I am used to finding inspiration and consolation from Scripture, particularly the Mass readings. Except when they come up with readings such as we had for this morning. Here is the link from the USCCB site. To say that all three readings hit a sour note is an understatement. They aren't an example of the Scriptures "afflicting the comfortable" but of God seeming not to be God.
First there was the OT reading from Numbers, which was a long, cobbled together patchwork from two chapters. The people are arguing with Moses:
"We went into the land to which you sent us.
It does indeed flow with milk and honey, and here is its fruit.
However, the people who are living in the land are fierce,
and the towns are fortified and very strong.
Besides, we saw descendants of the Anakim there.
Amalekites live in the region of the Negeb;
Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites dwell in the highlands,
and Canaanites along the seacoast and the banks of the Jordan."
They are reluctant to attack and take these lands because they belong to others, who are more numerous and stronger. After some back and forth we have an angry and vengeful god's reaction (I refuse to capitalize what I believe to be a false representation of God):
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron:
"How long will this wicked assembly grumble against me?
I have heard the grumblings of the children of Israel against me.
Tell them: By my life, says the LORD,
I will do to you just what I have heard you say.
Here in the desert shall your dead bodies fall.
Forty days you spent in scouting the land;
forty years shall you suffer for your crimes:
one year for each day.
Thus you will realize what it means to oppose me.
I, the LORD, have sworn to do this
to all this wicked assembly that conspired against me:
here in the desert they shall die to the last man."
After the events of the past week, this example of God supposedly giving permission, and actually commanding, his chosen people to "other" the inhabitants of the land, hits a nerve.
In the responsorial psalm, 106, we get another dose of a vengeful god; Moses had to talk him out of annihilating the people:
"...R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Then he spoke of exterminating them,
but Moses, his chosen one,
Withstood him in the breachto turn back his destructive wrath."
Then to top it all off, we have the gospel reading from Matthew 15:21-28, about the Canaanite woman pleading with Jesus to heal her daughter.
"I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
But the woman came and did him homage, saying, "Lord, help me."
He said in reply,
"It is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs."
She said, "Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps
that fall from the table of their masters."
Then Jesus said to her in reply,
"O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish."
And her daughter was healed from that hour."
That has to be the chapter in the NT which I most dislike. It probably is the only one that I actively dislike.
The young transitional deacon who gave a brief homily did the best he could with what he had to work with. He spoke about persistence in prayer, and commended the Canaanite woman's profession of faith. She's the only one who comes across very well in this story.
I don't know how the lectionary readings were chosen, but maybe some of them need to be revisited.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to get back on the high I was on Sunday, when one of the songs, based on Psaml 139, really touched me. It was this one.
Well, the scouts quoted in the first reading were lying. Fake news! Caleb and Joshua said they could prevail, with the Lord on their side. But the nervous Nellies didn't listen. The Nellies died in the desert over the next 40 years, but Caleb and Joshua got to the Promised Land. Moral: Pay no attention to John Boltin.
ReplyDeleteThe Canaanite woman persisted. She is supposed to be a model for Christians. Moral: Work as if everything depends on you, pray as if everything depends on God. I personally think Jesus was horsing around with her for fun, and she recognized it before the dull-witted apostles. Sort of like today, with bishops in the apostolic role they usually covet.
P.S. But I did like the psalm.
DeleteP.P.S. John Bolton.
P.P.P.S. I'll tell you about the closing hymn last Saturday evening at Holy Family in Whitefish Bay, Wis., some other time.
Tom, now you have to tell what the hymn was.
DeleteThe OT reading established the Jews as the conquerors of Canaan, and the Jewish sense of superiority to the Canaanites. Possibly Jesus knew that his disciples maintained these attitudes and was throwing their ugly prejudices back in their faces in his response to the woman in order to shame them. Plus to indicate that faith and need transcended tribal affiliation.
ReplyDeleteOnly way it makes any sense to me.
Never thought of that, that Jesus might have been challenging the disciples to move beyond their prejudices.
DeleteA few miscellaneous thoughts about this combination of readings, which admittedly may not increase their comfort level:
ReplyDeleteThe parts carved out of the pastiche of passages that comprise the first reading do soften its harshness, somewhat. Following the negative reports by all the scouts but Caleb (and, apparently, Joshua - which possibly could be a later insertion to burnish the latter's reputation?), the people didn't just despair - they openly rebelled against God and Moses. They wanted to appoint a different leader who would lead them back to Egypt. Then followed a scene in which God pours out his anguished heart in private to Moses, who manages to talk him off the ledge. God's initial idea was to strike them all dead on the spot; Moses prevailed on him to be merciful, so God relented - somewhat: they would not die on the spot, but all those who rebelled against him would not live to see the promised land. If we, reading this through our Christian allegorical lens, think of the promised land as an analogy to heaven, then this story is roughly in line with what we believe about our ultimate destiny: it's offered to us, gratuitously; but it's distressingly possible for us to be sufficiently ungrateful to screw it up and end up on the wrong side of the door, or river, gnashing our teeth.
Another thought that occurred, which would need to be vetted by a scholar, is rooted in the idea that the Pentateuch is not journalism from 4,000 years ago, but underwent a very long stretch of development. It's possible this story was shaped, not only by the ancient experiences of the twelve tribes in the desert, but also by the subsequent history of Judah and Israel, which were marked by long stretches when it must have seemed to many inhabitants that their God had given up on them, as they lived under the rod of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Macedonian Greeks et al. Doubting God's love and mercy isn't utterly unknown to us, either. If it can happen to Theresa of Calcutta, it can happen to any of us.
Finally, there is the interrelationship between first reading and Gospel. In the first reading, the sacred authors seem to illustrate that the benefits of the covenant are not unqualified: when his people violate it, there are negative consequences (albeit tempered by mercy). That disquieting conclusion is juxtaposed with the Gospel reading, in which we see God's Son offer the benefits of the covenant to those who are not God's original chosen people. This is one of the great themes of the New Testament; I suppose it should be comforting to those of us who are not Jewish (in fact, if we fail to find comfort in it, we probably haven't sufficiently appreciated the extent to which God properly is the God of the Jewish people). Some of the other passages in the New Testament are pretty clear in showing God's anger toward his people who have rejected his son, and I daresay this does not come across as Good News to Jews today or of any time. Scripture doesn't always make easy the business of building bridges of respect and tolerance - we have to read closely and think hard.
"Scripture doesn't always make easy the business of building bridges of respect and tolerance - we have to read closely and think hard." I agree with that; also that there has been a very long period of development.
DeleteA notion of progressive revelation is essential to the understanding of Scripture, i.e. that we as humans are limited in our understanding and therefore it takes time and multiple revelations to understand God.
ReplyDeleteIn the OT we begin with the God of Abraham, one God among many, who has chosen a people and who is progressively revealed to be a universal God, the only God, who calls all the nations of the earth to worship in Jerusalem.
In the NT the One God is revealed as Incarnate and Trinitarian, who sends out the disciples to renew all nations.
We have a Canon of Scripture because God can reveal only so much at a time, much of the revelation needs to be balanced by other revelation, and that God is revealed in terms that mix the misunderstanding of the people on that occasion with the revelation that comes from God.
Likewise all our theologies of how to interpret Scripture are also filled with our misunderstandings as well as true revelation. Hence, some notion of development of dogma is essential. It took us a few centuries to formulate somewhat adequate notions of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
God did not give us simply Scripture (e.g. Protestant fundamentalism) or the Church (e.g. Catholic fundamentalism) but gave us Godself (Jesus and the Holy Spirit) in a continuing progressive revelation.
I think you are right, especially about this: "A notion of progressive revelation is essential to the understanding of Scripture, i.e. that we as humans are limited in our understanding and therefore it takes time and multiple revelations to understand God."
DeleteAccording to Catholic dogma, public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. (Catholics are not required to believe information from "private revelation," for example the alleged words of Mary at Fatima or Lourdes.) So there really is no continuing revelation (according to Catholic teaching).
ReplyDeleteFrom the Catechism:
There will be no further Revelation
66 "The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ." Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.
The idea of "progressive revelation" raises some interesting questions. Were the writings of the Old Testament "dumbed down" so that the ancients could cope with them? When God commanded the genocide of the Amalekites, was that an acceptable level of behavior for the times, and does the New Testament somehow undo that command?
I have always found it very interesting that Jesus said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Some commentaries take the stories of the Canaanite woman and the Roman centurion to be a kind of foreshadowing of the "mission to the gentiles," but Jesus said he was sent not only just to Israel, but only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And very soon after his death, "Christianity" had little or nothing to do with Israel or the Law. As I have noted occasionally before, John P. Meier said, "The historical Jesus is the halachic Jesus." But if so, why did Jesus waste his time on Jewish Law which would soon become irrelevant to his followers?
David, yes, the canon of Scripture is closed. Which is why the Protoevangelium of James, or the Gospel of Thomas are never going to be incorporated into the Bible. But Biblical scholarship and commentary are not a done deal, they will be ongoing until the Parousia.
DeleteJack and Jim P both give a good summary in their comments above.
John's Gospel ends with this verse: "There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written." Even if we were a Sola Scriptura people, that would suggest that we've been given only a narrow glimpse of what there is to know about God. But we Catholics are not a sola scriptura people. Our view is that the church (the people of God) preserves and elaborates the deposit of faith that has been entrusted to us - via the bible, and via the broader apostolic tradition.
DeleteThat the Good News is not just for Jews but for all is amply attested both in scripture and in the church's tradition. We need to look no farther than the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ..." Paul's missions across the Roman Empire, the Council of Jerusalem described in Acts, the beautiful vision in Revelation of believers of every tribe and tongue, people and nation, robed in white and waving palm branches before the throne - all these, and other passages besides, provide a foundation for the doctrine that salvation in Jesus is to be offered to all.
I used to think that revelation was closed. But then I see a lot of parishes open an eight-day run-up to Divine Mercy Sunday on the formerly important feast of Easter. So clearly someone found out something since I was born.
DeleteI wonder what will happen to revelation if a copy of Q shows up?
ReplyDeleteQ is the hypothetical document which contains the verses in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark. Supposedly Matthew and Luke knew both Mark and Q when they wrote.
The words of Q found in Matthew and Luke are, of course, inspired but what about the words of Q that did not get into our present Gospels? Were they also inspired? and what might they say?
I don't think there is any dogmatic requirement that writings that are not part of the canon of the bible cannot contain wise, holy and beautiful words and insights. We revere the writings of the saints for this reason. If a written record of Q was to come to light, I don't know of a reason we couldn't look upon it in the same light as the works of Augustine or Aquinas.
DeleteRegarding the Great Commission, Saint Matthew by J. C. Fenton (a volume in The Pelican New Testament Commentaries) says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations: Contrast the limited mission of the disciples, to Israel alone, in 10:6. It is improbable that Jesus said this, in view of the hesitation of the first disciples over preaching to Gentiles, as this is recorded in Acts (N.B Acts 11:1ff and 11:19)."
DeleteMatthew 10:5-6
The Commissioning of the Twelve.
Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Acts 11 is too long to quote. But it is clear that Peter does not justify contact with the Gentiles by quoting Jesus about preaching to all nations. He tells them about a personal revelation. Obviously it is not official Catholic teaching that the "mission to the Gentiles" was something attributable not to Jesus but to a change in thinking about its mission by the early Church. However, it seems plausible to me. Even though the Gospels were written after the death of Paul and hence after the mission to the Gentiles was firmly established, evidence that Jesus himself willed the conversion of Gentiles to his movement is largely absent.