Friday, February 24

Matthew 13:10-17: In the Gospel dialogue that immediately follows the parable of the sown seed, only Matthew quotes at length the long text from Isaiah found in verses 14-15. This text well fits the pattern of growing obstinacy on the part of Jesus’ enemies, a theme that has been growing steadily since 11:16. The argument the Lord uses in these verses is obscure, for the plain reason that hardness of heart is an obscure and mysterious subject.

If the workings of divine grace are difficult to comprehend, even more difficult to grasp is man’s willful refusal of that grace. Because a choice is both an effect and a cause, there is a tautology in human choice, and like all tautologies it can only be expressed by what seems a circular argument. That is to say, we choose because we choose. This is what is meant by “free” choice.

Mysteriously, then, the refusal to believe is also the punishment for the refusal to believe. These verses are also a sort of explanation of the following section, particularly verses 19 and 23, which contrast the “understanding” and “non-understanding” of God’s Word.

In this respect the disciples of Jesus are distinguished from the others who hear the parables. The “to you” is contrasted with the “to them” (verse 11). The “whoever has” is distinguished from the “whoever has not” (verse 12). There is an antithesis between those that see (verse 16) and those that do not see (verse 13).

Matthew thus introduces the historico-theological themes of grace and rejection. To those who have, more will be given, while from those who have nothing, even that will be taken away (verse 12). Matthew will return to this irony in the Parable of the Talents (25:29). The judgment aspect of this antithesis will be illustrated in the suicide of Judas (273-10).

Inasmuch as these things cannot be understood, they are called “mysteries” (verse 11—contrasted with the “mystery” in Mark 4:11), indicating God’s free and mysterious (and mysterious because free!) interventions in history through grace and rejection. Matthew, in his own lifetime, was watching the fulfillment of these words of Jesus in the very painful relations between the Church and the Jews.

Saturday, February 25

Matthew 13:18-23: We have already reflected that the Parable of the Sower follows the outline of the Shema. Accordingly, the parable’s interpretation begins with the command, “Hear!” (verse 18) In the Greek wording, in fact, this command carries an emphatic pronoun, unusual with an imperative verb: “You!” This pronoun serves to emphasize the distinction between Jesus’ followers and the “others.”

The first group in this parable, symbolized in the seed sown by the wayside (verse 19), fails in the matter of the “heart” (a detail missing in Mark 4:15). These do not love God with their whole heart, a condition that renders them vulnerable to attack from the Evil One. Their hearts, which have grown dull, have no understanding (verses 14-15).

The second group, symbolized in the rocky ground, is shallow, so the Word cannot take root (verse 20). These will fall away at the first sign of trouble (verse 21). Matthew had already witnessed such trials in his own lifetime (10:18,21-23). Those who thus falter have failed to love God with their whole soul.

The third group, symbolized by the sowing among the thorns, permits the care for wealth and worldly concern to strangle the life from the Gospel (verse 22). They have failed to love God with all their might.

The fourth group, symbolized in the good ground that receives the seed, has the grace of “understanding,” because of which they bring forth fruit (verse 23). They have fruitful lives. They are later symbolized in the two productive servants in the Parable of the Talents (25:16-17).

In Matthew’s version of this parable-interpretation, we note his special emphasis on “understanding” in verses 19 and 23. According to Matthew, a special type of understanding is characteristic of true discipleship. Thus, Matthew omits both references to a failure of understanding on the part of the disciples in Mark 4:10, 13.

And at the end of the parables, in Matthew 13:51, the disciples admit that they do understand what the Lord has been saying. For more evidence of Matthew’s emphasis on understanding as a characteristic of discipleship, one may compare Mark 9:9-13 with Matthew 17:9-13; and Mark 9:30-32 with Matthew 17:22-23.

Sunday, February 26

Matthew 4:1-11: If the eternal Word’s taking of our humanity made him vulnerable to emotional pain, it also rendered him susceptible to temptation. When, after fasting for forty days, he grew hungry, it is hardly surprising that an early first temptation was related to food (Matthew 4:3; Luke 4:3). Adequate attention to Jesus in the flesh can hardly omit those temptations to which the flesh is heir. Holy Scripture, at least, does not omit them.

This aspect of the Incarnation was nowhere more emphatically asserted than in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which says of Jesus: ”Therefore, in all things he had to be made like his brothers, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in the things of God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. For in that he himself has suffered, being tempted, he is able to aid those who are tempted (Hebrews 2:17-18 emphasis added).

For the earliest Christians, the temptations of Jesus were at once the expression of his full humanity and the encouraging evidence of his ability to sympathize with the trials faced by those who put their trust in him:
“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in everything tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15 emphasis added).”

The temptations faced by Jesus, however, were not simply human. They came also from demonic intrusion, like the temptations of other human beings. The early Christians, who believed that Jesus was God’s Son in the flesh, were also prompted to recall that Jesus, immediately after his baptism, spent some period in the desert, facing “the Tempter.” In doing so, Jesus repeated the experience of ancient Israel and provided an example for his disciples. His temptations proved his humanity as an encouragement for those resolved to follow him.

The tempter is called “Satan,” the demonic name derived from the Book of Job. This is an important component in the story of Jesus’ temptations. Consider the correspondence with Job: God has just identified Jesus as the Son “in whom I am well pleased.” Satan heard God say this about Jesus, just as he had heard of God’s similar pleasure in Job: ”Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? (Job 1:8).”

Satan, we recall, immediately challenged God on the point of Job’s good standing, and he was given permission to smite the just man with grievous afflictions.

Here, likewise, right after Jesus baptism—in which God has expressed pleasure in His Son—Satan resolves to test the point: “Is God’s pleasure in Jesus justified? Let’s test it and see!” Satan, as we shall reflect presently, is “the Slanderer.” He wants to give just men a bad reputation with the Almighty!

Monday, February 27

Matthew 13:24-35: Matthew replaces the parable in Mark 4:21-25 with this parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, which is proper to his own gospel. It is joined to the parables that follow by the common image of growth. So much is this the case that Matthew postpones the explanation of the Wheat and the Weeds until after the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven.

As we shall see in that delayed explanation, the first of these parables is about judgment, and in cases of judgment there is usually the danger of misjudging. The difficulty of distinguishing the weeds from the wheat is that, in their early stages, they look very much alike. So the Lord commands that both be allowed to grow to maturity, because only in their maturity are they easily distinguished. Thus, the point of the parable is that finality in judgment should be delayed until “all the facts are in.” Indeed, by delaying the explanation of this parable until verses 36-43, Matthew is illustrating its point.

The six parables that follow the Parable of the Sower should be regarded as commentaries on the latter. The first of these, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, addresses a problem perceived in the seed sown by the wayside (verse 4). That seed, we recall, was snatched away by the Evil One (verse 19). This Evil One reappears in the present parable, where he is identified as the “enemy” and the “Devil” (verses 25,28,39). Those whose hearts are dull (verse 15) are especially under the influence of this “enemy,” even though they live side-by-side with the saints. The difference between the two will be settled at the end of time. (If Matthew intends the Weeds to represent the Jews—-a view certainly consistent with this section of his gospel—-then his view of salvation history is far less complex than that of Paul [cf. Romans 11:11-36]).

The temporary co-existence of the wheat and the weeds will appear later in the co-existence of the good and bad fish (verses 47-50), the wise and foolish maidens (25:1-13), and the sheep and the goats (25:31-46). In all of these parables the separation does not come until the end, the time of the judgment and harvest.

These latter images do convey the sense of delay and the passage of time, exactly as in the Lord’s Final Discourse (24:48; 25:5,19).

Our third parable, that of the Mustard Seed (verses 31-32) is also about growth. Unlike the previous parable, it is found in the other Synoptics (Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18-19).

This parable and the one that follows it—the Leaven in verse 33—address the second part of the Parable of the Sower; to wit, the seed that falls on rocky ground (verses 5-6). That rocky ground, we recall, symbolizes those shallow folk unable to love God with the whole soul. The seed that falls there, unable to bring forth fruit, is now contrasted with the growth of the mustard seed and the leaven.

The mustard seed is sown, says Matthew, “in his field,” an expression not found in this place in Mark and Luke. It appears that this field represents the world, into which God’s Son entered, along with His missionaries who continue to sow the seed. This image of the field also ties the present parable back to the one before it (verses 24, 27).

When the very tiny mustard seed grows, its bush becomes a veritable tree, where birds may live. These birds, in turn, represent those who take shelter in the Church through the apostolic preaching. In his own day Matthew saw this happening.

The theme of growth is sustained in our fourth parable, that of the Leaven (verse 33). This leaven is said to be “concealed,” somewhat as the mustard seed is concealed in the earth. In both parables there is an emphasis on something rather little becoming something rather large.

The Parable of the Leaven is followed by an explanation of why Jesus speaks in this symbolic language (verses 34-35). Matthew finds this explanation in the “fulfillment” (hopos plerothe) of a line of the Psalter (Psalms 77 [78]:2). Such speech is “hidden” (kekrymmena), rather like the leaven was “hidden” (enekrypsen) in the dough.

Tuesday, February 28

Matthew 13:36-43: Like the parable that it explains, this explanation is proper to Matthew. As in the case of the Parable of the Sower (verse 10), the explanation of the Wheat and the Weeds is given to the disciples in private—“in the house,” eis ten oikian. As an interpretation of history, it pertains to the divine mysteries; therefore, it is not shared outside the household of God. It is strictly “in house.”

This distinctive feature of “the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven” (verse 11) points to an important distinction of Christian theology, a distinction readily detected in the New Testament. Certain aspects of the Gospel are shared with the world at large, because they pertain to the kerygma, the message of God to the world, in order to bring the world to faith. These include the Lordship of Jesus, repentance from sin, justification by faith, Baptism and the rites pertinent to it, the return of Christ at the end of history, and the final judgment.

We find a synopsis of these Gospel teachings in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.” Hebrews refers to these things as “the foundation,” themelion,. They are the “elementary principles of Christ” (ton tes arches tou Christou logon–6:1-2). The “doctrine of baptisms,” for example, explained the difference between John’s baptism and the Christian Sacrament (cf. Acts 18:25-26; 19:3-5). One joined the Church through the Christian Sacrament, not John’s baptism.

Because they are apologetic, introductory, and initiatory, we find all these elementary components of the Gospel throughout the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles, inasmuch as those sermons were chiefly directed to non-Christians.

The Epistle to the Hebrews goes on to speak, however, of other Gospel truths, which are described as “perfection” (eis ten teleioteta). These Gospel truths are intended only for the ears of those who have repented, are converted, and are now members of the Church through Baptism. Indeed, Baptism itself is the point of transition from the unconverted to the converted.

In the sermons of the Acts of the Apostles we rarely find mention of these deeper “in house” doctrines (Acts 20:18-35 represents an exception, this sermon being addressed to bishops and presbyters), but they are found in many places in the apostolic epistles. These include the doctrines of the Most Holy Trinity (1 Thessalonians 1:3-10; 2 Corinthians 13:13), the Holy Eucharist (1 Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:23-26), the dialectical structure of salvation history (Romans 11:11-32), and the life in Christ (passim throughout Paul, Peter, John, James, and so forth). These subjects are properly addressed only to repentant, converted, and initiated Christians, not to those who still live and understand according to the flesh.

Although the field in this parable is identified with the world (kosmos–verse 38), the weeds are said to be taken away, not from the world, but from the Kingdom (verse 41). So which is it? The ambiguity here led to a line of interpretation chiefly associated with St. Augustine; namely, the Church was seen to contain both faithful Christians and those who were Christians in hardly more than name. Indeed, the latter seemed to have been placed in the Church by the devil chiefly for the purpose of making life difficult for the Church. Indeed, even an apostle can be called “Satan”! (16:21)

According to this Augustinian interpretation, the present parable is about life in the Church. It serves as a warning to Christians not to be overly eager to separate the two groups—the sinners and the righteous—who are found together in the life of the Church. Although the New Testament certainly authorizes proper excommunication from the body of believers (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:1-5), the explanation of this parable suggests a certain measure of caution in its application. Sometimes, we are warned, the good may perish with the evil in such a case, because a high degree of discernment is required for the proper application of the principle. At the final judgment (cf. 25:32), however, there will be no mistaking the separation of good from evil.

Wednesday, February 29

Matthew 13:44-52: This remaining section of the Parables of the Kingdom is completely proper to Matthew. It contains three parables: the Hidden Treasure (verse 44), the Pearl (verses 45-46), and the Dragnet (verses 47-50). These are followed by a brief exchange between Jesus and the disciples with respect to their understanding of the parables (verses 51-52).

The parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl pertain to the third seed sown in the Parable of the Sower—the seed sown among thorns (verse 7). That seed, we recall, was strangled by “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches” (verse 22). This preoccupation with wealth is addressed in the parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl; in each case the man who finds the treasure or pearl gives up all that he has in order to obtain the desired prize. Following the outline of the Shema, such a one loves God with all his strength.

These two parables, concerned with the cost of discipleship, are a corrective against any notion that, because grace is absolutely free and undeserved, grace makes no demands on us. The divine irony is that what is free may, in fact, cost us everything. In both cases, in fact, the discoverer sacrifices “whatever he has,” or “all that he has”; this is the cost of discipleship (cf. 18:21,27).

The discovered treasure (verse 44), like the leaven and the seed, is described as “hidden” (keykrymmeno). The discoverer then “hides” (ekrypsen) the treasure again. Clearly these parables appreciate the hidden quality of what is worth having! This metaphor of the treasure, like the pearl, is found all through Israel’s Wisdom literature (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Baruch, The Wisdom of Solomon) with reference to the Torah, Wisdom, and the Word of God.

Because of this hidden quality of the Kingdom of Heaven, not everyone recognizes its worth. Those that do, however, must be prepared to sacrifice everything else in order to attain it. They will not allow the “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches,” like thorns, to choke off the growth of the sown seed. They will love God with all their strength.

The seventh and last parable, the Dragnet (verse 47-50), is the story of the Last Judgment. It occupies in this dominical discourse the same place occupied by the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in the Lord’s final discourse (25:31-46). Here in verse 49, as in 24:31 and 25:31, the ministers of the final judgment are the angels.

As long as the net is concealed under the water, the bad and good fish are mixed together, like the wheat and the weeds, and the sheep and the goats. The Day of Judgment comes, however, when the net is dragged up onto the shore, and its contents are made perfectly clear.

These parables are followed by one final parable, having to do with the “understanding” of those scribes who have been “disciplized” (13:52 — the same verb as in the Great Commission in 28:29). These are the authorized preachers of the Gospel, whose authority comes through thr men who received it from the Lord in that scene described at the end of Matthew. On the transmission of this authority, see 2 Timothy 2:2.

Thursday, March 1

Matthew 13:53-58: Nazareth’s negative response to Jesus indicates a new level of resistance among the Jews with respect to the Gospel. We will see this resistance intensify through chapters 14-16.

This section begins with the normal formula that ends each of the five dominical discourses in Matthew (verse 53; cf. 7:28; 11:1; 19:1; 26:1): “When Jesus had ended these sayings . .”

The reaction of the Nazarenes is expressed by their wonder at Jesus’ unexpected authority. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the wonder of the people expressed a positive tone (7:28-29), but now it becomes an expression of skepticism (verse 56), scandal (verse 57), and unbelief (verse 58). They do not even refer to Jesus by name but speak contemptuously of “this man” (verses 54,56). Commenting on this verse, Father Augustine Stock remarked, “Jesus, the final prophet of God, experiences the definitive rejection of Israel; thus does he recapitulate the rejection of all of the persecuted prophets before him.”

As the ancient Fathers of the Christian Church were careful to remark —along with the entire Roman and Eastern traditions, as well as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and all of the major 16th century Protestant Reformers without exception—the reference to Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” is no evidence that these persons were children of Mary. Because neither Hebrew nor Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus and the apostles) has a special word for “cousin” or a generic word for blood relative, the words “brother” and “sister” do not necessarily mean what we mean by these words in English.

In fact, because individuals usually have more cousins and other relatives than they do actual brothers and sisters, these words in Hebrew and Aramaic do not even normally mean what we would mean by them in English. Unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, the expressions “brother and sister” in Hebrew and Aramaic only rarely mean what these terms mean in English.

In addition, that idiomatic feature of Hebrew and Aramaic also influences the Greek text of Holy Scripture, including the New Testament. (Those of us today who have friends from the Middle East and North Africa know that this characteristic of their native Arabic has also permeated their use of English. Someone from Egypt or the Sudan, when he speaks of his “brother” or “sister” almost never means what we native English-speakers mean by those terms.)

It should not be a matter of wonder, consequently, that the Lord, as He was about to die, entrusted the care of His mother to someone outside of His immediate family (John 19:27), for there is no evidence that He had any other immediate family.

Friday, March 2

Matthew 14:1-12: Matthew now returns to the sequence in Mark 6, to narrate the beheading of John the Baptist, the multiplication of the loaves, the walking on the water, and so on.

He begins with the martyrdom of John. Like the other Evangelists, Matthew clearly expects his readers already to be familiar with the identity of this Herod. Modern readers, however, need to be informed that he was Herod Antipas, whom the Romans had made tetrarch (ruler over a quarter of a Roman province, the province here being Syria) over Galilee and Perea after the death of his father, Herod the Great (cf. Matthew 2). Sharing his father’s insecurity and superstition, Antipas imagines that the slain John has somehow returned in Jesus to haunt him for his crime. It is at this point that Mark and Matthew insert the story of that crime.

Whereas Mark uses the story of Herod’s execution of John the Baptist as a sort of interlude between the sending out and return of the Twelve (Mark 6:6-31), Matthew has already employed that setting back in Chapter 10. Consequently, his account of the execution of John the Baptist fits into a slightly different sequence. Otherwise, his version of the event is simply a shortened form of Mark’s.

In this story of Herod, attention should be drawn to the king’s similarity to the ancient King Saul, who was likewise tormented by the unforeseen but lamentable consequences of an unwise, incautious oath (cf. 1 Samuel 14:24-30,43-46).

Another Old Testament parallel with this story is perhaps even more obvious. Accordingly, we observe John as a new Elijah, Herod as new Ahab, and Herodias as a new Jezebel.

In placing the arrest and death of John immediately after the rejection Jesus at Nazareth, Matthew augments the sense of tragedy in both events. Each prophet, John and Jesus, is rejected by Israel in a single generation. Jesus will now withdraw from the pubic scene (verse 13).

Friday, February 17

Matthew 12:9-14: This story continues the theme of the Lord’s relationship to the Sabbath. Rabbinical theory permitted acts of healing on the Sabbath only in danger of death; otherwise such actions had to be postponed. In this text, and generally throughout the gospels, Jesus ignores this distinction. In the present instance His enemies are completely frustrated, because Jesus does not do anything with which they can accuse Him. He does not touch the afflicted man; He does not speak one word that could be interpreted as an act of healing. He simple tells the man to extend his impaired hand, and immediately the hand is healed! In their frustration the Lord’s enemies take the action to which most of the narrative has been building up to this point—they resolve that Jesus must die. That is to say, they resolve to do what Herod had failed to accomplish in the second chapter of Matthew.

Psalm 102 (Greek & Latin 101): This psalm is structured on a contrast, pursued through two sequences. The first half of the first sequence is all “I”—I am miserable, I am sad, my heart withers away like the grass in the heat, I lie awake at night, I feel like a mournful bird, I mingle my drink with tears, my days flee like the shadows of an evening, and so forth. Life being rough, a goodly number of our days are passed with such sentiments, so it is usually not difficult to pray this part of the psalm.

The second half of the first sequence arrives with the expression, “but You, O Lord,” which is just as emphatic in the Hebrew (we’attah Adonai) and the Greek (sy de Kyrie). “You” is contrasted with “I.” God is not like me; God is almighty and does what He wants and does not die. God is enthroned forever, and His name endures from generation to generation. God will arise and deliver His people.

The second and shorter contrasting sequence repeats the first. Once again, as at the beginning, there is the sense of our human frailty, our shortened days, our strength broken at midcourse. To this is contrasted the eternity of God; His years endure unto all generations. Thus, both sequences in this psalm form contrasts between the permanence of God and the transience of everything created.

Jeremiah 8: In this chapter (verse 22) is the first of two instances when Jeremiah refers to the “balm of Gilead” (cf. 46:11). This medicinal ointment, known in Islam as “balsam of Mecca,” is first mentioned in Genesis 37:25 as one of the products transported by Midianite traders. Native to Arabia, this resinous gum was domesticated in ancient times and was well known to the whole Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean Basin.

The “balm of Gilead” is well known to students of literature and the stage. Although “Balm of Giliead” is the title of an early play by Lanford Wilson, perhaps the expression is best known from Poe’s “The Raven”:

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird of devil! Whether Tempter sent, or whatever tempest tossed thee ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore — Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Saturday, February 18

Psalms 107 (Greek & Latin 106): The outline of this psalm is given early: “From the regions He gathered them—from east and west, from the north and from the sea.” The “four corners of the earth”—expressed in the ancient Greek text in this unusual way—indicates the fourfold progression in a poetic narrative of redemption. Four times we read, “they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, / And He delivered them from their distresses.” This is an historical meditation for attaining contemplative wisdom; its final line asks, “Who is wise and will guard these things, and will understand the mercies of the Lord?”

The four “distresses” in this psalm are the wandering in the desert, a situation of imprisonment or bondage, a sickness, and a storm at sea. The last of these, the storm at sea, explains why, in the four directions listed at the beginning of the psalm in Greek, we read of “sea,” instead of the expected “south.”

Just as the people are delivered four times, so they are four times summoned to the praise of God: “Let them confess the Lord for His mercies, and His wonders to the sons of men.”

These four distresses may be understood literally or by way of metaphor, or as combinations of these.

Thus, for instance, when our psalm speaks of suffering in a waterless, trackless wasteland, this may be understood as referring to the return from the Babylonian Exile as well as to the earlier wandering of the Exodus generation.

It may also include any experience of being lost and trying to find one’s way back home. Thus, it may describe the journey of a reckless son lost in a distant country and already given up for dead (Luke 15:13, 24). This son, in turn, may be Jacob exiled in Harran, where the drought consumed him by day, and the frost by night, and sleep departed from his eyes (cf. Gen. 31:40).

And it may likewise be any or all sinners, exiled from the Garden and wandering away from the face of God, “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12).

Similarly, the psalm’s next part, dealing with bondage or imprisonment, may refer to Joseph sold into slavery, fettered in a foreign land and presumed already to have perished (Gen. 37). Or it may be descriptive of Micaiah (1 Kin. 22:26, 27), or Jeremiah (chapters 37—39), or John the Baptist (Matt. 11; 14), or the Apostle Paul (Acts 23—26). And it may refer to our spiritual captivity, of which Jesus said that He came to set the oppressed at liberty (Luke 4:18).

Then there is the section of the psalm describing conditions of sickness, which is potentially manifold in its applications. This could be a prayer during the deathly illness of King Hezekiah, for instance, or the affliction of the paralytics of Capernaum (Mark 2) and Bethesda (John 5), or the woman with chronic bleeding (Mark 5), or the lame man at the gate called Beautiful (Acts 3). To Jesus, after all, they brought “all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them” (Matt. 4:24). And the Lord’s healing especially concerns the forgiveness of sins (cf. Mark 2:5; John 5:14). This part of the psalm, then, is also a metaphor of our own various illnesses, whether of body, mind, or heart.

Likewise, when our psalm speaks of enduring a storm at sea, it may refer to the storm suffered by the shipmates of Jonah, or St. Paul, or the disciples on the Lake of Gennesaret, while Jesus yet slept in the stern of the boat. The fierce storm of this story may also indicate all of us as “children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting” (Eph. 4:14). Many and diverse are this world’s storms and hurricanes.

Our psalm is addressed to “those redeemed by the Lord.” Its historical meditation, that is to say, is directed to those who stand already “within” that history, the beneficiaries of its blessing. This is the Church, made up of “those whom He redeemed out of the hand of the enemy,” those whom He gathered from the four regions of the earth.

This psalm summons such as us to meditate on what the Lord has done in our midst and on our behalf, “that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12). Psalm 106 is a call to that profound effort of reflection and praise. (from P. H. Reardon, Christ in the Psalms (2011 edition)

Sunday, February 19

Matthew 12:22-30: The Lord’s work of driving out of demons is once again (cf. 9:32-34) the object of controversy, as His enemies allege that this power comes from Jesus’ collusion with the dark forces themselves. Among the Synoptic accounts of this controversy (cf. Mark 3:20-30; Luke 11:14-23) only Matthew records a healing from blindness in the context. This liberation of a man from satanic darkness is contrasted by the example of those who remain steadfast in their own blindness of heart. Having made up their minds to destroy Jesus, they become ever more inveterate in their sins. Hence, this story leads immediately to the theme of the unforgiven sin, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Psalms 149: A verse in the Greek version of Blessed Hannah’s canticle reads: “The Lord has ascended into heaven and has thundered forth. He will judge the ends of the earth. And He will give strength to our kings and shall exalt the horns of His Christ” (1 Samuel 2:10). Eusebius of Caesarea saw in this line a reference to the Ascension of our Lord and the consequent proclamation of the Gospel throughout the world:

The Lord who descended from heaven, the very Word of God, again ascended to heaven and, ascending, He thundered forth with His divine power the evangelical message (to evangelikon kerygma), so that it might be heard throughout the whole world. He Himself will judge the ends of the earth and those who live therein, as He has received all judgment from the Father. But He has also given power to His disciples—even the Apostles and the prophets—that is to say, our kings, and He has exalted the horns of His Christ, that is, of His people so named because of their participation in Christ” (Fragments from the Prophetic Selections 1.18).

This exaltation of the saints in the victory of Christ, their evangelical struggle for the Gospel, and the ultimate judgment of the world thereby are the themes of Psalm 149. This is a psalm of triumph in warfare, specifically that warfare described in Ephesians 6, the battle “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (6:12). As we have had occasion to observe so often in the psalms, combat and invocation, battle and blessing, are inseparable in the evangelical life. Therefore, we may take this same sixth chapter of Ephesians, a true warfare passage, to help us penetrate the meaning of Psalm 149.

Monday, February 20

Matthew 12: 31-37: Strictly speaking there is no “unforgivable” sin, because God’s mercy stands ready to forgive any sin of which repent. The whole business of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is that it is, by definition, the sin of which men do not repent. It is total and inveterate blindness of heart, in which men can no longer discern the difference between light and darkness. Such appears to be the sin of which the Lord’s enemies are guilty in these texts where we find them plotting His death.

From a pastoral perspective it must be said that those Christians who fear they may have committed such a sin should be take courage from the thought that their very fear is strong evidence that they have not done so. Those who are approaching the unforgiven sin are those who no longer even think about repentance and feel no need for it.

Psalm 25 (Greek & Latin 24): This prayer begins with such a “lifting up” of our inner being to God, and it is significant that Christians have traditionally prayed this psalm in the morning. If we want to “pray always,” as Holy Scripture tells us to do, it is important to raise our souls to God right away, before we face the day’s labor. Otherwise, there is great likelihood that our occupations will involve us in endless distractions that blind us to the thought of God’s presence.

But this is also a prayer for the Lord’s guidance throughout the rest of the day: “Show me Your ways, O Lord, and teach me Your paths. Lead me by Your truth.” And also a prayer for deliverance during the day: “My eyes are ever turned unto the Lord, for He will snatch my feet from the snare.” And for protection against the many enemies that afflict the soul: “Behold how many are my enemies, and with an unjust hatred have they hated me. Guard my soul and deliver me, that I may not be put to shame, for in You have I placed my hope.”

If this is a good psalm with which to commence the activities of the day, nonetheless, it is also an excellent psalm with which to close them. In this respect, several lines of the psalm beseech the mercy of God for those many sins and failings with which our conscience is invariably stricken as we look back over the previous activities of the day. Mindful of our numerous offenses, we pray at nightfall, “Remember Your compassion, O Lord, and Your mercy, for they are eternal. Remember not the sins of my youth nor my stupidity; but remember me in Your mercy—in Your compassion, O Lord.”

And if with such a supplication we end the day, it is with such a supplication that we should likewise finish our lives: “Remember not the sins of my youth nor my stupidity.” We pray to be remembered only with the divine compassion. Having no righteousness of our own, having “done no good deed upon the earth” (as the Liturgy of St. Basil says it), possessed of no other ransom note in our favor, this will be our prayer: “Remember me, O Lord, when You come in Your kingdom.” Thus our psalm ends, “Deliver Israel, O God, from all his afflictions.”

Tuesday, February 21

Matthew 12:38-45: Both examples given here, the Ninevites and the queen from southern Arabia, are Gentiles, those of whom Matthew has just been speaking in 12:18-21. The figures of Jonah and Solomon should also be understood here as representing the prophetic and sapiential traditions of Holy Scripture.

Jesus is the “greater than Jonah,” whose earlier ministry foreshadowed the Lord’s death and Resurrection and also the conversion of the Gentiles. The Lord’s appeal to Jonah in this text speaks also of Jonah as a type or symbol of the Resurrection. The men of Nineveh, who repented and believed, are contrasted with the unrepentant Jewish leaders who refuse to believe in the Resurrection (cf. 28:13-15). Matthew will return to the sign of Jonah in 16:2. Jesus is also the “greater than Solomon,” who was founder of Israel’s wisdom literature and the builder of the Temple.

The Queen of the South, that Gentile woman who came seeking Solomon’s wisdom, likewise foreshadowed the calling of the Gentiles. She was related to Solomon as the Ninevites were related to Jonah—as Gentiles who met the God of Israel through His manifestation in the personal lives of particular Israelites.

It is a point of consolation to observe that in neither case—whether Solomon or Jonah—were these Israelites free from personal faults!

Psalm 39 (Greek & Latin 38): If we do not venerate in the valleys in our lives—the low places, as distinct from the mountain tops—we will not be praying at all times, as Holy Scripture bids us do. If we are to follow that injunction, then, it is important to learn the ways of struggling prayer, worship down in the valleys. That is to say, we must find a prayer appropriate to those times when we do not enjoy the broad vista and brighter view. This is the reason that the Bible contains, not only the Song of Solomon, but also Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job.

This is also the reason that the Book of Psalms contains the likes of Psalm 39. This is a valley supplication and one of the very few psalms ending on a tenebrous note: “Do not be silent at my tears; for I am a stranger with You, a sojourner as all my fathers were. Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, before I go away and am no more.”

Yes, God permits us to say such things to Him, for these sentiments of profound despondency are also part of Sacred Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit. God would not have us hide from His gaze these dark places in the heart: “Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Surely every man walks about like a shadow [in the Hebrew, kol hebel, “all shadow”]; surely they busy themselves in vain . . . You make his beauty melt away like a moth; surely every man is vapor.”

The psalmist himself is reluctant to say such things to God, afraid of sinning by doing so: “I will guard my ways, lest I sin with my tongue. I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle . . . I was mute with silence, I held my peace even from speaking good.” But all this effort of restraint comes to nothing, for these sentiments only grow more fierce when thus confined: “And my sorrow was stirred up. My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue.”

“Hope that is seen is not hope,” says St. Paul (Romans 8:24), and here below, in the valley, on the workday, our prayer of hope must strive with other, darker voices rising from our hearts. But these honest voices too can be our prayer: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

Ash Wednesday, February 22

Joel 2:12-17: The context of Joel’s prophecy was some extraordinary visitation of locusts, in which the harvest of an entire season was destroyed, endangering the people’s survival during the following winter. The whole population was facing famine. Joel’s response to the situation may be summarized like this: “You think you are having a rough time now? Just wait. The present disaster is only a warm-up exercise for the Lord’s Day, the time of His visitation in judgment. For those who refuse to repent, far worse things lie in store.”

Joel’s prophecies present the reader, therefore, with a sustained call to repentance, fasting, and prayer, which is why Joel 2:12–17, the prophet’s summons to “sanctify a fast,” has for centuries been read in the West on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten observance. Lenten appeals to Joel are hardly limited to the West, however. In the Paschal Letter that Athanasius of Alexandria wrote at the beginning of Lent in 329, he cited that same text of Joel (Epistolae 1.4). Indeed, it has always been proper, in both East and West, to invoke Joel with respect to repentance at any time. On Pentecost morning, when the Apostle Peter summoned all of Israel to repent, he began that exhortation with a quote from Joel.

Psalm 102 (Greek & Latin 102): This psalm, the fifth of the traditional “penitential psalms,” is structured on a contrast, pursued through two sequences. The first half of the first sequence is all “I”—I am miserable, I am sad, my heart withers away like the grass in the heat, I lie awake at night, I feel like a mournful bird, I mingle my drink with tears, my days flee like the shadows of an evening, and so forth. Life being rough, a goodly number of our days are passed with such sentiments, so it is usually not difficult to pray this part of the psalm.

The second half of the first sequence arrives with the expression, “but You, O Lord,” which is just as emphatic in the Hebrew (we’attah Adonai) and the Greek (sy de Kyrie). “You” is contrasted with “I.” God is not like me; God is almighty and does what He wants and does not die. God is enthroned forever, and His name endures from generation to generation. God will arise and deliver His people.

The second and shorter contrasting sequence repeats the first. Once again, as at the beginning, there is the sense of our human frailty, our shortened days, our strength broken at midcourse. To this is contrasted the eternity of God; His years endure unto all generations. Thus, both sequences in this psalm form contrasts between the permanence of God and the transience of everything created.

Thursday, February 23

Matthew 13:1-9: As we now come to the third and central of the five great discourses in Matthew, Jesus once again sits down as teacher (Compare 5:1). Taking up a standard mystic number in Holy Scripture, this discourse will be composed of seven parables: the sown seed, the wheat and tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, and the fishing net. Four of these, as we will have occasion to note, are found only in Matthew. Even in wording this first parable is nearly identical with Mark 4:1-9.

In this chapter, a sharp distinction is made between those that understand the parable—the ‘insiders”—-and those that don’t—the “outsiders” (verse 11). Thus, when the chapter opens, Jesus is speaking to large crowds (verse 2), but afterwards He speaks only to an inner circle and privately (verse 36). This move indicates a change in the focus of the Lord’s ministry and preaching. This change is not surprising, in light of the bitter controversies that have been mounting in Matthew’s narrative.

Jesus begins this sermon by sitting down (verse 1)—the posture of the teacher—just as when He began the Sermon on the Mount (5:1; cf. 24:3). A close reading of this text discloses a striking parallel with Revelation 7:9-12, where a great multitude stands before God seated on the throne beside the sea (4:6).

This first parable, in which most of the sown seed is lost, summarizes Jesus’ own experience, as narrated in the previous chapter. So little of the Gospel, it seems, has fallen on fertile ground. As directed to the Church, this parable urges a sense of modesty about “success” in fruitful preaching. A great deal of the sown Word will simply be wasted.

This first parable also provides the foundation for the other six; it is the fountain out of which they flow. Thus, the second parable (wheat and tares in verses 24-30), is concerned with the wasted seed that falls by the wayside and is eaten by birds. The “enemy” that sowed the tares in verse 24 is identical with the “wicked one” in verse 19. Similarly, the third parable (mustard seed in verses 31-32) and the fourth (leaven in verse 33) deal with the seed that is sown on stony ground. Parables five (hidden treasure in verse 44) and six (pearl in verses 45-46) are concerned with the seed sown among thorns, while the seventh parable (dragnet in verses 47-50) parallels the seed sown on fertile ground and bringing forth much fruit.

The seed sown by the wayside (verse 4) is the Word preached to the unworthy heart, an interpretation introduced by the quotation from Isaiah in verse 15: “Lest they should understand with their hearts.” The key is an understanding heart (verse 23). The failure in this case has to do with the first imperative of the Shema: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart.”

The seed fallen on rocky ground (verses 5-6) is the Word preached to a shallow soul, which is unprepared for the trials that the reception of the Word will bring. The failure in this case pertains to the second imperative of the Shema: to love God with the whole soul.

The seed sown among thorns (verse 7) is the Word preached to the worldly, who are concerned with wealth and the strength that comes with wealth. In this case the failure is related to the Shema’s command to love God with all one’s strength.

The seed fallen on good ground (verse 8) is the Word preached to someone with an understanding heart. Such a man is described in Psalm 1: the man who “brings forth his fruit in its season.” This is the man who fulfills all the imperatives of the Shema.

Friday, February 24

Matthew 13:10-17: In the Gospel dialogue that immediately follows the parable of the sown seed, only Matthew quotes at length the long text from Isaiah found in verses 14-15. This text well fits the pattern of growing obstinacy on the part of Jesus’ enemies, a theme that has been growing steadily since 11:16. The argument the Lord uses in these verses is obscure, for the plain reason that hardness of heart is an obscure and mysterious subject.

If the workings of divine grace are difficult to comprehend, even more difficult to grasp is man’s willful refusal of that grace. Because a choice is both an effect and a cause, there is a tautology in human choice, and like all tautologies it can only be expressed by what seems a circular argument. That is to say, we choose because we choose. This is what is meant by “free” choice.

Mysteriously, then, the refusal to believe is also the punishment for the refusal to believe. These verses are also a sort of explanation of the following section, particularly verses 19 and 23, which contrast the “understanding” and “non-understanding” of God’s Word.

In this respect the disciples of Jesus are distinguished from the others who hear the parables. The “to you” is contrasted with the “to them” (verse 11). The “whoever has” is distinguished from the “whoever has not” (verse 12). There is an antithesis between those that see (verse 16) and those that do not see (verse 13).

Matthew thus introduces the historico-theological themes of grace and rejection. To those who have, more will be given, while from those who have nothing, even that will be taken away (verse 12). Matthew will return to this irony in the Parable of the Talents (25:29). The judgment aspect of this antithesis will be illustrated in the suicide of Judas (273-10).

Inasmuch as these things cannot be understood, they are called “mysteries” (verse 11—contrasted with the “mystery” in Mark 4:11), indicating God’s free and mysterious (and mysterious because free!) interventions in history through grace and rejection. Matthew, in his own lifetime, was watching the fulfillment of these words of Jesus in the very painful relations between the Church and the Jews.

Friday, February 10

Matthew 10:16-26: Four animals are mentioned in the first verse, all of them for their symbolic value. Although this initial mission is only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” it is significant that the “nations” are mentioned in 10:18; again, this foreshadows the Great Commission given at the end of Matthew. These verses make it clear that the proclamation of the gospel by the Church will be met with resistance, just as we saw to be the case in chapters 8 and 9. Like Jesus, the disciples will be “handed over” to “councils” (synedria). This description, contained here in prophecy, was very much the experience of the Christians whom Matthew knew when he was writing these words. Similar experiences are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.

Psalms 88 (Greek & Latin 87): One of the obvious reasons people pray is to be strengthened and comforted by the experience of doing so. Such comfort and strength derive sometimes from the words of the prayer, and sometimes from the sense of God’s close presence, but perhaps more often from both together.

Beyond our ability to number them, many men have approached prayer feeling depressed, anxious, weak, or desperate, but they finish their prayer full of hope and with a sense of calm. If this were not the case rather often, I suspect, some men would seldom pray.

Indeed, it makes sense to suppose the Lord confers grace on the habit of prayer precisely for the purpose of prompting us to pray resolutely, more often, and with greater persistence. If this were not so, His Holy Spirit would hardly have inspired so many prayers in which we detect this pattern. Such a prayer is Psalm 88, a meditation of Ethan the Ezrahite. This is a struggling prayer in which we detect no obvious signs of exultation or spiritual joy. The man devoted to God feels “adrift among the dead” and suffers from the terror of the divine wrath. Not once in this psalm is there a hint of joy. Feeling abandoned throughout his prayer, he is just as lonely at the end: “Loved one and friend You have put far from me, / my companions into darkness.”

It is very important to take note of such prayers, because they testify that the final purpose of prayer is not spiritual consolation. It is, rather, the gift of oneself to God—the placing of one’s life in God’s will.

Because the Lord confers so much joy on man’s serious, disciplined quest for prayer, it can happen that the desire for spiritual comfort may replace the desire for God. A man may come to prayer, no longer to place himself in God’s will, but in order simply to experience the joy of praying.

At various times in our life in Christ, the Lord will thwart prayer of this sort, because it has become just a subtler form of selfishness. The Holy Spirit will hold back the warm blessings normally attendant on prayer, precisely in order to concentrate a man’s attention on God, and not on himself. When this happens, the man devoted to God must remember that he is not less pleasing to the Lord, and, if faithful, he will become even more pleasing.

Saturday, February 11

Matthew 10:27-31: This section continues to portray the resistance with which the proclamation of the Gospel will be met. In his exhortation to confidence in the face of such adversity, the Lord takes up an image from the Sermon on the Mount, God’s care of the birds (verses 29-31). Will He not be even more solicitous on our behalf, if He displays such regard toward the tiny sparrows? (cf. 6:26).

Psalm 136 (Greek & Latin 135): After three introductory verses that call for the praise of God, one may distinguish three stanzas in this psalm.

Stanza 1, verses 4–9, we may think of as the “cosmic stanza,” because it deals with God’s work of Creation described in the opening verses of Genesis. This stanza is structured on four verbs (descriptive participles in Hebrew): “does great wonders . . . made the heavens . . . laid out the earth . . . made great lights.” Verses 8 and 9 are a continuation of verse 7 (“the sun to rule by day . . . the moon and stars to rule by night”) and bring the “cosmic” portion of the psalm to a close.

But Creation is the stage on which God makes history, so in stanza 2, verses 10–22, we move from Genesis to Exodus. This we may think of as the “history stanza,” containing material from the Books of Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua. In this stanza, likewise, there is a fourfold series of verbs (again, descriptive participles in Hebrew), this time mainly in pairs, that describe God’s redemptive activity for His people: (1) “struck Egypt . . . and brought out Israel;” (2) “divided the Red Sea . . . and made Israel pass through;” (3) “overthrew Pharaoh . . . led His people through the wilderness;” (4) “struck down great kings . . . slew famous kings . . . and gave their land as a heritage.”

Finally, stanza 3, verses 23–26, speaks of God’s continuing care for His people down through the ages. He is not simply a God of the past, but of “us,” the present generation of believers. The last part of the psalm is about here and now: “remembered us in our lowly estate . . . rescued us from our enemies . . . gives food to all flesh.”

Thus, Psalm 136 pursues a threefold theme: creation, deliverance, and the continued care of the redeemed. In this respect, the triple structure of our psalm is identical with that of the Nicene Creed: God made us, God saved us, God stays and provides for us all days unto the end. In the Creed, this structure is explicitly Trinitarian: “one God, the Father Almighty, the Creator . . . one Lord, Jesus Christ . . . the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life.”

Sunday, February 12

Matthew 10:32-42: As we face the animosity of the world, Jesus warns us, there is the real danger that we will end by denying Him. Indeed, confessing and denying, the two verbs spoken of in verses 32-33, are both illustrated in the case of Simon Peter, who both confessed Jesus (16:16) and then denied Him (16:22f; 26:31-35,69-75).

The New Testament provides a number of stories in which entire households accepted the Gospel, which then became the basis of a whole new way of family life. The next few verses of Matthew, however, affirm that such is not always the case. The Gospel proclamation can divide as well as unite, and family unity has sometimes been destroyed by the Gospel’s acceptance by some family members and its rejection by others. This is a matter of history experience. Consequently there is the principle announced in verse 37 about the priorities of love. This “he who” sentence becomes the first of a series of ten such sentences that close out the chapter on the more positive note of those who actually accept the Gospel. In this series of short sayings we particularly observe the emphasis on the first person pronoun, “me” or “my,” with reference to Jesus. It appears seven times.

The “little ones” in the final verses are to be identified, not only as little children, but also as other Christians, those “babies” to whom the Father reveals His Son (11:25), and who welcome Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (21:16). It will be the thesis of the last part of Chapter 25 that the charity shown to these “least of my brethren” is actually shown to Christ. Here in Chapter 10 the context of this reference suggests that the “little ones” (mikroii are especially to be identified as those who proclaim the Gospel.

Psalm 19 (Greek and Latin 18): This psalm begins with the testimony to God’s truth in the work of creation and then goes on to speak of the further testimony to that same truth in God’s law. These two revelations are the topics of the two halves of this psalm.

First, nature, given us by God that we may know Him. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” our psalm begins, “and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands. Day speaks the word unto day, and night unto night proclaims the knowledge. There is neither speech, nor words, nor can their voices be heard; yet their sound has gone forth to all the earth, and their message to the corners of the world.” That is to say, there is a message for us from God, inscribed in the structure of creation.

Second, the law, also given us by God that we may know Him: “The law of the Lord is pure, converting souls. The testimony of the Lord is sure, giving wisdom to little ones. The judgments of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever.” Such is the reciprocity between the Creation account in Genesis and the Sinai event in Exodus. What God reveals in nature, He also reveals in His law. Thus, whether he turns to God’s Word in nature or to God’s Word in the Torah, man finds order and truth and justice and wisdom and holiness.

It should not surprise us, then, that the Apostle Paul should see in God’s revelation in nature a foreshadowing of His revelation in the Gospel, for the universality of God’s witness in the works of creation is to be matched in the universal character of the Gospel’s proclamation. Speaking of the missionaries who proclaim God’s Word to the ends of the earth, Paul compares their witness to that same wisdom in which “day speaks the word unto day, and night unto night proclaims the knowledge.” He comments in Romans: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard? Yes indeed: ‘Their sound has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world’” (10:18). Paul is saying that the Gospel is as cosmic as the cosmos.

Just as the Gospel is God’s fulfillment of the Torah, so it is God’s answer to the hope that lies at the heart of nature. Each morning we behold how God “set His tent in the sun, and he goes forth as a bridegroom from his wedding chamber; he rejoices as a giant to run his race. His going forth is from the furthest heaven, and his setting is at the other extreme, nor can anything be hidden from his heat.”

Monday, February 13

Matthew 11:1-19: This first verse brings Jesus’ second discourse to a close (Compare 7:28). Presumably the apostles now go out to do the ministry for which Jesus was preparing them in Chapter 10 (cf. 10:1). While they are gone, Matthew introduces a “John the Baptist interlude,” a literary construction (paralleled in the structure of Mark 6:7-30) to indicate the passage of time while the apostles are gone. This is the story of the apparent despondency of John in prison.

There are two things particularly to observe in this story:

First, Matthew clearly relies on his readers’ familiarity with the entire career of John the Baptist. Although he refers here to John’s imprisonment, the circumstances of that imprisonment are not narrated until Chapter 14.

Second, the signs of the Messiah, listed here by Jesus in 11:5f, are not at all similar to those earlier enunciated by John the Baptist himself in 3:10-12. This dissimilarity may have been the cause of John’s evident misgivings, as he languished in his prison cell.

The fickle resistance that John experienced to his own preaching (11:17) is a sign of the people’s lack of interest in true conversion. This becomes the theme of the following verses: the condemnation of the cities of Galilee.

Deuteronomy 34: We come, finally, to the death of Moses, the last of the Israelites sentenced to die before Israel may enter the Promised Land. Indeed, that sentence was so complete that even Moses’ body could not cross the Jordan.

A literal reading of this chapter seems to indicate that God—or the angels—buried Moses, so that “no one knows his grave to this day.” Endless ink has been devoted to discussions on this point. This scene prompted the poem by Cecil Frances Alexander, some of which runs:

By Nebo’s lonely mountain On this side Jordan’s wave In a vale in the land of Moab There lies a lonely grave. But no man built that sepulcher And no man saw it e’er; For the Angels of God upturned the sod and laid the dead man there.

This was the bravest warrior That ever buckled sword; This the most gifted poet That ever breathed a word; And never earth’s philosopher Traced with his golden pen On the deathless page truths half so sage As he wrote down for men.

Tuesday, February 14

Matthew 11:20-24: The fickle resistance that John experienced to his own preaching (11:17) is a sign of the people’s lack of interest in true conversion. This becomes the theme of the following verses. In Chapter 8-9 Jesus was meeting the resistance of elite enemies, the spiritual leaders of the nation. Here in Chapters 11-12, however, we see resistance to the Gospel on the part of large numbers. Just as the opposition to John the Baptist was total and unreasoning, so is the stand against Jesus. This opposition of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum will lead to the plot against Jesus’ life in 12:14 and the subsequent tensions of that chapter. These verses also introduce the image of the final judgment, which will be the theme of Jesus’ final discourse, Chapters 23-25. The warning invoked against Capernaum here is taken from the cursing of Babylon in Isaiah 14:13-15; in the Book of Revelation Babylon will become, of course, the city symbolic of final unrepentance and eternal loss.

The Book of Ecclesiastes: Augustine of Hippo, in his major work, The City of God, appeals to the Book of Ecclesiastes with respect to God’s judgment over human history. He writes:

This most wise man devoted this whole book to a full exposure of this vanity, evidently with no other object than that we might long for that life in which there is no vanity under the sun, but verity under Him who made the sun. In this vanity, then, was it not by the just and righteous judgment of God that man, made like to vanity, was destined to pass away? But in these days of vanity it makes an important difference whether he resists or yields to the truth, and whether he is destitute of true piety or a partaker of it—important not so far as regards the acquirement of the blessings or the evasion of the calamities of this transitory and vain life, but in connection with the future judgment which shall make over to good men good things, and to bad men bad things, in permanent, inalienable possession. In fine, this wise man concludes this book of his by saying, “Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is every man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every despised person, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

What truer, more terse, more salutary enouncement could be made? “Fear God,” he says, “and keep His commandments: for this is every man.” For whosoever has real existence, is this, is a keeper of God's commandments; and he who is not this, is nothing. For so long as he remains in the likeness of vanity, he is not renewed in the image of the truth. “For God shall bring into judgment every work,”— that is, whatever man does in this life—“whether it be good or whether it be evil, with every despised person,”——that is, with every man who here seems despicable, and is therefore not considered; for God sees even him and does not despise him nor pass him over in His judgment.

Wednesday, February 15

Matthew 11:25-30: In contrast to those in verses 20-24, who resist the Lord and reject the Gospel, are the “babies” to whom the Father reveals His Son, and the Son His Father. Because of its similarity to the Gospel and Epistles of St. John in the very terms of its expression, this text from Matthew is often referred to as the locus johanneus.

This custom is perhaps unfortunate, for it conveys the impression that these verses in Matthew would fit the Fourth Gospel better than they fit Matthew. In fact, however, these verses may be taken as the very key to the proper understanding of Matthew as a whole. They are the explanation of the Father’s voice in 3:17 and 17:5. God has hidden such revelation from the “wise and prudent,” such as the citizens of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum.

Matthew’s use of these expressions, “babies” and “little ones,” to describe Christians, accentuates his teaching on the humility necessary to receive the divine revelation of the Father. Hence the invitation to learn of Jesus, for He is meek and humble of heart, modeling the meekness of those who will inherit the earth (5:5). This meekness of the Lord will later be noted when He rides into Jerusalem seated upon an ass (21:5).

Psalm 101 (Greek & Latin): This is a hymn of dedication and promise on the part of God’s servant, and its reference to the punishment of evildoers has prompted some critics to see in it the kind of righteous political program possibly associated with a royal enthronement. Indeed, the psalm is ascribed to David.

Along with such a political reading of the text, nonetheless, this psalm applies also to the humbler, yet perhaps more substantial, task of the governance of one’s own home. Twice here we find the expression “my house”—“I have walked in the innocence of my heart, in the midst of my house” and “The man who practices arrogance will not lodge in the midst of my house.” This psalm may be read, then, as a text concerned with the godly governance of a man’s household.

A house is an intentionally structured reality; it is quite different from dwelling in a cave or abiding under the branches of a tree. A house is designed; it is shaped according to a pattern, and the integrity of the house depends on its adherence to principles and laws. And what is true of the house is true likewise of the household, which is also structured according to principles and laws.

A household, moreover, is “hierarchical,” a Greek word indicating that its structure, its ordering, is sacral and stands under the aegis of heavenly prerogative. Founded on divinely sanctioned authority, families are hierarchical realities. Family homes are eminently prescriptive institutions, the loci of inherited wisdom and of the transmission of identity and culture. It is in homes that we learn to speak, and therefore to think. It is in homes that we learn to relate to other people and are thus cultured into human beings.

Thursday, February 16

Matthew 12:1-8: Matthew now picks up again the Markan sequence that he had broken off back in 9:17. He does this with two stories that he has taken from the series of five conflict stories in the second and third chapters of Mark: the stories of the standing grain and of the man with the withered hand.

These two narratives, both of which concern the observance of the Sabbath, appropriately follow the previous sayings about “rest” and the “yoke.” Matthew’s version of the first of these stories is longer than Mark’s, augmented by the reference to the priests who serve in the Temple on the Sabbath. The Lord’s reasoning here is as follows: If the servants of the Temple may work on the Sabbath, how much more the servants of the One who is greater than the Temple. The argument here is similar to that in 5:17-48; namely, Jesus’ superiority to the Mosaic Law.

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11: The wise man considers the kinds of things in which men attempt to find meaning, once they realize that “all is vanity.” Chief among these is the pursuit of prosperity. There is a special irony here: Wisdom is the path to prosperity, and yet Wisdom knows that prosperity is, in the final analysis, futile.

Jeremiah 7: In this chapter the prophet is critical of those Judeans who put an idolatrous confidence in the Temple. He mocks them with a sing-song refrain, “Temple of the Lord, Temple of the Lord, Temple of the Lord.”

Those citizens of Jerusalem carried to excess the earlier promise Isaiah made to Hezekiah, a promise that the Assyrians would not be able to destroy the Temple. That divine promise, made at a particular time and in specific circumstances, was transformed into a talisman, as it were, a sort of magical formula. Jeremiah realized that Isaiah would never have countenanced such an interpretation of God’s promise. Indeed, Isaiah—like Jeremiah later—had always been critical of a magical trust in the religious establishments, including the Temple.

Friday, February 17

Matthew 12:9-14: This story continues the theme of the Lord’s relationship to the Sabbath. Rabbinical theory permitted acts of healing on the Sabbath only in danger of death; otherwise such actions had to be postponed. In this text, and generally throughout the gospels, Jesus ignores this distinction. In the present instance His enemies are completely frustrated, because Jesus does not do anything with which they can accuse Him. He does not touch the afflicted man; He does not speak one word that could be interpreted as an act of healing. He simple tells the man to extend his impaired hand, and immediately the hand is healed! In their frustration the Lord’s enemies take the action to which most of the narrative has been building up to this point—they resolve that Jesus must die. That is to say, they resolve to do what Herod had failed to accomplish in the second chapter of Matthew.

Psalm 102 (Greek & Latin 101): This psalm is structured on a contrast, pursued through two sequences. The first half of the first sequence is all “I”—I am miserable, I am sad, my heart withers away like the grass in the heat, I lie awake at night, I feel like a mournful bird, I mingle my drink with tears, my days flee like the shadows of an evening, and so forth. Life being rough, a goodly number of our days are passed with such sentiments, so it is usually not difficult to pray this part of the psalm.

The second half of the first sequence arrives with the expression, “but You, O Lord,” which is just as emphatic in the Hebrew (we’attah Adonai) and the Greek (sy de Kyrie). “You” is contrasted with “I.” God is not like me; God is almighty and does what He wants and does not die. God is enthroned forever, and His name endures from generation to generation. God will arise and deliver His people.

The second and shorter contrasting sequence repeats the first. Once again, as at the beginning, there is the sense of our human frailty, our shortened days, our strength broken at midcourse. To this is contrasted the eternity of God; His years endure unto all generations. Thus, both sequences in this psalm form contrasts between the permanence of God and the transience of everything created.

Jeremiah 8: In this chapter (verse 22) is the first of two instances when Jeremiah refers to the “balm of Gilead” (cf. 46:11). This medicinal ointment, known in Islam as “balsam of Mecca,” is first mentioned in Genesis 37:25 as one of the products transported by Midianite traders. Native to Arabia, this resinous gum was domesticated in ancient times and was well known to the whole Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean Basin.

The “balm of Gilead” is also well known to students of literature and the stage. Although “Balm of Giliead” is the title of an early play by Lanford Wilson, perhaps the expression is best known from Poe’s “The Raven”:

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird of devil! Whether Tempter sent, or whatever tempest tossed thee ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted — On this home by Horror haunted — tell me truly, I implore — Is there — is there balm in Gilead? — tell me — tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Friday, February 3

Luke 2:41-52: Although the story of Jesus lost and found in the Temple is chiefly significant for its Christological import, its narrative structure, as I remarked before, conveys the “action” through the eyes and understanding of Mary. Luke invites us to take this approach in his final comment: “His mother continued to keep all these things in her heart.” Indeed, unless the reader approaches the story through Mary’s perception, he will miss much of its drama.

We observe, first, that the lostness in the story is objective: Jesus is not lost in the sense that he does not know where he is, but in the sense that he is missing—his mother does not know where He is. We readers, too, part company with Jesus in this scene: Until his parents find him, we don’t know where he is either. The story’s movement is advanced by what Mary and Joseph do:

When they had finished the days, as they returned, the boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and his mother did not know; but supposing him to have been in the company, they went a day's journey, and sought him among relatives and friends. So when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking him (Luke 2:43-45).

The narrative action, taking us readers along with it, first moves north. The storyteller and his readers travel towards Galilee with Mary and Joseph. The evangelist speaks of their worried search, though he does not directly mention their anxiety—indeed, it is made explicit only by Mary herself in the closing dialogue (Luke 2:48)—because the anxiety is implied in the details of the search. Not finding the boy Jesus after a day's journey, Mary and Joseph return south to Jerusalem—and we go back with them, of course—to continue their pursuit in the same place they last saw Jesus:

Now so it was that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions (2:46).

Jesus, we all discover, is the center of attention: “And all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.” The boy's parents are bewildered: "So when they saw him," writes Luke, "they were amazed." Every parent comprehends their amazement: This was the child they had raised for a dozen years. Yet, he did not accompany them back home after the Passover, as he had done on every prior trip. Mary and Joseph searched for him frantically, but even when they find him, the child displays not the slightest remorse or concern for their anxiety. The mother of Jesus finds this insouciance on the part of her twelve-year old a bit more than she is disposed to accept without complaint: "Son, why have you done this to us? Look, your father and I have sought you anxiously" (Luke 2:48).

Then, the boy, instead of apologizing and promising it will not happen again, turns the question back on his mother: "Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about the things of my Father?" From any other twelve-year old, this kind of answer would be called "back talk" and treated as impertinent. I suspect that Jesus’ answer to Mary was a sort of continuation of his discussion with the rabbis. Recall that Jesus, when his parents discover him in the Temple, has been engaged (for three days, apparently) in discourses with the rabbis; he has been asking them questions and answering theirs. In other words, Jesus has been engaged in a pedagogical and rhetorical method where a favored device is the "counter-question"—the answering of a question by a further and more probing inquiry. We find this style of debate frequently in rabbinic literature and in the gospels. The boy Jesus, then, so recently exposed to this pedagogical and rhetorical method here in the Temple, spontaneously has recourse to it in order to answer his mother. When she inquires, "Why have you done this?" He responds with a counter-question, "Why did you seek me? Did you not know?" No, as a matter of fact, Mary did not know, nor did she and Joseph find much reassurance in this brief dialogue with Jesus. Luke tells us, "But they did not understand the statement which he spoke to them" (2:50). Then, the three of them return to Nazareth—in silence, one suspects. Mary is portrayed as "anxious"—her own word—amazed, and confused. Considered from her perspective, as Luke clearly intends, the story is most noticeable as a test of Mary's faith. The angel Gabriel had spoken to her nearly thirteen years earlier, when she was perhaps half of her present age. At that time, indeed, she may not have been much older than Jesus was when they found him in the Temple. From that day when the angel visited her, it appears, Mary has understood rather little of what transpired. Like Abraham her father, she followed God's will in faith but can hardly guess where it was all leading. She walked obediently, day by day, not knowing whither she went. Luke’s story, which chronicles Jesus’ growth in wisdom, is told here through the person who witnessed that growth, and was obliged, in a very personal way, to explore its meaning. It was certainly from her that Luke learned the facts of the case.

Saturday, February 4

Matthew 9:1-13: Since the call of Levi falls in exactly the same sequence in the Gospels of Mark and Luke as Matthew’s call in the Gospel of Matthew, we are surely correct in regarding these two men as identical, notwithstanding the contrary opinions mentioned by Heracleon, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. Mark and Luke place this tax collector’s calling fairly early, soon after the calling of the fishermen, where we might naturally expect it. Matthew puts it somewhat later in the narrative, after the Sermon on the Mount.

It is much more significant, however, that all three Synoptic Gospels treat the call of the tax collector (Levi/Matthew) as a centerpiece bracketed between two stories about sinners: the paralytic being forgiven his sins and Jesus having dinner with notorious sinners. Thus set between these two events, the call of the tax collector represents above all the evangelical summons to repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

Hebrews 13:10-25: The closing verses of Hebrews contain two parts: First, there is a blessing, which invokes Jesus as the Great Shepherd (verses 20-21). This blessing closes the body of the work, which is here called a “word of exhortation.” Second, there is a very brief “cover letter,” or postscript, which follows the book itself (verses 22-25). We may examine these separately.

First, it may be the case that the work’s closing benediction already existed as a standard form of blessing. The reason for this supposition is that the benediction introduces two ideas that are not explicit or elaborated in the work itself.

The first of these “new” ideas is that of Jesus as the Shepherd: “that great Shepherd of the sheep.” Whereas the Epistle to the Hebrews is rich in its development of Christological titles—Son of God, High Priest, Mediator, Author of the faith, and so on—it does not otherwise speak of Jesus as Shepherd. Nor does our author otherwise describe Christians as sheep. These images, which are introduced, without elaboration, right at the end, remain thematically separate from the core collection of the book’s Christological and ecclesiological motifs. It is reasonable, therefore, to think of these images as simply borrowed from the early Church’s standard forms of closing benediction. As matters of theme, we would associate them especially with the Gospel of St. John.

The second “new” idea is the Resurrection: “the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead.” Except for the brief mention of Isaac’s restoration to Abraham in 11:19, Hebrews does not otherwise speak of the Lord’s Resurrection. On the contrary, his Christological and soteriological emphasis is consistently placed on the Lord’s Ascension into heavenly glory. That is to say, the sudden reference to the Resurrection, at the work’s very end, is better explained as coming from a common benediction in use among the early Christians.

Hebrews ends with a common Christian greeting: “Grace with you all. Amen.”

Sunday, February 5

Matthew 9:14-17: The terms of the question point to a feature that distinguished the disciples of Jesus from the followers of John the Baptist. In due course the followers of John the Baptist were absorbed into the Christian Church, a process of which we see evidence in the New Testament itself, notably the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel according to John, and it seems likely that the final stages of this assimilation may have been contemporary with the composition of Matthew. In His response to the question, Jesus made it clear that the Christian freedom from fasting was a very temporary arrangement, entirely limited to the time of His earthly ministry, and we know that even prior to the end of the first century the Christian Church had already established Wednesday and Friday each week as fast days. This arrangement would distinguish the Christians from the Pharisaic Jews, who fasted on Mondays and Thursdays.

Psalm 34 (Greek & Latin 33): Summarizing an entire Wisdom theme of Holy Scripture with a single question, Psalm 34 asks: “Who is the man who desires life, and loves many days, that he may see good?” At first the question may appear merely rhetorical. After all, doesn’t everyone desire life? Would anyone intentionally choose or prefer death over life?

The Bible is not so confident on this point. Deuteronomy distinguishes a true choice between life and death. It really is a matter of choosing, and some people do, in fact, prefer death over life (Deut. 30:19). That person shows little familiarity with history, or even his own soul, who would deny this deep, inveterate death wish at work in the human heart. Our psalm’s question, then, is well directed; in very truth, just who is the man who desires life?

By “life” we mean, of course, much more than material, animal survival, for man does not “live” by bread alone. True human life is a far more ample thing, a matter of the soul’s relationship to God; true life involves living in a particular way. The psalmist goes on, then, to answer his own question: “Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”

Our choices really do count in the sight of God. Even though He causes His rain to fall on both the just and the unjust, it would be a serious mistake to suppose that God has no regard for the difference between a just and an unjust man. God actively resists the proud man and gives His grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34; James 4:6). God really does discriminate, and our psalmist elaborates the consequences of this discrimination: “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.”

Monday, February 6

Matthew 9:18-26: From this point on, Matthew breaks away from the Markan sequence that he has been following. This sequence will be picked up again in Matthew 12. Matthew’s version of this double miracle, the seventh and eighth in the current ten miracles, involves significant shortening of the 22 verses with which Mark 5 tells the story. The expression “from that hour” in Matthew 9:22, which is not found in the parallel accounts in Mark and Luke, serves to tie the story back to the account of the centurion’s servant in 8:13. Matthew is also the only one of the evangelists to mention the flute players already assembling for the funeral of Jairus’s daughter. The raising of the little girl is to be contrasted with the killing of the first-born, which was the tenth of the Mosaic plagues.

Psalm 80 (Greek & Latin 79): The situation in Psalm 80 is pretty rough: “Will You feed us with the bread of tears, and give us only tears as our measure of drink? You have made us a contradiction to our neighbors, and our enemies regard us with scorn.” The problem in this psalm is not private, so to speak; it has to do with afflictions brought upon the Church.

The remedy requested against this plight is the revelation of God’s glory, a theme that appears early in our psalm: “You who sit upon the Cherubim, reveal Yourself to Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh; stir up Your might and come to save us.” Then, three times comes the refrain that makes the same prayer: “Convert us; show forth Your face, and we shall be saved.” The order in this refrain is important, in that God shows His face only to the converted—“when one turns [or “is converted” to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (2 Corinthians 3:16). So the psalm prays for a conversion, a change in our hearts, that we may behold the glory of God and thereby be saved.

But it is important to note that this is a prayer of the Church, a petition for conversion made by those who are, presumably, already converted and already have been enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift, and already were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and already have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come. Even these, our psalm is saying, still need even further to be converted and further to be saved.

Tuesday, February 7

Matthew 9:27-38: The healing of two blind men in verses 27-32 parallels a very similar account in 20:29-34. This earlier healing of the two blind men stands in contrast to the growing spiritual blindness of Jesus’ enemies in these two chapters, terminating in 9:34. The healing of blindness is a manifestation of the messianic era foretold in a number of Old Testament texts, notably Isaiah 29:18; 35:5; 42:7. This messianic note is particularly emphasized by the blind men calling Jesus “son of David.” The Lord’s answer, “Let it be!” (genetheto), by which the light floods into the eyes hitherto blind, repeats the verb in Genesis 1:3, “Let there be light!” (genetheto phos). It is also worth mentioning that this cure of blindness, which is the ninth of Matthew’s series of ten miracles in chapters 8 and 9, is parallel to the ninth plague of Egypt, the darkness.

Matthew’s account of the ten miracles in chapters 8-9 terminates with the Pharaoh-like hardness of heart on the part of Jesus’ enemies (9:34). Very much as Matthew 4:23-25 set the stage for the Sermon on the Mount, the closing part of this section, verses 35-38, sets the stage for the calling of the Lord’s first missionaries and the missionary discourse of Matthew 10. Indeed, Matthew 9:35 repeats 4:23 nearly word-for-word. This early mission-circuit of Jesus (periegen in verse 35, “He went around”) was stern work. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that there were 204 villages in Galilee. It was a foreshadowing of the Great Commission to “all nations” with which Matthew’s gospel will end.

Psalm 78 (Greek & Latin 77): Just as the early Christians saw the Passover and other events associated with the Exodus of the Old Testament as types and foreshadowings of the salvation brought by Jesus (cf. 1 Cor. 5:7; John 19: 36, etc.), so they interpreted the forty years of the Israelites’ wandering in the desert as representing their own pilgrimage to the true Promised Land. Thus, the passage through the Red Sea became a symbol of Baptism, the miraculous manna was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist, and so forth. In particular did they regard the various temptations experienced by the Israelites in the desert as typical of the sorts of temptations to be faced by Christians. This deep Christian persuasion of the true significance of the desert pilgrimage serves to make the Books of Exodus and Numbers necessary and very useful reading for serious Christians.

In the New Testament there are two fairly lengthy passages illustrating this approach to the Israelites’ desert pilgrimage. One is found in 1 Corinthians 10:1–13. In this text the Apostle Paul begins by indicating the sacramental meanings of certain components in the Exodus story: “All our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink” (vv. 1–4). The Apostle’s chief interest, however, is moral; by way of warning to the Corinthians he points to the sins and failures of the Israelites in the desert: “Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And do not become idolaters as were some of them. . . Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, . . . nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, . . . nor complain, as some of them also complained” (vv. 6–10). For Saint Paul the entire story of the Israelites in the desert is a great moral lesson for Christians: “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (v. 11).

The second New Testament text illustrating this theme is even longer, filling chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews. The author of this book was much struck by the fact that almost none of those who had departed from Egypt actually arrived in the Promised Land. And why? Because of unbelief, disobedience, and rebellion in the desert: “For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness?” (3:16, 17). Here, as in 1 Corinthians, the story of the desert pilgrimage is remembered as a moral warning for those in Christ.

Wednesday, February 8

Mark 6:7-13: When these men were originally called, they could hardly guess how their lives would change. First, sharing the lot of someone who had no place to rest his head (Matthew 8:20), they wandered with him all over Galilee and with him sailed on fishing boats to towns and villages all around the Sea of Tiberias, assisting his ministry in various ways, such as baptizing new followers.

When Jesus dispatched them, in pairs, to other places, the ministry of these men was an extension of his own, inasmuch as he “gave them power over unclean spirits.” Consequently, they went out and preached repentance. And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.”

These men traveled light, taking “nothing for the journey except a staff—no bag, no bread, no copper in money belts” (6:8). It is not entirely clear how many trips they made this way, nor were these the only men thus sent out. At one point, Jesus “appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go” (Luke 10:1).

In due course, the function and purpose of these missionaries changed, just as Jesus’ own ministry did. Originally summoned to assist the Savior in the spiritual renewal of Israel, they shared his rejection by Israel’s official leaders. Especially during the final year of this ministry, Jesus’ followers were reduced to a mere handful, a “little flock” (Luke 12:32).

When it became clear that Jesus would be completely rejected by official Judaism, he began to lay the foundation of a new community, a remnant, united in the foundational confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16-18).

When the new community, based on this confession, began to take shape, Jesus provided for it organizational leadership. After a night spent praying about this development, the Savior appointed twelve of these men—commonly called “those sent,” or apostles—to be the patriarchal foundation stones of the new congregation (Revelation 21:14). As we continue to reflect on Jesus in the flesh, there will be occasion to speak of some of these men, to whose preaching and writing we owe everything we know of him.

Jesus' love for these men comes from God's love for him: “As the Father loved me, I also have loved you; abide in my love” (15:9). Indeed, the Father loves them because they love Jesus: “the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me” (John 16:27). Jesus’ friendship with these men introduces them—in the measure that it can—to his personal intimacy with the Father.

Thursday, February 9

Mark 6:14-39): The Lord’s assessment of John the Baptist as “more than a prophet” was no denial that John the Baptist was a prophet (Luke 7:26). Indeed, He said, “there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist” (7:28). A common persuasion on this point commenced early. John’s own father “was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied” (1:67), with respect to his newborn son: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest” (1:76). John’s contemporaries, moreover, certainly regarded him as a prophet (20:6), as even Herod knew (Matthew 14:5).

Although our Lord said that “among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11), only Luke thought to provide us with the name of the woman who gave John birth. In fact, Luke went into some detail to tell of that lady named Elizabeth and the circumstances surrounding her unexpected conception of a son in her advanced years. The Angel Gabriel, who had been somewhat quiet in Israel after the days of Daniel, appeared to Elizabeth’s husband and predicted the pregnancy (Luke 1:13).

Moreover, God clearly intended to leave a special mark on John even before his birth. Six months into the gestation, Elizabeth received another visitor, this one human, her young kinswoman from Galilee named Mary. At Mary’s greeting, John’s mother sensed another Presence, as “the babe leaped in her womb” (1:41). Mary, in fact, like a new Ark of the Covenant, bore within her body God’s newly-incarnate Son, whose Father chose her greeting and that moment to sanctify the un-born John the Baptist. This event fulfilled an earlier prediction of Gabriel with respect to John: “He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb” (1:15).

In drawing our attention to John’s prophetic consecration before his birth, Luke portrays him in the likeness of the Prophet Jeremiah, to whom God said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; / Before you were born I sanctified you; / I ordained you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).

The “violence” associated with John was readily discerned in his asceticism, which prompted his enemies to say, “He has a demon” (11:18). Violence was also evident in his apocalyptic preaching, all about “the wrath to come,” with axes laid to the roots of trees and the burning of chaff with unquenchable fire (3:7–12). John’s hearers could never tell God that they had not been warned!

One of these was Herod Antipas, whom Herodias manipulated into beheading the violent John (Mark 6:14–29). Resenting the Baptist’s condemnation of her “meaningful and fulfilling,” albeit adulterous, relationship with Antipas, Herodias had longed for that day of vengeance. Indeed, in the New Testament triangle of the anemic Antipas, the hateful Herodias, and the relentless John, we have a striking parallel to the Old Testament triangle of the anemic Ahab, the hateful Jezebel, and, of course, the unrelenting Elijah.

Friday, February 10

Matthew 10:16-26: Four animals are mentioned in the first verse, all of them for their symbolic value. Although this initial mission is only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” it is significant that the “nations” are mentioned in 10:18; again, this foreshadows the Great Commission given at the end of Matthew. These verses make it clear that the proclamation of the gospel by the Church will be met with resistance, just as we saw to be the case in chapters 8 and 9. Like Jesus, the disciples will be “handed over” to “councils” (synedria). This description, contained here in prophecy, was very much the experience of the Christians whom Matthew knew when he was writing these words. Similar experiences are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.

Psalms 88 (Greek & Latin 87): One of the obvious reasons people pray is to be strengthened and comforted by the experience of doing so. Such comfort and strength derive sometimes from the words of the prayer, and sometimes from the sense of God’s close presence, but perhaps more often from both together.

Beyond our ability to number them, men have approached prayer feeling depressed, anxious, weak, or desperate, but they finish their prayer full of hope and with a sense of calm. If this were not the case rather often, I suspect, some men would seldom pray.

Indeed, it makes sense to suppose the Lord confers grace on the habit of prayer precisely for the purpose of prompting us to pray resolutely, more often, and with greater persistence. If this were not so, His Holy Spirit would hardly have inspired so many prayers in which we detect this pattern. Such a prayer is Psalm 88, a meditation of Ethan the Ezrahite. This is a struggling prayer in which we detect no obvious signs of exultation or spiritual joy. The man devoted to God feels “adrift among the dead” and suffers from the terror of the divine wrath. Not once in this psalm is there a hint of joy. Feeling abandoned throughout his prayer, he is just as lonely at the end: “Loved one and friend You have put far from me, / my companions into darkness.”

It is very important to take note of such prayers, because they testify that the final purpose of prayer is not spiritual consolation. It is, rather, the gift of oneself to God—the placing of one’s life in God’s will.

Because the Lord confers so much joy on man’s serious, disciplined quest for prayer, it can happen that the desire for spiritual comfort may replace the desire for God. A man may come to prayer, no longer to place himself in God’s will, but in order simply to experience the joy of praying.

At various times in our life in Christ, the Lord will thwart prayer of this sort, because it has become just a subtler form of selfishness. The Holy Spirit will hold back the warm blessings normally attendant on prayer, precisely in order to concentrate a man’s attention on God, and not on himself. When this happens, the man devoted to God must remember that he is not less pleasing to the Lord, and, if faithful, he will become even more pleasing.