Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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The most interesting thing I found in today’s Gospel is that the disciples of Jesus are not the Bride, they are the Bridegroom’s Attendants.

Who then is the Bride? Who is or are the beneficiaries of the New Deed which God is doing in the ministry of Jesus, the new relationship with people which God is working out something-like-a-marriage? Well, it’s initially the House of Israel, but particularly in Jesus’ own self-conception the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel. In other words, the ones who actually came to the party, the usual suspects: the poor the sick the blind the lame the prostitutes the tax collectors the sinners, those who mourn, the peacemakers, those who hunger and thirst after justice, people of great faith, the demon possessed, the lepers, the paralytics – to recall from the last few weeks. Beyond that it’s the Gentiles, the Nations, for the Jews even further beyond the pale of God’s love than the Lost Sheep, not even Chosen People – already on occasion during the ministry of Jesus, emphatically afterwards, people from every race and language and tribe and nation to the ends of the earth.

By attachment to one of these groups we the disciples get also to be beneficiaries, and indeed usually we are beneficiaries on the way to becoming disciples – of course. But disciples of Jesus as such are bridegroom’s attendants, or in St Paul’s language, “administrators of this new covenant”: we are there to mediate the arrangement, to make sure it all happens, to make sure everything goes smoothly, this new relationship between God and people, this new something-like-a-marriage covenant: initially with the poor the sick the blind etc., the usual suspects, beyond that with the Nations, with people from every race and language and culture, to make it all happen. What specifies us disciples, then, is mission and ministry!

Our language for talking about what went on in the ministry of Jesus we get mostly from the Old Testament prophets, like Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the prophet Joel (the Spirit being poured out on all flesh). The marriage imagery we are running with in the gospel would seem to go back particularly to Hosea, as in the first reading. Hosea’s prophesy is grounded in real life, notably his own real life, his tempestuous relationship with his wife, she is playing around, the whole relationship is tottering on the brink of collapse. Like Israel in Hosea’s day, playing around with idolatry, getting into all kinds of trouble. What is Hosea/God going to do about it? Well, from today’s reading it looks like he is going to try to run a second honeymoon, lure her out into the wilderness, lure her back to where they first met and where they had their first honeymoon. “I am going to lure her…land of Egypt.”

So God wants to change the normal relationship between God and God’s people from something-like-a-rather-tempestuous-marriage to something-like-a-really-good-marriage. But is it going to work? I know nothing about second honeymoons. But I imagine they work best for relationships which are already basically OK, to give such relationships new verve and energy. For the rest, it might be all right during the honeymoon itself, but what’s going to happen when they get back home, and the old problems and old habits reassert themselves. What’s different this time? What’s new about this new deed, this new marriage, this new covenant, this new garment, this new wine that Jesus brings?

I think there is something new on both sides. On God’s side there is a new luring, a new effort and totally gracious effort to speak to our hearts, in the birth and life and ministry of Jesus and in his body broken for us and blood shed for us. In terms of last week’s readings, inside this surround of love, there is a new healing provided: no need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before, See I am doing a new deed, It is I, I it is who must blot out everything and not remember your sins. A new healing is provided, a healing to the depths, from the inside out (as with the paralytic) as well as from the outside in (as with the leper, changing the context, breaking through the barriers). A healing that delves into the total context and that also reaches the level of mind and heart and spirit, that touches into our mind and heart and spirit, our self-identity, our sense of who we are. Here we are, sinners maybe, but the sons and daughters, God’s dear children.

This already changes the dynamic, in so far as it changes us and already starts to work on the external situation. In terms of Hosea’s imagery, it changes things back home, not just in the honeymoon setting. We are already somewhat new, like that new wine – or maybe we are new skins. But there is a further ingredient delivered to us though the birth and life and ministry and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and which St Paul goes on about in today’s second reading, the Spirit of the living God: we are like a letter, “written not with ink…living hearts.” St Paul is an “administrator…the Spirit…”.

This Spirit is not some secret thing hidden away somewhere, like we used to think about souls – the Spirit is known in its real life effects. The Spirit, among other things, in Pauline language, is what enables us to do as if by nature what the Law of God requires, so that it flows out of us easily. (In my philosophical moments, I think of this as the fulfillment of a promise written in the Ethics of Aristotle: Aristotle early in his Nicomachean Ethics points out that you know you have a virtue if you get pleasure in its exercise. If you have to push push push to be virtuous in a certain way, if it’s a big problem for you, you are still in the way to being virtuous, you haven’t got the virtue yet.) In other words, and to get away from philosophy: the Spirit is what makes it fun to be good! There is a place for fasting in our lives – and we will start doing some already this coming week. But these people asking the question, why aren’t your disciples fasting are basically spoil-sports, they have entirely the wrong attitude, and even fasting will be done in a new way.

The disciples have already caught the new attitude, that being part of this new group is where it’s at, that it might even be fun, to be the sons and daughters. And it’s an attitude for us to catch as well, new skins for new wine. That God really is loving, this God who makes us the sons and daughters, or in today’s language proposes to treat us something-like-a-new-found-bride inside something-like-a-really-good-marriage, and beyond that, having benefited ourselves, to mediate the same something-like-a-really-wonderful-marriage relationship to all kinds of people in our new-found role as ‘bridegroom’s attendants’ and ‘administrators of the new covenant’.