Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Today, I want to begin by paying attention to how the text before us from the Book of Matthew appears in the Lectionary from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. It opens with a single verse wherein Jesus addresses his disciples. Below that verse is a blank line followed by verse 12. Below that is another blank line followed by verses 13 and 14. Thus, visually speaking, we have three distinct words from Jesus. Three instructions. Let’s take each in turn.
The first instruction is a bit of a puzzle. While the general admonition not to waste something truly valuable by giving it away to someone or something that will only destroy it or us does make some sense, it’s not clear what Jesus means by “holy” and “our pearls.” So, we have to ask ourselves, what is holy? What would we consider to be our pearls? To be sure, God is holy. Are there times when we give God to the dogs? I wonder if taking the Lord’s name in vain is a bit like trampling God underfoot since whenever we do that we are actively forgetting who God is and making it harder for us to live in awe of the creative work God is doing all the time. Surely, our lives are holy—not in the sense that as human beings we are holy like God. Obviously, we are not. But our lives surely are holy in the sense that they are holy gifts from God. So, we have to ask ourselves when and how we might be throwing our lives to the dogs. How might we be wasting the immeasurable gift of our very lives by doing things or chasing after things that do not bring us closer to God and may even serve as obstacles between us and God? We engage in this kind of scrutiny during Lent. How might our lives be better if we did it all year long?
The second instruction—the Golden Rule—is ever so familiar to us and not so easy to follow, especially when we read it as Jesus likely meant it. He surely did not mean that as long as you would be willing to have someone do X to you, you should feel free to do X to them. Given Jesus’ challenge to us to love our neighbors and our enemies, chances are very good that here Jesus means that when we think about doing something to someone else, we should really think about whether we would want to be treated in the same way. In the recently released documentary about Pope France (Pope Frances: A Man of His Word), he talks a lot about immigrants and how they are being treated today. And he reminds us that very often immigrants are people who are fleeing violence or persecution or people who simply cannot make a decent life for themselves and their families in their home countries. Pope Francis rightly asks us, as does Jesus here, how would we hope people would treat us if we found ourselves having to flee our home country in the hope of freedom from harm and freedom to pursue a decent living for ourselves and our children?
The third instruction, in the context of the other two, is perhaps the simplest—to understand, that is. Following Jesus’ first and second instructions is not easy. Our culture and the times we live in present us with constant temptations to fail to see who God is and what God is doing in the world, to fail to scrutinize our own lives and make needed changes, to see the other as not at all like us and only as a threat. To be sure, following instructions one and two are a narrow path, and we are called to it. May we walk with Jesus. Amen.
- Sue Trollinger