23rd Sunday B

23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7  James 2:1-15  Mark 7: 31-37

“Did not God choose those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom he promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5)

Today’s readings announce the coming of God’s kingdom, foretold in Isaiah and realized in Jesus, who brings God’s justice for the infirm and oppressed.  As people of faith in God’s kingdom brought by Jesus, we are called to live by a new standard of justice based on God’s special love for the poor.  We pray in the opening verses of our responsorial psalm: “The God of Jacob keeps faith forever,/ secures justice for the oppressed,/ gives food to the hungry./ The Lord sets captives free” (Ps 146:7).

The Old Testament reading from Isaiah is a prophetic commission to announce God’s salvation to a frightened group of returning Jewish exiles. “Say to those whose hearts are frightened:/ Be strong, fear not!/

Here is your God, /he comes with vindication;/ with divine recompense he comes to save you.”  In God’s name, the prophet is to promise wondrous healing for the infirm.  “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,/

the ears of the deaf be cleared;/ then will the lame leap like a stag,/ then the tongue of the dumb will sing.”  God’s coming kingdom will also turn the barren deserts of Judah into a delightful garden with “streams” and “rivers,” “pools” and “springs of water.”

The Epistle from James exhorts the Christian to avoid favoritism because it is contrary to faith “in the Lord Jesus Christ glorified.”  James’ example is a stunning illustration of the way that worldly standards conflict with those of the kingdom of God.  In the world, the fashionably dressed, wealthy person invariably receives deferential treatment, while the poor, shabbily clad is ignored or shoved aside.  But in the Christian assembly, we are not to discriminate in this way because God has consistently chosen the poor “to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom.”

In Mark’s Gospel selection Jesus fulfills the prophetic expectations of the Isaiah reading by healing a deaf and dumb man in the Gentile “district of the Ten Cities” but then mysteriously commands secrecy about the action.  For Mark, Jesus is both the powerful, healing Messiah, promised in the prophets, but also the poor, suffering servant, who will not be fully revealed until his cross and resurrection.  In this selection, Jesus responds to the people’s begging for a healing, but he takes the deaf and dumb man “off by himself away from the crowd.”  In the healing itself, Jesus uses physical gestures and his Father’s power as he commands that the deaf man’s ears be opened in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.  “He put his fingers into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and emitted a groan.  He said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ (that is, ‘be opened!’) At once the man’s ears were opened; he was freed from the impediment, and began to speak plainly.  But, once he has cured the man, Jesus again enjoins the crowd not to tell anyone.  They, however, are amazed at Jesus and at a certain level realize that he is bringing the long anticipated Messianic age.  They proclaim: “He has done everything well!  He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak!”

Upon his entrance into Jerusalem, the crowds will again acclaim Jesus as the powerful Messiah (see ch. 11), but later they will be unable to accept him as the poor, crucified Messiah at the crucifixion.  “Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Aha!  You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross’” (Mk 15:29-30).  As we rejoice in Jesus’ bringing the kingdom to the needy and infirm, we also remember that this same mission will take him to the cross.  

22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-8  James 1:17-18,21-22,27  

Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23

“The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord” (Ps 15).

In an age tempted to ignore the basic ethical teachings of our Biblical faith, the readings for this Sunday remind us that the central message of the Jewish covenant and Jesus’ ethical teaching is doing the will of God as expressed in the commandments of the Torah. 

Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy is addressed to the Israelites who are about to enter the promised-land.  He reminds them that observance of the Lord’s wise and just commandments will determine if they will live and take possession of the land.  If they carefully observe God’s law without adding or subtracting from it, Moses assures Israel that other nations will observe: “This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.”

The Epistle is taken from the Letter of James which we will be reading for the next several weeks.  James is a work of moral exhortation, calling Christians living in a decadent Roman Empire to live by the ways of God and reject the ways of the world.  In this week’s lesson, James reminds his readers that the Father “wills to bring us to birth with a word spoken in truth so that we may be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.”  The proper response to that word is to humbly welcome it and let it take root within so that one acts upon it.  To simply listen and not act is to deceive one self.  True religion, undefiled by the ways of the world, is a life of action in caring for the needy in our midst.  “Looking after orphans and widows in their distress and keeping one’s self  unspotted by the world make for pure worship without stain before our God and Father.”

In the Gospel, the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus’ traditional enemies in Mark, challenge him by questioning why his disciples do not observe the tradition of the ancestors, but instead take food without purifying their hands.  Mark first carefully explains to his Gentile audience the Jewish purification rituals originally meant for the priestly class (cf. Leviticus 15), but now applied by the Pharisees to all Jews.  Jesus’ reaction is swift and to the point.  He accuses the Pharisees and scribes of being hypocrites like those mentioned in the prophet Isaiah’s prophecy. “This people pays me lip service/ but their heart is far from me.  Empty is the reverence they do me/ because they teach as dogmas mere human precepts”  (Isa 29:13).

In place of an external ritualism which emphasizes merely human laws concerning washings and unclean foods, Jesus proclaims that the only evils which defile a person are those coming from the deep recesses of the human heart (the seat of will and thought in Hebrew psychology).  The list includes actions forbidden by the Ten Commandments. “Hear me, all of you, and try to understand.  Nothing that enters a man from outside can make him impure; that which comes out of him, and only that, constitutes impurity.  Let everyone heed what he hears!  Wicked designs come from the deep recesses of the heart: acts of fornication, theft, murder, adulterous conduct, greed, maliciousness, deceit, sensuality, envy, blasphemy,arrogance, an obtuse spirit.  All these evils come from within and render a man impure.”

At a time when we are reminded daily of dishonesty and corruption at all levels of government and society, today’s readings challenge us to renew our commitment to living simple lives of honesty and justice based on the just decrees of the Lord.very cool!!!!

21st Sunday B

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Readings: Joshua 24:1-2,15-17,18 Ephesians 5:21-32 John 6:60-69

As the Church completes its five weeks of reading John’s Bread of Life discourse, we are given a final challenge to choose to go to Jesus, who has “the words of eternal life.”  We are invited to follow the words of the psalmist in today’s responsorial psalm: “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord” (Ps 34).

In the first reading Joshua has just completed the division of the land among Israel’s twelve tribes and now offers the leaders a choice between serving the Lord, who has delivered them from Egypt and given them the land of Canaan, and other gods-- either the ones their “fathers had served beyond the River (the Euphrates)” or “the gods of the Amorites” in whose land they were now living.   For the ancient Israelites this represented a very real choice.  To choose to serve the Lord meant committing to an ethical way of life as delineated in the commandments of the covenant and rejecting the polytheistic animism of their ancestors and the decadent fertility cult of the land of Canaan.  Therefore, covenant with Yahweh was freely entered into by each household.  Joshua speaks as the head of his family when he says, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  The assembled people also choose to serve the Lord and give as their reason his gracious saving actions in bringing them out of slavery in Egypt, protecting them along their journey and leading them into the land.

The Epistle completes our reading of Ephesians with an exhortation to “Defer to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  The examples given are taken from a traditional list of household duties that would be found in the philosophical writings of the day.  Homes in the Greco-Roman world of the first century A.D. were structured in a hierarchical manner with the husband/father as head of the household and the wife, children and slaves under his authority.  Ephesians transforms these family obligations by incorporating them into the mystery of Christ’s love for his bride, the Church, and its submission to Christ.  This is best illustrated in the exhortation to husbands to love their wives.  "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loves the Church. He gave himself up for her to make here holy, purifying her in the bath of water by the power of the word, to present

to himself a glorious Church, holy and immaculate, without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort.  Husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself. . ."

The Gospel is the conclusion of John’s Bread of Life discourse in which some of the disciples break away from Jesus’ company because of difficulty in accepting his pronouncement: “I myself am the living bread come down from heaven.  If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”  Throughout John’s Gospel Jesus’ pronouncements are consistently misunderstood by those who interpret his language without faith, or in a literal or “fleshly” manner.  In this case many of the disciples understand Jesus’ language literally as if he were speaking of cannibalism and remark: “This sort of talk is hard to endure!  How can anyone take it seriously?”  Jesus challenges them to move from a literal/fleshly to a faith-filled/spiritual understanding of his language.  “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.  The words I spoke to you are spirit and life.  Yet among you there are some who do not believe.”  When many of the disciples break away, Jesus turns to the Twelve and asks, “do you want to leave me too?”  But Simon Peter, as spokesman for the Twelve and a believer, answers, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe; we are convinced that you are God’s holy one.”  Like the Israelites in Joshua’s day and the disciples in John, we are offered a choice: to live lives of faith in gratitude for God’s loving deeds in our behalf or to live the “fleshly” lives of the gods of our time.