The Sánchez Archives THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Year B

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Welcoming God’s Mediums and Their Message

2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16
Romans 6:3-4, 8-11
Matthew 10:37-42

Canadian-born communications theorist and educator, Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), became famous in the 1960s for the aphorism, “the medium is the message.” This statement summarized his view of the potent influence of television, computers and other electronic disseminators of information in shaping popular thought regarding sociology, art, science, religion, etc. Said McLuhan, “it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” Would McLuhan have had a similar opinion about the prophetic mediums through which God chose to communicate messages to humankind? While the messages delivered by the prophets were essentially similar, viz., repent and be reconciled in faith and in love to the God who loves, heals and saves, the human mediums of God’s good news varied in temper, tone and personality. Could it be that the God who called and commissioned them knew that the prophets would encounter “tough” audiences and therefore chose to proffer the message in as many voices and styles as possible? For their part, the people were to welcome the prophets as God’s special emissaries and to welcome their messages as loving overtures from God.

Unfortunately, some refused the medium, killed the messenger and, as a consequence, missed the intended message of salvation. Others, like the woman of Shunem, who is featured in today’s first reading, welcomed both the medium and the message and lived to enjoy the blessings her hospitality had evoked.

Jesus called his followers to develop a similar openness and hospitality toward others. Included in his instructions regarding their ministry (see gospel), Jesus explained that the disciples’ service as his messengers and as mediums of the good news would require that they love him single-mindedly and be willing to accept the struggle and suffering (the cross) that are integral to such a commitment. Moreover, Jesus reminds those of us in the mission fields that whoever welcomes one of God’s messengers, mediums, prophets or holy people welcomes Christ, and with him, the God who sent him.

Prompted by the special message of today’s readings, the gathered assembly may spend some time this week considering the quality and warmth of the welcome it offers to God’s many and varied mediums of communication. Will God’s message be missed if it comes to us couched in someone as blunt, abrasive and fierce as Amos? Will we listen if God chooses to send a young, inexperienced and initially reluctant medium like Jeremiah? Will we scoff and turn a deaf ear if the truth is conveyed through the bizarre symbolism and eccentric behavior of an Ezekiel? How attentive would we be to the message of God’s unfailing spousal love if it were communicated to us by the likes of an Hosea whose own marital history was notably less than ideal? Would we find God’s message pertinent and applicable to our everyday, workaday lives, if it came wrapped in an Isaiah, whose priestly and prophetic duties usually kept him either in the temple or in the palace of the king? Would we be drawn out of our homes and churches to listen to a man named John holding a revival down by the river (Jordan)? Would his apparel, diet and no-nonsense message put us off? How would we welcome the message of a Peter who had denied having any knowledge of a dear Friend, precisely when that Friend needed him the most? Would we entrust our ears and minds and hearts to one like Paul who supported the opposition to the Jesus-movement to the extent that “he entered house after house and dragged out men and women and handed them over for imprisonment” (Acts 8:3)? Would we listen to a doubt-ridden messenger such as Thomas? Would we welcome a man from Nazareth whose demeanor and message were in complete contradiction of popular expectations?

If we would not be inclined to welcome mediums such as these, only God knows how many messages we may have missed along the way.

2 KINGS 4:8-11, 14-16

In a world where the popular mores dictate that a social visit be prefaced by an invitation or telephone call and where people must be assigned the “task” of greeting newcomers to the congregation, the hospitality of the woman of Shunem and the welcome she extended to Elisha seem all the more remarkable. In their commentary on this text, Jean Frisque and Thierry Maertens (Guide For the Christian Assembly, Fides Publishers, Inc., Notre Dame, IN: 1970) suggest that hospitality is on the decline, especially among Christians and in those areas of the world that are the most modern and materialistic. Strangers are no longer perceived as friends we have not yet met, but as intruders and where hospitality is practiced it is often an interested hospitality. For example, tourists are welcomed because of their money and the consequent boom to the economy. Foreign workers are received because their labor is needed but a welcome is quickly denied them if they are perceived as a threat to the financial well-being of their host country. Frisque and Maertens also suggest that contemporary humankind has forgotten the meaning of gratuitousness and, with it, the true meaning of hospitality itself.

In the Jewish Scriptures, authentic hospitality is essentially an exercise of faith derived from the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. Just as Yahweh cared for the Israelites when they were strangers enslaved in Egypt, so was Israel to welcome strangers as a sign of its union with God (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). Moreover, and based on the account of Abraham’s hospitality (Genesis 18:1-10), Israel was to welcome and care generously for strangers because in so doing, they might encounter the God of their faith. When the woman of Shunem welcomed the stranger, Elisha, as a holy man, she and her household also encountered God and, as a result of that encounter, she was promised a son.

Featured in today’s first reading, the Shunemite woman is one of several beneficiaries of Elisha’s prophetic ministry (see 2 Kings 4:1-8:15). Like his predecessor Elijah, Elisha mediated the message of God in both the personal lives and political affairs of his contemporaries. Active in the northern kingdom of Israel for about fifty years, and during the reigns of four kings (Joram, Jehu, Jehoahaz and Jehoash (ca. 850-800 B.C.E.), the prophet left no written record of his labors. Nevertheless, the Elisha (and Elijah) narratives became an important part of Israel’s oral tradition. Circulated widely, these stories were later committed to writing (ca. 700 B.C.E.) and became a permanent source of edification for Israel as well as a constant reminder of God’s personal involvement with humankind through the mediation of holy and prophetic men and women. For those who read this narrative today, the woman of Shunem remains an exemplar of the authentic hospitality with which we also are to attend to the strangers among us. Are they to be reviled as intruders or should they be welcomed as possible mediums of God’s messages?

ROMANS 6:3-4, 8-11

In his commentary on Romans, entitled Life in the Lordship of Christ (Darton, Longman and Todd, London: 1992), Raniero Cantalamessa (Italian author, educator and official preacher to the Papal Household) suggests that today’s second reading is better understood in conjunction with a text from the Johannine gospel. Recall the narrative of the paralytic, lying among a large number of ill, blind, lame and otherwise sick people beside a pool near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. According to John, when the waters of the pool were stirred up, the first person to plunge into the pool would be healed (John 5:6). Unable to get to the pool before the others, the paralytic, who had been ill for thirty-eight years, remained so until he met Jesus and was restored to full health. Cantalamessa compares Christian baptism to a plunge into the “pool” of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. Therein believers are healed, renewed, fortified, liberated, transformed and sanctified. Paul’s understanding of baptism and its effects was similar, as is reflected in this excerpted text from Romans; herein Paul describes baptism as being buried in death and being raised to life in Christ Jesus.

Paul’s graphic language and his theology of baptism were reflective of the manner in which the ancient ritual was celebrated. Baptism by total immersion was usually the norm; as the catechumen entered the baptismal waters, his/her descent signified that he/she was dying to sin and to all that could threaten his/her union with and life in Christ. As the newly baptized believer emerged from the waters, his/her ascent signified that his/her new life in Christ had begun.

Paul also understood that baptism was not a final step in the preparation for Christian living but rather the threshold to a lifetime of growth and development, challenge and struggle. More than an empty symbol or an external ritual, the sign of baptism must be internalized, such that in every aspect of the believer’s life and experiences, he/she is actually and authentically participating in the person, mission and saving mystery of Christ. This participation will necessarily entail the hard work of dying daily to self and sin, because while baptism offers strength against the power of sin, it does not confer immunity. As any believer can attest, sin continues to exist and each time this evil entity is allowed to rear its ugly head, the baptized must accept to engage it in battle. Granted, the reign of sin and death has been broken by Jesus and in Jesus we have died to sin; nevertheless, sin can find a foothold when in a moment of weakness sin is freely chosen and offered a welcome. Because of this possibility, Christian life is fraught with tension. Paul Wrightman (Paul’s Later Letters, Alba House, New York: 1984) suggests that this tension is exacerbated by the gap that exists between promise and fulfillment in our broken, imperfect world. The promise has been given: Christ has indeed freed us from the chains of sin and death. But just as life progresses developmentally from stage to stage, level to level, so also the process of our salvation. Fulfillment, i.e., our perfection in Christ, evolves gradually and will be fully experienced only after the final passage from death to life. Until then, we embrace the tension between promise and fulfillment with the knowledge that we are supported by grace and with the sure hope that Christ has struck the path, set the example, and leads the way, each day, every day.

MATTHEW 10:37-42

Just as Jesus would not have his disciples ignorant of the cost of their commitment to him, nor would he have them discouraged by the enormity of the task at hand or of the struggles that would be theirs as routinely as their daily bread. Jesus promised that if they left all, they would have all; if they were willing to lose themselves, their plans and their aspirations for his sake, they would find themselves, and all else besides, in him.

In all his instructions to his own, Jesus made it clear that their discipleship was not simply a personal decision on their part but rather a response to the prior initiative of God. In other words, discipleship was a consequence of offering the God who calls and comes to each of us a welcome into our heart, soul and life. In his book, Discipleship, Living for Christ in the Daily Grind (The Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA: 1994), J. Arnold Heinrich has put it this way: “Discipleship is not a question of our own doing; it is a matter of making room for God so that he can live in us” (sic). Although he expressed himself differently, Jesus seems to have been of a similar mind. As is reflected in today’s gospel, he challenged his disciples not to allow any other person, not oneself nor one’s parents or children, to occupy that special place within, which belongs to God alone (vv. 37-39).

In the second half of this text, the Matthean Jesus turns his attention to those whom his disciples will be sent to serve. They, too, are to cultivate in themselves an attitude of holy hospitality such that they will be ready and willing to welcome both Jesus’ chosen mediums and the message they have to offer. In accepting and welcoming Jesus’ emissaries, believers are also welcoming Jesus and the God who sent him. As John P. Meier (Matthew, Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington, DE: 1980) has pointed out, in verse 40 (“who welcomes you welcomes me . . .”), the dynamic relation of the apostles to Jesus reflects the dynamic relation of Jesus to God. This relationship was well expressed in some of the teachings of the rabbis, viz., “the shaliah or messenger of a man is as the man himself,” and “He who welcomes his fellow man is considered as though he had welcomed the shekinah” (cloud signifying the presence of God); “He who shows hospitality to the wise is as if he brought the first-fruits of his produce to God.”

William Barclay (The Gospel of Mat thew , The Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh: 1975) has suggested that this Matthean gospel establishes the four links in the chain of salvation: (1) First, there is God, out of whose love the whole process began; (2) Then, there is Jesus, who brought the message to humankind; (3) Then follows the human messenger or medium, i.e., the prophet who speaks, the good person who becomes an example, the disciple who learns. All of these, in turn, pass on to others the good news they themselves have received. (4) Then, there is the believer who welcomes God’s mediums and messages and therein finds life and salvation. However, since a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it devolves upon each participant in this process to maintain his/her relationship with Christ; therein will each of us find the grace and strength necessary to persevere and preserve the integrity of the “chain.”

While not all of us are prophets or preachers, great orators or famed teachers, there is none of us that can claim to be incapable of answering Jesus’ challenge to hospitality. No exceptional talent or great effort is needed for creating an atmosphere of welcome, wherein God’s mediums and messages will be heard and heeded. However, only exceptional love and genuine faith will succeed in breaking down the barriers of prejudice and discrimination that threaten our capacity for welcoming others.

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