{"id":7959,"date":"2019-03-15T19:00:31","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T19:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/turski.me\/?p=7959"},"modified":"2019-03-15T19:00:31","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T19:00:31","slug":"station-mass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/?p=7959","title":{"rendered":"Station Mass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Delivered at St Francis of Assisi, Mannofield, Aberdeen.\u00a0<\/em>
\nThe gospel passage: Matthew 5:20-26<\/em><\/p>\n

If your virtue goes no deeper than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the key phrase in today\u2019s gospel passage. Now, after a couple of millennia of reading the gospel, we have a very clear and well-established understanding of the Pharisees as Jesus\u2019 fierce but hypocritical opponents. Jesus lambasted them many times. So, with such a strong opinion on the Pharisees it\u2019s easy to read today\u2019s gospel as another outpouring of Jesus\u2019 scorn of them. Yet the opening phrase can be read from a different angle and lets us see the whole tirade in different light.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to use a slightly different translation of the phrase: I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.<\/em> Jesus uses the righteousness of the Pharisees<\/em> as a reference point and he does it intentionally. Jewish common folk looked up to them as their spiritual and religious elite, someone to admire and to imitate. They were the teachers and leaders of the people, in opposition to the seemingly corrupt priestly cast of the Temple cult. They were respected for their efforts to keep the Mosaic law in a strict way and to defend it against any alien or foreign influence. They were individuals full of good intentions and clear vision what their religion looked like in practical terms. They set high moral and religious standards; standards hardly achievable for common folk.<\/p>\n

And yet Jesus says that those standards are only a starting point for his followers. That they have to exceed them or go deeper. How\u2019s that even possible? How can we go even higher, if the Pharisees\u2019 standards already seem out of reach? The set of examples that follows by Jesus offers an answer to those questions. Jesus doesn\u2019t call for more rigid rules, stricter practices or harsher self-mortification. In fact, Jesus\u2019 main gripe with the Pharisees was their focus was of rigid, inflexible application of the law, without taking the person\u2019s circumstances into consideration. From their high moral ground they didn\u2019t see a person, but only a subject of the law. What Jesus offers here is a policy shift: a fellow human being must be at the centre of attention; any laws, regulations and rules must serve as means of helping the person to change their lives (if needed) or develop it. The main driving force must be charity. St Paul reinforced that call in his 1st Letter to the Corinthians: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n

As we progress through Lent, it\u2019s worth asking ourselves whether our resolutions and self-mortification of choice will lead us to greater pride of our own greatness, or will they benefit those around us?<\/p>\n

\n

Image by PublicDomainPictures<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Delivered at St Francis of Assisi, Mannofield, Aberdeen.\u00a0 The gospel passage: Matthew 5:20-26 If your virtue goes no deeper than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. This is the key phrase in today\u2019s gospel passage. Now, after a couple of millennia of reading the gospel, we have a very clear and well-established understanding of the Pharisees as Jesus\u2019 fierce but hypocritical opponents. Jesus lambasted them many times. So, with such a strong opinion on the Pharisees it\u2019s easy to read today\u2019s gospel as another outpouring of Jesus\u2019 scorn of them. Yet the opening phrase can be read from a different angle and lets us see the whole tirade in different light. I\u2019d like to use a slightly different translation of the phrase: I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus uses the righteousness of the Pharisees as a reference point and he does it intentionally. Jewish common folk looked up to them as their spiritual and religious elite, someone to admire and to imitate. They were the teachers and leaders of the people, in opposition to the seemingly corrupt priestly cast of the Temple cult. They were respected for their efforts to keep the Mosaic law in a strict way and to defend it against any alien or foreign influence. They were individuals full of good intentions and clear vision what their religion looked like in practical terms. They set high moral and religious standards; standards hardly achievable for common folk. And yet Jesus says that those standards are only a starting point for his followers. That they have to exceed them or go deeper. How\u2019s that even possible? How can we go even higher, if the Pharisees\u2019 standards already seem out of reach? The set of examples that follows by Jesus offers an answer to those questions. Jesus doesn\u2019t call for more rigid rules, stricter practices or harsher self-mortification. In fact, Jesus\u2019 main gripe with the Pharisees was their focus was of rigid, inflexible application of the law, without taking the person\u2019s circumstances into consideration. From their high moral ground they didn\u2019t see a person, but only a subject of the law. What Jesus offers here is a policy shift: a fellow human being must be at the centre of attention; any laws, regulations and rules must serve as means of helping the person to change their lives (if needed) or develop it. The main driving force must be charity. St Paul reinforced that call in his 1st Letter to the Corinthians: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. As we progress through Lent, it\u2019s worth asking ourselves whether our resolutions and self-mortification of choice will lead us to greater pride of our own greatness, or will they benefit those around us? Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}