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A Very Old New Morality
Matthew 5:17-26
February 22, 1970

John M. Buchanan

The phrase "the New Morality" has a very unsavory image today. I+ is used
mostly polemically, by the people who have an axe to grind, people who feel that
there is something exceedingly dangerous in the current moral climate. It is,
ordinarily, identified with a total rejection of all the old and honorable stand-
ards of right and wrong upon which our civilization is built. Whenever we see
"New Morality" in print, more often than not, it is associated with other unsavory
words and phrases such as “revolutionary, radical, 5.D.S., L.S.D., Communist,
Anarchy" etc. ad nouseaum. In a recent discussion of the new Church School
curriculum one woman said, "but, it's full of the 'new morality'". And that
observation, with no other explaination,- was deemed sufficient to damn the new
curriculum. All in all, then, “New Morality" is a very negative phrase and a
lot of people are quite threatened by it.

And yet the current debate is very similar to one which took place in Judea
nearly 2,000 years ago. In fact, it's almost an exact replay. People then were
upset and threatened by a teacher advocating a "new morality".

To back up a minute, human beings have always, and under every condition,
been moral. That is to say, all people have some sense of "oughtness", what is
right and what is wrong. LIven the criminal in our society abides by a code of
morality that forbids ‘squealing on his accomplices. In general, the culture, no
matter who you are talking about, supplies most of the “imput” for this corporate
sense of “oughtness'' - and for the individual conscience. In a tribe of head
hunters, hunting heads is something men ought to do, a very accopted and normal
behavior pattern. Now we don't agree with that, but the point is that in that
culture head hunting is moral.

In Jesus time “oughtness" was very carefully defined in the 613 separate
precepts of the Judaic law, the Law of God. Morality was.defined: whatever the
law said to do was good or moral: whatever the law prohibited was bad - or

immoral: In first century Judea, the Scribes were the trustees, teachers and

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interpreters of the Law. The Pharisees were its most thorough adherents. The
Pharisees had one objective ~ one "ought" — to obey the law of God. One commentator
put it this way: “There was no finer standard of righteousness in the ancient
world than the Pharisaic, with its emphasis on personal holiness and social
responsibility."

They were very admirable men: the pillars of society. But this teacher - this
advocate of a new morality - would have none of it. He wasn't satisfied with their
legal perfection and kept probing beneath the surface of their neatly manicured
lives to discover some rather shocking motives and feelings. In fact, to their
face, he once compared them to white washed tombs, clean and spotless on a out—
side, but full of corruption and death inside.

Well, it's no wonder they got upset about him. If we could transpose the
situation into our century it would be like a bearded hippie type from the Purdue
Peace Union trying to tell the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce the difference between
right and wrong. They wore upset, and threatened by him and very early in his
public life they began to accuse him of rejecting the old standards, of teaching
an alien and new morality, of undercutting the concepts which constituted the
fiber of the Jewish nation; they saw in him and his teaching the threat of cutting
civilization away from its ethical moorings to drift about on the sea of moral
relativity.

That's what they said about him; that's exactly the charge leveled at the new
morality today and I think there is a distinct relationship between the two.

In response to their accusations he said: "Think not that I have come to
abolish the law and the prophets: I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill
them." That's clear enough, but then he hopelessly muddied the water again by
adding: “Unless your rightcousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees, you
will never enter the Kingdom of Ilcaven."“

If you were a Pharisee you would smile benevolently at his condecension in

the first instance. The law still stands. But then you would be provoked to a

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righteous wrath. How is it possible to stand on the Law of God, and then say that
righteousness is something which exceeds whatever the Pharisees were doing. Liter-
ally it was impossible: an ultimate paradox. A man could do no more than the
Pharisees were already doing. They were the righteous —- unless there is a new
standard — a new morality.

Jesus accepted the old law. That is clear in the New Testament. He was a
Jew. But he accepted the law as the revealed will of God, and not a rigid prescrip~
tion for behavior. There is a difference, and a big one. Jesus accepted the
principles ond spirit of the law, which by the way, was its original intent. But
then he went on to interpret it and deepen it, and inevitably brought into focus
a man's interest, attitude, will and feelings, as well as his overt behavior.

The law said, “you shall not kill", And if we know anything at a1] about the
Pharisees we can be certain that none of them had ever killed anyone or ever would.
They wore much like us in this respect. The law, at this point, restricts an
extreme and has very little to do with our lives. Jesus added to that, however,
"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to
judgement." That's another ball game altogether. Of course they had experienced
anger, as we have. How can enger and murder be equated? Unfortunately Josus left
no book of ethics with tho answors. But we do know, for instance, that murder is
simply the logical end to anger; that anger is worked out in a variety of ways
short of murder, but noncthcless hurting and damaging to another person. ile do
know that there are many ways of denying a person's existence, or manhood, such as
making him sit in the back of the bus, or refusing his children entrance to our
schools. We do know a littlo bit about a genocide that has nothing to do with gas
chambers.

Jesus took the precept of the law which prohibited killing, and revealed its
spirit and intont. He took a clearly statcod injunction and interpreted it in 4
way that cut deeply into the secret heart of everyone who heard him.

That's always a very uncomfortable and unpleasant process. A good contcmporary

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example is the wide-spread discontent with the Supreme Court in the past decade.
In our system of government the task of the Supreme Court is to interpret and
protect the Constitution; no more, no less. The court has swung back and forth
over the years in the way in which it interpreted the Constitution and in our time
many people feel that cach successive decision has actually weakened the fabric
of the original document. This position is based on the assumption that the Consti-
tution is a once-given body of legal truth which needs no further interpretation.
It compares favorably with the Pharisaic position that the Jewish law was the final
word in defining morality. The fact is that people get very unhappy and threatened
when a constitutional principle, such as freedom of speech or assembly, is inter-
preted specifically to protect the freedom of somcone with whom we happen to disagrec.
When noble principles bocome specific, people become threatened. When Jesus took
"You shall not kill -— and broadened that to include anger and hostility of any
type his contemporarics accused him of weakening the moral structure of socicty.

An so, as a matter of principle, to protect everything they held dear they
labelled him a traitor and blasphemer. In the name of God whose will was revealed
in the law they crucificd him. The real issuc, you see, was that they had long
forgotten about the will of God: they had made the law their God. They had for—
gotten that the law was only the vehicle by which men could live out their gratitude
and faith, and had transformed it into an end in and of itself. Judaism ~ which
had been 2 living relationship with Almighty God within the terms of the Covenant,
became, under their leadership and example, a highly structured, rigid ethical
system by which a man carned his ow righteousness.

The law which intended to see that all men cle seated justly - as children
of God — had become the instrument by which men separated themselves from others;
the vehicle which produced nourishment for human pride and arrogance. The Pharisoe,
for instance, in the name of God, wrapped their robes tightly around them whenever
they encountered someone who was unelean - in order to meet the law's prohibition
of unecleaness.

Jesus pointed out in his teaching that people were important, not laws; that

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not killing another man is not enough; he is to i valued and served and loved. [ven
in worship - what men do is invalidated if they are not reconcilod with their brother.

So he taught his new and better morality, and continually the message was pro-
claimed that legalism in religion is sterile and dry and of no value whatever.
Continually he held up before them love — loving activity - as the only, ultimate
moral right. And the more he talked the worse they looked in the cyes of the
people.

Legalism in religion is always wrong. As a young boy I had neighbors who
neither smoked, drank, danced or played basketball on Sunday, and who wore arrogantly
proud of their legalistic morality; and who drew up a petition to keep a black
family out of our neighborhood. Now, there's something wrong there — radically
wrong. likewise I think we need to ask today what purpose has becn served by the
trial of the Chicago 7. . Justice has been served. Tho law has been served. But
who has been helped? What is better now than it was before?

The result of our Lord's very old new morality is a terrible burden placed
on our shoulders. There is something within us that likes rules and regulations.

We have a need for structure; in things moral — for a law which prescribes whnt is
right and wrong in every situation. And so we look to the church and expect religion
to get us off the hot spot of decision by saying that this is always right and that
is always wrong. Well it connot be done, if one remains open and honest with the
New Testament. We are called to be loving in every situation: we aro called to
measure and weigh cach situation and then to do what is most loving and the burden
of decision is on us, not on a law.

We would like very much to be able to say “Do what is right and let the chips
fall where they may. And Jesus would say to us, ‘Whether what. you are doing is
right or not depends precisely upon when the chips are falling. [J. Fletcher,
Situation Ethics p. 144]

The burden is ours. In the New Testament we read about a morality that is
new, always new. We read about safe, traditional standards made so personal that

we all come undor their judgement. One commentator says that Jesus “made the

bearable precepts of law wmbearable." [1.B.] And mil Brunner candidly observed
that “if looking at-.a woman lustfully is the equivalent of adultery, all of us
are adulterers." :

The New Morality of Jesus Christ puts everyone of us on the spot. But I think
we are inclined to forget that the one who puts us on the spot is also the one who
loves us and forgivos when we fail. Jesus Christ is the one who taught this terrible
new standard of righteousness: he lived it himself, and holds it up before us as
a model of how life was intended to be lived. Because of that the imperative of
the Gospel is that we take his teaching absolutely seriously.

But let us not forget the power of his love in our lives; a power which enables
us to be loving even when we don't want to . —- Let us not forget that everyone of
us is in a perpetual process of becoming more Christian - more like him; that we
do grow in faith and lovo.

Let us not forget that our teacher is also our Lord: that his judgement is

algo forgiveness.

Amon

Our father, as we confront the complex situations in our lives, grant us that
courage to do what is loving; to reflect your love in our lives; to honor and
respect all men and cach other. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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