- So today we said we were going to talk about Ethics. We could wonder what it has to do with Matthew's Gospel...Ethics is not a Bible word. As you may know it, it was born in Greek antiquity, at a time Greek people tried to share their lives in peace in democratic institutions. Ethics was the science of this life together, discussed by politicians, philosophers and teachers. We are used to think Ethics has something to do with moral, but first of all it isn't something about good and evil, it isn't about rules. It's a common reflection about what can give birth to a good life, a fair life, the Greek philosophers even said “divine life”. So if we understand eternal life as perfect life, and not only as everlasting, Ethics is the human answer given to the question of the young man: “What good thing must I do to get eternal life?”.

- In this passage, Matthew doesn't try to give a name or a face to this man coming to Jesus, and it is perhaps the reason why this story seems so strong to us. This man is nobody: it could be me, it could be you. Yes, we are so eager to do good, to please our family, to please our friends, to please the Lord. In a general way, we aren't so many not to wish good things to ourselves and to one another. Human being is a very simple thing! We want to love and to be loved, and we want to be happy, as this young man in front of Jesus.

- And yet, to remain in a Greek atmosphere, don't you think that this story sounds like a tragedy? Matthew tells us this young man, full of good intentions, desiring to lead a fair life, is a sad man, and so we are at hearing his story. Because in front of Jesus, this man realizes his true poverty, his incapacity to change :”For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” as confessed Paul (Romans 7). It seems that the man came to see Jesus to have a reassurance, to be comforted in what he does and who he is, but he has no real desire to make a change, to be the master of his own life and free from his possessions.

So today we could wonder: what about us? What's our level in Ethics? What is our degree of exigence? For us, is good life and happy life a comfortable and reassuring life or is it a given life? To think about it, I propose to follow the order of the text and have a look at the great ideas in it.

So what is Ethics according to Jesus?

• “Only One is good” = Be humble
• “Enter life...”= Accept incertitude
• “Love your neighbour” = Be attentive
• “Sell your possessions” = Give yourself
• “Come, follow me” = Watch and choose

- A lot of persons today try to turn Jesus in a philosopher, a master of wisdom and it's funny because when we read this text we see how much Jesus has nothing to do with a Socrates There are thousands pages of dialogues where Socrates tries to explain to his disciples what is good, Jesus just answers “Why do you ask me about what is good?” as if the question was nonsense, “There is only One who is good”. His reaction may seem tough. How can we understand it?

- Well, first of all, we are preoccupied to do good, in order to get eternal life, as if it was possible for us: to do good, and then to get eternal life. I think Jesus wants to avoid us a waste of time. We can't create good. Good isn't something human beings can give to themselves, it comes from God. It's a difficult idea to express, Christianity was often accused to have a very pessimistic view on humanity. Well, it isn't said we can't do good, it is said we aren't the spring of good (Neither are we the spring of evil). The first possession we have to renounce to is to please ourselves by considering we are the author of our good actions when we're only a vector. Good doesn't belong to us. Good is a gift, so there's nothing to get with it: eternal life is given. In that way, the answer Jesus gives is also a word of freedom. It should be reassuring for us.

- The question of Ethics should reminds us our dependence on God, when it is so often a way of getting ride of him. How often can we hear today that there's no need to believe to do good! But we can see in the story of the young man how fragile and uncertain our desire to do good is. It's not only a problem of our sinful nature, it is also a problem of knowledge. We don't even know what is really good for us, how could we know what is good for another person? We can see in History with the experience of communism for example how the desire to do good can turn into something evil, but we also see it in the story of Christianity! And what about our personal life? Are we convinced we know what is good for us, for our partner and children? Or are we open to God's word on our life? The will of doing good is positive, but Jesus reminds us that this will should start by humility: humility in front of God but also in front of our neighbour. We don't have to do good for our own pleasure and satisfaction, even if doing good can bring pleasure. How often do we do good to others because we want to be loved, or at least we want other people to have a good opinion about us? Are we able of delicacy and discretion, can we do good in a secret way, as Jesus so often invites us? Do we try to gain something by our actions, even love, or do we try to let the glory of God be shown in what we do?

- If only God is good, we have to obey his commandments to do good. So we can't get lost pretending it's too hard for us to know our duty. That's what remind us also the Deuteronomy: “What I am commanding to you today isn't too difficult for you or beyond your reach”. That's what Jesus also seems to answer to the young man: “obey the commandments”. Jesus always seemed to me quite ironic when he recites to the man commandments this one of course knows by heart. There's is one ambiguity. In fact there are two. First of all, Jesus doesn't say “to do good, obey the commandments” but “to enter in life” and then the young man ask him “Which commandments?” as if he wouldn't know then! Don't you find it quite strange? Well, I think that Jesus wants us to do a difference between commandments (which are called “words” in Hebrew) and rules. There is no idea of legalism in Hebrew, but this idea that Jesus stresses: commandments are an invitation to life : “choose life”. Commandments are often seen in the Bible as the gates of promised land. Promised land isn't the commandment, promised land is life, true life Ethics is looking for. The difference between commandments and rules isn't a question of contain, it's a question of horizon. Rule has no other reason to be than itself, to protect what already exists. Commandments lead us to a change and a new life. So humility God is expecting from us isn't blind obedience.

- We have to be careful not to be in demand of a rule for our life and our action, or trying to give rules to others. We would like to be wise and to know what to do with life but life always exceeds our previsions and what we are trying to do with it. There is no way to know how we must live, what we have to do, because our weak life is the way to true life. Life learns us how to live, if we are willing to listen to it and not make plans on it, as we so often do. Most of the time, we would like to know what to do before starting to do it. Why? Isn't it because we are easily afraid to fail, afraid to lose or to be wrong? Today, it seems that life is something to make a success of, and we only want to see the beautiful parts of it. But our life, the little taste of true life we experiment on this earth, in this body, is the way, it isn't the aim.

- Jesus invites us, as he did with the young man, to dispossess ourselves from our claims over our own life. We should perhaps more often see our lives, and other people's lives, in the light of the cross: in a human way, Jesus spoiled his life, his announce of the kingdom was a failure, nothing came for him except death and he died alone. So as says Paul “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

- In his answer to the young man, Jesus reminds the greatest commandment: “Love your neighbour as yourself”. In fact, there is no ready made Ethics, because human being comes first: each life is different, each person is unique when a rule makes general cases. We need general rules and boundaries to our action, without them we couldn't live as a society, but at the end of the day, it's the person in front of us that matters. In that sense, commandments can be ambiguous if we use them as systematic rules, they can lead to evil. For example, we are told not to lie but we know that a false testimony can save a life! We consider today people having lied to the Nazis as heroes, but even nearer from us, in our own experience, we surely sometimes lie to avoid to hurt some people. In the same kind of idea, we can wonder if stealing is evil when someone steals to give food to his family? If he has been fired from his job to enables shareholders to make more benefits, who steals who? Sometimes it is even difficult to avoid to transgress a commandment: most of us aren't vegetarians, we all kill to eat.

- So perhaps, as the Deuteronomy invites us, we should stop thinking our duty is written in heaven as if we had to “discover” it. We haven't to discover what we have to do but we have to invent our behaviour considering directions God gives to us. Our duty isn't somewhere, it is in the relation we have with our neighbour: “The word is very near you”, the duty is your neighbour. So we have to accept an incertitude: certain things aren't always good or always bad. We can't have a perfect behaviour, always know exactly what to do, God only knows, but we can try to do the best of what the Gospel inspires us.

- It demands to be attentive and available. It would be so easy to know what to say and what to do once for all, we could close our eyes and ears for the rest of our life! But doing good is this capacity to welcome other people and their demands. Do we really listen to one another or are we just waiting for our turn to speak? When someone tells us something, do we try to listen to what happens to him only or do we immediately come back to our own experience? Perhaps Ethics is nothing else than that: this capacity to see and to hear our neighbour. It demands not to be too hurry to do good, for our own pleasure, but just let to our friends time and space to exist. We so often love our neighbour as if he was ourself. But he is different: he has other needs, other expectations. Thanks God, we can't know what is good for him, but we can be good to him.

- So as we've seen it, leading a good life requires, in Jesus's mouth, different sorts of poverty: humility, self detachment. It isn't very surprising that the crowning of the desire of perfect life should be to sell our possessions. This way isn't an evident one in our mind. As the young man, we always wonder what we lack to be happy, to be holy. Perhaps we should wonder what we have too much. We're not only speaking here of materials possessions, but of every kind of possessions. We can't reach God's love and eternal life, but we can prepare a heart free from his attachments to receive his love. We could consider our life and wonder if we are able to receive from the others, and from God, because this ability is the real sign of poverty. Are we able to ask some help? Are we able to be grateful? Do we trust the future or are we always trying to anticipate it? The real problem with money is that it can make you think relationships are useless because you don't need to rely any more on the others.

- In the same kind of idea, perhaps we are too preoccupied to become good and wise persons for ourselves, as the young man is. We often hear that we should be preoccupied of what we are, and not of what we have. Well, there can be much pride in the desire to be good and wise, to always adopt the best behaviour. The young man wants to be rich in front of God in the same way as he is in front of men: “Look” he says to Jesus “All this commandments I observe, all this things I do for God”. We shouldn't be surprised Jesus reacts sharply. Don't we sometimes look like this guy?

- Perhaps the question of Ethics shouldn't be how can I change, how can I become a better person, because it might lead us to pride or despair. Perhaps the good question is: what can I do with who I am, who I am not in my dreams, but today. We mostly don't decide of our appearance, but we mostly don't decide of our character either. If I am an angry or an authoritative person, it will be very difficult to become a calm or a retiring person by reasoning. And it perhaps will be useless. The question is: what can I do with my anger, with my authority, how can I use it to serve God and my neighbour? Perhaps I can become a militant for human rights! Perhaps I am a sad person? Well I can use it to be compassionate to other people. And if we use what we are to serve, we might realize that we become free from what we are: we'll become not so angry, not so sad because we found a way to “give it to the poor”. Jesus calls us to give what we have, but also what we are and what we want to be for ourselves. Let's accept who we are and give it for him.

- “Come, follow me”: Jesus invites the young man to commit himself. We're not going to stand waiting for our neighbour asking for something. Well, it is good to help him when he needs, but most of the time we think it is sufficient and that good is just something to do in our everyday life, but doing good is a question of orientation of all our life. In that sense, “What would Jesus does” is a motto which never can help us to solve a difficult situation, because Jesus would never had been in the situation we are in: most of difficult situations are consequences of our sinful nature. If I think I have to lie not to hurt someone, the problem is not in lying, it is in what I did to this person that could hurt if he knew. In a general way, some moral questions today are really difficult to solve and become society problems, like death sentence, abortion, genetic manipulations, rights for homosexual persons. We can't find a ready- made solution in the Bible to these problems, but we could wonder what we can do today in our world to follow the example of Christ and to give the best of the message of the Gospel. Our behaviour and decisions will never be perfect, they will never be the “good” ones as Jesus reminds us, but we can try to let the Spirit inspire us.

- Ethics is a call to responsibility and to maturity. We have to be responsible of the decisions we take: to respond of them in front of God and of our neighbour. Most of the time, it is difficult to become an adult and we would like to be in the care of a rule, to be reassured by a master, as the young man want to be. But our neighbour and our world call us, we have to do something and we have to accept the risk of not doing good. Jesus calls us to try, not to succeed. We know that good isn't something we can create but we can let it shine through our lives, we can give it a chance to exist in our world by being a vector of this gift coming from God. In that sense it is as important to be able to receive than to give, as Jesus did.

- To conclude, I would like to stress that in all his Gospel Matthew is very preoccupied by the importance of being ready when the master comes: “Keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come”. Apparently, this is the time for the man of our story, it is time to choose. Good is an orientation we give to our lives by the different choices we make, or not. That's why we talk about ethics, because there is no moral questions without men choosing their lives and what to do with it. Little or great choices, that's the time the Lord call us. “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction” we read in the Deuteronomy. Perhaps the root of good life is this watch.

So what is Ethics according to Jesus?

• “Only One is good” = Be humble
• “Enter life...”= Accept incertitude
• “Love your neighbour” = Be attentive
• “Sell your possessions” = Give yourself
• “Come, follow me” = Watch and choose