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26th Sunday of Year B

28 septembre 2018
Nicole Gregoire
Aucun commentaire
Catégories: Anglophones et anglophiles
Mots-clés: authority, exclusion, jealousy, Mk.9:38-43, Nb.11:25-29, outsiders, power, prejudice, pride, segregation, séparation

I read and read again the 1st reading of this Sunday (26th Sunday of Year B – Nb.11:25-29)
and the first part of the gospel (Mk.9:38-43)
and… I try to read between the lines –
read the words and the meaning that is hidden there.

The two texts are similar and their message is equally so.
What is depicted there is, unfortunately, something still very much part of our landscape in this 21st century.

We see people trying to jealously keep some prerogatives.
People refusing that some good can be performed by ‘outsiders’.
People who try to prevent others to realize something positive as if it were their sole responsibility to do so.
People who want those in authority to side with them and support their attitude.

All this results in separation, segregation, exclusion, under the pretext:
those others are not from among us!
Power, pride, prejudice – all present there in a shameful display!

“If only the whole people of the Lord were prophets,
and the Lord gave his Spirit to them all!”
 
Moses, the wise leader, has the right answer as he replies to Joshua – an old saying which would serve us well.
If only… we lived according to it.

Note: Another reflection is available on a different theme in French at: https://image-i-nations.com/26e-dimanche-de-lannee-b/

Source: Image: Free Bible Images

27th Sunday of Year A

5 octobre 2017
Nicole Gregoire
Aucun commentaire
Catégories: Anglophones et anglophiles
Mots-clés: bad faith, behaviour, compassion, exclusion, Jesus, Mt.21:33-46, obstinacy, parable, Pharisees, pride, rejection, scorn, scribes, truth

The gospel narratives give us many parables of Jesus.
All of them are inspiring, some are challenging, others rather disturbing.
I think that the one in this Sunday’s gospel (27th Sunday, Year A – Mt.21:33-43) must have appeared very shocking to Jesus’ listeners.
And it was!

For us, 21 centuries later, the meaning is obvious and the words leave no doubt as to what Jesus wanted to say.
But I believe that the scribes, the Pharisees and the leaders of the people who heard the words of Jesus also had a rather clear picture of what he meant.
It was aimed at them – at their obstinacy in refusing to recognize him as God’s messenger.
In the verse following the parable we are told: “The chief priests and the scribes realised he was speaking about them” (v.45).

From the start they had challenged him, they opposed him, and they tried to trap him in all kinds of ways.
They saw all too clearly how his miraculous powers had a great influence on the crowds of people coming to hear him from all over the country.
They noted how his compassion for those whom they themselves despised was bringing more and more people to him.
“The crowd looked on him as a prophet but they would have liked to arrest him” (v.46).
A hard text, directed at people precisely hardened in their thoughts and settled in their ways – thoughts of pride and arrogance and ways of contempt and rejection.

Has the story, well-known as it is, anything to tell us in this day and age?
We like to believe that we would never have followed the ways of the Pharisees.
We would never have adopted such a behaviour as theirs.

Yet, one can wonder: are self-conceit, obstinacy, scorn, disdain, bad faith, exclusion, rejection,
are all these absent from our own attitudes in this or that situation?…
One can only wonder . . . and . . . possibly face an unpleasant truth never acknowledged until now.

Source: Image: LDS