Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 5:17-37

I don't really like this gospel. I was ok with the ten commandments. It isn't terribly hard to not steal, not covet, not murder, and I honor my parents, I guess. I don't take God's name in vain whatever that means. There are moments when unbecoming language may escape my lips, but I don't bring God into it. And if honoring the Sabbath means going to Church and trying to make the day a little different from the others, I usually do that. The ten commandments aren't that hard. But here Jesus is reinterpreting them. And not just that, he's telling us, it seems, that unless we embrace this much higher standard, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven' we will not be released until we have paid the last penny; our bodies might end up in Gahanna (which is Jesus' way of saying we'll be tossed onto the garbage heap outside the city – I don't think he was thinking of hell).

And by Jesus' standards, I have no hope. It seems that there are always smoldering resentments in my heart. I don't want them there, I try to suppress them when they pop up – but you can't live 74 years without having experienced a few people that you would rather not have ever met. I gather even monks and nuns have this problem. And adultery? It's hard to turn on the television or read the newspaper, or look at billboards, for that matter, without seeing something that exploits our sexuality. Does that qualify as looking at a woman with lust?

Is it possible to let my yes be yes and my no be no? Because I doubt a day goes by when I avoid saying something that's on the tip of my tongue, something that may in fact be very true or even helpful, but I'm afraid to say it. And Jesus continues to reinterpret the commandments, making the keeping of them very difficult if not impossible.

In a way, Jesus is doing what the Pharisees of his time were doing. They described it as “building a fence” around the commandments. It went like this. If the commandment said, “remember to keep holy the Lord's day”, one of the implications is that you couldn't work at your usual occupation. Why? Because labor, which was most of the time physical, took your mind off of God and the obligation to pray. But then, what does labor mean? Eventually, it meant you couldn't prepare a meal, you couldn't walk more than 100 paces from your home, you couldn't light a fire in your house. In other words, by complying with these seemingly trivial rules, you got as far away as you could from breaking the commandment. The Pharisees, the ancestors of modern Jewish rabbis, were making these rules to guarantee that they did not even come near breaking a commandment. But I think Jesus had something different in mind. Jesus is building fences around the commandments, but behind everything he is warning us of consequences – not entering the kingdom of heaven; not being released until we've paid the last penny; being thrown on the garbage heap which is Gehenna. He is basically describing a way to live, where we are always striving to be better. This striving for spiritual perfection, which is really a matter of cooperating with God's grace, with God's desire to transform each of us into sons and daughters who resemble Jesus, the First Born, is the mark of someone who is seeking the kingdom of heaven. To not do so is to be left behind, to have wasted one's opportunities.

Jesus is making the point that we have to look inward – do we harbor those attitudes and psychological dispositions that could lead us to breaking a commandment? Because if we do, we need to get rid of them. When we are chronically angry, yes, that could lead us to kill someone; but just being angry keeps us from being fully human. We are slaves to that passion. Likewise, if we allow ourselves to feel sexual attraction towards someone other than our spouse, it may seem harmless, but it isn't. It enslaves us. There are people addicted to pornography who started out by looking at other human beings with lust in their hearts. And Jesus tells us not to swear. We don't do this much anymore, but in his time, the act of swearing on something like the city you lived in or your mother's grave or some other valued thing was common, and was a way of emphasizing that you were speaking the truth. Jesus is saying, if you have to do that, that means that the rest of the time you can't be trusted to speak the truth. And if you do lie easily, sooner or later you will begin to lie just because you can; truth won't really matter and if that is the case, anything goes.

As is always the case, Jesus is giving us advice that has to do with our achieving happiness here and now. When we get rid of those things that bind us, those habits of the heart which put limits on us, then we are happy, and that is where the kingdom of heaven begins. When we hang onto those attitudes which hold us down, our possibilities are limited; we are less than fully human.

A Jewish friend was asked what would happen if he ate pork or used the wrong set of dishes for his supper or drove to the synagogue on Saturday rather than walked. His answer was, “Why would I do any of those things when God asked me not to?” I think that is a good attitude to have towards these commandments that Jesus interprets for us.

So today lets resolve to go into our own hearts and look for those attitudes which could lead us to breaking the commandments; and let us take Jesus' words seriously – even the little seeds of sin can hold us down – but with God's help and our own efforts we can uproot them and enter the kingdom of heaven.