Westwood Presbyterian Church

October 18th, 2009

197 Browning  Boulevard, Winnipeg, Manitoba  R3K 0L1

REV. PETER BUSH's SERMONS

6th Commandment - Do not Kill

     When I was in Grade 7 I joined the debating team. And our coach, who was more interested in current ethical issues than she was in teaching us debating skills, decided that our first debate topic should be Euthanasia. Now I had never heard the word before, I had no idea what it meant and so I spent the first two weeks on the debating team wondering what was the problem with young people in places like India and Malaysia – I heard the word as Youth in Asia – young people living in the continent of Asia.

 

     When we hear the command “do not kill” – we almost immediately start thinking about issues like abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, the military, and so on. And I agree that all those questions are wrapped up in this command – but in order to get at those specific questions we need to look at the bigger picture. And in fact in this sermon we are not going to get to any of those questions specifically. You can say it is because I am a chicken and don’t want to deal with them – and maybe there is part of that. But as I have been wrestling with this command over the last couple of weeks I have come to the conviction that while abortion and euthanasia and parallel questions are very important – debating them in many ways removes this command from the everyday flow of our lives. And I believe that is a mistake, because I am more and more convinced that Jesus invites those who wish to follow Him to live as people who do not kill on a daily basis.

 

     “Thou shalt not kill.” One of the questions people ask is, “what does kill mean?” “And not kill what?” To answer both those questions we need to look at the larger context of the Bible as a whole.

     First, the command is not saying that we should not kill animals. Throughout the Bible people kill animals to eat and to sacrifice. So the command do not kill is about not killing people. People are different than animals, in that people, all people are made in the image of God, and their lives therefore are of great worth, unimaginable worth.

     Second, people will say that the command “do not kill” means “don’t murder”. But if we look at the Hebrew word used for “kill” here, that same word appears when describing accidental deaths. The Bible does not make a distinction between pre-meditated murder, and someone being killed because by mistake I dropped a hammer off the roof and it hit them in the head and they died. Both are killing – both are taking human life – both are in violation of this command. To be clear, the Bible does make a distinction between what punishment should be meted out in each of these cases, but the act itself is the taking of life.

     So the command is “do not take human life.” There is no gradation in the command, it does not say that some lives are more valuable than others. In fact if we were to look at the complete law as laid out in the Old Testament, the master who beat his slave to death was to face the same punishment as the person who killed the leader of a family clan. As well, the person who killed a stranger or an outsider was just as guilty as someone who killed an Israelite. All human life was to be protected, all human life was to be regarded as of immense value. There is no space in this command for saying that some lives are more valuable than others, or that some killings are less immoral than others. The taking of any human life is a violation of the command. 

 

     Early in the book of Genesis, at the start of human history, we have the story of Cain and Abel. Abel sacrifice was accepted by God, and Cain’s was not; or at least Cain believed that his sacrifice was not accepted. The text is unclear as to whether God actually rejected Cain’s sacrifice or whether this was something that Cain thought. In any case he was jealous of Abel, and in anger Cain killed Abel.

     God spoke to Cain and asked, “Where is your brother?” and Cain famously replied, “Am I my brothers’ keeper?” Cain is trying to duck responsibility, he is saying “I am not responsible for keeping my brother’s life.” And on this Cain is absolutely correct. Only God is the author and preserver of life, only God is responsible for keeping our lives. We mere human beings do not keep other human beings, that is for God alone. What Cain was unwilling to recognize is that if he was not his brother’s keeper, neither was he to be his brother’s taker? If I am not the author and preserver of life, neither should I be the taker and destroyer of life.

     The clear direction of this passage is that God alone gives us life, God alone preserves our lives; therefore God alone can take our lives. There are limits on human responsibility, and therefore human action. The concern that human beings start playing God with the lives of other human beings is a legitimate concern. For human beings are not God, yes we are made in the image of God, but we are not God. We are limited, we are fallible, we are human. There are decisions that as human beings we are not competent to make and we should not make them. There are things that as human beings we should not do, and we should not do them. I realize that gives human ego a punch in the gut and a kick in the head – but human ego has created havoc in our world.

 

     That is what Jesus is pointing to in the passage that was read from Matthew this morning. Jesus takes us to look at what is it that leads people to kill people. You see, Jesus is on a mission to bring about transformation and renewal in our world. He knew that it was not enough just to say, “Don’t kill” – for the actions came from somewhere, there was a motivation behind them. And Jesus lays out for us what it is that lies at the core of people killing people.

     Jesus says, “If you are angry at a human brother or sister, if you insult another human, if you call them an idiot – then you are creating the atmosphere which allows for the attitudes that lead to murder to start developing.” Anger when it is allowed to fester grows to bitterness, bitterness becomes deeply rooted in our lives and allows us to place ourselves above the other. Bitterness creates the environment where we become the judge of the other person, and it is not hard to move from being judge to becoming executioner. When we insult another person, when we call them an idiot – we are diminishing them, we are making them lesser. They are not important, they are not like us, they do not matter, and so having despised them and having made them less than human, there is room to rid this world of them.

     Jesus is telling us that at the heart of killing another person is despising them, seeing them as lesser, believing they do not have worth. When we elevate ourselves and denigrate the other, we create the environment that allows us to despise the other, to see them as of less worth than ourselves. And then again we have created the environment that allows us to become the judge of the other, becoming the one who can execute our judgment.

 

     The answer to our problem is two-fold. Paul puts it neatly when he says, “We should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought.” We need to reduce our egos, lower our pride, recognize that we are but human beings. We need to have some honest talk with ourselves about who we really are. But we also need to be among other people who can challenge us and hold us to account. We need to be in a group where we can be ourselves and honestly say what we think and feel, and where people can tell us, “You are wrong.” Or “Your ego is getting in the way.” We need other people to do this for us because as human beings we are capable of extraordinary levels of self-deception, believing that we have told ourselves the truth. But there is truth about us and our situation that we can not see, and only other people can see it clearly. And we need them to help us see ourselves and our situation more accurately. This is part of why as Presbyterians we believe in things like Sessions and Presbyteries – we believe that a group of leaders can see more accurately, than a single individual. Within the accountability of the group a greater wisdom and insight arises.

     The second piece of undercutting our despising others, is to go to those who we despise, those we have diminished, and tell them that we have sinned against them. Out of being part of a group that challenges us and confronts us with what we have said and done, or out of an honest dialogue between God and ourselves, we will discover that there are people that we think of as lesser than ourselves – people that we have insulted, reduced in importance, made less human than ourselves. And Jesus invites us to go to them and acknowledge our sin. This open confession is as much for us, as it is for the other person. For if we find the humility to say we have done wrong, we are well on the way to creating a very different atmosphere from the one that leads to killing.

 

     It would be easy at this point in the sermon to ask where is the grace? – it feels like law, like stuff we need to do. And it is very easy for a series of sermons on the Commandments to be preached that way and to feel that way.

     We find grace in the passage we read from Matthew. Jesus said, “If when you get to the altar you realize…” The altar, the place where God’s gift of love and grace is most profoundly remembered – the place where we remember the death and resurrection is celebrated – where the rescue for the slavery in Egypt – the slavery to sin is marked. That is the place where we are confronted with a grace that cuts to the core of who we are and shows us who we really are. A grace that wants us to be all that we were created to be and will not settle for anything less. A grace that does not just offer us forgiveness – but forgiveness and the resources to change. This grace does not just clean us up and then stick us back in the same place to repeat the same errors. No, this grace offers transformation, renewal, we are made new – to live new lives. To live as people who live out of that radical, transforming grace of God each and every day.

     We find the grace also where we started – that the life we have is God’s gift to us – the life human beings share with us is also God’s gift – God’s grace. That we would be made in the image of God is astounding, extraordinary, amazing. This command invites us to rejoice in the life that is ours – but also to rejoice in the gift of life given to every human being. To see in that life the gift of God, the grace of God. In the breadth of humanity’s spread across the earth, we rejoice in new life, we rejoice in lives lived now, and we celebrate the lives of those who have gone before. Living out the grace of God – living out God’s gift.

     Thanks be to God for his good and gracious gift of life. Thanks be to God that he is the author and preserver of life.