Newsletter – Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. Year C.

The attitudes Jesus commends make no sense in themselves. Once again, as so often in the Gospels, allowance has to be made for the exaggeration that often marks the prophetic speech of Jesus. He is not laying down maxims to be followed literally. Rather, he is seeking to inculcate a fundamental attitude according to which one would be prepared to be vulnerable to a degree that would be thought foolish by the standards of the world. The grounds for adopting a policy of such vulnerability and generosity towards others, even one’s enemies, stems from what one both discerns in God and experiences from God. As in the case of the Beatitudes, the policy only makes sense in the context of the distinctive vision of God and relationship to God that Jesus communicates to his own. As obedient children follow the example of their parents, so, concludes Jesus, by acting in this way ‘you will be children of the Most High, who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked’(v 35).

Likewise, in view of this relationship with God, the members of the community are to be ‘compassionate’ as their Father is compassionate. If they refrain from judging (that is, condemning others), they themselves will avoid being judged (condemned [at the final judgment] by God]). If they forgive they will be forgiven (by God). If they are generous in giving, they will meet with an extraordinary measure of generosity in return (‘a full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap’). The principle is: ‘The measure you give will be the measure you get back.’ The sense is not that God waits to see the level of human generosity before deciding how generous to be in return. God’s aim from the start is to be as extravagantly generous as possible. But, just as the volume of water one can draw from a tank depends upon the capacity of the vessel one brings to draw from it, so the generosity of the human ‘receptacle’ conditions the amount (‘measure’) God can give. Any limitation stems from the human, not the divine side.

The First Reading, from 1 Samuel 26, tells of an incident in the early career of David when he had become a fugitive fleeing from the jealous vengeance of King Saul. According to the account, David had a fine opportunity to kill Saul – at that time his enemy. He refused to do so because of his reverence for ‘the Lord’s anointed’ (Saul). The incident provides a biblical precedent for the kind of attitude commended – albeit more radically – in the Gospel.

The Second Reading, from 1 Corinthians 15:45-49, plunges us without warning into one of Paul’s more complex arguments from the scriptural tradition. In the face of doubts circulating in the Corinthian community about the possibility of risen bodily existence for human beings (see 1 Cor 15:12, 35), Paul draws on a comparison/contrast between the humanity we have inherited from Adam and the transformed humanity we are destined to receive modelled on that of our risen Lord. The first Adam was simply a human being (‘a living soul’) who passed on ordinary human life to his descendants. This life, stemming from an ancestor formed from ‘clay’ (‘earthly’), is terminated by death. The Second Adam (‘Last Adam’), as ‘life-giving Spirit’, has the capacity to communicate a mode of bodily existence that, while truly human, is vivified by the Spirit and hence able to transcend the barrier of physical death (see Rom 8:11).

The comparison between Christ and Adam, while complex, makes the vital point that risen existence is about the attainment of true humanity. As risen Lord, Christ is the model and exemplar of what God intends for all human beings.