Gustave Doré, Jesus Preaching on the Mount
For the past few weeks, our Gospel reading has been from Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount. In that long discourse, early in his ministry, Jesus lays out the vision of the Christian life. We might even say that he’s like a coach establishing the fundamental rules for his team of disciples before they go out to begin the long season. Living a moral life is a lot more important than sports, of course, and so I don’t mean to minimize what Jesus is saying by using this analogy. But just like a coach wants his team to strive for excellence, so too does Jesus want his disciples to be morally exceptional – to stand out as markedly different from the world around them by the way that they live. He isn’t satisfied, for example, with the Old Testament commandment You shall not kill; he says it’s wrong even to be angry toward someone else. You shall not commit adultery is too low of a bar for him; he says, don’t even look at someone else with lust in your heart.
However, true excellence sometimes demands not just higher standards but also transformed expectations. Just like a coach knows that he must help his team break certain bad habits, and help them do away with certain bad attitudes, so too does Jesus know that for us to truly live according to his vision of life, there are things within us that must be completely radically transformed. In the Gospel today, Jesus calls his disciples to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. It’s one thing to live more calmly than the rest of the world, or more chastely, or more truthfully – but it’s something altogether different to strive not just for excellence but for perfection.
Notice the context in which Jesus demands perfection: he’s not talking about any interior moral quality, or about how we relate to God, but rather about how we relate to others – and specifically, those who have harmed us, who hate us, who are our enemies. If this feels like a step too far, that’s precisely the point. Jesus is changing the rules of the game – he’s forcing his disciples to play according to an entirely different set of expectations. We might say that for Jesus the most painful and damaging sins are those of discord and division – vengeance, hatred, hardheartedness, refusal to forgive. Unlike other sins, these sins begin a cycle of violence; they harm both sides. The true test then of the Christian disciple is how we respond to the one who has hurt us – whether we will continue the cycle of division or instead will seek peace and reconciliation.
There’s a reason why this particular rule of Jesus is so fundamental. Peace, good will, reconciliation – those things get to the very identity of who Jesus is and what he has come to do. A lot of people can quote by heart John 3:16, maybe the most famous Bible verse of them all: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.” Maybe just as important though is the verse that comes right after, John 3:17. Do you know that one? “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” In other words, when Jesus came, the world was worthy of condemnation. The human race had rejected God – we had spurned his offer of relationship and hardened our hearts against him. But God did not seek vengeance toward us – instead he sent his Son as an offering of reconciliation, indeed as the one Mediator who by his Death and Resurrection would reestablish our friendship with God. When Jesus commands his disciples to be perfect, he’s commanding them to be perfect in their mercy – he’s commanding them to be like he himself. If God’s Son has come not for vengeance, but for peace and reconciliation, then those who are playing on his side must do the same.
Notice the context in which Jesus demands perfection: he’s not talking about any interior moral quality, or about how we relate to God, but rather about how we relate to others – and specifically, those who have harmed us, who hate us, who are our enemies. If this feels like a step too far, that’s precisely the point. Jesus is changing the rules of the game – he’s forcing his disciples to play according to an entirely different set of expectations. We might say that for Jesus the most painful and damaging sins are those of discord and division – vengeance, hatred, hardheartedness, refusal to forgive. Unlike other sins, these sins begin a cycle of violence; they harm both sides. The true test then of the Christian disciple is how we respond to the one who has hurt us – whether we will continue the cycle of division or instead will seek peace and reconciliation.
There’s a reason why this particular rule of Jesus is so fundamental. Peace, good will, reconciliation – those things get to the very identity of who Jesus is and what he has come to do. A lot of people can quote by heart John 3:16, maybe the most famous Bible verse of them all: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.” Maybe just as important though is the verse that comes right after, John 3:17. Do you know that one? “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” In other words, when Jesus came, the world was worthy of condemnation. The human race had rejected God – we had spurned his offer of relationship and hardened our hearts against him. But God did not seek vengeance toward us – instead he sent his Son as an offering of reconciliation, indeed as the one Mediator who by his Death and Resurrection would reestablish our friendship with God. When Jesus commands his disciples to be perfect, he’s commanding them to be perfect in their mercy – he’s commanding them to be like he himself. If God’s Son has come not for vengeance, but for peace and reconciliation, then those who are playing on his side must do the same.
Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci (attr.) (c. 1500)
The question, of course, is how? It can be easy to embrace the idea of peace and reconciliation in theory, but when someone actually does hurt us – and sometimes hurts us very badly – how can we forgive? There are a few things to keep in mind. First, there’s no hurt so grave that it has to rob us of what should be our greatest consolation: God’s love. That’s why St. Paul says in the Letter to the Romans: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8:35, 37). In other words, when hurts and trials come our way, especially at the hands of someone else, we have to focus on the love of God present in that moment. God is ready to help you to be an instrument of peace and reconciliation in that moment, if you lean on him. Sometimes such hurts can even be helpful, if they make us realize that perhaps we had been relying upon something else – someone else’s esteem, our own reputation, maybe even a false narrative that now is revealed to be untrue. The pain of hurt can sometimes be a purifying one.
A second important thing to remember is our own experiences of being forgiven. I’m sure we have all had at least a moment or two in life when we realized that we had seriously hurt someone else, intentionally or unintentionally, and we honestly asked for their forgiveness. Maybe we received it, and we can use that memory to offer forgiveness as we were forgiven. Maybe we didn’t receive it, and in that case, we can choose to act differently when the chance to offer reconciliation is afforded to us. If nothing else, we can focus on the mercy that God shows to us, for sins past and present. God doesn’t want us to forgive through gritted teeth – he wants us to be so radically transformed by the mercy of his Son that we cannot help but show that mercy to others, almost in spite of ourselves.
Friends, as in sports, rules are fundamental to the Christian life – not because we always live them out perfectly, but because if we keep striving to live them out, they will make us more and more perfect. There is no higher expectation of being a member of Jesus’s team than to put into practice the rule of mercy. Letting go of offenses, not seeking revenge, going above and beyond to help those whom we dislike, or even despise – these things are not easy. But the more we seek to do them, the more they shape our character, and define our identity, and indeed transform us into the image and likeness of God’s Son – the One who has come into the world not for vengeance but for salvation. Through the grace of this Eucharist, may we consider to whom we can be instruments of the Lord’s mercy and so help others to learn to play for his winning side.
A second important thing to remember is our own experiences of being forgiven. I’m sure we have all had at least a moment or two in life when we realized that we had seriously hurt someone else, intentionally or unintentionally, and we honestly asked for their forgiveness. Maybe we received it, and we can use that memory to offer forgiveness as we were forgiven. Maybe we didn’t receive it, and in that case, we can choose to act differently when the chance to offer reconciliation is afforded to us. If nothing else, we can focus on the mercy that God shows to us, for sins past and present. God doesn’t want us to forgive through gritted teeth – he wants us to be so radically transformed by the mercy of his Son that we cannot help but show that mercy to others, almost in spite of ourselves.
Friends, as in sports, rules are fundamental to the Christian life – not because we always live them out perfectly, but because if we keep striving to live them out, they will make us more and more perfect. There is no higher expectation of being a member of Jesus’s team than to put into practice the rule of mercy. Letting go of offenses, not seeking revenge, going above and beyond to help those whom we dislike, or even despise – these things are not easy. But the more we seek to do them, the more they shape our character, and define our identity, and indeed transform us into the image and likeness of God’s Son – the One who has come into the world not for vengeance but for salvation. Through the grace of this Eucharist, may we consider to whom we can be instruments of the Lord’s mercy and so help others to learn to play for his winning side.
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