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Sunday Scriptures: Second Sunday of Advent 2016

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On this Second Sunday of Advent, we encounter the figure of John the Baptist in the Gospel reading (Matthew 3:1-12):

John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea
and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said:
A voice of one crying out in the desert,
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
John wore clothing made of camel’s hair
and had a leather belt around his waist.
His food was locusts and wild honey.
At that time Jerusalem, all Judea,
and the whole region around the Jordan
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.

When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees
coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers!
Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.
And do not presume to say to yourselves,
‘We have Abraham as our father.’
For I tell you,
God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees.
Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit
will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
I am baptizing you with water, for repentance,
but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I.
I am not worthy to carry his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fan is in his hand.
He will clear his threshing floor
and gather his wheat into his barn,
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

John is dripping with not only honey, but with Old Testament motifs. He’s really the last prophet of the Old Covenant, bridging it with the New Covenant (Testament) of Jesus Christ. He is Elijah redux, to be sure, but I want to focus here on a somewhat overlooked section of John’s speech: “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones” (Matt 3:9). What stones? And what do they mean?

Near the location where John was speaking, Joshua had set up twelve stones by the Jordan River as a memorial of God’s deliverance of the twelve tribes (Joshua 4). The twelve stones reappear in the time of Elijah, who built an altar with them (1 Kings 18:31-32). When one recalls Jesus’ identification of John with Elijah (Mark 9:13), and John’s own adaptation of Elijah’s very dress, this is instructive. As Elijah once did, John is calling Israel’s twelve tribes to repent, and prepare for the coming of Israel’s Messiah.

There is also a wordplay in effect: the Hebrew word for “stone” (eben) sounds like the Hebrew term for “son” (ben). John is essentially saying that God can obtain new children of his own from elsewhere; Israelites who remain unrepentant and faithless can’t rely on their pedigree alone for salvation; they must repent and become obedient to the teaching of the coming Anointed One.

Today’s Catholics also can’t rely on their baptism alone, their membership in the Church (the new Israel), as a “golden ticket” for salvation. One must ratify one’s baptism by remaining in friendship with God, obedient to Jesus Messiah. Advent offers us a wonderful chance to repent if we haven’t always done so. We must prepare for not only Christmas, the feast of Jesus’ first arrival, but the coming Parousia, Christ’s Second Advent, inexorably approaching.

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Sunday Scriptures: Biblical Inspiration

2-tim-3-16“Sunday Scriptures” is a series of posts explaining the Sunday Mass readings – helpful for those preparing to worship, or preparing a homily! 

What does the Church mean when she says that the Bible is the “inspired” Word of God?

In this Sunday’s second reading, we read the following, as Saint Paul writes to his young protege, the bishop Timothy:

Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingly power: proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage, through all patience and teaching.

– 2 Timothy 3:14-4:2

The important phrase to note is: “All Scripture is inspired by God”. The New Testament was, of course, originally written in Greek. The Greek word that is translated as “inspired” in our English new Testament is the word theopneustos. This word, in turn, is really made up of two other words: Theos, which means “God”, and pneu, which means “to breathe”. Thus, theopneustos literally means, “God-breathed”, and this is what is meant by the English word “inspired”.

In the first book of the Bible, we read that God “breathed” his life into Adam (Genesis 2:7), making him a “living soul”. This gave Adam participation in God’s life. This is related to Scripture, because divine inspiration is very much like divine respiration in Adam’s case – what is very human becomes filled with the life of God. The human words of the Bible are filled with the life and message of God.

Further, the word for “breath” in Hebrew (ruah) is the same word used for God’s Holy Spirit. When we are dealing with the “God-breathed” (inspired) Word of God, that means that God the Holy Spirit is the principal author of Scripture. The human beings who actually wrote the 73 books that collectively make up the Scriptures are called the instrumental authors of Scripture (Saint Paul, for example). They were the means, the instruments God used. These authors did not go into a trance when they wrote. They used their personal freedom, intelligence, education, cultural background, and personalities when they composed the sacred Scriptures. But God superintended the process in a providential manner, ensuring that what he wanted to communicate to us in human language made it into the Bible.

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Sunday Scriptures: John 3:16

This Sunday’s Gospel (for the Fourth Sunday of Lent) is one of the most famous passages, if not the most famous passage, in the entire Bible. The passage in question, of course, is from Chapter Three of John’s Gospel. This section contains the single most memorable verse in Scripture for most people in the culture at large. This, of course, is John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life.

One reason this verse is so ubiquitous is that it’s often displayed on “bedsheet banners” at sporting events. It has been called “the Bible in a nutshell” and “the Gospel in a nutshell”. And this is Good News indeed: by Jesus’ Passion, death, and Resurrection, God has made it possible for us to obtain forgiveness of our sins and attain eternal life and friendship with God.

But one thing that many people don’t focus on is what comes after John 3:16. So many remember John 3:16, but so few think about John 3:18, which, we musn’t forget, is just as much God’s word as John 3:16 is. Here’s John 3:18:

Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

The “flipside” of the Good News is the Bad News: not everyone goes to heaven. In fact, the Good News of the Gospel wouldn’t be so good if that sad truth were not a reality.

And people, if they are thinking properly, absolutely cannot blame God for the fact that many are not saved. As a priest friend said in a homily last week, God had a choice: to either create a world with love, or a world without love. To love requires freedom. Freedom means that one can say “no”. No to God, and no to love. “The door to hell is locked from the inside”, wrote C.S. Lewis. In other words, people send themselves to hell by freely rejecting the salvation Christ offers.

This should cause us to redouble our efforts to not only do penance for family and friends who are far from the Lord this Lent, but to share the Good News with them, too!

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This Sunday’s Gospel: The Woman Caught in Adultery

images-1In this Sunday’s Gospel, we hear the account of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. In my Bible, there is a textual note that explains that the earliest manuscripts of John that have been discovered do not contain this pericope. Does that mean that it didn’t actually happen?

No. The fact that early manuscripts may not have contained the account does not mean that it didn’t occur in the career of Jesus. The incident is certainly in keeping with what we know of the person and character of Jesus (not to mention that of his opponents). Besides, it is the final form of the texts that were canonized as Scripture, not the texts in their various stages of development.

First, Jesus is presented with a difficult dilemma. “Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?’ They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him.”

The utter hypocrisy (a sin Jesus has accused them of many times) of the scribes and Pharisees is obvious. If this woman was literally “caught in the act” of adultery, there is a very good chance that they themselves had known about the affair beforehand. Presumably, they may have been able to stop her – to reason with her, that she should stop this gravely sinful activity. If they had truly been concerned for the woman’s soul, they would have. Instead, they wait and spring a trap for her, so that they can use her as bait to ensnare Jesus. There is also the chilling possibility they themselves “set up” the whole illicit affair in the first place. Plus, where is the guilty male party? Why wan’t he “brought in for questioning”, too? At any rate, Jesus’ accusers are far from free of sin themselves.

The reason why this is dangerous for Jesus is this: if Jesus says, “Let her go”, he would be considered a lawbreaker, and therefore could not in fact be the Messiah. The Mosaic Law did indeed indicate that the woman ought to have been killed (cf. Lev. 20:10, Deut 22:22). On the other hand, if Jesus doesn’t forgive her, and agrees with the death penalty in her case, what of his reputation for mercy?

Let me interrupt you for a moment. What was Jesus writing with his finger on the ground?

Many commentators have proffered theories on this. Some say he was writing out the Ten Commandments; others believe he was spelling out the personal sins of the accusers. All of this might make for good preaching, but the truth is, no one knows. Interestingly, this is the only time the New Testament mentions Jesus writing.

In any case, Jesus’ reply is brilliant. “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Only the Sinless One – Jesus himself – can be her judge. All of the accusers drop their weapons of stone and go home, beginning with the eldest (who, because of their life experience and wisdom, realized first the truth of Jesus’ words). Yet Jesus does not “paper over” or excuse the woman’s grave, sinful behavior. He forgives, but his is not a cheap grace. “Go and sin no more”. Reform your life. Convert. This is what Lent is all about.

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