Week 11 Monday (Year 1)

 Readings: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Psalm 98; Matthew 5:38-42

There are some phrases in today's gospel reading that have become proverbial, and survive even into the general discourse of secular culture - 'turning the other cheek', 'going the extra mile', 'an eye for an eye'.

The third one is rejected by Jesus as a principle for human behaviour. In doing so he not only breaks a cycle of retribution (that would leave us all eventually blind), but endorses a revolutionary approach to justice, an approach that goes way beyond not just commutative justice but even restorative justice.

To live by his principles - turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, lend always, give more than is asked of you - would be to go beyond any known system of justice. It would mean living a kind of creative justice which breaks free completely from any sense of reaction to injustice and takes the form rather of a response to injustice. It does not ignore injustice but it does not simply react, instead it responds. The terms of this response are set not by the injustice suffered but from elsewhere. From where might they come?

'Do not accept the grace of God in vain', Paul says to the Corinthians in the first reading today. He is responding to what he could justifiably regard as unjust attacks on himself and on his ministry. And he seeks to do it as Jesus taught and did, not by reacting in the terms set by the injustice, but by responding in the terms set by grace - which means mercy, forgiveness, compassion, love, a gift that is freely given.

He commends himself to them in this response, not in any kind of defensive self-justificatory kind of way but simply by presenting the truth of what he has already undergone in his own efforts not to accept the grace of God in vain. It is but the first of a series of powerful litanies in 2 Corinthians in which Paul does this: if you want me to boast, he says later, here is what I will boast about: all I have undergone, all I have experienced, not in order to tell you how great I am but in order to let  you see my personal weakness and the power of God's grace.

How might I or you live today according to this revolutionary approach to justice, creating new situations by responding rather than reacting, by living from grace rather than from the desire to defend or justify myself, still less from a desire for retribution? There is no time for doing this except the present, today, which is a very acceptable time (Paul again). In fact today is 'the day of salvation' in which we are to be merciful (gracious) as our heavenly Father is merciful (gracious).