[RCL] Deuteronomy 30:15-20 or Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37 In today’s Gospel, we may be tempted to hear Jesus set aside the Law of Moses in favor of a newer, more up-to-date version of God’s teaching. His speech does have that sort of pattern to it: “You have heard that it…

[RCL]: Deuteronomy 30:15-20 or Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37 There have been many good and talented comedy troupes throughout the years: Burns and Allen, Martin and Lewis, the original cast of Saturday Night Live, for instance. Of course, there is Monty Python, so good it hurts. But of all the wonderful…

Immediately after His Baptism and following the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, presents a discourse of moral teachings we have come to know as “The Sermon on the Mount.” It is a portion of these instructions that we experience in today’s Gospel. Jesus eloquently presents a series of…

In the moral life, we can think of commandments in at least a couple of ways. One way to think of a commandment is as a rule by which we can evaluate the rightness or wrongness of a given action. We might think of a commandment like, “thou shalt not bear false witness” as a…

The Church makes many claims about God – about who God is and what God does and what God is like. We make big claims, and the biggest of all, the one that is at the core of all our claims is that God is love. Above all else, God is love. We sing songs…

Today’s Gospel lesson is a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We have been listening to that Sermon for the last two weeks–it began with the Beatitudes. Unfortunately, we shall not read any more of it this year. One of the difficulties posed by a lectionary, the list of lessons set apart for the…