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Commentary on Matthew 9:14-17

Today’s reading follows on yesterday’s challenge of Jesus by some Pharisees. On that occasion they asked why Jesus was eating with sinners and outcasts. Now they go one step further and ask why he is eating at all. They put forward the example of John the Baptist and his disciples who used to fast regularly. Jews were only required to fast one day in the year, on the feast of the Atonement. However, like the Pharisees, it seems that John’s disciples used to observe fasts which were not prescribed by the Law in the hope that their extra devotion would bring about an early coming of the Kingdom.

Jesus answers their question in two ways. First he says that people do not fast when they are in the company of the bridegroom. That is a time for celebration. By implication, of course, Jesus is the groom. As long as he is around, it would be inappropriate for his disciples to fast. However, he says a time will come when the groom is no longer with them, and then there will be reasons to fast.

His second answer is more profound and takes the form of two examples. It does not make sense to repair an old piece of clothing with a patch of new cloth. The new cloth, being much tougher, will, under stress, only cause the older cloth to tear. In the second example, he says that it is not wise to put new wine into old wineskins. Wine was kept in containers made of leather. Because new wine was still fermenting and expanding, it needed to be put in new leather bags which were still elastic and could expand with the wine. The old bags would be already stretched, and new wine would only cause them to burst. Then both the wine would be lost and the bags ruined.

What did Jesus mean by these images? He was giving a clear message to his critics. Jesus’ ideas were like new wine or new cloth. They could not be fitted into old containers. People like the Pharisees were trying to fit Jesus’ teaching and his ideas into their ways of thinking—it would not work.

Clearly, the old garment and the old wineskins represent the elements of Mosaic Law that were to be reinterpreted and “fulfilled” by Jesus’ new teachings. The new cloth and the new wine, then, are the spirit of the Kingdom as proclaimed by Jesus—the new order that Jesus was initiating—what we would now call a paradigm shift, a radically new understanding of how God was to be loved and served.

So John’s disciples wanted to know, for example, why Jesus was not fasting. Because, in their book, a Jew fasted, and a pious Jew fasted more often. But Jesus did not measure religion by external actions like fasting or keeping other requirements of the Law (such as washing hands before eating). For him, religion was a matter of the inner spirit, as we saw in his deeper interpretations of the Law during the Sermon on the Mount.

Over the centuries the Church has moved its position in many areas as it reaches a deeper understanding of the faith and how it is to be lived in a changing world. Such a movement took place with the Second Vatican Council. It involved much more than external changes (like having the Mass in the vernacular instead of Latin). It involved a whole new way of seeing our faith and our place as Christians in the world.

Even today, there are still people who try to live in the post-Vatican II Church with a pre-Vatican II mentality. It is like trying to squeeze new wine into old wineskins. It is a source of much friction and misunderstandings in many Christian communities. We all have an obligation both to enter fully into the mind of Christ as presented in the New Testament, and to enter into the mind of the Church in this post-Vatican II era.

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Commentary on Amos 9:11-15

Today we have our final reading from Amos. It deals with the happiness that messianic times will bring. It raises a hope underlying Amos’ words, one that runs through the whole Hebrew Testament from Genesis 3:15 onward – that God will bring blessing after judgement, and will not ultimately reject Israel.

After many denunciations of hypocritical religions and unjust treatment of the poor, the prophet concludes on an upbeat note of hope for the future. The promises for the future include the restoration of the Davidic kingdom, material prosperity and the homeland recovered forever. The day is coming when the Lord will raise up again the “booth of David that is fallen”, which had come on hard times and was continually being humiliated by outsider conquerors while being unfaithful, idolatrous and corrupt within its own borders.

He says the “booth” (“hut” in some translations) rather than the “house” perhaps to remind us of the humble beginnings of David, the shepherd boy who was picked out by God to succeed Saul as king of God’s people. Or perhaps it is an image of a once proud dynasty fallen on sad times.

And he says God will:

…repair its breaches
and raise up its ruins
and rebuild it as in the days of old.

That is, it will be as it was in the glorious days of David and Solomon. Then they will conquer the “remnant of Edom”, what is left of Israel’s bitter enemy, and “all the nations who are called by my name”. This will be the extent of the rule of Yahweh’s anointed future King, recalling the many nations surrounding Israel over which David reigned. Somewhere in the future, the ruins of Israel will be rebuilt, unfinished battles over enemies will be completed and former subjects will once again come under the rule of David’s house. It will be a time of prosperity and abundance.

The time is surely coming, says the Lord…

After all the forecasts of destruction, hardship and death, Amos’ final words picture a glorious prosperity like a new Eden, when the seasons will run together so that sowing and reaping are without interval, and there will be a continuous supply of fresh produce, and the hills will run with an abundance of wine, so unlike the times of suffering and invasion. God’s people will return to their own lands from which they will never again be taken.

There is no time scale given for this. It is really a statement of hope and confidence in God’s caring for his people and a call for them to behave in a way that shows they truly belong to him. It is a prophecy which was fulfilled – but in a very different way – by the coming of Jesus, David’s descendant as King and Lord, whose Kingdom will never end.

Whatever the circumstances of our lives, we too, look forward to a time of a never-ending happiness when we are totally united with the God for whom we were made. Our hearts are restless until they can find rest in Him.

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Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13

The cure of the paralytic is immediately followed by the call of Matthew, named Levi by Mark and Luke in their versions of the story. Matthew/Levi was an unlikely disciple; he was a tax collector. Tax collectors were among the most despised group of people in Jewish society of the time. Tax collectors never can be particularly popular, given their distasteful job, but in Jesus’ time they were collecting taxes for the hated and pagan colonial ruler. As such they were seen as collaborators and traitors to their own people and to their religion. The Romans had the custom of farming out the collecting of taxes to volunteer agents. These individuals paid up-front the amount that the Romans demanded, and then had to get the money back from the people. In doing so they often collected more than they had paid the Romans. This was their ‘commission’, but there was often an element of extortion and corruption in the whole practice.

Now Jesus invites one of these despised people to be his follower. It is an example of Jesus’ looking beyond the exterior and the stereotype to the potential of the real person inside. Immediately after this, Jesus is seen sitting “in the house” having dinner with his disciples when they are joined by a number of tax collectors and other public sinners. It is not clear whether the ‘the’ refers to the house where Jesus was staying or Matthew’s house. In either event, it was bound to attract the notice of Jesus’ critics.

And indeed some Pharisees, seeing this, are shocked. They ask the disciples (not Jesus):

Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

For the Pharisees, if Jesus is a man of God and a teacher, how can he be seen in the company of people who are religiously unclean? To be in their company is to become contaminated and unclean also.

Overhearing them, Jesus replies:

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.

Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees by looking at the situation from a completely different perspective.

The problem is not of Jesus’ becoming contaminated by the sinful and the unclean, but rather their becoming healed by his presence and influence. The legally-minded (the ritualists) are only interested in themselves; those governed by love (the merciful) think primarily of the needs of their brothers and sisters. There is no need for Jesus to spend time with the virtuous, i.e. with the already converted; it is those in spiritual and moral deprivation with whom he needs to spend his time.

The lesson of today’s reading is extremely relevant for our own day. When looking for potential followers of Christ, where do we tend to look? How many times have we heard people wonder why God picked them as Christian leaders—as priests, religious or lay people? When we look at the Twelve Apostles, they were indeed a strange bunch: full of faults, fragile in their faith, but in the end they started something extraordinary.

Is it not true that a great deal of our pastoral energies in our churches are directed at those already converted? Is it also not true that those most in need of experiencing Christ’s love and healing may be found in places where we are hesitant to go? Perhaps we should have courage and look for people in such places…Christ will be with us when we go there.

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Commentary on Amos 8:4-6, 9-12

Today’s reading is part of Amos’ fourth vision: “The Basket of Fruit”. Ideally, in a world of great prosperity all should be enjoying its fruits. Experience shows us again and again that that is never the case. The denunciations listed by Amos today have an unpleasantly familiar ring – sadly, little has changed.

The people asked:

When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?

The new moon, like the Sabbath, brought a halt to all commercial transactions. The question was asked by merchants who could not wait for the holy day (devoted to God) to be over so that they could get back to doing business.

Then they say:

We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier…

The ephah was a standard of measure, a little more than our bushel. So the merchants fiddle with their measuring instruments of buying and selling. They take advantage of the poor and the lowly and shamelessly exploit them:

[We will] practice deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals…

They talk about selling even the “sweepings of the wheat.” This practice reminds one of how tea merchants discovered that tea-leaf dust could be used for teabags! And only the Lord knows what goes into some of our processed foods these days.

At the same time, today in many parts of our world, even ‘ordinary’ people enjoy a level of prosperity never dreamed of by the rich in former times. Many workers in North America, Europe and parts of Asia can have their own house, a car, marvellous electronic devices and even go abroad for summer holidays. Solomon in all his glory did not enjoy such perquisites!

But we also live in a world where hundreds of millions live at appalling and totally unacceptable levels of poverty, deprivation, malnutrition and starvation. Every few seconds, someone dies of hunger, most often children.

This cannot last, Amos tells the people in the Northern Kingdom, for the Lord says through Amos:

I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.

The Day of Yahweh is accompanied by cosmic signs, including a solar eclipse. The later prophets enlarge on this, using conventional imagery that must not be taken literally. Darkness, in every sense of the word, will cover the earth.

Celebrations will become times of mourning and songs become lamentations:

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down, and there we wept
when we remembered Zion. (Ps 137:1)

As signs of mourning and loss, people will wear sackcloth and have their heads shaved. People will be reduced to destitution and will lose their only sons. A famine is coming – but it is not a famine of food and water. It is a famine for hearing God’s word. People will have no sense of direction:

They shall wander from sea to sea
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.

This is just what is happening to many in our affluent world. They have lost a sense of values, a truly moral sense, a sense of integrity and solidarity as they are caught up in the consumerist world of hedonism and pleasure. “If you like it, do it!” they think. They seek pleasure and enjoyment and are surprised that they cannot find happiness.

Happiness is only for the poor in spirit, for the gentle and compassionate, for those who hunger and thirst for justice, for those who are peacemakers, for those ready to suffer for the sake of justice and what is right – for those committed to making God‘s Kingdom a reality in our world.

Until we rediscover these truths we will continue to wander from pleasure to pleasure in a search that has no end. But where are we to find the guiding lights that will point us in the right direction? Where are we to go to find him who is the Light of the World, who is the Way, who is Truth and Life? Is it possible that helping to illuminate this path might be a responsibility for me?

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Commentary on Matthew 9:1-8

After the cure of the two demoniacs (see the Gospel passage from Wednesday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time), Jesus and his disciples now re-cross the lake and come into his own town. This refers not to Nazareth, but to Capernaum, which is the centre out of which he operates in Galilee. As usual with Matthew, he just gives the bare bones of a story which is told in a much more interesting way by Mark (2:1-12). Matthew concentrates on what Jesus says and does—he leaves out the details.

Some people brought a paralysed man lying on a mat to Jesus. Moved by their faith in him, Jesus says to the man,

Take heart, child; your sins are forgiven.

In Mark’s version the degree of the man’s faith is indicated by him being carried up on to the roof of the house by some friends and being let down through the roof at the feet of Jesus. Matthew says nothing about this.

The man was probably not expecting to hear Jesus mention his sins. As far as he was concerned, that was not the reason he had come to Jesus. Some scribes nearby were surprised too and even shocked. They were thinking:

This man is blaspheming.

Fully aware of what they were thinking, Jesus asked them:

For which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?

Obviously, it is much easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” How can you know if it has taken place? But Jesus goes on:

But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—he then said to the paralytic—“Stand up, take your bed, and go to your home.”

And the man did just that: he rolled up his mat and walked out of the house to his home.

The people around were awestruck and praised God for giving such authority to human beings. They did not yet fully recognise the identity of Jesus, but they did realise that God was acting before their very eyes. The scribes for their part were reduced to silence. Matthew’s use of the word ‘men’ seems to point to the power of Jesus being passed on to his followers—his power to heal and to forgive.

To understand this story we need to be aware of the close links that the people of the time saw between sickness and sin. Sickness, especially a chronic sickness, was often seen as a punishment for sin, either the sin of the person himself or of a parent. We remember, in John’s Gospel, how the people asked Jesus if the man was born blind because of his own sin or the sin of his parents (John 9:2). Similarly, after Jesus had healed a man crippled for 38 years, he told him not so sin again, for fear something worse might befall him (John 5:14).

In telling the paralysed man that his sins were forgiven Jesus was going to the root of his problem. We can probably say that sin in some form or other is at the root of all our problems. Jesus had been challenged for telling the man his sins were forgiven. To prove that he had the power to do this, he cured the man’s paralysis, which, in the minds of the onlookers, was the result of his sin. If there was no more paralysis, which was caused by sin, then the sin had been taken away too.

Nowadays, we do not see something like paralysis or a disability as a punishment from God—we do not believe that God works like that. On the other hand, it is likely that many health problems which we have can be linked with a disharmony in our lives arising from a conflict between what we are truly meant to be and what we tend to be. We refer to some sicknesses as ‘dis-eases’. They are the result of harmful stress when we are out of harmony with ourselves, with other people and with our environment. In that sense, we can see a clear link between sin and sickness.

Perhaps if we looked at our own lives we might see that some of our physical and mental ailments are due to a lack of harmony between God and others and our surroundings. Let’s think about that today.

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Commentary on Amos 7:10-17

Today we see Amos expelled from the sanctuary of Bethel, which, as mentioned, was in Israel, the Northern Kingdom. The reading begins with Amaziah, the priest at Bethel, telling Jeroboam, king of Israel, about the things Amos has been saying against the king:

Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel must go into exile
away from his land.

By “Jeroboam”, he means the royal house, where the king’s name also represents the dynasty. In fact, Jeroboam will die a natural death (2 Kings 14:29) but his son and successor Zechariah will be assassinated (2 Kings 15:8,10).

By any standards, these would be regarded as treasonable words and they were seen as such. The fact that they would be proved true was not relevant at this time. And, as far as Amos was concerned, he was simply transmitting words of warning from God to his people.

Amaziah, the priest, who comes across as someone more interested in his personal position and career with the king than in the service of God, is determined to get rid of this trouble-maker.

The contempt that Amaziah feels for Amos is clear:

O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there…

Amos is never again to prophesy in the shrine at Bethel, which Amaziah describes as the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple. Amaziah’s allegiance is to the King of Samaria rather than to Israel’s heavenly King. Amos is dismissed as a prophet for hire who need not be taken seriously.

Amos, however, makes no claims to being a member of a school of ‘professional’ prophets. He is neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son. He denies any connection with any school of prophets or their disciples. No one had hired him to announce judgement against Jeroboam and Israel.

He says that he was a simple shepherd (although the unusual Hebrew word used could mean he tended cattle also) and a “dresser of sycamore trees”. The “sycamore” here was a large tree which bore a fig-like fruit and also provided good timber. In order to ensure a good crop, the gardener had to slit the top of each fig and this is presumably implied by the rare word “dresser” of sycamores.

Amos says:

…the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

If Amos was prophesying, it was simply in response to instructions which God had given him. He has been made a different kind of shepherd for a flock that is straying far from the Lord.

Amos then proceeds to utter a savage prophecy against the priest Amaziah, even though Amaziah had told Amos not to prophesy (which was, in fact, telling the prophet to disobey God). There are four points in his prophecy:

1. Amaziah will be exiled to gentile, “unclean” and idolatrous territory where his ceremonial purity as a priest will be defiled;
2. his sons and daughters will be slaughtered;
3. he will lose his family estate;
4. his wife will be reduced to prostitution in order to survive.

And he repeats again the prophecy he had made earlier: the people of Israel will be driven into exile, repeating exactly the words Amaziah had attributed to Amos at the beginning of the reading. All of these things, of course, took place.

The reading epitomises the challenging but indispensable role of the prophet. His responsibility is to speak out clearly the truths he sees, however unpalatable they may be. He is bound to arouse hostility against himself by those who do not want to hear what he has to say. Yet prophets are absolutely essential; we need them, even if we do not like their messages.

There is a distinguished line of prophets in the Old Testament, of whom Amos is an excellent example. But there are also prophets in the New Testament. Jesus was a prophet, as was John the Baptist (although usually regarded as the last of the OT prophets). Both died because of the messages they gave in word and deed.

The letters of Paul rank ‘prophets’ very high in the list of charisms in the Church – immediately after ‘apostles‘:

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets… (1 Cor 12:27-28)

Down the centuries there has, thankfully, been a long list of prophets, some of whom fell victims of the Church itself. Even some of those regarded as heretics were prophets in their own way and, while much of what they said was regarded as not in harmony with tradition, they often forced the Church into changing direction. Without Luther and the other Protestant reformers would there have been a Council of Trent? Would there have been a Counter-Reformation?

The Second Vatican Council, too, produced many prophetic voices which led to insights not dreamed of by its first organisers. One example was Bishop Helder Camrara of Recife in Brazil. He was once credited with saying: “When I give help to the poor, people call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.” Bishop Camara was a prophet.

In our recent past, one thinks, too, of Bishop Oscar Romero, martyred in El Salvador, or of the martyred Baptist pastor, Martin Luther King, Jr. In one case, a prophetic voice for the downtrodden poor and, in the other, a voice demanding equality for the black people of the United States.

Who are the prophets in our Christian communities today? Do we recognise them? Do we listen to them? May we have many more of them.

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Commentary on Matthew 8:23-27

In the previous verses to today’s reading, Jesus tells his disciples to get into a boat and cross to the other side of the Sea of Gallilee (also know as the Lake of Tiberias). As they crossed the lake, a storm suddenly blew up. It seems this is a common feature of Lake Galilee.

The word that Matthew uses for ‘storm’ should actually be translated ‘earthquake’. It was a word commonly used in apocalyptic literature for the shaking of the old world as God brings in his kingdom. The Synoptic Gospels use the word in describing the events leading up to the final coming of Jesus. It indicates that there is more to this story than just a narrative.

While waves crashed into the boat Jesus remained fast asleep. In great fear, the disciples woke up him:

Lord, save us! We are perishing!

Jesus was not very sympathetic:

Why are you afraid, you of little faith?

Then he stood up and rebuked the wind and sea. There immediately followed a complete calm.

The disciples were awestruck and, in a way, were more afraid than ever. A storm they could understand, but not what they saw Jesus doing.

What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?

In their book, only one person could have this kind of power—God himself. Their question contained its own answer. It was a further step in their realising just who Jesus their Master really was.

We can, however, read another meaning into this story. We can understand it as a kind of parable about the early Church, the Church for which Matthew is writing. It was a Church consisting of many, small scattered communities or churches. They were surrounded by large, pagan and often very hostile peoples. Each little church community must have felt like those disciples in the boat with Jesus surrounded by a large expanse of water. Sometimes that water got very angry and threatened to engulf their boat.

At the same time, Jesus their Lord seemed to be very far away; he seemed to be asleep, unaware and uncaring of their plight. The fact that in the Gospel today they address him as “Lord” would indicate that the story points more to their present situation as isolated communities in a very uncertain world. Then they would come to realise that Jesus really was with them and that he did care a lot. And peace would come back to them again. But the peace would be in their hearts; the sea around them might be just as stormy as ever.

This is something for us to learn. Most of the time we can do very little to change the world around us or change the people who bother us. Maybe we have no right to make them change. But we can change; we can learn to see things in a different way; we can learn to be proactive instead of reactive. Above all, we can learn to be aware that God is close to us at all times, that he does know, that he does care, and that, instead of taking things away, he helps us to go through them and keep our peace.

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Commentary on Amos 3:1-8, 4:11-12

Amos continues his severe warning to his people. He speaks to the “whole family” that God brought up from the land of Egypt, apparently addressing all 12 tribes, although the Northern Kingdom only included 10. The others formed the Southern Kingdom, Judah, of which Amos himself was a member.

Over all these years God had shown his people a love which he had not given to any other people:

You only have I known
of all the families of the earth…

However, they had taken this privileged position as a right and did not respond in love and service, and as such they are told:

…therefore I will punish you
for all your iniquities.

Because of the abundance of love and favours showered on them, their wrongdoings, far from being overlooked, are considered all the more serious. Israel’s present strength and prosperity gave rise to a complacency about her privileged status as the Lord’s chosen people. She is now shockingly reminded of the long-forgotten responsibilities her privileges entailed.

What is going to happen to them must follow, then, as night the day. And Amos lists a set of rhetorical questions. When things happen, they demand a cause. There can be no effect without a cause, nor any cause without an effect. Therefore, the behaviour of the people inevitably brings a reaction from God expressed through the mouth of his prophet.

Amos builds up a series of questions leading to an understanding of why God reacts with terrifying punishment on his people. Each picture is of cause and effect, using figures drawn from daily life – and culminating in divine action.

The lion has roared;
who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken;
who can but prophesy?

The prophetic call cannot be resisted: in all this passage the prophet is justifying his intervention. There is neither effect without cause, nor cause without effect. If the prophet exercises his office, it is because Yahweh has spoken; if God speaks, the prophet cannot but prophesy. The images chosen suggest that the message will be one of disaster.

In the past, there had been terrible punishments. When Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly destroyed in an “upheaval” (perhaps an earthquake?), Abraham and his family, the only faithful ones left, were “like a brand snatched from the fire”. The complete destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and its sinful people had become proverbial. In spite of this and similar experiences in their history, “you did not return to me, says the Lord.”

Now, God is once again going to deal with his faithless people in his “own way”. The passage ends with frightening words:

…prepare to meet your God, O Israel!

And we know that a terrible punishment indeed awaits them, resulting in the utter and final destruction of the Northern Kingdom.

We too call ourselves God’s people and have been particularly blessed by the revelations that come to us through Jesus and the Christian Testament. But this greater knowledge only makes our wrongdoings all the more serious and deserving of greater punishment. Where God is concerned, there is no ‘inside’ track by which we can claim privileged treatment over non-believers. On the contrary, the closer we are to God, the greater our responsibility. That is why the saints could see themselves as sinners. Their closeness to God made even their minor shortcomings matters of repentance.

We too can think of many times when God has rescued us or given us ample warnings and yet we have continued our sinful ways. Are we ready to meet our God? For some, it is a moment to be dreaded. For others, it is a day to be looked forward to with a passionate longing. As Paul wrote to the Christians at Philippi:

For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. (Phil 1:21)

For me, which is it?

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Commentary on Matthew 8:18-22

There are times when Jesus goes out of his way to meet the crowds. On one occasion we are told he was filled with compassion because he saw them as sheep without a shepherd. But today, he gives orders to cross the lake apparently to avoid the crowds pressing in on him.

The crowds represent two kinds of people: those in real need of teaching and healing, and those who are simply driven by a kind of curiosity for the unusual. Jesus is not particularly interested in the second kind; they represent a false interest in Jesus. For them he is just a sensation, a wonder-worker—‘Jesus Christ Superstar’.

Similarly, when a scribe approaches Jesus and says, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go”, it seems like a generous offer, but Jesus reminds the man of just what that may entail:

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

To follow Jesus means, like him, to be ready to have nothing of one’s own. As Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, we cannot at the same time serve two masters. To be with Jesus is to accept a situation where we may have nothing in the way of material possessions—our security will be elsewhere.

We do not know whether the scribe took up the challenge or not, and It does not really matter. Jesus’ words are recorded mainly for us to hear them. What do I think when I hear them? Have I made the choice between having Jesus and having things? Or do I think I can have both? Do I want to have both?

Another person, described as being already a disciple, asks for permission to go and bury his father first before following Jesus. It seems a fairly reasonable request and Jesus’ reply sounds rather harsh as both the Jewish and Hellenistic world regarded this as a filial obligation of the highest importance:

Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.

There are two ways we can understand this reply. In one case, the man is asking to postpone his following of Jesus until his father dies and he can bury him. But to follow Jesus is to enter a new family with a new set of obligations. It is not that the man should not honour his father, but in the meantime, there are other things of much greater importance that need to be done. In the new family, of which his father is just one member, there are more pressing obligations. It is another way of Jesus letting us know that our following of him has to be unconditional. We cannot say, “I will follow you if…” or “I will follow you when I am ready.” When he calls we have, like the first disciples, to be ready to drop our nets, our boats and even our family members.

A second way of understanding Jesus’ words is to see his call as a call to a way of life. Those who want to go their own self-seeking ways belong to the spiritually dead. Leave the burial of the dead to them. The rituals of society, including burial, have their place, an important place. But for Jesus, the call to the Kingdom represents a commitment to a more important set of values.

We must put all these statements in their context. They make clear that following Jesus involves a radical commitment, but it does not mean that we act in ways that are inhumane or unreasonable. Soon after Peter and Andrew had abandoned their boats and their nets to follow Jesus, we find Jesus in their house tending to their mother-in-law who had fallen sick (Mark 1:29-31).

While there was a time in the past when some religious sisters were not allowed to attend a family funeral, that has now changed—and rightly so. At the same time, the call of Jesus still involves a total commitment.

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Commentary on Amos 2:6-10,13-16

For the next eight weeks we shall be reading from Old Testament prophets. The first of these is the prophet Amos. He was a shepherd from Tekoa in the southern kingdom of Judah. From there he travelled north to Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and to the great cult centre which was the shrine of Bethel. There around 750 BC he scolded the people for their hypocritical religious devotions while ignoring the demands of social justice around them. He was finally expelled from the sanctuary by the priest in charge.

His poetry is filled with imagery and language taken from his own pastoral background. The book we have is an anthology of his oracles and was compiled either by the prophet or by some of his disciples.

Amos is a prophet of social justice. He is strongest of all in his condemnation of those who make ostentatious displays of religious piety while acting abominably toward their less fortunate brothers and sisters. For a small amount of wrongdoing, the prophet says in God’s name, God’s promises will not be revoked from his people. But he then goes on to list what seems to be widespread and outrageous behaviour, especially towards the more vulnerable members of society.

They are willing to sell an otherwise good man into slavery just for the money they can get. They will sell off a poor man and be happy to take just a pair of sandals as payment, or sell him into slavery when he could not repay a debt for which his sandals had been given in pledge. They constantly trample on the poor and the weak and hold them in utter contempt.

The avarice of the already rich and of men in power is a constant preoccupation of the prophets. That avarice is still with us. To care for the poor and the oppressed and to protect them from injustice were clearly commanded by Israel’s law and, indeed, throughout the ancient Near East, kings were supposed to defend such people.

Amos further charges that there are cases where both father and son have sexual relations with the same woman. She might have been a slave in the household or perhaps a temple prostitute. Sacred prostitution was a feature of Canaanite worship which contaminated Israel.

Or it may even have been an incestuous relationship: father with wife and daughter, son with mother and sister. According to the law, to have sexual relations with a woman meant an obligation to marry her, while father and son having sexual relations with the same woman was strictly against the law and there were severe sanctions for such behaviour.

Clothes which have been taken as a pledge against borrowed money are then worn by the lender during religious ceremonies. There may even be an implication here that the borrower was left with nothing to wear. The law prohibited keeping a man’s cloak overnight as a pledge, or taking a widow’s cloak at all.

Wine demanded of those against whom (perhaps false or extortionate) charges of damages were made is then piously drunk at the ceremonial banquets following the offering of sacrifices. The “house of God”, then, is effectively reduced to the “house of their god”.

Such behaviour, Amos says, is a flagrant act of ingratitude to their God who helped them wipe out the Amorites, that is, the inhabitants of Canaan, on their arrival in the Promised Land. It is a display of thanklessness to Yahweh who brought them out of slavery in Egypt and led them to the land of Amorites after accompanying them for 40 years in the desert. God’s care and providence for them should now be reflected in their care and providence of their community, most of all, the weak and the vulnerable.

Because of their shameless behaviour, they can expect the worst to happen to them. They will be crushed as a heavily laden wagon of corn crushes what is beneath it. Those who can run fast will find they cannot escape from the approaching disaster. The strong will find themselves weak. The soldier will lose his life and the archer be unable to release his arrows. Even the bravest of warriors will not have time to dress and will flee the approaching threat naked.

“On that day” – refers to the day God comes in judgement, as he did through the Assyrian invasion that swept the northern kingdom away never to recover.

Obviously, the prophet is saying that there is a remedy, and that is to heed the prophet’s warnings and to change their ways.

This is a very powerful passage and is as meaningful today as when it was first written. Allowing for some changes of time and place, there is a distressing familiarity with the prophet’s accusations, for things have not changed very much in nearly 3,000 years (this was written about 750 BC).

At least, let us look into our own lives and see if any of these accusations could even be remotely thrown against us. And, where we can, let us work together with others to remedy the situation. Our relationship with God is not measured just by our attendance in church or the carrying out of religious obligations. There can be no love of God, there can be no true religion where there is no practice of justice and loving concern for the weak and marginalised.