Wednesday
of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time
January 27,
2016 8:30am
There is a sentence in today’s
gospel passage that really needs to be understood correctly.
The disciples ask Jesus why he
teaches in parables.
Jesus responds, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been
granted to you.
But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that they may
look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand.”
It sounds as if Jesus is saying
that he has chosen some but not others.
He is reaching out to some but
not to others.
The problem is that this
interpretation is counter to practically everything else that Jesus says and
does.
One Scripture scholar, I think,
unlocks what is going on here.
He points out that these words of
Jesus are a quotation from Isaiah here.
This scholar says that what Jesus
means here is that some people are so disinterested in what he is saying or
even closed off to his teaching that it seems, it seems as if God himself or
Jesus himself has done this.
It seems, it seems as if God
himself or Jesus himself is hiding from them the richness and beauty of the
good news, the gospel that he is bringing.
This Scripture scholar explains
that Jesus is really expressing his longing for those who have shut themselves
off to him.
Humanly speaking, he is probably
expressing frustration because he offers the good news of salvation to everyone
and wants everyone to be open to him.
So, perhaps the message for us
today is to make sure that we continue to do just that:
Be open to new understandings of
Jesus’ message and new ways that his teachings and parables apply to us that
maybe we have never thought of before.
That’s seems to be the correct
and best interpretation of Jesus’ words in this passage today.
