13th February, 2011 6th Sunday of Year - A
P Save a tree. Don't print this e-mail unless it's really necessary
Today’s Gospel is summed up beautifully in this quote from British writer, Michael Green: “(God’s) Law is not the limit of obedience; it is to be seen rather as the springboard for a life of devotion to Jesus and his Father. It is the curbing along the road of love.”1.
The law is never meant to be the end in itself, but rather an expression or distillation of the values that it seeks to promote and protect. When people focus on the letter of the law they are really losing sight of the forest for the trees, and losing the point.
Jesus was warning the Pharisees that this is exactly what they have ended up doing. They need to go deeper into the meaning and Spirit behind the law or become irrelevant.
All of the readings this weekend are really excellent and very key scripture passages. The first reading speaks of freedom that God give us. We have true, adult freedom given to us by God. This freedom is real and extensive. The key to understanding this freedom is that it is a freedom to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. If is a freedom to love as God loves and as God wants us to be.
God’s wise saying to us in the first reading is quite powerful. It is, in some ways, as if God is speaking to us, asking us to be adults, but aware that our choices and behaviours can resemble that of children who do not fully understand the responsibility that comes with freedom. God says, ‘Of course I have given you true freedom. You are free to touch the cool water.. it will feel cool…. And you are free to touch your hand to the flame,,.. but beware… it will still burn you. So choose wisely.. choose the good… avoid the harmful. Use your freedom to choose life and God’s ways.
The second reading flows nicely from this. In order to exercise our freedom, we need to develop the wisdom of God. We need to see and think the way God thinks and not merely in human terms and with human wisdom. We have to exercise our thinking and choices and freedom with the otherworldly ways of God.
The Scriptures say: “Train me to keep your commandments and keep it with my heart.” This is a reminder that what we are called to be is more like athletes who have it in them to perform their best, but only after training in the ways that allow them to reach the pinnacle. Not everything that we are called to do comes naturally or easily, just as a top athlete or a top musician need to train and practice in order to reach their best. We need to be open to be trained by God in God’s ways that are different from our natural ways of thinking and doing.
And finally, the gospel then has Jesus saying to us… “GO DEEPER!!” Don’t just stay on the surface. Jesus is calling adult, free loving people to be his disciples. He is therefore calling us to act as adult disciples and go deeper into the core of his message and values. He wants us to learn the meaning of God’s law and not merely its outward expression or its legalistic strictures.
Again, the analogy of child and adult could be helpful here: When young children are learning about what they should do and not do, parents often teach them that they should “do some things and not do others.” If a child asks “why”, they are sometimes (understandably) told, ‘because I told you.” They may not always be old enough to understand the subtleties of why some things are good and some things are dangerous… and so, simple answers and explanations suffice… until they grow older to understand the principles and values behind these things.
But as we grow older, we don’t just stay in the child-like understanding of what we should do and not do….; (with a list of do’s and don’ts and rules and regulations). We begin developing the wisdom to discern the inner values behind the rules and regulations and applying ourselves to that. At times it allows us to keep the rules to the letter… and at other times it gives us the wisdom to disregard the letter of a law so as to actually respect the principle behind it!. But this is something we do very carefully and after a lot of discernment and caution.
Jesus is inviting his disciples and the Pharisees and all who listen, to an adult relationship with God, which doesn’t just settle for the outward shell of observance, but rather dives deeply into the full meaning of being a loving disciple who lives out the reality of their true membership as a son or a daughter of God.
So, it is not good enough merely to keep the commandments by ‘not killing anyone’ because we also must strive not to have anger and hatred against our brother or sister too. It is not sufficient to say “I have never actually been unfaithful” when it is possible to break the spirit of this command by living a life of disrespect in the way one looks at or de-personalises, or to speaks or treats others. It is not good enough to do everything in the ‘name of Jesus’ if our ordinary everyday ‘yes’ is not reliable, or our ‘no’ does not mean what it says.
And, even more challenging; the readings today remind us that we should never blame God for our own failings: “Do not say it is the Lord’s doing that I fell away.” These are merely excuses and failure to take adult, free, Christian responsibility. We are reminded quite sharply by this weekend’s scriptures: The Lord never gave people permission to sin or to ignore his laws. Yes, God has given us true freedom, but this is a freedom to live God’s law and to act responsibly.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
REFERENCES:
· FR. PAUL W. KELLY
· 1. My Daily Visitor, Feb 13, 2011. (Our Sunday Visitor).
· Break Open the Word. 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment