Wednesday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 13:1-9

Today we come to the third of the five discourses of Jesus found in Matthew’s Gospel. It consists entirely of the Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it. It might be helpful to go back to Monday of the 10th Week (Ordinary Time) and look again at what is said there about the meaning of the ‘Kingdom of heaven’. Briefly to repeat, we are talking about, not a place and still less a place in the future life, but a network of people and communities who are committed to all that God is and stands for, as revealed to us through the life and teaching of Jesus. The people are those who work to see that God’s will be done on earth, which is the establishment of the Kingdom.

These parables, then, are images that Jesus gives to help us understand how we are to enter into and become part of that Kingdom—of that kingship of God to which we adhere with all our heart and soul.

Our passage begins:

That same day Jesus went out of the house…

What day? And what house? It seems that Matthew is linking the parables of the Kingdom with the scene at the end of chapter 12 (vv 46-50) about those who are on the ‘inside’ and those on the ‘outside’. The house—whose ownership is never referred to, and we know that Jesus had no house of his own—seems to refer to any place where people are gathered together with Jesus.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Matt 18:20)

And wherever people are closely related with Jesus, not just physically, but intentionally, that is what it means to be on the ‘inside’, and it is also to be part of the Kingdom.

We are told that the crowds wanting to listen to Jesus were so great that he had to use a boat moored near the shore to speak to them. In the Gospel, the boat often represents the Church or the Christian community from which Jesus continues to speak his message to the world. We are also told that he spoke to them in parables. Once again, Matthew uses his favourite number by having seven of them. Just to remind ourselves: there are 2×7 generations in Jesus’ genealogy; 7 Beatitudes; forgiveness not 7 but 77 times; 7 ‘alas’ in the condemnation of the Pharisees; and his Gospel is divided into seven main sections—infancy, five discourses, passion.

For three days, that is, for the rest of this week, we are going to be considering the first and the longest of the parables, the parable of the sower. First, today, we have the parable itself, then tomorrow some explanation of the role of parables in Jesus’ teaching and, finally on Saturday, an interpretation of the parable.

The parable itself is very straightforward. It speaks about a farmer sowing seed in his field, a typical Palestinian field of the time. It is obviously a very mixed patch of ground. There are paths going across it where people have long established a right of way. There are bits of rock sticking up above the ground with small hollows where water can gather after rain. At that time, ploughing was done after the seed was sown, so there are weeds and brambles growing wild all over the place. And then there are parts of the field which have good, fertile soil.

This image largely describes too the field in which Jesus, the preacher and teacher, is working. It provides very mixed soil, and much of the seed does not go very far in producing fruit. All this has been described in what we have already seen of Jesus’ mission among the people, the religious leaders, his own family—and his disciples. It is these latter who are the fertile soil, these are the ones who will enter, who are already entering the Kingdom.

A parable in the Gospel usually makes just one point. In this case the message is that God’s plan will succeed, even though there seem to be setbacks. It was as important a message for the early Christians to hear as it is for us today. It is a word of encouragement when Christians see how little success they seem to have at times in their evangelising work. The message is not to worry—God’s Word will prevail, and there will always be fertile soil in which to grow and multiply. Indeed, in the past, some communities did fail, but overall the Christian communities grew and the message spread to every corner of the world.

And then there is the final exhortation:

If you have ears, hear!

‘Listening’ and ‘hearing’ are sometimes used interchangeably. In this context, to ‘hear’ is not just to be physically capable of picking up sound. To ‘hear’ presumes attention and awareness; it implies understanding and acceptance and, ultimately, implementation of what is heard.

Am I ready to enter the Kingdom? What kind of soil do I present for the Lord’s Word? Am I really listening to him in the fullest sense?

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Wednesday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Exodus 16:1-5,9-15

After crossing the Sea of Reeds in safety, the Israelites begin their long, meandering journey to the promised land. In spite of all that God had done for them, they began complaining first of all about their water situation. There was water, but it was too bitter to drink. They discovered it could be made drinkable by throwing a certain kind of wood into it. God also told them that if they acted properly and observed the Lord’s precepts, they would not experience any of the problems which had afflicted the Egyptians. They reached an oasis called Elim, an oasis with twelve water springs and 70 palm trees. There they had an abundance of water and shelter.

Then, as we see in today’s reading, they set off again and arrived in the desert of Sin, which lay about halfway between Elim and Sinai and was clearly not a very hospitable terrain. They were following a route close to the eastern shore of the sea they had crossed earlier. It was the 15th day of the second month, just one month since they had escaped from Egypt. They had eaten the Passover meal and left Egypt on the 15th day of the first month, Abib, later known as Nisan.

Once again the grumbling started. They spoke with nostalgia of the “pots of meat” of Egypt and the abundance of food they had when they lived there. Apparently, all the hardships from which they were so anxious to escape were now all forgotten. And, once again, they laid all the blame on Moses for bringing them to a place where they could only die of starvation.

A patient God heard their complaint and told Moses of his plan to rain down ‘bread’ from heaven on them every day. As a gift from God, the manna was said to come from the sky. It may, in fact, have been something similar to a natural substance still found in small quantities on the Sinai peninsula, but here it is, at least in part, clearly miraculous. 

However, there were some rules to test their obedience to God’s law. Each day they were to pick just what they needed and no more; and, on the day before the sabbath, they were to pick a double portion. Clearly, there was to be no gathering of manna on the sabbath.

This message was passed on by Moses to Aaron who announced it to the people. And, just then:

…the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.

This was the cloud which was accompanying them on their journey, the pledge of God’s closeness to them. What form this manifestation took we do not know, but the message was clearly understood by the Israelites and was intended to put a stop to their grumbling.

Once again the Lord spoke with Moses. He was to tell the people that, from now on, in the evening they would have their fill of meat and in the morning their fill of ‘bread’. Sure enough, that evening a flock of quail came and covered the camp and, in the morning, they saw what looked like hoarfrost all over the ground.

When they first saw it, they asked: “What is that?” and were told by Moses,

It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

“What is that?” is represented in Hebrew as man hu and is taken to be the origin of the word ‘manna’.

We are told that quail are common in the Sinai and that, as mentioned, the manna was possibly the juice of some local shrub. However, the narrative intends some special intervention under natural forms by which God fed his people. 

The Psalms and the Book of Wisdom gratefully recall the gift of manna which, in Christian tradition (as early as John 6:26-58), is a figure of the Eucharist, the spiritual food of the Church, the new Israel, on her earthly journey to the Promised Land. Jesus will refer to the manna as a type of the Bread that he will give (see John 6:32,49-52).

We have since taken over phrases like, “I will now rain down bread from heaven on you” and “This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat” and given them Eucharistic significance.

What is made clear in the story is that the source of the food (and indeed of all we have and receive) is a compassionate and caring God, one who is largely deaf to his people’s constant complaints, their short memories of former help and protection and their weak faith.

We too so often suffer from the same weaknesses. It is so easy to be aware of our grievances and to forget the wonderful blessings we have received in life. Let us count our blessings today and say a big Thank You to our God and Lord.

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