Sunday Readings Commentary
Father Andrew Wadsworth offers a short commentary on this week's Sunday Lectionary readings.
To read the relevant Bible passage just click on the reference.
Before reading and reflecting on God's word you might like to use the following prayer:
O Lord,
who hast given us thy word
for a light to shine upon our path:
Grant us so to meditate upon that word
and follow its teaching,
that we may find in it the light that shineth
more and more unto the perfect day:
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
What human being can learn the counsel of God?
Or who can discern what the Lord wills?
For the reasoning of mortals is worthless,
and our designs are likely to fail,
for a perishable body weighs down the soul,
and this earthy tent burdens the mind full of thoughts.
We can hardly guess at what is on earth,
and what is at hand we find with labour;
but who has traced out what is in the heavens?
Who has learned your counsel,
unless you have given wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from on high?
And thus the paths of those on earth were set right,
and people were taught what pleases you.
This lovely passage is the conclusion of Solomon’s prayer for heavenly Wisdom, saying that heavenly Wisdom and the true knowledge of the things of God are beyond human grasp. If we cannot penetrate to an understanding of the visible world around us, how can we hope to reach an understanding of the divinity beyond the grasp of all our senses? The prayer is put in the mouth of King Solomon, who in the Old Testament is almost the personification of human wisdom, but artificially, for the Book of Wisdom was composed at Alexandria only shortly before the birth of Christ. The recognition at this moment that divine Wisdom lies well beyond the reach of all human faculties is all the more impressive in view of the achievements of the great philosophical schools of Alexandria. Such occasional poems, scattered through the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament, are a valuable reminder that God is beyond all human comprehension in wisdom, strength and beauty. Perhaps the most beautiful and overwhelming of all is the experience of God conveyed in the poems of Job 38-41. These poems may also be seen as praise of the Wisdom of God which will become flesh and be manifest to us in Christ Jesus.
Beloved: I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus — I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment. I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart. I would have been glad to keep him with me, in order that he might serve me on your behalf during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord. For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother — especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, receive him as you would receive me.
Paul’s letter to Philemon – and this reading makes up about half the letter – is a friendly little note from Paul to Philemon about a slave of Philemon’s called Onesimus, who has been serving Paul in his imprisonment, and has become a Christian. There are two theories why Onesimus was with Paul: either Onesimus ran away from his master and took refuge with Paul, or Philemon lent Onesimus to Paul for a limited period. In either case Paul is now sending Onesimus back, and at the same time pressurizing Philemon to send him Onesimus for a further period. The most important and attractive element in the letter is Paul’s affectionate brotherhood with the slave, now a Christian. After long centuries of the toleration of slavery within Christianity, Christians will realise that the affection and brotherhood here expressed make slavery among Christians intolerable. A further step taken later will be that any enslavement of human beings is incompatible with Christianity, and that all human beings must be treated as brothers and sisters, equal before the Lord. It is a classic case of the slow deepening of the understanding of Christian morality
At that time: Great crowds accompanied Jesus, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’
Jesus does not pull his punches, and here delivers a series of devastating body-blows to anyone who is looking for easy discipleship. All through this journey up to Jesus’ own death at Jerusalem the cost of discipleship has been a recurrent theme: ‘Let the dead bury their dead’, the Parable of the Rich Fool, ‘From one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded’, ‘Father against son, son against father’, and now ‘Hate father and mother’ and ‘Give up all your possessions’. A certain amount of the vigour of these demands may be attributed to a Semitic mode of expression, ease of superlatives and lack of comparatives, but there is no doubt about the absolute demands made on the disciple. When Jesus made these demands he knew what lay ahead of him, and was only asking his disciples to follow his own course. We must count the cost before beginning to build the tower. Most of us have, of course, already started to build the tower. There is no turning back from the plough, only prayer for a courage and loyalty which exceed our own powers.