Life is a Matter of Choice.

(Homily for February 12, 2017).

Last Sunday, Jesus told us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. As salt, our mission is to make the world a happier place for ourselves and for others by sharing our goods with the poor, the hungry, the underprivileged, the orphaned, the widowed, the homeless, the naked and so on. No matter how poor we think we are, there are people fasting and praying just to have a little of what we have. As lights, our mission as Christians is to point the way to right living; we are to give direction to others and set example for people to follow. We are not to copy from the world, instead, we are to set standards for the world.

They say, “you cannot give what you do not have.” How can we lights if we lack the light of Christ in us? How can we show others the way when we ourselves do not know the way? How can we tell people how to live their lives, what to wear or how to behave when our own lives are nothing to write home about? In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus sets the standards, he raises the bar from what was already customary among the people. He illustrates with clear examples how we are to shine as lights in the midst of the darkness that surrounds the world today.

First and foremost, Jesus says our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees; meaning we cannot afford to settle for mere hypocrisy. People are not what they say, but what they do. If I come out to say, “don’t eat meat” whereas my freezer is full of meat, I am only deceiving myself, I may succeed in pretending about it before the whole world but one day, it will come out clear that I am not what I preach. The failure of Christians today to influence the culture of our society lies with our hypocrisy. We are a society that has more churches than factories, more worship centres than schools, more religious gatherings than hospitals yet we rank among the most corrupt society in the world. Just few days ago, EFCC raided a single house and found a stash of 9.2million dollars in raw cash. How did this happen in the country where millions struggle to feed one square meal a day? How come there were no Christians to preach to the conscience of such individuals? We are all guilty, I am guilty. The truth is that our lights are not shining enough; our religiousity is no better than that of the Pharisees.

Secondly, Jesus wants us to understand that it is not enough for us to keep the letter of the law, we must also keep the spirit behind them. You don’t need to use cutlass to cut off a person’s head before you say you have killed. The moment you speak badly about that person, in fact the moment you are angry with that person, you have killed him or her already. Even without sleeping with another man’s wife, the moment you fix your eyes on her body, visualizing her nakedness and wishing she was yours, you are already guilty of the same sin of adultery as one who took her to bed. If we say we are light, we cannot settle for the minimum. We must go beyond the standards of our society, we must lead the way for genuine change. There are certain sins that our society glosses over today, things that used to be taboos but have not become “normal”, things that used to be forbidden but Satan has succeeded in making us believe there is nothing wrong with them. We may call them “small sins”, but as Lights, we cannot continue gloss over them.

Jesus says that for us to succeed in our function as lights, we must make sacrifice. We must let go of our comforts and luxury. We cannot join the world in its blind pursuit of money for instance and still hope to be lights of the world. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it off, meaning, if your desire to “hammer” like others, if your desire to build your own house, to own a Ph.D, to become the C.E.O, to become bishop e.t.c. entails that you compromise to sin, then forget that desire. It is better that you go to heaven a poor man, a tenant, or a “nobody” than for you to gain all these worldly things and end up in hell. Do you notice that whenever a light is on, it is always hot? Even a light bulb cannot afford to be cool all because it is supplying light. We cannot be cool Christians. We must be Christians on fire! We cannot compromise, we cannot give room for even the slightest sin.

In the end, life is a matter of choice. God has never and will never force his way on us. My will is my will, no force on earth, no power in heaven can take away my will. If I choose to emanate light, so be it. But if I choose to assist Satan in spreading a culture of darkness, the choice is mine. Our first reading tells us that we have fire and water set before us, life and death, good and evil. We are free to live the way we like but we must face the consequences of our choices. Because we are not robots, we are all going to punished for our choices. We cannot put fire inside our stomach and expect our intestines to be cool like A.C. Impossible! We cannot continue to live in darkness and still hope that things would be well with us. We cannot adopt the wisdom of this world, putting aside the wisdom of the Spirit and still hope to achieve salvation.

Let us Pray: Lord Jesus, guide my choices that my life may dispel the darkness of sin in the world today. Amen.

Happy Sunday. Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you. God bless you. (Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Year A. Bible Study: Ecclesisaticus 15:16-21, 1^st Corinthians 2:6-10 and Matthew 5:17-37).

Fr. Abu.