Deacon Michael’s Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time - February 11-12, 2023

Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time (February 11-12, 2023)

The Readings for this Sunday to which this homily speaks can be found HERE

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Over the past couple of weeks our Gospel readings have been from the  Sermon on the Mount

…often described as the Law of the New Covenant

…parallel in the New to what God had handed on to Moses on Mount Sinai in the “Old”. 

Most Christians, and many others, are at least passingly familiar with the opening of the Sermon

…the “Blessed are’s”

…the poor in Spirit, the meek, the merciful, the mourning, the peacemakers, those who yearn for righteousness, those who are willing to pay the price for their beliefs.

These are high minded, spiritual accolades and promises

…but for most they remain comforting aspirations.

Their presenting language in the text itself is third party, which lends itself to contemplating them

…and admiring others who can manage to live them

…rather than seeing them as a direct challenge to be lived into, which is what they are.

By contrast, the language of today’s readings, including the direct continuation of this Sermon is different

…direct, challenging, even confrontational.

Our current culture views freedom to make unfettered autonomous choices a pre-eminent value.

…followed closely, it seems, by the freedom to evade the consequences of these choices.

The opening words of today’s first reading speaks to this.

Here the Wisdom of Ben Sira tells us that choice is important

…”If you choose, you can keep the commandments..”

…and you will get what you chose…good or evil…life or death…

In making such choices Saint Paul warns us of putting much if any stock in the wisdom of “this age”.

Rather, he tells us, look to the timeless Spirit that God has revealed to us through his crucified and risen Son.

In our Gospel today we hear from this Son.

After the poetry of the beatitudes, the “Blessed are’s”,  and the lyric analogies calling us to be salt and light for the world, which we heard last week

…this week’s words are jarring.

Jesus launches into a clear, unambiguous defense of “the Law”, expounding on several of the Ten Commandments.

Here “the Law”

…are those revealed standards for living, that exist separate from us

…to which we are expected to conform

It is a common perception today that the Law is somehow the opposite of mercy and compassion and righteousness and the rest that Jesus speaks of and lives out  

…or for some that such things actually trump or negate the law.

Well, Jesus just doesn’t buy it. 

Almost as if he senses the risk of being misunderstood on this point, he says that the law will endure to the end of the age

…and that he has not come to abolish it

…but to fulfill it.

So, the law, will always have something to say to us that we need to hear

…even if it indicts us and is hard for us to live by.

Yet…Jesus has something else in focus.

For him the law is necessary, but in the end not sufficient to take us to the place where God wills us to go.

For Jesus, the need is to go deeper, into the matters of the desires and dispositions that prevent us or enable us to live it.

He points to a need to “do the work” that will take us to the place from which we will live in such a way that we are easily or effortlessly in harmony with it. 

This is how the law will be “fulfilled”

“Thou shalt not kill” is clear enough.

But it is the anger and its escalation in word and deed that gives rise to violence that needs to be held preempted and de-fused through reconciliation.

Adultery and its betrayal of promises is obviously wrong. 

Best to deal with the desires for what we can’t have that give rise to it.

Don’t be swearing oaths by this or that, as that should all be unnecessary

…as we should always speak the truth, which we value.

So today’s Gospel leaves us three things to work on

…the mastery of our passions and emotions and their expressive language that can easily escalate and take us where we will regret

…the mastery of our inordinate and disordered desires for what we shouldn’t want or cannot have

…and grounding our lives in speaking and acting truthfully.

Each of these runs counter to strong forces in our culture

…which sees mastery of emotions and desires as problematic repression of some sort

…and the truth as a luxury that is hard to afford.

Many live this way…and wonder why they are unhappy.

Wise old Ben Sira knew why. It lies in their choices.

We’ve been shown a different way, a different path by our Lord.

We need to choose that.