Well, this is a rough gospel passage, isn\u2019t it? It seems as if an awful lot of people are going to be disappointed when they come to enter the kingdom of heaven. It sounds as if Jesus is saying that even though some people think they\u2019ve been doing good things, Jesus is going to say to them, \u201cI never knew you.\u201d And worse than that, Jesus will call these people \u201cevildoers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That just doesn\u2019t sound like the Jesus we think we know so well in the gospels. Shouldn\u2019t people who claim to prophesy in Jesus\u2019 name and to cast out demons be pleasing to God? And what does this say to us about the things we do? Could we be in danger of being rejected when we say, \u201cLord, lord\u201d but don\u2019t live the way the Lord would have us live? It makes us squirm a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Certainly we all need to squirm at times \u2013 to look seriously at ourselves \u2013 and that\u2019s really the bottom line of this particular passage. But there\u2019s a lot more to these verses in Matthew than Jesus giving somebody the hard line; these verses are just a short bit of a much longer lesson Jesus is teaching his listeners. And unless we take a look at the whole teaching, we miss a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This section comes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus began his teaching with the well-known Beatitudes, the \u201cBlessed\u201ds. Blessed are the poor, the meek, the merciful, the righteous. Sometimes we tend to stop after the Beatitudes, but Jesus actually kept on teaching for three chapters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we read through Chapters 5, 6, and 7, we hear Jesus getting even more specific. He told his followers that they were to be the salt of the earth and a light to the world. He reminded them about the commandments, that they should love others as they loved themselves, and that love included their enemies. He talked about not showing off when they prayed or fasted, not parading their religion. But he also consoled them by telling them not to worry, because God loved them and would care for them much more, even, than God cared for the rest of creation \u2013 and they could readily see how beautiful and abundant creation was because of God\u2019s blessing. \u201cIf you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,\u201d he said, \u201chow much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wonderful words. In those several chapters of Matthew, we hear Jesus being a real teacher. He offers them the Beatitudes, which are easy to remember but hard to do. He gives them specifics of how they should behave, he gives them the words that we know as the Lord\u2019s Prayer, and he offers them the unconditional love of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So why, after all this, does he say, \u201cSome of you will hear me say, \u2018I do not know you\u2019\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He says that because even after all his teaching, even after all the things he did, some still didn\u2019t believe. That\u2019s hard to understand. These people saw him do miracles \u2013 they had Jesus in the flesh. What was the matter with them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We might say to ourselves, \u201cIf I lived in that time, I certainly would believe everything Jesus told me.\u201d But we mustn\u2019t forget that those people were just as human as all of us. Isn\u2019t it true that even today some folks miss the incredibly obvious? Some people \u2013 some of us, maybe \u2013 are so self-absorbed that they see very little around them. We read about lots of folks who were like that in the scriptures. Most often it\u2019s the Pharisees and Scribes who get pigeonholed like that, but they certainly weren\u2019t the only ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s no different today. We don\u2019t have to look far in our own society to find people who say one thing and do another, or even worse, who try to make us think they\u2019re doing us a favor when they are really lining their own pockets. Jesus is saying to his followers \u2013 and to us \u2013 make sure your actions and your motives match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s gospel is a stern reminder that we can\u2019t get away with appearing to do good while we pick and choose who it is we do our good deeds for. Jesus isn\u2019t kidding when he says he won\u2019t be pleased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus says over and over that all we have to do is hear his words and act on them, hear and believe, hear and obey. And the important thing is to remember that those early Jews already knew what they were supposed to do. Jesus wasn\u2019t giving them a whole new set of rules to live by. He\u2019d already reminded them at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount that he hadn\u2019t come to abolish the laws they already had, but to fulfill them \u2013 to help them live the life they knew more faithfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s the same for us. We know what we have to do. It\u2019s just hard to do it all the time. Hearing the word of God, hearing what Jesus says to us, isn\u2019t something we do once and then check off our list. We have to keep listening all our lives, learning more and more about how God would have us live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have our baptismal promises, we have the words and actions of Jesus, we have the commandments. What Jesus is telling us today is that we need to be faithful, that we need to examine our motives and make sure that what we do and say fits with the life God asks us to live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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