Reflection by Frances Flatman on next Sunday's Readings :-
Living as a believer is never a simple ‘once-off’ thing, it’s rather always about a process during which we have to work at our faith. This may be in any number of ways but clearly, as our Readings show, faith is never ‘blind’ but rather a continual work in progress as we allow the Mass readings to challenge us, or in our studies of the scriptures, or as we apply our faith in the hurly-burly of daily life. Our Scriptures after all are the work of human beings over hundreds of years, applying themselves to the understanding of their relationship to God in their times, as Old Testament Prophets did; and then there is our subjecting them to the conditions of our day. Unenlightened literalism simply is not good enough, and as St Jerome wrote ‘Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ’. We have to search for the relevance of what we find, gifted to us through the ages – unlike my erstwhile friend who lived by the maxim ‘Trouble is coming from the north!’ But as for me that is Scotland, clearly that does not work, we are not living in 8th C BCE Palestine.
Our passage from Exodus (17:8-13) is situated on Israel’s long journey to the Promised Land. It comes before the first ascent of Sinai, but when the people, threatening murder and mayhem on Moses, have been given both manna and water by God, and they are attacked by the Amalekites on whose lands they have impinged. Clearly things were not going smoothly at all, and the Israelites became a thoroughly unruly lot. In our story the ‘day’ is only saved by God, and the support Moses is given by his relatives Aaron and Hur. In fact, what we witness of the Exodus is a group of people whose disobedience and waywardness is demonstrated throughout the journey to the land gifted them by God. This then is one colossal learning experience for Israel, and a time when their hostility to their leaders is more in the forefront than their compliance, and the people are invited to understand that their God is nonetheless a god of mercy and justice.
The Letters to Timothy (2 Tim 3:14-4:2), though about a thousand years away from Exodus and in the pagan city of Ephesus in Turkey, have a similar feel, albeit the scenery is very different. It is clear from the letters that the writer, who knows the city well, as had Paul, is very aware of the prevailing situation in which the Christian community, under stress from the great variety of pagan philosophies and gods which flourished in this teeming cosmopolitan imperial capital in the east, are under threat. Clearly this was not their only problem, as there were internal disputes about the meaning of the Christian faith too which threatened its very survival. Accordingly, the writer advises the group to stick to the known traditions about the faith handed down from its beginnings and in the scriptures. As Mark is the earliest written Gospel, c 66 CE, it’s more than likely that Ephesus, a wealthy community had copies sent from Rome and could read Mark’s story of Jesus. He calls for the congregation to study so that they might ‘Teach, refute error and guide people’s lives teaching them to be holy’. This is not blind acceptance of teaching, but requires them to work out how to apply it in the situations in which they live. For instance, there is no reference to the Jewish law which would have shaped the original Judaeo-Christian teaching; and the Temple in Jerusalem most likely no longer existed by the time of the letter. Christianity and Judaism had parted company, and faith in Christ was increasingly a Gentile affair so that its teachings had to adapt to face the needs of Christian life in the largely pagan world of Ephesus, with its ever-present quest for wisdom and the understanding of the universe. Theirs was a world where questions about the nature of Christ and his relation to God were beginning to be hammered out, and Ephesus would be at the forefront of such debates as we know; but where this work had to be done under the guidance of existing scripture and with the philosophical thinking of the time. Our group are advised to ‘Proclaim the message and welcome or unwelcome, insist upon it...but do all with patience and with the intention of teaching.’ Their mission is to pass on the truth about the salvation wrought in Christ, but they must discover how to do so with sensitivity and respect for the intellectual needs of their time.
We are now very near to Jerusalem and the Passion of the Christ, (Luke 18:1-8) and as we have seen throughout these last weeks, Jesus worked to prepare his tiny community for a future beyond his earthly life. Whilst as we have seen, his attitude towards those he knew were bent on his destruction could be hard and caustic, his job was to bolster the disciples for their loss, and for the continuation of the message of salvation he brought. So yet again, as with the Reading a fortnight ago, we have not a polite discourse or even a solemn reprimand to the disciples, but a memorable and humorous image which would remain as a constant teaching aid in the minds of his followers. Telling people to ‘Pray and not lose heart’ in the midst of difficulties can be a tad dampening, but to tell a witty story of a corrupt judge – something the majority were extremely familiar with if you were poor - and the tale of the importunate widow – a group notoriously ill served by the judiciary whether Jewish or pagan in Jesus’ eyes and in the experience of his audience, would definitely stick. Our widow just keeps at it, regardless of the apparent deafness, laziness, corruption, sexism and class consciousness of the judge, until one day, he reasons he will respond, not from care of justice but to get her off his back. The idea that we might view God in these terms is of course quite shocking. Jesus has spoken of the Father as merciful, ever willing to respond and life giving, yet here Jesus deliberately resorts to a different image – we need to pray, and pray and pray when we feel there is no response and absolutely no hope of an answer, like the widow who just kept going in a cussed kind of way. There are times when prayer can be like that and when our faith is tested. The message is don’t give up, remember the widow and keep sticking your foot in the Lord’s door!
Comments