Thursday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 13, 2024

Matthew 5, 20-26

Jesus said to his disciples: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”

“I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”  This admonition must have struck the Lord’s disciples with the same dismay as when he told them that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.  On that occasion, Peter burst out with, “We have left everything to follow you!  What will there be for us?”  For Peter and the other disciples, wealth indicated the blessing of God.  But if even the rich could not be saved, what about the poor?  Jesus, having made his point about the rich, then proceeded to allay their fears about their reward for their faithfulness.  He had to turn their minds to the reality of the Gospel: it is not outward wealth that shows blessing, but holiness of life.  Now, the Lord tells his disciples that their righteousness — their holiness — must “surpass” or exceed that of the Pharisees in order to enter the kingdom.  They must have thought, But if the scribes and Pharisees cannot be saved, what chance do we have?

But the Pharisees had redefined “righteousness” for themselves so that it could only be attained by them and the scribes, who tended to be Pharisees as well.  At the same time, their redefinition had little to do with God’s definition.  For God, righteousness, holiness, is about the heart.  As the Prophet Micah said to the erring Israelites long before, “Should the Lord be appeased with thousands of rams, or with many thousands of fat he-goats? shall I give my firstborn for my wickedness, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? I will show you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Verily to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6, 7–8).  To exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees and the scribes is to stop our focus on what we can get away with without sinning, justifying our actions to ourselves and others, and merely trying to give the appearance of our doing good.  It is the difference between tolerating someone in order to move along in our business and loving that person for the sake of Christ.  To live a holy life means to see what others do not see, and to do what others cannot imagine doing.  The righteousness of Jesus Christ is an essentially different way of living and of looking at people from that of anyone else.

Instead of calling someone a “fool”, then, we try to understand why the person speaks and acts as he does.  We may be able to guide the person to truth through our willingness to listen and our genuine interest in his experience.  Or, to take the other example the Lord provides, we “leave our gift at the altar” in order to reconcile with our brother first.  In doing so we recognize that our gift would be defiled if we offered it first, and it is far better if we offer it either a clean conscience.  Now, our brother may not desire reconciliation, but we have made the effort and opened the door if he changes his mind.  In both cases we refuse to settle for behavior society (such as the Pharisees, in the Lord’s day) would accept and surpassing it with the second of the two great commandments: to love one’s neighbor as ourselves.