Sunday, February 23, 2020

God loves us disproportionately – Matt 5:38-48

7th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A; Holy Infant parish.

The sun produces energy at a rate of 400 Yotta-Watts, that’s 400 Yotta Joules each second, and that’s 4 with 26 zeroes after it.  That’s the equivalent of this: if every man, woman and child on God’s green earth had their own nuclear power plant, and ran it for fifteen years, the total amount of energy produced would be the same as what the sun produces each second. That’s powerful.  That’s energetic.  God makes the sun rise. That’s a tiny fraction of God’s action in the world, of God’s love, of God’s grace.  And God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good.


That’s what lights up everything Jesus calls us to in the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus – the brilliant light who sets us aflame, like baptismal candles from the Easter candle, that we might be light for the world and set it ablaze with his fiery love.  Jesus, who implores us not to be tempted by the bushel baskets of hate that could sterilize that flame into dim ineffectiveness, even if they could never quite extinguish it.  Jesus who makes us the Temple of God, as St. Paul puts it, and longs for us to open our doors.

You have heard it said “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” – that’s Biblical.  That’s God’s gift.  That’s good.  It’s in Exodus 21; Exodus, the book of God leading His people to freedom.  Here, freedom from escalating violence.  The intent is to limit and define vengeance so as violence doesn’t escalate – you lost a tooth?  The greatest penalty you can demand is a tooth, no more. It’s got to be proportionate.  That’s a good rule.

Jesus has better.  He says: look.  You can only look because of this light, because of this brilliant sun that shines, on the evil and on the good.  God does not give us a well-proportioned response to precisely measured sin: He gives disproportionate, extravagant grace: always intimate, always personal, but always indiscriminate.  It’s 400 Yotta-Watt brilliance and then some, shining on the evil and on the good.  So if your cheek gets slapped, turn the other one.  It’s a small lamp to shine in the face of darkness, but it’s all Jesus asks of us.  Note that he says slapped, and slapped on the right cheek: a back-handed insult, not a life-threatening assault.  In today’s world, it would be irresponsible of me not to add an addendum: if you are being abused, get out and call for help. This verse does have a bad history of having been used to convince people being abused to stay with their abuser. That’s not what Jesus is saying. The way to love a violent person can be to leave, to report, to prevent the abuse from continuing and God’s Temple being defiled.  And that can be a light in the darkness, a light for those feeling trapped.

You have heard it said “Love your neighbor” – Yes, that’s Biblical.  We heard it in our first reading, from Leviticus (a book that gets way too bad a rap, by the way).  It’s God’s gift.  It’s good.  You’ll note that we didn’t hear “hate your enemy” from Leviticus. That’s not because it just didn’t happen to be in our reading; it’s not there.  But we have heard that said.  Unlike everything else Jesus quotes when he uses that formula, we weren’t hearing the Law or the Prophets when we heard “hate your enemy.”  We were hearing how sin has distorted God’s word.  We were hearing something that it’s all too easy to hear when you turn on the news or open up twitter.  We were hearing something that the covenanters at Qumran did write into their rule.  A perversion of God’s word just as common in Jesus’ day as in ours.

Jesus has better, better even than “love your neighbor.”  Love limitlessly.  Love utterly, wholly, catholicly, entirely, perfectly.  Be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.  This is daring trust Jesus has in us: that God and God’s love can become the measure of humanity and our love.

Blessed Basil Moreau, the founder of my religious community, the Congregation of Holy Cross, had his novices memorize the whole Sermon on the Mount.  And I’m sure this section of it was etched it on his heart too.  Because on his darkest night when the disasters of his young congregation on so many fronts weighed the heaviest on it, he turned to God.  There were financial problems, hostility from his bishop, people he sent on mission dying of cholera, calumnies uttered against him, his own children in religion turning on him.  He was at rock bottom and much of it was other people’s fault. 

But, he didn’t turn on them, he turned to God.  He turned to God full of anguish, with the piety of a desperate friend of God, he walked into church, walked past the altar rail and banged his fist on the tabernacle.  His problems didn’t go away. But his anguish was changed. He wrote later that he knew at that moment how Christ suffered on Calvary, and knew Christ was with him. He stood, staring at the crucifix, staring at the crucified who let himself be struck, let his garments be ripped, let himself be pressed to walk up that hill, and loved, loved us to the end.  He knocked and he stared because he knew that there dwelt Love, the 400 Yotta-Watt prodigious Love, the Love he must be bathed in if he was to be able to treat his brothers and sisters how he knew Jesus commanded him to.


I long for us to live in that light.  It’s brilliant.


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