Gospel Reflection for Sunday September 1st 2024 – 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection for Sunday September 1st 2024, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time | John 6:60-69

In last week’s Gospel we met Jesus at a very difficult moment in his ministry. Many of his followers were deserting him and he even feared that his twelve apostles, his closest companions and friends, would also leave him. Thankfully that did not happen, and Peter’s deep statement of faith and trust must have enormously helped him through his crisis of self-doubt and uncertainty.

This week our Gospel opens with Jesus facing another huge moment of conflict.

In fact, if you think about it, it is difficult to point to any moment in Jesus’ ministry when there wasn’t tension of some kind between himself and the Jewish authorities; his own family; those from his home town, Nazareth; his disciples; or the ‘ordinary’ Jews he spoke to. On all sides he was misunderstood, tested, investigated and misjudged.

This is not the image of Jesus we often grow up learning about. We tend to be offered a peaceful, confident, popular, self-assured figure who moved from one situation to another, even if there was tension present, with aplomb and composure.

Almost by default we grow up seeing Jesus more as a God-like figure than a truly human person. In the great paintings of the Middle Ages Jesus comes with an almost permanent halo; he’s bathed in soft light; seems calmly aloof and meditative even when engaged with people and there are often hovering angels to look after him. In the great Icons of the time, it is the Divine Jesus we meet, and in the magnificent Cathedrals and architecture of the Middle Ages, Jesus is enthroned in glory, coming in might and power to judge the peoples of the earth.

However, much as we might like it, this is not the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. Many people, including myself at times, struggle with this. Some find the depiction of a tired, stressed, sometimes disliked and misunderstood Jesus disrespectful to him. “He was…”, they say,  “…still God – the Word who was with God and who was God from the beginning.”

The unease we feel in encountering the very human Jesus presented in the Gospels probably says more about the power of the ‘visual’ to lead us than anything else.

The great mystic of the Middle Ages, Teresa of Ávila, managed to maintain a wonderfully balanced view of Jesus: “It is important that while we are living and are human, we have human support. Christ is a very good friend because we behold him as man and see him with weaknesses and trials, and he is company for us.”

If our image of Jesus is of the ‘meek and mild’ kind, where he is bathed in a soft light and surrounded by a golden halo, then it is difficult to truly relate to him as ‘a friend’. Our God, yes. Our Saviour, yes. Our Creator, yes. Majestic and glorious, yes. Awe-inspiring and worthy of our endless thanks, yes. … But friend? Difficult, because ‘friend’ demands a relationship of equality that we can only have if Jesus has ‘walked in our shoes’ and experienced the “trials and weaknesses” we all experience.

The clash between Jesus and the Pharisees (and some scribes) at the start of this week’s Gospel was part of an on-going battle between Jesus and the Temple authorities. For the Pharisees Jesus quite simply ‘broke the Law of Moses’ again and again in his ministry. He healed (worked) on the Sabbath, his disciples plucked ears of corn as they walked between villages, again considered ‘work’ if done on the Sabbath. Constantly moving from place to place meant that Jesus and his disciples did not always strictly follow the washing laws before eating. As far as the Pharisees were concerned all of this indicated that Jesus played fast and loose with the laws and traditions handed down to them from the time of Moses.

As far as Jesus was concerned he was an observant Jew and accepted the Law of Moses and the oral traditions handed down over the centuries. He attended the synagogue every Sabbath, sometimes even reading and teaching there. He and his disciples observed all of the Jewish feasts and followed all of the rituals and traditions associated with them. He went to the Temple in Jerusalem and offered sacrifice there when the Law of Moses prescribed it.

The God of Jesus was the God of Israel – the God who freed them from Egypt, designated them ‘his Chosen people’ and made his Covenant with them (“You will be my people and I will be your God”…).

So why the constant antagonism between them? It was an antagonism which became almost an obsession for the Pharisees. They constantly following him, spied on him, sought to trap him and undermine his message. In our times we might well accuse them of ‘stalking him with menace’!

Jesus response to them was not to throw oil on troubled waters or seek to placate them in any way. He did not follow the politically wise and diplomatic road. Instead he rounded on them in anger, hurling insults at them, calling them ‘whited sepulchres, clean on the outside but rotten inside’. He accused them of being hypocrites – an accusation which hit at their very integrity and honesty. His words in this week’s Gospel, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites…” is, in fact, a very mild example of what he called them.

It is, maybe, a little naïve to run headlong into condemning the Pharisees. As with everything in life, things are never black and white.

As a group the Pharisees were on the ‘liberal side’ of interpreting the Law. The Sadducees, for example, were far stricter, rejecting even the words and traditions of the great Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.. Jesus had much in common with the Pharisees, finding no issues with their authority as teachers of the Law. Didn’t he say himself, “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do…” ?

We know that some Pharisees were open to Jesus’ message. Nicodemus, for instance, was a member of the ruling Council and a powerful voice in Jerusalem. He visited Jesus secretly and after Jesus’ death it was he who asked for the body of Jesus to bury in his own tomb.

Without doubt the Pharisees were sincere, good living, conscientious Jews. They had a responsibility to maintain peace with Rome – a responsibility some of them did not like at all – but they did it in order to prevent a Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

At a number of levels the Pharisees feared Jesus. His message about the ‘Kingdom of God’ and a coming ‘Messiah’ was liable to be seen as treason by Rome. Any mention of a Kingdom other than Rome, or of a King other than the Emperor was extremely dangerous. For the sake of the nation didn’t they have a responsibility to shut this dangerous message down?

Of course, they had other fears which were less noble. Their authority and their ‘friendship’ with Rome brought them power and wealth. They lived a privileged and wealthy lifestyle, with large houses, lavish feasts and rich clothing. Naturally, they feared that a ‘popular’ Jesus, with leadership ability, would endanger this lifestyle.

An even greater fear, however, was that the Kingdom Jesus was preaching was utterly different to the Kingdom they were expecting … and … there was very little room in Jesus’ Kingdom for them! The Kingdom Jesus talked of would be for everyone, equally, and not just Jews. The role of teachers of the Law of Moses would have a very diminished role, if indeed any role, in this kind of Kingdom!

Probably like all of us, the Pharisees found themselves with moral and altruistic reasons why Jesus was dangerous, and they also found themselves with hidden and selfish reasons why he needed to go!

Jesus saw through the contradictions and hypocrisy of their position. He was not alone in this. Many Jews resented their cosiness with Rome and their lavish lifestyle. The difference for Jesus was that the Kingdom of God that he preached was paramount and could not be compromised.  I don’t think Jesus had any great dislike of, or opposition to, the Pharisees as a group, but when the message of the Kingdom of God was at risk because of what they said, he had to oppose them, and oppose them forcefully.

Jesus’ message was the Kingdom of God. It was what he preached. It was all he preached. It was why he was sent by the Father, and he understood and accepted his mission. It put him in conflict with the Pharisees – a conflict he knew could lead to his death – and in the end, rather than compromise his message, he died.

The irony for the Pharisees was that they sought God by living the Law of Moses meticulously and to the smallest detail, not realising that what they were doing was, in fact, preventing them from finding the very God they sought!

I can never read this Gospel without thinking about myself, about our Church, about our different world religions, about our motives, about our blindness and about our sinfulness.

For the pharisees there was, I think, the blindness of religious fundamentalism and clericalism. It is a blindness which has not gone away and is still “the plank” in many of our eyes. How sad that we cannot seem to learn from the sadness and tragedy of this week’s Gospel!

For all of us there is, I think, a challenge to be honest and open about our motives. It is a challenge because, like the Pharisees, our motives will be a mix of noble and selfish. Just as Jesus challenged the Pharisees to recognise their blindness, he challenges us to do the same.

Jesus stands before us – the way, the truth and the life. “Here is the Kingdom I died for…”, he says to us, “…It is the Kingdom of God, and it is for you.

“Hear me, all of you, and understand….” He continues, “…the Kingdom of God is within you, as is its opposite, the Kingdom of this world. Open your eyes, forget your prejudices, learn tolerance and compassion and the wonderful Kingdom of forgiveness, love, joy and peace is yours. It is within you!

Many thanks,

Brian.

You put aside the commandment of God, to cling to human traditions