6th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Feb. 12, 2017
Matt 5: 17-37
1 Cor 2: 6-10
Holy Cross, Champaign, Ill.
“I
have not come to abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfill them” (Matt 5:
17).
2
weekends ago we began 5 Sundays of gospel readings from the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus’ new law for the new people of God created by the new covenant he
came to establish. The 1st 3 of those
gospel readings come consecutively from Matt 5:
the Beatitudes, the similes of Christians as salt, light, and a city on
a mountain, and today’s specifics about Christian attitudes and behavior.
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Sermon on the Mount
by Carl Bloch
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As
we listen to Christ’s words in the gospel today, we hear his teaching that his
new covenant, this new relationship between God and humanity, doesn’t destroy
the old covenant— the one mediated by Moses on Mt. Sinai, expressed in the
Torah, and preached by the prophets.
Rather, Jesus takes that covenant deeper, carrying its wisdom and
holiness into our hearts, our attitudes, beyond our external behavior.
What Jesus teaches is what St. Paul calls “a
wisdom to those who are mature, not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of
this age who are passing away” (1 Cor 2:6).
By “mature,” Paul refers to spiritual maturity, a mature Christian
discipleship. By “the rulers of this
age,” he means both the Roman Empire—Caesar, his governors, and subject kings
like Herod; and the Devil and his cohorts who wield so much power in the
present age. For us, Paul still means
the Devil, of course, and the earthly powers of our age: presidents, monarchs, dictators, armies, the
Fortune 500, the mass media, academia, et al.
Pope Francis probably would add, “church careerists.” These are “the rulers of this age.” In the end, only God’s wisdom will
remain. For now, that wisdom is
“mysterious, hidden” (2:7)—in the cross of our Savior. On the Last Day, it will be evident to the
entire world, and those who lived by the wisdom of the world will be, in Jesus’
words, “liable to judgment” (Matt 5:22), while those who embraced the cross and
the “righteousness” of Christ (5:6,10,20) “will be called greatest in the
kingdom of heaven” (5:19).
The
1st specific teaching that Jesus presents to us is an extension of the 5th
commandment. For Jesus, the commandment
includes much more than the avoidance of murder. Physical violence stems from one’s heart,
one’s attitude. So Jesus condemns
anger—not the feeling we all experience when we think we’ve been wronged, whose
arousal is automatic, so to speak; but the feeling that we nurture and savor,
the one that we obsess over as we hold a grudge, plot how to get even, make
rash judgments, attack the reputation of someone, hate to the degree that if we
thought we could get away with it we would do physical violence. Jesus warns us not to dare to approach the
altar of sacrifice—this altar here—without reconciling ourselves to our brother
or sister—which means, in the 1st place, our fellow believers, and then more
generally the rest of mankind. That’s
why we begin almost every Eucharist by calling to mind our sins and repenting
of them. That’s why we exchange a
symbolic sign of peace before coming toward the altar for the Eucharist. That’s why the Church makes the sacrament of
Reconciliation so readily available to us weak sinners.
Many
of you may be thinking, “I’d like to be reconciled with so-and-so, but she has
hurt me so badly that I don’t want anything to do with her”—and you call her a
real so-and-so! Or you may think, “I’d
like to be reconciled, but it takes 2 to reconcile, and that’s just not gonna
happen.” No, peace and harmony aren’t
always possible. The key question is our
attitude: Would I really want to be reconciled? Can I wish that other person God’s
blessings? Do I pray for my enemies, as
Jesus commands? Even if I no longer
count them as friends, can I at least be polite when they’re around and not
speak ill of them when they’re not around?
Do I ask Jesus to help me be
more forgiving, after the example that he himself set?
Then Jesus speaks of sexual morality. Avoiding the physical act of adultery is
insufficient virtue for his disciples.
He immediately addresses our hearts, our desires: wishing to commit adultery, desiring it,
lusting for it is just as great a sin as the act itself. How many real, personal relationships have
been damaged by online relationships? Our
age is suffering a tremendous plague of pornography—so great that some states
are considering declaring it a public health hazard like tobacco. Porn turns people—the images of God—into
objects, toys for our amusement, our selfish gratification like playing a video
game or diving into a big bowl of ice cream.
I don’t need to mention some of the specific social ills that follow
from that sort of mindset.
Jesus
uses a strong image as he speaks of our sexual desires—about cutting off hands
and plucking out eyes. His Semitic
culture liked such exaggerated images; recall the line about a camel squeezing
thru a needle’s eye. The point is to
control our bodies, to avoid the occasions of sin, to resist temptations, even
to practice traditional Christian mortification; not to let anything get
between us and God. Remember the
resolution that St. Dominic Savio made when he was 7: “Death rather than sin.”
Still
speaking of adultery, Jesus goes on to address divorce and remarriage—a hot
topic, shall we say, in contemporary Church discussions. Could his teaching be any plainer? The Church takes its doctrine of the
permanence of marriage from Jesus’ own words, expressed not only here but also
in a debate with the Pharisees; see Matt 19 (and parallel passages in Mark and
Luke, as well as 1 Cor 7). “Unless the
[1st] marriage is unlawful” (5:32), he says here, i.e., for some reason isn’t
an authentic marriage (is invalid), divorce and remarriage is adulterous. A careful reading of Pope Francis’s apostolic
exhortation Amoris Laetitia will find
the teaching of Jesus upheld, despite the interpretations that some have put on
it.
Finally—for
today’s gospel reading—Jesus takes up the question of truthfulness in our
speech. Christians aren’t to be
deceptive or devious but to speak the truth plainly. Yes means
yes, and no means no. If I give you my word, I keep it. If I speak of someone or something, I speak
as honestly about him or it as I possibly can.
We needn’t go into the intricacies of moral theology here, e.g., about
who is entitled to hear the truth and from whom we may withhold it.
So
Jesus isn’t doing away with any of God’s commandments when, e.g., he summarizes
the law and the prophets as loving God wholeheartedly and our neighbor as
ourselves. He sets a very high standard
for us to follow if we would be his disciples—so high that later he’ll compare
following him to carrying a cross toward crucifixion. It is
a challenge, absolutely, to follow Jesus as one of his disciples. The words that St. Paul quotes from the
prophet Isaiah, then, are encouraging, about the wonderful things that “God has
prepared for those who love him”: far
beyond anything we can possibly imagine (1 Cor 2:9).
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