Friday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13

The cure of the paralytic is immediately followed by the call of Matthew, named Levi by Mark and Luke in their versions of the story. Matthew/Levi was an unlikely disciple; he was a tax collector. Tax collectors were among the most despised group of people in Jewish society of the time. Tax collectors never can be particularly popular, given their distasteful job, but in Jesus’ time they were collecting taxes for the hated and pagan colonial ruler. As such they were seen as collaborators and traitors to their own people and to their religion. The Romans had the custom of farming out the collecting of taxes to volunteer agents. These individuals paid up-front the amount that the Romans demanded, and then had to get the money back from the people. In doing so they often collected more than they had paid the Romans. This was their ‘commission’, but there was often an element of extortion and corruption in the whole practice.

Now Jesus invites one of these despised people to be his follower. It is an example of Jesus’ looking beyond the exterior and the stereotype to the potential of the real person inside. Immediately after this, Jesus is seen sitting “in the house” having dinner with his disciples when they are joined by a number of tax collectors and other public sinners. It is not clear whether the ‘the’ refers to the house where Jesus was staying or Matthew’s house. In either event, it was bound to attract the notice of Jesus’ critics.

And indeed some Pharisees, seeing this, are shocked. They ask the disciples (not Jesus):

Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

For the Pharisees, if Jesus is a man of God and a teacher, how can he be seen in the company of people who are religiously unclean? To be in their company is to become contaminated and unclean also.

Overhearing them, Jesus replies:

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.

Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees by looking at the situation from a completely different perspective.

The problem is not of Jesus’ becoming contaminated by the sinful and the unclean, but rather their becoming healed by his presence and influence. The legally-minded (the ritualists) are only interested in themselves; those governed by love (the merciful) think primarily of the needs of their brothers and sisters. There is no need for Jesus to spend time with the virtuous, i.e. with the already converted; it is those in spiritual and moral deprivation with whom he needs to spend his time.

The lesson of today’s reading is extremely relevant for our own day. When looking for potential followers of Christ, where do we tend to look? How many times have we heard people wonder why God picked them as Christian leaders—as priests, religious or lay people? When we look at the Twelve Apostles, they were indeed a strange bunch: full of faults, fragile in their faith, but in the end they started something extraordinary.

Is it not true that a great deal of our pastoral energies in our churches are directed at those already converted? Is it also not true that those most in need of experiencing Christ’s love and healing may be found in places where we are hesitant to go? Perhaps we should have courage and look for people in such places; Christ will be with us when we go there.

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Friday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Amos 8:4-6,9-12

Today’s reading is part of Amos’ fourth vision, referred to as ‘The Basket of Fruit’. Ideally, in a world of great prosperity all should be enjoying its fruits. Experience shows us again and again that that is never the case. The denunciations listed by Amos today have an unpleasantly familiar ring—sadly, little has changed.

The people asked:

When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?

The new moon, like the Sabbath, brought a halt to all commercial transactions. The question was asked by merchants who could not wait for the holy day (devoted to God) to be over so that they could get back to doing business.

Then they say:

We will make the ephah smaller and the shekel heavier…

The ephah was a standard of measure, a little more than our bushel. So the merchants fiddle with their measuring instruments of buying and selling. They take advantage of the poor and the lowly and shamelessly exploit them:

[We will] practice deceit with false balances,
buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals…

They talk about selling even the “sweepings of the wheat.” This practice reminds one of how tea merchants discovered that tea-leaf dust could be used for teabags! And only the Lord knows what goes into some of our processed foods these days.

At the same time, today in many parts of our world, even ‘ordinary’ people enjoy a level of prosperity never dreamed of by the rich in former times. Many workers in North America, Europe and parts of Asia can have their own house, a car, marvellous electronic devices and even go abroad for summer holidays. Solomon in all his glory did not enjoy such perquisites!

But we also live in a world where hundreds of millions live at appalling and totally unacceptable levels of poverty, deprivation, malnutrition and starvation. Every few seconds, someone dies of hunger, most often children.

This cannot last, Amos tells the people in the Northern Kingdom, for the Lord says through Amos:

I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.

The Day of Yahweh is accompanied by cosmic signs, including a solar eclipse. The later prophets enlarge on this, using conventional imagery that must not be taken literally. Darkness, in every sense of the word, will cover the earth.

Celebrations will become times of mourning and songs become lamentations:

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down, and there we wept
when we remembered Zion. (Ps 137:1)

As signs of mourning and loss, people will wear sackcloth and have their heads shaved. People will be reduced to destitution and will lose their only sons. A famine is coming, but it is not a famine of food and water. It is a famine for hearing God’s word. People will have no sense of direction:

They shall wander from sea to sea
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.

This is just what is happening to many in our affluent world. They have lost a sense of values, a truly moral sense, a sense of integrity and solidarity as they are caught up in the consumerist world of hedonism and pleasure. They think, “If you like it, do it!” They seek pleasure and enjoyment and are surprised that they cannot find happiness.

Happiness is only for the poor in spirit, for the gentle and compassionate, for those who hunger and thirst for justice, for those who are peacemakers, for those ready to suffer for the sake of justice and what is right—for those committed to making God‘s Kingdom a reality in our world.

Until we rediscover these truths we will continue to wander from pleasure to pleasure in a search that has no end. But where are we to find the guiding lights that will point us in the right direction? Where are we to go to find him who is the Light of the World, who is the Way, who is Truth and Life? Is it possible that helping to illuminate this path might be a responsibility for me?

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