Sirach 15:15–20
1 Corinthians 2:6–10
Matthew 5:17–37
A well-known theologian and homilist once shared that as he was writing his reflection for this Sunday, his phone rang. He picked it up and a friend of his asked him what he was doing. He responded that he was meditating on the Sermon on the Mount. “Oh,” his friend said, “that is just a list of things you can’t do.”
Unfortunately, that is probably what a lot of folks think about this section of the Sermon on the Mount. It is all about the negative and that in clear black and white: Do not… One can continue to think that way, but then you would be missing the wisdom that is embedded in what Jesus is trying to tell and teach us. Probably without realizing it, you would also be reducing your understanding of who Jesus is and what he is asking of us.
Jesus makes it clear that he is not getting rid of the Law, the Torah, and the prophets. In fact, he down right refuses to do away with them. He talks about fulfilling them. What does this mean? It means going below the surface of not killing, not committing adultery, not swearing (that means invoking God to stand behind the truth of what you are saying). It means going from a simple letter of the Law and the Prophets to the heart of the matter. It is not just a matter of external actions that the Law is concerned about. That might be easy to carry out. But it is a matter of the inner self and what our inner self is thinking, feeling and desiring. Jesus our teacher is calling us to be quiet and listen to the depths of our feelings and thoughts. That is what a biblical heart is about.
He is saying: Don’t think that because you did not fire a gun at someone or put a knife in their back that you have not killed. As an example of what he means by killing, he asks us to be aware of our anger. Are you aware of how anger arises in you, is expressed and then subsides? Are you aware of its subtleties? Jesus is talking to us about attitudes, about motivations, about feelings. All this comes before some external action results. It would seem that Jesus is focusing on what is happening internally rather than on a clear-cut external act.
It is easy for us to focus on an act, on the external. Jesus would have us go further, go deeper and enter our hearts. In terms of the Law, he wants to move us from the external letter, originally carved on stone, to the heart, to the spirit. He wants us to become aware of the whole person with all that means. That he would say is getting close to what is meant by observing the commandment “Do not kill.”
Jesus draws that out further to include our need for reconciliation and forgiveness. It is what happens between us that matters. It takes work, much inner work, to become a peacemaker, a restorer of relationships. It takes effort to say and mean “I am sorry” or to be responsible for my actions in times of conflict.
It is clear that Jesus is about moving us to our heart when he says adultery begins in the heart with lust, with desire. Knowing our longings, knowing what lies behind our coveting, our reaching out to grasp at this or that person or thing. Bringing that to surface, that is where Jesus would have us look and begin to see what we are “keeping.” If we need to broaden the meaning of lust, then we might do well to consider our obsessions, look at our addictions, look again at our consumer society and how that effects others on the planet.
Jesus invites us to consider our language as well. Taking oaths and swearing are about invoking God to stand behind the truth of what we are saying. The language we humans are to speak is about the truth. One can blithely invoke God with a hand on the Bible, and then do the opposite of what one says. Integral speech is what Jesus is calling us to. There has to be a connection between our hearts and thoughts and what we say. This is about honest communication. Honest communication will sustain our common life whether the community be that of faith or of civil society.
Jesus is our teacher today. He is opening up for us what the heart of the Torah and the Prophets is all about. He is also our interpreter of tradition. He is taking what we have already received and is giving it back to us at a deeper level—what scripture would call, the level of the heart. He is only doing what the Prophets said God wants for us. Not a law out there, but one written on our hearts in such way that it comes naturally. What we are hearing today is what Jeremiah records as the new covenant, or as Jesus says, the old fulfilled. And Ezekiel sees it as going from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, a heart breathing, full of life and Spirit. What Jesus is doing is not abolishing but filling with life, Spirit and meaning what has been there all along. And what is that? A relationship with our God who is full of wisdom, is mysterious and waiting for our response in love–a response that will be met with a love we cannot imagine.
We are not about keeping a commandment or a tradition. We are about fulfilling it, living out its meaning in today’s world in our fragile society. Today Jesus teaches where to look to begin fulfillment-to a heart where the Spirit lives.
~Fr. Joel Macul, OSB