LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Exodus 19:2-6
Responsorial psalm: Ps 99(100):2-3, 5
Second reading: Romans 5:6-11
Gospel: Matthew 9:36 – 10:8
Link to readings
A strong sense of “identity” – knowing who we are and to whom we belong – is crucial to the wellbeing of any individual or group. The Scripture readings today, at least the First Reading and the Gospel, offer texts fundamental to the sense of identity of the People of God.
The First Reading, Exod 19:2-6, takes us to the moment when God is about to forge a covenant with the people of Israel through the mediation of Moses. The background to the covenant relationship is God’s action in bringing Israel out from the situation of slavery in Egypt. Israel thereby became God’s special people. The image conveying this specialness, “carried on eagle’s wings”, derives from a popular belief that eagles carried their young for a time on their wings.
But there is more: being the covenant people meant for Israel becoming a consecrated nation, a “kingdom of priests”. The high privilege of each and every Israelite is to function as the order of priests functions: to be those who are “set apart” to offer worship to God on behalf of the rest, to be mediators between God and human beings. This sense of being a holy people, set aside for worship, remained central to Israelite and later to Jewish identity. In one sense it sets Israel “apart” from other nations. But that apartness is not exclusive. Attaching to priesthood is the sense of being something (a mediator) for others, a channel of communication of the riches of God.
‘RE-FOUNDING’ THE PEOPLE OF GOD
Central to the Gospel for today, Matt 9:36-10:8, is Jesus’ choice of the Twelve. The number immediately suggests that what he is about is nothing less than a renewal or reconstitution of Israel, traditionally understood as made up of twelve tribes deriving from the twelve sons of Jacob. He is, in this sense, “re-founding” the People of God (though in preaching in this area we have to be careful not to convey the impression of the Christian Church as being simply a “replacement” of Israel in the “supersessionist” sense that prevailed for so long in Christian understanding but was strongly corrected in the Vatican II Declaration Nostra Aetate).
Significant is the context in which Jesus takes this action. At the beginning we read: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”. This is the way in which humanity appears to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: harassed, dejected, burdened. His entire ministry is focussed upon addressing and remedying this situation. This is the “harvest” for which “labourers” are required.
What he is doing, according to this Gospel, is preparing a people who will share and carry out in his name the same ministry of healing and service to burdened humanity. The Twelve are not mere symbolic figures in a static kind of way. They are named “apostles” in the sense that they are to be people “sent out” on this healing and liberating mission. Just as Israel was to be a “nation of priests”, not in the sense of having this privileged status simply for itself but in the sense of performing a function on behalf of the rest of the world, so the reconstituted People of God is to be a people similarly oriented to the good of others beyond itself. The function now is not so much that of cultic priesthood as of a ministry of service and healing. Something central to the identity of the Christian Church and its ministry is being established here.
DISCIPLES OF ALL NATIONS
The last few sentences of the passage, where Jesus warns the apostles not to take their mission into Gentile territory, may seem to contradict this. But the injunction has a temporary reference only. In the closing words of the Gospel (28:19-20), the risen Lord sends his Church to “make disciples of all nations”.
The Second Reading, (Rom 5:6-11) plunges us rather suddenly into one of Paul’s most magnificent reflections on God’s love. What Paul is trying to communicate is a sense of hope – hope in the midst of all the trials and suffering that attend Christian life. In a kind of a fortiori logic that he often deploys, Paul reasons: if, when we were sinners (“enemies”), God showed so much love and generosity as actually to send the Son to suffer and die for us, how much more certain is it, now that we are “friends” (justified) that God’s love will see us safely through to the end. [Translations often add “God’s” to the reference to “anger” in v 9. This is unfortunate, as there is no foundation for it in the Greek. “Wrath” is simply a way of referring to final destruction without personal reference to God, whose whole intent towards us the passage is one of love and salvation.]