Saturday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 12:38-44
We come today to the end of our readings from Mark’s Gospel. We stop just on the threshold of prophecies about the end of Jerusalem, the final coming of Jesus and the story of his passion and resurrection. There are two related passages today serving as entry points for this last phase of Jesus’ life and mission among us.
First, Jesus hits out at some of the scribes, the expert interpreters of the law. As such, they feel that they are expected to be perfect models of that law down to its smallest details. Jesus says they go around in long, flowing robes (the working poor could not afford to dress like that) and that they expect to be:
…greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!
Sadly, such behaviour, we have to confess, is still not unknown among Christian clergy and other religious leaders.
At the same time, Jesus says, these leaders were rapacious hypocrites. They did not hesitate to “devour widows’ houses” while at the same time making a show of lengthy prayers. They were the opposite of everything that Jesus was proposing as the way to love and serve God. They emphasised the external appearance rather than the inner spirit; they were concerned about being served rather than serving others; they thought only of what they could get through their privileged position rather than what they could share, especially with those in need.
Jesus warns that, precisely because of their greater knowledge of the law, their responsibilities in not keeping its real spirit will be all the greater—to whom more is given, more is expected.
The mention of widows leads on to the second part of the reading. Jesus was sitting facing the treasury of the Temple and watching the people putting in their offerings. A poor widow—and at the time, widows were almost by definition poor and, because they could no longer produce children, regarded practically as non-persons—rejected by their husband’s family. They were often reduced to poverty. Yet, it is a poor widow who approaches the treasury box and drops in two coins of negligible value.
Jesus draws the attention of his disciples who were with him and points out that the poor woman had put in more than all the others combined. They were contributing what they could easily spare while she put in her whole livelihood. It was an act of total trust in God’s providence and care for her.
It has been pointed out that she put in two coins. In other words, given her situation and under the law, she would have been more than justified in putting in just one. Compare her to the rich man who could not part with his wealth to follow Jesus.
It has also been pointed out that this anonymous woman is, in a way, a symbol of Jesus himself. He also will “empty himself”, give away everything, including his life, out of love for his Father and for us. It seems no accident that the story is placed just here as Jesus enters on his final days.
Today’s two incidents both provide matter for us to reflect on. Do we wear our Christianity just on our sleeve? Do we tend to assert our “rights” over others and expect due deference from them, e.g. in our working place? How much of what we have are we willing to share with others? Let us pray as St Ignatius prayed:
Teach us, Lord, to be generous.
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Monday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 12:1-12
This will be our last week of readings from Mark’s Gospel. We are now in chapter 12 and fast approaching the climax of Jesus’ life and mission. This chapter is marked by a growing conflict between Jesus and the religious and political leaders of his own people. The chapter begins today with a parable (or, more accurately, allegory) directed towards that leadership. Its meaning was very clear to those who heard it.
It tells the story of a man who planted a vineyard, fitted it out with all that was necessary and then let it out to tenants to cultivate. It is clear that the owner is God, the vineyard is Israel and the tenants the people of Israel. The words of Jesus echo very closely a similar image in a poem by the prophet Isaiah:
I will sing for my beloved In Isaiah’s image the vines only produce sour grapes. In Jesus’ story there are evidently good harvests. The problem arises when the owner sends his servants to collect what belongs to him of the harvests. One after the other, the servants are driven away, beaten up or even killed. It is a clear reference to the way that God’s people treated the many prophets which God had sent to them. In exasperation, the owner decides to send his only son, expecting that they will at least respect him. But no, the tenants argue that by killing the only heir, the vineyard will inevitably become their property. When the son (Jesus) arrives, they seize him, kill him and throw him out of the vineyard (a reference to Jesus being crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem). Jesus then says: What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected Jesus is rejected by the leaders and by many (but not all) of his own people. The Gentiles will be invited to take their place and will be more than happy to fill it. The words Jesus quoted from Psalm 118 can apply either to himself or the Gentiles. Jesus, the rejected and crucified one, becomes the cornerstone. Or, the despised Gentiles become the recipients of God’s love and grace and the cornerstone of the new Christian communities. Clearly, this story did nothing to endear Jesus to the leaders. They would have (as foretold by the story they had just heard) seized him, but they were afraid of the crowd (also Jews) who stood in awe of Jesus, his words and works. This is one of those stories where we can be tempted to sit in judgement on those who rejected Jesus. But we are not reading it today for that purpose. Rather we are being asked whether we are listening to the word of God as it comes to us in the various people that God sends into our lives. How much better are we than the scribes and Pharisees? How often do we rationalise ourselves out of doing what God clearly wants us to do? What welcome do we give to God’s messengers? Do we even recognise them when they come? Maybe today—right now—would be a good time to listen more carefully than we normally do.
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?”
Monday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Tobit 1:1 – 2; 2:1 – 8 (more…)
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Saturday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Tobit 12:1, 5-15, 20 (more…)
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Thursday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Tobit 6:10-11; 7:1, 9-14; 8:4-9 (more…)
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Tuesday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 12:13-17
Possibly in response to the parable of the wicked tenants which we read yesterday, a delegation comes to confront Jesus. Their composition is rather unusual, but proves the ancient saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. It would be hard to find two groups more ideologically opposed than the Pharisees and the Herodians. The Pharisees set the highest standards in their observance of the Law. They were highly patriotic and strongly anti-Roman. The Herodians, on the other hand, were seen as rather lax and not particularly devout. And they had the reputation of being a little too cosy with the Roman colonial powers. In normal circumstances, these two groups would never be seen in each other’s company. But now they had a common opponent in Jesus. For Jesus was seen, depending on how he was interpreted, as challenging the Law on the one hand and as a potential rallying point for anti-Roman sentiment on the other.
The confrontation is carried out with a good deal of subtlety. It begins with shameless flattery:
Teacher, we know that you are sincere and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with truth.
In fact, every word of this is absolutely true and would that it could be said of every one of us! In their book, however, it means that Jesus is a very dangerous person and, indeed, people like Jesus have run into trouble all through history, not least in our own days.
Having, as they imagined, totally disarmed Jesus by their positive approach, they smoothly slip in the knife. One can almost hear the blandness and feigned innocence with which they ask their question:
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
It sounds to us a very straightforward question, but it was, in fact, one of the most politically sensitive issues of the day. And of course, it was a trick question.
If Jesus said it was permissible, then he incurred the wrath of every Jewish patriot, most of all the powerful Pharisees, who deeply resented the presence of the Roman power on their land. If he said it was not permissible, then he could immediately be denounced by people like the Herodians to the Roman authorities for subversion. In either case, he would lose.
Jesus, of course, immediately sees through their deceit. He asks to be shown a denarius, a coin roughly equal to a day’s wage. It was a Roman coin and it carried the head of the emperor, Caesar Augustus. Pointing to the image, Jesus asks whose head it is and he is told it is that of the emperor. Jesus said,
Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.
His enemies “were utterly amazed at him” and reduced to speechlessness with no comeback. It was an answer that said everything and said nothing. It said everything because no one could quarrel with it; it said nothing because it did not decide in any way what belonged to God and what to the emperor.
The whole scene, of course, reflects a serious problem besetting the early Church. How much allegiance did they owe, as Christians, to the temporal power, especially one where the emperor was seen as having divine prerogatives or was openly persecuting Christians? There were clearly limits to the allegiance they could give. This resulted in waves of persecutions and large numbers of martyrs dying rather than compromising their faith.
The problem of how much allegiance Christians owe to temporal powers is still a live issue for us today. It concerns the question of separation of Church and state and how that is to be interpreted. It concerns the way we—both electors and elected—vote when sensitive moral issues are at stake.
In one sense, God has a total claim on our allegiance. There is nothing which does not belong to him. Nevertheless, society, through its legitimate authorities, also has a claim on our allegiance. It can make demands on us in asking us to contribute, e.g. through taxation, to promoting the overall well-being of our whole community, especially of those who are in need.
As Christians, we cannot simply isolate ourselves from the political arena, that is, the area in which the interests of the citizenry are discussed and managed. The political arena is inseparable from issues of truth and justice, and there is no way that Christians, who are committed to building the Kingdom, cannot be concerned about the welfare of their fellow citizens. “The Church should not dabble in politics,” say some. No, it should not dabble; it should be deeply involved in every important moral and social issue.
Nevertheless, the words of Jesus remain our guiding principle: we give to God what belongs to him and we give to society what it has a right to ask of us—our cooperation in making it a place guided by the principles and values of the Kingdom. To do anything less is to fail to give everything to God.
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Wednesday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Tobit 3:1-11, 16-17
Today’s reading follows immediately on yesterday’s where we saw the good Tobit, now blind, being taunted by his wife as being something of a pious hypocrite. We are given pictures of two people in deep distress, people who feel that life is no longer worth living.
The first of these is Tobit. In response to his wife’s indignant outburst, which he seems to have felt was not altogether wide of the mark and feeling sorry for himself over his blindness, Tobit breaks into a long lament.
He acknowledges God’s truth and justice.
All your ways are mercy and truth; you judge the world.
Like Job, in spite of his distress, he never utters a word of complaint against God himself.
He pleads with God to look compassionately on him and not to punish him for his wrongdoings, including those he is not aware of. Though Tobit is a good, observant Jew, he is not without sin. At the same time, he cannot, in his position of exile, make the necessary sacrifices to atone for them.
He pleads forgiveness too for the sins of those ancestors who disobeyed the Lord’s commandments. It is no wonder that his people have suffered so much from being plundered, sent into exile and death, and become a byword of mockery among the nations. To some extent he sees himself as liable for those sins too and they are partly the source of his present troubles.
For we have sinned against you and broken your commandments; and you have given us over to be plundered, to captivity and death, to be the talk, the laughing-stock and scorn of all the nations among you have dispersed us.
Finally, he puts himself fully into God’s hands and asks that his life on earth be terminated.
Deliver me from this affliction. Let me go away to my everlasting home…
His words are similar to those of Jonah who wanted to die because God would not destroy the pagan people of Niniveh. Moses, too, prayed for death (Num 11:15) as did Elijah and Job. The “everlasting home” was Sheol, the dismal abode of the dead from which there was no return.
It is better to die than still to live in the face of trouble that knows no pity. I am weary of hearing myself traduced.
He seeks to become again the dust from which he originally came, and to find a release from the undeserved insults of his wife. God, however, has other plans as we shall see.
At this point we move, with no apparent reason, to a completely different setting. Here we are introduced to Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, who lived in Media at Ecbatana.
She had become the object of taunts from one of her maidservants as she had been married to no less than seven different men in succession. But each one of them had died before they had had an opportunity to have intercourse together as man and wife (see a similar yet very different situation in today’s Gospel reading). This curse was understood to be the work of Asmodeus, “the worst of demons”.
The meaning of the name Asmodeus is uncertain but it probably means ‘the destroyer’. The name appears in the Testament of Solomon (where he also is the enemy of the marriage act) and in post-biblical Judaism; some think Asmodeus may be related to Aesma, a demon of the Parsees in northern India. The demon love, a common motif in ancient folklore, also appears in 1 Enoch 6-11. Here, the demon who cannot satisfy his lust kills his rival each time before the marriage is consummated, thus leaving Sarah without the possibility of offspring and making her the object of great reproach.
Even a maidservant could accuse Sarah of being the cause of her husbands’ deaths. She was a disgrace and an embarrassment to every other woman, whose primary obligation was to provide sons for her husband.
Deeply distressed, Sarah went to her father’s room with the intention of committing suicide by hanging herself. Unfair reproach leads Sarah, like Tobit, to wish and pray for death.
But then, she had second thoughts. If she hanged herself in her father’s room, the blame could fall on him. In addition, how could she cause such grief to an elderly father who loved his only daughter so much? Her death could hasten his own death.
Her rejection of suicide indicates a concern for her family which is lacking in Tobit.
Instead of hanging herself, she wanted God to allow her to die in some other way and not have to bear any more terrible insults from those around her. Like Tobit, she then recites a prayer to God which is not included in our reading.
Once again, God has his own plans, and the two previously unconnected victims are brought together in the unexpected way described in the last verse of the reading.
There are a number of issues for us to reflect on. In a time when assisted suicide and euthanasia are widely discussed, we need to sympathise with and try to understand the feelings of those for whom the burden of living has become too great. This is especially the case in our own times when people tend to live much longer (or are kept living much longer) and become the victims of debilitating old age. We also have the tragic situation where so many young people can see no future for themselves and, feeling they have no one to turn to, put an end to their lives.
In both the cases of today’s reading, we see Tobit, an older man, and Sarah, the young woman, begging God to let them leave this life. Yet, in very unexpected ways, help comes. Let us make sure that people we know in such a situation can find the help they need. For the terminally ill, it is to be able to die with dignity and peace and surrounded by love and care. For the young, it is to know that there are always alternatives, and that there are people who can understand, who will not judge, and who want to help.
We also see in the story the secondary role of the woman as the means by which her husband can produce an heir, preferably male. This is an attitude which has not completely disappeared even in so-called enlightened societies, but which needs to be challenged.
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Wednesday of Week 9 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Mark 12:18-27
Jesus faces another confrontation today, this time with Sadducees. The Sadducees were a group which did not accept many of the beliefs held by the Pharisees. They confined their beliefs to the Pentateuch, the so-called books of Moses that comprise the first five books of our Bible.
Among the beliefs they rejected was that of life after death. Armed with this conviction, they approached Jesus with a hypothetical case which they felt could not be answered by him.
A woman married a man, but he died before they could have children. In order that her late husband, the eldest son in his family, would have heirs, she followed a law (known as the Levirate law; see Deut 25:5-10) which said she had to marry her husband’s brother. She did so, but he also died and, in the end, she married seven brothers, all of whom died before a child could be conceived.
The Sadducees’ question to Jesus was that, if there is life after death, which of the seven men would be her real husband in the next life? For them, of course, there was no problem, but for Jesus and all those who believed in an after-life, they thought it created an insoluble situation.
Jesus answers them on two fronts. First, he says that in the next life marriage will no longer exist. People will all be related equally in a common relationship with God. Second, he astutely quotes from the book of the Exodus, a book of the Bible which the Sadducees acknowledge as divine revelation. Jesus reminds them that God spoke to Moses from out of the burning bush and:
He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
(Exodus 3:6)
Jesus adds:
He is God not of the dead but of the living…
God did not say to Moses: “I was the God of Abraham”, or “I used to be the God of Abraham”, but “I am (another I AM statement) here and now the God of Abraham”.
Perhaps we might not be altogether swayed by this argument, but faced with a text from a part of the Bible they accepted as divine revelation, it was a statement the Sadducees could not question…and they had no comeback.
It is useful for us to be able to handle distortions of our faith which can sometimes be thrown at us. It is essential that we are familiar with our Bible in order to do so. But we might also say that we do not bring people to Christ simply by besting them in arguments. The real way to bring people to Christ is by the compelling example of our words, our actions and our attitudes reflecting his love and tolerance.
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