ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2023)
Readings:
Exodus 19:2-6
Psalms 100:1-2, 3-5
Romans 5:6-11
Matthew 9:36-10:8
Our recent celebration of the Solemnity of the Trinity showed us that the God we worship is a community of persons, distinct persons one in being, one in essence, one in their divinity. Perhaps the communal origins of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus the Christ, made Him aware that in His mission among God’s people on earth, even a God would be in need of others to assist Him in accomplishing His goals. Our understanding of who God is gives us great confidence that if Jesus wanted to accomplish His goals, He could have done so with a snap of a finger, or a clap of His hands. But like the forthcoming Synod of Pope Francis, the building of a Kingdom here on earth needed the assistance of the people who would be listening for God’s voice speaking to them through the din of their daily lives.
Our first reading gives us an early glimpse into the foundations of the Jewish people. Moses is the conduit of God’s word, and a people who would become “dearer to God than all other people” needed a conversation with the God who would ask of them difficult things. “I will be your God, and you shall be my people,” and I will make you “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation,” if “you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant.” There were responsibilities involved in being God’s “special possession.” Over time, through thick and thin, the simplicity of the Ten Commandments would grow into 613 precepts that would govern the Jewish people’s daily lives, and Moses would be replaced by prophets and priests who also would communicate the word of God. That word would consist of an account of the acts of God which were done for the benefit of God’s singular people. Their’s was not the only religion in town, but over time they were proud of their traditions, and not very tolerant of other’s religious traditions.
The second readings from Paul’s letter to the Romans is the Christianized version of our first reading. As Moses reminded the people of what God had done for them and how special they were to God, Paul reminds his readers what the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, did for them: “Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” It is important for us as Christians to feel that love, and to have a genuine friendship with the God we worship.
In our gospel reading from Matthew we see Jesus making friends, summoning “His twelve disciples” (his special friends), and making them “apostles,” a title in Jesus’ day borne by persons sent on foreign missions. Indeed, after sharing some of His powers with the new apostles, giving “them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness,” and then sends His disciples on a mission. In the Gospel of Matthew, a gospel especially written for Jewish audiences (“do not go into pagan territory…. Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”), Jesus is the new Moses, sending out His disciples to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.” Jesus is less interested in them preaching and teaching at this time, perhaps because He knows they are not ready to do that. There is much that Jesus has yet to share with them before they become teachers. Not until the very end of Matthew’s gospel (ch. 28:16ff.) are the eleven apostles commissioned to go, “and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
Jesus is interested in extraordinary events (miracles) which will show people that the kingdom of God is already at work in their midst, and by performing miracles they will draw attention, not to themselves, but to their leader, who happens to be the Messiah. They are the new “laborers,” prayed for at the beginning of the gospel passage, laborers that Jesus will always be in need of to spread His good news.
A snap of Jesus’ finger establishing His kingdom might have made our job of spreading the good news easier, but it was not part of God’s vision for His world. Indeed, the kingdom on earth was intended to be a representation, albeit, a faint one, of the kingdom that awaits us where God exists as a true community of persons. When we build up communities of love and compassion, forgiveness and generosity, justice and right, here on earth, we most resemble the kingdom where God reigns supreme. The successors of the apostles, the bishops, cannot be counted on to further the building of God’s kingdom here on earth. All those, like the apostles of old, who have decided to follow Jesus, are entrusted with the task of building up God’s kingdom here on earth. May we always be attuned to the voice of God encouraging us to choose love over hate, justice over injustice, compassion over neglect, right over wrong, goodness over evil, truth over falsehood. Only by making the choices that have their origins in a loving God, will the kingdom intended by Jesus be built here on earth.
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