This coming Sunday is the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the previous post we considered the first of the three critiques of the scribes and Pharisees: they teach but they don’t practice what they preach. In this post we move to the second: They burden others while failing to act themselves.
4 They tie up heavy burdens (hard to carry) and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.
This coming Sunday is the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time. In Matthew’s timeline it is (still) Tuesday of Holy Week and Jesus is still in Temple precincts. The audience continues to be the crowds gathered around the man from Galilee, but the conversation will soon pivot to the disciples – in each case a critique and warning. Jesus’ critique of the scribes and Pharisees will have three elements Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. For several Sundays we have been in the midst of confrontations between Jesus and the Jerusalem leadership. On the 29th Sunday, we moved into a section of Matthew’s gospel that comprises a series of controversies between Jesus and the religious authorities of Jerusalem.
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Although the Sermon on the Mount has already included an extensive section of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples on love as fundamental to the life of discipleship (5:21–48), in this concluding encounter with his opponents Matthew gives Jesus another opportunity to summarize the core of his teaching (as 7:12). There, the teaching was to his disciples; here, it is to his opponents, in the controversy situation showing his orthodoxy as an advocate of the whole of the Law and the Prophets. Since Matthew here focuses on the argumentative aspect of the scene, he does not develop the theological issues that interest the contemporary interpreter (cf. Luke, who relocates the passage, 10:25–28): (1) the meaning of “love,” (2) the meaning of “neighbor,” and (3) the meaning of Jesus’ responding with two commands. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus’ choice of Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18 is notable for two reasons. In the first place, by focusing on “love” rather than on more tangible regulations to be obeyed, it raises the discussion above merely judging between competing rules, and gives the priority to a principle which has potential application to virtually every aspect of religious and communal life. When Jesus declares that “the whole law and the prophets” depend on this principle, he is repeating the point he made in 7:12, “this is the law and the prophets.” The ethical principle he there laid down did not use the word “love,” but that is what it was all about. The priority of love in the life of a disciple will be a frequently repeated NT principle, and one which it would be very hard to object to. Continue reading
In today’s gospel Jesus words are “hard,” speaking about “fire” and “division” – and all of this leading to some dire consequences. Perhaps it is good to provide some insight about passage and the words and imagery used – because it all begins with the opening words of the gospel reading as we hear Jesus say: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12:49). Interestingly, in the NT only rarely does “fire” (pýr) denote the earthly phenomenon. If Luke’s usage is not literal, then what are the possibilities? What is the fire Jesus comes to cast? Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The test goes to the heart of the Mosaic law, and as such, it is appropriately raised by a Pharisaic lawyer. It would not be an unfamiliar question, since rabbis did discuss which of the commandments were “heavy” and which “light,” and sometimes tried to summarize the main thrust of the Mosaic law in terms of a key OT text. Since the five books of Moses (Pentateuch) contained, by rabbinic calculation, 613 commandments, some means of assessing their relative importance would be widely valued. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. In commentaries and in Bible studies, I often encounter the variety of words, in the Greek, used for love. People ask lots of questions about the meaning and use of them in Scripture. There are perhaps several questions that can be asked:
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The gospel this week condenses the teaching of Jesus into its most simple form. And it is not a new topic in this Gospel. Jesus has already taught the centrality of love in the life of the disciples and that love for “neighbor” includes the “enemy” (Sermon on the Mount; 5:21–48, esp. 23–48). It is also not a radical topic for Judaism. Jewish teachers of Jesus’ day offered the same response adding that the rest of the scriptures are but commentary on these two things. In Deut 6:4–5, the command to love God is part of the Shema, which begins with the confession of the oneness of God, the closest thing to a universal creed in Judaism. In the Gospel of Mark, this same account is told as a friendly scribe making a sincere inquiry in which Jesus commends the scribe for his answer, declaring that the scribe is not far from the kingdom of God (Mk 12:28–34). Here in Matthew’s account, why would this become a controversy? Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A.
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them (a scholar of the law) tested him by asking, 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
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