6th Sunday of Ordinary Time
This weekend we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on Saturday as well as the world day of Prayer for the sick. We remember in a special way all those who are sick in the places where we live as well as all those caregivers who look after them. Following two Sundays of discipleship training we come to the discipleship that is the easiest to understand. It is about compliance, about rules and regulations. The First reading from Sirach sets the theme very clearly. “If you choose to keep the commandments, they will save you: if you trust in God you shall live. Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” That is a clear statement about will-power, choice. There seems to be nothing about using our heads to think, to discover meaning, nothing about growing spiritually, nothing about forming our personal characters. Just show me the rules, give me the commandments, let me know what behaviour is expected and I’ll choose life.
Stick to the letter of the law and we’ll be saved from an eternity of damnation and that’s what the pharisees in the Gospel for this weekend were all about keeping the rules and regulations. In the Gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus tells us that he has come to fulfil the law not to abolish or replace it. When he introduced the New Law of the Kingdom of God Jesus said something that was absolutely shocking to those heard what he told them that the holiness of the people had to surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees. How could anyone be holier than the Pharisees who were supposed to be holy men”! They dressed well, they fasted said their prayers loudly for all to hear. Jesus explains, our external actions must be a reflection of what we are really like. If what we do is not a reflection of who we are, then we are hypocrites. Hypocrite, is the word that Jesus uses over and over to describe the Pharisees. They were considered the righteous and holy ones who in truth were neither righteous or holy in so many ways. Jesus’ challenge was not only to his followers, but to the Pharisees and scribes as well.
Their religious faith was to go deeper than exterior works – the right motives were supposed to support the right behaviour. His demands are high indeed! They seem impossible to achieve. The Pharisee spent a lot of time and energy fulfilling the Law like so many people today the law was more important than compassion. They were of the middle class and unlike the desperately poor, who were most of Jesus’s followers, the Pharisees had the education and leisure to pursue the purity of observance. What chance did the illiterate, overworked and burdened poor followers of Jesus have? For that matter, what chance do we have in fulfilling these teachings? Jesus’ demands are more radical; his vision sharper; his expectations greater in regard to looking after his poor illiterate, overworked and burdened followers. When we see our own record of doing good against the demands of Jesus in the Gospel, we all come away feeling helpless. Our own efforts look so shabby against the clear unambiguous demands of the larger vision that Jesus had.
May we be courageous in taking up the challenge that Jesus vision gives each one of us today that is the call to live our lives so that everyone will see that we are faith filled people who live our lives with the compassion of God for those around us in our hearts and that we are not afraid to show it.
Fullerton T 