33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A
Today is the penultimate Sunday of the Year of Grace 2011. Our focus on the end of the Church’s liturgical year is a spiritual reflection upon our own mortality. Ours is a healthy religious disposition to live life in confident expectation of meeting God at our individual death. What we do in life and how we do what we do must be done with intelligent awareness of our relationship to God, to each other, to our Church fellowship, and to the neighborhood and world in which we live and work. Our individual lives are not simplistically about “me and Jesus,” but rather about Christ and his Church and me and us . . . all together. The Mystery of God’s Presence is not a private revelation, but an all-inclusive reality. So, we hear more today from the Jewish Wisdom tradition and of early Christian apocalyptic expectations.
The Old Testament’s life-situation was in an unashamedly patriarchal society. While that sounds archaic and unjust to many modern believers, and while even our Church preaches contra-patriarchy in some socio-ethical ways (not always successfully!) much good grew and developed in and from that ancient way of life. Today’s text from the biblical collection of Proverbs is in praise of the ideally good wife in cultural terms of the ancient near east in general and in Jewish terms in particular. In ancient near eastern terms, a man’s wife was his perfect compliment. Without her, he was incomplete and not as good, virtuous, or holy as he might be. While this approach seems one-sided today, it was genuine praise and full of respect to ancient ears. In Jewish terms, the social values in today’s first reading are already essential to Judaism even while they anticipate Jesus’ future Gospel in tone, i.e., the good wife is focused on the household, trustworthy, honest and constructive in work tasks, proactive and generous to the poor and needy, and embodying “fear of the Lord” (read: full of awe and respect towards God). These are virtues for all of either gender, ancient and modern. This scripture passage has been used at funeral services for noble and admirable women who blessed their family and circle of friends in selflessness, gentleness, and compassion.
The second reading engages the Parousia in terms of the conventional wisdom of Paul’s day, i.e., in apocalyptic terms. First Century Christians genuinely expected what they called the Second Coming of Jesus to occur within their own lifetimes. By the end of the 1st Christian Century, this expectation had diminished significantly, but it was sparked and re-ignited whenever any tremendous calamity threatened: in times of violent anti-Christian persecution; during natural disasters like earthquake, famine or flood; in times of disease like the plague; when hostile infidel armies invaded and pillaged; or on the occasion of solar eclipses, comet sightings, or other unusual and inexplicable events, whether natural or artificial. The travail experienced in such situations seemed so great to the ancients that death was held to be somewhat preferable to the immanent tragedy. One wonders what they would have thought about the 20th Century’s world wars, hurricanes, and the threat of nuclear holocaust? In any event, they expected the created universe to end by divine decree and for themselves as committed members of the Gospel fellowship to be taken by God into the heavenly kingdom. They were “children of the light ... of day.” This theme is emphasized at the Great Vigil of Easter in the Service of Light. This Easter metaphor requires the Easter Vigil to begin only well after full darkness has fallen (not in twilight!) or well before first light of dawn. Paul’s Christians considered themselves truly enlightened by the Gospel, and so their commitment was not culturally neutral or second-natured. They had to live with and wrestle with the question, How do we live the Gospel effectively? on a day-to-day basis! Paul’s urgent tone hints at that intensity. “Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest (non-Christians!) do, but let us stay alert and sober.” Such alertness would allow them to prepare for the Second Coming and to rejoice in it.
The Gospel narrative is the second of Matthew’s Gospel’s three eschatological parables in his 25th chapter. This is set in a primitive form of capitalism, not in the financial sense, but rather in the sense of being a socially adept and spiritual thoughtful entrepreneur. The parable is about engaging life because the master has entrusted you with unimaginably great blessings. Indeed, two of the servants do just that, engage life and find a great return. We must imagine that they had to live life with all the messiness which real life provides, but they engaged life nonetheless! They worked at it because the master trusted them with his own wealth. The third servant was bound by fear. Fear is an anti-Gospel value and quality. The Gospel cannot be preached or lived effectively if fear is a tool in Gospel proclamation or implementation. Fear at best is manipulative and at worst is deadly. The servant who buried the master’s wealth out of fear was roundly scolded and condemned by the master. Thus, the Gospel is indeed about the hard work of living life in an engaged and life-giving a manner as possible. It includes risk-taking and failure. It is expensive in that it costs the blessings with which God has entrusted us. But, it is worth ever bit of effort, every failure, every effort. The salvation which comes is not earned by the believer, but is a gift provided by God, just like the original gift of blessing. The opportunity to engage in life with intelligence, energy, and love are short-term blessings given by God. For whatever reason, faith is a gift given to some, but not to all. We to whom faith has been provided engage life with an extra advantage of knowing that creation and the lives we live in it are genuinely and eternally blessed. God has already “saved” us. Jesus’ Paschal Mystery was a statement of God’s great love and Jesus’ loving response to God. Jesus loved even though it cost him everything ordinary human life had to offer. He was the true suffering servant of God the Master. We ourselves are servants who suffer sometimes, to be sure. But, we are also blessed servants who are ever-more aware of the delight, joy and peace that comes from relating to God through the Gospel fellowship.
“To everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich...!” We must rejoice in the lives with which we have been blessed. We must demonstrate a sincere Gospel joy, especially as we bring this Year of Grace to a conclusion. Indeed, the future holds sufferings and burdens which we cannot see. But, the same God who raised Jesus from the dead will guard and guide us through life, into death, and into life eternal! Come, Lord Jesus!