1st Week of Lent (F): Ez 18.21-28 and Matt 5.20-26Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
Serra Club and Church of the Incarnation
Aren’t we accustomed to Jesus saying ridiculous things? He always seems to be pulling some kind of joke on his disciples. It’s like that 70’s martial-arts western, “Kung Fu,” where the novice monk, young Cain, is challenged by his blind master to walk on rice paper without tearing it or to catch a fly with his chopsticks or wrestle with a riddle like “what was your face before you were born”? Jesus tells his disciples to abandon family and friends and follow him to a certain death on a cross in Jerusalem. He tells them to walk on water, cast out demons; he tells them that they have to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. As our Brit brothers and sisters say, “He’s having a laugh.” All the more unusual then is this teaching from Matthew that makes perfect, practical sense: your sacrifice at the altar of God is rendered unacceptable, unclean by a heart darkened with selfish anger toward a brother or sister; with a sin against family or friends; or squeezed by the cold vise of rash judgment. Be reconciled first with the one against whom your heart is set, and then offer your gift at the altar. Very sensible. But Jesus can’t seem to resist just one small twist to keep us vigilant.
What’s the twist? Listen carefully, “…if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave the gift there…go first and be reconciled…” Did you catch it? If you recall that your brother has anything against you. Jesus tweaks his otherwise sensible teaching with a characteristically Jesus tweak: we expect him to say, “If you have anything against your brother…” What he actually says is quite different: if you know that your brother has something against you, it is your responsibility to go to him and reconcile. This tweak in the teaching serves to emphasize (in dramatic fashion) how important it is to serve our Lord a clean, a contrite heart—the one and only sacrifice we make for holiness! By making it my job to approach the brother I’ve sinned against, Jesus lifts us the radical nature of God’s love, the divine love that makes it possible for us to love in the first place. He turns us out of our self-pitying navel-gazing to face the one we’ve rashly judged.
The Lord tells the prophet, Ezekiel: “…if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life…” The wicked man “turns away” (i.e., repents) of his sins and lives. But his “turning away” is made good not by the act of turning away (remember: we do not earn forgiveness) but by the mercy of God who has promised (repeatedly promised) to honor our conversions from sin with forgiveness. In other words, we are forgiven NOW and urged to repent in order that that forgiveness might be made productive for us.
Jesus’ tweak—his insistence that I approach the one whom I have sinned against, the one whom I have given reason to be angry with me—this tweak guarantees my obligation to seek reconciliation, holds me directly responsible for helping my brother or sister to approach the altar with a contrite heart. For this difficult requirement we can only be grateful b/c when one member of the Body is reconciled to God, we are all made one soul cleaner! Notice also that this tweak assumes that you know you have sinned against another. Yet again, Jesus makes it difficult for us to say something like, “Well, if she has a problem with what I said or did, she needs to come to me and say so.” That attitude makes you the fool and the one you have sinned against “will hand you over to the judge…”
We march our way across the Lenten desert to Jerusalem and the Cross of Christ. This is the time to cry out from the depths of your heart and seek the Lord’s kindness in repentance. Does your soul wait for the Lord? Do you know that if He held our sins against us, we could not stand at His altar?
What’s the twist? Listen carefully, “…if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave the gift there…go first and be reconciled…” Did you catch it? If you recall that your brother has anything against you. Jesus tweaks his otherwise sensible teaching with a characteristically Jesus tweak: we expect him to say, “If you have anything against your brother…” What he actually says is quite different: if you know that your brother has something against you, it is your responsibility to go to him and reconcile. This tweak in the teaching serves to emphasize (in dramatic fashion) how important it is to serve our Lord a clean, a contrite heart—the one and only sacrifice we make for holiness! By making it my job to approach the brother I’ve sinned against, Jesus lifts us the radical nature of God’s love, the divine love that makes it possible for us to love in the first place. He turns us out of our self-pitying navel-gazing to face the one we’ve rashly judged.
The Lord tells the prophet, Ezekiel: “…if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life…” The wicked man “turns away” (i.e., repents) of his sins and lives. But his “turning away” is made good not by the act of turning away (remember: we do not earn forgiveness) but by the mercy of God who has promised (repeatedly promised) to honor our conversions from sin with forgiveness. In other words, we are forgiven NOW and urged to repent in order that that forgiveness might be made productive for us.
Jesus’ tweak—his insistence that I approach the one whom I have sinned against, the one whom I have given reason to be angry with me—this tweak guarantees my obligation to seek reconciliation, holds me directly responsible for helping my brother or sister to approach the altar with a contrite heart. For this difficult requirement we can only be grateful b/c when one member of the Body is reconciled to God, we are all made one soul cleaner! Notice also that this tweak assumes that you know you have sinned against another. Yet again, Jesus makes it difficult for us to say something like, “Well, if she has a problem with what I said or did, she needs to come to me and say so.” That attitude makes you the fool and the one you have sinned against “will hand you over to the judge…”
We march our way across the Lenten desert to Jerusalem and the Cross of Christ. This is the time to cry out from the depths of your heart and seek the Lord’s kindness in repentance. Does your soul wait for the Lord? Do you know that if He held our sins against us, we could not stand at His altar?
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