October 30, 2005: THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Malachi 1:14b-2:2b, 8-10
I Thessalonians 2:7b-9, 13
Matthew 23:1-12

George Bernard Shaw once observed, “One can only be converted to what one already believes.”

During my biblical prophecy courses, I remind my students that prophets never say anything new. One of the characteristics of a true prophet is his or her knack of taking people back to the beginnings of their faith, inviting them to cut through centuries of added religious practice and belief and explore the roots of a movement which somehow veered from its founder’s original plan. In these prophetic situations, “what one already believes” isn’t necessarily what people in the prophet’s audience believe, but what the first person or persons of faith believed.

Malachi invites us to do precisely this in our first reading.

Scholars believe the prophet’s name wasn’t Malachi. Malachi is a “pen name,” meaning “my messenger.” The New American Bible’s introduction to his book informs us that the prophet tried to conceal his identity “because of the sharp reproaches he was leveling against the priests and rulers of the people.” He’s afraid of retaliation.

The reason he’s afraid becomes clear when we hear the first verse of chapter 2. “And now, O priests, this commandment is for you: If you do not listen, if you do not lay it to heart, to give glory to my name . . . I will send a curse upon you . . .” For some reason, those who have determined our liturgical text have omitted the reason for Yahweh’s condemnation. Here it is: “For the lips of the priest are to keep knowledge, and instruction is to be sought from his mouth, because he is the messenger of Yahweh of hosts.”

Readers of this column know when the word “knowledge” is used in Scripture it almost always refers to an experience someone has. Biblically, to know something or someone is to experience someone or something. Malachi condemns the priests because their pompous acts of favoritism aren’t providing their people an experience of Yahweh in their midst.

Matthew’s Jesus prophetically proclaims the same message in our gospel pericope. He laments the Jewish “cleric/lay” gulf that has developed in his day and age, a gulf that contradicts God’s relationship with God’s people. The religious leaders “. . . preach, but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. Al their works are performed to be seen.” This God-forbidden division is most evident in a practice with which today are quite familiar: the honorific titles the leaders demand and receive.

Jesus turns this divisive system upside down, stating his belief, “The greatest among you must be your servant.”

Pertinent to the exegesis of this passage is Fr. John McKenzie’s break-through 60s book, Authority in the Church. In it, he popularized a concept scholars had been teaching for a long time: the only reason our evangelists describe Jesus condemning Jewish leaders is because those condemned traits are already beginning to surface in some of the leaders of the Christian communities for whom the gospels are written.

That’s why Paul deliberately reminds his Thessalonian community of his servant relationship with them. “We were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well . . .”

The gospel only makes sense when God’s equalizing, all-inclusive love is demonstrated by those who proclaim the gospel. Malachi, Jesus and Paul are convinced that God’s love has no strings of distinction attached. If they’re correct, the question for all God’s followers is simple: Why do we continue to develop and defend religious systems based on distinctions of person?

Today’s readings certainly challenge us to convert to what both the ancient Israelites and the first Christians believed.

October 23, 2005: THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Exodus 22:20-26
I Thessalonians 1:5c-10
Matthew 22:34-40

Most Christians know little about the 613 laws of Moses which all Jews have a responsibility to obey. And what they do know probably comes from the gospel confrontations between Jesus and a group of ultra strict observers of the law: the Pharisees. Yet contrary to popular Christian tradition, it’s clear from Matthew’s gospel that the historical Jesus doesn’t trash the Mosaic Law. As a reformer of Judaism, he simply encourages people to stop emphazing the law’s minutiae. He demands that they return to the heart and soul of those ancient regulations; to once again develop proper relations with God and one another: the core of all biblical laws. Unless we understand this, we can’t understand today’s gospel pericope.

Were a Jew to wander into one of this weekend’s liturgies, he or she might think they were participating in one of their Sabbath synagogue services.

The lawyer asks Jesus a question which faithful Jews frequently ask: “Which commandment of the law is the greatest?” Out of the 613, which regulation is the most important?

Jesus, the good Jewish teacher, doesn’t hesitate. He first reminds the lawyer of the prayer he and all Jews recite every morning – the “Shema.” Based on Deuteronomy 6:4-5, it begins, “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone. Therefore you shall love Yahweh, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

Agreeing with the Jewish teachers of his day and age, Jesus tells his questioner, “This is the greatest and first commandment.” Then, agreeing with his prophetic predecessors, Jesus quotes from Leviticus 19:18, “The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” His final statement resonates not only in the heart of all Christians, but also in the heart of all Jews: “On these two commandments the whole law is based, and the prophets as well.”

The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures constantly struggle against those who put a disconnect between these two laws. That’s why they so consistently condemn the “good folk” whose religious obligations consist only in fulfilling the law’s liturgical demands, and who conveniently ignore their responsibility to one another.

Today’s Exodus passage fits in the mainstream of that prophetic teaching. The author informs his readers that they best serve Yahweh when they serve the most powerless in their communities: the resident alien, the orphan, the widow and the desperate poor. (The latter must be in dire straits if the only thing they can offer as collateral for a loan is their cloak!) In each of these cases, the one God has become one with those who are society’s most insignificant members.

In the oldest Christian writing we possess – I Thessalonians – Paul joyfully tells his readers that he received biblically inspired treatment when he arrived to evangelize them. “People . . . openly declare . . . what sort of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God . . .” As we heard last week, the Thessalonian community demonstrated its faith in “a labor of love.” Their faith guaranteed that they would be more than just “liturgically active.”

If the historical Jesus and his first followers demanded that people return to the roots of their faith, why would we think that the risen Jesus and his true followers in our midst today wouldn’t want us to do the same?

Our all too frequent emphasis on the peripheral and minutiae of our faith place us squarely on the side of those “good people” who fought with or ignored Jesus, not on the side of those who courageously accepted and imitated Jesus.

October 16, 2005: TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Isaiah 45:1, 4-6
I Thessalonians 1:1-5
Matthew 22:15-21

It’s not unheard of that people will use a biblical text to defend the very position which the sacred author condemns in the text. This is how some have employed today’s gospel pericope.

Jesus’ words, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s!” have often been presented as the biblical basis for our modern division between church and state, excusing people of faith from concerning themselves with things political. Those who interpret these words that way seem to believe there are parts of the universe (outside of our bathrooms) where God’s presence and concern is rarely found. Nothing could be further from Matthew’s theology.

His narrative revolves around Jesus’ adroitness in sidestepping an ingenious trap. Natural enemies have discovered a common enemy: Jesus. Pharisees, among other things, insist on a strict division between Jews and Gentiles. Herodians, on the other hand, work for the Gentiles governing Israel.

Their plan is simple. If Jesus says, “Don’t pay the Roman tax!” the Herodians will have him arrested. If he says, “Pay the tax!” the Pharisees will see to it that he loses all credibility with his fellow Jews.

Jesus avoids their trap by getting his enemies to admit something presumed in ancient economics: the civil leader actually owns the money everyone uses. In this case, if it’s Caesar’s coin – proven by his image and inscription – and Caesar demands it back in taxes, then you’d better return to Caesar what’s Caesar’s.

It’s important for Jesus’ ministry that he add the last statement: “Give to God what is God’s!” “God’s realm” isn’t meant to contrast with “Caesar’s realm.” It’s just Jesus’ way of saying, “Don’t forget that everything is God’s; you, the coin and Caesar.” How could he teach anything else? His entire mission is rooted in opening people’s eyes and ears to perceive God working in their lives in ways and places they’d never before noticed.

In trying to convey the all pervasiveness of God’s presence, Jesus is following in the footsteps of his prophetic predecessors. Deutero-Isaiah must have blown Jewish minds when, during the Babylonian Exile, he delivered the oracle found in today’s first reading.

In Israel’s sixth century, BCE, belief, Yahweh was their God. Other people and countries had their own gods, less powerful, concerned and involved than Yahweh, but gods who actually existed. Yahweh, supposedly, had no power or influence in the territory of another god.

Deutero-Isaiah conveys a new image of Yahweh: “I am Yahweh and there is no other, there is no God besides me.” Not only can Yahweh help the Chosen People in Babylon, but the Babylonian gods don’t even exist! That means Cyrus, the Persian emperor on whom the prophet bases his hopes of liberation from exile, is controlled by Yahweh, and not by his Persian gods. Deutero-Isaiah not only proclaims this, he goes further, having Yahweh call Cyrus “his anointed.” This uncircumcised, pagan, Gentile dictator has become Yahweh’s Messiah. (We today, with our Greek based vocabulary, would refer to him as “Cyrus, the Christ.”)

Both Jesus and Deutero-Isaiah believe that our experience of God’s presence, power and methods of salvation must always be expanded.

That’s why Paul can marvel at how God, in Jesus, is working through his Gentile converts in Thessalonika. In the first lines of the earliest Christian writing we possess, the Apostle is amazed at how God has broken through the God-limiting-barriers we humans have erected. “Our preaching of the gospel,” he writes, “proved not a mere matter of words for you but one of power.”

What similar walls would our sacred authors expect us to be tearing down today?

October 9, 2005: TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Isaiah 25:6-10
Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20
Matthew 22:1-14

As a child I used to look at my religion as the means to get God to do what I wanted God to do. Because I was a member in good standing of the true, founded-by-Jesus church, I presumed God was more attentive to my prayers than to those of Protestants, and valued them infinitely more than the prayers of non-Christians.

But as an adult student of Scripture I discovered an entirely different dimension of faith. My relationship with God no longer guaranteed I’d get more “stuff” than those non-relating individuals around me; it simply provided me the means of seeing the stuff God already was offering, even before I prayed for future stuff.

Isaiah is certainly looking into the future when he promises, “On this mountain Yahweh of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines . . . he will destroy the veil that veils all people . . . he will destroy death forever . . This is Yahweh for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us.”

Knowing nothing of an after-life as we know it, the prophet can only hope that Mt. Zion will one day be transformed into a heaven on earth.

Yet Matthew’s Jesus has a different message. Employing the banquet imagery developed by Isaiah, he informs his followers that this long-awaited meal is now being served! There’s just one hitch. “The banquet is ready,” he states, “but those who were invited are unfit to come.” Somehow those who for centuries were anticipating this tremendous event excuse themselves when they find out the date and place.

Jesus’ point in telling the story is to remind Matthew’s community that the celebration isn’t going to be canceled for lack of participating. “You must go out into the byroads,” the king commands his servants, “and invite to the wedding anyone you come upon.” The meal is still being served, even if it has to be eaten by those (Gentiles) who didn’t have it on their schedule.

One of the fundamental mysteries of early Christianity was the realization that an event prayed for and anticipated by Jews for over a thousand years was largely ignored by those same people when it finally took place.

This seems to be why Paul ends his letter to the Philippians with the comment, “I am experienced in being brought low, yet I know what it is to have abundance. I have learned how to cope with every circumstance – how to eat well or go hungry, to be well provided for or do without. In him who is the source of my strength, I have strength for everything.”

Eternal circumstances aren’t very important for persons of faith. What one really needs, Paul believes one already has. That’s why he states, “My God . . . will supply your needs fully, in a way worthy of his magnificent riches in Christ Jesus.” The riches others are searching for are already part of our lives. We need only imitate Jesus to access them.

Jesus’ historical ministry seems to have revolved around encouraging people to shift their religious concentration from praying for future good to finding and recognizing the good God is already providing. It takes deep, mature faith to achieve such a transformation; a determination to relate to God and others in a new way. Instead of being just the means to achieve something, God and other are already something. It’s an invitation we can’t ignore.

(Don’t worry about the confusing end of today’s gospel. How could someone pulled in off the street be “properly dressed?” In a pre-gospel stage, the community collected Jesus’ parables according to topics. We’re dealing here with an independent parable. Though, like the prior parable, it ahs something to do with a wedding banquet, it addresses a different problem and conveys a different message.

October 2, 2005: TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Isaiah 5:1-7
Philippians 4:6-9
Matthew 21:33-43

Often things which created huge problems for the first Christians don’t seem to bother most modern Christians. For example, we’re so comfortable today in thinking of Jesus as creating a new religion that the historical split between Christians and Jews makes perfectly good sense. Yet our earliest Christian authors, like Paul and Matthew, didn’t conceive of the situation in those terms. One of their most vexing problems revolves around the question, “Why are Gentiles more eager to accept the reform of Judaism which Jesus preached and lived than the Jews to whom he ministered?”

All agree that it has something to do with experiences. Those who actually tried to imitate Jesus’ faith – even non-Jews – discovered a dimension in their everyday lives which most people could only observe from a distance.

In today’s second reading, Paul zeroes in on just one part of that experience: peace. “Dismiss all anxiety from your minds,” he tells the Philippians. “Present your needs to God in every form of prayer and in petitions full of gratitude. Then God’s own peace, which is beyond all understanding, will stand guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

This tranquil existence doesn’t happen automatically. Notice the prerequisites Paul puts forth. “Your thoughts should be wholly directed to all that is true, all that deserves respect, all that is honest, pure, admirable, decent, virtuous, or worthy of praise. Live according to what you have heard me say and seen me do. Then will the God of peace be with you.”

Getting people to break out of their old religious habits and step into the new relationship with God and others which Jesus experienced and shared was more difficult than his first followers had thought. That’s why we find so much reflection on the problem in our Christian Scriptures – nowhere as pointedly stated as in today’s Matthew pericope.

We know from our Isaiah passage that the image of Israel as Yahweh’s vineyard is classic. Yet, as the prophet demonstrates, it’s a two-edged sword. The vineyard on which the author’s “friend” spends so much time and effort ends up yielding useless “wild grapes.” As the prophet puts it, “The vineyard of Yahweh of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished plant; he looked for judgment, but see, bloodshed! For justice, but hark, the outcry!” Something which was intended to bring about the peace Paul envisions, actually delivered strife and war.

Matthew’s Jesus carries the disappointing vineyard image one step beyond Isaiah. The prophet simply says Yahweh will destroy his creation; Jesus talks about leasing “his vineyard out to others who will see to it that he has grapes at vintage time.” In the evangelist’s mind, the good product depends on whether or not one accepts Jesus and his reform. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the keystone of the structure. It was the Lord who did this and we find it marvelous to behold.”

What is this “kingdom of God (which) will be taken away from you and given to a people who will yield a rich harvest?” From other sections of the Christian Scriptures, it’s clear that, among other things, kingdom of God refers to our ability to perceive God at work in our daily, ordinary lives. The reality and closeness of God’s kingdom among us lit the fuse for the historical Jesus’ entire ministry, eventually leading to his death and resurrection.

Perhaps one reason Gentiles accepted Jesus’ faith more quickly and eagerly than his fellow Jews was because they didn’t have to deal with all the religious baggage the Chosen People brought to the situation. Jesus had encouraged his followers to slough off a lot of that baggage by constantly returning to the essentials of faith; something he still expects us to do today.