17th Sunday After Pentecost
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| Moses on Mt. Sinai |
Do you remember what the Apostles said right before the
Ascension? “Lord, will you at this time restore
the kingdom to Israel?”
The Apostles were clueless.
You know that, right? Three years
hanging out with the guy, and they still didn’t understand. They heard him tell the Pharisees, “Give unto
Caesar what is Caesar’s, give unto God what is God’s”. And so many times, He
indicated to all who would hear that the kingdom was spiritual, not political.
And here they are, asking, “When will you take political
power?”
That’s the context of this Gospel today.
They’d gone about 50 miles, from near the Sea of Galilee,
which is in Israel, to the area of Tyre and Sidon, in modern Lebanon. But Lebanon was not populated by Jews; it was
not part of Israel, so the Apostles would’ve said, “Why are we talking to them?
They’re not our people”. So
Jesus said to them, “Well, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the
House of Israel”.
Mind you, he’d already healed a centurion’s servant. He’d
already said that whoever believed in Him would have eternal life. They knew
that he wouldn’t reject a gentile who needed help. But still they said, “Send her away”.
Just like the widow who begged the unjust judge to help, this
Canaanite woman begged Jesus to help her daughter. And Jesus responded to her
faith and healed her daughter.
However, I want to revisit the concept of Jesus being sent to
the lost sheep of the House of Israel. That was His primary mission. Where does that leave us?
Some 600 years earlier, speaking through the Prophet Jeremiah,
God said, “The days are coming… when I will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel and the house of Judah … I will put my law within them, and I will
write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people”.
In his Epistle to the Romans, Paul likens the Jews to a tree,
a tree from which some branches have broken off. But he also speaks of Gentiles – that’s us –
being grafted onto that same tree. And,
do you remember the words of the Anaphora – the Eucharistic Prayer? “This is my blood of the New Covenant”.
In the days of Jesus, the Israelite religion had taken many
forms. There were the Sadducees, the
Pharisees, the Zealots, the Samaritans, the Essenes, and a handful of others
not even mentioned in the Bible. And there was a branch of that Israelite faith
that centered around a crucified carpenter from Nazareth. After the destruction of the Temple in the
year 70, only two of those groups survived – the Pharisees, who developed into
Rabbinic Judaism, and New Covenant Judaism, which came to be called
Christianity.
The Old Covenant had the sacrifices of the Temple. 1
Corinthians 10 shows us that the New Covenant has the Sacrifice of the
Eucharist.
The Old Covenant had the Passover, where a Lamb was eaten to
remember how God had freed them from the bondage of Egypt. The New Covenant has Jesus, our Passover
Lamb, who is eaten to remind us how God has freed us from the bondage of Sin.
The Old Covenant had the Levitical Priesthood. Hebrews
Chapter 7 tells us, “The Priesthood being changed, there is necessarily a
change in the law”. We have the Priesthood of Melchizedek.
The Old Covenant had the High Priest entering the Holy of
Holies once a year, on Yom Kippur, to make atonement for the sins of the people
for one year’s time. Hebrews Chapter 9
tells us that the New Covenant has our High Priest, Jesus, entering the
Heavenly Holy of Holies only once, making atonement for all, for all time.
The Old Covenant had the Law of Moses. It starts with the Ten
Commandments, but adds to them so that there are a total of 617 commandments.
The New Covenant has the Law of Love. Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is
the great and first Commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your
neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the
prophets.”.
Yes, we are, in reality, New Covenant Jews. And like the Jews
of the Old Covenant, we are a chosen people.
The Old Covenant Jew was the people through whom the Messiah,
Christ, would come to save the world.
The Old Covenant Jew was set among the nations to be an example of
worship of the One True God amongst a sea of believers in Pagan Gods. The Old Covenant Jew was set among the people
of the Earth to be a beacon of morality, of righteousness (who sometimes
failed).
The New Covenant Jew is, as Paul puts it, One New Man in
Christ, a new people who have the privilege and duty of taking that same Christ
to the whole world – whether our world is our workplace, or across the sea. The
New Covenant Jew is today still set among the nations to show the worship of
the One True God. And the New Covenant Jew is still set to be a beacon of
morality – even if we, too, sometimes fail.
How do we show the worship of the one true God? Just as we read in the Book of Ezra, we
publicly proclaim scripture in our Liturgy.
Our Priests offer the Sacrifice on the Altar. Even the architecture of
our churches, our temples, is a mirror of Solomon’s Temple.
So, how do we apply all this?
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Love God by practicing the Beatitudes
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Love our neighbor by practicing the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy
On those depend the whole Law and the Prophets.
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