A number of years ago when I was traveling I picked
up a novel to read at the airport by a British author names Nick Hornby called How to Be Good. The title called to me,
because I wanted to see what this writer would say about how to be good. Basically
the book was about people trying very
hard to be good. The main characters are a married couple who are average
modern people, educated, good jobs, living in the suburbs. The woman is tired
of her boring and meaningless existence. She has a longing for some kind of
purity, some kind of unselfish life, a life that means something, a life that
makes a difference.
She lets a homeless, free spirit type person move into their house because she senses that maybe he has the secret of being good. He seems to be free from the usual cares of the world. He is free to reach out to help others. He preaches a certain type of gospel and puts into action a kind of humanitarian philosophy that the woman finds very attractive. What happens in the end? Maybe you can guess. The free spirit fellow turns out to be a disaster, having his own ulterior motives. He leaves havoc in his wake. After he finally leaves the house, the woman returns to her previous life, perhaps a little more grateful for her very average husband. Being good, she decides, is not in doing radical things to change the world. The best one can do is to try to be kinder and more thoughtful of those around you. She comes to the sad realization that she can’t make herself good.
She lets a homeless, free spirit type person move into their house because she senses that maybe he has the secret of being good. He seems to be free from the usual cares of the world. He is free to reach out to help others. He preaches a certain type of gospel and puts into action a kind of humanitarian philosophy that the woman finds very attractive. What happens in the end? Maybe you can guess. The free spirit fellow turns out to be a disaster, having his own ulterior motives. He leaves havoc in his wake. After he finally leaves the house, the woman returns to her previous life, perhaps a little more grateful for her very average husband. Being good, she decides, is not in doing radical things to change the world. The best one can do is to try to be kinder and more thoughtful of those around you. She comes to the sad realization that she can’t make herself good.
Our actions are never purely unselfish, there’s
always a selfish motive in there somewhere that gets in the middle of our
attempt to do good or be good. It’s part of the human predicament. We want to
be good, we want to make the world better, but the harder we try the worse
things seem to get, simply because we are unable to change ourselves inside. How to be good is one of those
great religious and philosophical questions that every society and every
generation tries to answer. And always, the question comes down to the
difference between external actions and internal motivations.
There are plenty of examples of political,
social, economic, educational and of course religious efforts to make people be
good. Civilization depends on making people behave, and almost always it
focuses on external actions with systems of punishment and reward. But these
efforts fail to change what goes on in the human heart. Still our society has a
host of problems and we are in a quandary as to how to deal with them.
In the gospel this morning Jesus is
concerned with the question of how to be good. He knows that we long for
goodness and we long to be good. That’s how God made us. But there is a
problem. There are some religious leaders who are promoting their human
centered program for how to be good. And they are leading people astray, away
from God. The Scribes and the Pharisees are zealots for being good. For them this
means keeping rules, keeping the Torah, God’s law. It’s the main goal and
purpose of their lives—being good, keeping the Law. Not only are the Pharisees
concerned about being good themselves, they are concerned that everybody else
should be good like them. They have a plan not only for themselves but for
society as a whole. And they truly believe that if Israel will just be good
like they are, the kingdom of God will be ushered in. But they have seriously
underestimated one problem. They have forgotten about the problem of their own
hearts, their own self-interested motives.
While they are preaching about keeping the law
and being good, their own sin betrays them, because they are unable to practice
from the heart what they preach. Jesus says they demand strict obedience to the
law which is a heavy burden for people to carry, yet they show no mercy when people
stumble over the letter of the Law. Yet mercy is the deeper spirit of the Law. The
Pharisees want to set a good example for others by showing how good they are,
but pride comes to the forefront and they become more and more focused on being
admired for how good they are, rather than concerned to be helping others. What
began as a good thing—wanting to be good and make the world better—has been
twisted by their own selfish hearts that have not been changed. In fact, they
have been trying their very hardest to undermine Jesus’ ministry. They see him
as the enemy who is getting in the way of their plan to make people be good. In
their blindness to their own sins of pride and self-righteousness they don’t
even recognize that Jesus is the Messiah sent from the Lord God whom they claim
to love and serve.
The Scribes and Pharisees are caught in the trap
of trying to be good on their own terms, by their own definition, rather than on
God’s terms. The lesson of the Pharisees is an important one for religious
people like me and you. Self-righteousness is the biggest trap of all for
religious people. It’s what gives novelists and movie makers and others so much
fodder for anti-religious ideas. Jesus calls it hypocrisy. No one likes
hypocrisy, especially when it comes from those who claim to be close to God.
Jesus is concerned about goodness, but it is
goodness that flows from a humble heart surrendered to God. While the
Pharisee’s and others are concerned with outward behavior, Jesus is concerned
with the vast inner dimensions of the soul, the whole heart of the person in
relationship to God.
So what is it that Jesus teaches us about being
good? He doesn’t at all lower the standard of goodness. In fact he raises it by
emphasizing that God is concerned not only about external behavior but about
what is in the heart of the person. We see this all throughout the gospels. A
very memorable place is in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7. It
is all about the state of the heart before God and the difference between
external obedience and obedience of the heart. And here in our passage from chapter
23, Jesus says we have to turn to God in order to become good. You have one
teacher, he says. Who is our teacher? Who is it who teaches our hearts? It’s the
Holy Spirit who is your teacher. You have one Father, Jesus says. Your Father
in heaven who loves you and cares for you and who has your best interests in
his heart. And you have one master, Jesus says. It’s the Messiah. It’s Jesus himself
who shows us the path of Life. Jesus is saying we must turn to God in order to
become good. We must turn to Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Goodness comes from God. Remember in Mark chapter
10 how Jesus said to the rich young man, “No one is good except God alone.” God
alone is holy and pure. In that story Jesus is having a similar discussion with
the young man about how to be good so as to gain eternal life. The young man
asks, “What must I do to inherit
eternal life?” The man is thinking of goodness in terms of keeping the law.
Jesus says that goodness begins with leaving everything behind and following
him, the one who is the Way to eternal life. The path of the Pharisees sets goodness as its goal. “I’m going to make myself good. I’m going to
be good.” The very statement displays self-will. I’m going to do this. Jesus shows us that the path to true goodness
is the path of surrendering ourselves to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The
burden of the Pharisee’s way is heavy because it is fruitless and unending. It’s
like Sisyphus in the Greek myth who is doomed to roll a boulder up a hill day
after day, only to have it roll back down the hill as soon as he reaches the
top. In John’s gospel Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
There are no heavy burdens on Jesus’ path. He says simply, “Follow me.”
How do we follow Jesus? It’s the path of loving.
In last Sunday’s reading, if you remember, just a few verses before this passage,
a Pharisee tries to trick Jesus by asking him, “Which commandment in the law is
the greatest? He had no doubt hoped to trip Jesus up on a fine point of the law.
But Jesus doesn’t get embroiled in opinions and who’s right and who’s wrong. He
simply points to God and to love. He says, “You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is
the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.” Turn to God. Seek God. Love God with all your
heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Love him because he first
loved us. Show that same love to your neighbors. This is the only way to become
good. In fact, goodness is all about loving God and with God’s strength, loving
others from your heart. It’s not about following rules, because obedience flows
naturally from a heart in loving relationship with God. When we love someone we
want to please them.
Something Fr. Michael said last week
in his sermon really struck me. He said learning to love “begins with silence
and attentiveness to God.” It’s very profound. Listen again: learning to love
“begins with silence and attentiveness to God.” We might also say that goodness
begins with silence and attentiveness to God. Because it is in silence and
attentiveness to God that the depths of our souls are available to God for his
transforming work in us. I’m sure you remember the passage from I Kings where
Elijah has run from Mt. Carmel to Mt. Horeb. He is exhausted from his
confrontation with the prophets of Baal and now Jezebel is out to get him. He
needs reassurance of the Lord’s presence. Listen to what happens,
“The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the
mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to
pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains
and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in
the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in
the earthquake; and after
the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in
the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he
wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the
cave.”
A
sound of sheer silence. Silence brings us into the presence of God. When we
learn to be in silent attentiveness before God, we become like sea sponges that
live in the ocean. We become aware that God’s loving presence is all around us
and through us at every moment of every day. Listen to what some of the great contemplative
saints have said about prayerful, silent attentiveness to God:
St. Teresa of Avila says, “It is all
about love, melting in love.”
St. John of the Cross says, “To such
a person… the entire universe is a sea of love in which it is engulfed, for
conscious of the living point or center of love within itself, it is unable to
catch a sight of the boundaries of love.”
A fifth century bishop says, “Our
one point is to perceive the love of God fully and consciously in our heart.”
(St. Diadochos)
St. Paul says “In him we live and
move, and have our being.” And he says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is
Christ who lives in me.”
Being good is becoming like Christ. It is
learning to love God with heart, soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. It “begins with silence and attentiveness to
God.” It means to be ready and
listening, receptive and open to God’s transforming work in the vast depths of
our hearts. How does one become good? Turn to God. Come before him with silence
and attentiveness. Let the Holy Spirit be your teacher, receive the Father’s
love, and follow Jesus in the path to Life.