Enough with this justice thing! Seems like we just can’t get away from it.
There is a certain truth in that. God doesn’t let us get away with things, and the track record of humankind in this regard is not exactly great. You might also think you recognize the reading from Ezekiel from when we started on this theme three weeks ago: “The Lord is not fair” – I quoted a passage from Ezekiel then, saying the same thing. It was actually a different passage. So I guess Ezekiel found himself having to hammer the same message as well.
Last week the message about God’s fairness, or lack of it, was hammered home pretty thoroughly. Can there be anything more to add? But let us take our medicine, and see if there is anything new here. And I do promise I’ll move on to Saint Paul’s extraordinary and profound meditation on the nature of Christ before we finish.
The additional twist we get in the view of God’s justice today is in the link between what Ezekiel says and what Jesus tells the pharisees. It may not be immediately obvious, because Jesus appears at first to be saying something uncontroversial: if you say you’re going to do something then you are expected to do it. But the reason he says this is because he wants to tell the pharisees that they have no fixed right to get into the kingdom just because they claim to follow the Law and they are the good guys. If they do wrong then all bets are off – and conversely the molesters and the investment conmen (to give you the modern equivalent) will get there before them if they reform.
To bring it just a little closer to home – just because we’re Catholics doesn’t guarantee us anything. God won’t judge us by what we claim to be, by the label on the packet. He will look at what we do, or don’t do – not what we say we do.
Paul, as we concluded last week, also repeats that looking out for others is the foundation of what we are and how we behave. But in today’s passage he goes on to draw a direct link from that to Jesus. This is for me one of the most beautiful meditations on the nature of Christ that we find anywhere.
We are used to thinking in terms of achievement as something positive, something based on having more of some quality or capability – skill, strength, insight, empathy, whatever. Paul turns that totally on its head. What Jesus did was give up everything. Not in the sense of giving everything away, as we imagine Saint Francis giving all his wealth to the poor. Jesus gave away his complete self and allowed it to be replaced by the power of God. Mary’s reaction on being told she was to be the mother of the Messiah was somewhat similar – in allowing herself to be taken over for God’s purpose. But Jesus wasn’t simply a vehicle for God, as were Mary, Ezekiel, and other prophets. He was so totally emptied of himself that he could be God.
This negative approach to becoming Godlike it very hard to follow. Striving for something positive may be difficult, but at least it seems meaningful. Striving for nothing, to be nothing, seems almost incomprehensible. We sometimes hear Buddhists talk in these terms, and it may sound like nonsense. It is certainly scary to imagine giving up everything we hold onto that gives us our sense of identity and personhood. This is not a path that most will follow, but it does give us another insight into the extraordinary options that Jesus opens up for us. This path was followed by Saint Francis, Saint Ignatius, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In reflecting on their choices we may be more able to accept what the psalmist tells us today: “The Lord guides the humble to justice, and teaches the humble his way.”