Wednesday of Week 26 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Job 9:1-12,14-16

In today’s reading Job responds to Bildad of Shuah, one of his friends and comforters. Basically, Bildad had said that punishment of the wicked is as certain as the laws of nature. There is an implication that Job’s misfortunes are somehow the punishment for his wrongdoings.

Job agrees with this in principle and does not claim that he is sinless. Still, he does wish to have an opportunity to prove that at least he is not guilty of the kind of sin that would bring down on him such terrible misfortunes as he has experienced. He will make serious complaints against God’s treatment of him, but he never abandons his God nor (as Satan foretold) does he curse him.

Much later in the book (chap 42—Saturday’s reading) it is implied that Job persevered, but in these earlier chapters he does so with impatience. We talk about the ‘patience of Job’, but the book is really concerned with his perseverance and refusal to rebel against God. “You have heard of the endurance of Job”, says the Letter of James (5:11).

In today’s reading Job admits that God is all-powerful:

…how can a mortal be just before God?

His speech is filled with the imagery of the courtroom: “answer him”, “argue with him”, “innocent”, “plead”, “Judge”, “summon[ed]”, “pronounce me guilty”, “judges”, “court”, “charges…against me”, “witnesses”. Job strongly argues his innocence, but he feels that because God is so great, there is no use in contending with him. Job’s innocence does him no good. The reason is that God:

…is wise in heart, and mighty in strength…

Job then sings a hymn to the overwhelming power of God over his creation; he is the Master and there is no other. He moves mountains and performs countless wonders. But Job feels no blessings from all this. These actions simply speak of an unchallengeable power. Job does not yet see that God’s power is controlled by goodness and justice (see Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount about the universality of God’s love, Matt 5:45). At this point, however, Job cannot see clearly that God’s power is controlled by goodness and justice. He sees simply a God who can do what he likes when he likes and against whom the creature has no redress.

The power of God is illustrated in the ways he can overturn mountains and move the earth so that it shakes on its pillars. The ancient world believed that the earth was a flat surface supported underneath by great pillars. Earthquakes, too, must have been a truly frightening experience (as they still are for us today, but we at least now understand their cause). Later in the book, the earth will be described as suspended over nothing (Job 26:7).

God can control the rising and setting of the sun and the shining of the stars. He alone made the vast heavens and “trampled the waves of the Sea”.

The Jerusalem Bible comments:

“In the Babylonian cosmogonies, Tiamat (the Sea) cooperated in the birth of the gods and was then conquered and subdued by one of their number. The imagination of the people, or of poets, seized on this story: Yahweh became the conqueror who then set Chaos in order and ever after held the Sea and its monsters in control.

Canaanite texts describe the goddess Asherah as walking on the sea (or sea-god) to subdue it. So, in the same way, God ‘treads on the waves’ to control the boisterous sea.

It is the same God who made the vast constellations in the skies—the Great Bear (Plough), Orion and the Pleiades. Although the ancients did not understand fully the nature of heavenly bodies they were overawed by their size and mystery and their movements, which were often believed to influence events on earth. There was more astrology than astronomy. They would have even been more overawed if they had known the true size and extent of the heavens.”

This hymn to the vastness of the universe, all made by an all-powerful God, only makes Job feel worse. He wishes to argue his innocence, but he feels that because God is so great there is no use in contending with him. Job’s innocence does him no good. There is no use asking God, “What are you doing?” He is answerable to no one:

How then can I answer him,
choosing my words with him?

For God is both judge and jury:

Though I am innocent, I cannot answer him;
I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.

Job is obviously not yet clear about what is happening to him.

He acknowledges God’s absolute power over him, but at the same time, questions whether it justifies the situation he now finds himself in. Like his friends, he is still largely of the conviction that the good are rewarded and the evil punished in this life. It is the challenging of this very belief which is at the heart of this book.

The pain and the suffering of the good are not signs of God’s displeasure at all. They can in time be seen positively as signs of grace and God’s love steering us into a deeper relationship with him. Other more impersonal happenings are often simply the effects of the forces of nature (physics, chemistry and biology), and it is not reasonable to expect God to interfere with these.

This is the move from passive fatalism to a positive and welcoming acceptance of whatever way God comes into our lives. Sickness and death are not the ultimate evils; sin, the absence of truth and love, is.

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Wednesday of Week 26 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 9:57-62

Today’s passage has to be seen in the light of yesterday’s Ordinary Time Gospel (Luke 9:51-56). Jesus has reached an important stage in his public life and mission. He is now irrevocably on his way to Jerusalem and all that that means for him—and us.

But he does not want to go alone. His whole purpose is to have people go with him. Already there are his disciples, but there will be more. Today we see three ‘candidates’ coming forward with a lot of good will, but Jesus makes them aware of what following him really means. Their responses to Jesus’ remarks are not given so we do not know whether they became followers or not. The point Luke is making is to show what following Jesus entails.

The first says very generously that he will go wherever Jesus is going. Jesus answers:

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

These words of Jesus indicate not poverty or indigence, but freedom. To follow Jesus fully one needs to be free, not to be tied down by anything and not to be anxious about having or not having things.

There is no evidence that Jesus was poor in the sense of being deprived of the necessities of life. He did not own a house, but it is never even hinted that, by necessity, he had to sleep out in the open air. He belonged to a group of people who more than willingly shared what they had with him.

The second man from today’s Gospel was actually invited by Jesus to be a follower. But he asked first to be allowed to go and bury his father. This does not mean that his father had just died and he wanted to attend the funeral. It is more likely that he wanted, as a dutiful son, to wait for his father’s death before going off with Jesus.

But that is not good enough. The call of Jesus transcends needs of family, tradition and culture. The needs of the living outweigh those of the dead. His father might not die for years; what was the man supposed to do in the meantime?

Once we are aware of Jesus’ call the only time to answer is now. In spite of that, we should not read these lines too rigidly. Clearly, for example, there would be times when one would want to be present at the death of a parent, especially to provide support for the grieving spouse. That would be in total harmony with respect for parents and love for the neighbour. But the man in the example is in a totally different situation. He is talking about an event in the future whose time and place are not known.

Finally, another would-be follower asked first for permission to go home and say goodbye to his family. It was similar to a request made by Elisha when he was called to succeed Elijah as prophet (1 Kings 19:19-21). Elijah’s answer was, “Go ahead.” So what we have here seems a very reasonable request, but it is rejected by Jesus who says:

No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Like Jesus himself turning his face towards Jerusalem and all that it means for him, once the decision has been made to serve God and his people, there can be no turning back.

Again, the words of Jesus should not be taken literally. Read in that way, they would be totally at variance with the loving and compassionate quality of Jesus’ character. The point that is being made in all three examples is the absoluteness, the unconditionality that is required in the following of Jesus. It is a theme which is emphasised more than once in Luke’s Gospel. We cannot be fence-sitters, to have our cake and eat it too. Being a follower of Jesus can never be a part-time affair. It is all or nothing. At the same time, the demands of agape-love are always there. It is a matter each time of discerning where the truly loving act lies.

If we are honest, a lot of us are like these men in our following of Christ and in the living out of our faith. We do have our material wants (distinct from needs); we feel we cannot live without ‘our little comforts in life’. Today, let us pray today for a high degree of freedom in being able to accept unconditionally God’s will for us. To have that freedom is one of the greatest blessings and graces of our life.

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