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Commentary on Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

In Last week’s Gospel, we saw the disciples riding high. They had, through Peter, acknowledged that Jesus, their teacher and friend, was no less than the long-awaited Messiah-King of Israel:

You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

It must have been a really exciting moment for them. This, in turn, brought from Jesus a commission of the highest responsibility to Peter and his fellow disciples. Through Jesus, they were to be given the authority of God himself within their future communities. Peter himself is spoken of as a rock, firm and unshakeable, on which the ekklesia, the Church community, will be built.

It is hard to imagine that this was not a moment of particular joy and satisfaction for the disciples. They now were thinking that Jesus, in line with Jewish expectations, would be a glorious and powerful king. And they, of course, as his followers and companions would have a special share in the glory and privileges that went with it (and later, would not two of them go so far as to ask, rather cheekily, and behind their brothers’ backs, for special places in the Kingdom, to sit on the right and left of Jesus?).

A shock
However, the euphoria was not to last very long. Very soon after this:

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

This, undoubtedly, comes as a terrible shock. This was not at all part of the scenario for the coming of the Messiah! What is worse, the agents of Jesus’ humiliation and death will not be some hostile outsiders (like the pagan and barbaric Romans), but the leaders and most distinguished people of their own community. The elders, chief priests and scribes were the people who formed the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews in Palestine.

Furthermore, it would happen in Jerusalem, the holy city, the site of the Temple where God dwelt among his people. It might also be remembered, however, that Jerusalem was the city where prophets died and Jesus had said to the Pharisees:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! (Matthew 23:37)

The disciples must have felt very disturbed and confused indeed.

A protest
So, it is not surprising that at this point, Peter, still flush with his newly-acquired status, takes Jesus to one side, speaking to him almost on equal terms:

God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.

How can this happen to the Messiah-King of Israel?

The angry reaction of Jesus must have come as somewhat unexpected, to say the least. Turning to face Peter, Jesus says:

Get behind me, Satan!

These are strong words for someone who just now was being given leadership of the community Jesus would leave behind. It is not to be understood that Peter is literally a demon, but the disciple’s words are understood as a real temptation to Jesus to turn away from the path he is to follow. Unwittingly and with the best of intentions, Peter is doing the devil’s work – trying to steer Jesus away from the path laid out for him by his Father. How often have we been such a temptation or stumbling block to others? Perhaps more often than we care to think.

You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.

Peter is seen as an obstacle, a scandal (skandalon), a stone in one’s path which causes one to stumble. Ironically, the ‘rock’ which Jesus just now had said would be the foundation of his ‘church’ is now seen as an obstacle to Jesus’ work and mission!

The mind of Christ
Jesus is angry for, though his disciples may have acknowledged that he is the Messiah, they clearly have no idea whatever what kind of Messiah-King Jesus is going to be. They are, as he says, thinking in purely human terms and have not yet got “the mind of Christ” (Phil 2:5).

They shall have to change completely their ideas about what the Messiah is going to be like. He will not be a great political and military leader who will sweep away all of Israel’s enemies. Even after the resurrection they were still thinking in those terms.

Said the two fellows on their way to Emmaus, not realising the irony of their words:

…we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
(Luke 24:21)

And, the disciples asked Jesus as he prepared to leave them at the Ascension:

Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1:6)

Yes, Jesus will be a King, but he will be a King of love, a King who will rule by serving. Because he loves and serves them, he will, if necessary, be prepared to die for them, for this is the greatest love that a person can show for his friends. This is not to say that Jesus wants to die on the cross, but he is totally prepared to suffer and die, if the service of love demands it – and it will. Ultimately, the disciples will see that the death of Jesus was the source of his greatest glory and power:

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth [on the cross and into glory], will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32)

The prophet’s lot
The other readings today give examples of people who had similar experiences to Jesus. In the First Reading Jeremiah seems to regret that he was called by God to be his prophet.

O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.

As a result he became an object of people’s ridicule, a “laughingstock”.  Every time he opened his mouth, he had to warn of violence and disaster coming on God’s people. In return he got nothing but insults and derision. He decided he would not speak about God:

I will not mention him or speak any more in his name…

But that did not work because:

…within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.

He just had to go on speaking God’s message, which was like a fire in his heart, to his people whatever the cost to himself. It is a situation like this which explains why a person would risk insults, suffering and even death in order to witness to Truth and Love. Many people languishing in jails today for expressing their religious and political beliefs know this feeling. We have seen how political or religious dissidents released from jail show no signs of “conversion” and continue the struggle for human dignity.  It is something which those who see life in terms of material comfort and power simply cannot understand.

Paul, in the Second Reading, also knew all about this. He urges his fellow-Christians to offer their:

…bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship.

And, they are not to:

…be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that [they] may discern what is the will of God.

They need a “new mind”, the way of thinking which Jesus had and which Peter certainly did not yet have in today’s Gospel.

Walking with Jesus
Today’s Gospel goes further than just asking us to understand why the glory of Jesus our King and Lord was to be found through suffering and the shameful death of the Cross.  There is a further call for us to walk the same road with Jesus:

If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Jesus is asking each one of us to dedicate our lives in totally loving and serving others even, if at times, this involves misunderstanding, ridicule, pain and even death itself.

It would be altogether wrong to think that Jesus is asking us to lead miserable lives in order to be good Christians, although one gets the impression that some people interpret the passage in that way. To follow Jesus fully, we must be able to see life as he sees it, we must have that “mind of Christ”.

When we have the mind of Christ, then we can only see our lives in terms of loving and serving others and not in the pursuit of purely self-centred or even family-centred ambition. When we have the mind of Christ, the whole direction of our life changes. Our whole concept of happiness changes. Jesus is calling us not to a life of sacrifice and suffering, but rather to a life of total love and freedom. The person who can go to jail for his beliefs is more free and usually a lot happier than the one who is tied to the pursuit of material things, social position, pleasure, and the fear of pain.

“Denying oneself” is not a suppression of one’s personality. It is rather to let go of oneself so that one can really find oneself.

This is what today’s readings are saying, namely, that Jesus is calling us to where true success and happiness are. Maybe when we walk the way of Jesus there will be people who criticise us, think we are stupid, and even attack us. Yet those who have chosen the way of Jesus again and again confirm that their lives are full of freedom, happiness, and peace. Isn’t that what we all would like to experience?

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Commentary on Matthew 14:1-12

Our reading is about the death of John the Baptist at the hands of Herod. When Herod the Great died, his kingdom was divided among four of his sons. One of them, the Herod of today’s Gospel (also known as Herod Antipas), is called a “tetrarch”, meaning that he was the ruler of a fourth part, or a quarter of a territory.

Herod Antipas ruled over Galilee and Perea from 4 BC to 39 AD, that is, all during the life of Jesus and beyond. He is the same one who wanted to see Jesus, and whom Jesus called “that fox”. He is the one to whom Pilate sent Jesus during his trial. His rather painful and loathsome death is described in Acts (12:20-23). Although only a tetrarch, Matthew calls him ‘king’ because that was his popular title among the Galileans and also in Rome.

It seems that, by all accounts, Herod was a nasty man and, as revealed by today’s story, a weak and highly superstitious one as well. It is striking that, even today, many seemingly powerful people are made insecure by superstition (for example, needing to wear the same ‘lucky’ business suit or only drive or ride in a particular model of car).

Herod was hearing extraordinary things about Jesus and he came to the conclusion that Jesus was a reincarnation of John the Baptist whom he had executed for reasons he knew very well to be totally wrong. Now here was John’s spirit come back to taunt him, for he had killed God’s servant. This leads to a retelling by Matthew of the events which led to John’s death.

John, who was no respecter of persons, had openly criticised Herod for taking his half-brother Philip’s wife, Herodias, as his own partner. This was in clear contravention of the Mosaic Law. Herod’s fault was not so much in marrying a close relative, but for taking her as his wife when Philip was still living and, at the same time, putting away the wife he already had.

It was already an extraordinarily incestuous family. Herodias was a granddaughter of Herod the Great and therefore a niece of Herod Antipas. First, she married another uncle, Herod Philip, who lived in Rome. He was a half-brother, from a different mother, of Herod Antipas. It was on a visit to Rome that Herod Antipas persuaded Herodias to leave her husband for him. This, of course, was strictly forbidden by the Mosaic law:

You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness. (Lev 18:16)

Herod, doubtless under pressure from Herodias, had wanted to rid himself of the embarrassment John was causing him, but was afraid to do anything because, in the eyes of the people, John was a prophet and spoke in the name of God.

Herodias got her chance on the occasion of Herod’s birthday. Knowing her new husband’s weaknesses, she got her daughter to dance in his presence. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the daughter was known as Salome. She later married her granduncle, another Philip, and a son of Herod the Great who ruled over the northern territories. He is mentioned by Luke.

Whether the dance was lascivious (as old Hollywood movies have suggested) we do not know, but Herod was greatly taken by the performance. In the presence of his courtiers and very likely having drunk too much wine, he promised the girl he would give her anything she wanted, even half his kingdom. Under the prompting of her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist delivered on a dish. Herod was clearly appalled and also afraid, but he had made his oath in the presence of a large number of people. He could not go back. John was decapitated and his head delivered as requested. His disciples came and buried the body and then went to tell Jesus.

There are echoes in this story of Jesus’ own death. He also died because of the moral weakness of Pilate, who gave in to the threats of the Jewish leaders for the sake of his own career. Jesus’ death, too, was the result of blind hatred. And when he died his disciples arranged to have him buried.

Undoubtedly John was a martyr. He died as a witness to truth and justice in the service of God. Herod, on the other hand, put expediency and his own convenience before truth and justice. He was in an immoral relationship with a woman and he gave in to what he felt would be the criticism and perhaps the derision of others. He had indeed made an oath, but it was one that, in the circumstances, he was obliged not to observe.

With whom do I identify more? John the Baptist, the fearless champion of truth and justice? Or Herod, the vacillator, the one who compromised truth and justice because of pressure of opinion and his own personal interests? I am sure all of us can think of times when we compromised with what we knew was the good or right thing to do and took the line of less resistance.

John is an example to us of integrity. And like him, we have, each one of us, been called in our own way to be prophets, to be spokespersons for God’s way. It may not always be easy.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 26:11-16,24

Today we have a continuation of yesterday’s reading about the reaction to Jeremiah’s prophecy about the future fate of the Temple and Jerusalem. We saw yesterday how Jeremiah had been arrested by the religious leaders after he had warned that the Temple and Jerusalem would be reduced to ruins if the people did not change their ways. His words sounded sacrilegious to his hearers, and now judgement is being passed on him.

In a verse that comes between the two passages, but not in either reading, we are told that the leaders of Judah were told of the situation and held a formal trial at the New Gate of the Temple. The priests and prophets told the leaders and the people gathered round that Jeremiah deserved to die because of what he had said against the Temple and the holy city. His accusers pass sentence on him even before Jeremiah has had a chance to defend himself.

When Jeremiah does get the opportunity to speak, he says that everything he told them came directly from the Lord. They were not his own thoughts. Once again he tells them that they have only to change their ways and submit themselves to God’s law and the threatened disaster will not take place. Jeremiah is in their hands and he says they can do what they like with him. But if they execute him, they will have innocent blood on their hands:

…for in truth the Lord sent me to you to speak all these words in your ears.

This statement produces a division between the court officials and the people over the religious leaders, the priests and the prophets. The former say that Jeremiah does not deserve to die because what he has said he has spoken in God’s name.

What happens next in the passage is not contained in our reading (see Jer 26:17-23). First, some of the elders remind the people that the prophet Micah had made prophecies very similar to those of Jeremiah, but he was not condemned to death. Micah had said that:

Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
and the mountain of the temple a wooded height. (Mic 3:12)

But then we are told of another prophet by the name of Uriah, who was preaching the same message as Jeremiah. When the king wanted to eliminate him, he fled into Egypt, but he was pursued, brought back, executed and dumped in a common grave.

However, Jeremiah was rescued from certain death by some high-powered intervention. Ahikam, son of Shaphan, was a highly-placed official, a scribe in the court of King Josiah and always well-disposed to Jeremiah. He was also the father of Gedaliah, who would become governor of Jerusalem after its destruction in 586 BC, and would also befriend Jeremiah.

Here we have an example of how the prophet’s integrity is rewarded, although it might not always turn out like this. Whatever the consequences, Jeremiah had to speak out what he believed was the Lord’s message. Quite unknown to him, circumstances worked in his favour and preserved his life.

This is an example of one’s life being in the hands of the Potter. Jeremiah would die when his time had come and not before. Neither he nor anyone else could change that. Clearly, Yahweh had some more work for him to do.

For us it is the same. In our lives, too, God’s Providence can work in strange ways and use very unexpected instruments. Let us today count our blessings and recall how many times God’s love has been experienced through surprising and unexpected interventions.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 26:1-9

Today’s reading from Jeremiah is in historical or biographical form. Some believe these passages may come from the prophet Baruch. It tells of Jeremiah’s discourse to the people warning them about disasters which will come unless they change their ways. His message will not be well received by the priests and people.

The scene takes place at the beginning of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah. The Hebrew term indicates the beginning of his first official (calendar) year as king, rather than the time of his immediate succession. This places it in the year 609-608 BC. Jeremiah is told by Yahweh to go to the temple court, perhaps near what was called the New Gate, and to speak to all those who had come from the surrounding countryside of Judah to worship. He is to say exactly what Yahweh has told him. Through his prophet, Yahweh promises that, if they listen to Jeremiah and change their ways, he will not bring disaster on them.

The Lord’s warning comes in the clearest language. If each person listens and turns back from their evil ways, the Lord may repent of the “disaster” he planned to inflict on them. On the other hand, if they will not observe the Law and listen to the words of his prophet, the Temple will end up like Shiloh, and the city of Jerusalem will become a curse word among the nations of the earth.

Shiloh was an ancient shrine, which was now in ruins. The sanctuary there was apparently destroyed by the Philistines. In the first book of Samuel we read:

…Israel was defeated, and they fled, everyone to his home. There was a very great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. The ark of God was captured…
(1 Sam 4:10-11)

Jerusalem, says Yahweh, will meet the same fate.

Not surprisingly, this message did not go down well with those who heard it. The priests and prophets seized Jeremiah and threatened him with death. The phrase they used described the ultimate penalty for those who seriously violated the law of Moses. The ‘prophets’ here are those false prophets who gave upbeat prophecies putting unrealistic hopes in the people’s minds and glossing over their wrongdoings.

All were horrified and enraged that the Temple should become like Shiloh and the city become deserted. These were absolutely unthinkable ideas. How could God allow such a thing to happen?

But it would, and very soon. And it would happen again about 40 years after the death of Jesus – never to recover. St Augustine had similar feelings when he saw Rome (for him the centre of the world and its civilisation) fall to the ‘barbarian’ invaders.

Once again we see the dangerous vocation of the prophet. He is blessed with a special insight and he can see where the behaviour of people is leading them. He gives warnings but they fall on deaf ears. Even worse, they are rejected and the prophet is seen as someone to be gotten rid of as an enemy. But the prophet has no option but to continue speaking out.

What makes the matter more complex is that there will be confusion between true and false prophets and often the beguiling messages of the latter will be listened to. Careful discernment is needed to distinguish the genuine prophet from those who either lull us into complacency or, on the other hand, tell us that “the end of the world is nigh”.

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Commentary on Matthew 13:47-53

We come to the seventh and last of the Parables of the Kingdom in this discourse. Of course, we need to remind ourselves that Jesus did not speak them one after the other as they are presented here. They are the work of the author’s editing, putting matters with a common theme into one place.

Today’s Kingdom parable points to the end of time. There will come a time for the end of the Kingdom on earth, and then those who belong and those who do not will be clearly distinguished and separated from each other. That is something which cannot and should not be done now as the parable of the weeds indicated.

When will that end be? Of course, we do not know – fortunately! But one thing we do know is that our own end will come in a relatively short time, even if we live to be 100. And when that happens, it will be clear to God, if not to others, whether we are leaving this world ‘inside’ the Kingdom or ‘outside’ it, that is, whether we are with God or against him.

How can we make sure we are in the right place? By making sure that I get confession and the ‘last sacraments’ before I die? Don’t bet on it! The best guarantee is to enroll in the Kingdom today and every day, to live, with Christ’s help, in the way he has shown us. If we do that on a day-to-day basis, the future will take care of itself and there is no need to worry.

The whole discourse is then brought to an end by Jesus asking his disciples if they understand what he has been saying, and they say they do. Jesus then gives a description of the truly learned disciple. He is a “scribe”, an interpreter of God’s Word, who can bring from his storeroom “what is new and what is old”, someone who has both the wealth of the Old Testament, as well as the vision of the New.

The Jerusalem Bible comments:

“This picture of a ‘scribe who has become a disciple’ sums up the whole ideal of the evangelist and may well be a self-portrait.”

The author of this Gospel is clearly a Jew who has become a Christian.

As Jesus said earlier, he had not come to destroy the traditions of the ‘old’ Hebrew covenant, but to fulfil it with a new covenant. He would equally reject those who abandoned the Hebrew tradition, as well as those who rejected the new insights which he brought. This is a process which goes on today in the Christian faith. There is a continuing and creative tension between what has been handed down in the past, and the new understandings which arise with changing circumstances. We all have to be both conservative and progressive at the same time!

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Commentary on Jeremiah 18:1-6

Today, Jeremiah visits a potter. Three chapters, of which today’s reading is the beginning, consist of lessons that God taught Jeremiah at a potter’s workshop. The date is believed to be before 605 BC. The message is clear: as the potter has total control over his clay and makes of it what he wills, so is the Lord master of his people. They are like clay in his hands.

Once again we see how the prophet uses a symbol from daily life to give a message about God’s relationship with his people. (Remember on Monday of this week we had the image of the loincloth.)

The Jerusalem Bible makes the following comment (edited):

“The time of this enacted parable is before 598 BC, since the great disaster (the exile into Babylon) has not yet taken place. Symbolic gesture had accompanied the preaching of the earliest prophets, of Samuel for example, or Ahijah of Shiloh, and of the false prophet Zedekiah. This procedure was not simply a dramatisation of the spoken prophecy: it was a pre-enactment of the event threatened or promised, in such a way that the event itself became as inevitable as the gesture was irrevocable.”

The same phenomenon recurs among the ‘writing’ prophets. Hosea’s whole mission is inextricable from a symbolic action which in turn is his private predicament, namely, his difficult marriage. With Isaiah, the symbolic gesture is found less frequently (see Isiah chapter 20 and the symbolic names he gives to his children).

Jeremiah performs, or interprets, many symbolic actions: the almond tree and the pot; the hidden loincloth (though this seems only to have been enacted in vision); the potter; the jug; the figs; the yoke; the buying of the field. To this list we may add that his life itself is a symbol and that his sufferings (though he gives this no emphasis) identify him in advance with the nation itself about to suffer, and make him foreshadow the suffering servant of Yahweh.

Later, Ezekiel was to perform more symbolic actions (see Ezekiel chapter 4): the brick ‘besieged’; the rationed food; the hair; the mime of the exile; the pot; and the two sticks. He too, like Hosea, interprets his personal experience symbolically: his illness, his wife’s death, his dumbness and recovery.

Symbolism of this kind is also found in the New Testament, for example, the fig tree cursed by Jesus and the prophecy of Agabus in Acts (21:11) in which, by a symbolic gesture, he prophesies the future arrest of Paul.

In today’s reading Jeremiah is told to go down to the potter’s house. It was probably situated on the slopes of the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near what was known as the Potsherd Gate (perhaps because broken and discarded pottery was piled there).

The prophet sees the potter working at his wheel. The wheel consisted of two horizontal stone disks. Both were attached to an upright shaft, one end of which was sunk permanently into the ground. The potter would spin the lower wheel with his foot and work the clay on the upper wheel which was also turning.

Jeremiah noticed that if the vessel being made turned out wrong, which happened often, the potter would start all over again to get exactly the shape he wanted. It is worth noting that the Hebrew word for “going wrong” here is the same as that describing the ruined loincloth in Monday’s reading.

The message is then given. Can God not do with his people just as the potter does?

Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

It is an image found elsewhere in Scripture. And the Hebrew word for ‘potter’ is translated elsewhere as ‘Maker’ with reference to God.

The lesson tells us a number of things. First, that man proposes, but God disposes. We can make as many plans as we like in our lives, but in the end, we are always the subject of forces totally beyond our control. This applies to all, rich and poor, powerful and weak.

Second, this does not mean that we are to go through life passively and fatalistically and just let things happen to us. We cannot just write off things as “fate” or say that “I am an unlucky person”.

Finally, what it does mean is that we are to actively seek what God wants from us in life, and to actively accept what clearly is his will for us. Life and freedom and peace consist in making God’s will and our will to be in perfect harmony. I want what he wants. As Paul puts it, writing to the Romans:

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? (Rom 9:21)

God may be a potter, but he is a good one and wants to produce the very best product possible. For that, though, he needs my cooperation. I cannot make life in the way that I want it, but by allowing myself to be moulded by him, I can be all that I can be.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 15:10, 16-21 Read Wednesday of Week 17 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Matthew 13:36-43

Today we have an interpretation of the parable of the wheat and the weeds (or darnel). Matthew begins by telling us that Jesus left the crowds and went to “the house”. This is the nameless place where Jesus is at home with his disciples. As suggested earlier, it is the place for the ‘insiders’, those who are close to Jesus in the sense of following him and accepting his way; it is also a symbol of where communities of Christians gathered in the early Church. Here Jesus is alone with his own disciples, away from the crowd.

His disciples ask for an explanation of the parable about the wheat and the weeds. Likely enough, what follows is less the actual words of Jesus than a reflection of the early Christian community applying the parable to their own situation. The parable, which basically makes one point, is now turned into an allegory where each part has a symbolic meaning of its own:

Whereas in the original parable, the emphasis seems to be on the necessary and unavoidable coexistence of good and bad within the Christian community, the emphasis here is more on what will happen at the end: the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the good.

Let us pray that we may be found among the good seed of the Kingdom. We do that by opening ourselves fully to Jesus our King and Lord and following the way he asks us to follow.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 14:17-22

This passage was written during a period of death and famine in Jerusalem preceding the Babylonian captivity in 587 BC. It is also a response to Yahweh’s anger against false prophets who are raising expectations among the people that they are not going to experience “sword and famine”. In fact, they are going to experience that and more. Jeremiah, as a true prophet, will not raise such expectations but, however unpopular his words, will warn them of what is coming, and why. This won’t make him very popular; real prophets seldom are.

As written, however, today’s passage is another lovely reading full of compassion and tenderness. There is no anger in God’s words today against his people. Rather he is presented as deeply upset over their sufferings. Through the prophet, God says:

Let my eyes run down with tears night and day…for the virgin daughter of my people is struck down with a crushing blow…

The ‘daughter’ is Jerusalem. Everywhere God sees people in the countryside killed by the sword, and in the city sick with hunger. Even the prophets and priests, who would normally be supported by the people, are reduced to foraging for food “throughout the land [about which they] have no knowledge”. All are at their wits’ end.

Jeremiah then expresses his own distress at what is happening and wonders what the Lord is doing about it. He asks:

Have you completely rejected Judah?
Does your heart loathe Zion?
Why have you struck us down
so that there is no healing for us?

It is the cry of a people deep in despair at their never-ending sufferings and who lament:

We look for peace but find no good,
for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.

At the same time, the prophet acknowledges that his people are in no way innocent. They have brought their own tribulations on themselves:

We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord…
for we have sinned against you.

But the prophet reminds the Lord that they are his own people and, for his own Name’s sake, he prays that they not be rejected:

…remember and do not break your covenant with us.

Their suffering and shame somehow reduces the glory of their God, especially in the eyes of Gentiles. Who could honour a God who allows his people to suffer in this way?

But it takes two to make a covenant, and its observance depends on both sides keeping their promise. He is their God, but they are his people and must show it by their behaviour. This they have miserably failed to do.

The prophet concludes by appealing to the unique power of their God:

Can any idols of the nations bring rain,
or can the heavens give showers?

We remember the challenge that Elijah made to the priests of Baal about breaking a drought (see Exod 18:25-29). Only Yahweh can bring the longed-for rain:

Is it not you, O Lord our God?
We set our hope on you,
for it is you who do all this.

We see here, on the one side, the picture of the tender God who cares so deeply for his people. This was all so graphically illustrated by the life of Jesus, our God incarnate. We must never forget it.

On the other side, during times of tragedy, pain, loss or distress it is easy for us to wonder if our God really does care, when he allows such terrible things to happen to us or to our loved ones. But it is precisely at such times we need to be aware of the closeness of God’s love to us. His love for us was most clearly shown as Jesus hung dying in terribly agony and shame on the Cross. Paul writing to the Romans said:

He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us… (Rom 8:32)

And Jesus himself cried out:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)

The words died on his lips and were followed by total acceptance when he said:

It is finished. (John 19:30)

And he surrendered his life into his Father’s hands. That was the moment of supreme love, the moment of new life and glory.

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Commentary on Matthew 12:14-21

Jesus is becoming a figure of controversy.  We saw yesterday how he was accused by Pharisees of condoning the breaking of the sabbath on the part of his disciples.  Far from apologising, Jesus defended his followers and implied that he himself was greater than the Law.  Immediately afterwards he went to a synagogue and, in spite of a challenge about healing on the sabbath, went ahead and cured a man with a “withered hand” (Matt 12:9-13). At the end of this story, Matthew says:

But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him. (Matt 12:14)

He was seen as a severe threat to their authority—and this is where our reading begins today.

Jesus was fully aware of their plotting and so he disappeared from sight for a while.  We should be clear that Jesus did not go out of his way to confront and attack people.  Still less was his behaviour deliberately designed to create trouble for himself. There are people like that; they go out of their way to make trouble for others and for themselves.  Jesus never behaved in such a way.  He did not want to attack or be attacked by people.  He did not deliberately engineer his own sufferings and death, quite the contrary.  So now, as things get hot for him, he withdraws for a while.

At this point, Matthew (remember, he is writing for a Jewish readership) shows how Jesus’ behaviour corresponds to a prophecy in the Old Testament—something he does a number of times in his Gospel. Jesus quotes the passage from the prophet Isaiah (42:1-4), and it shows him as full of the Spirit of God campaigning for justice for peoples everywhere. 

He is the servant whom God has chosen, “in whom my soul delights”.  He is no demagogue shouting from a soapbox:

He will not cry out or lift up his voice
or make it heard in the street…

He moves around quietly and, at the same time, is tolerant and understanding of the weak. His behaviour is described as gentle and kind, so that:

…a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench…

We, too, are called to live and proclaim the Gospel without compromise, but to do so without any taint of arrogance or bullying. At the same time, we need to show patience and understanding for those who are not yet ready to answer Jesus’ call.