Thirty-Second Sunday In Ordinary Time, Year B
THIRTY–SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR B
1 Kings 17:10-16; Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10; Hebrews 9:24-28; MARK 12:38-44
The First Book of Kings contains an Elijah Cycle of stories. Tentative dating for Elijah’s prophetic ministry in Israel, the northern kingdom, is from 869-849 B.C. A theme of the Elijah Cycle of stories is a contest between the religion of the Lord God of Israel and Baal, the god of the Phoenicians, a neighboring nation. The Phoenicians thought of Baal as the god of storms, therefore the producer of rain. Elijah was the champion of the Lord God of Israel. When Elijah declared a drought, it was a direct challenge to Baal. Elijah is in danger from the Baalists. As the drought begins, the Lord God tells Elijah to go east of the Jordan, where the drought was not yet effective. There he could drink from a stream and ravens would bring him bread in the morning and meat in the evening, a balanced diet of carbohydrates and protein.
The stream dried up. The Lord God ordered him back across the Jordan to the town of Zarephath in the area of Sidon on the Mediterranean seacoast. “Stay there. I have ordered a widow to give you food.” As he arrived at his goal, he saw a widow gathering sticks to make a fire. He asked for a cup of water. As she left to get water, he also asked for a crust of bread. She noted that she had only a bit of flour and just a little olive oil, enough to form a flatbread for her son and herself. She adds, “When we have eaten it we shall die.” The story does not explain whether they were starving, or if this was her opinion of her cooking skills. The prophet quickly goes into his rap mode and promises that the jar of flour and the jug of oil would not become empty until the drought ends. She obeys, and behold! She and her son had enough to eat for a whole year. What is the Word of the Lord in this story? Obedience to the word of the man of God brought bless-ings to the woman and her son. Why was this reading chosen as the first reading for this Sunday? A widow’s generosity! In the gospel Jesus praises the generosity of another widow.
The Responsorial Psalm (146) is one of a group of five Hallelu-Yah Psalms. Halleluia is a comb-ination of a Hebrew verb form and Hebrew noun meaning “Praise (the) Lord,” or as we used to say, “Praise Yahweh!” Out of reverence for the personal name of God, and because of sensitivity toward our Jewish brethren, Pope Benedict XVI asked us to follow the Jewish practice of substi-tuting “Lord” for the sacred name. As expected in a psalm beginning as it does, it is a psalm of praise of God who does all the good things listed in the psalm: justice for the oppressed, food to the hungry, sets captives free, gives sight to the blind, raises up the oppressed, loves the just, protects strangers, supports widows and orphans, frustratesthe wicked. A job description worthy of the Lord! No wonder the people respond, “Praise the Lord, my soul!”
The second reading is the seventh in a series of readings from the Letter to the Hebrews. The au-thor continues his comparison of Jesus as high priest with the high priests of the Old Testament.
The ancient high priest entered a sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, made by human hands. He did this annually and took along blood “not his own.” as an offering to God. Not so with our high priest. The sanctuary he entered is not made by human hands, but is heaven itself. There, as a priest normally does, he appears before God “on our behalf.” It was his own blood, not offered annually, but “once and for all…to take away sin by his sacrifice.” A final but different compari-son, and not easy to understand: Humans die once, then judgment. So also, the author says,
Christ offered (a sacrifice) once only to take away the sins of many. When he reappears, the equivalent of our judgment, he will bring salvation to those who are looking for him.
The gospel reading begins with a denunciation of some scribes – the scholars of the Torah, of the laws of Moses. Therefore they are also called lawyers. Why only some scribes? The introduction speaks of scribes, “who do this and that.” So it is legitimate to understand that this isn’t a denunciation of all scribes (lawyers). In last Sunday’s gospel we encountered a scribe who responded so well to Jesus, that he complimented him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” What were some scribal abuses? Vanity, vain display of long robes, the desire for elaborate titles by which to be greeted, seeking places of honor at religious and civic gatherings. These faults can be excused as male vanity. As Robert Burns said so well, “O wad some Power the Giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us.” More serious is the accusation, “They devour the houses of widows, and as a pretext recite long prayers.” Immorality and hypocrisy! The Old Testament prophets railed against scribes who “turn aside the needy from justice, who rob the poor of their right, that widows may be their prey….” See Isaiah 10:1-2; Jeremiah 8:8.
That’s the bad news. Now the good news. Imagine Mark saying, “And speaking of widows, here is an example.” The temple was a kind of central bank for Jews. There were thirteen trumpet shaped chest placed along the walls of one of the outer courtyards. The chests were inscribed with titles: donations for wood, pigeons, frankincense, etc., plus several chests titled “free-will offerings.” Jesus was observing people dropping coins into these chests. He sees a poor widow dropping in two copper coins. With and oath Jesus says, “Amen, I say to you. This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing…. They gave out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty...gave all she had.” Is this a story criticizing wealthy lawyers (scribes), who through clever legal tricks rob widows of their property, while a poor widow gives her property to God? Or is it an illustration of religious hypocrites persuading poor widows to give to the temple what they cannot afford? Recall the words of Jesus at the cleansing of the temple, “You have made the temple a den of thieves.”
