A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Once on the Sabbath day, Jesus walked through the standing grain. His disciples felt hungry, so they began to pull off the heads of the grain and eat them. Talk about wheat, And I bet most of you have done it on a hot August day just before they harvest. You grab it and eat the head full of dust.
When the Pharisees saw them doing this, and remember this a Sabbath, and they were yanking off the heads of the wheat. Well, when the pharisees who knew the law and who obeyed the law saw it, they protested. Look here. Your disciples are doing what is not permitted on the Sabbath because that was labor. They were harvesting wheat.
Anybody knows that. Our lord replied, have you not read what David did when he and his men were hungry? How he went into God's house and ate the holy bread, a thing that was forbidden to him and to his men or to anybody else except priests. Have you not read in the law how the priests on temple duty can break the Sabbath rest rest without incurring guilt. And notice, our lord is quoting the law back to these lawyers.
Notice that. Then Jesus continues. I assure you there is something greater than the temple here, meaning the old law. If you understood the meaning of the text, it is mercy I desire and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned these innocent men.
The son of man is indeed the lord of the Sabbath, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Those of you who are legal minded, because that's all this is. This is a bunch of legalities, will be interested in this text because it's extremely clever.
Because on the surface it looks as if our Lord's contradicting himself. Because remember, Christ said explicitly, I have come not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Keep that in mind, that the new law doesn't reject the old law, It incorporates it. That is the law, not all these thousands of interpretations of the law. And that, of course, was the basis of the objection of the pharisees.
Because as you know, around the basic law, the 10 commandments, you had thousands, thousands of additions, interpretations, which had in in fact the force of law. Now, Our Lord says explicitly, I have come not to destroy the law. You just recall the instance of the woman taken in adultery. The law said she was taken in adultery. Notice, eyewitnesses, not hearsay.
And they bring her to Christ. The law said you have to stone her, to death. See, you couldn't touch her with your hand, but you could stone her. See the see the how legalities work out. Now what does Our Lord do?
He doesn't reject in the least the law. He doesn't reject it. All he says is, Anyone here without sin, let him cast the first stone. And they disappeared one by one. And then he had been stooped over.
When he rises, he doesn't see the woman's accusers. Notice they had they had to be those who had taken her in adultery. Our Lord said, where are your accusers? She says, they're not here. Well, our Lord didn't accuse her, so there were no there was nobody there to accuse her.
And so our Lord says, well, go in peace and don't don't do this anymore. This is clever beyond words, you know. It makes the Bundy trial down here look sick. I mean, it's very amusing, really. Just from a logical point of view, it's delightful if you have a legalistic mind.
Now because this is found you see, people will accuse the Catholic church of being legalistic. Of course, it's legalistic. If there's such a thing as law, the word legalistic comes from the word lex, which means law. And if there's a law of God, then we have to be legalistic. And so these good pharisees who know the law, who knew the law, who obeyed the law, down to the tiniest whip.
For example, you weren't allowed to touch the the handle of a plow. God said you must honor the Sabbath. Alright. That became that you couldn't even touch a plow because it it was looked upon. If you touch the plow, you might be tempted to plow.
That's the kind of stuff I mean. So they're walking through this field on a hot day, though, and the wheat's all ready to be harvested. So they grab a couple of heads, and they start eating the the the wheat. And the pharisee, look. You you guys are breaking the Sabbath.
You're lay you're you're laboring. You're you're working. You're harvesting grain. Now notice what our lord does. He doesn't deny their claim.
But what he does is he throws the law back to them, the very law that they have been using. And what can they do about it? It's very clever, very clever. Now today, you see, it's very easy to dismiss a sensitive situation as a mere legality. Just as it's easy to dispense with a good argument by simply saying, my friend, that's semantics.
And you know Wittgenstein, we don't You know, all of that's a lot of junk today. Somebody Some people use stronger language than junk. In other in other words, today we are faced in a world which has rejected God, in spite of the God we trust is on a lot of our money. But we'll be getting rid of that pretty soon, I'm sure. But the dare no one dares do it yet.
We are in a world which rejects God, which rejects any absolutes. Now I mean that with that whether you're talking about art, whether you're talking about aesthetics, whether you're talking about truth in the sense of logical truth, or in the sense of ontological truth, or in the sense of moral truth, it's all rejected in the world in which you're living. Now if you don't believe me, take it on faith. I know what I'm talking about, but most of you, I hope, know that what I'm saying is the God's honest truth. We are not living in a pagan world.
Pagans believed in God, in gods. They believed in some power beyond themselves. They believed in some kind of an absolute. Even Aristotle in a way did, and certainly Plato did. We are not pagans.
We're worse than that as a nation. And this is absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever, none whatsoever. And we don't know what to do about it, see. We don't know what to do about it. As a nation, they're crying out, We need value systems.
What value system? Who's going to determine the value system? And the value system isn't worth a continental damn. Not worth anything unless there is force behind it, unless there's something behind this system, the value system, to enforce it. It's not enough to make laws.
There has to be a power that gets them obeyed. Where is that in our society, USA today? It's not there. And as far as I can see, it cannot be here. That is overall picture.
But I'm not exaggerating this in the least. So when we come back to today's gospel, this has to be interpreted in the light of the facts. It's true. We can lose ourselves in legalities, and we're doing that right now. When a self confessed murderer, three times tried, three times found guilty, can walk out of a courthouse absolutely a free man after having confessed the murder, taken the police to the side to the side of the grave, and showed them the corpse, then you know where legalities can lead you.
And that's where we are today. Legalities don't do not lead to justice. All they need to is legality, and that's not justice. Always. Our Lord talks about mercy.
Talks about mercy today, and that's true. He does talk about mercy, but our lord also talks about god's law and the responsibility to obey that law. He doesn't ask us to like it or to love it or to feel comfortable with it or to think that it fulfills me or that I'm happy with it or that I think it's right. All Christ asks is obedience. That's a very naughty word today, obedience.
And that's what we are asked to do in many instances. We come back to old Saint Thomas, not Aquinas but the apostle. When we stand before Christ and he shows us his hands, his feet, his side, and Thomas says, My Lord and my God, help thou my un belief. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.