Faith

Temple Testimonies- Tuesday, 25th week in ordinary time – Ezra 6:7-8, 12B, 14-20

The book of Ezra outlines the return of the people of Israel from the Babylonian captivity. For seventy years they lived in the hope that one day they would go back to their homeland and temple. All that came to pass when the Persians defeated the Babylonians.

The Persian King Cyrus decreed the return of the exiled Jews back to their homeland. This return took place in a phased manner spanning three trips. The first group of Jews who returned were led by Zerubbabel, a descendant of King David, the second batch of exiles returned under Ezra the priest, in 458 BC and the third group to return were led by Nehemiah in 444 B.C.

Each one of these three leaders had an important job to do in rebuilding the nation of Judah. The temple of God was rebuilt under Zerubbabel’s leadership. Ezra reorganized the temple worship and Nehemiah, who was a “cup-bearer” to King Artaxerxes of Persia, rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the history of God’s people during the rule of the Persian Empire. Ezra was a priest. His great-grandfather was Hilkiah, the high priest when Josiah was king. It is likely that Ezra’s parents were among those who were taken to Babylon. Therefore, he must have been born in Babylon.

Returning to Jerusalem was hard for all. The land had remained untilled and therefore unproductive. The city was in ruins but more than anything, the heart of every Jew was broken when they returned, for the temple was destroyed. Within seven months of their return, the Jews began to work on the altar of the temple.

King Cyrus was followed by King Cambyses under whom the work on the temple comes to a grinding halt. It was in this period that Samaritans, the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin, desired to help with the rebuilding of the temple. This offer was flatly denied by Zerubbabel, leading to complaints to the king. As a result, the work on the temple was suspended during the reign of King Cambyses.

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Ruins to Restoration -Monday, 25th week in ordinary time Ezra 1: 1-6

Starting from today and spanning the next three weeks, our first readings on weekdays will cover a galaxy of eight prophets; Ezra, Haggai, Zechariah, Baruch, Jonah, Malachi, and Joel. These prophets cover the period of what has come to be known as post exilic prophecy.

Let me explain this briefly. Israel consisted of two kingdoms, the Northern kingdom called Israel or Samaria and consisted of ten tribes and the Southern kingdom called Judah consisting of two. The Northern kingdom fell to the Assyrian invasion in 722 BC.  The Southern Kingdom of Judah survived for another 134 years and fell to the Babylonians in 586 B.C.  Significant, was the loss of the temple which was razed to the ground by the Babylonians. The Prophet Jeremiah had predicted that this exile would last  for seventy years.

The Assyrian and Babylonian captivities meant that a whole nation was moved from their homeland and scattered across the lands of the conquerors so that they could not regroup. More than fifty thousand citizens of the Southern Kingdom were taken into captivity in Babylon. Only the very poorest people remained in Judah, hidden in the hills and they later fled to Egypt .

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Rembrandts Labourers in the Vineyard 1637

THE SCANDAL OF GRACE: ‘The Parable of the labourers in the Vineyard’ by Rembrandt

There comes Rembrandt delivering yet another masterpiece. ‘Say what? A masterpiece? Well it doesn’t look like one.’ The modern eye of observation often dulls the appreciation of a painter whose paintings are professed forms of distortion and abstraction. The soul of the painting has to be discovered and drawn from within one’s own self. Once detected it reveals to us the genius of the ‘painter of painters.’

Rembrandt’s paintings rarely depict faithful forms or vibrant colours. What then was the source of his mastery? The answer lies with his tryst with light and obscurity.  Rembrandt employed darkness to drive out light and vice versa. In addition, he also created an aura of partial radiance wherein some parts are easily understandable to the eye while the others are lost in oblivion. 

Take for example the painting in consideration. It recalls the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 20, verse 1 to 16. In the larger narrative sequence, in the preceding story Peter attempts to secure his reward for ‘leaving everything and following’ Jesus. Answering Peter’s question and illustrating the theme of rewards, Jesus embarks upon a parable.

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Passing the Baton of faith- Saturday, 24th week in ordinary time- I Timothy 6: 13-16

The pastoral letter to Timothy comes to a close. Its intention was to defend the Church from false teachers who worked not for God, but for fame and money. Timothy is not to be like them; he is to be a ‘man of God’, a title used for the great worthies of the Old Testament, like Moses and Samuel.

Unlike the sophists and false teachers  who called their teachings ‘knowledge’ or ‘gnosis’, the author of the pastorals wants to present Christianity by its ‘clear knowledge’ or ‘epignosis’.  What needs to preserved is the true teaching of the faith or ‘paratheke’. The word ‘paratheke’ was used to refer to a deposit of money which a person had to hand back exactly as they received it. This was Timothy’s job, to preserve the deposit of the Christian faith, untarnished by the teachings of the sophists.

Now Timothy is called to emulate Christ Himself who fought the good fight. Timothy is reminded that Christ will come again and that Christ is God. The word in verse 14, ‘I charge’ is not to be understood as human mandate, but as a divine mandate given to Timothy. Timothy’s charge is unlike the false teachers whose ‘charge’ is greed and popularity.

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Thirsting for human applause- Friday, 24th week in ordinary time- 1 Timothy 6: 2c-12

The first letter to Timothy is winding down. It was necessitated by false teachers in the community, who disturbed the faith of the new converts to Christianity. Now the author of the pastorals wants to expose the motivation of these false teachers and he does so by depicting them as ‘sophists’. Sophists were itinerant professional teachers and intellectuals who frequented Athens and other Greek cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E.

The Church too had wandering prophets whose very way of life gave them a certain prestige. The Church’s teachers were unlike the heathens whose sophists or wise men made it their business to sell philosophy. They claimed a fee to teach people and to argue cleverly, while still others gave demonstrations of public speaking. They advertised and gave personal invitations to their display of knowledge. Their thirst was for applause.

With this as a background the writer of the pastoral, exposes the characteristics of the false teachers who disturbed the early church; he calls them conceited. Their motivation was to please rather than to present the truth. Their concern is with abstruse speculations. In the philosophical tradition, episteme is the highest form of knowledge, the knowledge of truth, of which the false teacher has none. Such was the knowledge of truth that even Pilate was prompted to ask, “What is truth”.

But what drove this industry of sophists was also the love of money. Make no mistake, the Bible does not condemn money but condemns the love of money. The sophists teach a so called piety to acquire monetary benefits, for money is their god.

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