You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. Matthew 5:21-22

In the past, I would have skipped these verses altogether in my sermon. It is not that I didn’t think they are important. I always found it hard to add anything more to them. However, many things have happened in our lives and ministry in the past few years. We have experienced a government that has neglected people in the worst crisis in modern times. Many times we have felt helpless and angry. In these situations, I found these verses disturb ing. I am sure that many might think that these verses are not too hard for anyone to follow. We just have to watch our language. Treat people with respect. You know the drill. However, these are easy things to do when things are comfortable in our lives. A few years ago, our friend lost her kind and well-beloved daughter to an accident. The driver responsible for the accident was texting and did not pay attention to a stop sign. Our friend’s daughter ended up in a coma and a week later she left a two year old child and a grieving husband to be alone in this world. The driver instead of showing any remorse posted her picture saying that she got a new car out of the whole deal. One can’t help but say that this driver is a complete….wait a minute. Jesus said that this is the same as murder.

Violence is a constant presence in the streets. Our children suffer from it and they also commit it. We have witnessed this countless times. Each time there is a sense of disgust and anger which arises in our souls, sometimes even thoughts of violence towards the perpetrators. Again, the words of Jesus haunt us. They reveal that murderous attitudes are lying dormant in our hearts. We use words like “fools” or “idiots” instead of physical violence to express our disdain. Jesus says this is giving into our murderous nature. It seems to be a little unfair. After all, we do have the right to be mad at those who treat others in a cruel and unjust manner. I thought that there is room for righteous indignation. However, Jesus warns that this is a dangerous road. It can ruin our worship. It can contaminate our faith. It can make us become like the Pharisees and the Scribes whose spirituality we are to surpass.

Jesus says difficult things about adultery and divorce. Let us go deeper into these teachings and let us be clear here. This is not about sex. It is about being unhappy in one’s life and some times this is justifiable. People can be in abusive relationships and desire to be with someone else who will treat them the way they should. This seems like a good thing to do. After all, Jesus desires for us to have abundant life too. However, He has a problem with it when we use the instruments of this world to achieve our goal.

There is a saintly theologian who says all the ten commandments can be summed up into one law. “Thou shall not covet.” Often times, we tend to think that the last is the least. However, this theologian interprets it as a summary of all the things which came before it. The sin of covetousness is the desire to possess the thing which doesn’t belong to us. We believe that we should have these things and use any means to attain them. Consequently, we adjust the image of God according to one that satisfies our desires. We create an idol that will condone our use of violence, slander, manipulation and selfishness to achieve our happiness. Everything which Jesus warns us against doing. However, it doesn’t mean that as followers of Jesus we are to surrender to whatever life throws at us and do nothing about it. Fatalism is not the message of the gospel.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Remember these verses. They came before these teachings and are connected to them. The beatitudes represent people who are dissatisfied with what the world offers to them. Jesus has high hopes for us. He is speaking to us as if we are these people. He wants to make sure that in our frustration and dissatisfaction, we do not use the resources of this age to carve a place for ourselves in this world. Jesus is offering something new but we cannot see and comprehend it until we stop trying to build our own version of the Kingdom of God with all the wrong tools. This is why Jesus tells us,

“Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

Our spirituality is a composite of “Yes” and “No”. We say “yes” to the things that are within our power to do and “No” to those things which are beyond our ability and capacity. It is humbling to discover that most of the time, we have to say “No” but it makes our “Yes” even more powerful.

In the streets, Taina is one of the most difficult homeless girls. She is, by no means, a difficult person. She is quite a shy person and has never been rude or disrespectful to us. She is difficult because her condition makes us feel helpless and lost. She is a second generation homeless girl. She had four children before she turned 18 and all of them are third generation homeless. Taina is not an irresponsible person neither a promiscuous one. She just doesn’t know anything else besides being homeless. She sleeps in the streets and has done so from the day she was born. On rare occasions her family were squatters in one of the many abandoned buildings in São Paulo. To make matters worse, she is quite an intelligent and artistic person. We see her potential but she doesn’t believe anything will come out of it. Her mother is in the streets with her. She has spent her whole life being homeless too. This is a family who have accepted that homelessness is the only option for them. Sad to say, they are not wrong. There is nothing they can do which will change this. We feel helpless and useless when we see this young girl. We cannot make any promises that will guarantee a better life for her. There are just countless of “No”. We can only say “Yes” to being present in the streets for her. It seems rather weak and insignificant compared her needs.

Usually we stay in the streets until all the children and teens get a little bored with our presence. Thankfully, especially for our personal ego, we are leaving the streets later than usual nowadays. Since there are about two hundred children in the area, so we don’t get to see everyone every day. One day as we were on our home, we heard someone running after us. We turned around and it was Taina. We thought maybe she needed some help with money for food or diapers. Instead Taina came up to us and said that she just wanted to say hi. She had seen us but didn’t get the chance to come around and just wanted to make sure that we didn’t think she was ignoring us. She hugged us and even gave us a kiss. Then she just left. We were quite amazed with her little deed. We felt like we received a special gift.

There is something Taina saw in us even though we can not do much to improve her lot in life. We saw something in Taina which many don’t see because they cannot see beyond her homelessness. Taina doesn’t want us to change her condition. She knows better than us that it is an uphill battle. However, she wants people to love her as she is and she wants to love people, too. However, not many are giving her the opportunity to do so. Like ourselves, Taina also has to say “No” to many things but she is able to do much with the limited “Yes” in her life. On that particular day, Taina saw an opportunity and shared her love with us. She wanted to share the little she had with us. Now, it remains with us for eternity.

Instead of lamenting about the countless “No” we are forced to say, we realized that God can do much with our limited “Yes”. Like the other story about two fish and five loaves. We will save that one for another time.