The Eleventh Commandment does not Exist: Man, know thyself and Act Accordingly!
Sirach 27:30-28:7, Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35
A story may illustrate well the meaning of today’s readings – I can’t get away with my sins, I must account for them – even if wisdom is like every analogy, it limps. Wisdom can fit into a thousand and one illustration, just like every African proverb and the parables of the New Testament, but the story of a man who was over speeding and notices the police chasing after him, and he sticks out his hand through the window of his car with the inscription – “forgive us our trespasses,” is instructive for our homiletic purposes. Instead of receiving forgiveness, the driver also saw the police chasing him sticking out his own hand from the window of his car with the writing – “do not lead us into temptation!” You can imagine the end of the story!
This story simply indicates that the 11th commandment – “thou shall not be caught” – which is very popular in our so-called democratic dispensation, doesn’t sit well with our understanding of God, it doesn’t follow our theological understanding of God – the wisdom of God, as put forward in the readings of today, leads us in a different direction. The “wisdom of Ben Sirach” locates wisdom with God, and situates human life within the ambient of respect of divine ordering of creation. No human being is a master of his own life and destiny, God is the author of life, and he also apportions human destiny. In this statement of our first reading, “Remember your last days, set enmity aside; remember death and decay, and cease from sin!” one finds the summary of the ethics of Christian existence upon earth, the wisdom of living in this world of ours.
The infamous Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky saga typifies what happens when the 11th commandment becomes the order of the day – dishonest and hypocritical lifestyle. However, one can only delay when to be caught, a day of reckoning comes eventually. All the same, like the over speeding driver of our story, since God is not a capitalist, the 11th commandment doesn’t exist, God refuses, like the police in our story, to be led into temptation, not even the temptation by the devil in the gospels was successful with Jesus! In fact, if our democracies encourage the 11th commandments, with its capitalistic creed that encourages financial and fiscal irresponsibility, leading to individual indebtedness, especially with the invention of the credit card, God wants his children to live with the consciousness of judgment always before them. Perhaps, if those who keep borrowing with their credit card realized that they must pay back, that will help them to be prudent in spending. Anyhow, out debt of sin must be paid in full, either here and now or on judgment day!
An example of where credit card possession can lead is the popular saying that the difference between an average American and a German is that an American dies leaving behind a credit card debt, while a German dies leaving behind money in his account. Unfortunately, the economic meltdown which American debt-encouragement system orchestrated had global ripple effects, even if the magnitude of its impact varied from one country to the other. What is sure remains that the irresponsibility of one country affected so many other countries, who may be innocent or accomplices; yet, that debt had to be expunged by tax payers and innocent people! Indeed, whatever wrong one does, even in secret, needs to be cleared up someday by somebody, which means that there isn’t getting away with sin or wrongdoing!
We may deny our communal existence and corporate identity because of individualistic capitalism, where there are no human beings but “capitals,” yet, when push comes to shove, the community bails out the system that claims to be individualistic, like the case of the economic crunch – who is fooling who? According to Ben Sirach, the wisdom of life is to realize our accountability to God, but which passes through our accountability to one another. In other words, the way I treat my brothers and sisters go a long way in showing what kind of treatment I will receive from God. This is to say that God functions with a different logic from the possessive individualistic yardstick of our liberal democracies. Instead of the “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” God’s option is the “government of God through the people, for the people.” For the wisdom of Ben Sirach, democracy is NOT the power of the electorates to decide whatever they choose to do, but the power of human beings to comply with what God has ordained, the keeping of God’s commandments. Other human beings are NOT “capitals,” tools for making money, but fellow wayfarers on our common journey to heaven.
If taken seriously, Ben Sirach challenges a lot of our democratic principles, at least, the way we practice them. For instance, when Ben Sirach says, “Think of the commandments, hate not your neighbor; remember the Most High’s covenant, and overlook faults” (Sirach 38:7), these statements reveal the utilitarianism in our military and economy alliances and leagues – we form alliances to destroy the weak and strengthen the strong. Our social contracts are not based on the love of neighbor, as Ben Sirach suggests, but on the exploitation and possible extermination of the undesirable neighbor. On the contrary, Ben Sirach talks about a primordial “covenant” of humanity with God, which obliges us to be brothers and sisters to one another. Furthermore, earthly existence is transitory and it’s a battle field of service not a market place for profit making. In a battle-field, in order to preserve one’s life, the other is very important; in a capitalistic economy, the other has to be out-smarted and out-witted; in a battle-field, the other is an allied, in the market place, the other is a rival and an enemy.
Since the wisdom of Ben Sirach is not espoused today, our liturgy proposes that anew to us, it reminds us of the wisdom of earthly existence. Today, without mincing words, our gospel tells us the consequences of individualism and self-righteousness. Often times, the tendency we exhibit, without knowing it, is that we make ourselves superior to other people. As a matter of fact, we do not know who we are. We fail to understand the value of Albert Camus’ statement, to the effect that, “no one can judge the other from the stand point of justice, because no one is innocent.” Without acknowledging that we are sinners ourselves, it is impossible to appreciate the power of forgiveness and the need and obligation to forgive one another. Yes, in the “Our Father,” we accuse ourselves before God that we are sinners – “forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us” – but in reality, we only condemn others and refuse the same condemnation for ourselves – see the example of the unforgiving servant in the gospel of today!
Man, Know thyself and Act accordingly is the challenge of today’s readings! The parable of the gospel of today clearly shows one of two things, either that we do not accept that we are sinners who enjoy God’s constant forgiveness or we are so wicked and selfish that we are unable to extend the forgiveness we received from God to our brothers and sisters. The parable of the wicked servant, haven obtained mercy and cancellation of his debts of sin, throttles a fellow sinner in need of his forgiveness. This parable can be seen in a number of ways. With the war that looms between America and North Korea, with the enmity between Iran and Iraq, internal strive between Northern and Southern Ireland, Russia and Ukraine, Rwanda and D.R. Congo, fratricidal wars in Central African Republic, all point to the wisdom inherent in the saying, “man know thyself”: this wisdom says that no one is perfect, no one is without sin! In other words, without the realization that oneself is a sinner, forgiveness is impossible. On account of “holier-than-thou” attitudes we exhibit, thinking and condemning the other as deserving of punishment and chastisement, while clinging to sin and justifying sin because we neither remember our own sinfulness nor the fact that we will come to judgment to before God, things have gone terribly wrong. How true the statement of Ben Sirach, “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” Man know thyself and act accordingly is our watch word, if we want to build a better world.
Certainly most people will accuse me of plagiarism because Socrates and the Vedas have the saying “man know thyself.” Really, a plagiarism? Who is the originator of wisdom, and which culture has the exclusive right to it? Well, “man know thyself” is universal wisdom that has not yet been particularized, and it still seeks adherers and makes stupendous sense today. “Act accordingly” is important for this Sunday’s readings which border on divine wisdom very rarely appropriated by human beings. Biblical Wisdom Literature, amongst which the book of Ben Sirach falls, teaches the wisdom required for human everyday life, but most of all, for divine purposes. Ben Sirach teaches the wisdom of God, as understood among the Jews, to humanity. Today, he underscores three points, life, death and eternity.
These three dimensions of human life are all sustained and crafted by human activities and actions. The best exhibit for human self-revelation and discovery is human action – the real me comes out in my actions, in what I avoid to do, in the company I keep. In the words of Wisdom of Ben Sirach, here is how life should be lived: “Remember your last days, set enmity aside; remember death and decay, and cease from sin! Think of the commandments, hate not your neighbor; remember the Most High’s covenant, and overlook faults.” Every human being opens up to a future for which his actions are the architects of its unfolding. To be alive is to have a future, and it simply means that life is a project with an undetermined outcome; choices made of how we live every single day cumulatively define us and design our future. “Memory” keeps stock of every action, and Ben Sirach asks us to “remember your last days;” in other words, judgment day or a day of reckoning awaits every human being. “Memory” or “remembrance” functions as the compass that keeps us focused, if we care to profit from its pieces of advise.
We have witnessed so many funerals, and we’ve been affected by many more, but we are not close enough to ourselves to think that ours will inevitably come someday, and that we need to prepare for it now; not just the reality of death, but the worth of afterlife needs to be contemplated. We are good at explaining away the connection between our lifestyles and God; we deny the existence of God, even when we only posit a different name for him; we claim that a fetus is not a human being, but we terminate pregnancies before they reach full term, and we do not do that to the food we eat; we pride ourselves of being very intelligent and innovative, but we forget the giver of intelligence and why we are created intelligently!
Man, know thyself and act accordingly is anchored in human corporate existence and the need to accord to others the same love and value as oneself. The human destiny is intertwined, together we stand, and divided we fall. In the words of Paul today, in the second reading, we find the building blocks of our togetherness, the origin of our communalism in God himself: “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord.” Consequently, life is meaningless when it is not lived for the profit and benefit of one’s neighbor. An exploitative life is a life that refuses to see the inherent value in others’ lives, and that fails to consider future judgment and accountability to God as a necessity.
Paul puts forward a new ethics for a new world, a world of God’s wisdom. He says, “whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” According to Paul, it is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that human beings possess the wisdom for earthly existence in its fullness. Jesus Christ died for others, no one died for him; Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to create one family of God; Jesus Christ died to forgive the sins of humanity. The question, here and now, is what are you doing to improve the lot of your neighbors? If you are a sinner, what right have you to kill other sinners? Since God’s judgment is inevitable, how are you preparing for it today, here and now?
Indeed, fraternal correction is important, but we are all wounded healers – he who corrects his neighbor is as guilty as his neighbor, because we are all sinners. The courage to challenge the other acknowledges the responsibility that have to sell the idea that heaven is our common home, and that God “wants all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” How awful the scenario described in our gospel reading today, that a sinner was forgiven his sins but fails to forgive his neighbor! One of the most dreadful tragedies of life is self-deception, hence, the need to know oneself. Today, if we admit that we are no better than others, maybe forgiveness and mercy will make both sense and come readily to us. Today, if we admit that we are qualified for Hell because we are sinners, the Divine Mercy prayer will take a new pride of place in our lives. Today, if we confess our negligence in loving sinners and the so-called bad people, we will be en route to creating a new and better world than what we received from past generations. So, let us pray today “For the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world!”
Assignment for the Week:
Pray the Divine Mercy chaplet this week in solidarity with all sinners for the conversion of the world.