Black And White Morality--Absolutely!

Sixth Sunday in Course 2025

It’s likely that if you were educated, as I was, mostly in the 1960s or later, you might have bristled a bit at today’s Scripture passages. They have moral language that is very much black-and-white. If you trust in God and follow His way, you’ll bear much fruit; if you trust only in human beings, you’ll dry up and blow away. So says the prophet Jeremiah. Now we can understand how it is that Jeremiah would speak in stark prophetic language. Every time he told the Jerusalem Jews that they needed to repent and reform their ways, they either laughed at him or threw him down a cistern into the muddy bottom. Even after the Babylonians did conquer Jerusalem and burn it to the ground, and they asked Jeremiah to find out what God wanted them to do, and he told them to stay in the land and rebuild it, they thought they knew better and even dragged him off to Egypt with themselves. Jeremiah knew what God wanted for them, but they continually rebelled. From his experience we get the word “jeremiad,” which means “a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom.”

The psalmist may have had the prophet in mind when he wrote the first psalm we just prayed: the good man or woman meditates on the Lord’s law of love, even in the nighttime when trying to fall asleep after an examination of conscience. It’s a good idea for each of us to stretch out our roots to the water of life. Those with horticultural experience know that under most streams there is an underground stream, one that can still run when the bed of the creek has dried up. If your roots are long enough to reach the subsurface water, your plants will still green up and even bear fruit. That means when you can’t see or feel the Lord’s action helping you to grow, even when you are suffering, if you push your spiritual roots toward God, He will assist you with His grace.

Most of us are familiar with the chapters in St. Matthew’s Gospel broadly titled “the Sermon on the Mount.” What we have from St. Luke today is often called the “Sermon on the Plain” and must have come from a different location in the Tradition, maybe a place without mountains or hills. “Blessed are the poor” is the way Matthew styles Christ’s words, but he adds “in spirit.” And we hear three beatitudes from St. Luke, followed by three curses. Very black and white, again.

We can and maybe should “heavenize” the blessings St. Luke shares with us. Blessed are the poor in the kingdom of God, because in heaven all of us will have the Beatific Vision, union with the Blessed Trinity. We will be divinized, and it can’t get any better than that. So no more hunger or crying, just as we read in the Book of Revelations.

But what about these “curses”? I don’t know about your financial situation, but compared to 99% of the world’s population, most North Americans are wealthy. If we have a house and two cars and a pool and investment account, are we cursed? Look at the rest of the condemnation; “you have already received your comfort.” That sounds more like Christian teaching from generations, also found in the letters of Paul: accumulate for adequate shelter, food, clothing, emergencies and safety, and then share from the surplus with the poor. The words “well fed” probably refer to people with surplus wealth binging and eating and drinking the most expensive food and beverages. And “laughing now” might refer to a life that ignores the suffering folk and spending all the time in pastimes for enjoyment, like non-stop video games, sports venues and other entertainments. Enjoying life in moderation, while taking care of obligations to others, is not what Jesus is condemning.

And, by the way, that suggests as we prepare for the coming season of Lent, we might take time to examine our lifestyles and cut back the excess so we can devote more of our assets to helping the poor and suffering of our communities.

Let’s look at St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians so we can have a better, Christian look at the future: apparently there were people in or close to the Corinthian church who had lost Christian friends or relatives to death. Their bodies were in the ground, but they heard from Paul and others that they would rise at the end of time. Maybe they had the wrong idea about the general resurrection when Jesus comes in glory to take us with Him to heaven. Whatever the cause, they were doubting the dogma of the resurrection of the just into union with God. Maybe they thought of the human body as matter holding back their spirits, and they didn’t realize that Jesus’s resurrection was the model for our own. So Paul uses some logic with them: