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Commentary on Genesis 12:1-9

Today we return to the Book of Genesis. We have left behind the mythological pre-historical stories of Creation and the Fall, and the early developments of mankind with their own theological meanings. We now move into an area of what we can call dateable history, about 1,800 years before the Christian era.

Starting with chapter 12 we enter on the real beginnings of the history of Israel proper. The rest of Genesis deals with the so-called ‘Patriarchs’—Abraham, his son Isaac, his son Jacob, and his 12 sons—with special attention to the second youngest, Joseph. These 12 sons will be the patriarchs from whom all the Israelites are descended. The book ends with the word “Egypt”. That introduces us to the next book, Exodus, which opens (at a much later date) with the Israelites living in slavery in Egypt where they have been since the time of Joseph.

The two opening chapters of this section of Genesis, chapters 12 and 13, come from the ‘Yahwist’ tradition, although there are some editorial additions from the ‘Priestly’ tradition. What we begin reading today represents the beginnings of the history of the Jewish people. The story begins with Abram (later to be called Abraham), the founding father of Israel.

Although we have now moved into the domain of history, it does not mean that everything described is a newspaperman’s eyewitness report. We are still very much in the area of legend and myth. These are stories which were told and retold to succeeding generations to give them a sense of pride in themselves as a people. Undoubtedly there are areas of fact which archaeology findings often confirm.

At the end of chapter 11 we are told that Terah brought his son Abram with his childless wife, Sarai, out of Ur in Chaldea, their ancestral home in what is now southern Iraq, with the intention of going to Canaan, but when they reached a place called Haran, they settled there. Haran was in northern Mesopotamia (now part of Iraq).

Our reading today begins with a call from God to Abram:

Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

Abram is being told to leave the settled world of the post-Babel nations and begin a pilgrimage with God to a better world of God’s making.

Yahweh then makes his first great promise to Abram:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

The original Hebrew promise can be understood to read as: “All nations shall bless themselves through you” (i.e. in blessing someone they will say, “May you be blessed as Abraham was”) or “All nations shall be blessed in you”. The former understanding is the more likely. Altogether the word “bless” or “blessing” occurs five times in this promise of Yahweh.

The blessing has a seven-fold structure:

1. I will make you into a great nation
2. I will bless you
3. I will make your name great
4. You will be a blessing
5. I will bless those who bless you
6. The one who curses you I will curse
7. In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed

God’s original blessing on all mankind would be restored and fulfilled through Abram and his offspring in various ways and degrees. These promises were reaffirmed to Abram, Isaac and Moses. The seventh promise is quoted in Acts (3:25) with reference to Peter’s Jewish listeners, Abram’s physical descendants, and in Galatians (3:8) to Paul’s gentile listeners, Abram’s spiritual descendants—among whom we are also included.

Putting his trust in God’s word, Abram left Haran, set out for Canaan and brought his nephew Lot with him. Prompt obedience, grounded in faith, characterises Abraham all through. He cuts off all earthly ties and sets out for an unknown land. It will be the first of the great acts of faith and trust in God’s word which will make Abraham a model of faith for future generations. It will be renewed when the promise is repeated in chapter 15 (of Genesis) and really put to the test when God asks for the surrender of his only legitimate son, Isaac, on whom the fulfilment of the promise depends.

To Abraham’s unquestioning act of faith, the chosen people will owe its very existence and destiny (Heb 11:8-19). Not only Abraham’s physical descendants, but all who, in virtue of this same faith, become his spiritual descendants will have their share in that destiny as Paul shows (Rom 4; Gal 3:7). We count ourselves among them.

So, in obedience to the Lord’s call, Abram leaves Haran and sets out for Canaan, bringing with him his wife Sarai, his brother’s son Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated between them (mainly flocks and herds), and “the persons” they had acquired in Haran. These “persons” would include slaves and retainers forming part of the extended household of Abram and Lot. One gets the impression that they were very prosperous.

When they reached Canaan, they went as far as “the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak [terebinth] of Moreh.” The terebinth or turpentine tree is native to the Mediterranean region. It yielded probably the earliest known form of turpentine, said to have been used as medicine by the ancient Greeks. A famous sanctuary was located at Schechem in central Canaan, and a large tree was often a conspicuous feature at such holy places.

The Canaanites were living there but God had promised the land would in the future go to Abram and his descendants.

To your offspring I will give this land.

It is worth noticing that at this stage Abram did not have a single son or daughter by his wife Sarai, so the issue of descendants was still only based on a promise. But it is on the basis of this promise that Abram and his descendants claimed a sacred right to this land as their home. In the course of time, the original inhabitants, the Canaanites, would come to symbolise an idolatrous people who did not recognise the lordship of Yahweh and did not deserve to keep the land as theirs.

In acknowledgement of God’s promise, Abram:

…built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

This was the first of several that Abram would erect at places where he had special spiritual experiences. From there, Abram moved to hill country to a place between Bethel on the east and Ai on the west. Bethel lay just north of Jerusalem and was an important town in the religious history of God’s people. Only Jerusalem is mentioned more often in the Old Testament. Here, he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord. Then he was on the move again and went by stages to the Negeb, the semi-desert area in southern Palestine.

The virtue for which Abram (Abraham) would become a model later on was his deep faith and trust in God’s promises, however unlikely they were of being fulfilled. Paul in his letters (especially Romans and the Letter to the Hebrews) put him forward as a model for all believers. It begins with his answering God’s call to leave the familiarity of his homeland and settle down in an unknown territory with which his people had no former connection.

This faith in God’s providential care is something we too need to cultivate. God can call us too to strange places and situations. He sometimes asks us to leave the familiar and take risks with the unknown. Sometimes it takes the form of a ‘vocation’ or calling to a particular way of life—inside or outside the Church. However, and sadly, it would appear that many people decide on their life’s work first and only then ask God what he wants them to do.

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Commentary on Genesis 16:1-12,15-16

In spite of God’s promises, Abram is still without child by his wife, Sarai. But among her staff was an Egyptian maidservant, called Hagar. She may have been acquired while Abram was in Egypt (an anecdote not covered in our readings).

Sarai is aware of how she has disappointed her husband by not giving him a son, and she attributes this to God’s action. She then makes a generous offer, suggesting to Abram that he “go in to [her] slave” so that Abram might have sons through her:

You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.

Hagar would, in effect, act as a surrogate mother.

Sarai’s actions are all in keeping with the laws of the time, as known from ancient extra-biblical sources. According to Mesopotamian law, an infertile wife could offer one of her female slaves to her husband and recognise the child born as one of her own. There will be a similar situation with Rachel, the wife of Jacob, and Leah, Rachel’s older sister who was also a wife to Jacob (see Gen 30:1-24).

So, after they had lived 10 years in Canaan, Sarai offers her maidservant Hagar as a concubine to her husband. The servant very soon becomes pregnant. As soon as she did so, she looked on her mistress with disdain and contempt. Although a mere slave, Hagar was able to do what her mistress had not been able to accomplish. As mother to Abram’s long-wanted son she was not afraid of any reprisals from him.

Sarai then turns on Abram and blames him for Hagar’s behaviour:

May the wrong done to me be on you!

Sarai had generously given her maid to Abram and now that the maid is pregnant, she has only disdain for Sarai. Expressing hostility or suspicion on her part, Sarai says to Abram:

May the Lord judge between you and me!

Abram’s response does not sound very admirable to our ears today:

Your slave is in your power; do to her as you please.

Taking him at his word, the jealous and grieved wife treats Hagar so badly that she flees the household.

She is found on a road by an “angel of the Lord” near a spring out in the wilderness at Shur. At this time, the ‘angel’ is understood as a manifestation of God in human form and not—as angels are later understood—a created being distinct from God.

He asks her where she has come from and where she is going. She says she has run away from her mistress Sarai. The angel tells her to go back to Sarai and to submit to her mistress’s abusive behaviour. In return, he promises that she will have descendants too numerous to count.

In addition, the messenger tells her that she is in fact already pregnant. She is going to have a son and he is to be called Ishmael. This is in answer to her prayer. In fact, the name Ishmael means either “May God hear!” or “God has heard”.

However, this son is strangely foreseen to:

…be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he shall live at odds with all his kin.

Away from human settlements, Ishmael would roam the desert like a wild donkey and the hostility between Sarai and Hagar will be passed on to their descendants. Ishmael’s descendants will be the desert Arabs. In describing them, Job asks:

Who has let the wild ass go free?…to which I have given the steppe [wilderness] for its home….[and which] scorns the tumult of the city. (Job 39:5-7)

But sure enough, when Abram was eighty-six years old, Hagar bore a son to Abram and the son was named Ishmael.

It is clear that this story represents a more primitive society with different social values. The having of an heir transcended any duties of marital fidelity, a fact which Sarai clearly acknowledged. Her primary responsibility as a wife was to produce an heir. Being a loving marriage companion was secondary to this.

Hagar’s attitude to Sarai is certainly not commendable, though it is understandable that a slave should feel good about being able to do something so important for her master which his wife could not. Abram’s attitude is not altogether commendable either. But he was, in his time and culture, simply recognising the superior status of his wife over a slave—even if that slave was to be (as he would have thought at the time) the mother of his heir. Hagar was, in contemporary terms, ‘only a baby-bearer’.

In our own day, typically there is a great deal of turmoil when a ‘mistress’ is present in a marriage. Extreme situations can occur, all the way from reducing a wife to the status of a live-in household employee to total amorality about sexual relations outside of marriage—and everything in between. All too often, the victims who suffer the most from this turmoil are the children of such relationships. In today’s passage, the seeds of future problems are sown, and sadly, the same unfortunate outcomes still occur.

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Commentary on Colossians 1:24—2:3

A story is told of a woman who went to one of Shakespeare’s plays for the first time.  Asked her reaction, she responded: “It was full of quotations!”

Sometimes one gets the same feeling reading the letters of Paul.  Scattered through what were simply letters to Christian communities with no thought that they would ever be part of the inspired word of God one comes across gems of sayings which have become the very fabric of our Christian culture and spirituality.

Right at the beginning of today’s reading we have such a gem.  Paul tells the Colossians:

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

In his preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles, Paul experienced all kinds of afflictions, but here he is probably referring especially to the imprisonment he is experiencing at the present time. In saying that, through his own sufferings, he is trying to make up what is lacking, he does not mean that there was a deficiency in the sacrifice of Christ.

Jesus suffered in order to establish the Kingdom of God and anyone who continues his work must share in this suffering.  Paul is not saying that he thinks his own sufferings increase the value of the redemption (since that value cannot be increased).  The sufferings of Christ were of infinite value and not deficient in the least.  But Paul is saying that he shares by his sufferings as a missionary in those that Jesus had undergone in his own mission. These are the sufferings predicted for the messianic era, and are all part of the way in which God had always intended the Church to develop. Paul feels that being the messenger Christ has chosen to send to the pagans, he has been specially called on to experience these sufferings.

For Paul, too, the Body of the Risen Christ is his church.  That Body continues to suffer and undergo hardships and Paul wants to share in these sufferings and identify with them—as all of us are called to do.

What a beautiful concept!  At this time, Paul is in prison in Rome. He offers up his pain and sufferings and joins them to those of Christ that they may benefit the Body of the risen Christ, the whole Church.

In uniting his sufferings with those of Jesus, it is part of Paul’s sense of an extremely intimate closeness to Jesus.  In a sense, all the sufferings that Christians have ever offered to God, and have yet to offer, may be seen as united as part of the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross.  In a way, the work of redemption is made full by Christians identifying their own sufferings for the Gospel as the building blocks of the Kingdom. Paul’s sufferings were for the church and he:

…became its minister according to God’s commission that was given…for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

The meaning of ‘to make the word of God fully known’ seems to be that the word of God is brought to completion, i.e. to its intended purpose, only when it is proclaimed (see Rom 10:13-15).  Paul’s commission to bring the word to completion thus required him to make the word of God heard in Colossae as well as in many other places.  In doing so he is continuing what Jesus did on the cross. We should remember that Jesus said his followers would do more than he did—certainly in terms of spreading his Message.

Paul’s role is to unfold that ‘mystery’ which has been hidden from ages past, but is now revealed to the ‘saints’, that is, the Christians.  By ‘mystery’ he means not so much something that is difficult to understand, but rather something hidden which is only now being revealed.  It is different from the more prevalent use of the word ‘mystery’ to describe esoteric religions (sometimes called ‘mystery religions’) where only the initiates were given special knowledge denied to others.

The Church is not like that.  What Paul means is that truths about God or God’s plans, hitherto unknown to the Gentiles, have been made known through Jesus Christ and are now being proclaimed to the whole world.  Paul radically changes the original meaning of ‘mystery’ by always combining it with words such as “unfold”, “made known” (Eph 1:9), “make everyone see” (Eph 3:9) and “revelation” (Rom 16:25).  The Christian mystery is not secret knowledge for a few.  It is a revelation of divine truths—once hidden but now openly proclaimed.

The ‘mystery’ he is referring to here is that extraordinary love of God which has been made known to us through the life, sufferings, death and resurrection of his incarnate Son Jesus, and which Paul and his fellow evangelisers continue to unfold to those who have not yet heard.

To them God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

The mystery is the fact that Christ now indwells in believing Gentiles, for it had not been previously revealed that the Gentiles would be admitted to the church on equal terms with Israel.

Previously, when it had seemed (to the Jews) that pagans could never be saved, as salvation was restricted to ‘Israel’, pagans had seemed to be without a Messiah and consequently to be deprived of all hope.  The ‘mystery’ or secret of God that had now been revealed was that the pagans too were, and had been, called to be saved through union with Christ, and so to reach eternal glory.

It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

The Christ Paul proclaims is the wisdom which makes us “mature” or perfect. ‘Perfect’ was a word used by the mystery religions and the Gnostics to describe those who had become possessors of the secrets or knowledge boasted of by the particular religion.  But in Christ every believer is one of the perfect.  The wisdom of the Christian is not (as the Gnostics believed) perfect knowledge, but the Way of Jesus, the Way of the Cross, the Way of universal and unconditional Love, the Way of the Beatitudes, the Way of Service, the Way of Justice and Compassion.  In other words, the vision of the Kingdom. That is the meaning of being “mature in Christ”.

And Paul says, it is:

For this I toil and strive with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.

He puts all his effort into his work for the Gospel, but it really is “his” (i.e. Christ’s) energy which produces the results.  As Paul says:

…whenever I am weak, then I am strong… (2 Cor 12:10)

And he wants the Colossians to know how much he is struggling on their behalf and also for the Christians of nearby Laodicea and other places he had not visited.  Laodicea (modern Pamukkale) was about 17 km from Colossae and this letter was intended for both towns. Paul had not been to either place, but was fully aware of the problems the Christians were facing in each one.  His concern for them is no less because of that.

Finally, the reading ends with another lovely passage in which Paul says that his purpose is for:

…their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

In the mystery of God is revealed what till then had been ‘hidden’, namely the ‘infinite wisdom’ of God.  That it is Christ who is revealed in the mystery is of course true, and he himself is also the Wisdom of God and he is also the Mystery that is hard to understand.

Paul also stresses knowledge in this letter because he was refuting a heresy that emphasised knowledge as the means of salvation (Gnosticism).  Paul insists that the Christian, not the Gnostic, is the one who possesses genuine knowledge about the meaning of life.

These are the ‘mysteries’ which are now being made known:

…that is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

This wisdom is within the reach of even the simplest person.  It requires not a massive intellect, but an open heart.

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Commentary on Zechariah 8:1-8 Read Monday of Week 26 of Ordinary Time – First Reading »

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Commentary on Joel 1:13-15; 2:1-2

In today’s First Reading, the prophet calls for repentance for many sins and gives a warning about “the day of the Lord” (or in some translations, “the day of Yahweh”). The prophet excludes no one from the need to repent and do penance. He begins with the priests and all those who serve in the Temple. He calls on them to do night-long penance for they have failed in their duties of liturgical service:

Grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

A fast and a solemn assembly of the people is to be proclaimed by the elders. Everyone in the country is to be called together in the Temple. Similar exhortations to repentance and prayer recur in other parts of the book. The interest that Joel displays in formal observance of the liturgy contrasts markedly with the attitude of other prophets such as Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Jeremiah, but Joel too insists on the need for inward conversion.

In general, fasting was required on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and also practised in times of calamity as a sign of penitence and humility. The New Testament, both Matthew’s Gospel and Paul, speaks strongly against outward signs that do not reflect a corresponding inward belief or attitude (see Matt 6:1-8; 23:1-36).

The reason for the fast and the assembly is that:

…the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

The “day of the Lord” is the dominant theme of the Book of Joel. Other prophets also use it, such as, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah and Malachi. Sometimes abbreviated as “that day” or “the day of Yahweh”, the term often refers to the decisive intervention of God in history, such as through the invasion of locusts in Joel. It can also refer to Christ’s coming at the end of time.

Some translations also use the Hebrew word Shaddai in referring to the “Almighty”. This is a play on the words shod (devastation) and Shaddai (a name for God, i.e. “the Almighty”). The plague of locusts at the beginning of the book heralds “the day of the Lord”, which is a day of terror, even though, in the context of Joel (chaps 3-4), it brings the ultimate triumph of Israel.

The last part of the reading is a sombre warning that “the day of the Lord” is very near. “Blow the trumpet” is a warning of approaching danger and the punishment of Israel for the coming day of wrath. The alarm is to be raised on God’s holy mountain, that is, Mount Zion where the Temple was situated. The trumpet, made of a ram’s or bull’s horn, was used to signal approaching danger. Its sound could fill people with fear. It was also used to summon Israel to religious gatherings. Hence it is to be the signal for the gathering of all the elect on the last day.

The coming day is a “day of darkness and gloom”, corresponding to the approach of locusts which darken the sky. The plague of locusts mentioned in chapter 1 is a kind of parable for the coming “day of the Lord”. Darkness is a common prophetic figure used of the day of the Lord and generally a metaphor for distress and suffering.

As with the locusts, the day will come:

Like blackness spread upon the mountains, a great and powerful army comes…

In some translations of this verse, the “blackness” spreads ‘like the dawn’. ‘Dawn’ usually suggests relief from gloom and the end of darkness. Here, however, it is used ironically, describing the locust infestation spreading across the land like the light of dawn, which first lights up the eastern horizon and then spreads across the whole countryside.

But an infestation of locusts is as nothing compared to “the day of the Lord”, whose like has never been seen before, and whose like will never happen again.

Despite the somewhat apocalyptic language, the words of the prophet are still applicable to our own situation. In our Church too, both priests and people have often failed in their gospel responsibilities.

There is always a time for us to repent and do some purifying penance. We are all, without a single exception, sinners. It is the humble acknowledgment of this that sets us on the way to getting closer to God and Jesus our Lord. It is understandable then, that this passage is also used during the liturgy of Lent on Ash Wednesday.

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Commentary on Matthew 7:21-29

We come today to the final reading from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus spells out the essential quality of the true disciple. He or she is not to be measured merely by external activities. It is not enough, for instance, to keep saying “Lord, Lord…” That by itself will not bring a person under the kingship of God. It will not be enough either to be able to perform wonders like casting out demons or working other miracles, even in the name of Jesus.

The true disciple is someone who is totally united to God in heart, soul and mind. Such a person is one who listens to Jesus’ words and carries them out. As we have said elsewhere, listening here means a number of things:

• To pay attention to what Jesus is saying to us; to listen with attentiveness.
• To understand what is being said, as it is possible to listen without understanding.
• To accept fully and to assimilate into one’s being what one understands. It is possible to hear clearly, to understand clearly, but not to accept or assimilate. Children do that all the time!

When we have fully assimilated as part of our own thinking what we have heard and understood, we will naturally act accordingly. It is only when all this becomes a reality in our lives that we can say we are truly disciples of Jesus and, as he says, that is the only sure foundation on which to build our lives.

To live a Christian life only on the surface, that is, only with words and externally conforming behaviour, is like building a house on sand. Once we come under attack, we will collapse because we have no deep foundation inside. We see that happening frequently when people who have lived in an outwardly Christian environment move to a purely secular situation—and fall away very quickly.

So let us be like that sensible man who builds his house on rock, the firm foundation that is Christ, with the vision of Christ also the vision of our own life, a life built on truth and love. With this we come to the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew clearly indicates the end by saying:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these words…

He adds that Jesus’ teaching made a deep impression on the people, mainly because he spoke with authority:

You have heard that it was said…But I say to you…
(Matt 5:38)

That is, he spoke in his own name, unlike the scribes who could only be interpreters of God’s Law.

As mentioned at the beginning, the Sermon on the Mount is the first of five major discourses. It deals mainly with the qualities that are to be found in the individual follower of Christ. Let us pray that those qualities may be found increasingly in each one of us.

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Commentary on Luke 10:25-37

As we accompany Jesus firmly on his way to Jerusalem we come across this beautiful incident which is only to be found in Luke. Imagine our loss if this Gospel had not been handed down to us. What other treasures of Jesus have we in fact lost over the centuries?

We are told that a scribe approached Jesus with the intention of putting him on the defensive and perhaps making him contradict the teaching of the Law. It is not clear whether this was just a single attack or part of a conspiracy. The question sounded simple, the kind that anyone would put to a religious teacher:

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

As so often happens, Jesus throws the question back at his interrogator. In fact, as a scribe, the man should already know the answer and Jesus asks him his opinion.

He replies as a scribe might be expected to, not in his own words, but quoting two passages from the Pentateuch, from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus which say we are to love God with all our heart and soul and our neighbour as ourselves. Jesus says in response:

You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.

However, the man is not satisfied:

…wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor”?

For him “neighbor” meant, of course, only other Jews like himself, but did it include every Jew, even those who did not follow the Law? Was he supposed to love them also?

The answer Jesus gave must have come as a surprise, not to say a shock. And it came in the form of a kind of parable. It is the story we know as the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the eyes of most Jews of the time, such a term would be a contradiction because it was about someone from Samaria. It would be like saying someone is a ‘good terrorist’.

It is most likely (for the story to have meaning) that the man who was set upon by robbers and left half dead on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho was a Jew. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a distance of about 30 km and involved a drop from about 800 metres above sea level to about 150 metres below sea level. It ran through rocky and desert country providing ample opportunity for hidden robbers to waylay unwitting travellers.

In the story, three people saw the injured man there. Two of them were religious people, people expected to be lovers of God and neighbour. Yet both carefully passed by on the other side. It is most likely that they were going in the opposite direction, that is, they were on their way from Jericho to Jerusalem and the Temple. The injured man would have been covered in blood. No one intending to go to pray in the Temple would dare to become contaminated and made ritually unclean by coming in contact with blood. In other words, they ignored the man for religious reasons.

But then a Samaritan came by. He was, in the eyes of the Jews, an alien and a heretic. There was strong hostility between the two neighbouring peoples on historical, geographical, racial and religious grounds. The Samaritan was regarded as a ‘half-breed’ both physically and spiritually. They were ethnically related and shared some of the Jewish beliefs, but were seen as heretics, ‘half-Jews’. We remember how surprised the Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob was when she was spoken to by Jesus, who would have been expected to ignore her.

This despised outsider, presumed to have nothing of the spirit of God’s mercy and compassion, gives the Jew lying on the ground the attention that the two other religious-minded men refuse to give. In fact, the Samaritan went to extraordinary lengths to take care of the injured man, sparing no expense. Two silver coins may not seem very much, but it represented two days’ wages and would have been enough to keep someone for up to two months in a wayside inn.

It is difficult for us, now in our time, to understand the impact that such a story would have had on the traditional Jewish listener, not to mention a scribe. In our world today, it would be something like a Palestinian fighter coming to the help of an Israeli soldier or vice versa. Perhaps you can think of examples closer to home.

The question of Jesus is interesting:

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

The answer of the scribe is equally interesting:

The one who showed him mercy.

The answer then to the question, “Who is my neighbour?” is not, as we learnt in our catechism, “Everybody”, though that is true. The answer of Jesus is: A neighbour is someone who shows compassion to another in need—irrespective of who the helper or the person in need may be. It is less a question of seeing every other person as my neighbour, but much more importantly, of my being actively a neighbour to others, not on the basis of their race, nationality, occupation, gender, skin colour, or beliefs, but on the basis of need. And who does not need love and compassion?

Finally, in answer to an academic, theological question, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus tells the scribe not what or who is his neighbour, but to:

Go and do likewise.

In other words, to go and be a neighbour.

The story has a secondary lesson for us about stereotyping. For the Jews there was the negative stereotype of the Samaritan (which was probably reciprocated). Our world today is full of stereotypes. We have stereotypes of practically every race and ethnic group and skin colour, every gender and political persuasion, and they can influence our attitudes deeply and often unconsciously.

With regard to race, certainly each race can have recognisable characteristics—Jews, Italians, Irish, Germans, French, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Africans—arising from language and traditions, but it is an irrational jump to attribute to every member of a group generalised characteristics. We can never say that “Irish are…”, or “Chinese are…”, or “Africans are…” There are too many exceptions.

Every single person has to be approached individually and there are good, bad and indifferent people to be found in every group, including our own. But they all have one thing in common: they should be confident of being helped by good neighbours in their time of need.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 18:18-20

Today’s readings continue in a slightly different direction from that of yesterday: the need for someone who is a servant to not expect a reward. Right behavior means doing the right things in the right way because they are right, and not for glory, honour, praise or reward.

There are plots against the prophet Jeremiah. People find his teaching uncomfortable and they want to get rid of him. He is seen as a trouble-maker. In the eyes of his critics, getting rid of Jeremiah will make their own lives easier. Without him around to pronounce harsh truths, the work of the priests, sages and other prophets can go on just as before. Their words are so bland and harmless, and lull people into complacency as they have always done.

But Jeremiah is puzzled. Referring to the attacks being made on him when he passes on God’s word to the people, he asks:

Is evil a recompense for good?

It is a question that is often asked: “How could God allow this to happen to such a good person?” He had pleaded with God on the people’s behalf and this is the reward he gets.

We will see in today’s Gospel that those plotting against Jesus do not treat him any differently. We should not be surprised either if, as Christians, we meet with ridicule and rejection. The world is not ready to hear words of truth and justice. It does not like the true prophet who has the tendency to draw people’s attention to the things they don’t want to hear. Jesus had that annoying habit too.

But let us also consider whether people’s indifference to our message and way of life is because of its blandness, like salt without taste. If so, then we deserve to be ignored.

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Commentary on Matthew 6:19-23

This short passage contains two related teachings. The first may be seen as a commentary on the petition in the Lord’s Prayer:

Give us this day our daily bread…

It is a teaching about the things which are really valuable, which really count. We live in a highly materialistic world where a very large number of people seem to believe that material wealth is the solution to every problem. There is nothing that money cannot buy—no problem it cannot solve. This belief prevails even though every day it is shown to be false.

Jesus urges us to put our trust and our security in something less perishable, something more lasting. To ‘store up treasure in heaven’ is not just to pile up a whole lot of ‘good works’ which will be to our credit in the next life. That credit too can be very quickly lost. It is much more a question of growing more and more into the kind of person who is steeped in the values and the outlook of the gospel. It is less a question of doing than of becoming. We also build treasure by what we give away, by sharing with others whatever gifts we have, especially those most in need.

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)

And, as Jesus so wisely says:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Obviously, the questions for me to ask today are: Where is my treasure? What do I value most in life? And how do I reveal that in the way I live?

And that brings us to the second part:

The eye is the lamp of the body.…if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.

It is that light which we need in order to have a clear vision of what is most valuable in our lives. The person who cannot see beyond money, status, power, or fame is truly in darkness. Life is not about getting these things. Life is about who we are; it is about love and relationships.

Let us pray today for vision and light to be able to discern what are the real treasures, the most precious things of human living. In that way, our life truly becomes a Christian life.

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Commentary on Matthew 24:42-51

We enter the final phase of our readings from Matthew, which will conclude on Saturday of this week. We will see selected readings from chapters 24 and 25 which form what is called the “Eschatological Discourse”. This is the fifth and final discourse, each of which is a collection of the teachings of Jesus and which are a feature of Matthew’s Gospel. This discourse is concerned with the end of all things, and the second and final coming of Christ to bring all things together.

The earlier part of chapter 24 includes the foretelling of the destruction of Jerusalem, an event which for the Jews of the time (including those who had converted to Christianity) must have seemed like the end of the world (just as, later on, the collapse of the Roman Empire seemed to be the end of the world for St Augustine and his contemporaries).

The early Christians had expected to see the Second Coming in their lifetime and the sacking of Jerusalem and the sacrilegious destruction of the Temple must have seemed the certain signs of the eschaton (Greek, meaning “last thing”). But by the time Matthew’s Gospel came into circulation, that was already at least 15 years in the past. The end, although certain to happen, did not seem any more quite so imminent.

Matthew includes as part of the discourse a number of Parousia (Final Coming) parables. Following a pattern we have seen in other parts of this Gospel, they are seven in number. We have two short ones in today’s reading. Both consist of an exhortation for readiness to welcome the final coming of the Lord.

In the first we should be as alert in watching for the coming of the Lord as a householder would be to prevent his house being broken into and robbed. Like a thief, Jesus will come when we least expect him.

In the second parable, Jesus compares us to a servant who has been put in charge of the house while the master is away. This may refer to the community leaders in Matthew’s church and, by extension, to leaders of communities everywhere. It will be well for that servant when the master unexpectedly returns and finds his servant diligently doing his job. Readiness is measured by people’s consistency in carrying out their responsibilities. On the other hand, the servant may think that there is no sign of the master (who had been expected to come earlier) and goes about beating up the other servants and leading a debauched life. It will be too bad for that servant when the master does suddenly appear on the scene.

The lesson is clear. Many of the Christians, who had expected the Lord to come soon, now see no sign of him and begin to backslide in the living of their Christian faith. We can be tempted to do the same thing. “Let’s have a good (i.e. morally bad) time now and we can convert later.” It is not a very wise policy. In the long run, the really good life, that is, a life based on truth and integrity, on love and compassion and sharing, will always be better than one based on phoniness, on selfishness, greed, hedonism and immediate gratification of every pleasure.

And the “Final Coming” may never come for some of us (in our lifetime), along with the chance to turn back to him who is the Way, Truth and Life—but our individual lives will come to an end. The wisest people are those who consistently try to seek and serve their Lord at every moment of every day. They both experience happiness now, and also find that Jesus will not be a stranger when he comes to call them to himself. They are the ones who are both faithful and prudent.