THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT – THE CONCLUSION

The final verses of the Sermon on the Mount contain a veritable potpourri of adages that the disciple needs to hear and dare to take to heart.  Jesus puts before us the law that governs the new way and sums up the standards by which disciples will be judged. By now it should have been clear to that first assembly gathered before Jesus on that mountaintop that if they were going to choose to be disciples of the Lord, the law that would govern their lives would be the law of love.  Jesus would affirm what the Hebrew Bible teaches, that God’s law can be summed up in two statements: Love God with your entire being.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  And his whole public ministry was devoted to living out the two great commandments.

As the full expression of God in flesh and blood, Jesus lived in union with God.  As Christians, we have come to believe that God is a trinity of persons.  The Son is the second of the three persons.  The love that binds them as one is the Spirit.  So we come to understand that our God is a community of love, ever active, ever creating, and holding all of creation that bears the image of the Creator in love.  God is ever mindful of all that is.  The universe is an unfolding and developing reflection of the Creator.  Each person is created in the image of the Creator.  So it is that Jesus can declare, “the Father and I are one.”  And he can promise his disciples that if they are faithful they will be drawn into that community of love.  Just as the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father, so will they live in the disciples.  The Spirit empowers that.  The poet declared that the earth is charged with the grandeur of God.  So, too, are God’s people.  God’s love called us into being.  All we have to do is imitate Jesus and love God in return.

What does it mean to “love your neighbor as yourself?”  One expression of that love is what has come to be called “The Golden Rule.”  “Treat others the way you would have them treat you,” Jesus said; “this sums up the law and the prophets.”  It may sound naïve to ask it, but how many of the world’s evils would vanish if the Golden Rule were lived and practiced by all?  Who would there be left to exploit, to bilk, to abuse, to rape, or to kill?  What would happen to the machines of war?  Would there be any question regarding equal rights for all races, and both genders?  How could there be such a thing as capital punishment?  What would the elderly and the enfeebled have to fear?

That litany may sound naïve, but remember that some have called the Sermon on the Mount, the Magna Carta of the new era that begins with Christ, the Magna Carta of the Church.  Christ came to reorder creation distorted from God’s plan for it by sin’s entrance into Eden.  Sins have been washed away in the Blood of the Lamb.  The Resurrection and the Pentecost that followed are the dawn of the new creation.  Remember how those gathered in that upper room were transformed when the wind howled and the fire danced over their heads.  They were the first to herald the New Creation in Christ.  It is hard to believe in that creation when believers continue to live disordered lives.

What did “treat others as you would have them treat you” mean when translated by the life Jesus lived?  “Treat” becomes “Love.”  “Love one another.”  “By this will all people know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  We shouldn’t move on too quickly.  An important reflection here would result from allowing yourself to be in a vulnerable position, to identify with someone who is not able to defend or even care for himself.  Be there.  Experience the anxiety that would result from your no longer being able to fend for yourself, that would result from your needing someone else.

I heard about a fascinating retreat experience for a group of high school seniors.  Through their classes, they had heard much about the plight of the poor and about the people who lived on the streets.  But these young people were far from poor.  They lived very comfortable lifestyles.  Poverty could only be considered notionally.  Their teacher challenged them to live as one of the poor.  They were driven to various parts of the inner city, that part of the city that some would describe as the slums, or Skid Row.  They were told where the shelters were should they find themselves desperate.  They had only cents in their pockets and were expected to struggle for two days and two nights as they would have to, were they in fact poor.

Two changes in their thinking resulted.  To a person, they had a new and profound respect for people who struggle in those conditions regularly.  They witnessed the scorn heaped on the homeless by some passers by.  They had been told that they could not speak out against any tirades or abusive language.  They were told to “feel it as if the words were being directed at you.”  In fact, one young man did experience it first hand as he was flailed for being a lazy (the b. word) and an embarrassment to society.

The other thing some of them came to appreciate was how vulnerable they really were.  They were embarrassed to have to beg for money in order to have enough for a bowl of soup or a cup of coffee.  And when they held their hands out and asked for spare change, hungry as they were, they hope that at least “this person,” the next one coming toward them would respond to their desperation.  More than one concluded that they would never feel about beggars the same way again.

And, oh how they appreciated their own bathrooms and hot showers and the comfort of their own beds.  It wasn’t easy to sleep either on the street or in one of the shelters

The Golden Rule has much more urgency for the one in danger of being abused than it does for the strong and the elite.  Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta is quoted as saying that when she was ministering to the poorest-of-the-poor she had become acutely aware that she was then ministering to Christ in his passion.  As disciples how different would our perspective be were we convinced that Christ lives in all of us, but especially in the poor.  That is one reason why Pope John Paul II urged the Church to recognize and exercise the fundamental option for the poor, their primacy of place among the people of God.

Enter through the narrow gate. You remember Jesus’ statement that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle.  Be sure that Jesus was not talking about a sewing needle.  He was talking about the narrow gate into Jerusalem.  A heavily laden camel could not pass through it.  The load would have to be taken off.  The camel would have to crouch in order to make it through, the same way the rich man needs to be divested if he is going to recognize his own poverty and accept God’s reign.

“The road that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it.  But how narrow is the road that leads to life.”  If it isn’t obvious by now that in Jesus’ mind it is not easy to be a disciple, then we will never understand that.  I don’t feel a compulsion to talk about damnation.  I’d like to think that for even the worst there is still the possibility of salvation.  There may well be a rigid atonement process to be gone through – some call that purgatory – but since God wills the salvation of all people, I like to think that in this arena God has God’s way.

Jesus urges us to choose the narrow way.  In our day, that means swimming against the tide of self-indulgence in a society that values wealth, position, power, youth and beauty above all else.  Self-indulgence is the only item that obviously goes against Christ’s teaching.  To be self-indulgent is to be self-absorbed.  Nothing makes one blinder to the needs of others than self-absorbed self-indulgence.  All of the other desired goals of today’s society can be used for the good of others.

From time to time, I have wondered what it would have been like to be moneyed.  I remember my father telling me that if I had wanted to be wealthy I had chosen the wrong vocation.  When I have thought about being wealthy it has been with the fantasy centering about what I could have done with the wealth.  It might be fortunate that I never experienced the wealth nor had to struggle with the temptation to think that my importance corresponded with my bank accounts.  It is inspiring to read what Bill and Melinda Gates strive to do with the monies in their foundation.  They are not the only ones who see the importance of giving back to society from what has been given to them.

In reality, very few in the United States of America know the poverty experienced by millions in Developing Countries.  I witnessed poverty during one brief tour of Kenya and Uganda.  Those countries know 12 percent employment and a monthly wage that amounts to a pittance.  Having seen a Kenyan Super Market with mostly barren shelves, I remember the revulsion I felt upon my return to these shores the first time I went into a Safeway market.  The shelves teemed with more varieties of pet foods and beauty aids than was the case with the shelves in Kenya stocked only with basic essentials.

The powerful, the youthful, and the beautiful can use their gifts to the benefit of the weak, the aged, and those not so physically endowed.  Again there are wonderful examples of those from those so blessed that do exhibit compassion and concern for the poor and disenfranchised.  They are choosing the narrow gate.

I think of Henri Nouwen as an example.  He was a brilliant theologian, prolific writer, and priest.  Much of his life was a quest to find the way of living that would bring him peace.  He suffered a nervous breakdown.  Then he came upon L’Arche Community.  Founded by Jean Vanier, the basic premise of the Community is that a church will not truly be the Body of Christ until every stratum of society is represented in it.  In L’Arche communities, the healthy and strong live with and care for those less able.  Nouwen spent the last years of his life caring for a young man who could do absolutely nothing for himself.  And in so doing the priest found peace.

The narrow gate means something different for each person who has to choose it.  Those who choose the monastic life may do so for that reason.  But the challenge is for everyone.  All of us are called by the Lord to enter by the narrow gate.  In essence, I believe that is a call to imitate Jesus in a life of service.  It may be difficult to break out of the isolation that enwraps the self-absorbed.  That is what conversion is about.  With the grace and inspiration of the Spirit, all things are possible.

So we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  We have reflected on the Lord’s words to that first assembly gathered at his feet on the mountaintop and have realized that the Sermon is meant for us, too.  Now the Lord tells us that if we hear his words and put them into practice we will have nothing to fear.  He uses the example of the person who builds his house on a rock foundation and therefore does not have to fear the worst of storms.  The house will stand through it all.  The other one builds a house on sand.  You know what follows.

Hearing the Sermon and putting it into practice means to choose to live a life of faith.  It means to hear the prompting of the Spirit and choose to respond to Jesus’ invitation to follow him.  There is strength that results from that union lived in the community of believers.  In the best of times, faith and union with Jesus helps us keep perspective.  In the worst of times, faith and union with Jesus enables us to persevere with confidence to the end.

We are an Easter people and alleluia is our song.  That means we are a people who realize the power of Christ’s dying and rising to transform us and help us to be part of the kingdom, part of the new Creation born of his blood and transformed by his gift of the Spirit.  The challenge for us as individuals and as church is to constantly question whether we are living the Gospel.  Are these the values that radiate from who we are and what we do?  When people experience us as individuals and as the faith-community that is the Church, do they see Christ continuing to pour himself out in loving and humble service, convincing each one ministered to the s/he is the beloved of God?

Our lives must center on the Eucharist.  It is there that the transformation of bread and wine and of our being takes place.  When we take and eat and take and drink, then we are sent to be that Body of Christ in the world, announcing in action the Sermon begun and meant for all to hear and take to heart.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT: THE POWER OF PRAYER

(Matthew 7:7-11)  This section of the Sermon on the Mount is among the most problematic.  Taken literally, it would seem that Jesus is telling his disciples that whatever they ask for from God they will receive it.  The problem is the contrary experience of so many believing people.  They prayed fervently.  Their prayers were not answered, at least as they had hoped they would be.

Think of parents who prayed over their gravely ill child, prayed for a miracle that would restore the child to health, only to enter into grief as their child died.  Think of the person praying for the mending of a troubled relationship only to see the other abandon the relationship to take up another with someone else.  Think of those terrorized during the genocide between the Hutus and the Tutsis.  In 1994, the Hutus slaughtered some 800,000 Tutsis, even though thousands of Tutsis prayed for deliverance as they crowded into churches where they should have experienced sanctuary.  The Belgians who should have defended them abandoned them.  Both sides were predominantly Catholic.  Then there are those who pray fervently that this will be the time for them to win the mega lottery.  Seems trivial in comparison, doesn’t it?  Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive.  Seek and you will find.  Knock and it will be opened to you.”

It angers me when I have heard some say with smug and judgmental attitudes that people’s prayers aren’t answered because their faith is weak or they don’t pray hard enough.  Having journeyed with people through their desperate times and prayed with them, I can attest that never did I see evidence of weak faith or a lack of fervor.  What does seem clear is that their experience proved to be a furnace that purified and refined them as they emerged paragons of belief.  They knew God far more intimately then than they had when the crises first entered their lives.

I remember sitting by the bedside of a lad who was in the last stages of leukemia.  He had prayed and so had his parents and brother and sister that somehow the leukemia would be conquered and he would be cured.  The doctors said it wouldn’t be so.  Death was not far away.  His breathing was labored.  His fingers fidgeted with the blanket that covered him.  Earlier in the evening I had anointed him and he received Holy Communion.  His parents had gone home by the time I returned.  He took a sip of water from the glass I held and then he lay back on the pillow.  “Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Whatever you want,” I said.

“It might have been a dream, but I don’t think so.  They were standing at the foot of my bed.  Some of them I had not seen for a long, long time.  Some I had actually forgotten.  They nodded and smiled and said they were waiting for me.

“I hope my folks know where I am going.  I hope someday they will be happy for me.  Tell them that I’ll come back for them when it is their time.”

On another occasion I had gone to the hospital to anoint a parishioner.  I asked at the nurses’ station for the patient’s room.  When I walked into a stranger’s room and was about to excuse myself for intruding, the patient looked up with a start.  “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t think you would come for me.”

So, I shifted gears, so to speak, didn’t tell him that I was looking for someone else, and said that I was happy to visit with him.  I pulled up a chair and listened as he told me that it had been 35 years since he had received Communion.  He went to mass almost every weekend but never dared to approach the altar.  “You see my wife left me all those years ago.  We divorced and she moved to the other side of the world.  I raised my kids in the faith.  That’s for sure.  But because I was divorced I knew I could never take Communion again.  You know what I prayed for all along?  That a priest would come and take care of me before I died.  I’m awfully glad to see you.”

We chatted on and he told me that he had never married again.  Somehow he had always felt married to the wife who left.  It hurt when his pastor at the time told him he could not go to Communion because of the divorce.  But he accepted the discipline and made spiritual communions instead.

I can still see the tears rolling down his cheeks as I anointed him.  He smiled and nodded as I held the host up before him.  When he had taken the host, he smiled again.  Then he said, “Thank you.  I think I would like to sleep now.”  I never saw him again.

I believe in the power of prayer.  I believe Jesus when he says, “Ask and you will receive.”  And I also believe that prayers are answered far in excess of what we pray for.  If it were simply a matter of praying for some thing and our knowing that we would receive that thing like a child who asks Santa for this or that only to find it under the tree on Christmas morning, prayer would be trivialized.  Remember Jesus praying in the garden the night before he died?  He prayed with such intensity that his sweat became like drops of blood, Luke’s Gospel tells us.  What did he pray for?  That he would be spared the horrors that tomorrow would bring.  Wouldn’t the Father answer the Son’s prayer?  Oh, yes, but in ways beyond one’s wildest imaginings.

The blind man asked Jesus, “Lord, that I might see.”  Through this encounter and the mud made from Jesus’ spittle and smeared on the man’s eyes, the blind one had his sight restored.  And he recognized Jesus as Lord and knew that God’s reign was beginning for him.

What Jesus is promising as the fruit of prayer is that all people, Jew and Gentile, that all who seek God will find God.  All those that yearn for the Kingdom of God will enter it.  Ask.  Seek. Knock.  Be earnest in the quest and you will receive, find, and have the door opened for you.  It seems obvious when we hear Jesus say it.  He puts it in terms that we can all appreciate.  We are brought back to the parent-child relationship in the Lord’s Prayer.  Even the basest know how to give their children things that are good and good for them.  Push that to the nth degree with God as the heavenly parent and you as the child in need and how can you doubt that God will draw you into that loving relationship and bring you safely home to the heavenly kingdom?

Many of the saints who were also mystics wrote about their difficulties with prayer.  In the beginning of their faith lives, God seemed very near and their lives were flooded with joy and peace.  But then came what they variously described as the Dark Night.  The comforts of prayer vanished.  God seemed distant.  Doubt entered their faith lives.  Some of them cried out for consolation.  Silence.  Then the fog lifted and consolation returned.  Their prayers remained silent.  There was no need for words, no need to tell God what they needed.  They entered into what is called the Unitive Way.  God opened the door and they gazed at each other with love.

In the gospels we hear accounts of Jesus, the miracle worker.  The blind see.  The lepers are cleansed.  The poor hear the Good News.  Even the dead are raised to life again.  But that does not mean that all the blind saw.  Many of the lepers were not cleansed.  And many of the dead did not see life in this world again.  There were miracles.  There are miracles today.  Their purpose is the same now as it was then, to give hope.  Miracles are signs of God’s bounty and love.  They encourage those of us in need or difficulty to believe and live in hope.  Love will survive even as we learn to accept that we do not have here a lasting city.

We honor crosses and wear them around our necks and hang them over our beds.  Odd isn’t it?  The cross is a means of torture and execution.  Jesus died on the cross after all his prayers that the cross would be taken from him.  But that was not the end of the story.  Jesus was the victor on the cross.  He kept his trust in the Father even when the darkness seemed to envelope him.  He cried out with the words of the psalm: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  But that psalm ends with God vindicating the one who felt abandoned.  Jesus was raised up.  The cross became for us a sign of victory only because of the Resurrection.  If we ever doubt, the cross tells us that God is faithful and will deliver us.  Darkness will never extinguish the Light.  God will always bring us into the dawn and the life that is in store for us when that last door opens to us.  All we have to do is knock.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT: AVOIDING JUDGMENT

Think back to the line in the Lord’s Prayer.  Remember that we were taught to pray for the forgiveness of our debts, or trespasses, or our wrongful acts to be reflective of the way we forgive those who act wrongly toward us.  Those who heard the condition placed on God’s forgiveness for the first time might have had a moment of pause and even asked the person next to them if they had heard Jesus correctly.  “Did he just say what I think he said?”

Twice-told tales lose their impact through repetition.  The same is true of axioms and admonitions.  If you have said the Lord’s Prayer at least once a day, imagine how many times that phrase has tripped from you lips.  By now it might have very little impact or cause you slight reason for pause.  I have to admit that that was true for me until I prayed it in the context of my need to forgive another and wondered if I could.

Now, as a reflection on the Lord’s Prayer and our need to forgive that flows from it, we are confronted with what is tantamount to a ban on judging others’ deeds.  Up to now we might have thought that a judgment could stand even when forgiveness was extended.  There is much to consider here.  And just as that first audience might well have squirmed at this point, so might we as we come to understand the implications for our own interior being.  In both cases, God’s forgiveness and judgment hang in the balance.  How earnestly do we desire God’s forgiveness?  How confident are we when we think about our own standing before God’s seat of judgment?

Have you ever noticed how understandable your own sins are?  We might be quick to conclude that everybody sins just the way we do.  We’re just human, after all.  Our sins aren’t that bad.  It is the sins that you could never imagine yourself committing, sins toward which you feel no compulsion or temptation, that require little effort when it comes to condemning.  It is that dichotomy that Jesus demands us to look at.

Certainly what is not involved here is the suspension of all moral judgment.  There is a code of ethics, a moral law by which we are all supposed to live.  The Ten Commandments still apply.  We are called to walk uprightly in the Lord to the degree that we can be the Lord’s other self, seeking always to do the will of the Father.  Such is the ideal for which we should strive.  When we are honest we know that sometimes we fall shy of the mark.  That is precisely when we pray for forgiveness.  And usually we conclude that God grants us the forgiveness we seek.  Most of the time we don’t give that a second thought.

We move into the attitude that Jesus is condemning when we cease being all that concerned about our own sins, when we find them so understandable that our consciences are hardly troubled by what we do.  If our faults are that basic to human actions, from where will come our need to reform our lives and to repent of our sins?

Another consideration.  From the language it seems clear that Jesus is talking about values and attitudes exercised within the community.  He talks about “brothers” (and we would add “sisters”) in the example he uses regarding the speck in the other’s eye.  The “other” is someone we ought to know fairly well.  After all, we work together and pray together.  We are baptized into the same Christ.  We share the One Bread and the One Cup.  While the admonition might apply to those beyond the community, there is no doubt that it applies to those within.

How much do we know about the conscience of another person, even someone we think we know fairly well?  The fact is, very little.  We may know the outline of the person’s life.  We may have shared experiences.  But no matter how well we know the other we can never perceive the world through the other’s eyes.  We don’t know how events shaped his attitudes or why she fears the things she does.  We know the external.  We’re used to the sound of the voice and we recognize the physical attributes.  After even limited exchanges our conversations become patterned.  We know how he will react.  Still, we know very little of the “why.”  But that is precisely what one needs to know before a valid judgment can be made – not about the good or evil of the deed, but about the degree of responsibility or culpability for what was done.

It is when we presume to understand and rush to judgment that we go against the Lord’s teaching.  Jesus talks about the speck in the brother’s eye and the beam in our own.  We can be bent on correcting our brother, wanting to point out to him the error of his ways.  None of us would want to be called sanctimonious or judgmental, but that is what we are when our primary interest is pointing out the faults of others and moving them toward punishment.  The conservative evangelical-right evidences that attitude.  They do not seem reluctant to consign people to damnation.  The call to forgiveness and reconciliation are not heralded nearly as well.

Some saw as scandalous the directive from some bishops that banned “pro-choice” politicians from receiving Holy Communion, even naming the politicians publicly.  The fact that it is forbidden for anyone to make that judgment about another’s worthiness to receive did not stand in the way of some making such proclamations.  There was no invitation to dialog about values and attitudes that might have influenced a good and practicing Catholic senator or governor in his or her moral decision to be pro-choice.  Instead of the clear-voiced message that “all are welcome here,” the message heard by many was one of exclusion.  We call it excommunication.  What a pity that the church would not have leveled against her the same condemnation that was voiced against Jesus.  Would it be so bad if we as church were criticized for welcoming sinners and eating with them?  What if the sign over the main doors of our parish churches read: “All are welcome here.”

So, what are we to do?  Far more of our time needs to be focused on the formation of our own consciences.  We need to look clearly at those sins or faults that we might be tempted to ignore.  We cannot use the excuse that the wrong we do is understandable because that is just the way we are.  If our tempers rage out of control, we must recognize our need to be less self-centered and work to acquire an inner peace, even as we deal with those things that might have made us vulnerable to temper tantrums.  If we are dishonest and are prone to take what is not ours, rather than deluding ourselves into thinking that we are only exacting occult compensation that should come to us, we have to look in the mirror and see clearly one who is dishonest and see our need to make restitution.  If we gossip with abandon and think nothing of it, we have to learn to recognize the destructive nature of what we do and learn to be deaf and silent, i.e., neither listening to the gossip nor being the source of it nor passing it on.

Jesus told those first ones gathered with him on the Mount and he tells us that when we have all of our own disorders under control, when we have removed the beam from our own eyes, then we will be able to see clearly enough to ease the speck from the eyes of our brother and sister.

I visited a woman in prison.  Then in her late 30’s she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole when she was sixteen years old.  The crime was sordid and sensational.  She was present when the murder happened but did not participate in the deed.  That had no impact in terms of modifying the sentence.  Those who have known her through the years say that there is nothing of the sixteen-year-old in the woman currently serving her sentence.  She has achieved a college degree.  She spends much of her time mentoring other women in her prison.  Many of those who know her and her situation have appealed to the authorities for compassion, avowing that she more than merits being eligible for parole.  So far, it all has fallen on deaf ears.  Her only hope is that the Supreme Court will affirm a challenge to the constitutionality of sentencing youngsters to that type of life sentence.  It is not only individuals who need to reform.

If nothing else moves us, we need to hear the warning in the Lord’s harsh words.  “The measure with which you measure will be used to measure you.”  I want to be able to stand before the Lord and admit that I might have erred on the side of leniency and that I perhaps was too quick to forgive.  And I certainly won’t object if the Lord errs in that direction on my behalf.  How about you?