8/1/2023 0 Comments Daily gospel reflectionMercy cannot be shown to those who are kept at arm’s length. Jesus’ business is showing God’s mercy to sinners, bringing God’s healing presence to the spiritually needy. Jesus is declaring that what God wants before all else is ‘mercy’, and his own style of table fellowship is reflecting that primary desire of God. He prefaces this quotation with the directive, ‘Go and learn the meaning of the words’. Why did Jesus share table with, enter into communion with, those who did not keep God’s law, as the experts in that law understood it? In response to this question, Jesus quotes from one of the prophets of Israel, Hosea, ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice’. In this morning’s gospel reading, the Pharisees ask a question of Jesus’ disciples when they see Jesus sharing table with those who would have been regarded as religious outsiders, ‘Why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ It is a good question and one that is worth our while pondering. Some of them are asked by Jesus, others are asked by his disciples and still others are asked by various other characters in the gospel narrative. There are many questions posed in the course of the four gospels. In celebrating God’s mercy, as Jesus did at table with tax collectors and sinners, we are then called to share with others the mercy we celebrate. Such a merciful attitude to others was lacking in the Pharisees, even though this was clearly revealed to be God’s will in the Scriptures they cherished, ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice’ (Hosea 6:6). Jesus also expected those who received God’s mercy to be merciful in their dealings with others. What distinguished them was their awareness of their need of God’s mercy and their openness to receive this gift from Jesus. Jesus knew that all were sinners and in need of God’s mercy. He was ready to share table with the religious leaders and with those whom the religious leaders considered sinners. The gospels suggest that Jesus had a very broad table. The Pharisees were scandalized at the kind of people with whom Jesus shared table. Matthew may have been an unlikely candidate to become a member of Jesus’ inner circle, but according to the gospel reading, in response to Jesus’ call, ‘he got up and followed him’. The Lord is like the fisherman who casts a very wide net that brings in all sorts of fish or like the sower who scatters seed with abandon so that it falls on all sorts of ground. As Paul declares in his first letter to the Corinthians, ‘God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are’ (1 Cor 1:28). Let us treasure and safeguard our most personal, private relationship with the Holy Spirit, but also pray for the grace to confess publicly how we are disciples of Jesus, committed to learning to love one another.The call of Matthew, the tax collector, suggests that the Lord does not see someone’s profession or former way of life as a block to their becoming his disciple and sharing in his mission. “The witness required of each of us is much more that of a transparency rather than a witness of words - a word, even an exact one, can raise a lot of contradictions, but nothing can resist the radiance of a silence that is filled with love” (M. Privacy is at the heart of a relationship with God, but we can develop through exercise the courage to disclose the character of our personal faith to one another, not merely in words but in our behaviours and actions. It is insufficient to confess Jesus as Lord by repeating dogmatic formulas every Sunday. Mature Christians must learn to speak freely, communicating through our behaviour how Jesus is Lord for us. In his essay “A Theology of Creativity,” Cistercian author Thomas Merton wrote of the dignity and responsibility each of us has “to stand before God on our own feet, conscious and alert to the light that has been placed in us” and then be willing to be “perfectly obedient to that light” . Every Sunday as we gather to recite “our creed” we should examine our consciences as our lips declare we believe in God, maker of heaven and earth. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux advised his Cistercian monks that they should ask themselves every day, “Why did I come to this monastery and why do I stay?” We should perform a similar spiritual exercise, asking ourselves what is still motivating us to confess Jesus as Lord and why we are participating in a particular church/faith community.
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