A Homily for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18 1 Corinthians 3:16-23 Matthew 5:38-48
Walter Van Tilburg Clark is not a household name, but many of us have heard of his classic Western novel “The Ox-Bow Incident.” Published in 1940, it was made into a movie just three years later, starring Henry Fonda, Harry Morgan and Anthony Quinn.
A young rider tears into the town of Bridger’s Wells with news of cattle-rustlers and, even worse, a murder.
“Shot right through the head, I tell you,” he cried, like somebody was arguing with him, though nobody was.
Cattle-rustling was enough to hang a man in the old West, and the sheriff was out of town. How could the men of Bridger’s Wells wait for the law to respond when a man had been murdered? The perpetrators were getting away, and as one of the men insists, the law—then and now—so often disappoints the righteous when the guilty go free.
A more level-headed man, a shopkeeper named Davies, asks:
“What would you say real justice was, Bill?”
Winder got cautious, “Whadya mean?” he asked.
“I mean, if you had to say what justice was, how would you put it?”
That wouldn’t have been easy for anyone. It made Winder wild. He couldn’t stand getting reined down logical.
“It sure as hell ain’t lettin’ things go till any sneakin’ cattle thief can shoot a man down and only get a laugh out of it. It ain’t that, anyway, he defended.
“No, it certainly isn’t that,” Davies agree.
“It’s seein’ that everybody gets what’s comin’ to him, that’s what it is,” Winder said.
David thought that over. “Yes,” he said, “that’s about it.”
“Your damn shootin’ it is.”
“But according to whom?” Davies asked him.
“Whadya mean, ‘according to whom’?” Winder wanted to know, saying “whom” like it tasted bad.
“I mean, who decides what everybody’s got coming to him?”
Winder looked at us, daring us to grin. “We do,” he said belligerently.
“Who are we?”
“Who the hell would we be? The rest of us. The straight ones.”
The conversation is so curiously contemporary: the righteous taking the law into their own hands, lest evil go unpunished. Even without social media, these townsfolk are ready to hate faceless others to protect what is right. It is not a legal posse that sets out in the darkness gathering snow to track the culprits. It is a gang, one that hangs three men whose only crime is being strangers in the valley.
Ancient philosophers saw a paradox in our choice for evil. We can only do it by lying to ourselves, focusing upon some apparent good, which we are choosing.
Jesus, who is God’s goodness and truth made manifest, tells us that hate is not of God. God only loves. Because goodness and truth come from God, they serve a single purpose.
Perhaps this is still the scent of God on us, however far we have wandered from God: We know that we are ordered toward the good. God is the singular and simple union of goodness and truth. So, when we truly encounter one of these in this life, we also find the other. The good is always true; it is always of God.
Conversely, if evil is the absence of God’s truth, of the truth that is God, it will come to us wrapped in deceit. As creatures of God, as those who emerge from truth and goodness, we can only choose the sterile blast of evil by deceiving ourselves totally or, more dangerously, in part.
In the novel, the vigilantes rightly abhor evil deeds, cattle-rustling and murder. But their hate is so strong and the chance of their being wrong so low that they refuse to question themselves sufficiently. Have they captured the right men? And which is stronger in their hearts, love of righteousness or hatred of strangers? How contemporary this old Western still is!
Jesus, who is God’s goodness and truth made manifest, tells us that hate is not of God. God only loves. Because goodness and truth come from God, they serve a single purpose. They are each intended to be poured out in life-giving love.
You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Mt 5:43-45).
But even as you withdraw from the sins which others commit, remember that sinners themselves are wounded, just like you. Pray that God keeps you from rejecting the goodness and truth, the birthright, that still lies within your adversaries.
To hate someone is to turn from God, because God, who is our origin and our destiny, cannot be parceled out. The other is a creature of God, one created wholly from God’s goodness and truth. You cannot choose some of God, the bit that you fancy, and leave the rest.
We were created to love what is good and true in others, to be attracted to its beauty. To look upon the evil that another does rather than the good that the other is, is to go partially, not to go “all in” toward another. It is to reject something of God.
That’s why hatred is always death-dealing. It is a slashing that inevitably turns back upon the one with the knife. It is a poison we brew for another and then drink ourselves.
But the other so richly deserves my hatred! What we hate in the other is the negation of God’s truth, God’s goodness. Yes, abhor this absence in the other, which we call sin, but work and pray to love the soul it has ravished, always remembering that sin has done the same to you.
You may well need to protect yourself and your loved ones from the evil another perpetrates. Sin is real. It wounds; it even murders. But even as you withdraw from the sins which others commit, remember that sinners themselves are wounded, just like you. Pray that God keeps you from rejecting the goodness and truth, the birthright, that still lies within your adversaries. Because once you give way to hate, you have given away your own birthright and your share in God.
