The following is part 1 of an even drier summation of a pretty dry talk I gave at FBC Canyon Sunday to the college ministry. While I was really bummed at how poorly the whole thing went, the preparation fired up some thoughts that I wanted to share here.

That being said, I kind of hope we all find it controversial. A Word that never challenges us is probably not a Living Word after all.

What makes something a “tough saying”?

Conflict. The other party says or demands something we find either difficult to understand, or difficult to do.

So what about a “tough saying of Jesus”? We read throughout the gospels that Jesus came in conflict with religious leaders all the time. But we don’t think of those encounters as tough, because we see what Jesus is talking about and agree. The tough sayings of Jesus are those in which Jesus is not in conflict with an obvious enemy, but with us.

The conflict may take one of many forms. Maybe the conflict is between Jesus and our understanding of Jesus. Maybe the conflict is between Jesus and our expectations. Sometimes, the conflict is between what Jesus tells us to do and what we want to do. Or even between Jesus’ will and ours. But it seems that if we read a story or a teaching about Christ and find it difficult, either to understand or follow, there is a conflict between us and the text.

The conflict in Matthew 5:17-20 seems to have all these conflicts in some form. And yet, if we take some time to think about what Jesus is saying, we find that it’s among the least complicated of the “tough sayings”. And we find that the passage is in fact not a conflict, but a solution.

Matthew 5:17-20 (NRSV)

17 ‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

It seems that Jesus was accused of trying to “abolish the Law and the Prophets”, which was a phrase used to refer to the Hebrew Bible. We don’t have the account of that exact claim, but either it happened or Jesus perceived that people saw him as claiming to get rid of the scripture. And we can imagine the religious leaders having that misunderstanding, right?

But what if it wasn’t enemies of Christ that thought this, but his friends and followers? What if they thought that Jesus was getting rid of all their history, and that they could just slide into this new religion? Surely they were tired of Pharisees too. All the tedious details of laws and history and war in the Hebrew Bible must have weighed on them somewhat. Maybe Jesus was a chance to dump all that and be free from tradition.

Imagine a Faith in which no matter how hard you tried to faithful, devout even, someone was there to point out your shortcomings. Imagine people whose role it was not to instruct, but critique. A tiny minority given power over your faith. But not just that. Your national history, legal responsibilities, and religious growth, were all constantly used against you.

Unfortunately, we can relate, can’t we? The purpose of the Church is to be a community of the faithful. But we easily turn it into a court of supreme piety. Instead of a cloud of witnesses, we encounter a line of accusers. I certainly sympathize with anyone who wanted to be free of the hypocrisy of the establishment.

So maybe there were some of Jesus’ committed followers who were tired of it, and thought welcoming the new meant abolishing the old. And maybe, just maybe, we think that too. Perhaps we’re the ones who think Jesus came to abolish what we call the Old Testament. If so, he’s telling us clearly here that we are very wrong.