6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 16, 2014
4 PM Liturgy
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Today’s gospel is a very long one. So I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news: because it is long, I will try to be short. The bad news: this is a much more complex gospel passage than you may realize. It could take days to do justice to just the gospel—letting alone the other two readings.
This gospel passage is an attempt to describe Jesus’ relationship to Jewish Law, the Torah. And I immediately think of an old adage from the publisher and wit H.L Menkin who said: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is simple, clear, and wrong!”
Let me just give you a taste of why I said it could take hours or days to do justice to this gospel. The authority in the world of scripture study on the question of Jesus and the Jewish Law is
Professor John Meier at the University of Notre Dame. His forth volume, in what will eventually be a five volume study of the historical Jesus, is devoted entirely to the question of Jesus’ relationship to Law--all 735 pages of it!

It is not just we simple folk who may miss the complexity either. Maier says in the early pages of his magisterial work, “I come out [of this study] convinced that, although I may not be right in my position, every other book or article on the historical Jesus and the Law has been to a great degree wrong.” He then admits that that claim takes real chutzpah. But he contends that most of the scholars have been dead wrong in their conclusions here. And, friends, there has been tons written about these gospel passages.
There is an enigma at the heart of this passage. An enigma is just something hard to understand, or obscure. Matthew starts by having Jesus say, “I have not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.” But then immediately afterwards, Jesus changes at least two significant tenets of Jewish law (ones regarding the taking of oaths and on divorce). The Law in First century Palestine seems to have allowed both.
Meier puts it this way, “The real enigma is how Jesus can at one and the same time affirm the Law as given, as the normative expression of God’s will for Israel, and yet in a few individual cases or legal areas (e.g. divorce and oaths) teach and enjoin what is contrary to the Law, simply on his own authority.”
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There are many other examples of evangelists’ portrayals of
Jesus as a very complex and original man. (I will try to highlight some of them for you throughout the rest of the year.) But Jesus is anything but simple or single-minded in the New Testament writings.
I have little consoling, spiritual or uplifting to say about today’s scripture readings. But I leave you with a simple invitation. Jesus of Nazareth is an infinitely complex and marvelous person. Any one of us could spend a lifetime getting to know him better. And, in fact, it would take a lifetime. But what a delight that life would be!
So even when it comes to getting to know Jesus, the real one, present with us here today, remember our H.L. Menkin line. And don’t settle for anything less than the real, infinitely complex and consoling Jesus.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is simple, clear, and wrong!” Real faith is usually anything but simple or clear. Welcome to a lifelong, but exciting, journey. Peace!
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