The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation for Ordinary Time
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Today’s readings continue to explore the theme of discipleship, this time in the context of the institution, around the question of institutional control. The leading question is, “Who has the power?”
We are still in Ordinary time but, like the changing of seasons from summer to fall, the tenor of readings is beginning to change. Throughout the liturgical year, we are always on a relentless path moving us towards the mystery of Easter. But as we approach the Advent season, we will be reminded of that in more urgent ways.
Numbers 11:25-29
This book duplicates a lot of material in Exodus and Deuteronomy, but today’s story is unique to this book. Chp 11 is another recounting of wandering in the desert, and the people are complaining. They are always questioning, “Is God with us?!” This time it’s because all they have to eat is manna and they’re tired of it. I guess their image of God is one who provides variety in the food. God is portrayed as becoming angry at this. Moses also gets angry and then discouraged. In response to Moses’ discouragement, God relents, and has Moses choose 70 elders to help him govern the people. Today’s passage is a commissioning for that group.
The passage begins with God’s spirit descending. The word used for spirit is ruah, the same word as in Genesis 1, “The spirit of the Lord hovered over the waters.” Moses had the closest possible relationship with God that a living human can have. He was a saint in every understanding of that word. If we put it in the language of contemplative prayer, Moses had achieved the state of union with God. Now God allows these elders to share directly in that relationship, in that unitive experience, purely on the strength of Moses’ relationship with God. Maybe it pays to hang around with saints.
In v16, God tells Moses to assemble these 70 elders and bring them to the meeting tent. V26 says that Eldad and Medad were on the list but didn’t show up and it’s not clear why. It’s telling that their names are mentioned because names in the Bible are almost always significant. Eldad means “beloved of God” and Medad means “friend of God. Their names suggest they, too, had a special relationship with God.
So the elders gather, with the exception of these two, God’s spirit descends, and everyone begins to prophesy, including the two not present. Which apparently gets everyone in an uproar. OMG, things are out of control! Someone, go find who’s in charge and tell them what’s going on! In v27 a young man runs and tells Moses that Eldad and Medad are acting strange. Even Joshua, Moses’s close aide and eventual successor, urges Moses to intervene.
Things are out of control. We’ve got 68 people in an ecstatic trance or speaking in tongues or something of that nature. Two more are back in camp doing the same. Moses is obviously not up to the task so here comes Joshua, and, like any good aide, Joshua pulls out the rule book. The rules say…. these men can’t be from God because God said… and they didn’t do that. To be fair, nothing like this has ever happened before so Joshua is trying to make sense of things, trying to make the rules fit a situation that has never come up. In Joshua’s experience, when God says to do something, you do that. And if you don’t, bad things happen.
Moses, however, has a much deeper relationship with God and understands God better. Moses knows that there are times when God wants to work on the fringes, times when God does things a new way. I read v29 and I wonder if maybe God allowed Moses to see a far-distant future where people like you and I would be baptized and anointed as priest, prophet, and king. Maybe he saw a time when the spirit would work in new and refreshing ways, in ways that were far outside the rulebook of his time.
Joshua wanted to confine things to authorized channels. Moses said you simply can’t. God cannot and will not be contained.
I am reminded of a homily by Fr. Steven Bell, C.S.P. where he said that uniformity of spirit is impossible and doesn’t really help. We’re called to go way beyond tolerance. Love says, “I see your value and you have something to teach me. All God’s people have something to teach me.”
This is yet another great passage for imaginative prayer where we are invited to see a variety of viewpoints:
- Moses, who discerns God at work in unique ways
- Joshua, who wants to stick to the tried and true
- an elder who experiences God’s presence in a wholly new way
- a young man witnessing something disturbing and seeking out an authority for help
- someone in the crowd watching from afar
James 5:1-6
The lectionary spends five weeks with this short letter. I encourage you to read it in its entirety at least once, if not every week. Today is our last Sunday in James; next week we move on to Hebrews.
We could sum up this little book by saying: a faith that does not transform is no faith at all.
Today’s passage is about our relationship to wealth. I think this really relates to the Mark reading: money can definitely be one of those things close to us that can cause others to stumble as well as ourselves.
The passage makes three accusations against the wealthy:
- Defrauding day laborers out of a just wage
- Living in luxury and self-indulgence
- Legal action against the innocent to get their own way
V4 might evoke Exodus 3:9 where God tells Moses that the cries of the people in Egypt have reached him.
This passage serves as a warning of the terrible fate of those who abuse riches, and perhaps also a consolation to those now oppressed by the rich.
It can be all too easy with any reading to assume it’s talking about someone else. We might justify it away by saying we are not rich or we haven’t used wealth in these ways. The challenge is to sit with the reading and let it penetrate the heart; to let God reveal ways in which it does apply to us.
Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
Through the end of chp 8, the primary question of the gospel has been “Who is this man?!” Peter answered that question by naming Jesus the Messiah. Jesus doesn’t deny that but he’s still got a lot of teaching to do for them and us to realize what that really means.
The gradual healing of the blind man in 8:22 is key to interpreting chps 9-10. The man can see the first time around, but he doesn’t see clearly. Neither do the disciples. They name Jesus as the Messiah but they don’t see clearly what that entails.
Chps 8-10 there will be a pattern of three actions and it will repeat three times:
- Prediction of Jesus’ passion
- An inappropriate response
- Teaching on discipleship
Last week started us on the second repeat of this pattern. Jesus predicted his passion and death. The inappropriate response was silence and fear, and then Jesus begins teaching what it means to be a Messiah, which is intricately intertwined with what it means to be a disciple. Today will continue the teaching on discipleship.
The reading begins with the disciple John reporting to Jesus that someone is driving out demons in Jesus’ name without being a follower. OMG, things are out of control! Someone go find who’s in charge and tell them what’s going on! Here’s John, in the spirit of Joshua, trotting out the rulebook.
The fact that the guy was doing things in Jesus’ name had to have indicated some rudimentary level of faith that it might work. Back in v37 Jesus said whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. This would have been familiar to his listeners since emissaries were common and in that culture, an emissary would have been someone with all the authority of the one who sent him. In Mark 6, Jesus sent the Twelve out with authority to preach and heal. John’s action here seems to be protective of that authority; he wanted to restrict the use of it to just their group. This is a question of authority and other people being sent essentially as emissaries by Jesus versus others who had not been sent that way.
Jesus’ response is very similar to Moses’: don’t worry about it. Whoever is not against us is, by default, for us. He uses the plural here to refer to the whole group. Jesus is telling his disciples to take a stance of openness. He also says there is no neutral ground: if you’re not against Jesus then you’re for him. One perhaps might think of the Baptist church next door to the Catholic church. If they are not against us then they are for us, they are with us in what we’re trying to do.
He goes on to illustrate this in v41. A poor person might well have nothing more to offer than a cup of water. Remember last week Jesus illustrated the kingdom with a little child – the person who can never pay you back. Those are the ones you are to serve. These are also the people who are for you, who are a part of your community whether formally or not. This is a radical stance of openness: not judging, not defining, not categorizing.
Part of discipleship means serving the least – those who can never pay you back. It means accepting those same ones as part of your community, part of the body of Christ. Be open BUT…. you have to be careful! Whatever you do, don’t harm the weak and powerless or, in fact, anyone else in the community. V42 tells us on the one hand we have to be open-minded about how the work is being done, but on the other hand, we have to be careful about how we do it. Jesus is talking here about sins that harm the weak. Paul talked about this as well in Romans 14:1-15:6 and 1 Corinthians 8:1-13. Remember, we’re on The Way and we don’t want to put any stumbling block for others along the same Way.
One practical application is that you can and should have a stance of openness about the system, but if you see that it’s actually harming the weak then you better get working to change the system.
Jesus is then going to talk about the ways in which the weak can be harmed by our sins. In v43-47 he talks about the hands, the feet, and the eyes. All these are metaphors for faults that are so close and dear to us, they’re like parts of our body. These are things that cause other people to stumble, but to conquer them will be like cutting off a part of ourselves.
Jesus says if you’ve got a fault or a habit that is causing other people to stumble, it’s better to cut it out of you even though that’s like cutting off a limb. Better you do that than lose the kingdom. Teresa of Avila is known for her teaching on prayer, and the first three “mansions” or stages are part of the ascetical phase, purification, rooting out those things that keep us and others from our ultimate aim. A reflective life helps make sure we aren’t hampering our own progress or that of others.
V43 references Gehenna, a valley near Jerusalem where it was thought the final judgment would take place. Also sometimes called Sheol or Hades, it was the destination of the wicked. Initially, it was a valley where some Jewish kings sacrificed their children and was considered cursed (see Jeremiah 7:31, 19:2-6).
Paul uses the body as a metaphor for the Christian community, the church. It’s possible that meaning is intended here as another layer: if someone is causing trouble in the community, causing others to stray, cut them off from the community. Better to go into the kingdom less a few members than risk having everyone go astray.
You’ll notice that v44 and 46 are left out of the lectionary and they don’t appear in most Bibles. It’s generally accepted that these verses are later scribal additions that simply repeat v48, to retain the poetic flavor of the passage. The phrase is a quote from Isaiah 66:22.
The lectionary leaves out v49-50 which is unfortunate because they continue the theme of this teaching. V48 ends with a reference to fire which v49 picks up. It was common in rabbinic teaching to link disparate thoughts with a common word. Fire and salt both have the potential to purify. This evokes the idea of punishment that stops just short of destruction.
Salt makes the taste vibrant and alive, like what our discipleship is supposed to be. This is a comment on what it means to be a disciple.
In the Old Testament, Jewish law required sacrifices to be offered with salt (see Ezekiel 43:24, Exodus 30:35, and Leviticus 2:13). Salt was seen as necessary to keep the sacrifice from being perfunctory, and to sustain zeal for God’s worship. In this way, salt is that necessary quality in disciples that keeps us vibrant and alive and fervent. Salt losing its flavor means falling into a discipleship that is bland and insipid and doesn’t do much good. This is the type of Christian who is one in name only.
Salt also makes you thirsty: we are to maintain that spiritual vitality that will make others thirst for the living water.
And then, finally, salt would be mixed with other things depending on the purpose. If you got the saline quantity too low, then the salt would be factored out and wouldn’t really do much good. Just like if we put too much junk in our lives, we can’t be good disciples. James keeps trying to tell us this and Jesus tells us this over and over again. It’s part and parcel of the gospel message. We have to keep our focus clear – our salt level high – to be true disciples.
Sectarianism is an excessive attachment to a particular sect or party, especially in religion, which excludes other viewpoints. The first part of this passage warns us not just about sectarianism, but also about our human tendency to draw the circle of fellowship too narrowly, to exclude others.
The rest of the passage brings home the point that we have to live a self-reflective life so that we are always making sure our path is straight and that it doesn’t lead others or ourselves into sin.
How zealous are you to identify and root out the things that might lead yourself or others astray?
What functions as salt in your life? How do you function as salt in the world?
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© 2024 Kelly Sollinger