Keeping it Quiet

Gospel: Matthew 12: 14-21

Today's Gospel portion reminds us that with every healing miracle of Jesus comes with it the admonition to tell no one about it.  The kingdom of God is not about fanfare and bluster.  It has no need of public relations firms, advertising agencies, consulting firms, and media empires.  The work of the kingdom speaks for itself.  The works of mercy reflect the values of the Beatitudes: they are about mercy, meekness, purity of heart, justice and peace for others.  It is not about us.

Yet, we just can't help ourselves.  We have to have our "witnessing" and our "evangelizing", neither of which are about building the kingdom of God on earth.  These things are about building a kingdom for ourselves, a kingdom predicated on our own ego, on the accumulation of wealth, property, political power, and influence.  Jesus was about none of these things.  He rejected all of that in the desert of temptation, and after doing so gave us the Eight Beatitudes.  

As individual followers of Jesus and as communities of faith, we have a choice.  We can build our own kingdoms as we have been doing for centuries.  Or we can be about the kingdom of God where we go about healing others, liberating people from their demons, and nourishing people at table.  Asking for no credit, giving thanks to God alone in solitude, and moving on to the next place to carry out the ministry of Jesus - the ministry of mercy and reconciliation.

An Ethics for All

Gospel: Matthew 12: 1-8

In today's Gospel portion, a group of Pharisees berate Jesus' disciples for plucking grain and eating on the Sabbath, seeing this as a violation of the Sabbath work rule.  The response of Jesus is a telling one.  He gives examples of a king and group of priests who violate this same rule and yet are seen as heroic within the tradition.  This response of Jesus provides us with reflection on what law and ethics mean for the entire human race.

The subtle implication of Jesus' counterexamples is that law and ethics are often imposed rigidly on the poor and those with little power in society, while those in privileged classes and states of life live by an entirely different set of standards, if any at all.  But if law and ethics are to have any meaning at all, then they must apply equally to all people, regardless of position or class in society.  Having such double standards results in lawlessness and amorality.

In our own day we see the same double standard in our political leaders and clerics.  They preach and seek to enforce a rigid morality upon the commoners while doing whatever they please.  The political leaders who rail against "illegals" while committing all sorts of lawbreaking, and the cleric who wags his finger at his congregation for sexual errancies while excusing those of his priestly brethren are the real enemies of law and ethics in our world.  Today is a day for us to live with integrity the life Jesus calls us to follow.

The Yoke of Slavery

Gospel: Matthew 11: 28-30

In ancient Rome the slave was made to wear a wrap around metal collar that could only be removed by the slave master.  The collar was made to resemble in appearance the yoke of oxen used to pull wagons, plows, and other loads.  The message this collar conveyed both to the slave and everyone else that the existence of the slave is sub-human, that they exist on par with beasts of burden.  That this condition was imposed only on foreigners gives us the origins of our present day animus and treatment of the other.

Now, along comes Jesus in today's Gospel portion who tells us that his yoke is easy, and that our burden light if we accept to be servants in his kingdom.  For in the kingdom Jesus does not call us servants but friends, seeing us as images of God, images of himself, and temples of the Holy Spirit.  We are in fact not slaves but citizens of heaven, and the burden we carry is that of others in the work of mercy and loving kindness that is the task of the worker in the vineyard.

The fundamental option before us is whether we will accept the yoke of the world where the burden is onerous and the rewards are a mirage, or whether we will accept the yoke of the Lord Jesus where we ease the burden of each other as we work together to build the kingdom of God, a civilization of love that honors and respects the dignity of all human beings as images of God, images of Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit.