Today’s reading comes from the Sermon on the Mount which is Jesus call for us to return to living in relation with God and others as we were created. Communion is at the center of Sermon on the Mount. The scribes and pharisees had built up a religious life that was based on the external, ritualistic observance of the Law. Jesus wants our religious life to be centered in the heart and soul of each of us, not just in an external ritual. Jesus is speaking of a new way of life.
Clearly for Jesus, this new way of life is centered on God but also on our relationships with others. We cannot offer prayers, gifts, and sacrifices to God in a way that is divorced from our way of life with others. A true Christian cannot go to mass and then go home to mistreat family or neighbors or go to the workplace and mistreat workers, destroy the environment, or steal from and cheat the employer. Our relationship with God is tied to our relationship with others. This concept would have been revolutionary for many who heard Jesus that day. Living a ritualistic relationship with God can be easy in the sense that we let the relationship degenerate into complying with some prescribed obligations and sacrifices. That type of relationship never touches our hearts, our souls, or the life we have in the community.
When I was pastor in Lima, two thieves were caught in the neighborhood’s open market stealing clothes from one of the seller’s stalls. The people had the thieves tied up to the two posts in the main square all day and then at night they buried them alive up to their necks. After some little children came to let me know what was happening, I started to dig them out. Who do you think were the people who screamed curses on me the whole time? It was the folks who sat in the front pews every Sunday at mass, the folks who prayed the rosary for the novenas. The folks who were, by external appearances, the most religious in the whole neighborhood. I am not advocating for a life of robbery nor a life without consequences for illegal activities. Jesus knows it is easy for us to set up a lifestyle with a complete divorce and separation between our life with God and our life with others.
Through the whole Sermon on the Mount, Jesus wants to get into our heart and soul. He is calling us to live a deeply in reconciliation with God and with others. He ties together our life with God and our life with others. Reconciliation is at the center of a Christian life.
Go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Image: https://scpeanutgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/forgiveness-1.jpg.
