The Sánchez Archives SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Year C

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Maps For Living

JEREMIAH 17:5-8
1 CORINTHIANS 15:12, 16-20
LUKE 6:17, 20-22

Someone once compared life to a great journey for which we carry two roadmaps. One map features the streets, highways, crossroads and bridges where they are actually located; the other map is a diagram of the streets, highways, etc. where we think they should be. Obviously, one map will prove useful in helping us find our way; the other will not. Only by embracing the reality of the human situation as it is can we hope to make the journey which is life worth living.

Roy Campanella, the great baseball player, had two such road maps for his life. His successful stint as catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers was right on track, following the path he thought it should. Then, an automobile accident, which left him paralyzed and in a wheel chair, sidelined his career and proved to be a roadblock which also sidetracked his life’s journey. When he was forced to accept and follow the map which reality handed to him, he found strength in the following:

“I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey . . .
I asked for health, that I might do great things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things. . .
I asked for riches, that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might be wise. . .
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God. . .
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things. . .
I got nothing I asked for - but everything I had hoped for
Almost despite myself, my unspoken words were answered.
I am, among men, most richly blessed.”

That Campanella was able to recognize the direction his life had taken as a blessing rather than a curse is indicative of a deep and solid faith. In today’s scripture readings, the community of believers is challenged to a similar faith as it examines the blessedness of human need before God.

Jeremiah pronounces as blessed those people who trust in God rather than in their own human devices; those who hope in God can survive any and all difficulties. In a continuation of his teaching on the resurrection, Paul reminds his readers (second reading from 1 Corinthians) that our hopes must stretch beyond this life with all its exigencies; as believers in a risen Lord, we trust that the map of our life’s journey will lead eventually but surely to eternity.

Luke, in the gospel, declares the blessedness of the human condition; the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the ostracized should rejoice in their need, for they are the special venue of God’s activity in the world. In polar opposition to these blessed ones are the rich, the full and the self-absorbed whose lives are so stated with the fleeting joys of this world that there is no room, no openness, no sense of need of God.

Through Jesus’ appearance in flesh and blood, time and space, humankind has been given notice that a great reversal is in the works. As Luke Timothy Johnson (The Gospel of Luke, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville: 1991) has noted, in Jesus, this great reversal has been proclaimed and enacted; human security and complacency are challenged by the gospel. The poor and all those who have been rejected on the basis of human standards are accepted by God. The rich and self-important, who have had a lion’s share of the goods and consolations of the earth, have already been rewarded. The map of their own making will not lead to the kingdom of God; gridlocked in selfishness and detoured by inordinate desire, the self-directed and self-righteous will find themselves lost. Those, however, who have accepted the reality of the human struggle and have found therein, the map that leads to God, will be forever blessed.

JEREMIAH 17:5-8

Moving away from the roadmap metaphor, Jeremiah offers the gathered assembly a lesson about commitment illustrated in the world of nature. The first of three wisdom sayings (17:5-13) incorporated by the prophet into his prophetic message, today’s first reading contrasts the way of the wicked with the way of the just, by comparing a stunted shrub to a well-watered tree. Those who dispute the authorship of this pericope do so on the basis that it contradicts the prophet’s own experience. Although he believed and trusted in God, his life’s work put him at great risk, much like the barren bush struggling to survive the harshness and aridity of the desert. Whether Jeremiah wrote these sayings or merely borrowed them to make a point, the images of the bush and the tree convey a powerful message, a message which is better understood in its historical and literary context.

In the verse immediately preceding this text, Jeremiah had prophesied doom for those who trust in human ways rather than in the divine will. If, as some scholars suggest, this message was delivered during the initial Babylonian invasion of Judah, ca. 597 B.C.E., then Jeremiah was probably confronting King Zedekiah. This weak, puppet leader had ignored the prophet’s advice and made an alliance with Egypt against the Babylonians. A staunch defender of the covenant, Jeremiah exhorted Zedekiah and his contemporaries to forego all other alliances, save that covenant alliances, to which they had been invited by God. When his advice was ignored, the prophet used the image of the barren bush in the desert to portray the folly and futility of trusting in human allies. His prediction in Jeremiah 17:4 was realized in fewer than ten years: “You will relinquish your hold on your heritage which I have given you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land that you knew not. . .”

For those who clung to the will of God and were faithful to the covenant relationship, the figure of the fruitful tree held out great hope. Those whose hearts are firmly rooted in the ways of God will be able to withstand the heat and remain green and to endure the drought and still bear fruit. Their rootedness in God provides a steady source of strength and sustenance.

Later, during the years of exile in Babylonia, when the priestly editors were compiling, ordering and preserving the Hebrew Scriptures, they must have remembered this wisdom saying and its arboreal imagery. A similar spirituality is reflected in Psalm 1, a late composition, which serves as an introduction to the entire psalter. Stanley P. Hopper (“The Book of Jeremiah”, The Interpreter’s Bible, Abingdon Press, Nashville: 1956)) suggested that Jeremiah’s comparison also anticipated the dialectic between flesh and Spirit developed by Paul as well as the Pascal’s Apology of the Christian Faith in which he characterized humanity without God as miserable and with God as utterly happy.

As it is read today, centuries after Jeremiah, the psalmist, Paul and Pascal, this text reminds the faithful of the beautiful but burdensome gift of human freedom. Unlike the bush or the tree, believers have a choice as to where they will be rooted, in whom they will believe, how they will develop and if and when they will bear fruit. On any given day, the manner in which each of us exercises our freedom of choice will also determine whether we shall bring upon ourselves and our world blessings or curses.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:12, 16-20

Careful readers of the Pauline correspondence can arrive at quite an accurate assessment of the apostle’s missiology in addition to understanding his theological insights. As was his custom, Paul chose to exercise his gospel ministry in strategically located cities, from which he hoped the good news would spread to the surrounding regions. After he had established a sure foundation and had entrusted the day to day leadership of the community to capable elders, he moved on to other areas which had not yet been proselytized.

Paul maintained contact with the churches he had founded by letter and/or by personal messengers. When news reached him that there were difficulties or disputes among the believers, Paul acted swiftly to correct the situation. The first letter to the house churches in Corinth was occasioned by several issues, not the least of which was the fact that the Greek Christians were questioning the resurrection.

Today’s second reading represents a portion of Paul’s attempt to correct the Corinthian’s erroneous thinking and assuage their doubts. Written ca. 53-54 C.E. this text is among the earliest doctrinal presentations of resurrection theology.

Paul was well aware that his Greek converts to Christ had formerly ascribed to a philosophy (proto-gnostic) which denigrated the body as a burdensome mortal prison from which the superior mind and spirit longed to be released. Over and against this background, bodily glorification was inconceivable; death was not viewed as a passage of a risen person (body and soul) to fuller life but merely as a means of freeing the soul of its bodily shackles. While some Corinthian Christians exercised a certain selectivity as regards the gospel, accepting some doctrines and rejecting others, viz., the resurrection, others claimed that their participation in the sacraments afforded them a spiritual experience that superseded the resurrection and therefore rendered moot any discussion thereof.

With astute logic, Paul argued that if his readers rejected the notion of their own resurrection, they were in effect denying the resurrection of Jesus and undermining the central tenet of the Christian faith. To reject the Christ event, i.e., the passion, death, and glorification of Jesus is to reject the gift of salvation and the very means by which God effected the forgiveness of sins and the reconciliation of sinners. To do so is to admit that sin, evil and death continue to reign supreme. Faith is futile; hope is in vain. As Paul says, “If our hopes in Christ are limited to this life only, we are the most pitiable of people” (v. 19).

Then, in an effort to redirect their thinking and to raise it from philosophy to faith, Paul challenged the Corinthians to accept Christ as the aparche or “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v. 20). A Jewish cultic term, firstfruits was that portion of the harvest which was offered to God in thanksgiving and as a sign that the rest of the harvest to come was also being consecrated. Jesus, risen in glory, as the firstfruits from the dead, is a pledge and a promise that the whole “harvest” of humankind will follow his lead to everlasting life.

For contemporary believers, Paul’s defense of the resurrection may seem unnecessary but perhaps the great apostle’s words could be accepted as an invitation to ask ourselves, How does my belief in the resurrection of Jesus and in my own resurrection affect: the way I live; my thoughts about death; the plans I make for the future; the way I mourn the deaths of others. . .?

LUKE 6:17, 20-22

No matter how many times this gospel and its Matthean counterpart (Matthew 5:2-12) are proclaimed, it appears to be a contradiction in terms to describe the poor, hungry and sorrowful as blessed, and the rich, full and happy as woeful. However, as Charles H. Talbert (Reading Luke, A Literary and Theological Commentary or the Third Gospel, Crossroad Pub. Co., New York: 1984) has explained, our understanding of this gospel depends first on our grasping the functions of beatitudes and woes in antiquity and second on our perception of the meaning of the key terms used by Luke. As regards function, the beatitude was a specific genre found in both Greek and Jewish literature (e.g. Psalm 1:1; Proverbs 8:24, Daniel 12:12; Tobit 13:14). Adopted for use by Christian writers (Romans 8:34; Matthew 5:3-12; John 20:29; Revelation 14:13, 16:15, 22:7), the beatitude consisted of a pronouncement of blessedness (makarios) followed by who is blessed and why. The declaration of blessedness does not confer or impart a blessing; nor is it an exhortation to be or to do something, e.g. to be poor, to be hungry, etc. Rather, the beatitude exalts or approves a person on the basis of some good fortune. In contemporary parlance, we might say “Congratulations to ________ because of ________,” as a way of celebrating the blessed person’s success.

Nevertheless, it still seems unusual to declare as blessed, or to extend congratulations to someone on the basis of their poverty, hunger, etc. For this reason, the beatitudes must be understood as eschatological statements which see and evaluate the present in terms of the future. As Talbert (op. cit.) further notes, “the one uttering the beatitude does so from a position within the councils of God and with an awareness of the ultimate outcome of history,” as, for example, a prophet. Paradoxically, the content of the beatitude is usually in polar opposition to the person’s present circumstances. Nevertheless, blessedness is pronounced and congratulations are appropriate despite present trouble, and because of what will ultimately be. Therefore the poor, hungry and sorrowful are blessed now because of the divine power to reverse the fortunes of those whose lives are totally dependent on and given over to the providence of God.

Similarly, the woes pronounced upon the rich, the full, and those who laugh, function as an expression of sadness, not because of the person’s present circumstances but because of what will ultimately be. Those who are satisfied with temporal and material things and whose base of security is firmly rooted in existential gratifications are enjoying their blessed reward here and now. When their fortunes are ultimately reversed, these will find, much to their woe, that their future blessedness has already been squandered away.

Today Luke’s declarations of “blessedness” and his ominous “woes” offer his contemporary readers a choice between two ways or, as it were, two maps. One way or map sees life’s journey and all its bumps and potholes as a place to meet God, as a venue where God’s power can be welcomed and as a prelude for blessings yet come. The other way plots a path for destruction; a dead end street, a cul-de-sac, the way of self-centeredness and self-promotion at the expense of others leads nowhere.

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