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James 2:14-26
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LETTER FROM TAIZE:
LEAPING OVER WALLS OF SEPERATION
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ICONS
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Bible texts with commentary
These Bible meditations are meant as a way of seeking God in silence and prayer in the midst of our daily life. During the course of a day, take a moment to read the Bible passage with the short commentary and to reflect on the questions which follow. Afterwards, a small group of 3 to 10 people can meet to share what they have discovered and perhaps for a time of prayer.
February 2014
Luke 14:7-11: Before God with Empty Hands
When Jesus noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 14:7-11)
You never know what may happen when you open your home and invite someone for a meal. A true encounter with another person can be a life-transforming experience.
In chapters 14-16 of the Gospel of Luke, in the course of the journey that led Jesus to Jerusalem, we find him at table in the company of very diverse people. Jesus is welcomed by Pharisees and scribes, by tax collectors and sinners, by his disciples and is often surrounded by a large crowd. A number of Jesus’ parables are told during the meals he takes with others.
In this passage, Jesus is at dinner on a Sabbath in the house of one of the leaders of the Pharisees.
The portrait that is given to us in the gospels about the Pharisees is often very critical. They had their own ideas about who should be the Messiah and how that Messiah should act. Since they were masters and teachers of the Torah of Moses, with a great number of followers, they were looked at with respect and admiration. Their prestige may have led them to claim honors and privileges. Without a doubt, Jesus’ success provoked in some of them jealousy and anger.
The portrait that is given to us in the gospels about the Pharisees is often very critical. They had their own ideas about who should be the Messiah and how that Messiah should act. Since they were masters and teachers of the Torah of Moses, with a great number of followers, they were looked at with respect and admiration. Their prestige may have led them to claim honors and privileges. Without a doubt, Jesus’ success provoked in some of them jealousy and anger.
It is in this setting that Jesus makes an observation. What does he see? He observes how the guest who are invited to a wedding feast pick the places of honor and shove and jostle in order not to be put in the “last place”.
Jesus calls into question this type of behavior. Like the prophets of Israel, he invites his listeners to change their hearts and renounce the values and ways of acting current in society. Jesus upsets the logic of a world which often gives great importance to merit, honors and privileges.
However, Jesus is not just teaching good table-manners. In fact, Jesus is speaking about the Kingdom of God, which often in the gospel is referred to as a wedding feast or a banquet. The Kingdom of God will propose new priorities and other values, calling for an inner transformation and a new way of living.
Through this parable, Jesus denounces a religious practice that leads to self-justification, spiritual pretentiousness and arrogance, of claiming “rights” before God. He invites his listeners to place themselves before God in an attitude of humility.
In God’s Kingdom we are invited to present ourselves before God with empty hands, so that God may fill them. Real honor will come from what is given to us by another. We follow a new logic: everything is gift, everything is grace. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. There will no longer be a need to push and shove. Everyone will be invited to participate and given a “place of honor”. But, in order to enter the Kingdom you must change your way of seeing things.
Furthermore, Jesus speaks in this way because he wants to reveal to us who God truly is. Through the way that he lived, Jesus reveals to us a God who does not pick the place of honor but rather becomes a servant. He is capable of inviting us to a great banquet but also of getting up and washing our feet (John 13). “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
What are the values that are upheld as important in the world around you? How does the Gospel challenge or affirm them? How do you understand Jesus’ words “All those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted”?
"Blessed the pure of heart for they shall see God. "(Mt 5:8).
Jesus begins his preaching with the Sermon on the Mount. On a hill near Lake Tiberius, not far from Capernaum, Jesus sat down, as was customary for teachers, and described to the crowds what it means for a human being to be blessed. The word for beatitude, ‘blessed’, had been heard throughout the Old Testament. It spoke of the exaltation of the one who, in the widest variety of ways, fulfilled the Word of the Lord.
The beatitudes of Jesus were partly an echo of the ones the disciples already knew. But for the first time they heard that not only were the pure in heart worthy of going up the hill of the Lord, as the psalmist sang (Ps. 24:4), but they could even see God. What kind of purity could be so sublime as to deserve so much? Jesus would explain it several times during the course of his preaching. Let’s try to follow him so we can draw from the source of true purity.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
First of all, Jesus points out the very best way to be purified: ‘You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.’ (Jn 15:3) His Word, more than the practice of religious rites, is what purifies our inner self. The Word of Jesus is not like human words. Christ is present in his Word, as he is present, in a different way, in the Eucharist. Through his Word Christ enters within us and, provided we allow him to act, he makes us free from sin and therefore pure in heart.
Thus purity is the fruit of living the Word, of living all the Words of Jesus which free us from our so-called attachments, which we inevitably fall into if our hearts are not in God and in his teachings. These can be attachments to things, to people, to ourselves. But if our heart is focused on God alone, all the rest falls away.
To succeed in doing this, it can be useful at different times during the day to say to Jesus, to God: ‘You, Lord, are my only good!’ (see Ps. 16: 2) Let’s try to say it often, especially when various attachments seek to pull our heart towards those images, feelings and passions that can blur our vision of what is good and take away our freedom.
Are we inclined to look at certain types of posters or television programmes? Let’s stop and say to him: ‘You, Lord, are my only good’ and this will be the first step that will take us beyond self, by re-declaring our love for God. In this way we will grow in purity.
Do we realize sometimes that someone, or something we do, has got in the way, like an obstacle, between us and God, spoiling our relationship with him? That is the moment to say to him: ‘You, Lord, are my only good.’ It will help us purify our intentions and regain inner freedom.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Living the Word makes us free and pure because the Word is love. It is love, with its divine fire, that purifies our intentions and the whole of our inner self, because our ‘heart’, according to the Bible, is the deepest seat of our intelligence and our will. But there is a type of love that Jesus commands us to practise and that enables us to live this beatitude. It is mutual love, being ready to give our life for others, following the example of Jesus. This love creates a current, an exchange, an atmosphere characterized above all by transparency and purity, because of the presence of God who alone can create a pure heart in us (see Ps. 50:12). It is by living mutual love that the Word acts with its purifying and sanctifying effects.
As isolated individuals we are incapable of resisting the world’s temptations for long, but in mutual love there is a healthy environment that can protect purity and all other aspects of a true Christian life.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
So, then, the fruit of this constantly re-acquired purity is that we can ‘see’ God, which means we can understand his work in our lives and in history, hear his voice in our hearts, and recognize him where he is: in the poor, in the Eucharist, in his Word, in our communion with others, in the Church.
It is a foretaste of the presence of God which already begins in this life, as we ‘walk by faith, not by sight’ (2 Cor. 5:7), until the time when, ‘we will see face to face’ (1 Cor. 13:12) forever.
Chiara Lubich
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