6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023
Eccles (Sir) 15:15-20 1 Corinthians 2:6-10 Matthew 5:17-37
An anti-Church media and an undisciplined social media have very much undermined the moral teaching of Christianity in our day. Issues of morality and ethics which, in former times, were clear and accepted are presented daily as being up for discussion and for personal interpretation. In confusion we may well ask ‘have the rules changed?’ So often we are presented with liberal versus conservative arguments when what is required is the balance that true wisdom brings.
The situation which the Lord addresses in the Gospel reading today is something like what we experience in our contemporary world. Saint Matthew was writing his Gospel for Jewish Christians and more widely for the Jewish world. This Jewish world was directed by the Torah, the five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,Numbers, Deuteronomy) which they believed Moses had received from the original revelation from God. When the Jewish people heard Jesus speak they, understandably, feared that the foundation of all that they believed in was under threat.
But the teaching of Jesus begins: “I have come not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to complete them.” Jesus, of course, respected and valued the Law given to Moses and would not change it by one ‘dot’. He wanted to enhance that Law. He wished that people would go beyond the letter of the law and be guided by what is new and what is come from heaven. The Torah, the embodiment of the Law and Prophets, was looking forward to the Messiah. The Messiah was among them and now Jesus presented them with ‘Torah of the Messiah’ which was totally new and different and precisely fulfilled the Torah of Moses.
In our Gospel reading Jesus shows that he is well acquainted with the Laws and to the astonishment of those listening he proclaims “But I say to you”. For the first time in his ministry he is hinting at his divinity. The Son of God is among you and so the Law of Moses, sacred as it was, has been overtaken, completed.
The teaching of Jesus, which professes to be true and to bring freedom, given to the disciples from the Mountain will be their guiding light and will order the days and lives of the disciples.
Today we are called to hear this word of God, to recognise who is speaking to us, who is teaching us. We are encouraged by Saint Paul in today’s second reading. Paul has a wisdom to offer ‘those who have reached maturity’. It is the hidden wisdom of God, which reveals things ‘that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the human mind’. These things God has revealed through ‘the Spirit who knows the depths of God, Himself’.
We pray the Spirit of God to teach us with the Wisdom that comes from God