Beyond the "gooder" life

Over the past few weeks we have been hearing at least two things (and there could be many more) from the Gospel of Matthew: (1) there is a great danger, even for the Church, if faith is reduced to a formula and (2) that the Church is in great danger if it tries to avoid offering itself fully to both God and to neighbour. This is why Jesus tells his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount that he has not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. The purpose of shinning light on how we live is to get us to live God’s way and not our own.

Jesus’ coming to us was not to make things easier or even better. The purpose of the Jesus coming and of shedding light on our way of living is so that we can live life differently – in an altered and transformed way. We are not just to go through the motions so that we obey the rules, we are called to live because we are being drawn into the kingdom of heaven, into God’s presence, and thus into eternal life.

The Gospel this week reminds us that we need to be aware of what is going on in our own lives. It is not enough to say that we have not done certain things like commit murder or adultery. We have to examine ourselves concerning the thoughts, feelings and attitudes we hold in our hearts. It is not enough by kingdom standards, to say that we have obey and not physically harmed someone, when we have held anger, hate, mistrust, slander, false humility, lack of generosity and hospitality, arrogance, lust and impiety. It’s not just a matter of what we do and don’t do on a day by day basis as important as such things might be. Our emotions and attitudes come into play as well. And if this all this a bit much to take in, we need to remember how this sermon started a few weeks back. Blessedness is not just happiness and it is more than just a simple blessing. We are not blessed because we are always right or that we are even doing this particularly well. We are a blessed people precisely because of where our hearts and lives are going and who it is that go with us. New life in Christ is more than daily rule keeping; it is a life that is dedicated to service and offered in loving sacrifice. Our life is empowered by such living and such living enlivens and raises the level of prayer and of worship precisely because it is a life that is coming towards the kingdom and to eternity.

Living a life that interprets the Law the way that Jesus does causes us to move beyond the demand to make our lives the service and the sacrifice that honours both God and neighbour.  Reframing our faith and relationships in the way that Jesus calls us to causes us to confront some of the easy truces we make with ourselves. We commend ourselves for not doing things we shouldn’t do, like committing murder or adultery but then do something else that causes injury like slandering a neighbour behind the back.  We pat ourselves on the back for not going outside the martial relationship to satisfy sexual desire but then build relationships with other people, with television, with work, with sports, with the computer and internet that exclude the one we promised to love above everyone else Such actions render us unable to offer our gifts to God or to anyone else until such a thing is dealt with. We are called to live such a high standard.

The work of this holy season of Epiphany calls us to see Jesus for who he really is and to recognize we are not called to a “gooder” life. We are called to transformation, beginning with ourselves. Lets live out life this week in his strength and in Christ grace and peace.