Optional Memorial of Saint Ephrem, deacon and doctor of the Church

Lectionary: 361

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.

 

Marxist philosophers, taking their cue from Hegel, predict continual revolutions by which society travels toward its goals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Although our American culture despises communism and socialism we nonetheless expect cycles, which (by definition) revolve as in revolutions. These cycles entail discontent with the way things are (thesis) spawning calls for change and new ideas (antithesis), and resulting in a new system (synthesis.) Some parties enjoy victory, others are defeated. Sometimes these conflicts entail upheaval, violence, and warfare. We might forestall but cannot avoid forever the cycles with their attendant violence.

Some nineteenth and twentieth century theologians believed that Jesus was a revolutionary. He had been crucified for his trouble. His death proved that he had shaken up the dominant thesis with his antithetical idea of care for the poor. He was history's first Marxist! 

A glance at history disproves any notions of actual progress. The issues that lead to revolution and conflict are not resolved. The Russian “proletariat” may have deposed the czar and his family but the Russian elite, temporarily removed from office, soon returned to their offices because they knew how to make government work. They adjusted their language and titles to fit the new ideology, and then resumed their primary work of taking care of themselves first and the population later. When Gorbachev tried to discard the communist system they sat back and waited for Putin to restore it, with different titles.

In the United States the Civil War was supposed to end slavery but Jim Crow, apartheid, and lynching proved that the evil persisted by another name. The heart of slavery was unchallenged.

A similar glance at the Bible disproves "Jesus as Marxist." He offers another Way. The Lord does not abolish, he fulfills. Fulfillment does not discard the past; it does not replace something bad with something good. Rather it discovers and reveals the good within the bad, the truth amid the lies, and the beauty in ugliness. It changes darkness to light because the darkness cannot overcome the light that has never stopped shining.

The best analogies are biological words like growth, flourishing, and metamorphosis. We might be surprised to see an oak grow from an acorn, but the tree was germinally there all along. We are astonished to watch tadpoles become frogs and caterpillars become butterflies but they have only fulfilled their hidden potential. 

Jesus's teaching counters any suggestion that his "Way" revolted against the Jewish religion. He accepted the beautiful faith of Mary and Joseph and revealed its potential to save all humankind from our misconceptions, fear, and evil. He also teaches us that we need not be anything but ourselves to receive his salvation. We do not need to climb a mountain to find the truth, nor plumb the depths of the ocean. "No, it is something very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it." 

We ask the Lord to give us that Spirit of Wisdom which, like the water that reveals the hidden life of an acorn, fulfills and completes our potential holiness.