Faith

The Calling of St. Matthew, by Vittore Carpaccio, 1502.

When Jesus followed Matthew -Friday, 13th Week in ordinary time- Matthew 9: 9-13

Someone once well put it, Jesus ate His way through the gospels and He certainly must have eaten a lot. His detractors even accused Him of being a friend of gluttons and drunkards. Not without reason did Jesus sit at table to eat. In Judaism, table fellowship was not merely a time to tuck into stew of vegetables, lentils and chickpeas spiced with herbs. To be invited to someone’s home for a meal, was to be invited into their inner circle.

Matthew would have had more than just a vegetable stew the day he invited Jesus over to dine. He had every reason to celebrate, for the famous resident of Capernaum, now a wonder working Rabbi had asked him to be His follower. Just the thought of it was unimaginable for tax collectors such as Matthew, for they were a hated lot and considered to be traitors, for they worked for the enemy, the Romans.

Matthew had more reason to be hated. He was tax collector in Capernaum, which was situated on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, and it connected major population centres of the world. It was famously known as the Via maris or the way of the sea. Matthew surely made a killing in overcharging taxes from those who passed that way.

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Lowered to be raised- Thursday, 13th week in ordinary time – Matthew 9: 1-8

There are two ways to approach this passage – from a pastoral reflection point of view, or from the evangelist’s intended purpose.  This morning, I will briefly dwell on both approaches.

In order to understand evangelist’s purpose, we must place ourselves somewhere between the years 80-90 AD, when Matthew penned this Gospel. Matthew is not the first to write New Testament literature. Paul had been writing letters and Mark has already completed his account of the Gospel in around 64-69 AD.

The circumstances that surround the accounts of Mark and Matthew are very different. By the time Matthew has written his Gospel, the Romans have attacked Jerusalem, pillaged it and destroyed the temple. The Jewish authorities, seeing the lack of co-operation from the followers of Christ in defending the city and temple, now excommunicate the ‘followers of Christ’ who still considered themselves to be Jewish.

A bitter family feud between the Jews and the Jewish followers of Christ breaks out. Matthew, writing in these troubled times, uses as his foundation, the Gospel of Mark, albeit with the circumstances of his community in mind.  For Matthew, Jesus is the Son of God come to fulfil the law and the prophets, corrupted by the Jewish authorities who likewise, have an intense hatred for Him.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus, in healing a paralytic in His own home town earns the ire of the scribes when He says, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ Immediately the charge of blasphemy is brought up. This is the very charge that will cost Jesus His life in Matthew, 26:65.

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If pigs could fly- Wednesday – 13th week in ordinary time- Matthew 8:28-34

Jesus is now in Gentile country and Gadara is about six miles from the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was in this part of the land that the Decapolis was established—the league of ten, largely Gentile, cities. This explains the pigs!

Had they been in Jewish country there would be no pigs at all; for not only were pigs considered unclean, they were also seen as funny. The Gentiles on the other hand had no such problem, for they reared pigs and ate them and knowing of the Jews’ horror of swine, made this a subject of laughter and teasing (JBC).

The passage of today is not limited only to pigs; we also have demons to compound the matter. The Fourth Lateran council which began in Rome in 1215, clearly acknowledges the role of Satan and his fallen angels who are called demons. It’s a pity that some Christians dismiss with ‘great authority’ the role of Satan or demons as merely a creation of a superstitious mind.

The activities of the two demons (a single demon mentioned in the Gospels of Mark and Luke), are described in great detail here in Matthew’s Gospel. Sufficient to say that they recognize Jesus  as the Son of God and fear that He has come to judge them, yet strangely two verses before, the disciples in the boat asked themselves ‘what sort of man Jesus was’. The demons answered that one! He is the Son of God.

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More than a storm in a tea cup- Tuesday, 13th week in ordinary time- Matthew 8: 23-27

I certainly know what my reaction would be if I was in a first century fishing boat out on the sea of Galilee (also called sea of Gennesaret or Tiberius). Just the thought of the sea, twenty-one kilometres long, thirteen kilometres wide with a depth of seven hundred feet below sea level leaves me in a panic, and that too with a reputation of sudden storms triggered by the funnelling of wind that could capsize a boat.  But fear would be my justifiable reaction for I am neither a fisherman nor a lover of the sea.

This storm must have been a nasty one, for the disciples who were fishermen themselves, were terrified. Surely they had seen enough of Lake Gennesaret’s boisterous displays of storms to know that this one was different. So what really got the jitters into them? Was it as some scholars suggest, the fear of Leviathan and Behemoth, the sea monsters who resided there and who were believed to have had the ability to destroy creation? In any case the situation warranted more than a gentle ‘Lord wake up’.

Matthew presents Jesus as being unfazed by this Gennesaret storm. In fact He seems a bit perplexed by their reaction. He is in the boat; they should have been smiling at the storm. This is the point that St Matthew perhaps had in mind when he was writing the Gospel in about 70 AD. 

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Thomas in the dock- Feast of St Thomas – John 20:24-29

If Peter had his confession, “you are the Christ the son of the living God”, then Thomas had his too, when he said, “My Lord and my God”. Unfortunately we never hear the confession of Thomas spoken with the same adulation as Peter. Thomas has been maligned unfairly for centuries from the pulpit for what seems to be a moment’s weakness of unbelief.  He has forever been tarnished with the name ‘doubting Thomas’, when in reality he is like you and me, a ‘seeking Thomas’; seeking answers all his life with a thousand questions.

If we are to be fair to Thomas, let’s look at the rap sheet of some of the other apostles. Peter denied the Lord three times, but we don’t call him denier. Nathaniel scoffed when he said, “What good can come from Nazareth’’, but we don’t call him a scoffer. James and John were fighting for the right to sit at the Lord’s left and right seats, but we don’t call them opportunists. The rest abandoned the Lord at Gethsemane, but we don’t call them cowards.  Poor Thomas, he got the worst end of the Christian preachers’ stick, and a name, ‘doubting Thomas’ which has stuck to him like feathers to tar.

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