Readings (Year A):
Sirach 15:15-20
Psalm 119:1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34
1 Corinthians 2:6-10
Matthew 5:17-37
Reflection: The spirit scrutinizes everything
The readings this week can be very unsettling, even icky, for anyone who associates law and order with oppression. Insistence on following the law at the expense of people’s well-being can feel especially gross in faith-based settings. Yet here we are!
This week’s psalm is asking us to respond with “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!” And the gospel reading, which features a legal lecture from Jesus as presented by Matthew, begins with:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
If you are someone like me, troubled by politics, legalism, and clericalism within the church, you may already feel yourself shutting down. “This is why I don’t want anything to do with church anymore,” you may be saying, “It is too judgy.”
I even wondered for a minute how someone like me, an interfaith seminarian gravely concerned about the state of injustice in the present-day United States, could possibly handle the reflection this week. How could I write on these readings, I asked myself, especially when so many people are using their faith to bludgeon others in the name of “law and order”?
And then, in a moment of prayer, the words of Rev. Dr. John Mabry, one of my seminary professors at the Chaplaincy Institute, came to me and recentered my approach to the readings. In his teachings on how to read and to study scripture, Mabry is fond of saying, “This scripture was not written for you.”
You may take issue with such a statement if in your devotional practice, every word feels like it is an inspired message from God. Yet it is always important to take context into account and ask ourselves whom the author of the text was writing it for. Matthew was writing to Jewish people who wanted to follow the teachings of Christ but did not yet have a formal structure called “Christianity” as a guide. These early followers that Matthew wrote for and who Jesus preached to would have been concerned about Jewish law and custom not being followed.
What Jesus taught and what Matthew further proclaimed to the early Jewish followers of the Christian faith is that you have nothing to worry about. What you believe will still be respected here, perhaps in a different way. The emphasis on the law to people who were taking a risk in following Jesus likely landed as very comforting. When I can appreciate this context, the gospel passage can feel very adaptive and accommodating, rather than scary.
And if you are still worried that the first reading, the responsorial psalm, and the gospel might feel too intimidating in their legal emphasis, I encourage you to draw your attention to the last line of the second reading, from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “For the spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God.”
Scholars generally view the ancient city of Corinth as having been obsessed with power, honor and glory, at this time in history. So to its residents, Paul suggests a different way: trusting in the wisdom of the Spirit. The Greek word ereunaō, translated here as “scrutinizes,” means to examine, investigate, or search. So yes, even the ways of God, the laws of God, can be searched and reexamined if the Spirit is revealing a new truth.
For this interfaith modern Catholic who aligns with the spirit of the law much more than its letter, in Paul’s words here, I actually find comfort.
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