Sermons
The Gospel (Mt 5 38-48) takes us to the heart of the moral teaching of Jesus— there are four ringing commands that Jesus issues: love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.” Jesus develops the thinking he receives from his Jewish contemporaries. Jesus somehow says: “You are called to much more than what the existing rules and laws prescribe. You can do much more if you let your heart govern you.” And Jesus brings examples how this might work practically.
The rule of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” comes from the Old Testament. It is also in the codex Hammurabi and was meant to protect people of unrestrained revenge. So it was not a call to counter-attack, but a call to moderation and to temper oneself. Revenge in this context is OK, but it must be moderated and tempered.
Here Jesus goes one step further. He invites us to renounce revenge and the claim for retaliation. Instead of the “tit for tat” we are invited to walk in the way of love. The motto: “As you do to me, so do I to you” should not be the motto of a Christian who follows Jesus. And Jesus gives a reason for this in today’s gospel: “Your heavenly father makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, he causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” It is out of love that God does this. We humans are images of God, and as images of God we should imitate our creator as brothers and sisters. God takes no revenge; God does not insist on retaliation – so we also should say good-bye to revenge and retaliation.
This explains the somewhat excessive examples in today’s gospel. Jesus wants to show that his followers, his friends should always counter evil with good, they should undermine evil by love. So did Jesus act according to this? Was he someone who did not put an opposition to violence and who did accept evil without protest?
No, certainly not. On the contrary!
Jesus did NOT keep silent when he confronted with evil. But he never countered evil with evil; he never countered injustice with injustice. To oppose love to evil is not weakness, is not to give in in a cowardly way. To oppose love to evil is a very active fighting, a fighting to make evil lose ground. If evil loses ground, then it can no longer escalate and grow. This may all seem a bit theoretic and not very palpable. But let us look at some examples how the expectations of Jesus might be put in practice in our everyday life.
For example: We should refrain from every form of hatefulness or nastiness in a quarrel; when there are reproaches we should not counter them with new reproaches but take the time to see if there are bits of truth in the reproach; if there was a mistake, a failure with someone, we should not again and again trot out this mistake or failure; if we are disappointed in a relation, we should not break the relation without thinking about it; if someone is clumsy, we ; should not brand him or her a fool or an idiot; if someone refuses to take a council or an advice from our part, we should not let this person down and abandon him or her; if we are exploited, if we are taken advantage of all too often, then we should not refuse to help others or to support others. These are some examples which illustrate what Jesus might expect from us today. And thus this old “tit for tat” can be surmounted, because in the other we still see God’s image.
Jesus did not presuppose that we are perfect. But he did not want to spare us the effort to explore the love to which we are able. To explore this capacity to love and not to give up too quickly. Jesus urges us to be “perfect as the Father is perfect”. If we transcend the ordinary, the usual, the normal, then we approach our humanity, we come nearer to our being the image of God.
I like a phrase by Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a Danish philosopher and theologian. He said: “The one I am, wistfully greets the one I want to be”.- “Der, der ich bin, grüsst wehmütig den, der ich sein möchte“. I like this word “wistfully”, in German “wehmütig” – the dictionary says: “full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy, colored by melancholy”. Let us pray to strengthen this longing and yearning that time and again we leave the out-trodden ways of Christianity to become the Christians we would like to be. “The Church we are, wistfully greets the Church we want to be”.
Wolfgang Felber SJ
In the bible, mountains are place of encounter with God. Elias has his deep experience of God on mount Horeb. Jesus is transformed on mount Tabor. When the readers of the Gospel of Matthew which was addressed to Jewish Christians heard: “Jesus went up on the mountain”, they spontaneously remembered another great prophet who went up on the mountain: Moses. There he received from God “the two tablets of the covenant law” (Ex 38:18), the ten commandments. Jesus on the mountain also proclaims a new law. “Our ancestors were told… But I say to you…”. Jesus is the new Moses who proclaims a new law. It is not an ethical theory or a vague ideal. Jesus proclaims the law of God, what God wants us to be.
What is the difference between the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ? The Mosaic law forbids certain sinful acts, murder, committing adultery, stealing, telling lies. For Jesus to avoid these acts is not enough. He wants us to go deeper, to tackle the root of sin. “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander”. (Mt 15,19) The heart is the battleground if we want to become Christlike, “perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect”. (Mt 5:48)
In the Gospel today Jesus gives us three examples:
- “You shall not commit murder”. The readiness to use violence starts in the heart. That is where I have to fight it. I harbour thoughts of revenge. I spend endless hours playing video games where I murder countless people and gradually the line between the digital world and the real words begins to blur. I have expressed my hatred for somebody on the social media in a violent language and joined in mobbing the person. Verbal violence prepares the way to physical violence.
- “You shall not commit adultery”. All sexual transgressions begin in the heart and in the head. I indulge in sexual phantasies or even stimulate them by looking at pornography. The fight against sexual abuse of others in all its forms needs first of all the discipline of the eye and of the imagination.
- “You shall not swear falsely.” Let your Yes be a Yes, your No a No. A wonderful definition of authenticity. Political parties spend a lot of money for public relation companies to project a positive image of themselves and hush up any faults and failures. In the long run they lose their credibility and discredit politics in general. The reason Pope Francis enjoys a moral authority worldwide is his authenticity. He speaks openly about his own failures and those of the church. We are often not authentic when we try to show our qualities and successes but hide our defects and failures.
When we take the radical commandments of Jesus seriously, we might say: This is impossible. Who has never lost his temper and told harsh words to a partner, a colleague or his own children? Who has never indulged in erotic phantasies? Who has never told even a small lie? Indeed, we all fall short of the demands of the Gospel. Faced with the sermon on the mountain we realise that we are still all sinners.
How do we react to this bitter truth? There are two extremes to be avoided. One is to water down the challenges of the Gospel to the level of our own mediocracy. This is a strong tendency in society today. Fact and fake news are no longer distinguishable. We allow the advertising industry to bombard us day and night with erotic images. Our language becomes contaminated with hate speech. Faced with our own sinfulness there is another temptation: to give up and despair. When year after year we confess the same sins, we tend to say to ourselves: What’s the point? And give up receiving the sacrament of reconciliation.
Jesus challenges us with a high ideal. But he equally reveals the infinite mercy of God who always forgives and gives us the chance for a new start. To be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is not to be holy, but to struggle to become holy. It is a lifelong process.
Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke, MAfr
Every year we celebrate the world peace day.
Pope Francis’ World Peace Day message in 2017 was to help the Church become “a light to the nations, so that the salvation of God may reach to the ends of the earth” (reading of last Sunday).
As you may know, I am also the airport chaplain in Berlin (Tegel, Schoenefeld, soon BER) – in June 2019 we had a worldwide meeting in Rome organized by the “dicastero per il servizio dello sviluppo umano integrale”, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. The pope created the dicastero in January 2017.
Here is the Pope’s text:
“I pledge the assistance of the Church in every effort to build peace through active and creative nonviolence. On the 1st of January 2017, the new Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development begins its work. It will help the Church to promote in an ever more effective way ‘the inestimable goods of justice, peace, and the care of creation’ and concern for ‘migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture.’ Every such response, however modest, helps to build a world free of violence, the first step towards justice and peace.”
Pope Francis in 2017
Is what the Pope describes only the task and duty of the “dicastery” in Rome or is it a task and duty of all of us? How do we react as church members to this invitation from the side of the Pope?