Parish Missions

Retribution or Compassion

The scribes and Pharisees come in for a good deal of criticism in the Gospels, and though it is sometimes overblown, today’s Gospel finds the criticism well deserved. T he problem with the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel is that they were more interested in retribution than compassion.

They were trying to discredit Jesus – his message as well as his mission – by forcing him to take their hard line on what is clearly a serious violation of the traditional law. But they also fail to stay in touch with another tradition embodied in the words of Isaiah:

Remember not the events of the past,

the things of long ago consider not;

see, I am doing something new!

Jesus has a new solution to the brokenness of humanity: unconditional love, a reality so powerful that Paul thinks everything else is “so much rubbish!” Because the scribes and Pharisees don’t get it, they slink away with their tails between their legs.

And what about the woman in the story? She got to experience the full power of that compassion, that divine love that can be found in no human relationship. I believe that, like so many in Jesus’ day, we, too, have a hard time accepting the idea of that kind of compassion. We don’t get it because we really – REALLY – don’t believe we are loved unconditionally. Oh, we believe we’re loved by God – it’s that “unconditionally” that gives us a hard time.

Yet, once we do come to understand God’s unconditional love in all its implications, we are like the woman in the Gospel – we are set free! We become a new creation. In the words of Isaiah:

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

In the desert I make a way,

in the wasteland, rivers.

Wild beasts honor me,

jackals and ostriches,

for I put water in the desert

and rivers in the wasteland

for my chosen people to drink,

the people whom I formed for myself,

that they might announce my praise.

Failing to understand the unconditional love of God affects all our relationships. For if we believe we are incapable of being loved unconditionally, we can’t love in that manner.

Because Christ loves unconditionally, he can forgive with ease. We can’t, because we don’t love unconditionally. But that’s his command: “Love one another as I have loved you!” And because we don’t, we can’t forgive. Because we can’t forgive, we in turn find it hard to say, “I’m sorry.” See the mess we make for ourselves just because we won’t believe that God loves us unconditionally!

Look what it does in our personal relationships…

Every year, one million children are affected by divorce.

Of those, according to research published in the Journal

of Psychotherapy, nearly 50,000 children are involve in

custody battles so contentious that there is a growing

phenomenon throughout the world of “parental alienation,”

signifying the use of children to retaliate against one of

the spouses.

Look what it has done to our Church…

A German woman commented this past week on the

growing sex abuse scandal in Germany that it was time

that the church stopped hiding abuse cases and questioned

why priests seemed to be held to a less strict standard of

morality than ordinary parishioners. "If you get divorced and

remarry you can't take communion, but someone convicted

of molesting children can celebrate Mass for the rest of his

life," she said.

Look what it’s doing to our nation…

The passion against health care reform has elevated to

such a level that protesters in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday

mocked a man with Parkinson's Disease, scorning him as

a "communist" who is looking for "handouts."

Look what it’s doing to our world…

Afghanistan, Iraq, the West Bank, Iran, Sudan, Myanmar

That compassion and love are effective tools to resolve these relational issues is attacked on many fronts as “simplistic.” On the contrary, it is really very “simple.” There are two radical options for how we view relationships, and Jesus makes them abundantly clear in the Gospel today: We are either guided by retribution and division or we are guided by compassion and love. It isn’t easy. It takes effort. It takes humility. It takes a lifetime of Lents. But we embrace the goal of living by the law of love in the spirit of St. Paul.

It is not that I have already taken hold of it

or have already attained perfect maturity,

but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it,

since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.

brothers and sisters, I for my part

do not consider myself to have taken possession.

Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind

but straining forward to what lies ahead,

I continue my pursuit toward the goal,

the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.