciples of Jesus, we are to respect the image of God in each person, to view each human being as worthy of love and dignity, and to refrain from using them for our own desires.

That might sound easier than the previous teaching about anger, but consider the ways we use each other every day. We lash out at others because of past hurts, hoping that others will heal the wounds we are carrying. We look to others to help us feel worthy, or to help us feel good about ourselves. We cannot help the harm that was done to us. And all of us will struggle with this in some way at various points in our lives, but Jesus urges us to consider the heart of the matter. Disciples of Jesus will need RECONCILIATION and RESPECT for the image of God in others as they take the journey up the mountain.

Jesus’ teaching on divorce is a tough one, especially if we get caught up in the letters on the page and not the spirit behind them. Previously, the law made some allowance for divorce, but some saw this allowance as a way to get out of their commitment to their wives. So many things were considered acceptable reasons for divorce that men could even divorce their wives for things as small as burning the bread. Jesus urges his disciples to look at the heart of the law. In Jesus’ time, if a woman was divorced by her husband, she either had to live with her father, her brother, or any sons who were old enough to support her. If she didn’t have any of these things, she would have to live on the streets, and there were almost no ways for women in this situation to make money. Jesus urges his disciples to live lives of RECONCILIATION, RESPECT, and FAITHFULNESS. Carla Works explains Jesus’s teaching this way: “In contrast to a world where women were treated like property, Jesus’ mission allowed women to be disciples.”

Here in the valley, one week before we climb up the mountain with Jesus, we pack our bags with RECONCILIATION, RESPECT, and FAITHFULNESS. And finally, we add INTEGRITY. Jesus says we should not need to swear extravagant oaths. We don’t need to “swear on a stack of Bibles” in order to prove our sincerity. Instead, if we are people of integrity, if we care about community and healthy relationships with each other, we will be people who tell the truth to each other. We will be people who stick to our commitments. We will be people who mean what we say.

In our reading from Deuteronomy, it says, “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away.” After hearing these teachings from Jesus, my first inclination was to say, “Yeah, right!” How is this not too hard for me? How is any of this possible? But then the reading continues that we can either choose ways that lead to death or ways that can lead to life. As it says in the Didache, a Christian manual for worship and life together compiled prior to 300 AD: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways. The way of life, then, is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second, your neighbor as yourself; and all things whatsoever you would should not occur to you, do not also do to another.”

This is it. This is the backpack we bring up the mountain with us as we follow Jesus. And into that backpack we add RECONCILIATION, RESPECT, FAITHFULNESS, and INTEGRITY. (If we include the other two teachings in this section, we would also pack LOVE, and PEACE.) We can’t live out the spirit of the law perfectly, but we can keep striving. We can keep returning to what matters, and we can keep getting back to the heart of it all.

Today, on this Sunday before the journey up the mountain, let’s love God, our neighbors, and let’s do no harm to the people God entrusts to our care. And then let’s pack our bags with RECONCILIATION, RESPECT, FAITHFULNESS, and INTEGRITY. May God give us the strength for the mountaintop journey, eyes to stay focused on Jesus who leads us, and hearts that keep returning to who God is and what God desires for us. AMEN.