Our Nature is Holiness

Homily for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

This Sunday we continue to read from the Gospel of Matthew and from the section of that Gospel that has come to be known as the Sermon on the Mount. Last Sunday we heard Jesus’ commentary on the fifth, the sixth, and the eighth commandments. Today we hear what is in all probability the most difficult section of this teaching of Jesus. We know that Matthew’s intention in writing this Gospel was to portray Jesus as the new Moses. To that end, St. Matthew tells us that Jesus drew the crowd up this hillside where he sat and taught just as the rabbis sat and taught in the synagogues. Moses gave the children of Israel the commandments from Mount Sinai. Jesus presents us with his view of those commandments also from a hillside. We are told to love our enemies, to do good for those who harm us. To turn the other cheek when we are struck by another person. No ethicist or moral philosopher in the history of humankind has ever taught such conduct. Indeed, moral philosophers from Plato to Hegel and Kant would look upon Jesus’ teaching as lunacy. Consequently, the question that rises this morning is, “How are we to read to this?”

Jesus offers us a comparison that helps us to interpret what he means. He tells us that the rain falls on the good as well as the bad. He tells us that the sun rises for the evil as well as for the good. Of course it does! The sun cannot choose the people upon which it shines. The rain cannot choose to soak the bad people while letting the good people to remain dry. It is the very nature of the sun to shine on everything, on everyone. It is the very nature of the rain to soak the earth as well as those who would walk in it. The sun and the rain follow the laws of nature. Now let us extend that comparison to the nature of God. In the first reading, we heard God tell us to be holy as he is holy. Because God is holy, God cannot withhold his mercy from some people while showering it on others. Because God is holy, God cannot withhold forgiveness from the bad people while bestowing it upon good people. It is God’s nature, God’s holiness, which demands that all people enjoy the goodness of God.

At least five times in the Book of Leviticus, the Israelites are exhorted to be holy because the Lord is holy. The word “holy” means “to be set apart exclusively,” to be distinctive from the world. Holiness is, first of all, the nature of who God is. The Book of Genesis clearly tells us that humankind was formed in the image and likeness of God. Consequently, what Jesus is suggesting in this passage is simply that we act according to our nature, which as the Book of Genesis tells us, is the nature of God.

The statement in the Book of Leviticus that we should be holy is both an indicative and an imperative. We are holy because God made us holy. Consequently, we must be holy if we are true to our nature just as the sun and the rain are true to their natures. This is biblical logic at its best. This is a moral philosophy unlike any other. Humankind has withheld kindness from those who are unkind. Jesus suggests that this is contrary to who we are as children of our Creator. God never intended us to act this way. Unfortunately, sin has entered the world; and because sin is in the world, we have strayed from holiness.

At the very end of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus says, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." Unfortunately, when we hear that comment, we usually think and sometimes say, “Well, I’m not perfect.” We use our imperfection as an excuse, forgetting how we were made, forgetting the words that God uttered when he created humankind, male and female he created them; and then God said, “this is very good.” What Jesus is telling us today is simply to be who we were meant to be by nature.