Sunday Gospel Comment

 

Alberic Jacovone OSB

Return to Articles and Reflections

YEAR A

Ex 19,2-6; Rom 5,6-11; Mt 9,36-10,8

Slaves of no one but God, yet humble servants 

Jesus & His Kingdom of God. From the outset, Matthew states, that Jesus came to set up God’s New Kingdom: he launched the Jesus Movement by alerting everyone: ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand’ (4,23). Matthew spends Chapter 9, to tell us what happened: his preaching made a deep impression on people & large crowds began to follow him from place to place. All sorts of ‘little people’ & outcasts came to Jesus from the crowd: an unclean leper & a hated pagan Centurion - a sick woman & pagans under evil spirits - a paralysis stricken man & the dead daughter of a Jewish Chief, a woman with unclean haemorrhage, 2 blind men & a dumb demoniac: indeed all kinds of troubled people came in search of hope, healing & dignity. And Jesus healed many. Matthew goes on to say that Jesus called some people to become disciples; he even called Matthew, (a despicable man who extorted taxes from his own people, to enrich the enemy, to stress that the invitation is for all), and these left everything & followed Him. Finally Jesus selected his closest leaders: ‘The 12’, to match the 12 tribes of Israel in his New Kingdom. Jesus instructed them, before sending them to preach, teach & heal in His name: ‘as you go, proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand’. The injunctions that Jesus gives his missionaries have a special urgency not only for Matthew & the Christian Community of his time, but for us & the believers of all time, today & forever.

Warnings for you and me. Matthew’s Gospel is a book of his time, deeply imbedded in the legal system of an ancient male-dominated society. The liberation proclaimed by Jesus at his time was easily perceived as political freedom from a Roman oppressor: as a National Liberation Front. But Jesus went deeper than that. The conviction that no one is King but God alone is at the centre of Jesus’ message & of the Christianity he founded. He proclaimed a freedom from all oppressive structures that are built in society, at his time & at all times. Naturally, the Gospel became -and will always be- ‘Good News’ for the poor & marginalized, for all who are excluded & made invisible by our legal systems: slaves & sinners, prostitutes & publicans (tax-collectors), women & children, & those who are ousted as ‘unclean’. Warning: we have no right to exclude others & claim power for ourselves: rich over poor, Jew over Gentile, White over Coloured, Man over Woman, Clean over Unclean... For years we said that ‘Kingdom of God’ was a simple expression that Jesus used to mean God’s rule, reign & sovereignty: something that is not spatial, territorial, political, national... something that will apply fully in the hereafter, in the life of the Blessed in Heaven. Wrong! this is not good enough! Rather, Jesus established a society (‘Church’), where no one is king (melek), or emperor (basileus) but God alone. This very point brought Jesus in conflict with the political leaders of Israel (Sadducees) who cooperated with the Roman Empire, and with the Pharisees who accepted Yahweh’s Kingdom over Nations & Nature, but excluded the poor, oppressed & unclean.

Deeper warning: Jesus’ words are for us leaders, not for a world out there. We leaders are likely to betray these warnings, as the apostles betrayed Jesus one by one. If we think we are strong & have got it right, we delude ourselves. Consider the abuse & wrong-doing in our Church right now. Indeed, Jesus’ powerful warning is for us all, lest by preaching what we do not practice, we become a mockery to ourselves & a disgrace to the Church.

______________________________________