A Cycle – 30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 23

Mt. 22:34-40

Before Jesus began His ministry, John the Baptist cried out “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  We are familiar with those words but what exactly does it mean to repent?  Does it mean to be sorry and to seek reconciliation?  We know from the scriptures; John was exhorting the Israelites to do something even harder than reconciliation.  He was promoting a radical change in how they lived their faith.  Then when Jesus began His ministry promoted that same radical change in how the people should approach their faith and like John, it got Him into trouble with the religious leaders.

Today we see a Pharisee, a scholar of the law, try to entrap Jesus by doing what lawyers are good at doing, asking tough questions.  “What is the greatest commandment?  Every person gathered around Jesus heard that question and their minds began to reflect on the commandments, the over six hundred laws and wondered which one Jesus would say was the greatest.  It was not an easy question to answer because they all understood the impact of breaking one law.  Also, the Torah not only gave them the ten commandments God gave to Moses it also includes six hundred and thirteen prescribed moral, dietary and ceremonial laws.  Which one would be the greatest?

Without realizing they were asking the “Word made flesh” to condense the law into one commandment.  If that were possible, just think of how easy it would be for us to do God’s will.  We would be back to the one commandment God gave Adam and Eve. But we like those Israelites, have an extensive list of laws that the church tells us is necessary to be in right standing with God.  We, like the Pharisees, have been taught we must follow the laws of God and the Chruch and we find ourselves unable to follow every one of them.

But we have been able to separate them into grave sins and small sins making it possible for us to feel better about ourselves.  But is adhering to the laws and rituals enough?  We know how often Jesus chastised the Pharisees telling them “…they liked to appear religious in public, but God knows their hearts (Lk.15:16).  He told them they “… honored God with their lips but their hearts were far from God” (Mt. 15:8).  He told them they were like “…whitewashed tombs which on the outside are beautiful but inside they are unclean” Mt. 23:27. It is our hearts God is interested in not how well we can be obedient.  What we fail to understand is how God wants our hearts not our blind, strict obedience to laws and rituals.

Jesus, knowing their hearts, hits them with something they do not expect Him to use in His answer.  He quotes from the Torah: saying “You shall love the lord your God, with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul” (Deut.6:5).  Then He continues by saying “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:19).  These two laws were given to Moses by God as were the ten commandments and the six hundred and thirteen laws. Yet they do sum up the entirety of the laws of God and the church.

Jesus takes the two laws to sum up the entirety of what God expects, and it silences them. As it should us, because we are blinded by thinking the laws can save us.  We cannot save ourselves because we are in violation of the very heart of the law. Loving God and loving neighbor.   

Jesus knows how easy it is for us to be obedient to the law but at the same time holding back the one thing He desires from us and that is our hearts.  It is easy for us to believe we are loving God by following His commandments.  But we deceive ourselves when we believe we are being “righteous or holy” because we are so good at following the law.  That was why Jesus kept pointing this out to the Pharisees. They measured their standing with God by how well they obeyed the six hundred laws.  But look at how they treated the man born blind from birth and you can easily see how we may be good by the measure of the law, but we are not living according to God’s will. 

Today’s gospel is challenging us to examine ourselves and honestly determine if we are Pharisees or are we disciples.  Do we equated our ability to follow the laws as doing God’s will and thus our own righteous.  Do we like the Pharisees, look down on those who break the laws as being outside of God’s grace?  Do we look upon our inability to overcome habitual sins and have given up on God’s mercy and His ability to changer us?  The Pharisees looked at the followers of Jesus with that same distain and upon Jesus because He said things and did things which were clearly against the law. Jesus touched lepers, dined with sinners, associated with tax collectors. 

It is interesting to me that the one Pharisee who Jesus converts was Saul of Tarsus.  Saul who was arresting the so called Christians and bringing them back to Jerusalem to be tried and put to death.  Saul whose message became a force converting the gentile world to believe in Christ. What made the difference between him and other Pharisees?  It was Saul’s encounter with Jesus.  A moment when Jesus got Saul’s attention and touches his heart.

Today Jesus wants to have that same encounter with us.  Are we going to respond as the Pharisees did and deny Him and continue to seek God by believing our salvation is in the law. Or are we going to invite Him to touch our eyes, our minds and our hearts and show us how we can become new creations in Christ by the transforming power of Holy Spirit opening our minds to hear the good news.