Sunday of Week 19 of Ordinary Time (Year A)
Commentary on 1 Kings 19:9, 11-13; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33
Today in the Gospel, we have a continuation of last week’s story about the feeding of thousands of people by Jesus in the desert. Immediately after the event, we are told that Jesus:
…made the disciples get into a boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.
Was there reluctance on their part to go? Certainly there is the implication that the disciples were not too willing to leave the scene. They were enjoying the reflected glory of being part of Jesus’ ‘miracle’ and the enthusiasm of the crowds for Jesus, ‘their’ Jesus. They were basking in the reputation of being partners with Jesus. Yet, it won’t be very long before they will be hiding, even denying under oath, ever having had connection with him.
Jesus himself, after having dismissed the crowds:
…went up the mountain by himself to pray.
In John’s version of this story he tells us that the people, after being fed by Jesus, actually wanted to make him their king. They, like the disciples, have totally missed the meaning of what has happened.
Here indeed was a real source of temptation. Jesus could easily have convinced himself that here was a golden opportunity to get control of the crowds and ‘save’ them. They were so ready to follow him—it seemed. The world was at his feet. There is an echo here of one of the temptations in the desert after his baptism:
…the devil took him to a very high mountain and 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)
Instead, Jesus flees to the shelter of the mountains, not to have a panorama of the world’s kingdoms, but to pray to his Father and renew his purity of heart and his commitment to the Father’s way. His power will be exerted through love and service and not through domination, control and popular appeal. Jesus’ work is not to be seen in terms of crowd-pleasing miracles or supernatural powers. It is primarily for him—as it is for us—in the quality of his relationships with God, with people and with his mission. Jesus’ mission—and ours—gets its significance in a life of service, sharing and community building, in the ‘Kingdom-ising’ of our environment. It does not consist in having power over others or in becoming an idol of the crowds.
Having a hard time
The story now switches back to the disciples. They are far out on the lake by now, battling with a heavy sea and fighting a strong headwind. It is quite clear that here we are seeing a parable of the Church itself, represented by the disciples in their fragile boat surrounded by hostile winds and waves. It was the common experience of the Church during its first centuries and, in many parts of the world today, continues to be the case. IIt was a situation that created, then as now, much fear and anxiety.
Then, all of a sudden, they see Jesus approaching them walking on the lake. Far from feeling reassured, they become even more terrified, thinking him a ghost. It is a measure of their superstitious natures and, as such, a measure of the long way they have to go in exorcising such superstitions and replacing them with a genuine faith in God. One still meets a great deal of such irrational fears in people, including Christians, today. For instance, how many of us here would be comfortable walking alone through a large empty cemetery on a dark, moonless night? Even though it would probably be a lot safer than walking down one of our city streets at such a time!
No need to fear
Then out of wind and wave and terror comes a comforting voice:
Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.
The disciples need courage whose source is their confidence and trust in the protection of their Lord. Through the words “It is I” (literally, ‘I AM’, in Greek, ego eimi), Jesus identifies himself with the saving power of God himself. They are the words spoken to Moses from the burning bush. As such, there is no need for fear or anxiety in spite of the apparently threatening dangers around them.
Characteristically, Peter is the first to respond. He is the impulsive one, but he is also the group’s leader:
Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.
“Come”, says Jesus, inviting him to leave the shelter of his boat and go to where the wind and waves are. Peter starts to make his way to the Lord, who is in the wind and the waves, but his fear is too much and he begins to sink. Peter cries:
Lord, save me!
This cry has been echoed by Christians all down the ages who have felt that the world was ready to crush them.
There is something for us to reflect on here: Jesus is not in the boat; he is in that hostile environment into which we often fear to enter and instead huddle in the security of our church. I think it is significant that Jesus is found outside the boat in the middle of the stormy sea, i.e. the world. And we have to go out there to meet him in spite of the dangers and possible setbacks. Too often we Christians spend much, if not all, of our time in the shelter of the boat, taking care of ourselves and neglecting those in the stormy sea who need to hear the words of life:
You of little faith, why did you doubt?
How often has Jesus had to say those words to each one of us?
Peace
Jesus and Peter now step into the boat and the wind drops. There is peace and calm. In Mark’s version of this story, the disciples are simply amazed at the sudden change, but do not draw the obvious conclusion. In Matthew’s version, however, they understand and believe. They even anticipate Peter’s later confession (in chap 16), saying:
Truly, you are the Son of God.
The conclusion, then, is that Jesus can also be found in the boat, but only when we also are ready to leave the shelter of the boat to find him in the ‘world’, that place which is at least indifferent and at its worst very hostile to the Christian vision.
Our own situation
All in all, today’s Gospel reflects problems in the early Church, problems which are not unknown to us today. From the inside there were always problems of unity, conflicting opinions, theologies and spiritualities. From the outside, there were persecutions and misunderstandings from both the Jews and the secular powers.
Paul, in the Second Reading, reflects what must have been something very painful to many Jews who had become followers of Christ, namely, the division and hostility of their fellow-Jews who had not converted. Even today, this relationship still causes pain.
Matthew also here features the special role of Peter, something he constantly stresses. Peter is the leader and so he is the one who steps out of the boat to go and meet Jesus in the midst of the storm. This surely is an image of the Church’s apostolic mission to reach out to find and make Christ present in the world, however hostile it may be. It is not the role of the Church to stay cowering in the shelter of their boat. One remembers the disciples after the death of Jesus hiding behind the locked doors. Pentecost soon changed all that and literally blew them out on a mission that would bring them and their successors to the remotest parts of the earth.
Of course, there are dangers in the world. And the Church, like Peter, is weak and vulnerable. But the Lord is there wherever we go and he will not allow his Church to sink beneath the waves. It has looked very often as if it might happen, but each time the Christian community has risen from the ashes stronger than before.
Jesus our peace
One important lesson of today’s readings is that, in our turbulent world (and much of the turbulence is in our own hearts), Jesus is the source of peace. Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper:
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you…Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)
These words were spoken just before Jesus was to be arrested, tried and executed by his enemies. The ‘world’ cannot provide peace in such a situation, but Jesus can and does. It is for us to learn how to find Jesus, who gives peace in the ups and downs and in the storms of our own lives.
It is put beautifully in today’s First Reading where Elijah is told:
Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord.
And the Lord himself does pass by. But he was not in the wind “splitting mountains and breaking rocks”. He was not in the earthquake. He was not in the fire. However, he was in the “sound of sheer silence”, i.e. a gentle breeze, and Elijah knew that he was in the presence of the Lord. Jesus touches our cheeks with his gentle breezes every day, but we are too concerned about the buffeting winds, the earthquakes and the fires in our lives that attract both our attention and our fears.
Today’s readings, then, are saying two things to us:
- There is never any need for fear and anxiety, for Jesus is always close to us and, no matter what may be happening in and around us, his peace is there for us to share. A Buddhist saying captures it: “Why worry? If I worry, I die. If I don’t worry, I die. Why worry?”
- We have to reject the ambitions and dreams of the world and separate ourselves from them (as when Jesus went into the mountains to pray) but, at the same time, that world which both attracts and threatens is the arena where we are to live out our mission to build the Kingdom of God. We are called to be “not of the world”, i.e. a counter-witness to its ways, but also to be “in the world”, as taste-giving salt and growth-giving leaven. We are to lead people to that moment when they can fall to the ground before Jesus present and active in their lives and say with full recognition:
Truly, you are the Son of God.
Friday of Week 30 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Romans 9:1-5
In today’s reading, Paul now moves on to a theme which causes him great pain, namely, the rejection of Jesus as Messiah by the vast majority of his fellow-Jews.
We hear people making a wholesale condemnation of the Jewish people for their rejection of Christianity, but here as in most situations, generalisations are highly inaccurate. Jesus himself and his mother were Jews. All of Jesus’ early disciples were Jews, as were all of the first converts. Even after Gentiles began to be baptised, there were still Jews becoming Christians. However, the majority were not ready to accept Jesus as the expected Messiah and, in addition, they acted in some places very strongly against the Christians, whom they saw as renegade or heretical Jews.
Speaking of his own people Paul says that:
I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
And he emphasises that these are not just empty words when he says:
…I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit…
Perhaps some felt he was not sincere because elsewhere he has been extremely critical of the attitude and behaviour of some Jews—both Christians and non-Christians.
But he feels so strongly for the spiritual future of his people that he is ready to be cut off entirely from Christ if this would benefit the brothers and sisters who are his own flesh and blood. Literally, he is willing to be “accursed”—an anathema—to be someone condemned and put under a ban of exclusion. And we know how intense Paul’s feelings were for Christ when he says:
…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.
(Gal 2:20)
In his letter to the Philippians his love for Christ is so great that he does not know whether he wants to live or die. In death, he would be with his beloved Christ forever; in life, he could continue his work of helping others to know the Christ he knows and loves (see Phil 1:18).
The “brothers and sisters” who are his “own flesh and blood” are his fellow-Jews, the actual descendants of Jacob (who was also called ‘Israel’). The name ‘Israel’ was then used of the entire nation, and later of the Northern Kingdom alone after the nation was divided, with the Southern Kingdom being called Judah.
During the period preceding and later in New Testament times, Palestinian Jews used the title to indicate that they were the chosen people of God. Its use here is especially relevant because Paul is about to show that, despite Israel’s unbelief and disobedience, God’s promises to her are still valid:
They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship [of God], and the promises…
Emanating from this ancestral link, Paul lists all the privileges that came with it: their adoption as God’s children, the glory of God at times clearly evident among his people, the covenants with Abraham, with Jacob-Israel, with Moses, the worship of the one true God, the Law which expresses God’s will, the messianic promises and, finally, their physical relationship with Christ, a son of David. They have a very special place in God’s plan and it is no wonder that Paul grieves over their rejection of Jesus.
…to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
From the Jews came the great patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his twelve sons, after whom the tribes of Israel are named. But above all, it is from them that Christ is physically descended in his humanity. Jesus was a Jew born of a Jewish mother. All his family were Jews and he spent his whole life, with only one or two very brief exceptions, immersed in Jewish society. He went to the Temple and attended the synagogue. At the same time, Paul reminds us that Christ above all shares God’s divine nature in one of the clearest statements of the divinity of Jesus found in the entire New Testament.
Speaking of Christ’s origins and his relationship with the Father arising from the last sentence in the reading, the Jerusalem Bible comments:
Both the context and the internal development of the sentence imply that this doxology is addressed to Christ. Paul rarely gives Jesus the title ‘God’, though cf. Tit 2:13, or addresses a doxology to him, cf. Heb 13:21, but this is because he usually keeps this title for the Father and considers the divine persons not so much with an abstract appreciation of their nature as with a concrete appreciation of their functions in the process of salvation. Moreover, he has always in mind the historical Christ in his concrete reality as God made man. For this reason he presents Christ as subordinated to the Father, not only in the work of creation, but also in that of eschatological renewal. Nevertheless, the title ‘Lord’, Kyrios, received by Christ at his resurrection, is the title given by the Septuagint [the Greek translation of the Old Testament] to Yahweh in the Old Testament. For Paul, Jesus is essentially ‘the Son of God’, his ‘own Son’, ‘the son of his love’, who belongs to the sphere of the divine by right, the sphere from which he came, being sent by God. The title ‘Son of God’ became his in a new way with the resurrection, but it was not then he received it since he pre-existed not only as prefigured in the Old Testament, but ontologically. He is the Wisdom, and the Image, by which and in which all things were created, and have been re-created, because into his own person is gathered the fullness of the godhead and of the universe. In him God has devised the whole plan of salvation, and he, no less than the Father, is its accomplishment. As the Father raises to life and judges, so does the Son raise to life and judge. In short, he is one of the three Persons enumerated in the Trinitarian formulae. (edited, text references omitted)
This Jewish tradition of which Paul speaks is a tradition which we Christians acknowledge and recognise by our constant reading of the Old Testament. In fact, we cannot fully understand Christ and the New Testament without making the Old Testament part of our tradition.
Jesus, as Matthew points out again and again, was not a turning away from Judaism, but its fulfilment. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
(Matt 5:17)
While we regret that many Jews still distance themselves from our faith—often, it must be emphasised, in good conscience—we must never contribute in any way to the hatred or discrimination that has been directed towards them over the centuries, not least by many who called themselves Christians, leading ultimately to the horrors of the Holocaust.
There can be no doubt that many Jews are very close to God. They are our brothers and sisters and both communities should do all they can to come closer together and share their common heritage.
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