Jesus invites us to inner wisdom

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

“You have heard it said in ancient times... but now I say to you.” This phrase Jesus repeats three times in the course of today’s Gospel. These words are revolutionary. Jesus evokes three commandments found in the Old Testament to regulate our external behaviour: do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not bear swear false oaths, and tells us that he wants us to go deeper in observing them: we must also regulate the desires and passions of our hearts that lead to such sins. He invites us to an inner wisdom, a loving widsom that is both liberating and challenging.

Regarding the Old Testament injunction not to murder, in addition we need to purge our hearts of the desires that lead to murder – and other sins that harm our neighbour. We must overcome our tendency to criticise others, to reprove them, but above all we must overcome the root of all these sins which is anger. Indeed the pattern of Jesus’ life is that of non-violence. Even when he speaks challenging words, he does so with compassion and understanding, not with anger.

Regarding the Old Testament injunction not to commit adultery, in addition we need to purge our hearts of lustful thoughts directed towards others. We must avoid adultery with others not only in our bodies but also in our imaginations and our hearts. What Jesus is asking of us is that we respect ourselves and all others as temples of the Holy Spirit, and, to add a contemporary note, this includes abstaining from pornography which degrades so many caught up in that trade to the status of mere objects.

Regarding the Old Testament injunction not to swear falsely, Jesus tells us that if our hearts are transparent and authentic, if we do not harbour within ourselves the spirit of duplicity and deception, we do not need to artificially convince others of our sincerity, which may be false, by swearing by heaven, or by Jerusalem, or by our own heads, to use examples from his own culture. No, let our words by yes if we mean yes and no if we mean no. That is sufficient.

Jesus’ approach in this passage is liberating . The Pharisees imposed many extra regulations on the Hebrew people at the time of Jesus, and Jesus liberated the people from the burden of following them, though he did not reprove those who followed them sincerely. But these were means and not ends, and there is ample room for exceptions and following the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Jesus did not abolish the law, but he fulfilled it.

We struggle with similar issues today. Those of us who are older in the Church remember when many religious practices loomed large, and we had the sense that a failure to implement them faithfully was a sin, in some cases a mortal sin. I remember as a young priest going through the approved manuals and counting 23 mortal sins I could commit in celebrating the Eucharist! We have been liberated from many of these burdens in the aftermath of Vatican II, and our consciences breathe easier. But the underlying attitudes of fidelity and worship which the Church was trying to foster in people through its earlier regime of regulations and penalties remains. Fostering these attitudes are the purpose, the regulations are the means. We have to use our freedom responsibly, and remain accountable to the Lord for our choices. He is above all interested in where our heart is. Simply throwing away our earlier practices because we are no longer obliged to follow them is no answer. To do this would be to exchange our earlier regulated existence not with freedom but with licence. Hopefully you come to Church not because of an external threat but because of your desire to worship God, to find nourishment in the Eucharist and the word of God, to find and to build community. This is true freedom, because you are following external do’s and don’ts you are listening to the voice of the inner wisdom that resonates within your hearts.

It is more difficult to deal with disorder of anger and criticism and lust and duplicity which often reign within our hearts – to use the examples Jesus lays before us in today’s Gospel – than to simply abstain from killing, adultery, or swearing false oaths. So while Jesus liberates us in today’s Gospel, he also challenges us, to move from a morality grounded in external commandments to one grounded in inner wisdom. The commandments are necessary as are banisters on stairways, as a way to guard us. But to try to control our outer behaviour without dealing with our inner impulses is futile. Sooner or later our anger or lust or duplicity or whatever vice lurks within us will have its way, and we will engage in toxic and destructive behaviour.

How can we fulfill Jesus’ invitation to cleanse our hearts and not just our outer behaviour? We all struggle with the tendencies within our own hearts and at times we fail to control them. Is Jesus imposing a new burden on us which we cannot fulfill?

The answer to this question is found in the second reading. It speaks of God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, revealed to us through the Spirit. This is a wisdom based on love and compassion, God’s love and God’s compassion, which God wants us to receive into our hearts and share with others. Let us not pretend that we can fulfill on our own, with our own resources, what Jesus asks of us, but let us allow the Spirit to make us channels of His love, knowing that what Jesus asks of us he will give us the power to accomplish. All can be summed up in Augustine’s phrase: love, and do what you will. Not any love, but authentic love. We cannot really love unless God love in and through us. Let us allow that true love to enter into our hearts as we celebrate this Eucharist.