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Commentary on Matthew 12:46-50

Just before we enter the third of the great discourses on the parables of the Kingdom, we have today’s short passage on who really belongs to Jesus. As Jesus was speaking to the crowds his mother and other family members arrived:

While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him.

Matthew does not say what their words were, but we know from another context (Mark 3:21) that they were embarrassed by what he was doing, probably because of the way he was earning the displeasure of the authorities. In later times, many who opted to follow Christ have been a source of embarrassment and displeasure to their families, especially in situations where being Christian or Catholic was a violation of state law or religious affiliation.

When Jesus is told they are looking for him he stretches out his hands to his followers and says that they are his “mother and brothers”. And then he defines how one becomes one of his brothers and sisters:

…whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

It is significant that Jesus’ own blood relatives are spoken of as being “outside”; Jesus’ disciples, those who really listen to him, are those who are ‘inside’. This is not to say that Jesus is rejecting his family; to do so would be to contradict his own teaching of loving all unconditionally. But he uses the situation to make a very important point—that relationship to Jesus is based on one thing only, total commitment through Jesus to the Father.

To be a Christian, a disciple, is to enter into this new relationship with God and with others. All other bonds, including those of blood, take a second place or are to be understood in the light of this bonding to God first of all and above all.

It would be wrong to conclude that Jesus was rejecting his own mother here. Yet what he says applies to her as much as to anyone else. Mary is measured by her commitment to the Father and the Son, who is also her Son. That commitment was clearly made when she accepted to be the mother of Jesus:

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. (Luke 1:38)

It was a commitment that was still being kept as she stood in grief at the foot of her Son’s cross. Mary was certainly on the ‘inside’. Let us ask her today that we too may always be ‘insiders’.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 1:1,4-10

As we listen during these weeks to the teachings of the great prophets, we come today to one of the greatest – Jeremiah, from the latter half of the 7th century BC. He was born about 650 BC of a priestly family in Anathoth, a village near Jerusalem. Today we read how, in the year 628, at the age of 22, he was called by God to be a prophet. His life in the service of the Lord will face many hardships. Today we start with hearing about his call.

The first three verses of the first chapter put Jeremiah in his historical context, but we only read the first verse. In the verses omitted, we are told that his call came in the 13th year of the reign of King Josiah of Judah and continued through the reign of his son, Jehoiakim and on until the downfall of Jerusalem under puppet King Zedekiah, a son of Josiah, when the people were brought off into exile to Babylon. In our readings from the books of the Kings, we have met all these people already.

The book opens by telling us that it contains the “words of Jeremiah”, that is, the whole story of his discourses and activities. (There are actually 10 people called Jeremiah in the Hebrew Testament, of whom two were actually contemporaries of our prophet.)

His father, Hilkiah (a common Biblical name, meaning ‘the Lord is my portion’) may have been related to a priestly house going back to the time of King Solomon. Like Ezekiel and Zechariah, Jeremiah himself was both a prophet and priest. We know of two other men in the Bible named Hilkiah, both of them Jeremiah’s contemporaries.

His birthplace, Anathoth, was a village not far from Jerusalem and was named after Anat(h), a Canaanite deity who was goddess of war. Its priestly connections go back to the time of Joshua, the successor of Moses, and Solomon. Abiathar the priest had been sent into exile there by Solomon. Its pagan origins would presumably have been almost forgotten by Jeremiah’s time.

Anata, a town 5 km northeast of Jerusalem, still preserves the ancient name, although it is about 2 km away from the biblical site. Anathoth is described as being in the territory of Benjamin (patriarch and the youngest of Jacob’s 12 sons) and was one of four Levitical towns (recall that priests came from the tribe of Levi). After the Babylonian exile, Benjamites settled there again.

Jeremiah then tells how the word of God came to him. Yahweh says to him:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you…

From all eternity God knew of Jeremiah and, in the very act of creating him, had a call on his unconditional service. In the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians we read a similar description of our own calling:

…just as [God] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.
(Eph 1:4)

Paul, writing to the Galatians, also speaks of God:

…who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace was pleased… (Gal 1:15)

When God tells Jeremiah, “I knew you”, he means more than an awareness of his identity. To “know” in the Scripture implies a close and intimate relationship which goes beyond the purely mental or intellectual, still less just recognition. In other biblical contexts, the word can also mean to “choose”.

When God says to the prophet, “I consecrated you”, he means more than making Jeremiah holy, but rather equipping him for the work of prophet, to be a spokesman for God with his people. Jeremiah is being called to be a prophet to the nations, but his native Judah, the kingdom of which Jerusalem was the capital, is certainly included among these.

Jeremiah responds to this call with some alarm; like Isaiah, he feels totally inadequate for the task. Moses, too, had many misgivings about being chosen to lead God’s people, and said:

O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. (Exod 4:10)

Similarly, Jeremiah says:

Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.

And Paul, when he complains of an affliction that he feels makes him less effective as an evangeliser, is reassured that it is precisely his weaknesses which make him a fitting channel for God’s message (see 2 Cor 12:7-10).

Jeremiah’s objection is immediately rejected by Yahweh. He has no cause to fear:

Do not say, ‘I am only a boy…’

Youth and inexperience do not disqualify when God calls. He equips and sustains those he commissions. Timothy is also encouraged when he is told:

Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
(1 Tim 4:12)

Jeremiah is told, “Do not be afraid” – perhaps one of the most repeated phrases in both the Old and New Testaments, and often heard from the lips of Jesus. Jeremiah will be given what he needs to carry out his mission. He is simply to go to those to whom he will be sent and to say what he is told to say. He has no need to fear because God is with him to protect him.

“I am with you” – God’s promise of his continuing presence should calm the fears of the most reluctant of prophets. “To deliver you” – Yahweh does not promise that Jeremiah will not be persecuted or imprisoned (he will), but that no serious physical harm will come to him.

Then comes the act or rite of commissioning. What is described may have come to Jeremiah in a vision, or the experience is simply being expressed in figurative language. The Lord touched Jeremiah’s mouth and gave him his mission:

Now I have put my words in your mouth.

This describes perfectly the role of the prophet – to be a spokesperson for God. As he had been promised earlier, Jeremiah will be told what he has to say. The prophet does not speak in his own name; he speaks as the messenger of God.

The prophetic mission is then described in both negative and positive terms. He is both to “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow”. But he is also “to build and to plant”. The first two pairs of verbs are negative, stressing the fact that Jeremiah is to be primarily a prophet condemning what is wrong, while the last pair is positive, indicating that he is also to be a prophet of restoration – even if only secondarily. This is the traditional role of the prophet. He is called on to denounce all that is against truth, love and justice. He also exhorts people to convert, to reform and to turn their lives around.

Jeremiah is often seen as a prophet of doom (we call gloomy people ‘Jeremiahs’), but he also had positive messages to bring. We will see that Jeremiah’s hard-hitting words were not welcomed especially by the rich and those in power. He will be attacked and persecuted.

This too is the role of the Church within whose ranks there must always be prophets. These prophets will speak not only to the world, but to their own Church.

We might reflect on who are the prophets in our contemporary Church today? Do we have enough prophets? Does our Church encourage and see the need for the prophetic role? One fact is sure; they are not always welcomed by their fellow-Christians, not least by those in authority. There can also be false prophets and we must carefully discern which is which.

Every baptised person is priest, prophet and king as we share in the mission of Jesus Christ himself, who was, of course, a prophet in the sense we have been discussing. Each one of us has been called from all eternity to do what Jeremiah was asked to do:

…to pluck up and to pull down…to build and to plant.

As we sometimes say, the Church and its members have both to denounce and announce, or, in more colloquial terms, ‘to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable’. As with Jeremiah, this will not make us very popular with certain groups, but popularity has never been a requirement for salvation.

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Commentary on Matthew 13:1-9

Today we come to the third of the five discourses of Jesus found in Matthew’s Gospel. It consists entirely of the Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it. It might be helpful to go back to Monday of the 10th Week (Ordinary Time) and look again at what is said there about the meaning of the ‘Kingdom of heaven’. Briefly to repeat, we are talking about, not a place and still less a place in the future life, but a network of people and communities who are committed to all that God is and stands for, as revealed to us through the life and teaching of Jesus. The people are those who work to see that God’s will be done on earth, which is the establishment of the Kingdom.

These parables, then, are images that Jesus gives to help us understand how we are to enter into and become part of that Kingdom—of that kingship of God to which we adhere with all our heart and soul.

Our passage begins:

That same day Jesus went out of the house…

What day? And what house? It seems that Matthew is linking the parables of the Kingdom with the scene at the end of chapter 12 (vv 46-50) about those who are on the ‘inside’ and those on the ‘outside’. The house—whose ownership is never referred to, and we know that Jesus had no house of his own—seems to refer to any place where people are gathered together with Jesus.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Matt 18:20)

And wherever people are closely related with Jesus, not just physically, but intentionally, that is what it means to be on the ‘inside’, and it is also to be part of the Kingdom.

We are told that the crowds wanting to listen to Jesus were so great that he had to use a boat moored near the shore to speak to them. In the Gospel, the boat often represents the Church or the Christian community from which Jesus continues to speak his message to the world. We are also told that he spoke to them in parables. Once again, Matthew uses his favourite number by having seven of them. Just to remind ourselves: there are 2×7 generations in Jesus’ genealogy; 7 Beatitudes; forgiveness not 7 but 77 times; 7 ‘alas’ in the condemnation of the Pharisees; and his Gospel is divided into seven main sections—infancy, five discourses, passion.

For three days, that is, for the rest of this week, we are going to be considering the first and the longest of the parables, the parable of the sower. First, today, we have the parable itself, then tomorrow some explanation of the role of parables in Jesus’ teaching and, finally on Saturday, an interpretation of the parable.

The parable itself is very straightforward. It speaks about a farmer sowing seed in his field, a typical Palestinian field of the time. It is obviously a very mixed patch of ground. There are paths going across it where people have long established a right of way. There are bits of rock sticking up above the ground with small hollows where water can gather after rain. At that time, ploughing was done after the seed was sown, so there are weeds and brambles growing wild all over the place. And then there are parts of the field which have good, fertile soil.

This image largely describes too the field in which Jesus, the preacher and teacher, is working. It provides very mixed soil, and much of the seed does not go very far in producing fruit. All this has been described in what we have already seen of Jesus’ mission among the people, the religious leaders, his own family—and his disciples. It is these latter who are the fertile soil, these are the ones who will enter, who are already entering the Kingdom.

A parable in the Gospel usually makes just one point. In this case the message is that God’s plan will succeed, even though there seem to be setbacks. It was as important a message for the early Christians to hear as it is for us today. It is a word of encouragement when Christians see how little success they seem to have at times in their evangelising work. The message is not to worry—God’s Word will prevail, and there will always be fertile soil in which to grow and multiply. Indeed, in the past, some communities did fail, but overall the Christian communities grew and the message spread to every corner of the world.

And then there is the final exhortation:

If you have ears, hear!

‘Listening’ and ‘hearing’ are sometimes used interchangeably. In this context, to ‘hear’ is not just to be physically capable of picking up sound. To ‘hear’ presumes attention and awareness; it implies understanding and acceptance and, ultimately, implementation of what is heard.

Am I ready to enter the Kingdom? What kind of soil do I present for the Lord’s Word? Am I really listening to him in the fullest sense?

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Commentary on Jeremiah 2:1-3, 7-8, 12-13 Read Thursday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Matthew 13:10-17

Today’s passage continues from the Parables of the Kingdom and forms an interlude between the parable of the sower and its interpretation. Jesus is asked by his disciples why he speaks to the people in parables. The implication is that he does not speak in parables to his own disciples.

It would be possible to interpret Jesus’ reply as meaning that he speaks clearly to his disciples but to the people in riddles because they are outsiders. This would seem to contradict the purpose of speaking in parables, which is to use helpful and familiar images in order to lead towards a better understanding of a deeper message (the parable of the sower is a good example).

The Jerusalem Bible sees it somewhat differently:

“Those who saw so dimly could be further blinded by the light of full revelation. Jesus, therefore, does not reveal with complete clarity the true nature of the messianic kingdom which is unostentatious. Instead he filters the light through symbols; the resulting half-light is nevertheless a grace from God, an invitation to ask for something better and accept something greater.”

It seems that we are dealing here again with the difference between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The ‘insiders’ are those who give Jesus a ready hearing. Naturally, they are more open to hearing about the ‘mysteries’ of the Kingdom and to assimilating what they hear. The ‘outsiders’ on the other hand, are precisely that because they have closed minds; they are not ready to listen.

In the particular context of Matthew’s Gospel, those who refuse to listen are those who have rigidly bound themselves within the confines of the Mosaic Law and who refuse to listen to the message of Jesus. His message is a “fulfilment” as well as being a radical restatement of the Law and the proclamation of a totally new covenant in the person of Jesus as Messiah. Or, as the Jerusalem Bible puts it:

“The ill-disposed will even lose what they have, namely, that Jewish Law which, without the perfection Christ brings to it, is destined to become obsolete.”

This gives meaning to the words which Jesus uses. Speaking of the ‘insiders’ he says:

For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

Those who have opened themselves to the Word of God will find themselves evermore enriched, while those who have not even begun to accept the Word will end up in even a worse situation than they are now. Similarly, those to whom the parables are addressed:

…look but do not see, listen but do not hear or understand.

This happens, not because the parables are difficult, but because the hearers are not prepared to listen. In fact, they are, one might almost say, watered down and easily digestible versions of the full message.

And Jesus quotes words of Isaiah (9:13) which are not meant to be understood as God deliberately blocking his Word from reaching people as this would not make any sense. The prophet is better understood as speaking in a strongly sarcastic tone:

You will indeed listen but never understand,
and you will indeed look but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes,
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.

That is where the issue lies. If we are prepared to see and to listen, it will mean a radical change in our lives, in our attitudes, in our values and priorities, in our relationships. Many are not ready to have their lives turned upside down. They prefer to remain blind and deaf.

On the contrary, Jesus says to the ‘insiders’:

But blessed are your eyes, for they see [i.e. understand and accept], and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it [i.e. listen, accept and carry out].

And to the extent that we have become ‘insiders’ with Christ, we too are deeply blessed. But we do need to be sensitive to our own tendencies not to see or not to listen because of our unreadiness to go all the way in our following Jesus, or in our reluctance to let go and make the changes in our lives he is asking of us.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 3:14-17

Today we are given an optimistic vision of Zion in the messianic age. Jeremiah, in spite of his reputation, is not all gloom and doom. It was, of course, an important role of the prophet to point out the people’s shortcomings and to warn them of the consequences of their lifestyle. But it was also his role to bring a message of hope and to raise the morale of people who were oppressed or depressed.

Today’s reading is a message of hope for a people whose city has been destroyed and who have been carried away into exile in Babylon. Now the prophet is calling them to come back—not only to their city, but also to following the will of their God. He calls them “faithless children”, and reminds them that God alone is their husband and master.

The Hebrew word here for “husband/master” is ba’al, which, of course, is also the name given to the false gods that the Jews of the time had, under the influence of their conquerors, been worshipping. Jeremiah is calling on his people to have only one ba’al or master, namely Yahweh.

Now comes the promise. The people will return to Zion or Jerusalem, but in very small numbers, “one from a city and two from a family”. They are the remnant of Judah who will carry on the covenant promises of the Messiah to come.

They will have shepherds, that is, rulers, who, like David of old, will be “after my own heart”. They will be wise and prudent shepherds, unlike the corrupt and idolatrous rulers who led them to their downfall and exile.

“In those days”, that is, in the age of the Messiah, the remnant that has returned to Jerusalem will grow in numbers, yet:

…they shall no longer say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.”

It is clear that the Ark had been carried away or destroyed with the pillaging of the Temple by the Babylonians, but this will not matter.

The Ark of the Covenant, formerly symbolising God’s royal presence, will be irrelevant when the Messiah comes:

It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed, nor shall another one be made.

For the city of Jerusalem itself will become the “throne of the Lord”, where all the nations will assemble. Formerly, the Lord had been “enthroned upon the cherubim” in the Ark (Ps 99:1).

Moreover:

…all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall no longer stubbornly follow their own evil will.

In the past, they refused to listen to the Lord and instead worshipped idols made by human hands.

Unlikely as it must have seemed at the time, Jerusalem did indeed become a place where the nations assembled. It became the place where the Messiah, the Christ, sealed the New Covenant in his own blood. It was the place where the people converged from all over the Mediterranean and, on the day of Pentecost, heard the Good News proclaimed in a language they could perfectly understand.

And, from Jerusalem, the message fanned out to the four points of the compass and eventually to every corner of the world. This is the theme of the Acts of the Apostles.

Jeremiah’s hearers never lived to see that day, but he was accurate in everything he foretold. We, on the other hand, are the beneficiaries. How are we responding to this tremendous gift of God’s love? To what extent have we heard and assimilated the Message? And what difference does our way of life make to those around us?

The Messianic Age continues, but it depends on us to make it visible. The realisation of the Messianic Age is the coming of the Reign of God into our world. There is a lot of work still to be done!

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Commentary on Matthew 13:18-23

In today’s Gospel reading from the Parable of the Kingdom, we find the explanation of the parable of the sower. Or perhaps we should say it is an interpretation rather than an explanation. It is presented as coming from Jesus, but it is likely to have come from the tradition of the early Church. There is quite a different emphasis between the original parable and this interpretation. The parable focuses on the sower and the ultimate and inevitable success of his work. The interpretation, however, looks much more at the soil in which the seed falls. The interpretation reflects the experiences of the early Church as it tried to spread the gospel. The four different kinds of soil are taken to represent four kinds of environments into which the Word of God is ‘seeded’. The behavior of the seeds, then, represents four types of responses to the Word of God.

The first kind is like the seed on the stony path. The Word of God never even gets started, but gets plucked away by the evil influences by which the person is surrounded. In our strongly secular world today it is not easy for the Word to take root with so many competing enticements.

The second kind is like the seed that falls on the rock. The Word of God is received with great enthusiasm; the person becomes a devout and active Christian. But if obstacles arise which make the living of the Christian life difficult, the person falls away, maybe quickly, maybe gradually. As the Gospel says, the person has no roots; the faith has not gone deep, and so has not been really assimilated. This must have been the case with many in the early Church who enthusiastically embraced Christianity, but when persecution came, abandoned their faith. In our own time, we see this often enough when, for instance, people are removed from a protected environment where it is easy to live the faith to one where the faith is ignored or even ridiculed.

The third kind is like the seed that falls among the briars and brambles. I would suggest that a very large number of us are touched by this category. Anxieties about many things and the lure of material goods can gradually choke off our commitment to the gospel in its fullness. Our witness becomes seriously compromised and “there is no yield”—that is, we make no real contribution to building the Kingdom and changing the world. We sit on the fence and try to have the best of both worlds; we try to serve God and mammon, which Jesus says is not possible. I am sure many of us have matter for reflection here.

Finally, there is the fourth kind, the seed which falls on good soil. This is the one “who hears the message and takes it in”. These people hear the Word, accept the Word, make it their own and it overflows into all they are and do and say. Much fruit for the world comes from such persons.

These four types can still be found and it is for each one of us to determine to which group we belong.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 7:1-11 Read Saturday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Matthew 13:24-30

Today’s passage from the Parables of the Kingdom is found only in Matthew’s Gospel. It is about the planting of seed, but the concern is quite different, and it again reflects the experience of the early Church.

A man has sown good seed in his field but, unknown to him, an enemy has come and planted weeds among the wheat. As the plants come up the farmer sees the weeds growing all through his wheat. His slaves want to pull them out, but the farmer tells them to wait until the harvest time. The wheat and the weeds are similar in appearance in the early stages and it will be much easier to differentiate them as they mature. In the meantime, let both grow side by side.

This is a picture of the Kingdom and also of the Church which is trying to be part of it. For the early Church, more distressing in many ways than persecution from outside, must have been betrayal and shortcomings on the inside. There would have been a strong temptation immediately to get rid of such people. But wiser heads prevailed: “Wait…let God be the judge and, in any case, people can change”. The sinner of today may be the saint of tomorrow.

This has been a problem all through the history of the Church and today is no exception. There is always a strong temptation among those who feel themselves more committed to living out the Gospel to adopt an elitist approach to the faith. This can take two forms, either: 1) members who are seen as falling short of the Church’s requirements in faith and behavior are gotten rid of, or 2) and perhaps more commonly, those who see themselves more committed form a relatively closed group, i.e. a church within a church. There has been a certain amount of tension over such situations with the appearance of a number of Catholic movements in recent times.

Today’s parable reminds us of something very important, namely, that the Church is, and always will be, a Church of sinners and for sinners. Our Church is, as Paul puts it, “a vessel of clay”, leaking and easily broken. At the same time, we have been called to help bring about the Kingdom in our world and we have constantly to try to do that. But we need to distinguish between the vessel and its contents—the weeds and the wheat—to distinguish between the Christian vision and the Church which tries to communicate it.

Some have been disturbed by the scandals of our age (and scandal has existed all across the time of the church) and have left the Church because of them. To do so is to not to understand today’s parable. These scandals, far from undermining the Christian vision, only affirm it. That vision remains a shining ideal. But the Church, which is not to be identified with the vision, is the flawed and fragile bearer of that vision. It has always been so and always will be. The Church is called to proclaim the Kingdom, but it has to struggle to realise that Kingdom in itself also. Today’s parable is a call for tolerance, patience, compassion and understanding while not compromising on the vision that comes to us from Jesus.

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Commentary on Micah 7:14-15,18-20

Today’s final selection from Micah consists of a lovely prayer from a people aware of their great needs which only God can remedy. The prophet begs God to lead his people to richer pastures, for the people of Israel are his very inheritance:

Shepherd your people with your staff,
the flock that belongs to you…

Right now, they live:

…alone in a forest
in the midst of a garden land…

The prophet says they are living isolated in a land that is unproductive—in the sense that they are living in a situation of desolation and hardship after their return to Jerusalem from their exile in Babylon.

They now long for the days when they could pasture in:

…Bashan and Gilead….As in the days
when you came out of the land of Egypt,
show us marvelous things.

This was a time when they were the witnesses to all God’s wonders on their behalf. And as in the days after they left Egypt, they long for more wonderful signs of Yahweh’s love and power.

The prophet then appeals to God’s very nature to come to their aid:

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over the transgression
of the remnant of his possession?

This prayer is a kind of psalm of which similar examples occur in the prophetic writings. Micah’s God is not the kind of god that others believe in, a god who instils terror and fear. This God takes faults away and pardons crime. This God is not vindictive; he does not cherish anger forever, but delights in showing mercy and compassion.

Micah begs his God to have pity on his people in spite of all that they have done:

…tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.

He appeals to God to remember and to implement the covenants of old that were made with Abraham and Jacob, covenants of faithfulness and mercy.

Perhaps we, too, feel now (or have felt at other times) that our lives were being lived in a kind of desert. We ask God to lead us to richer pastures where we can experience joy and peace. As well, we should also know that we have a God beyond compare, made known to us through the life and death of Jesus. Through Jesus, he has given us a new life in a new covenant. As did the people of Micah’s time, we also beg our God to wipe out all our sins and help us to turn totally to him in love and fidelity.