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Commentary on Exodus 11:10—12:14

We have skipped several chapters of Exodus to come to today’s reading. The sufferings of the Hebrews became intolerable and eventually God sent what we call the Ten Plagues on Egypt in order to persuade the Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave. After each one, the Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he refused to let God’s people go.

The Ten Plagues were as follows:

1. Water turned into blood (most likely caused by a plant which discoloured the water).
2. An infestation of frogs which penetrated every place and every home.
3. An infestation of gnats (mosquitoes?) on man and beast alike.
4. A plague of flies.
5. An epidemic which attacked all the livestock of the Egyptians, but not those of the Hebrews.
6. An epidemic of boils on humans and beasts.
7. A fall of hail, accompanied by thunder and lightning, which killed everyone and every animal that was in the open air.
8. A plague of locusts which devoured every plant which had survived the previous plagues.
9. Total darkness for three days.
10. The killing of all the first-born of the Egyptians, from the Pharaoh to the lowliest slave.

Most of these ‘plagues’ actually correspond to natural phenomena found in Egypt. But they are represented here as supernatural, at least in their greater intensity and in their occurring exactly according to Moses’ command. In each of the plagues, the Hebrews were not affected, another sign of God’s intervention in what would normally be natural calamities affecting everyone.

With these plagues we are coming to the great finale and the high point of the Exodus story. Nine plagues inflicted on Egypt have:

…hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his land.

The Hebrews are now told to prepare for the final catastrophe with which God will strike the Egyptians. As our reading opens, the Tenth Plague has not yet taken place. It is as if, in the eyes of the author, God wanted the Pharaoh to be hard-hearted so that eventually the situation would become so bad that he would have no alternative.

The passage we read today is not really a historical account of how the Hebrews actually prepared for that last night in Egypt. It consists rather of formal instructions to a later generation on how to celebrate the great event that is about to take place. The instructions are presented as coming from God to Moses and Aaron.

First, the month in which it is taking place is from now on to be regarded as “the first month of the year”. It is the month of Abib, meaning the month of ‘young corn’ or ‘ripe grain’. It occurred around the time of the spring equinox, in a period between March and April in our Gregorian calendar. After the Exile it came to be known by the Babylonian name of Nisan, the name used in later books of the Old Testament (Nehemiah 2:1 and Esther 3:7).

Then, on the 10th day of that month, each family is to procure for itself a lamb. If a family is too small to finish one lamb, then it can join with another family and they can share the lamb between them, including perhaps the cost of purchasing it. The lamb must be male, one year old and free from any blemish. It may be a sheep or a goat (sheep and goats are closely related animals).

The animal is to be kept until the 14th day of the month; then it is to be slaughtered in the presence of all the assembled Hebrews. This should happen “at twilight”. This was understood as either between sunset and darkness (the Samaritans) or between afternoon and sunset (the Pharisees and the Talmud).

In every house where the lamb is to be eaten, its blood is to be applied on the doorposts and lintel of the house. This, in a way, was the most important requirement. On the night of the 14th day of the month, the same evening on which it had been slaughtered, the roasted flesh of the lamb was to be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The animal was to be roasted, not to be eaten raw or boiled, and the whole animal, including head, limbs and internal organs roasted as one.

Nothing must be kept over till the following morning. Anything that is uneaten is to be burnt. This was to preclude any possible profanation of something regarded as ‘holy’. The Greek text adds:

You shall not break a bone of it.

This requirement is also mentioned in further instructions within the same chapter (12:46).

In John’s account of Jesus’ passion, he notes that the soldiers, seeing that Jesus was already dead, pierced his side with a lance, but did not break his legs, as they did with the other two men being crucified. And he says:

These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, “None of his bones shall be broken.” (John 19:36)

This happened because Jesus was the Paschal Lamb of the New Covenant.

In Exodus, they are then told:

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly.

In other words, the meal is to be taken like people preparing to make a hasty departure.

And it is to be called “the Passover of the Lord.” The origin of the word ‘Passover’ is disputed. The word pesah (Greek, pascha) means that Yahweh ‘leaped over’ the marked houses, as one might skip names on a list. The word may be originally from the Egyptian, pesach, meaning ‘the blow’, that is, the final plague which is about to happen. Both meanings, obviously, are applicable.

On this very night, the Lord would go through Egypt and strike down every first-born in the land, humans and animals alike, and thus pass judgement on all the gods of Egypt. But because the blood of the lambs has been painted on all the houses of the Hebrews, when the Lord sees the blood, he will pass over, or skip over, those houses and no harm will come to them. Hence the name of the feast.

Then comes the final instruction to Hebrews of every future generation:

This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

This is an instruction which Jews continue to observe to this day.

For us Christians, all this has great meaning because we see in it a foreshadowing of another Passover which Jesus celebrated with his disciples. It took place at the same time as the celebration of the traditional Jewish Passover but, because of what immediately followed, it was seen as the sacramental anticipation of the new Passover in which Jesus is the Sacrificial Lamb whose blood poured out becomes the instrument of our salvation and liberation.

It is significant that, in the descriptions of the Last Supper, no Gospel mentions the lamb as the main dish. There is now a New Passover Lamb—Jesus himself. And in the eating of the Bread and the drinking of the Wine, those present had ‘eaten’ and ‘drunk’ of the Lamb.

This passage from Exodus is also the First Reading of the liturgy on Holy Thursday. It might be noted, too, that some Catholics now celebrate during the earlier part of Holy Week a ‘seder meal’ which is a reenactment of the Hebrew paschal supper, at which there will be cooked lamb, unleavened bread, wine and bitter herbs.

Finally, the Jerusalem Bible has the following comment on the feast:

The long section of the Passover and the feast of the Unleavened Bread (12:1—13:16) combines the Yahwistic and the Priestly traditions and some editorial additions the style of which is ‘Deuteronomic’. With this passage should be compared the liturgical calendars of Leviticus 23:5-8, Deuteronomy 16:1-8, and the legislation of Numbers 28:16-25. The two rites may have had separate origins: the Passover is primarily a pastoral feast, offering the first-fruits of the flock; the feast of Unleavened Bread is primarily agricultural, offering the first-fruits of the barley harvest. But they were both springtime festivals and became fused at a very early date. Once associated with a historical occurrence, that decisive event in the history of Israel’s election, the deliverance out of Egypt, these rites took on an entirely new religious significance: they recalled how God had saved his people (see also the explanatory formula accompanying the rite, Exodus 12:26-27, 13:8). The Jewish Passover hence becomes a rehearsal for the Christian Passover: the Lamb of God, Christ, is sacrificed (the cross) and eaten (the Last Supper) within the framework of the Jewish Passover (the first Holy Week). Thus he brings salvation to the world, and the mystical re-enactment of this redemptive act becomes the central feature of the Christian liturgy, organised round the Mass which is at once sacrifice and sacrificial meal. (edited)

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Commentary on Exodus 3:11-20

We are still with Moses as he speaks with God at the burning bush. God has asked Moses to be the leader of his people to rescue them from their life of slavery and hardship in Egypt. And Moses has heard this with some alarm. He feels unsuited to such a huge task. He is wanted by the Pharaoh for the murder of an Egyptian and he had angry words with some of his countrymen, making his acceptance even by his own people not very likely.

But God assures Moses that he will be with him all the way, and the confirmation will come when the Hebrews will one day worship their God on Mount Horeb. However, Moses is still not at ease with the proposed mission. If he tells the people that the God of their fathers has sent him and they ask “What is his name?”, what is he to tell them?

He wants to know what credentials he can bring to justify his being leader and the truth of his message. He asks God to give his name as proof. To know a person’s name was to have a certain power over them; to know the name of a deity was to be sure of a hearing. By being able to give God’s name, Moses would be able to claim a certain authority.

God replies:

I AM who I AM.

And Moses is to say to the people:

I AM has sent me to you…the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you….This is my name forever.

In a sense God’s words say everything and they say nothing. The Israelites are being given a name they can use, but it does not give them, as thought with pagan gods, a power over God—that they cannot have.

Later philosophers, of course, were to see in the name the assertion of pure and infinite Being. God simply is and everything else that is comes from him. But it is not likely that the authors of Exodus had reached that level of insight.

The phrase “I AM who I AM” apparently is the source of the word Yahweh, the proper personal name of the God of Israel. Out of reverence for this name, the term Adonai, (Hebrew for “my Lord”) was later used as a substitute. The word ‘Lord’ in many translations represents this traditional usage. The word ‘Jehovah’ arose from an incorrect reading of this name as it is written in the current Hebrew text.

We do not hesitate to use the word ‘God’ in our speech, but we should avoid any disrespectful use of any name of God or any persons of the Trinity, something which is all too common nowadays. Often it betrays ignorance rather than malice. It is an ignorance of the deepest nature of God’s being. It was Thomas Aquinas who said:

“…because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not.” (Summa Theologia)

Said more simply, we are only learning to know God when we realise that he cannot be known. And when we use his name blasphemously, it is ourselves we hurt, not him.

The Jerusalem Bible has a lengthy comment on the phrase “I AM who I AM”:

“According to the Yahwistic tradition, the worship of Yahweh went back to the days before the Flood. According to the Priestly tradition, Yahweh revealed himself to the patriarchs under the name El-Shaddai (See Gen 17:1 and Exod 6:2-3). In this passage which belongs to the Elohistic tradition, it is at this time that God reveals the name of Yahweh; by this name he wishes to be invoked in future by the children of Israel. This narrative, a peak of Old Testament revelation, presents two difficulties: the first is philological—the etymology of the name Yahweh; the second is exegetical and theological—the meaning of the narrative as a whole and the significance of the revelation that it conveys.

With regard to the etymology, attempts have been made to explain the name Yahweh (abridged forms like Yaho, Yah, and others are found in both biblical and non-biblical texts) from various Hebrew roots, but there seems little doubt that it is an archaic form of the verb ‘to be’.

There are two possible interpretations. First, it may be that Yahweh is used here to imply the impossibility of giving an adequate definition of God. In semitic thought, knowledge of a name gave power over the thing named; to know a god’s name was to be able to call on him and be certain of a hearing. The true God does not make himself man’s slave in this way by revealing a name expressive of his essence; this refusal to reveal is contained in the formula Ehyeh asher ehyeh (‘I am who I am’) which, in the third person, becomes Yahweh, ‘He is’. Understood in this fashion the name does not define God; nevertheless, for Israel it will always call to mind God’s great deliverance of his chosen people and the divine generosity, fidelity and power that prompted it. In Christian thought, this interpretation brings out the transcendence of a God for whom man can never find a worthy name.

Second, tradition, however, following the Septuagint, has commonly preferred to take Ehyeh asher ehyeh as meaning ‘I am the One who is’, ‘I am who I am’. The name Yahweh, ‘He is’, would then express not necessarily the absolute nature of God’s essence as a later philosophy and theology were to state it, but least God’s unlimited existence as opposed to the ‘nothingness’ of the gods (see Is 42:8 and following).”

Moses is then told the message he is to bring to the Hebrews. The elders of the people, as their representatives, are to be called together. They are to be told that the God of their ancestors has appeared to Moses. He has told Moses of his concern for the people’s sufferings and has decided to lead them out into:

…the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.

God assures Moses that the people will heed his message. Moses and the elders are to approach the Pharaoh and tell him that their God has sent the Hebrews a message. They are to say to the Pharaoh:

The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; let us now go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.

But God tells Moses that he knows the Pharaoh will not give his permission for this unless his hand is forced. In that case. God says:

I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders [a reference to the Ten Plagues] that I will perform in it; after that he will let you go.

Over the centuries, philosophers and theologians have led us to very deep understanding of the nature of God. We also learn much about God from the revelation that comes to us through Jesus Christ. Much of what Jesus reveals goes far beyond what we might come to know by reason alone. To know our God ever more deeply and become closer to him and his way of seeing life is really the only thing that matters.

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Commentary on Matthew 11:28-30

The Gospel in many of its passages is very demanding and requires an unconditional commitment to the following of Christ.  We have seen that clearly in the contrast Jesus made between the demands of the Law and what he expected from his followers.  But again and again, that is balanced by the other side of God—his compassion and his understanding of our weakness and frailty.

Today Jesus invites:

Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

He seems to be referring to the burden of the Law and the many other legalistic observances which had accumulated over the generations.  In fact there was a common rabbinic metaphor which spoke of the ‘yoke of the Law’.  We will see some of this in the two remaining readings of this week.  Jesus did not have much time for this kind of religion. He invites us rather to come to him and experience comfort and consolation.

Jesus invites us to take on his yoke instead.  A yoke can be heavy, but it makes it easier for an ox to pull a cart or a plough.  Jesus’ yoke is the yoke of love.  On the one hand, it restricts us from acting in certain ways, but at the same time it points us in the right direction.  In the long run, it has a liberating effect.  It is not unlike the idea of the “narrow gate” which Jesus invites us to go through rather than follow the wide road to nowhere (Matt 7:13-14).

Jesus asks us to learn from him in his gentleness and humility.  This was in stark contrast to the severity and arrogance of other religious leaders.  Not only are we to experience the gentleness of Jesus, we are also to practise it in our own dealings with others.

Another lovely idea that has been expressed arises from the observation that it was quite common for farmers to use double yokes, with two animals pulling a cart together. The thought is that Jesus is offering to share his yoke with me, so that Jesus and I will pull together and thus split the work. In any case, Jesus assures us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

Jesus expects us to give all of ourselves to him, but when we do so, we discover that what he asks is absolutely right for us.  To follow Jesus is not to carry a great weight, but to experience a great sense of liberation. If we have not found that experience yet, then we are not yet carrying the yoke of Jesus.

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Commentary on Matthew 12:1-8

Today’s story follows immediately on yesterday’s words of Jesus inviting those carrying heavy burdens to come to him for comfort and relief.  Those burdens were understood to be the yoke of the Law which could weigh so heavily on the ordinary person. Today we see what kind of burdens it entailed.

Jesus and his disciples are walking through a cornfield.  The disciples were feeling a little hungry so they began plucking ears of corn to eat…nothing wrong with that.  Gleaning, especially where the poor were concerned, was not regarded as stealing:

If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain. (Deut 23:25)

Yet the Pharisees criticised the disciples’ behaviour before Jesus.  They were not upset by the plucking of the corn, but because it was done on a Sabbath day.  Most manual work was forbidden on the Sabbath, including for instance, reaping.  So we read in Exodus:

Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest.
(Exod 34:21)

The question that would come immediately to the legalistic mind would be what exactly constituted harvesting.  In the minds of the Pharisees, who would put the strictest interpretation in order to be on the safe side, what the disciples were doing contravened the Sabbath requirements.

Jesus would have none of this nonsense.  He gave two examples which the Pharisees would find difficult to criticise. First, David’s soldiers, because they were hungry, went into the house of God and ate the ”bread of offering”, that is, bread which was laid out as an offering to God.  According to the Law, only the priests were allowed to eat this bread.

Second, he pointed to the priests on temple duty who not only worked on the Sabbath, but did more work than usual on that day (like priests today!).  Yet no one found fault with them.

Jesus has two further and more powerful arguments. First, he calls his accusers’ attention to a saying paraphrased from the prophet Hosea:

I desire mercy and not sacrifice… (Hos 6:6)

What this means is that the measure of our behaviour in God’s eyes is not our observance of law, but the degree of love and compassion we have for our brothers and sisters.  Laws are for people; people are not for laws.  That is why a truly loving act always transcends any law.  If the Pharisees had fully understood the meaning of Hosea’s words, they would not have “condemned these innocent men”.

Second, Jesus simply says,

…the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus as Lord is not bound by even the God-given laws of Israel.  If, in the eyes of Jesus, his disciples are innocent, then they are innocent.

Every time we read texts like this we have to look at how we as Christians behave both individually and corporately.  Legalism and small-mindedness can very easily infect our Catholic life.  We can start measuring people—including ourselves, but especially others—by the observance or non-observance of things which really have little to do with the substance of our Christian faith.  Of course, we can also go to the other extreme of having no rules at all.

There is a very demanding law to which we are all called to subscribe and that is the law of love.  It allows of no exceptions.  But its practice can only benefit both the giver and the receiver.

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Commentary on Exodus 12:37-42

Yesterday’s reading about the celebration of the Passover is followed by instructions on the feast of Unleavened Bread and other instructions on the observance of the Passover. After this, the book then goes back to the narrative and, considering its climactic role, gives a rather brief account of the Tenth and most terrible Plague, the killing of all the first-born Egyptian children and animals. However, Pharaoh has now had enough and ordered Moses and Aaron to leave with all their people, their herds and their possessions.

Today’s passage describes the beginning of the long journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land by way of Mount Sinai. The journey began in the city of Rameses in the very north of Egypt, where the Hebrews had been employed virtually as slaves in the Pharaoh’s great construction works. They set off for Succoth which lay to the southeast about half way between Rameses and the Sea of Reeds.

Their numbers were estimated to be 600,000 men, “not counting their families.” There was also a crowd of “people of various sorts” with them. These were probably the result of mixed marriages between the Hebrews and the native Egyptians. They also brought with them numerous flocks of sheep and goats and herds of cattle.

However, they had left in such a rush that the flour they had with them had no time to be leavened, so they made bread with the unleavened flour. This is another tradition of the origin of the use of unleavened bread as part of the Passover celebration. They left in such a rush that they did not even have time to prepare any proper food for their journey.

It was the end of a long sojourn in Egypt—estimated by the Bible as 430 years—from the time Joseph had first invited his family to settle there. The day they left was said to be the exact anniversary date of their arrival. It was seen as the greatest event in the history of Israel.

They had also started on their journey by night, so future celebrations of the event were forever more to be observed by a vigil. The passage ends with:

That was for the Lord a night of vigil, to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That same night is a vigil to be kept for the Lord by all the Israelites throughout their generations.

And as we have seen, it will be the foreshadowing of a much greater Passover, a more significant vigil to come—the Christian Easter Vigil.

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Commentary on Matthew 12:14-21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Commentary on John 5:31-47

Today we continue on from yesterday’s words of Jesus to the Jewish religious leaders. In four ways, John’s Gospel reaffirms that God himself is the witness to the truth of all that Jesus says:

1. The testimony of John the Baptist gives witness, although that was only human testimony (vv 33-34).
2. The works of Jesus give clear testimony of the divine origin of all that Jesus does:

   The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.

   The leaders could not see this, but the crowds often testified to it with enthusiasm (v36).

3. The Father himself has given testimony, although that has not been seen directly by some of the Jews:

   And the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf. You have never heard his voice or seen his form…

   Perhaps this is a reference to Jesus’ baptism or to the Transfiguration (vv 37-38).

4. A careful reading of the Scriptures will show they give testimony to Jesus (vv 39-40).

   You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

   This is clearly shown later on by Jesus when explaining the Scriptures to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).

Although Jesus clearly comes in the name of his Father, he is not accepted or believed in. Yet some other individual will come in his own name, and they will accept him. Further, they keep looking to their own traditions, rather than looking further to someone who clearly comes from God.

Jesus will not accuse them before his Father. Moses, in whom they claim to believe, will be their accuser.

If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?

By “Moses” is meant the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch. Their authorship is attributed to Moses, although we know now by the dating of the various parts that this could not be possible. It was common in ancient times to attribute the authorship of a work to a well-known personality.

How much of all this applies to us? Where do we ultimately put our faith—in the Christ of the New Testament, or in a Jesus we have tailored to our own wants? How familiar are we with the Word of God in the New (and Old) Testament? Where do we clearly see the Risen Jesus bringing God into our lives every single day?

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Commentary on Mark 8:34—9:1

Having warned his disciples of the future that lies ahead for him, Jesus now calls the crowds and his disciples together, and lets them know in no uncertain terms what following him entails. To be a follower of Jesus is to be ready to go exactly the way that he went:

If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. Whoever wishes to save his life, will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.

Yet, this is the paradox. Self-preservation and self-centred aggrandisement leads to nothing, only to a kind of death. Surrendering one’s life totally through a commitment to Jesus and to his Way (as expressed in the Gospel) leads to an enrichment which nothing else can supply.

This is a clear challenge: that anyone who wants to follow Jesus must be ready both to suffer and give their lives in love for others. Those who make every effort to preserve their lives, and hang on to what they have with no regard for transcendent values or the needs of others, are destined to lose everything, not least their integrity, dignity and self-respect.

This was very practical teaching for people who were frequently being persecuted for their Christian faith. Those who betrayed that faith to save their lives or their property had lost something more valuable—their integrity, their wholeness, their consistency. Undoubtedly many could not live with themselves afterwards. There are certain things which are more important than human life or material possessions.

What gain, then, is it for a man to win the whole world and ruin [the true meaning of] his life? And indeed what can a man offer in exchange for his life?

We have a long list of martyrs (from the Greek, meaning ‘witnesses’) to the faith whose memories we cherish, and whose example we respect and admire. We have no list, and no desire, to remember those who avoided martyrdom and compromised their faith and their values, and who may have enjoyed wealth and position as a result. They lived on for a while and then disappeared; the martyrs are still very much alive.

There are overtones here of a Church in persecution. There must have been those who, when their faith was challenged, “were ashamed of Jesus and his words” and denied their faith to save their immediate lives. They will hear the terrible words cited in Matthew’s Gospel:

Truly I tell you, I do not know you. (Matt 25:12)

The final phrase is ambivalent:

There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power.

This can refer to the establishment of the Christian communities, as witnesses to the Kingdom’s being established in the world, which will be the result of the great experience at Pentecost. It can also refer, of course, to a belief among many in the early Church, that the Second Coming of Jesus, the Parousia, would take place in their lifetime.

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Commentary on Genesis 11:1-9

We are now at the end of our selected readings from the story of Creation and our tragic fall from the life that God originally intended for us. Today’s story is based on the stepped or terraced temple towers called ziggurats in ancient Babylon, a city with few happy memories for the Israelites and, for them, the home of idolatry and religious corruption.  The context is used by the writer to show humanity’s increasing wickedness, here shown by an arrogant desire to create an urban culture without God.  A secondary theme is an explanation of the huge diversity of languages and dialects in people who, in most respects, seem so similar, and also an explanation for the meaning of the name ‘Babylon’.

Like the garden of Eden story, it is a folktale of human pride and folly and reflective of Israel’s strong anti-urban bias. We are told that originally, the whole of humanity had just one language and one vocabulary.  Then the world’s people migrated from the east and settled in the plain of Shinar.  This is ancient Sumer in southern Mesopotamia (today, southern Iraq), and also known as Babylonia.

Here they developed construction techniques, learning how to make bricks instead of using stone and bitumen as mortar.  Bricks were so easy to make and so convenient, when compared to the tedious process of cutting stone.  Buildings could be bigger and constructed so much more quickly.  Stone and mortar were used as building materials in Canaan, rocky country where the Israelites lived.  Stone was scarce in Mesopotamia, so mud brick and bitumen were used as determined by archaeological excavation.

The people in Shinar decided to build a whole city, including a tower that would reach upwards, penetrating the heavens.  This is a direct reference to the chief ziggurat of Babylon, the E-sag-ila, signifying “the house that raises high its head”.  Ziggurats were pyramidic temple structures intended to serve as staircases from earth to heaven.  They were square at the base and had sloping, stepped sides that led to a small shrine at the top.  They could be called the earliest ‘skyscrapers’.

These structures were intended to symbolise the holy mountain and resting-place of the deity, and the builders were apparently seeking a means of meeting their god.  But the biblical writer sees their project as an act of arrogant pride.  They built this tower because:

…otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

As so often is the case, the root of overweening ambition is often fear. The theme of the tower is combined with that of the whole city, as a condemnation of urban civilisation.

God was not at all pleased with what he saw.  They were all one people, united by a common language, and this was only the beginning of what they could do.  Nothing would seem impossible.  There would be no limits to their unrestrained rebellion against God.  The kingdom of Man would try to displace and exclude the kingdom of God (something often seen today).

In order to put a stop to such ambition, God says:

Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.

The result was that, divided by incomprehensible languages, they were scattered over the face of the earth, and the building of their city had to be abandoned.  The very thing they feared ultimately took place.

Finally, the city was called Babel, because it was there that the Lord had thrown the language of the earth into confusion and scattered the earth’s peoples in all directions.  Babel is the Hebrew form of the name ‘Babylon’, originally Bab-ili, meaning ‘Gate of the gods’.  Apparently the name referred originally only to a certain part of the city, the district near the gate that led to the temple area.  There is a play here on the similarly-sounding Hebrew word balil, which means “to be confused”.

For the biblical writer, the dream of building a tower reaching up to heaven is just another example of the sinfulness of the human family, this time of their arrogance and pride.  It is a repetition of the sin of the man and the woman in the garden who thought they would gain infinite wisdom by eating the forbidden fruit.

There is also a theological explanation of why our single species, once thought to be living in one place and sharing one language, is now so divided by language, and why we are scattered and separated over such a wide area.

Arrogance can be found in many places today, and is a feeling that we are in total control of our lives and our destinies. But events that happen in all our lives constantly remind us just how fragile and contingent our existence really is.

However, the divisions of Babel and mutual incomprehensibility are reversed on the day of Pentecost.  As Peter speaks to the crowds coming from so many different places, they are amazed that they can all understand the message.  It is a message for everyone, and one which is in total harmony with the deepest needs and desires of every single person (Acts 2:5-12).  There is a similar gathering of the whole of humanity in the presence of God described in the Book of Revelation (Rev 7:9-10).

It is our mission as followers of Christ to work for the establishment of the Kingdom where all are united in truth and love as brothers and sisters.  There is still a lot of work to be done.

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Commentary on Mark 8:27-33

We now come to a high point in Mark’s Gospel which the texts of previous days have been leading up to.  Since the beginning of this Gospel the question has been continually asked: “Who is Jesus?”  Today we get the answer.  The blind and deaf disciples show that they are beginning to see more clearly.

So Jesus himself puts the question that has been underlying all that has gone before:

Who do people say that I am?

The disciples give a number of answers reflecting the speculations of the people.  These include:

• John the Baptist come to life again
• Elijah, who was expected to return to earth just before the arrival of the Messiah
• One of the other prophets

Then Jesus asks his disciples what they believe:

But who do you say that I am?

Peter speaks up in the name of all:

You are the Messiah.

This is indeed a dramatic moment.  Jesus is not just an ordinary rabbi, not just a prophet. He is the long-awaited Christ, the Messiah, the anointed King of Israel. This is a tremendous breakthrough for the disciples.  However, they are told to keep this to themselves for the time being.  There were many expectations about the Messiah and Jesus did not want to be identified with them.

But it is not the end of the story.  There is a sudden and unexpected twist for which they were not at all prepared.  Jesus immediately begins to tell them what is going to happen to him in the days ahead: that he will suffer grievously, be rejected by the religious leaders of his own people, be put to death and—perhaps most surprising of all—after three days rise again.  And there was no mistaking his meaning for:

He said all this quite openly.

The religious leaders mentioned here are part of the Sanhedrin, a 71-member ruling council of the Jews consisting of elders, the chief priests and the scribes.  Under Roman rule, the Sanhedrin had authority in religious matters.

For the first time in this Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man”.  He will do this many more times.  The title was first used in the book of Daniel (7:13-14) as a symbol of “the holy ones of the Most High” (Dan 7:27), referring to those faithful Israelites who receive the everlasting kingdom from the “Most High” (i.e. God). 

In the apocryphal books of 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra, the title “Son of Man” does not refer to a group, but to a unique figure of extraordinary spiritual endowments—who will be revealed as the one through whom the everlasting kingdom decreed by God will be established.  Of itself, this expression means simply “a human being”, or, indefinitely, “someone”, and there are instances of this use in pre-Christian times. Its use in the New Testament is probably due to Jesus’ speaking of himself in that way, “a human being”, and the later Church’s taking this in the sense of the Jewish apocrypha and applying it to him with that meaning.

It is not difficult to imagine how the disciples must have been profoundly shocked, and could not believe their ears at what Jesus was telling them.  Peter, their impetuous leader, immediately begins to protest.  They have just pronounced Jesus to be the long-awaited leader of the Jewish people, and now he says he is going to be rejected and executed by their very own leaders.  It made absolutely no sense whatever.  Jesus turns round, looks at his disciples and scolds Peter with the terrible words:

Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.

This is what the gradual opening of the eyes of the blind man in yesterday’s story indicated.  They had reached the stage where they had made the exciting discovery that their Master was none other than the long-awaited Messiah.  They had answered the first question of Mark’s Gospel: Who is Jesus? But they were still immersed in all the traditional expectations that had grown up around the coming of the Messiah as the victorious and triumphing king who would put all Israel’s enemies to flight.

But they would have to unlearn all this. The rest of Mark will answer the second question: What kind of Messiah is Jesus? or what does it mean for Jesus to be Messiah?

And a further question follows from that: What will all that mean for the disciples—and for us?  We will see some answers to that tomorrow.