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Hopefully you are all familiar with Thurgood Marshall, if not for his Civil Rights work then for his time as Justice of the Supreme Court. What you may not know is that during his time on the Court, he attended St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. He tried to take his faith seriously and see where God led in the call to justice in his life, hence why he is on our calendar for Lesser Feasts and Fasts.
For that reason, it is very appropriate we hear Jesus’ words from Matthew on this day. So often, in church and in politics especially, we hear people, like the leaders of the Scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’ day, who tell us how we should live or what we should do. Sometimes those things resonate with us and sound nice. Then we find out something later that makes it clear these leaders can’t live up to the same standards they expect the rest of us to.
Thankfully, as Jesus points out, Morality is something that goes beyond what others tell us to do. We don’t need our leaders to always stand tall and do the right thing. We just need to know that there is a right thing to do, and the only one who can teach us anything is there very one who won’t let us down: Jesus.
Thurgood Marshall worked hard to push past what the leaders in his day told him to establish a justice that squared with what God desires. Are we willing to do the same? We may not all be on the Supreme Court, and that is okay for we are not called to be. Yet we all live in this world, whether we want to or not, and so we are all called to follow God’s will and hopefully, in the process, make things better.
Don’t follow the leaders who often go astray. Follow God instead.