Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

If it were possible to take some kind of a survey of all of those involved in any way with the whole field of mental, emotional, spiritual health, counselors, therapists, spiritual directors, if it were possible to ask them all what is the one single insight most consistently resisted by those with whom they work, the one greatest obstacle to living fairly comfortably in the real world, I'd be willing to bet that most of them would answer that it is the notion of personal responsibility for the course of one's life. Or better, personal responsibility for the way that a person experiences the course of his or her life. How it feels. How satisfying, or frustrating, how right, or how wrong that life may be, how fertile, or sterile it may be. The simple truth is that in my life, all of that flows simply and solely from me, from judgements I make, attitudes, values I choose to hold.

Now pretty clearly, the quality of a person's life will often enough be influenced by things which one cannot control, and should never try. Material things, circumstances, other people, and the choices that they make, all of these affect the experience of our lives to some degree, in ways for which we could never reasonably be held responsible.

But none of that changes the fact that the way life feels, the happiness that we do or don't have, the sense of rightness that we experience about the course of our lives, those things do indeed flow directly from the judgements that we make, the value choices that we make. And for that, for the quality of rightness that marks or doesn't mark our lives, we are indeed, each of us responsible, and will be held so, by society now, and ultimately by God.

Well, that is a hard insight. It is a demanding one. For some, even a frightening one. So much so that it really is no surprise that it is resisted, that again and again in our history, human beings have tried to find some way around it, tried to find someone or something other than themselves to shoulder responsibility, to explain away, even to blame, for our problems, weaknesses, anxieties.

Now, for us, in our own times, that is a fairly easy thing to do. After all, we are surrounded by any number of things bigger and more powerful than are we. Just THEM... the system, the government, technology, the establishment, the Church, the times, any number of things that we can accuse of taking away our freedom to choose, and so absolving ourselves of the responsibility of choosing.

The people at the time of the author of the first reading had come up with a pretty effective way of their own of avoiding personal responsibility. They really didn't have a system or a technology to blame, so they blamed God. And they did so in a pretty systematic and convincing way. If God is All-powerful, the Creator of everything, then He is responsible for everything. He is responsible for me, for what I do. For what I do well, and for what I do poorly. If I act wrongly, in ways that are destructive of my own happiness, my own satisfaction, my own future, then I am simply exercising a God-given ability, in a God-given way. So it is not my fault if my own or anybody else's life gets screwed up.

That was a popular theme at the time of this writing. But it is one which the author of this book explicitly rejects. God is indeed all powerful, and the creator of everything. But one of the things which He created, is creatures with free will. Creatures for whom, as the last few lines of the first reading puts it, sin, self-destructive, self-defeating acts, is always a possibility, but never a necessity. God constantly calls His people out of such acts, but call is all He does. He never drags them out. And He calls them out of sin not by taking away their freedom of choice, but rather by insisting on it. God calls His people out of sin by describing for them, revealing to them the consequence of sin, and by insisting that if they persist in choosing such acts, they also persist in choosing the consequences.

And so for this author, as for so many of the other Wisdom authors, God is not nearly so much judge as He is teacher. He doesn't say, "If you act in such and such a way then this is what I will do to you." Rather He says, "If you act in such and such a way then this is what you are doing to yourselves."

And it worked, really. The efforts of the Wisdom authors changed the thinking of the time. The Hebrew religion became again uniquely marked by that renewed emphasis that each person is held accountable for themself, their own behavior, before the world, and before God.

But as always, in the cycle of things, that teaching grew again, for some, too heavy to bear. And so again the people began to look around for ways to ease the burden of personal responsibility, the burden of having to make value choices. And they found one. One which they themselves had helped to build centuries earlier. The Law of Moses. And it was a very comforting thing that law. Because it left little or no grey areas in the making of value choices. It spelled out in explicit detail just exactly what a person should or should not do, in practically every situation imaginable.

And again, it worked. It worked very well. The Law simplified their lives, gave structure and value to their lives. And as long as the law did all that, they themselves didn't have to. Justice, compassion, kindness, love, even salvation itself became a matter of simply following the letter of the law. The people really didn't have to wrestle with those challenging, disturbing notions any longer. How am I to act towards those around me? What does love of neighbor really mean here and now, towards this person? Well, the law tells me. It means this and this, and nothing more. What does compassion, forgiveness, mean, here and now toward this person? Well, it means this and this, and nothing more. So the law worked very well indeed. Slowly, over a number of centuries, the intricate, even divine mysteries of relationships between human beings, and between human beings and God, became programmed, codified, something that could be set down on paper, and measured against that paper.

Well, it all may have seemed to work, but in fact it didn't. Because it didn't take very long before the people began to use the law to distinguish not only between good and bad acts, but between good and bad people. Who is worthy of my respect and who is not? The law tells me. Who must I offer forgiveness when offended, and who is not deserving of forgiveness? The law tells me. To whom do I owe compassion, and kindness in their need and weakness, and whom can I simply reject as foolish and unworthy? The law tells me. Who holds favor in God's eyes, and who doesn't? The law tells me. The trouble is, when the law tells me that much, it can get pretty tough to listen to anything else... to my conscience, to my heart, to the Spirit in me. When the law tells me that much, relationships between people, and between people and God, become simply formulas, not all that different from formulas in a chemistry book. Such relationships no longer demand any self-giving, any risk. In a word, they are no longer an act of faith.

And so it was against that background that Christ began His life of public preaching. And as the Gospel reading today shows, early on in that preaching, Christ took on the biggest adversary He could find. The law itself. And He did so not by opposing the law, but rather by radicalizing it. He didn't tell the people to break the law, He told them to go far beyond it. He told them clearly, "You cannot surrender responsibility for what you do to the letter of an external law, a program written on paper. If you do not take to heart the spirit of the law, internalize it, weave it into your life, build on it, then you do not act rightly, morally."

And in the reading, part of a lengthy instruction to His disciples that continues on into Lent, Christ gives some very concrete examples. He tells them, "The law teaches, do not kill. But at the moment of judgement, the Father will not ask you, did you kill? Rather He will ask you, did you love? Did you treat those around you kindly, with respect, with compassion, with gentleness?" And then in the next few lines, Christ stamps the simple, "Do not kill" of the law with an unmistakable, uniquely Christian mark. He radicalizes the law as far as can be done. Did you treat with kindness and respect only those you like? Those who treat you that way? Or did you act as lovingly toward those you don't like? Toward those who don't like you, toward those with whom you disagree strongly, even bitterly." Far far beyond the demands of the law, it is on that, Christ teaches, that salvation hangs.

The concrete examples continue. The law teaches "Do not commit adultery." Fine. But not nearly enough. Christ calls His people to a healthy respect for the power, the sacredness of sexuality, one's own, and everyone else's. Christ calls His people to develop the ability to take an honest and holy joy in sexuality, one's own and everyone else's, without ever reducing anyone to an object, to be used.

Christ says, "The law prescribes a ritual, a formula that must be followed in acquiring a divorce. Fine. Sometimes that is the only thing that can be done. Sometimes. But I tell you, be faithful to the commitments you have made. Not only when they are pleasant, but when they are painful as well... even when to do so is a crucifixion."

Christ says, "The law teaches that a pledge made, or a testimony offered in God's Name must be honored. Fine. But I tell you, don't be too quick, too rash in calling down the authority of God in your personal dealings... don't be too quick to assume that God is automatically, necessarily only on your side. Human dealings are just that, and may very well not reflect perfectly the mind of God, no matter how well intentioned."

So. Radical indeed, and profoundly Christian. In this and even more clearly in teachings to follow, Christ strips away from human relationships, from the relationship with God, any sense of a mathematical formula that can be followed precisely, unerringly, and He makes again of those relationships what they were meant from the beginning to be, an act of faith, a leap of faith, made in love. Not as secure and predictable as the formulas of the law, perhaps, but for those who leap well, and trustingly, far more fully human, and infinitely more satisfying.

Readings: Sirach 15:15-20; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37