Tuesday of Week 2 of Easter – Gospel
Commentary on John 3:7-15
We continue today Jesus’ night-time dialogue with the Pharisee Nicodemus. Nicodemus, while accepting in principle what Jesus has said about being born again in the Spirit, now wants to know how it can be brought about.
Jesus accuses Nicodemus and his fellow-leaders of a lack of spiritual insight and a refusal to accept his testimony as coming directly from God:
If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
Jesus does not speak simply on his own initiative. He speaks of what he shares with the Father. It is the Father’s words and teaching that he passes on to us—he is the Word of God. His is not just a speaking Word; it brings all things from nothing, calls the dead to life, hands on the Spirit, the source of unending life, and makes us all children of God. To experience all this we need to have faith in Jesus as truly the Word of God and to live our lives in love.
But the Word is not always easy to understand and it requires, above all, an openness to be received and witnessed.* It is this openness that Jesus is challenging Nicodemus to have. People respond to the Word in so many ways. Some believe fully; others go away disappointed in spite of the many signs. One is reminded of the parable of the sower. To which group do I belong?
And up to now, only the Son has been “into heaven,” that is, with God:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)
It is from there that:
…the Word became flesh and lived among us. (John 1:14)
He is in a position, therefore, to speak about “heavenly things”, that is, to speak of everything that pertains to and comes from God.
The only solution is to put all our focus on Jesus:
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
This is a reminder of the incident in the book of Numbers (21:6-9) where, as a punishment for their sins, the Israelites were attacked by serpents. God told Moses to erect a bronze serpent on a pole and all who looked at the serpent were saved.
Jesus, in a much greater way, will also be “lifted up” both on the cross and into the glory of his Father through the Resurrection and Ascension. And he will be a source of life to all who commit themselves totally to him. Only then will we be washed clean by the water from the pierced side (see John 19:34 and Zech 13:1).
To what extent are we ‘looking at’ Jesus? Is it merely a sideways glance when we think about him, or at certain fixed times (e.g. Sunday Mass), or is he the centre of our attention in all that we do and say?
Let our constant prayer be:
Lord, grant that all my thoughts, intentions, actions and responses may be directed solely to your love and service this day and every day.
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*For numerous references about vv 11-12 of this passage, see the footnote in the New Jerusalem Bible.
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Wednesday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 3:1-9
In today’s First Reading, Paul continues his thoughts on the nature of the truly spiritual person. With regret, he cannot call the Corinthian Christians “spiritual people”. They are still sensual, governed by their bodily desires and still “infants in Christ”. They are still “fleshly”, like worldly people rather than people of God. They are living by purely human standards. And so, up to this time, he has treated them like infants, giving them milk rather than solid food. They are not ready yet to hear the gospel in its fullness because they are still so un-spiritual.
On what does he base this evaluation? It is clear there is “jealousy and quarreling” that divide them so badly, and which make them in no way different from their non-Christian neighbours. They are divided into factions, one rooting for Paul and another for Apollos.
To Paul this makes no sense at all. Paul and Apollos were merely the agents by which the faith message was brought to them. And the different ways in which they did that were based, not on a preferred style of operating, but on the different roles that they had been given by the Lord. Their different roles could not be compared with each other.
As Paul puts it, his role was to do the planting while Apollos did the watering. In other words, it was Paul’s role to found and to set up from scratch the Christian community in Corinth, starting something which had never existed before. Apollos, on the other hand, was working in a church already begun and building on the foundation that had been laid by Paul. But the actual growth of the community is the work of God alone and of no one else. Without God, the sower and the waterer are nothing.
So it does not matter who plants or who waters. Each one will be rewarded accordingly as he is doing the task assigned to him. Paul sums up by saying that he and Apollos:
…are God’s coworkers, working together…
They are partners, each one contributing something special to the whole work.
The people, for their part, are God’s farm, the soil in which he works, and all growth is attributable to him alone. And they are God’s building, the place where he takes up his abode; he lives in them. That is what makes them ‘holy’ (hagioi), a people set apart from those around them. Later in the letter Paul will speak of the Christian community as a ‘temple’, the place where the Lord is to be found in a real way.
And so they belong to God and not to Paul or Apollos. They are God’s people and not Paul’s or Apollos’. So, for people to say they belong to Paul or to Apollos makes no sense.
It is certainly not for us to point an accusing finger at the Christians of Corinth. We see the same kind of factionalism at many levels dividing Christians today, both inter-denominational and intra-denominational.
The divisions among the Christian churches, which are often expressed in the most regrettable and un-Christian forms, must be a matter of shame for all of us, not to mention a source of scandal and confusion among non-Christians. This observation is especially salient when we read Jesus’ prayer for unity in John’s Gospel (John 17:20-23).
There are also divisions in our own Catholic Church at many levels from high up to low down. We should especially take cognisance of divisions in the communities to which we personally belong, especially our parishes, organisations and groups within parishes—and certainly our families as well.
Instead, we should be making sure that we do not say or do anything which contributes to such divisions and, where we can do so, let us try to be agents of healing and reconciliation, because:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
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Wednesday of Week 2 of Easter – Gospel
Commentary on John 3:16-21
Today we continue reflecting on the meeting of Jesus with Nicodemus. The dialogue has given way to a theological reflection in which the words of Jesus and of the author cannot easily be distinguished.
The theme is the relationship between God and the world. A few very important statements are made:
- God so loved the world…He loves it so much that he gave his only Son, who died a terrible death on a cross as proof of that love. God loves the whole world and not just the “good” parts. God’s love is total and unconditional for every one of his creatures. But to experience the life that comes from God through Jesus, we have to believe in him, open ourselves to him and give our whole selves to him in deep faith and trust.
- God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. We must constantly remind ourselves of this. God’s first and only instinct is to love us and for us to experience that love. We have been made by him and for him. He made us to share his life and love forever.
- Those who believe in him…in heart, word and deed—avoid judgement. But whoever does not believe is already condemned. That does not contradict what we have just said above. Judgment does not come from God, but rather from our own choice. Today’s Gospel states it this way:
…the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.
It is not God who abandons or dumps us—it is we who abandon him. We are our own judges when we deliberately choose darkness over light. We put ourselves beyond the reach of his love, which is there and only waiting for us to turn back. On the contrary, those who:
…do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.
It is not God’s judgment that we are to fear. Rather it is our own choices which can bring us closer to him or push us away from him. It is our own decision whether we wish to live always in the light or instead choose darkness.
It might be good for us to reflect today on those dark corners of our life—present and past—which we keep hidden from others. Why do we hide these things? The person who lives in the light, the person of integrity and wholeness, has nothing whatever to hide.
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Thursday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 3:18-23
Again, Paul urges the Corinthians to put aside the “wisdom of this world” and learn to be a fool for Christ in the eyes of that world. To ‘be a fool’ means to turn away from the ‘wisdom’ of the world, which will make one, in the eyes of many, a fool. It is the first step to real wisdom. It is only when we can recognise in the apparent failure and disaster of the Cross the triumph of God’s love that we begin to have true wisdom.
People who chase after the ‘wisdom of this world’ believe that money and material wealth and success and power over others are the ways to fulfilment and happiness. Some are even ready to die for these things, but in the long run such pursuits do not lead to the fulfilment for which we all long.
Quoting from Psalms, Paul says:
The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise,
that they are futile. (Ps 94:11)
God’s wisdom, on the other hand, is conveyed to us through the life and death of Jesus.
So, Paul continues, no one should boast on the level of human beings. He picks up again the call to unity which he raised at the beginning of his letter (see 1 Cor 1:10-13).
He writes, for instance, about being one person’s disciple versus another’s. The Christian leaders—Paul, Apollos and others—belong to the whole Church. No group can call one leader its very own. In other words, it was quite wrong—as the Corinthians apparently had been doing—to be investing their whole self in someone like Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas (Peter), or in the world in general, in life or in death, in the present or the future. All of these things are mere servants or agents of God and we can never stop at them.
So let there be no more talk that one group is for Paul and another group for Apollos:
…all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
Christians are in union with the Church’s true leaders and with Christ, who in turn is in union with the other members of the Trinity.
All, however they came to be members of the community, can have only Christ as the source of meaning for their lives. And it is through Christ, and only through him and not through any other human agency, that they will find access to God from whom they have come and to whom they are called to be finally united.
If the Corinthians were genuinely wise, their perceptions would be reversed, and they would see everything in the world and all those with whom they live in the church in their true relations with one another. On the level of ‘ownership’, one reads: God, Christ, church members, church leaders—in that order. But on the level of service one reads in the opposite direction.
Only when we see Church leadership in terms of service to its members will we avoid the kind of situations which Paul is denouncing. When members must serve leaders, we begin to create the factionalism that was hurting the Corinthian church. We might well apply this idea to the situation of our own church be it on the world, national or local level.
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Easter Monday – First Reading
Commentary on Acts 2:14,22-33
We begin today reading from the Acts of the Apostles. From now until the end of the Seventh Week of Easter, the weekday First Readings will be from Acts. The Sunday First Readings will also be from Acts.
Today’s reading follows immediately on the account of the Pentecost experience. The immediate result of that experience is for Peter, filled with the Spirit and as leader of the new community, to begin proclaiming the message about Jesus Christ as Saviour to the people gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost.
It is the first of six such kerygmas (from the Greek kerux, meaning a ‘herald’) or proclamations in Acts about Jesus as Risen Lord and Messiah-King. Five of them are attributed to Peter and the final one to Paul (to the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia, Acts 13:16-41).
Peter’s address follows a pattern that became common in the early Church: 1) an explanation of what was happening; 2) the proclamation of the death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus, the Christ; 3) an exhortation to repentance, a change of life and baptism.
Peter stood before the crowd, flanked by the Eleven (including Matthias, newly chosen to replace Judas as a witness who had been with them “during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” (Acts 1:21). Peter spoke, then, not just in his own name, but in the name of the whole apostolic ‘college’. Right from the beginning, his special position in the group is recognised.
And he has ‘good news’ (i.e. ‘gospel’, from the old English ‘god-spell’; Greek, euanggelion) to communicate to them. His words reflect the content of the earliest apostolic preaching:
- He gives witness of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his being raised to glory.
- He describes some general details of Christ’s ministry and how it was proclaimed in advance by John the Baptist, inaugurated by teaching and miracles, and completed by appearances of the Risen Christ and the giving of the Spirit to his followers.
- The story of Jesus is put in the wider context of the Old Testament prophecies, while at the same time looking forward to a Messianic age. All—Jews and Gentiles alike—are called to a radical change of life in order to be ready for the Christ’s glorious return—believed to be in the near future.
Peter, then, reminds them that Jesus had come to live among the people—as many of his listeners were well aware—and performed signs and wonders as the credentials of his real identity. But in the inscrutable plan of God, he was “handed over” (again we have that term which is a refrain throughout the New Testament).
Sad to say, those who handed Jesus over were from among his own people, perhaps including some of those listening to Peter, and they had even delivered him into the hands of the Romans (“those outside the Law”) for crucifixion. There must surely have been some uneasy feelings among the crowd when he said that.
But Jesus was liberated from the pain of death, and death had no power over him. Peter sees in words spoken by King David, their fulfilment in Jesus, his descendant:
…you will not abandon my soul to Hades…
(In Hebrew, Hades is Sheol, the place of the dead.)
These words are seen as applying more appropriately to Jesus because David died, was buried, and the place of his tomb was known to his hearers, while Jesus:
…was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.
Instead,
This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.
We, too, are called to be witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and his living presence among us by the way we live both individually and as a community.
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Thursday of Week 2 of Easter – Gospel
Commentary on John 3:31-36
In rather abstract language, the Gospel today contrasts Jesus with those who see the world with purely worldly eyes. Jesus is the One who comes “from above”, although he lives in the world. The “one who is of the earth” can mean any of us, but here seems to refer to John the Baptist, who spoke of “earthly things” in the sense that he spoke simply as a human being, as opposed to Jesus as the Word.
But the “one who comes from heaven” is above all and:
He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony.
What Jesus has seen and heard comes through direct communication with his Father.
But “no one accepts his testimony”. This does not mean literally every single person (obviously not true), but all those who are entirely immersed in this material world. Yet there are some who do listen and who do accept what Jesus is saying, and they know that what God says is trustworthy. When anyone fully accepts Christ’s witness, he accepts that Jesus is truly from God and that God acted (and continues to act) through him for the establishment of the Kingdom and the salvation of the world. For:
He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.
He is the Word of God. But the sentence can be understood to apply to everyone who has consciously become a disciple and Apostle for Jesus and his message. Jesus is the Light of the world, but his followers are also called to be the light of the world (Matt 5:14).
The Son, Jesus, is the perfect image of the Father, and shares generously with us what he has received from his Father. Life without end awaits all those who believe in the Son, who believe his words and accept them as their way of life.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life but must endure God’s wrath.
Notice that one who believes “has” eternal life. Eternal life begins now with the response of faith.
We must not think that God takes vengeance on those who disobey Jesus. God can never be angry in our normal sense of the word. But rather, those who choose to go another way, the way of darkness and evil, can only expect to meet death. They are the victims, not of God’s anger, but of their own determination to live in darkness. Let us remember that with God’s help, the choice is ours to make.
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Friday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Paul continues the theme that he and the other Apostles and ministers in the community are merely human agents of God. He asks the Corinthians to see him and his fellow workers in the church as servants and not masters or lords. They are to be seen as stewards or house managers working for a master. And they have been entrusted with communicating the “mysteries” of God.
The word ‘mystery’ (Greek, mysterion) here does not strictly mean something that is beyond all understanding. Rather it refers to truths which we could not discover by our own human efforts, but which are now being revealed and made known by God through his agents to those who believe. The term is linked to the so-called ‘mystery religions’ of the time, where the inner workings of the religious sect were only made known to initiates.
In the Christian community, there are also ‘mysteries’ made known. They are not meant to be kept secret, but it is likely that they will only be accepted and understood by those who have faith.
Paul emphasises that what is most expected of a steward is that he can be trusted—that he is reliable and conscientious. Paul also knows, however, that he has his critics among the community, so he affirms that his trustworthiness cannot be measured by them. He does not even dare to evaluate his own trustworthiness, on the principle that one is very often a poor judge where oneself is concerned.
Nevertheless, in spite of the criticisms he has received, his own conscience is perfectly clear. But that still is not enough. Only God can be his judge. And if only God can judge, then others have no right to pass final judgement on him. Jesus certainly had something to say about that (see Luke 7:36-50).
When the Lord comes at the end of times, the hidden intentions of all (Paul and his critics) will be made plain. Then, and only then:
…each one will receive commendation from God.
We should remember that each one of us, too, is a steward of the mysteries and truths of the gospel. Through our Baptism, they have been entrusted to us and we are expected to pass them on to others.
And we must do our utmost to be faithful and reliable stewards. Even if we are carrying out our stewardship to the best of our ability, it is almost inevitable that we will run into criticism, misunderstanding and opposition. In such cases, we must do our best to be people of honesty and integrity.
Sometimes the criticisms may be valid, and sometimes not. If they are valid, we should be grateful and make the necessary changes. If our consciences are clear, we should not be too concerned with what is being said about us, and leave the judgement ultimately to God. On our part, we continue to carry out our stewardship to the best of our ability.
Jesus never promised praise and popularity to those who proclaim the gospel—quite the opposite, in fact. He himself lost his life because of the hatred his work for others generated:
A disciple is not above the teacher nor a slave above the master. (Matt 10:24)
Paul focused on loving and serving Christ and the gospel in spite of great opposition both from fellow-Jews and fellow-Christians. Let us try to follow in his footsteps.
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Easter Thursday – First Reading
Commentary on Acts 3:11-26
Immediately after the dramatic cure of the beggar who was “lame from birth” in the Temple, Peter takes the opportunity to address the crowds which had gathered, to explain the meaning of what they have just witnessed.
The scene takes place at “Solomon’s Portico”. This was a porch along the inner side of the wall enclosing the outer court, with rows of 27-foot high stone columns and a roof of cedar. So it was a roofed structure—somewhat similar to a Greek stoa. There was a common, but mistaken, belief that it dated back to Solomon’s time.
The message that Peter now gives the amazed crowd gathering around is similar to other addresses in the early Church and contains: 1) an explanation of what is happening; 2) the gospel of Jesus Christ—his death, resurrection and glorification; and 3) a call to repentance and change of life, symbolised by baptism.
First, Peter makes clear that the healing that has just taken place before their eyes is not by his own power or that of his companion, John. They are not to be gaped at as having supernatural powers. What has been done has been through the power of Jesus, who has been empowered by the God they all believe in, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Jesus is the one his hearers “handed over” to Pilate. Here again we have this ‘handing over’, a phrase which runs like a refrain through the Gospel. And he whom they handed over was the “Holy and Righteous One”, indicating Jesus’ special relationship to the Father and his sinlessness—in stark contrast to the guilt of the murderous Barabbas.
Pilate was only too anxious to let Jesus go, being aware of his innocence, but he gave in to the demands of the crowd and yielded to their choice of a convicted murderer, Barabbas. To the crowd, Peter says:
…you killed the author of life…
While Barabbas had taken away life and was freed, Jesus—the source of life—was condemned to death. The sequence of the Easter Sunday Mass says:
Dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus.
Literally translated this means: “The Leader of life, having died, reigns alive.”
Peter and his companions are witnesses that Jesus was raised again. And it was in the name of this same Jesus that the poor beggar has been restored to health and mobility.
God has “glorified his servant” by Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. The word “servant” is reminiscent of the Songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah (and which we read early in Holy Week), especially Isaiah 52:13—53:12. Jesus himself spoke of being a servant when he washed his disciples’ feet and when he said that he had come to serve and not to be served. All of this did not quite fit the image of the kind of Messiah the Jews were expecting.
And it is by faith in this very Jesus that the poor beggar, “lame from birth” and well known to the crowds who came regularly to the Temple, has been “made strong”:
…faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.
Peter excuses his hearers (as Jesus himself did), saying they did not fully realise at the time what they were doing. Yet, the suffering of the Christ had long been foretold by the prophets. The early Christians saw the suffering and death of Jesus clearly indicated in Old Testament prophecies. The Jews, however, did not expect a suffering and dying Messiah—quite the opposite. They saw in Isaiah’s Servant Songs their own suffering as a people.
Now it is not too late for them to ‘repent’ (there is metanoia again), that is, radically to change their ways and thus have their sin taken away. To ‘repent’ is not just to express sorrow; it involves re-establishing one’s close relationship with God and submitting totally to his Way. The nearest English equivalent is ‘con-version’, a ‘turning round’, which means, of course, a ‘turning towards’.
Jesus, after all, is the prophet who was foretold by Moses, who, Peter tells the crowd, had said:
The Lord your God will raise up for you from your own people a prophet like me. You must listen to whatever he tells you.
This is a loose quotation from Deuteronomy (18:15). In fact, at the time of Jesus, some Jews expected a unique prophet to come in fulfilment of this text. So early Christianity applied this tradition and text to Jesus, especially where Christian teaching seemed to diverge from traditional Judaism.
And indeed, says Peter, every prophet from Samuel down predicted what is now taking place before their eyes. Samuel was one of the earliest of the prophets and the one who anointed David, Jesus’ ancestor, as king. So the Jews in his audience are the heirs of the prophets’ messages; they are the heirs to the covenant first made way back with Abraham:
…and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice. (Gen 22:18)
It is time now for the people to acknowledge this sacred covenant, made new through Jesus Christ, and they will do that by their accepting Jesus as their Saviour and abandoning their sinful ways to walk the Way of Jesus. Exactly the same applies to us.
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Friday of Week 2 of Easter – Gospel
Commentary on John 6:1-15
Today we begin the great chapter 6 of John with its strong Eucharistic overtones. We are bypassing chapters 4 (the Samaritan Woman) and chapter 5, which was read earlier. The stage is set by the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, a story we find in all four Gospels but which, in John, has some characteristics of its own.
As Jesus crosses the Sea of Tiberias, large crowds follow him along the shore. This lake was more commonly known as the Sea of Galilee. Its Roman name came from the new town of Tiberias, named after the emperor and founded about AD 20, i.e. during Jesus’ lifetime.
The crowd’s motive in pursuing Jesus was because of the “signs that he was doing for the sick.” The implication is that they were not following Jesus for his own sake or because of his teaching. They were not really disciples, but to some extent, people looking for something just for themselves. It is possible for us to come to Jesus in that frame of mind too, our prayers full of ‘Give me this and give me that’, but with little real commitment to the mission of the Kingdom.
Jesus goes up the mountain and sits down with his disciples. There are echoes here of Moses on Mt Sinai; Jesus is the new Moses and his disciples are the nucleus of God’s new people. It is also close to Passover, a time soon to be linked with the new Passover in the death and resurrection of Jesus and with the Eucharist, which is the new Passover meal. The whole of the chapter is linked to this.
Seeing the vast crowds approaching, Jesus teasingly asks Philip, always presented as being somewhat simple and naive:
Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?
As Philip came from Bethsaida (John 1:44), which was nearby, it was logical to ask him as a ‘local boy’. If Philip had any insight into who Jesus really was, he might have given a different answer. As it was he sees no solution:
Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.
Then Andrew, Peter’s brother and sometimes seen as a companion of Philip (see John 1), mentions a small boy who has five barley loaves and a couple of dried fish. Barley bread was the food of the poor. Obviously, that would not go very far. But of course, it is all that Jesus needs.
The British priest and author, Monsignor Ronald Knox, makes much of this small boy who was picked out of the crowd and was being asked to give up his precious lunch. The boy played a crucial role; it was his tiny contribution which made it possible for the whole crowd to be filled and satisfied.
It is typical of Jesus to make use of someone, a very insignificant person, in the doing of his work. This is something which happens all the time. How many times have I been chosen to be an instrument of God’s work? How many times have I failed to recognise some person I regarded as being of no importance who was in fact bringing me something from God? How often have I not recognised God’s presence in what needed to be done?
Jesus now gets all the people (5,000 men not counting women and children) to sit down on the grass:
In meadows of green grass the Lord lets me lie…[He] prepares a table before me. (Ps 23:2,5)
Then, in a ritual reminiscent of the Eucharist, Jesus:
…took the loaves, and when he had given thanks he distributed them to those who were seated.
All had enough and more than enough to satisfy their hunger, and the disciples are instructed to gather up all that is left over. After doing so, 12 baskets were filled. The Jews regarded bread as a gift of God and it was required that any scraps that fell to the ground should be picked up. These were collected in small wicker baskets which were carried as part of one’s daily attire. Twelve represents a number of completeness and abundance—an indication of just how much there was from the original five loaves that the little boy offered.
The boy provided the offering, but the Lord gave the increase. Such is always the case. The 12 baskets may also represent the Twelve, the ones who actually did the distributing of the Lord’s largesse—still the role of the Church today.
The crowd became excited at the sign they had witnessed and were saying:
This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.
Recall that John the Baptist was also asked if he was the ‘prophet’ (John 1:21).
As we will see in the rest of the chapter, the sign was pointing to Jesus and the food for eternal life which he will give. But the people were thinking of the ‘Prophet’ mentioned in Deuteronomy (18:15) who would be like Moses. Through Moses, God had provided food (manna) and water (from the rock) for the people in the desert. The Prophet they were expecting would do more or less the same.
Jesus, realising that they wanted to make him their leader, fled to the mountains alone. This is an example of one of those temptations experienced by Jesus when fasting in the desert:
…the devil…showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matt 4:8-9)
Jesus had come to win over the people to himself as Messiah and Lord and here was a glorious opportunity when the people were, literally, eating out of his hand. But Jesus knew that this was not the way he was to become king, nor was he to be the kind of king that these people wanted him to be—so he fled. The time for establishing his own kind of kingship would come later on.
We, too, sometimes can be tempted to take steps which seem, at first sight, to bring people to Christ, but on reflection, they may lead to results which are far from the gospel vision. They tend to lead people to ourselves rather than to God.
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Saturday of Week 22 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 4:6-15
In the reading which continues from yesterday’s passage, Paul has been describing himself and Apollos as stewards or managers of God’s message. The focus should be totally on the message rather than on the messengers (also good advice for today’s Church!). As Paul says elsewhere, the messengers are just leaking vessels, vessels of brittle clay. The Corinthians therefore should not be taking sides and pitting one messenger against another, accepting one and rejecting the other. They have no right to be doing such a thing. They should keep to “what is written”. This may refer to Scripture or the written traditions and teachings that had been passed on to them.
The Corinthians themselves can only make judgements based on the teaching they were given, and they should not act as if their ideas were their own. Paul says:
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings!
There is a strong element of irony and sarcasm here as Paul points out their arrogance coupled with their spiritual poverty, in comparison with those by whom they were taught. He wishes it could be otherwise so Paul could share in their riches, but the sad fact is that those riches do not exist.
And in spite of their calling to be apostles, missionaries and teachers, Paul and his fellow evangelisers seem to be at the very bottom of the social ladder:
…God has exhibited us apostles as last of all…
It is as if Paul and the other evangelisers were numbered last in the line of condemned men called to fight for their lives in the gladiatorial arena and on display before the whole world.
There is more irony as Paul mockingly compares his position with the imagined superiority of the Corinthians:
We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are sensible people in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are honored, but we are dishonored.
The fact was, as he had reminded them earlier, they were neither learned nor powerful nor influential. They came from the lower strata of their society.
On the other hand, what Paul says of himself was largely true. He proceeds to give a litany of the trials and hardships he and his companions have to go through to fulfil their mission of proclaiming Christ to the world:
To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are naked and beaten and homeless, and we grow weary from the work of our own hands.
Paul and his companions worked hard to support themselves. For example, we know that Paul supported himself as a tent-maker.
But following the teaching and example of their Master, they turn the other cheek to all the abuse showered on them:
When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.
And as it seems to be implied, some of this abuse comes from the Corinthians themselves.
Paul is saying all this not to shame or condemn them, but “to admonish you as my beloved children”, and to help them realise the real meaning of the gospel they have been called on to embrace. They may have “ten-thousand guardians in Christ”, but they should remember they have only one father, only one person who originally established the gospel among them and that person is Paul:
Indeed, in Christ Jesus I fathered you through the gospel.
All too often we hear Church leaders and pastors being criticised, sometimes with justification. But we do need to remember that, from top to bottom, we are a Church of flawed people. And so, we should keep in mind what Paul says—namely, that what we really need to focus on is the Message rather than the messengers. Some people abandon the Message on the basis of the behaviour of one or two messengers. Sometimes this is a rationalisation for not accepting the Message. We might remember Jesus’ words about being too conscious about the splinter in the eye of the other while there is a large beam of wood in our own. Messengers have had their shortcomings since the very beginning. Just look at Peter and Paul. The gospel, too, is addressed equally to all and the same fidelity is required of every member and not more from some and less from others.
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