Today's Readings
Some people are always trying to suggest that Judas was not so bad. Maybe he only betrayed Jesus in order to push him to get started saving Israel. They point to the fact that, when Jesus was condemned to death, Judas regretted what he had done. Of course, this just makes him more prideful than pure evil, to think that Jesus needed to be pushed along by Judas. We hear today that Judas was indeed greedy. Whether he had intended for Jesus’ arrest to be the beginning of something greater or not, Judas was the kind of person who stole money from the poor. Judas was greedy. The thirty pieces of silver were all the temptation he needed.
What we hear about the chief priests is truly horrible. Sometimes it is suggested of them as well that they only arrested Jesus in order to encourage him to act more like the Messiah. Others say that they were only fulfilling the law. No matter how people try to justify their actions toward Jesus, the suggestion at the end of the Gospel today that they were planning on killing Lazarus shows that they were bad men. They were willing to kill a man because he was living proof of the power of Jesus Christ. They wanted to hide the works of Jesus Christ. How corrupt does a person have to be, to be willing to kill someone to hide the fact that he had risen from the dead?
Perhaps Judas just began by “borrowing” a little money from the money bag. Perhaps he began to take a small percentage of each donation as a “fee” for handling. I would expect that he had all sorts of ways of justifying what he did, but he eventually became the sort of person who reprimands others for not making donations to the poor (which he intends to steal) and who would sell his friend for 30 pieces of silver. Perhaps the chief priests began with legitimate doubts about whether Jesus was the Christ. Perhaps they even made up lies about him to “help” the uneducated people see that he was not. I expect that they could justify lying and hiding the truth, but today they are willing to kill a man for no better reason than that he used to be dead. We learn today that Judas and the chief priests were scoundrels. Nothing can justify the crimes they are accused of today.
Daily Homilies
Showing posts with label Guilt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guilt. Show all posts
November 23, 2011 - Wednesday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Today's Readings
Our first reading today is the source of a couple of sayings in English. The first is “seeing the hand writing on the wall”. When someone says that they have seen the hand writing on the wall, they mean that they are aware of what is coming next, usually something that cannot be avoided. In the reading today, the writing hand is a visible expression of the will of God. God gives the king this sign so that there can be no doubt that the end of the empire of Babylon was not a mere accident of history; it was part of God’s plan for the world.
Another saying taken from the reading today is an insult: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” This insult is profound: it implies a judge of the world able to weigh emperors on a scale; it implies a minimum standard which everyone ought to meet. This statement is an expression of pure justice: no one can debate with a scale; no one can give excuses or explanations; no one can bribe a scale; the scale measures dispassionately. Thus we have the image of blind Justice holding the scales.
The king is terrified. In fairness, he did see a disembodied hand writing on the wall, but how did he know that the hand was writing something against him? The hand could have been writing something good. Such a hand would surprise anyone but it will only cause fear in the mind of a guilty person. The king knew that he deserved punishment, so he presumed that his punishment had come. When we have a clear conscience very little can frighten us, but a person with a guilty conscience is afraid of their own shadow.
Was this king guiltier than other men? I do not think so. No guiltier than I am, perhaps less so. We all have a guilty conscience because we all have sinned. We are afraid of ghosts and darkness because we know that we deserve punishment for our sins, and we fear that our punishment is just around the corner. We need someone to save us from our guilt, from our fear, and we have such a Savior. How many times did Jesus say, “Be not afraid”? In Jesus Christ, our sins will be forgiven so that we do not have to be afraid anymore.
Our first reading today is the source of a couple of sayings in English. The first is “seeing the hand writing on the wall”. When someone says that they have seen the hand writing on the wall, they mean that they are aware of what is coming next, usually something that cannot be avoided. In the reading today, the writing hand is a visible expression of the will of God. God gives the king this sign so that there can be no doubt that the end of the empire of Babylon was not a mere accident of history; it was part of God’s plan for the world.
Another saying taken from the reading today is an insult: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” This insult is profound: it implies a judge of the world able to weigh emperors on a scale; it implies a minimum standard which everyone ought to meet. This statement is an expression of pure justice: no one can debate with a scale; no one can give excuses or explanations; no one can bribe a scale; the scale measures dispassionately. Thus we have the image of blind Justice holding the scales.
The king is terrified. In fairness, he did see a disembodied hand writing on the wall, but how did he know that the hand was writing something against him? The hand could have been writing something good. Such a hand would surprise anyone but it will only cause fear in the mind of a guilty person. The king knew that he deserved punishment, so he presumed that his punishment had come. When we have a clear conscience very little can frighten us, but a person with a guilty conscience is afraid of their own shadow.
Was this king guiltier than other men? I do not think so. No guiltier than I am, perhaps less so. We all have a guilty conscience because we all have sinned. We are afraid of ghosts and darkness because we know that we deserve punishment for our sins, and we fear that our punishment is just around the corner. We need someone to save us from our guilt, from our fear, and we have such a Savior. How many times did Jesus say, “Be not afraid”? In Jesus Christ, our sins will be forgiven so that we do not have to be afraid anymore.
April 11, 2011 - Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Today's Readings
The two stories today are similar because they are both fascinating stories. They are similar because both cases deal with the problem of a woman caught in adultery. They are dissimilar though because Susanna is innocent and the woman in the Gospel is guilty. They are dissimilar because, while Daniel was able to save the life of an innocent woman, Jesus saved the life of a guilty one.
How clever Daniel was we can see, because a mastic tree and an oak tree are pretty different, as different as a pine is from an oak. The cleverness of Jesus requires a little more background. The Romans did not allow the Jews to stone anyone caught in adultery, but the Mosaic Law said that that was the right thing to do. So the Pharisees are making Jesus choose between being faithful to the Law and demanding the woman be stoned and obeying the Roman law. If Jesus had been for stoning the woman, the Pharisees would have denounced him to Pilate. There would not have been all the hand-wringing that we saw at the actual trial; Pilate would have quickly ordered the death of anyone who went around stoning people. If Jesus had been against stoning the woman, the Pharisees would have been able to say, “See, even you break God’s Law when it is convenient to do so.” Jesus answer is so clever because he tells the Pharisees to stone the woman, but if they reported it to Pilate he would have laughed at them for being outwitted.
Yet, unlike the “render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar”, we should not be satisfied with this cleverness. The Law of Moses said that every member of the community had to participate in stoning. Even if we agree with Jesus we might want to ask him whether this means that the Old Testament is wrong sometimes. No. It was not wrong; it was only insufficient. Jesus is God. He will never take away the smallest part of the Law, but when the appropriate time comes, he will add a new law. We see Jesus writing down the 11th commandment today. We see him writing it into the very earth as he did with the first 10 commandments. “The first stone shall be cast by the one without sin.” Without taking away any law, and merely adding one slight adaptation to the law, Jesus changed the right interpretation of the Law forever.
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