True Freedom

As a young child, it seemed to me that the purpose of rules and laws was to keep me from doing what I wanted to do.  They were the “don’ts” in my life – don’t do this, don’t do that.  I would often strain against those rules, testing them up to, and occasionally beyond, the limits.  Even today, as an adult, I am reminded that my attitude is often much the same.  For example, I am driving merrily along when I suddenly come upon another driver doggedly sticking to the posted 25 mph speed limit.  Of course, I suddenly come upon him – I have been driving quite a bit faster than that.  I am still testing the limits.

On reflection, this seems a natural source of frustration for us.  Laws and rules make us aware of our limits.  They make us aware of our finiteness.  We cannot do it all, be it all, for we are limited, finite beings.  Yet, inside, we yearn for something greater.  We are created in God’s image, and are endowed with an eternal soul that seeks and yearns for reunion with its creator, the limitless, eternal, infinite God.

In today’s readings, both Moses (Dt 6:1-9) and Jesus (Mt 5:17-19) remind us that the true purpose of God’s law is not to remind us of our finiteness by imposing limits on us, but to open for us the door to righteousness, to holiness, to the infinite and unconditional love of God.  The doors which it seems to close are those that lead to dead ends that we often mistake for freedom – materialism, selfishness, individualism, exclusivity, hedonism, and humanism.

But Jesus knows something that Moses may have guessed, but could not really know, for Moses’s experience with God’s law was necessarily a brief one, limited to his own lifetime on earth.  Jesus knows that our pride and greed can corrupt even the God-given law of righteousness and justice, a law which demands justice and care for the poorest of the poor, the widows and the orphans, a law which demands that our first love be for the one and only God, and a law that insists we love our neighbors as ourselves.

Jesus knows that we can – and often do – pervert this law by focusing on the letter of the law, using it to exclude justice and mercy from those who perhaps don’t follow it as closely as we like to think we do.  We can pervert the law by using it to exact vengeance on those who harm us, but of course, meticulously measuring out that vengeance to the “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” standard,  as if such exact and objective measurement was possible.

Jesus comes not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, to show us through his life, his teachings, and, most importantly, through his death and resurrection, that the law truly leads us to our all-loving, all-merciful God if we follow it through Jesus, the fulfillment of the law.  Following the lead of Jesus and putting humility ahead of pride, mercy ahead of vengeance, compassion ahead of competition, we uncover the true spirit of the law, the spirit which Jesus goes on to teach us in the rest of the Sermon of the Mount, the spirit which insists that we turn the other cheek, love our enemies, leave judgment to God, treat others as we would have them treat us, and live free of anxiety for material and physical well-being, for our all-loving God surely knows of and will provide for all of our needs.

Jesus fulfills the law and opens for us the door to true freedom, for it is the door which leads to our deepest yearning – the everlasting, ever-loving, infinite God who created us to be one with him and one with each other. 

Step through this door and enter the kingdom of God.