Sunday, February 12, 2023
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading: SIRACH 15:15-20
Responsorial Psalm: PSALMS 119:1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34
Second Reading: 1 CORINTHIANS 2:6-10
Gospel: MATTHEW 5:17-37
I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it
We continue to read from Jesus’s sermon on the mountain. The Gospel of Matthew was written primarily for Jewish converts to Christianity. His purpose was to demonstrate to the Jewish Christians how the prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. That is why the Gospel of Matthew is sometimes called the Gospel of fulfilment. In order to do this, he has to convince his audience that Jesus Christ is not a new patch sewn onto an old garment, he is the new and greater Moses and that he is the new and supreme lawgiver.
Jewish converts were especially concerned with how the teaching of Jesus fitted in the teaching of Moses and the prophets. Forthrightly, Jesus addresses that concern. He begins with a statement of reassurance. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.” The law remains and will always remain because it comes from an unchanging God. The truth of faith does not change with the passage of time. But it allows fresh insights and deeper understanding. By saying “I did not come to abolish but to fulfill it,” Jesus reveals that He is the fulfillment of all God has revealed in the law and the prophets.
Keeping the law for the Jews is a matter of life and death as we heard in the first reading today. To keep the law is to choose life, joy and happiness and not to keep the law is to choose death, disorder and destruction. Throughout history, Israel could not keep the law. Many times they abandoned the law and bad things happen – loss of the land, destruction of the temple, and enslavement by foreign powers. To keep the people from transgressing the commandments, the Scribes created a broad sense of the law passed down from generation to generation. By the middle of 3 AD they were codified in the Mishna, an 800-page book that details in 73 treatises all the 613 laws the faithful must observe. So while the Scribes wrote the laws and interpret them, the Pharisees commit themselves to embodying every tenet of these laws. For them it is a matter of life and death.
The problem here is that keeping of the law becomes the means to justification. With the coming of Christ, what makes us righteous, what justifies us in the mind of God is not keeping the law. It is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross which brings us sanctifying grace. Because the Scribes and the Pharisees keep the law, they do not see any need for Jesus. Their righteousness is based on themselves. Sometimes like the Scribes and the Pharisees, we are so obsessed with the law that we lose the meaning and purpose of the law, the necessity of flexibility, common sense and the meaning of mercy and we lack love.
The Greek word that translates ‘fulfill’ is ‘plerosai.’ It also means ‘to bring to its intended purpose’ or ‘to reveal the definitive meaning.’ It also means to make complete or to bring to perfection. So the first thing Jesus reveals is that the literal interpretation of the Old Testament laws is not perfect. It is not what God ultimately wants for his people. He wants to bring his disciples beyond legalism and a literal interpretation of the law to the spirit of the law. In Matthew 22: 36-40, Jesus was asked, “Which is the greatest commandment of the law?” He responded, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.” And then he said, on these two commandments hang the Law and the Prophets. He tells us that minimal obedience is far beneath the dignity of his disciples. In observing the law, to strive for less than perfect love is to strive for too little. His intention not to abolish the law but to fulfil it demands surplus, not deficit of righteousness.
A disciple is not not just to avoid sinful actions but to avoid even interior tendencies toward them. While the law says, “do not kill.” Jesus goes ahead to condemn the anger which leads to it as being just as bad. Anger is a subjective emotion that often has more to do with the person who is angry than with the circumstance that occasion it. Instead of fuming and letting our anger to get the best of us, we can look within to discover the dark spots and hot buttons that are so easily triggered.
Secondly, he quotes the commandment, “do not commit adultery,” and goes on to say that looking at a woman lustfully is equal to the act of adultery itself. Men and women find each other attractive. God made us that way and that is the beauty of healthy sexuality. To find a woman beautiful or a man handsome is to pay them a compliment. To long for a loving relationship with a person you find attractive is good. That’s what makes the world go around. But there is a world is difference between this longing and lust. To lust after a person is to debase that person and be willing to use him or her as a mere object of self-gratification. It is to distort and twist the beauty of loving relationship and turn it into an evil form of power and control.
Jesus wants us to strive for perfect love of God and neighbor, therein is life. Otherwise, we choose death and destruction. Let us commit ourselves to Jesus who gives us the grace of justification and is our Salvation.
Happy Sunday
Fr Chidi Onwuka m.ss.cc.