“IF YOU CHOOSE…”/“BUT I SAY TO YOU…”

There is not a combination of Scripture passages that are more scary than these, from Sirach and Matthew, as we hear them this weekend. This is because the implication is that if we do not keep the commandments, it is (solely?) because we choose not to. But can we really claim that we have kept the commandments of the Lord as they are presented to us this weekend and the next, as we move through what are called the “Six Antitheses”? Can we really choose never to be angry, or lustful, or always to love whomever we regard as ‘enemies’?

Martin Luther, for one, was convinced that these words were impossible by intention—he thought the purpose was to make folks despair of their own abilities and surrender to God’s grace by faith.

The mediaeval Catholic Church was not far from this point of view. It was thought that ordinary folks didn’t need to worry about total fidelity to the Sermon on the Mount because what it was, was a “counsel of perfection.” The implication was that the laity simply couldn’t manage this; only clergy and religious (especially monks and nuns who took the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience) were obligated to embrace all this. [We will pass over in silence the extent to which those monks and nuns, and priests and bishops, and popes, were successful.]

Again in the 16^th century, those who advocated what came to be called the “Free Church Reformers” (ancestor of the groups that came to be Quakers, Mennonites, Amish…) believed that this was an absolute obligation for everyone. The extent to which this was able to be achieved was highlighted for us some years ago, in 2006, when a man entered an Amish school and killed a number of children before killing himself; that body of believers forgave him, consoled his wife, and even attended his funeral! Could we have done this? Or would we have been clamoring for the death penalty for him?

For myself, I think that I would need to modify Sirach’s statement and try to come to an understanding of Jesus’ teaching. I think I could agree that “If I choose, I can want to keep the commandments.” My intentions, I think, I can control; my actions (especially those that rise up from within me spontaneously) I really cannot. And I think this is where Jesus’ teaching needs some nuance (which is NOT the same as explaining it away).

There is a difference between feeling the emotion of anger or lustful thoughts, on the one hand, and choosing to embrace those feelings on the other. I cannot typically control my emotions, but I can choose not to create them or dwell on them. A blast of anger inside of me might not be controllable, but if I constantly brood on my sense of being wronged and keep imagining what I would love to do to the person if I could sneak up behind him in a dark alley…
A blast of sexual desire inside of me might not be controllable, but if I constantly fantasize in a way that creates sex objects of others rather than seeing their dignity as children of God, redeemed in Jesus Christ… THEN there are sins that I surely should be able to avoid. I must choose. I might have to accept the emotion; I can choose what to do with it. So it is that sin is all about actions, not emotions. Even Jesus felt anger (see Mark 3:1-6, for an example). Let’s choose to be the best we can be in our actions, and not let our emotions control us. -Fr. David