If you would like to catch up on some recent posts, here is a place where you can easily access some posts you might have missed. I hope it helps… enjoy.
Continue readingA quick look back
Featured
2
More on free speech
As noted in the blog’s “About”, “…when I have time and inspiration, I muse on things.” Apparently I had time this morning. And so, I mused about free speech.
Two years ago College Pulse and FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) surveyed 55,000 undergraduates. Nate Silver, commenting on the resulting analysis and report, wrote: “Long story, told short, college students are not very enthusiastic about free speech. Particularly true for progressive/left wing students at elite institutions but also more broadly across all colleges. In general student support for free speech is tepid and [citing the report] ‘A significant minority of students don’t even have much tolerance for controversial speech on positions they presumably agree with…When it comes to controversial speakers, students at non-elite colleges are just as intolerant as their Ivy League counterparts.’” I think the point being is that over the last decade (maybe longer) we have collectively raised a generation that is risk-averse in general. Perhaps they have reason to be. Its has been a tumultuous last 20 years.
In the general population, within and outside of the political sphere, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and everyone in general has concerns over misinformation and are more supportive of governmental restrictions on misinformation. There are calls for governmental censorship on misinformation although no agreement on the standard and who enforces it. Meanwhile the social media conglomerates push for self-regulation.
In some sectors, there is concern that the United States may be reverting to the statistical mean of free-speech tolerance as seen in other western nations who have a more restrictive understanding of free speech. I think we are all finding out what happens when someone stands up for a controversial, unpopular position. How tolerant are we willing to be of the rights of others to express themselves? Because unless we are willing to do that, as Nate Silver commented: “to defend free speech in a principled, non-hypocritical way — the game theory says it’s just going to be a race to the bottom. And given the increasingly tenuous commitment to it in many corners of American society, free speech is going to lose out.”
Here in the United States, free speech is protected by an absolutist constitutional First Amendment. Not so in, for example, Britain. Their free expression operates under the laws of parliament. There is no First Amendment equivalent, rather the milieu of general freedoms protected via common law and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998. Britain balances those freedoms against the parliamentary sense of what is needed for public order, the control of hate speech, and, in general, defamation laws. In other words, it can and has changed.
Legislation in the UK is highly subjective with standards such as “grossly offensive” or whether the expression is deemed to demonstrate “hostility”. Enforcement by local authorities and adjudication by the courts can be somewhat fluid, seeming to shift with politics, cultural norms, and local discretion. If that all seems to paint the picture of a moving target, I don’t think you are incorrect – at least from the standard of free speech that is just part of the American “DNA.”
Legislation and enforcement can vary within the UK. Scotland’s recent hate-crime laws criminalizes behavior that “stirs up hatred” against protected groups, even within the privacy of one’s own home. As you might expect, as soon as the law was passed the police were inundated with anonymous complaints against public figures, private citizens, and neighbors. Besides being overloaded with such reports, under law, it can lead to the police placing a notation of a non-hate crime incident in the person’s record, even if no crime was committed. Different regional police forces interpret the guidance differently, meaning a controversial blog post or workplace comment might be officially logged in Manchester but dismissed in London.
JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, immediately posted a thread on X detailing various high-profile transgender women, explicitly calling them men, and critiquing the law. At the end of the thread she invited the police to arrest her, writing: “If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
As you can imagine the police were flooded with complaints which, after a few days, announced they did not consider it a hate crime or even an incident. Was it a realization that it was more a public challenge to the law, purposefully incendiary? Was it the reluctance to engage in what would be a public relations nightmare with a person who had the financial means and access to counter punch? And should they have gone to trial, they’d be facing someone who could afford a stable of lawyers to make the battle protracted and public. Or was it a recognition of a fundamental flaw in the law that the police recognized would keep them from applying resources against real-world violent crime?
All something to think about when someone’s free speech has you grinding your teeth and raising your ire.
What are we to do? Remember and act upon this morning’s first reading: “Brothers and sisters: Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us…” (Eph 4:32 – 5:1)
Free Speech and the First Reading
Here in the United States, free speech is protected by an absolutist constitutional First Amendment. We might find someone’s speech repugnant, etc. and wish it would “go away” but as much as it might rub us the wrong way we acknowledge free speech is a fundamental right unless it crosses the line in the narrow categories of expression that cause direct, immediate harm, illegal acts, or fraud.
In a 1974 Yale Law Journal, law professor William L. Cary popularized an economic and legal concept originally coined by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Cary coined the phrase: “racing to the bottom.” Wikipedia describes the expression’s popular use: “Over the late 20th and early 2011s, the phrase crossed over from academic economics and corporate law into the sociopolitical lexicon. In discussions of public decorum, it applies the same structural logic: a negative feedback loop where competing entities (such as politicians, media outlets, or public figures) realize they can gain short-term attention or advantage by abandoning traditional standards, insulting rivals, and lowering the bar of civility. Because one side lowers their standards, the other feels compelled to match them to stay relevant, driving a collective descent into vulgarity or hostility.”
Not sure of the pathway in the Ohio race for Governor, but the recent ad by the Republican candidate’s campaign seems to have entered the race. One can’t help considering that in the context of this morning’s first reading: “Brothers and sisters: Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us…” (Eph 4:32 – 5:1)
It is always good to check yourself. Are you following St. Paul’s advice, staying on the path of love, or are you straying afield and racing to the bottom.
Setting the scene
Note: Sunday, November 1, 2026 celebrates the Solemnity of All Saints in place of the 31st Sunday for Year A. Each day’s post will provide a link to the Gospel of All Saints – the Sermon on the Mount – which was read on the 4th Sunday of Year A. The main body of the post will discuss Mt 22:34-40, the Gospel for the 31st Sunday with a link to the readings from 2023.
All Saints: Sermon on the Mount – context and audience
This coming Sunday is the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. For several Sundays we have been in the midst of confrontations between Jesus and the Jerusalem leadership. On the 29th Sunday, we moved into a section of Matthew’s gospel that comprises a series of controversies between Jesus and the religious authorities of Jerusalem.
- “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (asked by Pharisees and Herodians: 22:17);
- “In the resurrection, whose wife of the seven will she be?” (asked by Sadducees; v. 27);
- “which commandment in the law is the greatest” (asked by a lawyer; v.34; the core of the Gospel for the 30th Sunday, Year A)
It is the third controversy which is the context of our gospel this week. Where the lectionary draws the boundaries of a reading and where scholars mark the boundaries can be different. For purposes of studying Scripture, the boundaries of our gospel narrative is usually taken to continue and includes vv.41-46, where at the end of the questioning by the leaders of Jerusalem, Jesus asks them a question:
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus questioned them, 42 saying, “What is your opinion about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They replied, “David’s.” 43 He said to them, “How, then, does David, inspired by the Spirit, call him ‘lord,’ saying: 44 ‘The Lord said to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet”’? 45 If David calls him ‘lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. (Matthew 22:41–46)
For our gospel reading, the setting is still in the temple courtyard (see 24:1 – “Jesus left the temple area and was going away, when his disciples approached him to point out the temple buildings.”). Thus, here at the beginning of Mt 23, it is the same group of folks surrounding Jesus. Among them are Jesus’ disciples, and so Matthew mentions both groups as the audience. The content of this section suggests that it begins with the crowd as the primary audience, warning them against those they have been taught to regard as their teachers and leaders; but from v. 8 onward, and unmistakably in v. 10, the disciples are more directly in view, with the last two verses returning to what have already been familiar themes in Jesus’ teaching of his disciples (see 18:1–5; 20:25–28). Those earlier instructions and their synoptic parallels (and cf. also John 13:13–16) indicate that already among the pre-Easter disciple group the issue of status and ambition was a real one, but the wording of vv. 8–10, especially the unparalleled (in Matthew) reference by Jesus to “the Messiah” in the third person with apparent reference to himself, suggests that the teaching has been adapted to address an inappropriate concern for status and respect in the church of Matthew’s own day.
The immediate target, however, is the scribes and the Pharisees, two groups who belong naturally together and probably in fact overlapped to a large extent, most scribes being Pharisaically inclined (see on 5:20). They enjoyed popular respect and authority as the recognized experts in understanding and applying the OT law and its subsequent elaborations, and Jesus’ opening words note the authority of their office, though in the light of what follows there is surely an element of irony in his endorsement. His criticism focuses, however, not on the role they purport to fulfill but on the way they fulfill it. The charge of inconsistency in their behavior (v. 3b) is not developed at this point, but much of what follows in vv. 13–36 will fill it out. But two more specific charges are developed, their lack of consideration for the problems their teaching generates for ordinary people (v. 4), and their concern for appearances and reputation (vv. 5–7). It is the latter which triggers Jesus’ return to his disciples’ preoccupation with status, which takes up the rest of the paragraph.
In the larger context of the story of Jesus, this pericope is taking place on the Tuesday of Holy Week. In other words, after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday” but before the events of Holy Thursday and beyond.
Image credit: Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees (Malheur à vous, scribes et pharisiens) James Tissot, 1886-1894, Brooklyn Museueem, PD-US
One thing never changes
Day in and day out, we encounter all sorts of people. And if we’re being candid, we don’t feel the same way about all of them. At least for purposes of this homily, let’s consider them as sorted into four groups.
The first group is made up of people we genuinely like. It is easy to be in their company. We enjoy and look forward to spending time with them. You know, they make life a little brighter.
The second group is made up of good people who know and generally like. We get along well enough even though they have their quirks. But hey, who doesn’t; it’s part of their uniqueness. And yes, from time to time they may test our patience, but, you know, all-in-all, we’re happy to have them in our lives.
Group three might consist of a good percentage of the people we know. If we are honest, we are sort of neutral towards them. Don’t get me wrong, they are good folks. We know them through work, serving together committees, we see them at church and around the neighborhood. Our paths cross when circumstances bring us together, and then we go about our separate lives. We have no particular feelings about them one way or the other.
And then there’s the fourth group. When we see them coming we might hold our breath, and say a prayer that the most we need to say, “Hi. How’s it going?” And hope they don’t answer in detail or length. What is it about them that just rubs us the wrong way? Let’s have a show of hands. Am I in any one’s group four?
These imaginary four groups are what makes today’s Gospel so interesting because Jesus gives us exactly the same commandment concerning every one of those people: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Not just the people we enjoy, get along with or who make our lives easier. Everyone.
“You shall like the ones who occasionally test our patience, the ones we are rather pell-mell about, and the people we don’t even particularly like.” We weren’t asked to like anyone. We were asked to love them. Like and love ain’t the same thing.
Br. Juniper Capice tells the story of another friar who tormented him all through the years of formation just making his life miserable. Juniper really disliked the guy. And as fate would have it, several years later they were stationed together. The other friar had cascading medical problems and Juniper was assigned to take care of him, take him to medical appointments, run errands, check in on him and the like. All the while the man made Juniper’s life miserable. Juniper was there at his bedside when he passed away. I heard Juniper tell the story the same way every time. He’d take his pipe out of his mouth, use it as a pointer and say, “I never did like that guy. But I loved him.”
Love may or may not have affection. But the love Jesus asks of us is, regardless of how we feel, to seek the good of the other person. All those folks in the four groups? We are not going to feel the same about each one, but we are commanded to love them. Our challenge is to figure out how.
The first will be easy. We already like them and it is easy to do and want good things for people we like. Sure, it might require some sacrifice, but we are happy to do it.
The second group won’t be as easy, but certainly doable. Now we have to be a little more intentional about our choices. Think how often people we like well enough but some days their quirks get to us, under our skin. Those are the moments love asks us to be patient and overlook the quirk rather than start a kerfuffle. It is still the same commandment but it is starting to demand a little more from us.
Maybe group three is the one that will take the most conscious effort. There are the folks that are not on our radar. There is one of them just a few pews behind you. They are the folks that clean your office building. They are the cashiers. They are the waiters who fill your water glass at the restaurant. You say thank you but never look at them. We were cordial, but have we loved them? We probably all need some time to think about that one. Maybe we overthink it. Maybe we just need to pay attention, greet them by their name even if we had to read it off their nametag. Sometimes love begins when we invite people to be more than part of the scenery of our lives.
And then, of course, there’s the fourth group. This is Juniper’s story. He never liked the guy, but chose to be kind, treat him with dignity, serve him, and pray for him. Not one of those things requires affection. He didn’t like him, but he loved him. Loving didn’t mean approving of everything the guy did. Sometimes Juniper was honest and set boundaries. Sometimes he said “no.”
Jesus’ commandment doesn’t change as we encounter folks from the different groups. It is my experience that the intentionality and effort required to love certainly changes. Meanwhile the commandment remains the same.
And perhaps that’s why Jesus gives us two commandments in today’s Gospel, not just one. “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The second is like the first and as such belong together. The goal is that love of neighbor flows from our love of God – especially in the times when our own capacity to love bottoms out. Patience has evaporated, feelings are rising, and our energy and willingness are fast fading.
I think those are the moments when our life of prayer, reflection, and the Eucharist allow us to overcome our natural human inclinations. It is the grace of the Sacraments and the work of the Holy Spirit that keeps us mindful and intentional, giving us glimpses of how God sees others. It is the life in grace that allows God’s love to transform us and the way we encounter others.
At the end of Mass we are all sent out to face those challenges, but before that, in the Eucharist, we will encounter the One who has loved us first. We will receive the love we are called to give. And then be sent.
Into the world armed by today’s gospel message that may make us a wee more patient, less focused on our feelings, and more willing to make an effort to love – and with a better understanding of what love calls us to do.
All manner of things might well change this week. But the commandment doesn’t change. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Image credit: The Pharisees Question Jesus (Les pharisiens questionnent Jésus), James Tissot, 1886-1894, Brooklyn Museum, PD-US
The approaching winter
Over at the New York Times, Melissa Kirsch provides a description that well may describe my relationship to winter: “A few years ago, I had the rather rudimentary realization that my aversion to being cold was causing me to shrink my life to fit within the walls of my apartment during winter. I’d decline invitations, measuring the worthiness of an activity by its proximity to a thermostat. When I realized being cold is not an emergency — it’s just discomfort, and discomfort can be tolerated — I got a better winter coat and stopped dreading February so much.” I still have too much native Floridian in my blood to relish winter’s approach, but perhaps this winter will be milder and my travels wider.
Love Means…. What?
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Although the Sermon on the Mount has already included an extensive section of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples on love as fundamental to the life of discipleship (5:21–48), in this concluding encounter with his opponents Matthew gives Jesus another opportunity to summarize the core of his teaching (as 7:12). There, the teaching was to his disciples; here, it is to his opponents, in the controversy situation showing his orthodoxy as an advocate of the whole of the Law and the Prophets. Since Matthew here focuses on the argumentative aspect of the scene, he does not develop the theological issues that interest the contemporary interpreter (cf. Luke, who relocates the passage, 10:25–28): (1) the meaning of “love,” (2) the meaning of “neighbor,” and (3) the meaning of Jesus’ responding with two commands.
While Jesus quotes two OT passages (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18), it is interesting that commentators offer different opinions about the relationship between these two commandments. Here is but a sample:
- Patte (The Gospel According to Matthew) writes: “… these two commandments remain distinct. They should not be identified with each other. Loving God should not be reduced to loving one’s neighbor! Loving God is an act of love distinct from loving one’s neighbor, and vice versa” [p. 314].
- Boring (Matthew, New Interpreters Bible) writes: “To love God is to love one’s neighbor, and vice versa (25:31-46)” [p. 426]
- Hare (Matthew, Interpretation Commentaries): “Truly to love God is to love the neighbor; truly to love the neighbor is to love God (cf. 1 John 4:20-21)” [p. 260].
All hold an insight. On one hand, I think that loving God means something different than just loving one’s neighbor. One can be a very kind, caring, philanthropic person without giving any thoughts or love to God. On the other hand, I don’t think that a believer can love God without loving neighbor and self, because God loves that neighbor too.
There are three basic Greek words for “love:” agapao/agape, phileo/philos, and eros. There is not always agreement among scholars about the distinction between these three choices. Boring, (Matthew The New Interpreters Bible) says that the words are synonymous — that agape is not necessarily a special word for “God-love”. He writes:
When Christians use the word love with reference to God, to the deepest human relationships, and of the stance they are to exercise toward the world, the content of this word is not to be filled in with supposed meaning of a special Greek word, but from an understanding of God’s nature made known in Christ. It is from this revelatory perspective that we come to know love as unmotivated and unmanipulated, unconditional and unlimited. Such love is not a matter of feeling, which cannot be commanded in any case, but of commitment and action. It is at the farthest pole from sentimentality and is related to the OT word for “covenant love” or “steadfast love” (hesed). [p. 425]
While there is merit to stress the nature and actions of God to give understanding to the word “love,” (i.e., it is God’s actions that give the content to agape, rather than a dictionary meaning of agape that defines God’s actions) and recognizing that the meanings of the three Greek works for “love” overlap — that is, they are partially synonymous, still there are different emphases or nuances in these three words. Given a continuum with “selflessness” on one end and “selfishness” on the other, most place agapao/agape towards the selfless end and eros towards the selfish end with phileo/philos in the middle.
Agapao/agape are words that tend to center on actions (not emotions) towards other people. Eros is a word that tends to center on emotional/sexual actions or feelings that please one’s self. Phileo/philos are words that tend to center on actions and feelings that benefit both parties, e.g., friendships. Especially as a verb, agapao refers to “loving (or caring) actions towards other people for their benefit.” It is not primarily a word to describe one’s emotions, e.g., having warm feelings towards.
For a slightly different definition, Hare, (Matthew, Interpretation Commentaries) writes:
In an age when the word ‘love’ is greatly abused, it is important to remember that the primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that Deut. 6:5 demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment. Similarly, to love our neighbor, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love the neighbor is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously. [p. 260]
Loving God then implies an attachment to God — a commitment that goes beyond personal, inward feelings. The same is implied towards the neighbor. Within the OT context of this commandment (Lv 19:17-18), neighbor referred to “kin”. (However, Lv 19:33-34) extends the love to “aliens” who reside among them.
Image credit: The Pharisees Question Jesus (Les pharisiens questionnent Jésus), James Tissot, 1886-1894, Brooklyn Museum, PD-US
Jesus’ Choice
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus’ choice of Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18 is notable for two reasons. In the first place, by focusing on “love” rather than on more tangible regulations to be obeyed, it raises the discussion above merely judging between competing rules, and gives the priority to a principle which has potential application to virtually every aspect of religious and communal life. When Jesus declares that “the whole law and the prophets” depend on this principle, he is repeating the point he made in 7:12, “this is the law and the prophets.” The ethical principle he there laid down did not use the word “love,” but that is what it was all about. The priority of love in the life of a disciple will be a frequently repeated NT principle, and one which it would be very hard to object to.
In the second place, by bringing these two texts together Jesus asserts that the one principle of love applies equally to the two main aspects of religious duty, one’s attitude to God and one’s attitude to other people. It is these two foci which provide the framework of the 10 Commandments, with its two “tables” covering these two aspects in turn. If the 10 Commandments are a sort of embodiment of the law, these two quotations in turn sum up the 10 Commandments.
As France (2007:846) points out, even though the love of God as expressed in Deut 6:5 rightly takes first place, Jesus goes beyond the scope of the original question to assert that “a second” must be placed alongside it. It is “like” Deut 6:5 not only in that it is equally important, but also in the formal sense that it uses the same verbal form, “you are to love,” and more fundamentally in that it equally insists that one’s religious duty is focused outside oneself. It might be possible to think even of love for God as a self-centered spiritual experience, but love for one’s neighbor is inescapably practical and altruistic.
Is Jesus the first Jewish teacher to bring the two texts together in this paradigmatic way? The great Jewish teacher Hillel summarized the law in a way that is much like the so-called golden rule of Jesus: “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole law; the rest is commentary. Go and learn.” And there is certainly evidence that others had combined love for God and for neighbor in a summary of religious duty in non-Biblical, Jewish writings such as Jubilees, The Testament of Daniel, the Testament of Isaiah, Philo, and the Testament of Abraham. But as far as canonical, biblical sources, there is no parallel to Jesus’ use of this double quotation to make the point. (France, 2007:843)
Image credit: The Pharisees Question Jesus (Les pharisiens questionnent Jésus), James Tissot, 1886-1894, Brooklyn Museum, PD-US
Jesus Being Tested
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The test goes to the heart of the Mosaic law, and as such, it is appropriately raised by a Pharisaic lawyer. It would not be an unfamiliar question, since rabbis did discuss which of the commandments were “heavy” and which “light,” and sometimes tried to summarize the main thrust of the Mosaic law in terms of a key OT text. Since the five books of Moses (Pentateuch) contained, by rabbinic calculation, 613 commandments, some means of assessing their relative importance would be widely valued.
But to provide this must involve choosing one legal principle over others, and this carried the risk that other teachers, who might have made a different choice, could accuse their colleague of belittling the importance of some other equally scriptural principle. Any answer must risk pleasing some at the expense of alienating others, and therein perhaps is the element of “test” from an unsympathetic dialogue partner, particularly in view of the suspicion already noted in 5:17 that Jesus had come to “abolish” the law. If he differed radically from mainstream Jewish orthodoxy, this question ought to reveal it. (R.T. France, 2007: 842)
As Brian Stoffregen notes: “In a similar way, if we were to assume that all verses in the Bible were equal, then asking, “What’s the most important verse in the Bible?” would be a “testing” question. We could find fault in any answer that was given.”
The Old Shaping the New. In Mark as in Deut 6:4–5, the command to love God is part of the Shema, which begins with the confession of the oneness of God, the closest thing to a universal creed in Judaism. Although there was a rabbinic tradition of “summaries of the Torah,” the combination of the command to love God and love neighbor is distinctive of the synoptic Jesus. Matthew’s most dramatic change is to replace the Markan conclusion’s positive interchange between Jesus and the scribe with Jesus’ pronouncement (v. 40) that the whole of the law and the prophets “hang” from these two commandments. In the context of the Matthean narrative theology as a whole, this is more than another summary of the law. Nor is it a statement explaining that all the other commands of the law can be exegetically derived from these two commands. Rather, Jesus declares the command to love God and neighbor (on their unity as one command, see below) to be the hermeneutical key for interpreting all the divine revelation—not only the Law, but the Prophets as well.
Image credit: The Pharisees Question Jesus (Les pharisiens questionnent Jésus), James Tissot, 1886-1894, Brooklyn Museum, PD-US
How far
It has been my experience that people just beginning serious study of Sacred Scriptures follow a pattern: the Gospels/Acts, selected Old Testament books, and then the letters of St. Paul. One of the challenges in reading and understanding Paul is that you are often only listening to half of the conversation. Often Paul is responding to some news or correspondence he has received from the particular Christian community, e.g. Corinth and Galatia. This week’s first readings are mostly taken from the Letter to the Ephesians, a letter that lacks any personal greetings and seems, as some scholars offer, a “circular letter” meant to be received, copied and passed on to the next community. One is left to wonder if Paul is writing about a problem or whether the majestic chapters of Ephesians are meant to be an overarching message that emphasizes the unity in the church of Christ that has come about for both Jews and Gentiles within God’s household.
In the first reading today, Paul talks about “the mystery was made known to me by revelation.” He tells us the great mystery: the Gentiles would share in God’s promises. But wait a minute. Didn’t Isaiah already say that the nations would come to worship God? Didn’t God promise Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him? So what exactly was the mystery?
The surprise wasn’t simply that the Gentiles were invited but that they were no longer outsiders. “The Gentiles are coheirs [synklēronoma], members of the same Body [syssōma], and co-partners [symmetocha] in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” The underlying Greek and its near alliteration drives the point home. They didn’t have to become someone else before they could belong to Christ. The middle word, syssōma, is especially striking. It is an unusual Greek formation, emphasizing membership in the very same body, not simply association between two communities. The emphasis isn’t merely that Gentiles may receive blessings from Israel’s God. They become equal participants in God’s promise through Christ.
Prophetic expectation was that the nations would come to Zion and worship Israel’s God. But the mystery revealed in Christ is that Jews and Gentiles are reconciled in Christ and together constitute one new humanity, sharing the same access to the Father through the Spirit. The prophets saw the nations coming to God. But they did not see the full shape of the Church as the one Body of Christ, constituted through his death and resurrection, in which Gentiles share fully in the promise without becoming Jews. All this is no longer some future event, but one that has already happened. The Church itself has become the visible expression of what God has accomplished. “So that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.”
If God’s great mystery is that people once separated have become one in Christ, then the Church cannot proclaim that mystery while casually accepting divisions within its own life. We cannot celebrate being one Body while treating other members as though they don’t belong. And the challenge isn’t simply to be welcoming in a general sense. It is to recognize that the person whom I might regard as an outsider may already be someone Christ has made my brother or sister.
For generations, the prophets proclaimed that the nations would come to God. But in Christ, God did something more extraordinary than anyone had fully imagined. He didn’t simply invite the nations to come and visit. He made them family.
It is not that God had never hinted at what He intended to do, but that no one had yet seen just how far God’s promise would go.
And you have to wonder if God is done. How far might He go?
Image credit: “Christ at the home of Martha and Mary” | Charles de La Fosse | Private collection in a castle in Lorraine (France); Galerie Didier Chéreau, Paris | PD-US
What’s love got to do with it?
This coming Sunday is the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. In commentaries and in Bible studies, I often encounter the variety of words, in the Greek, used for love. People ask lots of questions about the meaning and use of them in Scripture. There are perhaps several questions that can be asked:
- How do modern-day Christians use and interpret the various Greek words for “love”: eros, philos, and agape? The answer is often given as a hierarchy of love ascending to God-love in the word agape.
- How did the first century Scripture writers understand the differing words? How did they intend to use them?
- How does OT and NT scriptures use the words.
It is perhaps the latter question that is the foundation. Boring (425) provides an excellent summary:
The word used here for “love” is ἀγαπάω (agapaō), the verbal form of ἀγάπη (agapē). The interpreter should first dispel the tradition that has become almost sacrosanct that there is some magic in the meaning of the Greek word agapē. There is certainly something special about the Christian understanding of love for God, neighbor, and world as expressed in the NT. But this is not bound up with the meaning of a particular Greek word. The author who composed in Greek was in approximately the same situation as the English interpreter in having several words for “love” that overlapped in meaning. In Greek as in English there was and is no single Greek word with an inherent meaning that refers exclusively to the kind of love with which God loves the world and with which Christians are commanded to love God, each other, and their neighbors. Let it clearly be said: agapē was not such a word. Neither Jesus nor Christians invented this word, found in the LXX in a variety of senses: for the love of God (Deut 6:5) and neighbor (Lev 19:18) as here, but also of adulterous lust (e.g., Jer 2:25, 33), and of the love of money (Eccl 5:9). It is used as a synonym for ἐπιθυμία (epithymia) in Wisdom of Solomon 6, and for φιλία (philia) in 7:14; 8:2. The NT takes over this variety of usage of agapē. It is used in 2 Pet 2:15 for Balaam’s love for money. In Luke 6:32 it is used for sinners’ love for each other. In John 3:19 it is used for the love of evil people for the darkness. In addition, both agapē (noun) and agapaō (verb) are used as synonyms for φιλέω (phileō) / φιλία (philia), as in the celebrated but misunderstood John 21:15–17. Likewise, phileō, supposed in the traditional interpretation to express mutual love as in friendship, inferior to the self-giving love of agapē, is in fact used both for the deepest self-sacrificing love of both human beings and God (Matt 10:37; John 5:20; 11:3, 36; 16:27; 20:2; 1 Cor 16:22; Titus 3:15; Rev 3:19). When Christians use the word love with reference to God, to the deepest human relationships, and of the stance they are called to exercise toward the world, the content of this word is not to be filled in from the supposed meaning of a special Greek word, but from the understanding of God’s nature made known in Christ. It is from this revelatory perspective that we come to know love as unmotivated and unmanipulated, unconditional and unlimited. Such love is not a matter of feeling, which cannot be commanded in any case, but of commitment and action. It is at the farthest pole from sentimentality and is related to the OT word for “covenant love” or “steadfast love” (חסד ḥesed).
This is not the only opinion on the meaning of the various Greek words as used in the NT, but it one of the only commentaries I have found that explores how the words are used in the OT (LXX). Later in this commentary, other views are presented.
Image credit: The Pharisees Question Jesus (Les pharisiens questionnent Jésus), James Tissot, 1886-1894, Brooklyn Museum, PD-US
