Saturday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time Yr 1 2025

Title

The New Has Come

Outline

The problem with the Torah as law is that it is “according to the flesh”

So you took an oath and made a promise with an appeal to God, which might be either a promise to do something for God or a promise to do or not do something to others. The problem is that in that one was dealing on a this worldly level, according to the flesh, one could call upon various levels of truthfulness, for you were not seeing yourself in God nor God in you. We see this type of argument in post-New Testament rabbinic literature and also in later Christian casuistry (dare I say, Jesuit? but it is not limited to them).

This is one example that Jesus gives for how he transforms us.

Paul explains this further

Through Jesus’ death and resurrection God has transformed Jesus’ followers from a two-level way of thinking, earthly and heavenly, into thinking of themselves as one with Christ, a new creation, not separate from or trying to control the world but one with God in reconciling it to him, overcoming its alienation in the evil one and bringing about its recreation in Jesus.

Thus we relate to the world as Jesus, as God, with love, truth, and goodness.

This even, according to Paul, changes how we relate to Jesus, for he is resurrected Lord. That is likely why the New Testament is not interested in his physical characteristics: what he looked like, how tall or strong he was, or what his voice was like. Those descriptions do occur for Old Testament kings and prophets, but they are “in the flesh” in relation to us.

If we get this it will transform us in two ways

First, it make us see ourselves differently, as a new creation in Christ living “for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Yes, this world still clings to us and we struggle to maintain Jesus’ point of view, which is why constantly keeping up our awareness of our presence to God is so important. But we are fundamentally not determined by who we are “in the flesh.”

Second, we both view the world as those God desires to reconcile, to transform, and as those to whom we relate to as representing the transformed life, as those towards who we are living the love and mercy of God.

And that is a big enough vision for me to no longer care about earthly distinctions but rather to struggle to live so that I hear his “well done” and “enter into the joy of your Lord” as I breathe my last breath.