THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – C

Genesis 18:1-10

Colossians 1:24-28

Luke 10:38-42

A dear friend wrote the icon that hangs near the front door of my home.  Each time I open the door to welcome a guest I have a moment to contemplate the copy of Rublev’s The Holy Trinity.  Inspired by this Sunday’s first reading, the icon shows the three heavenly visitors seated around the table that Abraham set for them.  The magic and mystery of icons, as you know, derive from their power to draw the viewer into the imagery and colors depicted and read there what the Gospel proclaims in words.  Many people meditate before icons and experience through their wonder a communion with God.  You might think that after all these years and the many, many times I have gazed at the icon, I would have grown used to it and exhausted and digested whatever meaning it could possibly contain.  The strange fact is, for me, each viewing holds the wonder that fascinated me the first time I saw it.  Of course I pray that I am continuing to absorb what the icon inspires.

Don’t miss the opening words of the first reading.  The Lord appeared to Abraham by the terebinth of Mamre. It isn’t clear whether upon reflection Abraham realized who his visitors were, or if something about them revealed the divine presence the first time he saw them.  The reading can also be confusing because as the text goes on, sometimes it speaks of the three visitors and sometimes it speaks of one.  We, from our faith tradition, oughtn’t to be troubled by that.  We believe in the Triune God, after all.

Hospitality was a prime virtue for Abraham and his fellows.  That may have risen out of a realization of the difficulties and dangers involved in travel in those days.  It may have risen out of a faith conviction.  In any event, as soon as Abraham catches sight of the three, he rushes to them, runs to them, the text says.  Abraham is not a young man by this time in his story.  Neither is his wife, Sarah.  Abraham addresses them as a servant would and invites them to stop from their journey to rest and let him minister to them – water to wash their feet, a sumptuous meal to nourish them.  His offer is accepted.

Notice how lavish is Abraham’s expression of hospitality.  He asks Sarah to knead three measures of flour into dough and make rolls for them.  Three measures is a lot of flour – the equivalent of a bushel.  There would be quite a few bread-rolls resulting were three measures of flour kneaded into dough.  Then he has a young, choice steer slaughtered and roasted for the meal.  The curds and milk that Abraham puts on the table might be what we call yogurt today.  That food began in the desert country and was prepared in goatskins.  It is safe to say that it was a splendid table that Abraham put before his guests, an expression of appreciation for the abundance of God’s love and bounty.  There is no way that three men, no matter how hungry they were, could have consumed a dinner of those proportions.

Now, to get the impact of what follows, it is important to remember that Abraham now is of advanced years.  God had made a promise to, a covenant with Abraham many decades ago, that Abraham’s descendants would number as the stars in the heavens or the sands on the shore.  Yet he and Sarah had no children.  Abraham remained faithful, clinging to the promise, even though his wife was past her childbearing years.  Sarah, despairing that she would be a mother had convinced Abraham to have a child with her servant Hagar – and Ishmael was born of that union.  But the promise had been made to Abraham and his wife, Sarah.

Abraham has been waiting on table and tending to his guests’ needs.  He doesn’t presume to sit to table with them.  At the conclusion of their dinner, the guests ask where Sarah is.  Abraham says that she is in the tent nearby the table where they are seated.  If Abraham is in a subservient position, even more so is his wife.  She is not even in view.  Now come the amazing declaration and the point of this reading.  One of the guests promises to return next year at about the same time.  By then Sarah will have born a son!  The reading ends here.  What follows in the scripture text is probably a little too earthy for public proclamation.  The hearers would probably blush.  But the composers of the lectionary could at least have added one short line.  Listening at the doorway of the tent and overhearing what the visitor had said to her husband, the text says: Sarah laughed.

You can read the text for yourself and find out what prompted her mirth, but the fact is, Sarah’s laughter indicated that she thought some things are beyond the realm of possibility, even when God is the one making the promise.  What she has to learn, and so do we, is what is said early in Luke’s Gospel: Nothing is impossible with God. And another truth: God is faithful to God’s promises.  A year after the visitation, Sarah nursed Isaac.

Inscribed over the icon by my front door are these words: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. That’s a lesson we need to remember, too.

The hospitality theme continues in the Gospel.  Jesus visits Martha and her sister, Mary.  Notice that whenever these two are mentioned in Luke’s Gospel, Martha is always named first.  That might be because she was the older of the two.  Or, she might have been the more prominent.  It is she who welcomes Jesus to the home.  Immediately she sets about taking care of all the preparations necessary if there is going to be a meal to serve the guest.  Unlike in the first reading, here we do not find out what Martha was planning to serve, only that all she had to do burdened her.  Meanwhile, her sister, Mary, seats herself at Jesus’ feet, like a disciple, and listens to him.  That position, taken by a woman in those times, is odd.  There in is a hint of Jesus’ deference to women that is contrary to the mores of his contemporaries.

Martha’s frustrations mount.  It is not difficult to see why.  Put yourself in her shoes.  If you are preparing for guests and the tasks are many, wouldn’t you expect and appreciate help from your spouse or housemate?  What if Martha had taken Mary’s posture, too?  From where would have come their supper?  And so Martha complains to Jesus and asks him to tell Mary to help with the preparations.

Martha, Martha, you are busy about many things.  There is need of one thing only.  Mary has chosen the better part.  It will not be taken from her. Now be careful what you read into Jesus’ words to Martha.  First, there is obvious affection for her.  The repetition of her name was probably voiced with a smile, even a laugh.  He is not denying the worth and importance of what Martha is doing, to say nothing of his gratitude to her.  But what he is saying is that hosts ought not to get so busy that they fail to pay attention to the guest.

Have you ever been the quest in someone’s home?  While you wait for dinner to begin, you sit alone in the parlor or on the living-room sofa, sip from the cocktail you were served, and watch the flurry of activity, the host/ess fraught with anxiety as s/he rages around the kitchen.  You’re on pins and needles and filled with anxiety yourself by the time the host announces it is time to sit to table.  The whole evening can become an exhausting experience.

That is what Jesus is chastising Martha about.  Chastising is too strong a word.  More likely, Jesus is telling Martha to relax a little and remember what time together should really be about.  It is a sharing time.  Amid all of the labors, there ought to be conversation and the sense of tangible joy the host has from the pleasure of the guest’s company.  You’ve had that experience, too, haven’t you?  That is what makes the evening memorable and lingers in the memory long after you have forgotten what was served.  That is the genius of hospitality well executed.

Here are some questions that occur to me.  What does the first-time visitor experience as s/he enters the assembly for Sunday Mass where you gather for Eucharist?  For that matter, what do longstanding members feel?  There is a hymn that has this refrain: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place. Are they?  We are talking about hospitality and table fellowship that ought to be imitative of Jesus’ own.  Does the stranger feel immediately welcome?  Does the longtime member hear expressions of joy that s/he has come to be part of this celebration?  And here’s one to ponder.  Would a sinner dare to enter through the doors and not be made to feel like a pariah?  Would a sinner feel welcome?  Do the people in the neighborhood talk about the church among themselves and say with amazement and/or distain: this parish welcomes sinners and eats with them?  That’s what got Jesus into trouble and became one of the accusations that led to his crucifixion.

A final note: the inscription over the icon by my front door advises to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.  Change one word in that line and we would be advised to remember that we might entertain Jesus unawares.  That is not as far-fetched as it might seem.  After all, we do believe in the implications of the Incarnation, don’t we?  We do believe that our brothers and sisters are created in the image and likeness of God as Jesus is.  Are there implications here that we need to consider when we talk about the aliens at our door?

Sincerely,

Didymus

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT (continued)

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets”

In Jesus’ time it was ordinary for the scribes and the Pharisees to spend hours arguing about the Law, that is, about which of the laws was the most important.  They were not arguing about the Ten Commandments, but about the over 600 commandments that had made their way into the scriptures in the attempt to cover all the possibilities of violation by which a person could go against God’s will.

Remember when Jesus was asked: “Good Master, which of the commandments is the greatest commandment?”  The question was not unusual.  The lawyers asked each other the same question every day.  Unfortunately, the motive for asking Jesus the question was sinister.  The experts in the Law asked the question in order to trip him up and have a charge to bring against Jesus.  To break a law was to be unfaithful to God and therefore to be a sinner.  Jesus got into trouble because his disciples were seen eating grain without first washing their hands.  And he made the Pharisees angry because he worked a miracle on the Sabbath and then bade the once paralyzed man to “pick up your pallet and go home.”  Both actions clearly violated the Law.

It is quite clear that had Jesus spoken out against the Law, he would have been persecuted.  To break the Law habitually could have resulted in his being cast out of the synagogue, the Temple and even being stoned to death.  He would not have lasted in ministry for even the three years that he did.  Welcoming sinners and eating with them broke the law.  So did coming into contact with lepers and gentiles.  Jesus was accused of all these “crimes” as he stood before Pilate.  And then they crucified him.

So what is the new teaching about the Law in the Sermon on the Mount?  Jesus is speaking about fulfillment of the Law, not the breaking of the Law.  In the history of the Jewish people, the Law had special significance.  The Law was the sign of the covenant between God and the Jewish people.  If God was to be their god and they were to be God’s people, the Law spelled out how they were to live.  Obeying the commandments would be an eloquent sign to all the other nations of the wonderful relationship between God and this people.

And what about the prophets?  Jesus says that he has come not to abolish the Law or the prophets.  Look at the role the great prophets played in the lives of the Jews.  Remember that a prophet is one who speaks for God a message God wants the people to hear.  In Israel’s history when the people wandered from the Law and became fascinated with the ways of the gentiles and their gods, the people became week and vulnerable to those who would oppress them and eventually lead them off into captivity and exile.  The prophets called them back to fidelity.  When the Jews were in captivity the prophets accused the people of their idolatry and sinfulness and pointed out their weakness that resulted.  But their message was also about God’s fidelity to them even though they had wandered.  God’s faithfulness would bring the people out of slavery again as God had when God led the people out of Egypt.  And God would restore the people to Israel and to the holy city, Jerusalem – when the people once again became followers of the Law and again were faithful to God.

So, is Jesus preaching a slavish, even scrupulous following of all the six hundred plus commandments in the Law?  Perhaps he was in the beginning.  Remember the Sermon on the Mount is at the beginning of his ministry.  It is possible that his thinking changed as his ministry went on and as he had increased experience of the people and their lives.  But look at the final words of this sermon on the Law and the prophets.  “I tell you, unless your holiness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees you shall not enter the kingdom of God.”  It is quite possible that Jesus is saying that fulfilling the minutiae of the Law is not enough.  After all, that is what the scribes and Pharisees tried to do.  What were they missing?

The Law is not an end in itself.  To make it so could result in that situation Jesus held up to scorn: “You strain after the speck in your brother’s eye and miss the beam in your own.”  The Pharisees, as they are characterized in the gospels, were observers of the law and the judgers of those who were deemed to be breaking the Law.  Remember the woman caught in adultery?  Remember how the Pharisees taunted Jesus?  “The Law of Moses says such a woman should be stoned to death.  What do you say?”  Notice how careful Jesus was not to give voice to the breaking of the Law while forcing the accusers to confront the error of their judgment.  “Let the one of you who is without sin be the first to cast the stone.”  And in so doing, Jesus gave the Pharisees an opportunity to contemplate and to give thanks for God’s mercy and desire to forgive.

We will see applications of Jesus’ thinking regarding specifics of the Law in the verses that follow this section.  For now, it is important for us to look ahead, if you will, at what Jesus will teach his disciples about the new law.  God said to the people in effect, when you keep the commandments others will know that I am your God and you are my people.  Jesus will say, “By this will all know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  Love becomes the Law in the new Way.  Love of God.  Love of neighbor.  And as soon as love becomes the norm we find the all-consuming demands of the new Law.

Certainly the Decalogue continues to bind believers.  The Ten Commandments govern the basic relationships between people and God, and people with one another.  Deuteronomy and Leviticus summarized the Ten Commandments and condensed them into two: Love God with your whole being.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  These two statements sum up the Law and the prophets, Jesus will say.  The operative word is “love.”

Do you remember the parable about the Good Samaritan?  Probably all too well.  And in some ways, that is unfortunate because familiarity dulls the impact of the story.  The audience for the telling are Jews.  The Jews and the Samaritans are enemies.  Besides the Samaritan, the other characters in the parable are prominent figures in Jewish life that slavishly keep the law.  What happens in the parable?  An unfortunate man is beaten and robbed and left for dead by the side of the road that goes from Jerusalem to Jericho.  On their way to Jerusalem for temple worship travel a priest and a Levite along the same road.  Each sees the man.  Each passes by.  There may be many reasons why they ignored the desperate individual, but the principal reason was not to break the law, to avoid ritual uncleanness that they would incur should they come in contact with blood.  Then comes the Samaritan who not only sees the man, but tends to his wounds, puts him on the Samaritan’s beast of burden and takes the wounded one to an inn, pays for his lodging and promises to pay for anything that what he has paid so far does not cover.  Amazing, don’t you think?

What had occasioned the parable?  A lawyer asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit everlasting life.  Jesus answered him with a question: “What is written in the Law?  The lawyer knew the law well and answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  And when Jesus commended the lawyer for his answer, the man then asked for some limits on the law.  “And who is my neighbor.”  Maybe he could love his neighbor as long as there were some exceptions to that umbrella term.  But the parable states quite boldly that that neighbor law applied even to people one might be tempted to despise.

Jesus will be specific in John’s Gospel when he will command his disciples to love their enemies and do good to those who hate them.  When one might be tempted to think that the Love Law surely doesn’t apply to those people one excludes because they belong to a hated race, color, creed, or national origin, Jesus says there are no exceptions.  Even your enemies must be ones you love and to whom you must do good.

When you are thinking about this new law to be followed by Jesus’ disciples, think about someone who has done ill to you, someone who holds you in contempt.  How easy would it be for you to love that person?  Not so easy, I would imagine.  I know it wouldn’t be easy for me.  But that doesn’t let us off the hook, not if we want to be Jesus’ disciples.

I remember the story of two parents of a daughter who had been murdered by a young man convicted and later imprisoned.  I don’t remember the circumstances of the killing, but I know that the parents heard the Love Commandment in their church and knew as believers that they were obliged to love the man who killed their daughter.  So, they went to the prison and began having regular visits with him.  Over time they found the way to forgive him and come to love him.  And when he was paroled he found a home with them, loving them as he did his own parents.

Then there is the story of the parents who traveled to South Africa to where their daughter had been murdered by three black men from the people she had volunteered to serve and educate.  The parents stayed for the trial and conviction of the three men.  Then they decided to take up their daughter’s cause and determined to build a bakery where workers could be trained and prepared to find meaningful employment.  The parents regularly visited the three men, forgave them, got their trust, and when the men were paroled, welcomed them into the bakery project and helped them secure managerial roles.

Love fulfills the law, Jesus says.  It manifests God’s attitude toward those created in God’s image.  But it is not enough to be loved.  Those who are loved must let God’s love flow from them and embrace all, especially those deemed unlovable by others, or even by themselves.

“Unless your holiness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees you shall not enter the reign of God.”  Perhaps it is only when we let God reign in our lives, when Jesus lives in us, perhaps it is only then that one can fulfill the law of love.

It is grace that empowers and makes all the difference in the world.

THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – C

Deuteronomy 30:10-14

Colossians 1:15-20

Luke 10:25-37

Sometimes, the editing decisions in the Sunday lectionary are puzzling.  In today’s first reading, for example, why are Moses’ opening words omitted from the text?  It would take only a second or two longer to read: The Lord will delight in you and your descendants, rather then beginning mid sentence with if only you would heed the voice of the Lord…. What Moses is telling the Israelites and us is that God is delighted with us when we act according to the law God has imprinted on our hearts.  What is that law?  The law of love.  That is spelled out a few verses after the end of the reading when we are urged to always choose life over death.  To choose life is to choose love.  That seem to be the instinct that God placed within us.

We should have realized that when we pondered the creation narrative in Genesis.  Didn’t God say there: Let us make the earthling in our own image, after our likeness?  Our understanding of the Triune God is that God’s essence is to be a community of love.  Everything that God does is an expression of that love.  Every creative act is an expression of that love.  If we are created in God’s image and likeness and are therefore loved by God because our being reflects God that would seem to indicate that we are created to love as God loves.  That is what we should be about.  That is what will bring us the greatest sense of fulfillment of our purpose.  Of course sin entered our narrative early on and warped our consciousness, tending to make us more self-centered, but that calling remains in us.  It just takes a little more effort to respond.

Sometimes I wish the slate of our memories could be wiped clean and we could hear familiar Gospel passages for the first time again.  Don’t misunderstand me.  It is not that I wish everyone could suffer an amnesia attack.  Rather I wish the scriptures could impact us as they did when our ancestors in the faith heard them, when they heard Jesus tell the parables.  If only we could be stunned by the implications of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Lives could be changed for the better if we chose to live out the implications of the parable.

The lawyer who occasioned the parable is an interesting character.  It is possible to interpret him variously, but not to be harsh, as I read him, he is not a voice from the crowd of those seeking to be Jesus’ disciples.  Luke says quite clearly that the expert in the Mosaic Law stood up to test Jesus.  Most of the time those tests were attempts to build up a case against Jesus, to have something to accuse him of and so bring him down.  His calling Jesus teacher might have the smarmy about it.  His question is lofty: What must I do to inherit eternal life? Apparently it was quite ordinary for scribes and Pharisees and others interested in the Law to sit around and discuss which laws were the most important and most necessary to be carried out if one hoped to see God at life’s end.

If there is a snare in the question, Jesus eludes it and turns the table on the inquisitor and asks for his own opinion.  It is immediately apparent that the man knows the law and is able to summarize it by quoting the scriptures, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and stating that the Law is about loving God with our entire being and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

What makes me wonder about the man’s sincerity is what follows.  In another encounter when Jesus hears one give a similar answer, the text says that Jesus looked at the responder with love.  It doesn’t say that here.  Perhaps that is because Jesus knew that there was no correspondence between the man’s knowledge of the law and the way he lived it. In stead, Jesus gives a curt reply that affirms the man’s grasp of the Law and challenges him to change his ways and live by that understanding.  Perhaps the man saw the others in the crowd smirk at him when they heard Jesus’ admonition not to be one who only knows the law but to be one who lives by the law.  To justify himself, in other words, to save his face before the crowd, he now wants Jesus to define the term neighbor.

It is never a bad idea to put yourself in a gospel text.  Suppose you were the man who fell victim to the robbers on your way down from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Doesn’t that add weight to all that happens in the story?  Imagine yourself stripped, beaten, robbed and left half dead by the side of the road.  We are not that unfamiliar with road-rage stories.  It shouldn’t be that hard to identify with the poor soul.

What is not that immediately clear to us is what results from the man’s beaten and bloody condition.  He becomes unclean.  Any observant Jew would incur ritual impurity were s/he to come into contact with him and his blood, and being ritually impure that one would not be able to enter into temple worship without first being purified.  That is why the priest and the Levite, when they see the man, are careful to pass by on the other side of the road – lest even the hem of their garments should brush against the man’s bleeding body.  Religious people would understand their concern.  That is how important it was for them to keep God’s law.  Do you think the injured man would understand?

Along comes a Samaritan.  Again, the choice of character probably doesn’t jar us.  We’re used to Good Samaritan hospitals, aren’t we?  But Jews despised Samaritans.  And vice versa also seems to have been the case.  Remember when, not that many verses ago, the Samaritans turned Jesus away?  This Samaritan is not concerned about incurring ritual impurity.  Jesus says that when he sees the wounded man, the Samaritan is moved with compassion.  The word compassion means to suffer with. The Samaritan felt the man’s dreadful situation as his own.  He ministers to his needs, dresses his wounds, takes him to shelter, pays for his care and promises to pay for anything in excess of the amount he has paid upon his return.  Wow!  Isn’t that an amazing response from a stranger, especially from a stranger who knew that the one he was helping probably held him and his kind in contempt?  Wouldn’t you think that the expert in the law found the Samaritan’s actions incredible?  What would you have thought were you the beaten and abandoned one by the side of the road?  Would it still bother you that he was a Samaritan?

Remember that the question that occasioned the parable was: And who is my neighbor? Jesus did not respond with a definition of neighbor that would have allowed the expert in the law to maintain lines of demarcation.  Who is my neighbor?  Who is not my neighbor?  Instead, at the end of the parable came another question: Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim? It is interesting that the man cannot even bring himself to utter the word Samaritan. Instead he has to fess up and admit that the neighbor was The One who took pity on the victim and responded to his needs.  And he probably wish that he hadn’t asked the question that started all of this in the first place when he heard Jesus say to him: Go and do likewise. Did his friends snicker then?  From the text it doesn’t seem that he protested.  Maybe he went home and stewed over the matter.

What should be our response?  The proclamation of the Good News is never meant to induce a guilt trip on the part of the listeners.  But it is meant to challenge us, help us to change, and respond more fully to the Living Word.  Certainly, if we harbor prejudices in our heart, we must root them out.  The one we have the strongest feelings against is, because of our faith, more than a neighbor to us.  That one is our brother or sister in the Lord.  How could racial prejudices survive were we able to get beyond the color of one’s skin and recognize our commonality?  Religious prejudices would yield were we able to be convinced that what the Second Vatican Council proclaimed is so, that there are many paths to God, that the Jewish people remain the chosen race, God’s beloved ones.  That in no way diminishes our standing before God, baptized and identified with the Son as we are, washed clean in and redeemed by his blood.  Are we able to love even those who vilify us?  Even if they act in that way against us, their relationship to us remains the same and they are included among those we are commanded to love as we love ourselves.

So there we have it.  In the end it is about love, love of God and love of neighbor.  We are invited to love God with our entire being.  I say invited even though we are talking about a commandment here.  I don’t know that love can be commanded.  And we are invited to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  Perhaps that what we should bring with us the next time we celebrate Eucharist.  In our giving thanks to God (that’s what the word Eucharist means – thanksgiving) what if we dared to pray that we might be transformed completely as is the bread and wine over which we pray.  How differently would be conduct ourselves were we convinced that we are the Body of Christ?  Would we find the courage to love our neighbor the way Christ does?

Sincerely,

Didymus