Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
It is said that familiarity breeds contempt. When a person knows someone very well, they can become so aware of their faults that they become scornful of them.
But it can also be said that familiarity breeds nonchalance. When a person knows someone very well, they can easily forget how amazing they are.
So it goes with certain biblical passages. They are repeated so often and in so many different contexts that we can forget how radical they are.
Take, for example, the Golden Rule: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.” We have heard this so many times that it is very easy to think of it as a friendly little suggestion to try to be nice. It is commonsensical. Self-evident, even.
There are, however, three pieces of evidence here that make clear that what Jesus is commanding us to do is not commonsensical, but, instead, extraordinarily radical. The first is the word, “others.” As my amazing wife – who happens to read ancient Greek – points out, the phrase translated as “others” is hoi anthropoi, which refers to humanity. Not family members. Not friends. Not fellow Catholics or Americans. Not men. Human beings in general.
The second piece of evidence that Jesus has given us a radical challenge is that he is not calling for us to engage in acts of reciprocity. He is not telling us that we should respond to kind acts with kind acts of our own. Instead, Jesus is instructing us to anticipate what would be good for others and then do it, without thought of what we might receive in return.
All of this is daunting enough. But then there is the clincher. Jesus says of the Golden Rule that “this is the Law and the Prophets.” He does not say that the Golden Rule is one part of the Law and Prophets.” He does not say that the Golden Rule can be found in the Law and Prophets. Instead, Jesus asserts that the Golden Rule is the Law and Prophets.
We could state all this as follows: God’s instructions for how we should live our lives can be summarized as imagining what would be good for our fellow human beings and doing it for them, without thought of what we will receive in return.
Yikes. Put this way, who could be nonchalant about the Golden Rule?
- Bill Trollinger