February 13, 2011: Epiphany VI

   

Epiphany VI (a)
Mt 5.21-24,27-30,33-37
13 February 2011
Fr. Patrick Allen

+ + +

We continue this morning, as we will for the next few weeks, through this compendium of our Lord's ethical teaching, the Sermon on the Mount.  And, of course, it is challenging stuff.  In the first section, the Beatitudes, Jesus began by overturning all normal expectations and preconceived notions about what a happy and blessed life might look like.  Poverty and mourning, meekness and persecution:  that's the stuff of blessedness, says Jesus (5.1-12).  And last week, we heard our Lord call us to a level of righteousness, of moral perfection, that will be observable by and remarkable to all men, like a light in a dark room or a city set on a hill – a level of righteousness that, Jesus says, must exceed even that of those professional law keepers the Scribes and Pharisees (5.13-20). 

The Scribes and Pharisees, as you will know, were deadly serious about following the law of Moses – they studied it in minute detail and bent their considerable energy to developing strategies for conforming their lives to the exact letter of the law.  St. Paul himself said of his pre-conversion life as a Pharisee that he was, "as to righteousness under the law, blameless" (Phil 3.3-6).  Which is a pretty high bar, I would say. 

I remember glancing at the syllabus on the very first day of a class in seminary and seeing that the professor had assigned more than eleven hundred pages of reading for the very next class, which happened to be the next day.  Well, I know what to do with that kind of a law – ignore it!  And it may be that we feel a bit that way when we encounter this deepened and new law of the Sermon on the Mount.

So what could our Lord even be talking about when he declares in this sermon that "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven?"  How do you exceed "blameless?"

Well, we begin to see what that might mean in this morning's lesson.  Jesus declares, not only must we not murder, but we must not even be angry and insulting, and must abandon everything, even our religious duties if need be, in order to heal a broken relationship.  Not only must we not commit adultery, but we must not look at another with "lust in our hearts."  The purity of our intention, the integrity of our words and our wills, must be so perfect that it becomes unnecessary and superfluous (not to say redundant and needlessly repetitive) to bind ourselves by oaths to anything greater than our own "yes" or "no." 

So you see what Jesus is doing.  He is mining, digging beneath our actions and inactions in the world, beneath those "things done and left undone," right down to the desires of our hearts:  do not murder, don't even be angry; do not commit adultery, don't even lust. 

Which might begin to seem like a little much.  It might seem akin to being pulled over by a highway patrolman who leans down to look though your window and says, "You weren't exceeding the speed limit, but I could tell you wanted to!"

Well, it might seem akin to that, it might seem to be a bit much, if the law only bound, if it only restricted freedom and was not actually a blueprint for our flourishing, even a picture of who we are meant to be. 

Now, I think we know that.  I think here is yet one more case in which we need more to be reminded than instructed.  I know that I am free to drive from my home on James Island to the Church of the Holy Communion because of all those lines, those restrictive lines, painted in the road.  If we all – or even just a few of us – chose to disregard those lines, none of us would be free to drive anywhere. 

The guarantee of our safety, of the integrity of our persons, makes it possible – among many other very good things – to engage our differences freely and fruitfully:  so, you shall not kill. 

We know the value, the deep freedom and confidence for life in the world and the firm foundation for the raising of children – among many other very good things – that comes from the forsaking-all-others bond and covenant of marriage:  and so, you shall not commit adultery. 

In a fallen world, populated exclusively by fallen persons, the moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments makes it possible for us to live – frees us to live – more like human beings in community and less like beasts trapped in a state of nature, "red in tooth and claw."

The moral law protects and promotes those goods in this fallen world, but Jesus has in view another horizon.  He is speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven, of God's eternal reign of love established in and among the community of his disciples – that coming Kingdom which, in the person of Jesus and his body the Church has already taken root and is surely growing to its fruition. 

Here in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus draws our attention to the disharmony between what the law requires and what our hearts desire, he does so to prepare us for life – which is real life – in his Kingdom, which is already among us, is already happening.  And when we see it this way, we see that his sermon is not so much about what he is demanding from us as it is about what he wants for us, and is accomplishing in us. 

After all, it is one thing – and a good thing – not to take advantage of my neighbor, it is another thing – and an infinitely better thing – to love my neighbor and seek his good, in perhaps something of the same way in which it is one thing to memorize a couple useful words and phrases in another language, and another and better thing actually to inhabit and genuinely express oneself in another language.  Comprenez-vous? 

Or, as C.S. Lewis said with regard to worship, "as long as you notice and have to count the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance" (Letters to Malcolm).  When it comes to the eternal community of love which is the Most Holy Trinity, whose life is shared with us in Christ, when it comes to his eternal Kingdom of justice and peace, Jesus wants us to quit counting the steps and finally, truly, freely to dance.

And that is what, a we throw ourselves on his grace and mercy, he is doing for us, within and among us.  Because, if it is to happen, he will have to do it.  The healing of this wound, the overcoming of this disjunction between who we are and what we do, between our desires and our actions, puts the lie to any kind of Pelagian, grit-your-teeth and just-do-it religion.  I cannot make myself love what, or whom, I do not.  I cannot fix my own hard heart. 

So how will it happen?  As Neil Young sang, "only love can break your heart."  In his sermon, our Lord urges us with exaggeratedly graphic images to radical measures in the pursuit of holiness:  If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off.  But there is no exaggerating, no overstating his love for us.  He has taken radical measures to find and to heal us.  His body is broken for us; his blood is shed for us.  His heart of love is perfectly revealed as he offers himself for us, and in that offering is the healing of our own hearts, as our own hard hearts are melted by and conformed to his most Sacred Heart.

+ + +