In this Sunday’s Gospel, Matthew, writing to a Jewish audience, has Jesus say, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Mt 5:17) The line is misinterpreted and isolated to diminish the revolution of Jesus’ Good News. As such, it can be used, in general, to contradict Jesus’ conscientious Gospel witness. In particular, it contradicts a passage and more truthfully Jesus’ life witness as stated in Luke, “The law and the prophets lasted until John the Baptist; but from now on the Community of God is proclaimed, and everyone who enters suffers violence.” (Lk 16:16) Jesus’ life witness shows he has indeed come to abolish the law. It is because the law and the institutions that force it, both ancient and current, can do violence to conscience and community.
Current laws are deeply entangled with ancient laws, for example the 10 Commandments. In part helpful, their inadequacy is apparent in Jesus taking issue with them 2,000 years ago. For example, “You have heard the law 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.” Jesus repeats this pattern of replacing old commandments with informed conscience five more times. Jesus is helping shift our moral compass away from a ruler’s dictates, external laws. Laws are developed for the benefit of the rulers who craft them. For example rulers pass laws against killing, but they kill people routinely and legally in prisons and in war. U.S. law, legalizes the entry of U.S. soldiers and their corporate masters into various nations. Soldiers have recently entered Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen, and other predominantly Muslim nations to kill people. Sadly, many of the killers call themselves ‘Christian.’ People displaced by the violence are legally prevented from reversing the flow. They cannot enter into the U.S. with the same moral impunity as was allowed the corporate raiders and their gunman. This is the case even when the displaced flee as refugees and lack the same overt violent intent to kill. When the old pattern of rulers dictating law is flipped and conscience becomes the basis of law, it is not the advantage of rulers that is promoted but instead the common good of the people. It is the people’s conscience and the common good that matter and laws that do not allow for such must indeed be abolished.
“Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? … Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every (person) a conscience, then? … It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. … Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed.” (On the Duty of Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau)
Prayer: Spirit, continue to form and guide my conscience.
Question: In what areas is my conscience leading me to question and challenge legal dictates?
February 12, 2017 Gospel Matthew 5:17-37 Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time