A Second look at trouble

Social Justice comes to mind as we reflect on the texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary. Maryanne Rouse reads the story in the first book of Kings of the how the non-Jewish wife of Ahab, Jezebel, conspires to acquire land for the king through false accusation and murder. She considerers that our modern characterization of an evil woman as a “Jezebel”  based on the biblical story may not have considered the other side of her story as a Phoenician princess unfamiliar with Jewish custom. Friar Jude Winkler reminds us that the text from the Book of Kings is expressing the importance of our horizontal relationships with others in addition to our vertical relationship with God. In the Gospel from Matthew, Jesus extends the Law expressed in Exodus 21 which is based on an eye for an eye. Friar Jude notes that the Exodus law is originally a merciful limit to the retribution which could be extracted when evil is judged. The practical challenge of turning the other cheek and going the extra mile is that it often is very much counter to our culture and our normal life as finite, temporal and limited beings. Our acceptance of Jesus invitation to consider the response of Love and taking a second look at situations of evil requires our faith in the indwelling Divine Presence which will lift us from temporal, finite and limited solutions to our conflicts to infinite, timeless, unlimited actions based on the Love which converts hearts to follow His Way