Today’s gospel (Mt 5:20-26), as well as Saturday’s and Monday’s, puts us in the middle of what we know as the Sermon on the Mount (although Monday the gospel is from Luke, and he calls it the Sermon on the Plain).
The Sermon on the Mount is an incredibly rigorist ethic of the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ.I think it, upon reading or hearing it read, really demands at least these two things from us: First, it demands that we do indeed take Jesus enough at his word to be startled by what he seems to expect from his disciples.Now this reminds me of the incredible play on the life of St. Thomas More, A Man for all Seasons.A friend of Thomas More is trying to convince him to sign off on the king’s edict expressing his sovereignty over the Church in England, effectively separating the Church from the Catholic Church.His friend explains to Thomas that it must be alright since even the nobles have signed it.Thomas interrupts immediately and says, “My friend, the nobles of England would have snored through the Sermon on the Mount.”This teaching of Jesus demands at least to be heard for what it is and if it is it should startle rather then bore.Second, it should give rise within us to the question, “How is it possible to live this life?”The Sermon on the Mount lays out an incredible rigorist ethic and the possibility of fulfilling it is not self-evident.
The great German biblical scholar, Rudolf Schnackenburg, offers what he thinks is the key to this teaching of Jesus.I think he has it right.
“[The] scandalous trust that inspired Jesus himself and that he desired to awaken in his disciples appears to me…to be a key to understanding the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus’ extreme demands astound and irritate us.But they do not stand alone:they must be read in the context of Jesus’ whole message and proclamation…It bears direct witness to Jesus’ fundamental trust in the Father which he wished to bring to his disciples” (All Things are Possible to Believers, 3).
Here it is again.To understand Jesus, his life and his teaching, is to somehow receive from him the same kind of relationship of intense intimacy with the Father which leads to absolute confidence in God’s desire and power to bring us to good.
Or in another way, connecting this to the specific precept laid out in today’s gospel, to live in this radical peace and harmony with our neighbor simply demands that we be touched and shaped by the radical relationship that the Son shares with the Father.
It is not hard for me to recognize how far beyond me this call of Jesus is.I have now lived long enough and have carried enough responsibility to have left behind me certain people who still hold one thing or another against me.Jesus’ word is, “If you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled.”Did you notice?“The other person’s guilt is simply not in question; it suffices that ‘your brother or sister has something against you” (Schnackenburg, The Gospel of Matthew, 55).
In attempting to live by this command, I have all too often been confronted by my pride, unable to step over it and acknowledge my guilt.I have, also, been confronted by the wall put in place by the other unwilling to forgive me.What am I to do?To be honest, I really don’t know.Somehow, though, the “key” is setting my heart more firmly on the Father.Somehow, the “key” is sitting more closely at the feet of Jesus in order to receive the Father from him.
And yet, I can not afford to delude myself into thinking that this relationship with the Father will not change my relationship with others, will not demand of me actions that will seek to being change in those relationships.