Faith

God does not play by our rules- Wednesday, 20th week in ordinary time – Mt 20:1-16

 The parable of the labourers in the vineyard is unique to the Gospel of Matthew and found in no other Gospel.  Matthew, who follows the narrative of the Gospel of St Mark, breaks the flow of St Mark to insert this parable. What then did Matthew want to communicate which the other Gospels did not seem to be too interested in?

We have to constantly place the Gospel of Matthew in its historical and social context. Written in approximately 80 to 90 AD, the Gospel is principally addressed to the Jewish Christian community who lived in some proximity to Jerusalem.  However the Jewish Christians were not the only ones attracted to the message of Jesus.

Paul, by this time, had already criss-crossed the Roman world. He had evangelized in Antioch, Macedonia, Achaia, Asia Minor and finally in Rome. It is possible, that by the time Matthew had written the Gospel, Paul was already martyred under Emperor Nero. From the Acts of the Apostles, we can safely surmise that the message of Christ found appeal in both Jewish Christians and even more among the Gentile Christians. Here in lies the problem

Central to the council of Jerusalem, which took place in about 49-51 AD (Gal 2:1-10; Acts 15), was the contentious issue of the Gentile converts as a result of Paul’s missionary activity.   Some sections of the Jewish Christians felt that these converts needed to be catechised in the Jewish traditions of circumcision, ethics and dietary habits. The council however, swung in Paul’s favour, albeit with a couple of riders. The Church now began to open its doors to the Gentiles.

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Buying heaven! Tuesday, 20th Week in ordinary time – Mt 19:23-30

The Gospel of today seems to take off from where the rich young man left, but in reality it must be seen as one composite text.  At the heart of this text (19: 16- 30) lies the million dollar question of the rich young man. He wants to DO SOMETHING to enter into eternal life. He sought the one exclusive ‘good work’ that would give him eternal life. Jesus’ answer, as we know, left him devastated for Jesus hits him where it hurts the most, “sell everything, give it to the poor and follow me”.

For the Jews, wealth was a sign of blessing from God. The mandate comes from the book of Proverbs 10:22 which says, “The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it”. Wealth was a clear sign of divine favour if one kept the commandments of the law, which the rich young man kept.

So what then is the problem? The rich young man desired salvation but he wished to ‘obtain it’. For him, salvation could be earned by doing something; that’s why he asks Jesus, “What must I do?”

For Jesus, the commandments had a vertical and horizontal dimension of love. It was not so much in the doing rather than in the being, that salvation could be obtained. Salvation is not obtained by performing a unique or special deed, nor is it a ‘claim’ made by virtue of religious appropriation. Salvation is a free gift! Here in lies the mistake of this rich young man.

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Rich, young and nameless – Monday, 20th Week in ordinary time – Mt 19:16-22

There are many unnamed characters in the Gospels; the Syro-Phoenician woman, the men from whom demons were cast out in Gennesaret or the father of the boy from whom Jesus cast out a demon at the foot of Mount Tabor.

Today we read of another unnamed person whose identity is revealed in dribs and drabs all through the seven verse pericope. The Gospel begins by calling him, ‘someone’, and then reveals he is male, young and finally that he is rich.  That makes him a rich young man.

The rich young nameless man has a lot of things going well for him, or so it seems. He is rich; plousioi in Greek, indicated that the man was rich enough to live properly on his income that was derived from land that he had hired to tenant farmers. This puts him ahead of the peneis or the working class who formed 70 per cent of the population and even more than the ptokhoi, the lowest class of people who could barely eke out a living and comprised of 28 per cent of the population. That put our young man in the two per cent creamy layer of society.

The rich man was also young; but more than that, he was ‘a man’. Misogynistic as this may sound, you have to understand this statement purely with a first century patriarchal mind set. A Jewish male, woke up each morning, to the crowing rooster. As his feet touched the ground he would faithfully utter a prayer from the Jewish prayer book, the Siddur. In this prayer, he would thank God for not making him a goy or Gentile, a salve or a woman. These three categories of people were deeply frowned upon and looked down on in first century Jewish society.

So the young man ‘seemingly’ has a lot going for him. To his roll call of material and physical assets, he also has an enviable religious life. He has maintained all the five commandments that Jesus sites from the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) including the additional command to love ones neighbour as oneself.

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Divorce; an attempt to shift the goal post- Friday, 19th week in ordinary time – Mt 19:3-12

With His teaching on community ethics now done and dusted in chapter 18, Jesus leaves His ‘headquarters’ in Galilee and heads south to Judea. This incident in today’s Gospel takes place several months prior to His final trip to Jerusalem, where He will be crucified.

Having already set in motion the plan to kill Jesus, the Pharisees are now stacking up evidence to use against Him. They have come to ‘test’ Him. Make no mistake, they are not testing His ‘knowledge’ but trying to drive a wedge into the growing number of His disciples with the content of His answer.

So what’s so deadly about this contentious question? The question thrown at Jesus is about legality; can one legally divorce one’s wife for any cause? This was a catch twenty two; damned if you do answer and damned if you don’t, for this question already had a Jewish community divided down the middle. At the heart of this issue were two rabbinic schools of thought. The school of Hillel held that divorce could be granted over bad cooking or because of the wife leaving her head uncovered and to say nothing of the ‘must happen’, inevitable; a fight with the in-laws.

The school of Shammai, however, held that divorce could be granted only in the case of moral impurity such as adultery. We have no idea which school of thought was behind the question posed to Jesus but we can be sure of this: He understood the implications of even appearing to take any particular side.

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Forgiven of 150 years hard labour – Thursday, 19th week in ordinary time – Mt 18:21–19:1

Perhaps some of the little details of this parable are lost in the larger message of forgiveness that we are rightly attuned to hear.  So the question we need to ask at first is, how in God’s name did the servant of the King end up with a debt so high and even more how did the King permit such a debt to accumulate?

Ten thousand talents is no small amount.  One talent is equal to 5,475 denarii (a day’s labour) and the debt had stacked up to 54,750 denarii or about 150 years of labour. So how did the King slip up in overlooking the debt of his servant, or did he?

I want to flip this parable a bit. Nothing misses the eye of the King or for that matter, Jesus our King. If our own debt to Jesus  has so greatly accumulated to 150 years of labour then it clearly indicates that we have not been prudent with our life choices  and so have had to over borrow mercy from Him. It is more than clear that the borrowing has now become a habit, permitting a mounting debt to reach astronomical proportions, so much so that it can’t be paid. Ironically we borrow again.

The King on the other hand is fully aware of the debt owed and even more fully aware that the debt can’t be paid back to Him. His magnanimous heart has already figured this out and he knows that He will have to cancel the debt even though the threat of punishment is part of the deal. Yet he forgive and waves off the debt; an act of generosity unmatched by human kindness.

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