THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2023)

THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2023)

Readings:

Malachi 1:14-2:2, 8-10

Psalms   131:1-3

1 Thessalonians 2:7-9, 13

Matthew 23:1-12

In a short time the continuous reading of Matthew’s gospel will be interrupted by the great season of Advent, our prelude to Christmas and the beginning of a new liturgical year (Year B, in which a new synoptic gospel will guide us through the Ordinary times of the year).  For the last several Sundays, Jesus has addressed the ‘elders’ of the people (Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees, Herodians, and chief priests), and He did so with His primary way of teaching, with parables.  This Sunday, the subtlety is discarded, and in speaking to the “crowds” Jesus has something specific He wishes to warn them about concerning their religious leaders: “do not follow their example.  For they preach but they do not practice.”

We fervently believe that Jesus was sent into our world by our Heavenly Father in order to lead all peoples back to the Father, where we will sit at His heavenly banquet.  Before Jesus’ public ministry began, He had some thirty years to observe and be immersed in, the Hebrew faith of His day.  It is safe to assume that Jesus’ parents, Joseph and Mary, played essential roles in “bringing Him up” in the Hebrew faith, and their particular insights into how that faith was manifested in their home, their neighborhood, and their work place, made a particular contribution to the kind of person Jesus was, and the kinds of things that He would notice.  In today’s gospel passage we can almost see His view of these religious elders (who have “tested Him and tried to entrap Him”) fester, to a point where it became necessary to directly speak to the crowds lest they be confused about what true religion entails.

Last weekend’s gospel, with its emphasis on the two “great commandments,” loving God and loving neighbor, makes an appropriate prelude to this week’s assault on the “Scribes and Pharisees.”  While never being disrespectful (Jesus admits that “they sit in the chair of Moses,” i.e., they exercise a special ministry in the Church/community, much like our bishops and priests), Jesus clearly is of the opinion that they seem to have lost their way.  Not only have they gotten caught up in all of the trappings of their office: “they widen their phylacteries (small boxes with quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures) and lengthen their tassels (an outward sign they are deserving of respect).  They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi’ (Father).”  So caught up with the enforcement of the Law, that “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” (sound like anyone we know?).  Indeed, Jesus says, “all their works are performed to be seen.”  We know from elsewhere in the Scriptures that humility should be the hallmark of our good deeds.

The Scribes and Pharisees are far from what should characterize those who decide to follow Jesus, and Jesus wants to make sure that the crowds understand that “the greatest among you must be your servant,” for “whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  The ostentation we sometimes see manifested by clerics is abhorred by Jesus, and is abhorred by some who attended this month’s Synod on Synodality, who “spoke of a Church that wounds” through “clericalism, a chauvinist mentality and inappropriate expressions of authority continue to scar the face of the Church and damage its communion.”

Not a page of Scripture is addressed only to anonymous “crowds,” for as the living Word of God it is addressed to us for all ages – to the laity, to the priests, to the hierarchy.  Indeed, clergy in our Church share a particular burden of forming their lives according to that of the Lord Jesus, in whose footsteps we claim to follow.  If all we do is pile up burdens for others, if we are more concerned about our own comfort instead of that of others, if we are overly focused on our ‘modern day’ phylacteries and the trappings of honor, if we don’t preach a better sermon with our lives then with our lips, then we do not have a right to bear the name of Christian, for all we are doing is “exalting” ourselves.

In the oldest letter in the New Testament, Thessalonians, Paul exhorts all of us to be “gentle,” gentle as “nursing mothers.”  We are to bring others to Christ by love and “affection,” and we are armed with the most powerful of weapons – the living Word of God.  As Paul states: “we give thanks to God unceasingly, that in receiving the word of God from hearing us [preach], you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in all who believe.”