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 Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
In this second account of the beginning of all things the way in which the man continues the creative work of God is shown by his naming the animals. A thing with no name cannot be fully grasped, is not really complete. So God leads each of the creatures to the man so that he can complete it by pronouncing, ‘You are (let me think, yes) – camel. And you, yes – you are mosquito’ and so on. Under the friendly guidance of God the man completes the divine work of creation. Having joined in the act of creation, the man will take affectionate care of what he has completed.
But none of these is a fit companion, and man remains solitary, miserable and incomplete, without a partner. The Lord God realises that there is something amiss and acts as anaesthetist and surgeon in one, even to the extent of carefully closing up the wound. The man cannot claim that he is the superior as the source of the material, for the Lord God does the work of moulding the woman from the rib just as he had moulded the man from earth. In Hebrew the names are the same too, ish and ishah; it is just that ‘woman’ has a feminine ending. The companionship of man and woman is shown because woman is made from the part closest to man’s heart, the rib, so that with relief and satisfaction the man exclaims, ‘bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh’.
So again we are taught the intimate relationship, the continuity between God and his human creature who is to complete and guard the creation. Again we are taught the affection and partnership of man and woman, this wondrous and trusting love in the innocence of perfect nakedness. There is nothing to hide, so no embarrassment, no threat of danger or exploitation but only confidence and respect for one another. This is the story of how God made things to be, but is it the analysis of how things once were at the very beginning, before evil entered in, or is it the picture of how things will be in the end when evil has been washed away and God’s plans are brought to fulfilment?
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honour,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.”
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying,
“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”
The Letter to the Hebrews concentrates on the true humanity of Christ, who is also uniquely exalted, and also on Christ’s priesthood. Here, at the opening of the letter, both these themes are sketched. Christ is higher than the angels, the very powers of God who accomplish the works of God and are the highest of all created beings. It is through these powers of God that God’s will is accomplished, but Christ is incomparably higher than the angels. As ‘the reflection of God’s glory’ and ‘the imprint of God’s being’ Christ is spoken of in terms of God’s Wisdom. In the Old Testament God’s Wisdom is seen as the image, the reflection, the emanation of God through which God creates, and by which God is mirrored in the world, the way in which God’s power and goodness is perceived. At the same time, in history as man, Christ has made purification for sins and has been exalted to the right hand of God. The whole history of salvation is hinted in these phrases, which express both the approach of God to human beings by the incarnation, and the exaltation of humanity by the vindication of Christ at his resurrection and ascension.
The second part of this reading is a meditation or midrash on Psalm 8, applying directly to Jesus what is said in that psalm about humanity in general. The change in sense is legitimised by the expression ‘son of man’, which is the one title which Jesus takes for his own in the gospels. In the psalm itself it is strictly parallel to ‘man’, but Hebrews takes it to apply to Jesus, and goes on from there to deduce Jesus’ special position ‘crowned with glory and splendour’ Jesus himself uses this title deliberately enigmatically, using it to describe both his authority (‘the son of man is Lord of the Sabbath’) and to foretell his Passion (‘the son of man must be rejected’). There has been considerable discussion about whether Jesus intended a reference to the glorious son of man in Daniel 7.13, the son of man who comes to the One of Great Age and receives from him all power on earth. Certainly this passage in Hebrews seems to take that interpretation of the title, seeing Jesus as ‘crowned with glory and splendour’.
However, beyond the psalm, our passage stresses that Jesus was made perfect by suffering, and that his followers too will be made perfect and taken to perfection only by suffering with Christ. This is the beginning of the theme which will be so important throughout the Letter, the self-sacrificial priesthood of Jesus, which will bring all people to salvation.
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.
The Pharisees are putting a trick question to Jesus, as is clear in Matthew’s fuller account. They knew the Law, which permitted divorce, and they will quote this Law to Jesus. The Law allowed divorce for ‘indecency’, but teachers were divided about what this meant: did it mean adultery or a lesser fault? So their real question is what Jesus considers grounds for divorce. As so frequently in his discussions with the legal experts, Jesus goes beyond the question: God made man and woman such that they should bond together permanently and become one thinking, living being. The word used for one ‘body’, or one ‘flesh’, really means one entity, not a hunk of meat, but a single, vibrant personality. God’s intention was not that they should be separable again. So Jesus does not answer the question about grounds for divorce at all. It is striking that here – and on other occasions – Jesus’ authority is such that he feels able to alter the sacred Law of Moses. For the Jews the Law of Moses was God’s own gift, sacred and unalterable by any human authority. By altering it, by annulling the permission for divorce under certain circumstances, Jesus is implicitly claiming divine authority.