Monday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 8:18-22

There are times when Jesus goes out of his way to meet the crowds. On one occasion we are told he was filled with compassion because he saw them as sheep without a shepherd. But today, he gives orders to cross the lake apparently to avoid the crowds pressing in on him.

The crowds represent two kinds of people: those in real need of teaching and healing, and those who are simply driven by a kind of curiosity for the unusual. Jesus is not particularly interested in the second kind; they represent a false interest in Jesus. For them he is just a sensation, a wonder-worker—‘Jesus Christ Superstar’.

Similarly, when a scribe approaches Jesus and says, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go”, it seems like a generous offer, but Jesus reminds the man of just what that may entail:

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

To follow Jesus means, like him, to be ready to have nothing of one’s own. As Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, we cannot at the same time serve two masters. To be with Jesus is to accept a situation where we may have nothing in the way of material possessions—our security will be elsewhere.

We do not know whether the scribe took up the challenge or not, and it does not really matter. Jesus’ words are recorded mainly for us to hear them. What do I think when I hear them? Have I made the choice between having Jesus and having things? Or do I think I can have both? Do I want to have both?

Another person, described as being already a disciple, asks for permission to go and bury his father first before following Jesus. It seems a fairly reasonable request and Jesus’ reply sounds rather harsh as both the Jewish and Hellenistic world regarded this as a filial obligation of the highest importance:

Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.

There are two ways we can understand this reply. In one case, the man is asking to postpone his following of Jesus until his father dies and he can bury him. But to follow Jesus is to enter a new family with a new set of obligations. It is not that the man should not honour his father, but in the meantime, there are other things of much greater importance that need to be done. In the new family, of which his father is just one member, there are more pressing obligations. It is another example of Jesus letting us know that our following of him has to be unconditional. We cannot say, “I will follow you if…” or “I will follow you when I am ready.” When he calls we have, like the first disciples, to be ready to drop our nets, our boats and even our family members.

A second way of understanding Jesus’ words is to see his call as a call to a way of life. Those who want to go their own self-seeking ways belong to the spiritually dead. Leave the burial of the dead to them. The rituals of society, including burial, have their place—even an important place. But for Jesus, the call to the Kingdom represents a commitment to a more important set of values.

We must put all these statements in their context. They make clear that following Jesus involves a radical commitment, but it does not mean that we act in ways that are inhumane or unreasonable. Soon after Peter and Andrew had abandoned their boats and their nets to follow Jesus, we find Jesus in their house tending to Peter’s mother-in-law who had fallen sick (Mark 1:29-31).

While there was a time in the past when some religious sisters were not allowed to attend a family funeral, that has now changed—and rightly so. At the same time, the call of Jesus still involves a total commitment.

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10 January – Reading

Commentary on 1 John 4:19—5:4

Once again John emphasises the inseparable link between loving God and loving our sisters and brothers. We are to love because God loves first. Because of his love, the only response we can give is to return his love and pass it on. God’s love for us does not depend on our first loving him. Our love is always a response; it is never our initiative. But then our love for God is primarily shown by our loving those around us. John writes:

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

It is so easy to love an invisible God. But it can be very difficult at times to love a very visible sister or brother. It is so easy to appear pious, devotional, even ‘holy’, spending long hours in front of Jesus in the tabernacle and in other religious activities, and yet living in very poor relationships with certain people.

The Letter puts it very simply:

…those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

John puts it another way by saying:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.

At the time this Letter was written, families were very closely-knit units under the headship of a father. So, in the same way, anyone who loves God our Father will naturally love all God’s children who are, of course, in a very real way our brothers and sisters. We must love every single child to whom our loving God has given life. I cannot refuse to love someone that God loves and for whom he sent his Son to die on a cross.

Again he repeats what he has already said:

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.

We love God by keeping his commandments, and earlier he has made it clear what those commandments are:

And these commands are not burdensome. This is not because they are always easy to carry out fully, but because we live in the strength of the Spirit and because they are in total conformity with our nature made in the likeness of God. There is nothing artificial or arbitrary about them. To observe them is to become more and more what we are meant to be—living in the image of our Creator God. The reading concludes:

And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.

It is by doing this that we will “conquer” the world of sin and of self-centred greed and hate. It is only this faith and love which can bring healing and wholeness into people’s lives.

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Wednesday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 6:20-26

Today we begin what is known as Luke’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’, which more or less parallels Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’. Luke’s is much shorter, but both begin with the Beatitudes and end with the parable of the house builders. Some of what is found in Matthew’s Sermon is found elsewhere in Luke, because Matthew’s Sermon consists of disparate sayings of Jesus gathered into one place. Luke also omits Matthew’s specifically Jewish material which would not have been relevant to his gentile readers.

Luke’s Sermon can be summarised as follows:

• An introduction of blessings and woes (vv 20-26)
• The love of one’s enemies (vv 27-36)
• The demands of loving one’s neighbour (vv 37-42)
• Good deeds as proof of one’s goodness (vv 43-45)
• A parable on listening to and acting on the words of Jesus (vv 46-49)

Similar to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Luke’s Sermon on the Plain begins with his version of the Beatitudes. But there are striking differences. Whereas Matthew has eight (some would say seven) Beatitudes, Luke has four “Blesseds” and four contrasting “Woes”. As is typical of his uncompromising style when it comes to following Jesus, the language of Luke is much more direct and hard-hitting, and it may well be closer to what Jesus actually said.

Matthew’s Beatitudes propose a set of attitudes which reflect the spirit of the Kingdom—qualities to be found in the truly Christian and human life. Luke, on the other hand, speaks of material conditions in this life which will be overturned. Later in this Gospel, this is illustrated graphically in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-30).

Luke also has Jesus speaking in the second person: “Blessed are you” and “Woe to you“, rather than in the third person as Matthew does (“Blessed are those who…”). Nor does he speak of the “poor in spirit”, but of “you who are poor”, and he certainly means the materially poor.

He goes on to say how blessed too are:

…you who are hungry…you who weep…you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.

Undoubtedly Matthew’s Beatitudes can be read to consider just spiritual poverty and a hunger for righteousness, which in fact are also a form of real poverty and real hunger. In contrast, Luke’s is a Gospel for the materially poor and distressed, and we must be careful not to turn our focus away from them. That is why he has Jesus being born in poverty and dying naked and destitute (of even his ‘friends’).

Jesus tells those who are poor and hungry and abused to:

Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

And this is the way Jesus the Prophet will also be treated.

In a first read, it seems like a classical example of religion as the ‘opium of the people’: Be happy that you are having such a hard time now because there is a wonderful future waiting for you in the next world (as was mockingly described by the atheist Karl Marx).

The second part is not likely to go down well in our contemporary developed world:

• But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
• Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
• Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
• Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

How are we to understand these sayings which turn our common worldview upside down? They have to be seen in the light of the Kingdom, in the kind of society that Jesus came to set up, a society based on mutual love and sharing and support. This is a Kingdom for this world and not just the next. The coming of such a society could only be good news for the poor and destitute (material and otherwise), for those suffering from hunger (physical and otherwise), for those depressed by deep sorrow and for those abused and rejected for their commitment to Jesus and his Way.

On the other hand, it would not be good news for those self-focused people who amass material wealth at the expense of others, who indulge in excessive consumption of the world’s goods, who live lives centred on personal hedonism and pleasure, and who feed off the envy and adulation of those around them. They are really not part of that Kingdom. To enter fully into the Kingdom, they have to unload all these concerns and obsessions and let go. Instead of focusing on what they can get, they will have to focus on what they can share of what they have.

A clear example is the rich young man in the Gospel. How rich he was—and yet how sad he was! Compare him with Zacchaeus, whom we will be meeting later on.

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Monday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 12:13-21

We move on now in Luke to more immediate concerns of the Christian life. Today’s topic is about the perennial question of money, or rather, the love of money. A man in the crowd said to Jesus:

Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.

According to Mosaic Law, the general rule was that an elder son received double that of a younger son. If there was a dispute, it was usually settled by a rabbi, which is presumably why the man approached Jesus. It was the kind of problem in which Jesus was not remotely interested, and he refused to get involved. One wonders how interested Jesus is when we make novenas to win lotteries or when we ask God to help us get our hands on the wealth of a rich and elderly aunt!!

Jesus now takes the opportunity to make some general remarks “against all kinds of greed”. A man may be wealthy, he says, but his possessions do not guarantee him life. Life comes with freedom, peace and happiness. Money cannot buy these things.

There is no evidence that rich people enjoy more freedom, peace or happiness, although many of us are inclined to think they do and envy them. Their marriages do not last any longer. They do not bring up better children. They do not necessarily enjoy better health.

At this point Jesus speaks a telling parable. A farmer who is already rich has a bumper harvest. It is so big that he has to pull down his existing barns to build larger ones. When all that is done, he smugly says to himself: “My boy, you have blessings in reserve for years to come. Relax! Put your feet up. Eat heartily, drink well. Enjoy yourself.” But Jesus tells them, that very night:

God said to him [i.e. the farmer], ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you’.

What happens now to all his piled-up wealth? Yes, it is all left behind. “You can’t take it with you.” “How much did he leave?” was asked about a billionaire who died. “Every cent,” was the reply. When the farmer met his God, what had he brought with him? Little or nothing. When St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) died, how much do you think she brought? One feels she brought a great deal. And she certainly left behind a great deal to enrich the lives of many.

What is my attitude to money and wealth? If I were to die now, what could I bring with me to present to God? And what will I leave behind, apart from cash and possessions? All of us can be rich in God’s sight, and it does not require any money. Someone has said that the really rich are not those who have the most, but those whose needs are the least (see Luke 12:22-34, where Jesus spells out a recipe for a life free from anxiety—the life which he himself lived).

And what we need most is the ability to reach out in love, the love that builds and makes life better for others. Think of what good parents leave behind in children whose lives are dedicated to making this world a better place—or teachers who have helped young people to devote themselves to service of the community. What we need is to live in communities where people look after each other. That would be a situation where, because everyone gives, everyone gets.

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Friday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Genesis 23:1-4,19; 24:1-8,62-67

We come to the end of the story of Abraham. The reading consists of selected paragraphs from chapters 23 and 24. As the reading opens we learn that Abraham’s wife Sarah has died at Hebron, a place also known as Kiriath-arba (Hebron). She was 127 years old. Abraham is plunged into mourning with grief for his wife and the mother of his only son.

Leaving her bedside he went to the “Hittites” (“sons of Heth” in some translations), the pre-Israelite and non-Semitic inhabitants of Palestine. As he was an outsider and a settler in the land of Canaan, he asked for a burial plot where his wife could be laid. He still “lived in tents” (see Heb 11:9), the most temporary of dwellings, but he looked forward to the more permanent home promised to him. About this, the author of Hebrews says:

…he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Heb 11:10)

Ownership of burial land was a crucial step in establishing legal residence. In the culture, people had a strong desire to be buried ‘with their fathers’ in their native land. By purchasing a burial place in Canaan, Abraham indicated his unswerving commitment to the Lord’s promise—Canaan was his new homeland.

The New American Bible states:

“A resident alien would normally not have the right to own property. The importance of Abraham’s purchase of the field, which is worded in technical legal terms, lies in the fact that it gave his descendants their first, though small, land rights in the country that God had promised the patriarch they would one day inherit as their own. Abraham therefore insists on purchasing the field and not receiving it as a gift.”

The Hittite leader was happy to give Abraham a burial place as a gift, but Abraham insisted on buying it so that he had full rights over it. It gave him a legal standing in Canaan which he did not have before. He then buried his wife in the cave within “the field of Ephron in Machpela” which he had bought and which was opposite to Mamre, in Canaan.

Abraham himself was also well advanced in years and had been blessed by God in many ways. He knows that death cannot be far away. His main concern is for his son and his future descendants. The elaborate story of acquiring a wife for Isaac marks the last, decisive step toward fulfilment of the promise of progeny through Isaac.

First, Abraham calls his senior servant, the steward of all his vast possessions (perhaps the Eliezer we met previously), and makes him take an oath:

Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live…

The descendants of Abraham must come from his own people. Putting the hand under the thigh means placing them near the genital organs to signify the solemnity of the oath which follows. The symbolism of this act was apparently connected with the Hebrew concept of children issuing from their father’s ‘thigh’ or ‘loin’ (see New American Bible Revised Edition note for Exod 1:5). Perhaps the man who took such an oath was thought to bring the curse of sterility on himself if he did not fulfil his sworn promise. Jacob made Joseph swear in the same way (Gen 47:29). In both these instances, the oath was taken to carry out the last request of a man upon his deathbed.

The servant is to go to Abraham’s land, Mesopotamia, and to choose a wife for Isaac from among his kinsfolk. The steward has one problem. What if the future wife does not want to leave her country and go to Canaan? Is Isaac to go back and live there with her? Abraham rules out that suggestion altogether:

The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’…

So Abraham is torn between loyalty to his own people, the ‘purity’ of his family line and his mandate to take possession of his adopted home.

Abraham promises his steward that God will send an angel ahead of him to choose a suitable wife for his son. However, if the woman chosen is not willing to come back to Canaan, the steward will be released from the oath he is now being asked to make. The steward then put his hand under Abraham’s thigh and made the oath.

We now move to the end of chapter 24 for the last part of the reading. In between, there is the long account of how the steward went to Mesopotamia and came across the beautiful Rebekah coming to a well to draw water (Jacob—later called ‘Israel’—will meet his future wife, Rachel, at a well also). Is there an echo of these scenes in John’s Gospel where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well—symbolic of the Old Testament—and takes her as his ‘spiritual’ bride into the New Covenant? (see John 4).

Rebekah turns out to be a niece of Abraham, the daughter of his brother Nahor, and is a virgin. She fulfils all the requirements. The steward meets her family, showers them with gifts from his master and then takes Rebekah back to Canaan (see Gen 24:10-61).

We are then told that Isaac, who lived in the Negeb, had come into the wilderness to the well of Beer-lahai-roi (there are lots of wells!). This was the site of the annunciation of Ishmael’s birth to Hagar. Isaac’s emergence from there has a symbolic resonance—henceforth he will have his own posterity. As he walked in the evening light, Isaac saw a caravan of camels approaching. With it was Rebekah. She looked up and saw Isaac, her future husband, for the first time. Getting down from her camel she asked who was the man she saw walking towards them. Abraham’s servant replied:

It is my master.

Rebekah immediately veiled her face, perhaps indicating that she was unmarried. Up to now the steward’s master had been Abraham; from now on it is Isaac, the new patriarch of the family. The servant then told Isaac all that had happened in his search for a bride. Isaac, without more ado:

…took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

Isaac is now head of the family, but we will not spend too much time with him. In fact, there will be just one more reading about him.

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Saturday of Week 2 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Hebrews 9:2-3, 11-14 (more…)

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Wednesday of Week 11 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Corinthians 9:6-11

Paul continues his exhortation to the Corinthians to be generous. He begins with a kind of proverb: skimpy sowing means skimpy reaping:

…the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

He further adds that each one should make their donation according to what has been agreed, but to do it without a long face or under a sense of compulsion:

…God loves a cheerful giver.

As Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ says, “It is the love of the giver more than the gift of the lover that counts.” And Paul further adds that the Source of everything we have will reward us generously for our generosity because he is, in fact, the original source of all that we give:

God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

So that the more we receive, the more we are able to share with others.

The behaviour to which he exhorts them is based on God’s own way of acting. Paul quotes Psalm 112 describing that God is capable of overwhelming generosity, so people need not fear of being short. God will provide in abundance, both supplying their natural needs and increasing their inner goodness. Paul challenges them to a God-like generosity and reminds them of the fundamental motive for encouragement—God himself cannot be outdone:

He scatters abroad; he gives to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever.

And Paul says:

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

In other words,

You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us…

This is the paradox: the more we give of what we have and are to others, the more enriched we become. When everyone gives, everyone gets.

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Thursday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 8:31-39

In recent readings, having moved from the powerful forces, which keep preventing us from doing the good, we went to the firm hope of a glorious future. Paul now moves another step in reminding us of the inalienable love that God has for each one of us.

It is put dramatically right in the first paragraph:

If God is for us, who is against us?

It is clearly a rhetorical question. The form of the condition makes it clear that there is no doubt about the answer. It is a question that requires no answer for it is clear that God is always for us—one hundred percent all the time. Of course, whether we are always for him is another matter altogether. Even then he reaches out to us in love. God is love; he cannot not love.

And, if we do have any doubts, then we just have to look at Jesus:

He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else?

If God could sacrifice the One closest to him, the One who shares his very nature, can there be any doubt that he will give us every other good thing? The cross is the guarantee of our preciousness in God’s eyes. And God will not want to see the work begun on the cross frustrated. It is important to remember all this, especially in times of trouble.

Paul continues:

Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?

The prophet Isaiah writes:

The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me?….Let them confront me.
(Isaiah 50:7-8)

How could anyone accuse us, when we have on our side Christ Jesus who died as a pledge of his love for us and, more than that, was raised from the dead and now sits at the Father’s right hand pleading on our behalf?

And then there comes another rhetorical question:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

And he is speaking of Christ’s love for us, not our love for him. No level of hardships or distress, persecutions, lack of food and clothing, or threats of violence can negate the reality of that love. We need to remember that at this time the Christians, not least in Rome, were being faced with violent opposition and persecution. It will soon be the age of martyrs, including Peter and Paul themselves. Apart from that, Paul could speak of the long list of hardships he himself experienced in this missionary work, some of which he tells us about in his Second Letter to the Christians at Corinth (see 2 Cor 11:16-33).

Paul wants to show his readers that suffering does not separate believers from Christ, nor is it a sign of his losing interest in them, but rather it can actually carry them along toward their ultimate goal. In the eyes of their persecutors it seems like their defeat. In the eyes of pagans it must have looked like failure. But it is the martyr who lives on in people’s memories.

And Paul quotes from the Psalms:

For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered. (Ps 44:11)

Suffering is nothing new to God’s people and, as long as we are faithful to the call of the gospel and are committed to sharing the message with others, there will be more to come. And it is precisely the love of Christ shown on the cross that enables us to come triumphantly through all kinds of hardships.

Then affirms Paul:

…in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us.

Just as Jesus conquered by his own death in shame and degradation, we also can do the same. In fact, as Hebrews says:

Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him… (Heb 5:8-9)

It was the conquest of love. For us it must be the same.

He concludes with a rallying cry for all those who may be suffering for their faith and indeed for every one of us:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The ‘powers’, ‘heights’ and ‘depths’ are probably the mysterious cosmic forces which to the mind of antiquity were in general hostile to mankind. None of these powers nor any other created thing whatever can come between us and God’s loving reach. There is, in other words, absolutely no force, however powerful and no happening, however terrible, which can come between us and the overwhelming love of Jesus for us.

It is a re-saying of something Paul mentioned yesterday that absolutely everything that we experience is imprinted with the loving hand of God.:

…all things work together for good for those who love God… (Rom 8:28)

And the reason is because our love of God has its source in the love of God for us—from which all love originates.

Certainly, there are times when it is difficult for us to see that. It must have been difficult for many of the martyrs of the early Church in the midst of their sufferings, and yet it is now with praise and thanksgiving that we today celebrate their glorious memory.

If we can see the hand of God in what they did and were ready to suffer, it may help us to see his loving hand in our lives too.

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Friday of Week 23 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 6:39-42

In Matthew, the parallel passage today is addressed to the Pharisees, but in Luke it is addressed to the disciples, and Jesus makes two points.

First, the blind cannot lead the blind. The disciple, left to himself or herself, does not know very much and depends on their teacher. But once the disciple is fully trained and has learnt everything it is possible to discern from the teacher, then the learner becomes an extension of the teacher. At that point, the disciple shares the teacher’s knowledge and wisdom and can, in turn, be a guide to others.

This is something we all have to do: to listen carefully to what Jesus tells us and make it part of our own lives. Only then can we effectively lead others to him.

Second, we have to be very careful about sitting in judgement on others. Jesus uses a graphic image of someone trying to remove a speck of dust from another person’s eye while there is a large “log” in their own. How can we see properly to correct the vision of our brother or sister when our own vision is so distorted?

The faults we so easily see in others are often trivial in comparison with our own shortcomings. Of course, much of the energy we exert in putting down others (the main staple of gossiping sessions!) is sub-consciously designed to compensate for the shortcomings we are all too aware of in ourselves. Instead of lifting ourselves up by changing our ways, we try to drag others down.

And so often our judgements are based purely on external behaviour. We usually have no idea of the inner motives or intentions of other people, or an awareness of their inability to behave otherwise than they do.

And, while we can be very ready with criticism behind people’s backs, we do not dare to say such things to their face. Yet, there may be times when we will be asked to give—as far as is possible—an objective evaluation of a person’s behaviour or their fitness for some responsibility. And, not infrequently, we sadly shy away from this responsibility.

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Friday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 12:54-59

Today we have two inter-related pieces of advice from Jesus. It is striking how simple and down to earth are the examples which Jesus uses to illustrate his teaching.

Here he takes the common phenomenon of the farmer reading the sky to forecast the weather. With experience, one can become very accurate, at least in the short-term, forecasting by observing the colour and shape of the clouds, the direction and strength of the wind and so on. The wind from the west came from the Mediterranean and so brought rain. The south wind blew from the desert and so brought hot weather.

First, Jesus asks his listeners, if they are so good at reading the weather signs, why are they not equally good at reading the signs that are taking place before their very eyes:

You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

They were now in the messianic age. Jesus has been performing one sign after another through the power of his teaching and the authority that he brings, through the healing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the calming of storms, the liberating of people from evil forces and so many other miraculous events.

Yet, the people do not seem to be able to see the clear hand of God in what he does. They follow him with curiosity to see what they may be able to get for themselves, but very few commit themselves to following him as disciples.

Second, he asks them:

…why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?

He urges them to solve issues here and now instead of dragging their opponents to court only to find they lose the case and end up in jail.

If that is wise advice in everyday life, how much more important to be ready when we come to face the Judge of judges? If we do not settle our affairs now, in the future it may be too late. Linking this with what has already been said, it is time for us to read the clear signs of God’s call coming through Jesus and to respond by a change of heart and behaviour (Greek, metanoia). Then, with no evidence to incriminate us, we will have nothing to fear from the Judge on that day of reckoning and accounting.

Bringing all this down to a more earthly level, we might say that in our own time, we live in an age that is litigation-crazy. In many situations, both sides often end up the losers (but not their lawyers!). The bitter aftermath can last for years.

There may be times when recourse to a court is the only way to see justice done, but very often, disputes are best worked out between the parties involved. For example, for many, the pain of marriage breakdowns can be vastly increased by litigation, and can be a source of long-lasting bitterness, especially where the arguments are over large—or even small—amounts of property.

As Christians, we need to develop a real sense of justice as shown by wanting the best for all concerned. Forgiveness and reconciliation should be a high priority for us. There should be no place in our lives for sheer vindictiveness or, perhaps worse, simply a desire to make someone suffer more cruelly than we have.

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