17th Sunday after Pentecost EF
A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians 4:
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. Who is blessed forever and ever, Amen.
The Continuation of the Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew 22:
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I put thy enemies under thy feet’? 45 If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did any one dare to ask him any more questions.
“You are just, O Lord, and your judgements are right. Deal with your servant according to your loving kindness. Blessed are the sinless in their way, those who walk in the law of the Lord.” The words of today’s Introit should give us pause, because they raise a number of difficulties for our modern minds and hearts. In a sense, they are so foreign to what our culture teaches that they could have been written in the Klingon tongue.
Read the writings of some of the philosophers of this abased culture and you will know what I mean. The so-called “new atheists” have best sellers every year. They deny the existence of God because of the existence of evil. There’s a destructive tsunami in Japan, or horrible violence in Syria, or rampant poverty and disease in Africa. Moreover, these things have been going on for centuries, even millennia. The atheists ask “if there is a God, and God is just and good, then why does He permit or cause so much evil, suffering, and death?” They then conclude that there is no God, or that if there is a God, He is neither good nor just.
The psalm verse from the Introit confuses such folks just as much as the antiphon. Many of them do not admit the existence of sin, of personal sin, of personal responsibility. If humans do evil, it is because there are too many people on earth and not enough resources, or because they were raised in a broken family, or in poverty. If there are bad decisions, it is because the system is broken. Some say there is not enough welfare; others say there is too much. Some say there is not enough freedom; others say there is too much liberty. Some follow Luther’s lead and deny that humans have truly free will. So the statement of faith, “blessed are the sinless in their way, who follow the Law of the Lord,” is meaningless to them, since there is no Lord, there is no God-given Law, and there is no personal responsibility for evil.
The Christian witness realizes, with Chesterton, that the world has been turned completely on its head. If that were true in 1913, when he lived, then it is even more true in 2013, when political leaders–even some non-Catholic religious leaders–are telling us that abortion is a right, even a sacred right, that those who believe contraception is sinful must pay for it anyway, that two men or two women have a right to marry, and even force Catholic clergy to preside. The words of Isaiah chapter 5 come instantly to mind: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
The Hebrew word used here is “Oi,” and “woe” is really an English transliteration of it. Jesus uses it when he denounces the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. Jews today can be heard in a lament over evil to say “Oi, vay,” which is the worst form of dirge. I know that atheists are actually confirmed in their doubt by God’s reluctance to punish evil as soon as it is done. Even the psalmists were scandalized by the seeming triumph of evildoers–how they grow fat and sleek on the money they steal from the poor. But both opinions are in error. God does not ignore sin; He hates it. But He loves us more. His loving kindness and compassion are unending. That makes God look like a chump, like some kind of indulgent parent. God would rather be taken for an enabling dad than cut down His beloved children before they have had every opportunity to repent and be healed. That is one reason He calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, even if our neighbor has proved herself to be our enemy. Remember, Jesus loved us so much He became human, and gave up His life precisely when we were His mortal enemies, when we were enslaved by deadly sin. Jesus laid down His life for Pontius Pilate, Hitler, Stalin, and, yes, Nidal Hasan–if they had repented from their evildoing and accepted God’s forgiveness, He would be willing to give them eternal happiness (once they’d toiled several million years in Purgatory).
The judgements of God are right because He deals with all of us sinners out of His loving kindness. But His forgiveness is not the whole story. With forgiveness comes actual grace, the grace of action, the grace that enables us to do good–not just avoid evil. And so he answers the legal scholar, who had probably debated for years the rabbinic question, “which is the greatest of the six-hundred plus dictums of Torah,” with the perfect reply. The greatest commandment is a two-sided coin. We must love Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind. And the other side of this priceless golden drachma is like it. We must love our neighbor as ourselves. The commandment would be nothing without the muscle to obey, but the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus, crystallized in His Risen Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity we receive in Holy Communion, gives us that muscle, that divine energy, that grace. Moreover, St. Paul gives us the practicum to go with it: “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Lowliness means humbly realizing how weak we are without divine grace, and being grateful each day for that grace that lifts the poor and strengthens the hobbled. Meekness means treating everyone else as our betters, taking the path of service and always avoiding snobbery. Patience supports both, because some folks are just insufferable, and patience means bearing with those who can’t be borne. Why? Because the unity of the Church in the Holy Spirit brings peace to our gatherings and peace to our souls. If we all live like that, then our little corner of the Church, of Texas, will be blessed because we will be walking in justice, in the twofold Law of the Lord, and know peace. May the Lord preserve us in that peace.
