SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (A)
Beyond the Law
Laws, orders, commandments, who likes them? Don’t they take away our freedom? Yet the Word of God tells us: make your free choice between life and death. We see Jesus make his free choice repeatedly, as at his baptism, his temptations, during his agony in the garden. He chose God, his mission, for that was his life. He lives in us; in us and with him he invites us to choose life and love and to go with him far beyond the commandments. Then we will be really free.
Reading 1 Sir 15:15-20
If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you;
if you trust in God, you too shall live;
he has set before you fire and water
to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.
Before man are life and death, good and evil,
whichever he chooses shall be given him.
Immense is the wisdom of the Lord;
he is mighty in power, and all-seeing.
The eyes of God are on those who fear him;
he understands man’s every deed.
No one does he command to act unjustly,
to none does he give license to sin.
Reading 2 1 Cor 2:6-10
We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it’s not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God’s wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don’t find it lying around on the surface. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven’t a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn’t have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That’s why we have this Scripture text:
No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this,
Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.
But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.
The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along. Who ever knows what you’re thinking and planning except you yourself? The same with God—except that he not only knows what he’s thinking, but he lets us in on it. God offers a full report on the gifts of life and salvation that he is giving us. We don’t have to rely on the world’s guesses and opinions. We didn’t learn this by reading books or going to school; we learned it from God, who taught us person-to-person through Jesus, and we’re passing it on to you in the same firsthand, personal way.
Gospel Mt 5:17-37
“Don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures—either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God’s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God’s Law will be alive and working.
“Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.
“You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.
“This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.
“Or say you’re out on the street and an old enemy accosts you. Don’t lose a minute. Make the first move; make things right with him. After all, if you leave the first move to him, knowing his track record, you’re likely to end up in court, maybe even jail. If that happens, you won’t get out without a stiff fine.
“You know the next commandment pretty well, too: ‘Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.’ But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those ogling looks you think nobody notices—they also corrupt.
“Let’s not pretend this is easier than it really is. If you want to live a morally pure life, here’s what you have to do: You have to blind your right eye the moment you catch it in a lustful leer. You have to choose to live one-eyed or else be dumped on a moral trash pile. And you have to chop off your right hand the moment you notice it raised threateningly. Better a bloody stump than your entire being discarded for good in the dump.
“Remember the Scripture that says, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him do it legally, giving her divorce papers and her legal rights’? Too many of you are using that as a cover for selfishness and whim, pretending to be righteous just because you are ‘legal.’ Please, no more pretending. If you divorce your wife, you’re responsible for making her an adulteress (unless she has already made herself that by sexual promiscuity). And if you marry such a divorced adulteress, you’re automatically an adulterer yourself. You can’t use legal cover to mask a moral failure.
“And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.
Prayer
Lord God, loving Father,
in your Son Jesus you have shown us
how we should seek and fulfill your loving will.
Dispose us to respond to your love
from the depth of our heart
and to be faithful to you in all we do.
Make us also respectful of one another
and attentive to the needs of people,
even when they remain indifferent and thankless,
that we may help to ban evil from this world
and bring to it your love and mercy.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Reflection:
12 February 2023
Matthew 5:17-37
You have heard…, but I tell you…
In the first phase of today’s Gospel, Jesus stresses the value of the Old Testament. It was an anticipation or a curtain-raiser for the definitive law which the Messiah would introduce.: “Do not think that I have come to annul the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to annul them but to fulfil them” (v. 17).
Jesus’ message was the new Torah. He had proclaimed on the mountain a Torah that would upset the principles and values of the Jewish customs of the day. As a supplement to the old law, Jesus announces the Beatitudes as the new proposal, bringing perfection to the old one. In the eyes of God, those whom the Old Law regarded as the first ones will appear as “the least,” and the others will be considered “the first” in the kingdom of heaven.
In the second part of the Gospel (vv. 20-37), Jesus gives six examples of the new Law. But today’s reading takes only four. These are, indeed, four provisions that are found in the Old Testament. Jesus does not refute them but highlights their implications.
Do not kill! (vv. 21-26): This commandment has no exceptions. It condemns any form of murder (Gen 9:5-6). Jesus gives a new meaning to a person’s right to live: It is essential to check if we have rejected anyone by refusing to talk to them, by denying them forgiveness, by continuing to accuse them of mistakes done, and by destroying their good name through gossips or slanders…. When we use offensive words, get angry, and hatch hatred has already killed one’s brother/sister (v. 22).
The second example is the issue of adultery (vv. 27-30). The letter of the Torah prohibited only evil actions. But Jesus goes to the heart of the issue. Jesus insists on the need to have the courage to proceed with cuts, even though painful before evil desires become adulterous. The right eye and the right hand are the symbols of that which awakens lust and dangerous contacts. To cut off the hand or pluck out the eye does not mean bodily mutilation but refers to gruelling self-control, which Paul speaks about : “I punish my body and control it, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be rejected” (1Cor 9:27).
Gehenna is the valley that borders a side of the city of Jerusalem. It was the city’s garbage dump, the cursed place where babies had been sacrificed and burned to the god Moloch. It was believed that there was a door there that led to the world of demons. Jesus tells his listeners that when they fail to go beyond the letter of the Law and refuse to accept the proposal of the beatitudes, their life is worth the Gehenna – the garbage dump!