Ordinary Time

Our modern ears can easily interpret the Genesis story as regarding women as subservient. From the perspective of the writer, over 2,500 years ago, the intention was precisely the opposite. Today’s Gospel faces us with a similar issue. We hear it through the prism of our particular questions about church teaching on marriage as a lifelong sacrament, the pain of marriage breakdown and the position of children in society. But to understand what Jesus was saying, we also need to appreciate his context and the questions he was addressing. In Jesus’ time, there were 2 main schools of thought that a man could divorce his wife only for a serious reason, such as adultery. The other school thought that it was a man’s right to divorce his wife for any reason whatsoever – even if she burnt the dinner. The Pharisees’ question was a test. They wanted Jesus to take sides, perhaps even to contradict the Law of God. Jesus refuses to buy into their assumption that a man has any right at all to exercise such power over his wife. By ruling out divorce completely, Jesus is saying: a man can’t treat a woman as an object; he can’t get rid of her for any reason, serious or trivial. Woman is a person with equal dignity and should be respected as such. Jesus’ outright ban on divorce is a rejection of male domination of women – He affirms marriage as a covenant of equal partners. When St. Mark recorded this teaching some years later, his Christian community lived in a very different context – Gentile rather than Jewish, in a culture that gave some women the right to divorce their husbands. So Mark applies Jesus’ teaching to his own community’s situation, balancing Jesus’ prohibition on men divorcing their wives with a equal ban on women divorcing their husbands. Jesus rejects the idea that people can be treated as disposable objects. In welcoming and blessing children, Jesus shows His respect for every human being made in the image of God – even those regarded as the least and most powerless.

Jesus’ teaching on marriage – and indeed His whole attitude and behavior towards women and children – only makes sense when seen in the context of His time and culture. It is a teaching about the essential dignity of every human being and about what that means for all relationships, especially marriage. His teaching is simply that we should treat people as human beings, not as objects for our personal gratification or comfort. It means respecting and upholding the dignity of every person. Domination and control have no place in marriage, in the home or in any relationship. Whether we are married or not, Jesus’ words challenge us to examine the quality of our relationships. Do I treat others as means to my ends, or do I respect their dignity and worth as human beings.

Today’s Gospel has at its heart issues of power. It begins with Jesus speaking about His impending passion, death and resurrection. The problem is that the disciples do not understand what He is saying. Today we are told plainly that they are too afraid to ask for an explanation. Instead of trying to get inside the meaning of Jesus’ words, the disciples argue about who is the greatest among them. They focus on themselves. Being around Jesus, witnessing His power and sharing in that authority themselves has turned their heads. They are followers of a miracle worker. Power flows from and through Him. So how human it is for them to start discussing who is closest to Jesus; who is most effective as a follower; who is most powerful. Hierarchy would have been important to people in the time of Jesus, just as it is today in many areas of our society. Jesus wants to make it clear that greatness or power or hierarchy are not to be focus for His followers. These are things that can turn His disciples in on themselves and make them an exclusive group. Belonging to the group and finding a rank within it is not what matters, but finding Jesus in the least likely places is what counts. Jesus takes a child, someone who is not respected because children had no status in the society of that day, someone who has no rights. Jesus says that true power comes in the ability to open one’s arms and receive a child as if he or she were Christ himself.

In church circles, there can be temptation to think that we are important when we are involved in various ministries, or are given impressive titles. Listening to St. James in second reading, we would do well to be reminded that the disordered desires fighting in ourselves can often be the source of a desire for power and glory. Prayer is surely the antidote. Closeness to Christ through regular prayer will help us to be shaped according to His will and to grow in the humility He so desires for all His followers. Prayer is our weapon of choice. True power comes when we allow ourselves to be filled by the Holy Spirit to be leaven in this world and a member of the body of Christ, clinging to Him in prayer.

In the 1st reading we meet Joshua, one of Israel’s outstanding military commanders. In victories he established his people in the promised land of Canaan. By now he is old and knows that his end is near. He calls the people together at Shehem in the heart of their new homeland and delivers a moving speech. He says nothing of his victories, but only tells the people of critical choice that they have to make: Joshua calls them to “choose today whom you wish to serve;” is it to be the Lord who brought them out of slavery in Egypt or the pagan Canaanite gods? Joshua says that he and his family are setting an example: “As for me and my House, we will serve the Lord.” The people reply: “We too will serve the Lord, for He is our God.” They choose God, they choose life.

The Gospel centers on a choice. Last week He spoke plainly about the Eucharist. It is all too much for some hearers. Jesus agrees: it isn’t easy to accept such a claim. But He doesn’t go back on what He’s said, not even when – and this is one of the saddest sentences in the Gospels – “many of His disciples left Him.” He takes back nothing. He goes further; He turns to the 12 and asks, “What about you, do you want to go away too?” Peter has a wonderful response: “Lord, who shall we go to? You have message of eternal life, and we believe.” They trust Him: they choose God; they choose eternal life.

There is a sense in which that Gospel story becomes a reality at Mass. THE BODY of CHRIST. All we see is a wafer of bread; that’s what it will taste and feel like. As we look at the host, we say AMEN. A tiny word, and full of meaning. It comes from a Hebrew root that suggests solidity and strength. We believe this is the body of Christ: the same Christ who once walked the roads of Palestine; the Christ who healed the sick and comforted rejected. The Eucharist is above all the sacrament of faith, and faith is more than simply saying, “I believe” it is total commitment to Jesus. Our AMEN is like Peter’s declaration: “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life.” We are making a decisive choice…

In today’s Gospel, Jesus describes himself as the “living bread.” After He was gone, they would still have God’s word, and they would have His “living bread” for nourishment. As Catholics, we believe that when we receive the Eucharist we receive the body of Christ. The monk and writer Thomas Merton suggested that “while we eat the substance of the true body of Christ under the sacramental species, we ourselves are eaten and absorbed by the mystical body of Christ…we become as it were perfectly part of that body, assimilated by it, one with its spiritual organism.” By loving one another we are incorporated into the body of Christ and enlightened by Christ. We are to bring life to the world, as He did. Courage, gifts and blessings come to us when we remain close to Jesus and deepen our relationship through the Eucharist.

Bread is a staple of our lives, just as Jesus is central part to our lives. Today’s Gospel focuses on what nourishes and sustains us. Today we get the sign in the breaking of bread that the spirit of Jesus is with us always when we are dedicated to the teachings of Christ and to building life-affirming relationships. The celebration of life has everything to so with food. Food is at the centre of human community-making. The challenge is there for us today. Each of us is called to follow Jesus and we will be filled with food that is far more than daily nourishment.

The first reading from Amos and the Gospel passage from St. Mark have an important message for us, the Christian community today. In Amos we are presented with the prophet being lambasted by a crowd and told that he is never to speak in the way he has been doing. Poor Amos, we may think. However, he does not need our pity; he is a man who utterly believes that what he says and does is just what he was told to say and do by the Lord. In the Gospel we witness how the disciples are given the power to anoint sick people and drive out demons from those who find themselves possessed. This power has come from Jesus and has been gifted to the apostles. These are people who can now minister as they have seen the Lord minister.

It can often seem today that there is a rising intolerance towards Christianity and its message. In our society we are unlikely to meet the kind of persecution that is faced by people of faith in some other countries of the world. We are people who have been given a call, a vocation by the Lord. We know our identity as sons and daughters of God. We have been chosen and made holy bur our God. The more we recognize these truths, the more we should not care what the “crowd” thinks about us. Being Christians today, as it always has been, is about being people of love, people of truth, people of justice, people of integrity, people of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us never give up living the life that we have been called to live.

Jesus encountered opposition and unpopularity in His own country. We see in today’s Gospel that the people in His home town of Nazareth would not accept Him, and that their lack of faith prevented Him from performing any great miracle there. He remarked, “A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house.” People of His home town were so enraged with Him and His teaching that they tried to throw Him over a cliff, but He faced them down and escaped. On the other hand, Jesus sometimes found great faith among people who were not of His own country or race or religion, such as the Samaritan leper whom He cured, or the Roman centurion of whom He said, “I tell you solemnly, nowhere in Israel have I found faith like this”; or again, the Canaanite woman whose daughter healed, telling her, “Woman, you have great faith.”

We might do well to keep some examples in mind in our attempts to proclaim the Gospel today. Many of us are glad to support the missions in faraway countries, but closer to home, if we attempt to spread the Gospel outside the doors of our churches at all, we tend to address our message to what we might call the fringes of our own church community: those who come to Mass at Christmas and Easter, those who send their children to our schools, those who have fallen away from the regular practice of the faith.