Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR A TWELFTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR - 23.6.02 Jer 20,10-13; Rom 5,12-15; Mt 10,26-33 In the face of opposition.... Life is worth more! Matthew’s Gospel draws strength from its structure & language. It’s made up of 5 sections, each with a list of miracles & cures, & a Sermon by Jesus. These 5 sections are meant to match the 5 Books of Moses, i.e. first 5 Books of the Bible (Torah). They are: 1. Sermon of the Mount: launch of God’s Kingdom Chs 5,6,7). 2. Sermon on the disciples: proclaim the Kingdom (Ch 10) - 3. Sermon on Parables: the Kingdom is like this... (Ch 13+) - 4. Sermon on ‘Church’: this is the Kingdom (Ch 18+) - 5. Sermon on the End of Old Order: join the Kingdom now! (Ch 24+). After urging to pray that God may send labourers in his heaviest (9,38), Jesus selects the 12 leaders who -with Him- will preach the Kingdom. He warns all, against strong opposition and persecutions that are surely to come. When these come -He says-, be starkly aware of your failures & limitations -of past & present-. And still know that God’s Spirit is in you. Amazingly, we read the Gospel, thinking that we are following the events of Jesus’ life step by step, well... this is not the case, as the above structure shows. The Gospel (=God’s spell) carries first & foremost the meaning of ‘Good News’, Evangelization & Christian propaganda. Behind the written word, there is a heated & at times angry debate between the early Christians & the powerful Jewish Teachers. And all along, the language betrays strong convictions on both sides. Only from weighing these strong convictions, can we apply to our situations, the perennial message of the Gospel. Declare yourself! Chapter 10 occupies three Sundays: today, last Sunday, next Sunday. It hides a strong sense of urgency. Matthew lets the plot unfold, presuming we know already a lot about his time & life. He stresses conflict, suspense, tension, struggle; & he does this so we may capture the importance of ‘the Kingdom of God’, to which we are invited to be members. We know that at his time, the ‘Jesus Movement’ confronted its own Jewish culture and demanded a renewal of Judaism. Matthew presents Jesus as ‘Teacher of the Kingdom’ & Healer of all infirmities. As the New Moses, Jesus fulfilled the Old Law and gave his own New Law (Sermon of the Mount). Then He practiced what He preached, by liberating people from affliction & oppression. In his prayer, (the Our Father) He asked us to pray: thy Kingdom come! And after exploring the inner logic of God’s Kingdom through beautiful parables, He claimed that in this Kingdom, He himself is the King who will judge all: I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger ... and you never! (25,34). In today’s Gospel, Jesus means to send each of us to preach his Kingdom & heal (10,7). Matthew presents 3 lots of people as beneficiaries: 1st: the sick, possessed & unclean (people with incurable diseases). 2nd: ‘Ethnics’ & pagans who were treated as dogs. 3rd: the used & abused slaves & women, who were rendered invisible in society, with no rights of their own. Matthew’s lesson for us in Chapter 10 is a strong challenge to remove every form of oppression, ambition & injustice in the Church. As Christians we are all equal before God, all brothers and sisters in Christ. From the start, Christianity claims to be essentially multi-cultural & universal: there are no distinctions between Jews or Gentiles, slave or free people, men or women. Its ironic, how such a plain truth -obvious to all-, creates liberating activity but also it encounters tension, rupture & discontinuity. ______________________________________ |
