Living His Way
Eighth Sunday of the Year. Br John Bernard Church offers an authentically Christian view of authenticity.
Over the past few Sundays we have been reading through Jesus’ great proclamation of the Christian moral life in St Luke’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Plain. Today we come to the final section, and here the focus is on the disciple. What kind of person is the good disciple? Jesus’ words touch on a peculiarly modern concern: authenticity.
The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has observed a phenomenon that he labels the ‘culture of authenticity’, which he argues is deeply embedded in modern society. The basic idea is that each person has his or her own way of living out their humanity, and authenticity comes from discovering one’s own unique path. As Taylor puts it: ‘There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s.’ Central to this idea is the priority given to one’s inner feelings. The ‘authentic person’ lives outwardly in accordance with what they discover to be the ‘true self’ within.
The question of how one’s inner life is outwardly expressed is raised by today’s Gospel too. ‘For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit.’ Jesus is speaking about how our words and actions relate to our interior dispositions, expressing a fundamental biblical conviction that what comes out of a person reveals what is inside. This is what Sirach speaks about too in our first reading, using that same image of a tree and its fruit: ‘The fruit discloses the cultivation of a tree; so the expression of a thought discloses the cultivation of a person’s mind’. The basic point is that the good disciple manifests an integrity of life, where there is a harmony between what is within and without: ‘The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil’. Is this integrity the same thing as Taylor’s notion of ‘authenticity’?
The image of the tree and its fruit is used, in fact, to make two quite distinct observations. In the first place, Jesus talks about the quality of the fruit: good trees produce good fruit, bad trees produce bad fruit. But, importantly, Jesus adds to this a second observation: the fruit and the tree correspond also in kind. Figs grow on fig trees, not thornbushes, and grapes from vines, not bramble bushes. For the good disciple, the authentic outward expression of one’s inner life has everything to do with what kind of thing you are. Behind this observation sits another fundamental biblical conviction: we are created in the image and likeness of God. Becoming a good disciple, therefore, is not about searching for a ‘true self’ within, but searching for God. It is about learning to receive what God has given. For the Christian, the question of authenticity can never be separated from creation and gift.
What kind of person, then, is the good disciple? The whole movement of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain couldn’t be clearer. Over the past two Sundays we heard first the proclamation of the beatitudes and then the command of utterly gratuitous love. Then, today, in this final part of the Sermon, Jesus says to his disciples: ‘everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.’ This vision of the moral life takes a concrete form in Christ. The good disciple, shaped by the beatitudes, given totally in love, looks like Christ.
If Taylor is right that our culture’s mark of authenticity is a life lived in one’s own way and ‘not in imitation of anyone else’s’, then Christian authenticity couldn’t be more different. Becoming a good disciple is about receiving and inhabiting the life offered in Christ. ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’, St Paul proclaimed to the Galatians.
Today’s Gospel concludes with the words ‘out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.’ If I can share St Paul’s conviction, and Christ truly does dwell within my heart, then I can be sure that my mouth will speak words of life.
Readings: Ecclesiasticus 27:5-8 | 1 Corinthians 15:54-58 | Luke 6:39-45
Image: Fig Tree, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
