A Cycle –6^th Sunday of Ordinary Time 26

Mt. 5:17-37

Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. That seems to be an extremely low bar, for Jesus often chastised the Pharisees for their holier than though attitude.  Now Paul in this letter to the disciples in Corinth is reinforcing how the law is a necessary part of righteousness. Yet he knows more is needed beyond following the law and he states that in his letter to the Galatians.  In that letter Paul says if you are led by the Spirit, you are no longer in need of the law.  In other letters he calls the law our disciplinarian until the law of the Spirit guides our hearts. Without the Spirit we are in danger of becoming Pharisees whose hearts were far from God.    

In the gospel today, Jesus is redefining what it means to become righteous. Discipleship changes us and it demands our lives become instrumental in witnessing what it means to follow Christ.  How we live, act, and speak becomes our strongest witness to others.  Unlike the Pharisees, we must live by fulfilling the Spirit of the law.  We must not only follow the commandments, but we must also adhere to a stricter standard of the law.  If we are angry with our brother, we are as guilty as if we had killed our brother.  If we bring our gift to the altar and remember, we have something against our brother we must go and seek reconciliation with our brother. Living the gospel is more important than those dictated rules of sacrifice and offerings.  Forgiveness is a necessary and mandatory aspect of discipleship.  

When we began our faith journey, he law awas our training wheels keeping us on track and defining sin.  Obedience to the commandments was necessary and they demanded discipline. We found it necessary to control our tendency to seek self-satisfaction. That took willpower and discipline to overcome all temptations to break the law.  But Christ is telling us that was then and now we must live up to a higher expectation.  To meet this higher standard, we must have a change of heart.  Which is impossible for us but not for God. 

The thing we must do is to die to self. At some time in your faith journey you must accept the fact, God demands more than for us to show up on Sunday. More than just a short meditation which we call prayer or by our service to those in need.  Those things are easy, but they only require a little discipline, effort, and some sacrifice.  Jesus is telling us to examine ourselves against a new standard of discipleship. We are today’s disciples and must live lives that give witness to our belief in Jesus. If we ignore minor infractions of the law as acceptable then we send the wrong message to an unbelieving world.   

Jesus’s amplification of the law in today’s gospel was made to desire to receive a change in our hearts and minds. Jesus is telling us there is a standard we believe we must meet to become a disciple is not enough.  We must die to self and become more dependent on Christ.  Ther will never be a resting place where we can sit back and feel we have arrived. That is because we are expected to do more than just live on the margins of what is required.  What is required is for us to admit we need to be empowered by the Holy Spirit.  It was only through the transforming power of the Spirit that the disciples were able to evangelize the world.  We are also called to become witnesses of the Kingdom of God among us.  To do that effectively we need our own Pentecost.  That begins by doing exactly what they did, pray and invite the Holy Spirit into our lives.    

He is calling us to go deeper and when we do respond we will discover there will be more demand and more challenges to what we believe is possible.  But at the same time, we will be filled with an inner peace, confidence, and the ability to find joy in helping others discover what God expects of them.  What we can learn from this gospel is God demands we live the gospel message and by actions all will know who we follow.