YEAR A Homily for 6^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today we head right into the core of Jesus’ teachings.  Jesus almost follows the structure of a modern essay that I might teach a Grade 12 student in an English class.  Jesus starts with his thesis, which is that Jesus offers continuity with the Law that was given to the Hebrews, but that he interprets it and wants people to go beyond it.

In the remaining ‘essay’ he gives examples of what he means by this. In our shorter reading today, we see three of the examples he uses ,when he takes three of the ten commandments, and basically tells us that if we want to keep those commandments, which we should, here’s what will help us avoid them. For example: Thou shalt not murder. 

If you want to avoid murdering someone you have to go to the core root of what causes murder and get rid of it. He suggests anger is the root cause of it, and so we must work at getting rid of our anger and the things that go with being angry – insulting others, casting aspersions on others, judging others, inspiring hatred in others, taking away the honor of others. We need to resolve those issues, and we will then be able to follow the commandment.

Similarly with “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, the second example Jesus uses: adultery is caused by lust and so we must avoid situations which cause us to be sexually excited by someone. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

The last example could refer to the commandments of taking the Lord’s name in vain or bearing false witness. If we have to swear to something, it is because people don’t take our word. So, we must be the kind of persons who always are true to our word, and then we won’t have to swear to anything.

So that is an overview of the shorter, edited  reading that we read today. In the longer reading Jesus goes into a little more depth on each issue.

When Jesus says, “Truly I say to you” or in older translation “Amen. Amen I say to you”, Jesus is always saying these things with authority and emphasizing the importance of them. In this section he is establishing the point that his interpretation of the Law and the interpretation of the Pharisees are at odds. Jesus is at his most radical in much of this teaching. He wants his followers to go beyond the letter of the Law. Resolving social matters comes before religious matters. For the community to be one, there must be harmony, and that harmony must be achieved, first, through reconciliation

So this is what Jesus says we have to do, if we want to be his followers.  This is true Wisdom. But we have choices. We have free will, and that is what the first reading from Sirach explains to us today.  Sirach shows our choices using terms that are polar opposites.  We can choose fire and water, life and death, good or evil.  The view of the book Sirach is that God created everything with a certain pattern or organization to it.  We can and should follow that pattern and organization, and if we do we will have a good life.  But we can choose not to follow it; then, however,  the resulting life will not be a good one. We will reap what we sow. “Whichever one chooses, that shall be given,” Sirach says. In Sirach’s time, when this was written, they did not consider and after life, just this life. But just so we see things in the proper perspective, Sirach reminds us that God has set the world in an order, and that God has not commanded anything that would cause us to go outside that order; God has not given anyone permission to be wicked or to choose disorder or sin. That choice will be ours.

If, however, we follow God’s order, we obey God’s Laws which both the Hebrew Testament and Jesus  give credence to, then we will have achieved the kingdom of heaven, that time when no human heart can even conceive “what God has prepared for those who love him”, according to St. Paul quoting Isaiah in our reading today. It is the Spirit, according to Paul that teaches us these things and has revealed God’s order to us. This is true Wisdom. For Paul, too, God has created an order, not the order that humans will understand, and which may have been hidden in the past, but an order that is God’s and that has been handed down to us today, that God has “decreed” for our glory. We need to work through the Spirit to understand these things, and the Law is there to be a guide to that order. Jesus expanded on this to go to the root of those Laws in order to help us see that it is easier to get rid of the causes for sin before they become sins or disorders. It is very similar to all the attempts today to have people take care of themselves to avoid becoming sick.

All three of the readings today urge us to find Wisdom. We soon come to realize in this life that the choices we have to make to become moral people are not always black and white, like the choices Sirach uses. Life and its choices are complex. To be wise means to choose carefully what choices we make, not through blind obedience, but through thought and prayer. Jesus wants us to see that we need to take care of social concerns and take care of other people before we take care of our relationship with God. Remember, that in the Hebrew Testament, seven of the Ten Commandments deal with the social order. Only three deal with God. Wise Jesus gives us ways today to help us to choose the law, by going to the core causes of what could be a social problem or sin.

Jesus did not come to get rid of the Law, but to reinterpret it to meet the needs and the understandings of the people of his day. In other words, the Law should not be an inflexible thing, but a fluid thing, reviewed as the human experience changes. By using the examples of Jesus, and by the Spirit which is always with us, we can gain true Wisdom in whatever situation meets us today. True Wisdom is seeing God’s order, and applying it to the present situation, filled with the Spirit, and with the example of Jesus. Let us pray that this week we make wise choices in our dealings with others that lead to a loving relationship with God and an experience of his kingdom.

A young man who goes to his parish priest and says to him, "Father, is it a sin for me to sleep with my girlfriend? The priest shakes his head and says, "Nope." The young man goes, "Cool!" And the priest adds, "So long as you are actually sleeping." In love relationships there are often more questions than answers. And so on this eve of Valentine's Day, a day in which we celebrate human love, it would be appropriate to ask ourselves, "What does the gospel we hear in church today say to us about this most important human value of love which we are celebrating.

Valentine or Lovers' Day is now celebrated almost everywhere in the world. Love happens and is celebrated everywhere in the world. But whereas in the developed world people tend to think of only one person, their special man or woman, as their Valentine, in the developing societies of Africa Valentine is understood and celebrated in a more embracive way. People give Valentine cards and gifts to their parents, their sisters and brothers, their parish priests and their teachers. Valentine has indeed become a universal affair. Has today's gospel anything to say to us about Valentine?

First of all, we must point out that today's readings were not chosen with Valentine in mind. So any relevance to Valentine is coincidental rather than intentional. All the same I believe that Matthew's gospel, which we read today, has an important message for us on Valentine's Day. Let us go to verses 23-24 which says:

So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23-24)

This passage reminds us of two important truths that we tend to forget, namely (i) that your lover is also your brother/sister, and (ii) that your partner is usually a good thermometer for gauging your spiritual temperature.

The early Christians used to refer to fellow believers who shared their faith in Christ as brothers and sisters. So your partner is also your brother or sister insofar as he or she shares your faith in God. Your partner or lover is also your companion in the spiritual journey to God. A good love relationship should recognize this spiritual dimension and make room for its adequate expression. Yet some couples tend to share everything except their spiritual lives. They make arrangements to wine and dine in a good restaurant, or to go and watch a good movie together, but they rarely think of going to church to worship God together as part of their Valentine's Day celebration. But people who know that their partners are also their brothers and sisters in the faith always make room for praying and sharing their faith together as an important way of supporting each other spiritually.

In fact your partner is so spiritually relevant to you that he or she often serves as a good thermometer for gauging your spiritual temperature. Many people never come to see how patient or impatient they are, how caring or self-centred, how responsible or irresponsible they are until they enter into marriage or a meaningful friendship. In is not an overstatement to say that if you are not doing well in your love life you are probably not doing well in your spiritual life either. How can you say that? Well Jesus just told us that if you brought your offering to God's altar and there you suddenly remember that your partner has something against you, drop your offering there beside the altar, drive home (since he or she did not come to church with you, to start with), make it up with him or her, then come back to the church, pick up your offering where you dropped it, and then proceed to offer it. Otherwise, if you went on and offered it without making it up with your partner, you might as well be making an offering as unacceptable as that of Cain. In other words, you can offer an acceptable offering or worship to God only when are reconciled with your neighbour, and your number one neighbour is your marriage partner.

Another passage in today's gospel that is relevant to Valentine, the Feast of Lovers, is this:

You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matt 5:27-28)

This passage brings up the important question of the distinction between love and lust which many people today find difficult to make. The gospel prescribes love and proscribes lust. What is the difference between the two? In plain words, love asks "What can I do for this person to make him or her happy?" Lust, on the other hand, asks "How can I use this person to derive as much pleasure for myself as possible?" Examples of lust abound. Here is a rare example of love:

Jacob and Anna had been married for nine years going on ten. Both wanted to use their tenth anniversary to show how much they loved each other. But they were poor, very poor. For three years now Jacob's grocery business had steadily dwindled to a shadow of what it used to be. Jacob had sold his radio and Grandfather's clock and the only thing he still had as a reminder of past affluence was his ivory pipe which he still stuck between his teeth all day as if he was smoking, although there was nothing in the pipe. He could no longer afford the tobacco. Even Anna missed the rich aroma that used to fill the house whenever her husband smoked. It made her so proud of her hero. Jacob was also proud of Anna. In spite of the hardship in the family she was still the most beautiful woman in the neighbourhood. Her rich golden hair was still the envy of other women and the pride of her husband.

As the anniversary drew near Jacob and Anna each wanted to do something special to make the other very happy on their anniversary. So Anna went to the local hair shop and asked how much they would give for her hair. In a few minutes, her beautiful hair was gone and she had twenty-five extra dollars in her purse. She covered her now clean-shaven head and headed straight to the tobacco shop where she bought a packet of quality tobacco, the type her husband used to smoke when he was rich, and headed home. Meanwhile Jacob had an idea. He went and sold his ivory pipe in the antique shop and bough an ivory hair band for his wife. At the dinner table they exchange their tenth anniversary gifts, tobacco from Anna to Jacob who had sold his pipe, and the ivory hair band form Jacob to Anna who had cropped her hair. That is love. Each had only one question in mind: What can I do to make him or her happy?

With love like that between Anna and Jacob, you can be sure there is one word that is not in their dictionary, and that is "divorce." Jesus' strong condemnation of divorce makes sense for people who are in a truly loving relationship. For people who are united by lust rather than love, it just doesn't make sense. Our prayer today as we celebrate Valentine's Day is that God help us to become truly loving men and woman able to maintain a lifelong relationship of love like that between Jacob and Anna.

There is a crisis of faith in the Church. Many Christians today, including practising and committed Christians, have only a shallow knowledge of the teachings of the Bible and the Church. In today's second reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul touches on one of the key causes of the problem, as well as what we can do to remedy the situation. The problem is the one-size-fits-all teaching that goes on in our churches, and the remedy is to return to teaching smaller groups of believers according to their various stages in the journey of faith .

Preaching in church is a very challenging activity. In school, pupils are grouped according to age and class. In church everybody is in the same class, the toddler, the child, the teenager, the young adult, their parents and grand-parents. The preacher addresses all these people, who naturally belong to different age and class levels, all at once. What we get from the pulpit is usually a one-size-fits-all teaching that does not specifically target the needs of any one of the age groups. If the preacher addresses his message to the specific needs of kids and those who are new to the faith, adults and veterans in the faith will find it boring. If the preacher focusses on the needs of adults and those who are mature in the faith, the younger ones find it equally boring. What can we do about this problem?

We can learn from the example of St. Paul and the early Christians. Let us connect what he told us last Sunday with what he is telling us today. Last Sunday, we read: "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1). Today he goes on to say, "Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:6). We can see that Paul always adapted his message to suit his audience. To those new in the faith he avoided lofty words of wisdom, but to those who are mature in the faith, he spoke the mature language of philosophy. When Paul said that he was all things to all people (1 Corinthians 9:22), he meant that he adapted his teaching to suit the faith needs of each group that he addressed.

We see this more clearly in his reprimand to the Corinthians, "I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready" (1 Corinthians 3:2). Just as a human person first needs milk and then solid food, so also in the spiritual life. It is the desire of the shepherd to see his sheep graduate from drinking only milk to eating solid food. Likewise, it is the desire of the Church to see her children grow up to become mature Christians, enlightened and empowered to explain the Church's teaching to others and lead them to the faith. It can be frustrating when, year in, year out, believers keep on needing milk instead of growing up to eating solid food. On this, the Letter to the Hebrews written two thousand years ago speaks to Christians of our times:

We have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull in understanding. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; 13 for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14)

What then can we do to facilitate our conversion from milk to solid food? First is to recognise that the once a week homily we hear on Sundays is not enough. We need to join an association of Christians who are serious about growing up in the faith. Such associations include small Christian Communities, Bible study and prayer groups, and other associations and sodalities that provide occasion for ongoing education in the faith. For God has called us not only to believe in the Gospel, but to grow in the Gospel to the point where we become teachers of the Gospel.

By Rt.Rev.Prof.Kasomo Daniel

Bishop Kasomo is the Bishop of The Society of St. Peter and Paul (SSPP)