{"id":6689,"date":"2014-08-06T21:40:59","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T20:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=6689"},"modified":"2014-08-06T21:47:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T20:47:31","slug":"17th-sunday-of-ordinary-time-27-07-14-appreciating-what-it-means-to-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=6689","title":{"rendered":"17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (27.07.14) Appreciating what it means to understand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (27.07.14)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Appreciating what it means to understand?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this Sunday\u2019s Gospel we hear Jesus ask his disciples:\u00a0\u201cDo you understand all these things?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>They answered,\u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Jesus replied, \u201cThen every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>(Matt 13:44)<\/p>\n

Jewish religious teachers who became disciples of Jesus of Nazareth brought with them their rich, deep knowledge of The Torah (the Jewish Scripture). Jesus encouraged these teachers- become-disciples to hold on to their scriptural inheritance but, simultaneously, to be prepared to make significant changes to their understanding of them. \u00a0In Matthew 5:17<\/a>\u00a0Jesus says:\u00a0“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Jesus, himself, was and is the living link, the living conjunction, between the \u2018Old\u2019 and \u2018New\u2019 Testaments. His parables, directed to his audience of Jews, made it clear that they couldn\u2019t get to where he was without first changing their mindset; without a major alteration to the way in which they processed their inherited religious knowledge and understanding of humanity.<\/p>\n

Jesus was describing himself when he said:\u00a0\u201cThen every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Jesus, God made Man, came among us to be the living link between the \u2018Old\u2019 and the \u2018New\u2019 Testaments thereby initiating the new Covenant.<\/p>\n

It takes a 180-degree of change in our value system to begin to experience God\u2019s Kingdom layered into everything and everyone around us.<\/p>\n

Most people have heard the old fable about a tourist asking a native Irishman how to reach a certain town. The Irishman reflected for some moments before saying, \u201cWell, you cannot get there from here!\u201d In other words, to carry on as previously will not bring you to your most deeply desired destination. This was the essence of Jesus\u2019 message within his teaching parables.<\/p>\n

Through his parable teaching, Jesus undermined the previous \u2018establishment\u2019 way of looking at life and God. He dislodged the \u2018taken-for-granted\u2019 approach of the Scribes and Pharisees that their understanding and interpretation of God\u2019s Law was the only way. There are those who hold that Jesus\u2019 parables can be blamed for his eventual crucifixion. The Jewish and Roman authorities seriously disliked the way Jesus looked at what they treasured as the only reality because it concentrated power in their hands. As it was for Jesus, so it has been and continues to be for his followers these centuries later as decades of martyrs continue to testify.<\/p>\n

Though many things happen in their direct line of sight, people have selective vision. They see what they are conditioned to see. As an experiment, a group was tasked with counting the number of passes being made in a specific and busy football match. While the passes were happening, a girl in a bright gorilla outfit came on to the pitch, walked among the players and then left the field. Most of the group came up, eventually, with the correct number of times the ball was passed. No one mentioned the gorilla; many claimed not to have seen it! The explanation is, they weren\u2019t conditioned to look for a gorilla.<\/p>\n

Jesus\u2019 contemporaries did not see the Kingdom of God among them because they were conditioned – as are we today by media, culture and peer group pressure \u2013 to look for something else! For those historic Jews, the Messiah they were looking for was a victorious and powerful leader, a warrior of stature and military might not a Galilean carpenter riding on a donkey!<\/p>\n

We take understanding for granted in that we rarely question how we understand what we claim to understand. We are more likely to unquestioningly accept what is passed to us as \u2018knowledge\u2019 from an authoritative source (parent, teacher, lecturer), because that\u2019s the way it\u2019s always been!<\/p>\n

Jesus intentionally challenged and, through his Church, continues to challenge this process of placated, platitudinous \u2018understanding\u2019. His challenge is critical because understanding can so easily become corrupted when it passes through fallible, sin-infected, human beings. Evil can initiate chasm-like alterations to the Truth that distort understanding as readily as deep, hidden cracks appear, without warning, in an ice field making it a treacherous place for the unwary and the over-confident.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Gospel extract also tells that God can tolerate weeds better than we can! God forbids us to take the issue of punishment into our own hands. We are not to usurp his role as the ultimate judge. He would rather we believe that the field, crop and weeds, just like the Church and the world, are ultimately in his good care!<\/p>\n

Scriptural parables are designed to disconcert us. They promise that while God\u2019s kingdom is surely coming, its arrival may not tally with what we have been led to expect; nor may it conform to what we prefer!<\/p>\n

Parents not infrequently complain that they no longer understand the Catholic religious formation their children receive at school. They complain that what their children are taught as the Catholic faith bears little resemblance to their memories of what they were taught at a similar age.<\/p>\n

The parental understanding of what they were taught may have become distorted by a wide range of influences \u2013 passage of time, personal preferences, personal rebelliousness, incorrect presentation, faulty initial uptake, to mention just some. It\u2019s also possible that those who catechised the parents conveyed some of their own skewed understandings!<\/p>\n

Regular health checks are recommended for all. It is equally necessary, for our spiritual health, to place under the spotlight with regularity our own \u2018understanding\u2019 of what is of eternal significance in our life. There is no better way to achieve this than to compare our \u2018understanding\u2019 with the Gospel texts in conjunction with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. (There are several editions of The Catechism available to suit all pockets.) The process itself can be treated as a prayer of intercession to the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Regularly putting our incomplete understanding of faith under the spotlight may draw us to the conclusion that the disciples prompt anwer of\u00a0\u2018Yes\u2019<\/em>\u00a0to Jesus\u2019 question:\u00a0\u201cDo you understand all these things?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>was a tad too quick to be accurate. Jesus would have understood their willingness to give him support, as he understands our untested enthusiasm that can crumble all too easily.<\/p>\n

When Jesus asks us:\u00a0\u201cDo you understand all these things?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0We need never fear revealing to him our inadequacies. He knows we are limited and unsure. He knows too that we are daily under attack from the Evil one. This is why Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.\u201d (Matt 11.28)\u00a0 The invitation is unconditional and enduring till the end of the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"P1100268\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (27.07.14) Appreciating what it means to understand? In this Sunday\u2019s Gospel we hear Jesus ask his disciples:\u00a0\u201cDo you understand all these things?\u201d\u00a0They answered,\u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0Jesus replied, \u201cThen every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archdiocese-of-liverpool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6689"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6689\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}