7th Sunday in Ordinary Time A
Readings: Leviticus 19:1‑2, 17‑18 1 Corinthians 3:16‑23 Matthew 5:38‑48
Today's readings challenge us with Jesus' two most radical ethical teachings: the command to demand no justice for injury and the command to love and pray for enemies. As we struggle to be faithful to Jesus' revolutionary teaching, let us remember God's own mercy and pray in the words of our responsorial psalm: "The Lord is kind and merciful" (Ps 103:8a).
The Lord's command to Moses in the first reading from Leviticus lays the foundation for Jesus' teaching about love of neighbor in the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, the Lord commands Israel, "Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy." The word "holy," qadosh in Hebrew, means "separate" or "other." Israel is to be different from the other nations by imitating God's own love. The Lord commands them: "You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart. . . . Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Jesus simply radicalizes these teachings of the Torah by extending them even to the love of one's enemy.
In the second reading Paul continues his treatment of the problem of factionalism in the Corinthian church by reminding its members of their privileged status as "God’s temple" as the dwelling of God's Spirit. He warns them that "God will destroy" anyone who "destroys God's temple" with a boastful factionalism rooted in claims to worldly wisdom. The only way to preserve the unity of "the temple" is for the Corinthians to give up "their boasting about human beings" and embrace the folly of the cross by living the kind of radical love Jesus speaks about in today's gospel (see also 1 Corinthians 13).
The Gospel completes Jesus' interpretation of his ancestors' Scriptures which began with last week's reading. With the final two antitheses Jesus both overthrows and radicalizes commands in the Torah concerned with justice between "neighbors." Originally, the law of retaliation ‑‑"an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,"‑‑ was a good command because it put a limit on the human tendency to take unlimited revenge for an injury done to one's person or family (see Ex 21:24; Lev 24:20; Deut 19:21). For Jesus' followers, however, a higher righteous is demanded‑‑ one that overturns the normal standards of all human justice systems. When they have received an injury, Jesus' disciples are commanded not to seek the justice that a reasonable law would give them. "But what I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other as well. If anyone wants to go to law over your tunic, hand him your coat as well. . . ." Only a few saints, who shared Jesus' vision of the "kingdom of heaven," have been able to follow this command. Only when we have been remade by the grace of that kingdom will we be able to do the same.
The last of the antitheses radicalizes the love of the neighbor command from the Leviticus reading. A popular interpretation of that command was to limit the term neighbor to one's fellow countryman and encourage hatred of foreign enemies. "You have heard the commandment, `You shall love your countryman but hate your enemy.'" Jesus rejects this narrow nationalistic reading and tells his followers: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The basis Jesus offers for this radical teaching is found in our first reading from Leviticus where God commands Israel: "Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy." Jesus' revelation of God is that of a benevolent Father who is indiscriminate in his love. To be children of such a Father is to imitate that unconditional love: “for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” To only love those who love you is not to act as a true Israelite who has been grasped by God's kingdom, but is to behave like a tax collector or a pagan. “If you greet your brothers on, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?” Jesus' followers are commanded to imitate the perfection of God's indiscriminate love. “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
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