Month: October 2018

Jeremiah 31:7-9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52

The key word in our reading from Jeremiah this Sunday is “remnant.”  Though Israel has been defeated by Babylon, a few remain, and will come back.  Central to this remnant are “the blind and the lame.”  They show both how weak is the remnant and how strong is God, who can save even the weak.

Our Psalm adds “the torrents in the southern desert.”  It’s an important image, please watch this video.  Where there is nothing, God brings abundance.

(I like this one, too.)

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We continue our reading of Mark with the story of blind Bartimaeus.  Now it is Jesus restoring the blind remnant.

The story opens with an important but obscure detail: “As Jesus was leaving Jericho.”  He is on the road to Jerusalem.  Jericho is in the Jordan flood plain, the typical path south from Galilee.  Perhaps you know cities like this, such as Denver: it is the last city at the foot of the mountains, before you go up to Jerusalem.  The very next verse after our reading, Jesus begins his triumphal entry: Palm Sunday, on the way to Good Friday.

That context illumines Bartimaeus’ cry: “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. . . . Son of David, have pity on me.”  (The word is eleison, as in “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.”  It’s what beggars cry, and the response is not just to withhold punishment but to give alms–or better, to give sight.) When Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds will say, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”  Later, in Jerusalem, Jesus will argue with the scribes about the Christ’s relation to David.

But this is the first time David is named in Mark’s Gospel.  Mark says Bartimaeus spoke, “On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth”—not the city of David.  In other words, Bartimaeus has a kind of intuition.  He is the first of the remnant to cry out in welcome to the true king of Israel as he enters Jerusalem.  The king is welcomed not by the wise of this world, but by the weak, the remnant.

***

Mark gives us another detail: he calls him, “blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus.”  In fact, Bar- (like Ben-) is Hebrew for “son of.”  Bar-timaeus has no other name but “son of Timaeus” and “blind man.”  The son of Timaeus welcomes the son of David: a little contrast to bring out the identity of Jesus the King.  I am not the son of David, he is.

In fact, Timaeus, says my Hebrew dictionary, means “the dirty one,” or “ritually impure.”  David means “beloved.”  The dirty one welcomes the beloved.  This is the true entry of the King, and the true meaning of mercy.

***

Mark repeats a word: “Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’  So they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.’”  The word for “call” is just “sound.”  The blind man cannot see, so Jesus reaches out another way.  (Flannery O’Connor has the great line about Christian literature, “To the hard of hearing, you shout.”  But Mark seems to say, “To the hard of hearing, you wave; to the blind man, you shout.”)  Jesus condescends to speak as we can hear him.

And he gives him sight.

***

Then Jesus says, “Go your way”: it’s a strong word, “pull away,” “go home.”  Jesus lets him go—but the response of the blind man healed by Jesus is, “he followed him on the road,” to Jerusalem.

An odd detail is that when they call the blind man, “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.”  In part, the “throwing aside” (another strong word) emphasizes the “springing up,” the joy with which he leaps to meet his king and healer.

But I wonder if there’s not more.  I’m not sure what it is—these cloaks are ubiquitous in Mark’s Gospel.  A cloak is what the woman (to whom, as to Bartimaeus, Jesus says, “your faith has saved you”) reaches out to touch; it is what turns white at the Transfiguration, and what is stripped by the soldiers; it is what the people will put on Jesus’ donkey and strew on his path when he enters Jerusalem; and Jesus will say of the end, “let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains . . . and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.”  Anyway, Bartimaeus does not go back for his cloak, he leaves his old life behind to follow, under the cloak of the king, to Jerusalem.

***

Our reading from Hebrews tells us what is necessary for this encounter.  Jesus is the high priest who “is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring, for he himself is beset by weakness.”  But “No one takes this honor upon himself but only when called by God . . . You are my son.”

Jesus can reach Bartimaeus and the rest of the remnant because in his weak humanity he walks the paths of the world.  But he can heal us and lead us to glory because he is also the divine son of God, the true king and the high priest clothed in glory.

What does it mean for you to be part of the remnant, like Bartimaeus? 

Isaiah 53:10-11; Psalm 33; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45

In this Sunday’s Gospel, James and John ask for privilege: they want to sit at Jesus’s right and left in glory.

Our last few readings from Mark, in fact, have walked us through the evangelical counsels: poverty, chastity, and obedience.  First Jesus talked about marriage.  In Mark’s version he doesn’t talk about celibacy (though Matthew does).  But the evangelical counsel is called “chastity,” not celibacy, and although we are not all called to celibacy, Jesus does present the golden path of his very high call of marriage.

Celibacy is an “evangelical counsel,” that is, something the Gospel presents us helpful, but not necessary.  “Chastity” reminds us that these counsels call to everyone.  We are all called to radical faithfulness in regard to sex and marriage, to a transformation that is impossible for man, but for God all things are possible.

The next story, the Rich Young Man, made the same point about poverty.  We are not all called to sell all we have, that is only a “counsel”—but we are all called to a kind of radical fidelity through detachment from possessions.  That too is a gift of grace: not the grace to enter the kingdom of heaven rich, but the grace to abandon our riches and pass through the eye of the needle.

And in this week’s story, he points to the counsel of obedience.  To vow obedience to a religious superior is only a counsel.  But we are all called to radical fidelity by renouncing our desire for power and authority.  “Those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.  But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant.”  Not everyone has to vow obedience—but we all, “whoever,” must be servants.

We are not all called to vows of religious poverty, chastity, and obedience.  But we are all called to the spirit of these counsels.

***

The Lectionary skips over three verses, between the Rich Young Man and this week’s reading, where Jesus again foretells his death.

But our story does present us with the conflict between worldly mentalities and the mentality of the kingdom.

When they ask to sit at his side in glory, he says, “You do not know what you are asking.”  Their idea of glory is all screwed up.

But he concludes, “You know”—this is what you do know—“that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them.”  What we know is the desire for power.  That is worldly wisdom.  Jesus calls us to a new wisdom, what we do not know.

***

Most translations have him ask, “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”  But there are no question marks in the original Greek, and perhaps it is a statement: “Let me tell you what you can do: You can drink my cup, receive my baptism.”  We receive that cup and baptism sacramentally, so that we can receive them literally when our sufferings are united to his.

Then Jesus says, “You will drink . . . and be baptized; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give, but is for those for whom it has been prepared.”  “Prepared” could be translated, “adjusted to,” “fitting for.”  What Jesus gives us his cup and his baptism.  Those are our path, our preparation, for glory.  But it isn’t his way to give us glory without that preparation; the only path to glory is through the cup and the baptism, through the Cross of Christ.

***

He concludes by talking about “those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles.”  “Recognized” is important.  The ones who seem to rule are not really the ones who rule.  They are not really lords, do not really influence people as they—and we—think they do.  “You know that those who seem,” he says: your worldly knowledge is a matter of appearances, not of reality.

Renounce that worldly mentality and follow the Son of Man, who “did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

***

Thus our reading from Hebrews tells us that Jesus, son of God, has become our high priest by sharing in our weakness, so that our weakness—our cup and baptism—can become an approach to “the throne of his grace” and mercy.

Isaiah tells us that the one who “gives his life as an offering for sin”—Jesus, and then us who join in that cup and baptism—“shall see his descendants in a long life.”  The way to success is not the way we think.  We must follow the way of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Where has worldly wisdom infected your life?

Wisdom 7:7–11, Psalm 90, Hebrews 4:12–13, Mark 10:17–30

This Sunday’s Gospel is the Rich Young Man.  Mark’s version is too rich for this short space.

The drama heats up when Jesus names the commandment: “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and mother.”  Matthew and Luke both report the same ordering of commandments: the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth, then back to the fourth, “honor your father and mother,” the positive good that undergirds the negative prohibitions of the other commandments about neighbors.

But Mark has Jesus throw in one more: “You shall not defraud.”  That is not one of the Ten.  In fact, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, that word appears only twice.  One is in the prophet Malachi: “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who DEFRAUD the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.”

Jesus sees to the man’s heart.  The prophets just spell out what was implicit in the law.  Theft and false witness are the main issues.  But Jesus challenges him: have you “defrauded the hired worker in his wages”?  Have you covered your theft behind a hidden false witness?  (Have we?)

***

The man responds, “Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.”  Perhaps he is lying.  Or perhaps Jesus is showing him that even if you follow the Law exactly, “You are still lacking in one thing.”  In fact, the deeper issue beneath the Law, the issue the Law protects but does not exhaust, is love.  As Jesus points out at the beginning, the deeper issue is what we think is “Good,” whether we know that nothing “is good but God alone”—and therefore “no one” is good until his heart is fixed on God alone.

“God alone” is why we must not steal, bear false witness, or defraud the hired worker in his wages.  But “God alone” means, too, that we must be willing to go beyond the law, sell everything, and follow Christ.  Why does the man cling to his possessions?  Why do we?  It is a question of whether we know what is truly good.

***

The other time “defraud” appears in the Old Testament is earlier on, at the very beginning of Moses giving the Law, when he talks about divorce: “If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not defraud her of her food, her clothing, or her marital rights” (Ex. 21:10).  And in Mark, this story comes immediately after Jesus has talked about what Moses said about divorce.

These things are all tied together.

Fascinating that this story ends with him saying “no one who has left . . . mother or father . . . for my sake . . . will not receive . . . children.”  There’s lots else he’s saying—lots of issues beyond marriage.  But fascinating, because in the previous story (last Sunday), he has just said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother,” and in the story right before that (two Sundays ago) he said, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me,” and right after he talked about marriage he said, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

It is all about what we leave and what we receive, in Jesus’ name, and for his kingdom.  No one is good but God alone—yet in God’s name we must receive the whole world anew.  We must not “defraud” God’s kingdom of the love it deserves.

***

There is an innocence in this receiving.  Thinking about the reading this week, I was fascinated by a funny juxtaposition.  When Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” the disciples “were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, Then who can be saved?”  “Exceedingly astonished” is a lot (and it’s a good translation).  The disciples’ argument seems to be that if the rich can’t be saved, no one can!

But the very next thing is that Peter says, “We have given up everything and followed you.”  The disciples have already done exactly what Jesus asked the rich man to do.  Why, then, are they so amazed?  I’m not sure.

The best I can come up with—let me know what you think!—is that for once, the disciples are doing something right.  But they are doing it right because they have not done it self-consciously, not as the Pharisees. It’s not that there’s a law of poverty, and the disciples follow it, and say, “Wow, look at us, we are the greatest!”  (Though we know they are tempted to think that way.)

It sounds more like this is the first time the disciples have even noticed that they gave up everything.  It suddenly dawns on them, after they have been “exceedingly amazed” at Jesus’ demand on the rich young man, “Hey, wait a minute . . . we did that, didn’t we?”

They didn’t do it because it was the Law.  They did it because Jesus was good.  They didn’t do it for their self-righteousness—they did it because “No one is good, but God alone,” and as Peter said a chapter before, at the Transfiguration, “It is good [beautiful] that we are here,” I wish I could make a tent and stay here.  Jesus says, “That’s right, it is good.  Follow me, not so you can be good, but because I am.”

Are there places in your life where you haggle over Jesus’ demands, because you forget how good and beautiful he is?

Searching the Scriptures

I recently heard a Thomist I respect tell priests that they need to plan non-Biblical “doctrinal” homilies, because the Lectionary doesn’t hit the important points.  I think he’s wrong about that.  Especially this past Sunday.

Our Gospel was on marriage.  It is shocking how directly Jesus speaks into our current “issues”—and how much more deeply he speaks than anyone else.  (It is not sufficiently noticed that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is nothing but a meditation on Scripture: and it hits everything.)

***

The Lectionary’s choices for first and second reading are fabulous.  The first reading, naturally, is the passage from Genesis that Jesus quotes: Adam says, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh . . . .  That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”  (The ancient Hebrew doesn’t have quotation marks.  Today, we tend to assume that “That is why” is the narrator commenting on Adam’s words.  Traditionally, they thought those too were Adam’s words: his prophecy about marriage.)

The Second reading is the beginning of the seven-week tour of Hebrews with which we fill finish this Year of Mark.  It is not about marriage.  But it is about flesh: Jesus “was made lower than the angels” so that he “might taste death for everyone,” and become “perfect through suffering,” and thus call us “brothers.”

What is important about these readings is how they portray family as a matter of both “flesh” and relationship.  When Adam calls Eve “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” he is using an Old Testament expression that has nothing to do with sex.  It is what Jacob’s uncle Laban calls him (Gen 29:14), what Abimelech says to “the house of his mother’s father” (Judges 9:2), what the tribes of Israel say to David (2 Sam 5:1, 19:13), etc.  It means “she is my sister,” family.

So too when in the very next verse “the two of them become one flesh.”  That’s not a euphemism for sex.  It’s an enduring state of relationship.  And it is a relationship that is both flesh and person.  They become entirely one: family.  So too Jesus becomes one of us: family, our “brother.”

***

In the Gospel, there are three things to note.  The first, of course, is the prohibition of divorce.  “The two shall become one flesh.  So they are no longer two but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”  Again, it’s not talking about sex: that fleshy union doesn’t last long.  Rather, it’s talking about becoming family.  Once that is joined, there is no breaking it.

Catholics don’t just “oppose” divorce.  We don’t believe in it.  It isn’t possible.  You can’t stop being married any more than you can stop being brother and sister, or father and son.

***

Love as I have loved

But second, notice that Jesus goes beyond the prohibition.  “Because of the hardness of your hearts he [Moses] wrote you this commandment.”  Lately there has been a lot of talk in the Church about mercy and divorce.  In fact, Moses’ mercy was to let them divorce and remarry, slowed down a little but not much by the “bill of divorce.”  Moses couldn’t do anything about their hardness of heart, and when hearts grow hard, marriage becomes impossible: because it’s not just “flesh,” it’s a relationship.

But Jesus is God.  He can do something about our hardness of heart.  Human mercy can offer external helps, but often all we can do is give up.  Jesus, “made perfect by suffering,” can give us the strength to get through our struggles.  He can soften our hardness of heart.  That’s what grace means.

Marriage is a central issue for Christian faith because we see this softening of hearts “take flesh.”  It’s for real.  Jesus can actually help us.

***

And that might be (third), why the next paragraph has Jesus saying, “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”  Children are in a state of becoming.  They have begun the path to adulthood, but they still have a long way to go.

The only way to live marriage is to realize that God isn’t finished with me yet.  He is still at work, transforming me, building me a natural heart, teaching me to love.  Marriage, and all of family, is a life-long project of being transformed by the grace of Jesus Christ.  It is, in fact, the most tangible, fleshly example of how Jesus has made himself part of our family, and ourselves part of his family, and is sharing with us his sacred heart.

The failure of liberals and conservatives both is to think that the way we are now is the final word.  Unless we realize that we are still children, we can never grow up to the kingdom of God.

What transformations is family demanding of you?