Standing At the Crossroads: Sunday Reflection

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This morning’s Gospel reading is Matthew 9:36—10:8:

At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”
Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.
Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus takes notice of the massive hunger of the people for salvation and redemption, and how few there are to serve them. That certainly was true in the moment, but did Jesus lament more than just the lack of committed disciples for His mission at that moment?

Today's responsorial psalm has us singing, 'We are His people, the sheep of His flock,' from Psalm 100. Tradition has King David as the author, although it may be likely that it was written in his name or from his perspective as the anointed king of the Israelites. The original concept of "His people" clearly meant the Israelites as the chosen nation for the Lord's purpose of bringing the world back to His Word.

Our first reading from Exodus 19 makes that clear. Moses preaches that the Lord will have a special place in His heart for the Israelites, but the Lord gives Moses a clear mission for his newly freed people, emphasis mine:

In those days, the Israelites came to the desert of Sinai and pitched camp. While Israel was encamped here in front of the mountain, Moses went up the mountain to God. Then the LORD called to him and said, “Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob; tell the Israelites: You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though all the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”

The Lord forged the Israelite nation in hardship to become an entire nation of priests. What purpose would an entire nation of priests serve, though? Priests are called to evangelize and form people to the faith, but a nation of priests would already be formed to the Lord. The mission of the Israelites was to have all nations come to Jerusalem to learn the Word of the Lord and be saved through His redemption.

Unfortunately, the Israelites rebelled repeatedly and refused this mission of salvation, choosing instead to pursue worldly power and prestige. Rather than being a church led by prophets and later judges, the Israelites demanded a king. Saul, David, and Solomon followed, all of whom failed in some way to pursue the true mission the Lord gave His people. The Lord withdrew His protection from the kingdoms and allowed His people the choice and the consequences for that rejection. Rather than provide salvation to the nations, the Israelites and later the Judeans chose to contend with the world, leaving the rest of the nations without the saving Word. The Lord did not punish them by defeat, but the people chose that rather than maintain the Lord's mission and His protection.

That is what makes Jesus' warning in today's Gospel worth noting. Jesus would later give the disciples/apostles the Great Commission to "make disciples of all nations," and Jesus Himself would minister to Samaritans and pagans during His ministry. (We quote a Roman centurion whom Jesus provided with a miracle at every Mass.) Why, then, tell the disciples to shun the Samaritans and the pagans at this point?

A few reasons come to mind. The disciples were not well-formed yet at this stage and may not have been prepared for that kind of evangelization. They would have been more familiar with the Judeans, and there were more than enough of those who thirsted for the Messiah. Moving among the Gentiles and the Samaritans may have been dangerous too, not just because of the hostility they would get from those communities but also because it might have prompted more adverse attention from the temple authorities in Jerusalem. The scriptures also emphasized that salvation would come through the Israelites, too, but Jesus fulfilled that prophecy Himself, as did the initial disciples/apostles.

There is another possible explanation, one hidden in Obadiah, one of the shortest books of the Old Testament. This week, the YouTube algorithm handed me an interesting analysis of this link from Nils Glenn, who discusses it in the context of a later episode from Acts. It may apply here as well, as it relates directly to the refusal of the Israelites to fulfill their founding mission from the Lord.

Glenn notes that the vision of Obadiah links directly to Isaiah 34, both of which explain the enmity of the Lord toward Edom, the nation founded by Esau after Jacob took his birthright. In the Babylonian capture of Judea and Jerusalem, the Edomites had an opportunity to assist the remnants of Israel as they fled their enemies. Rather than assist, the Edomites stood at the crossroads and handed over the Judeans to the Babylonians for their capture, and joined the Babylonians in the looting of Jerusalem.

Obadiah makes the Lord's fury at this betrayal explicit in verses 11-14:

On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them. You should not gloat over your brother in the day of his misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction, nor boast so much in the day of their trouble.
You should not march through the gates of my people in the day of their disaster, nor gloat over them in their calamity in the day of their disaster, nor seize their wealth in the day of their disaster. You should not wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives, nor hand over their survivors in the day of their trouble.

The message is clear from Obadiah: the Edomites had the power of salvation and mercy in their hands, and refused to provide it. Rather than assist their cousins at the crossroads, they betrayed them to the enemies of the Lord for their own enrichment and power. It worked, at least for a short period of time; the Babylonian captivity started in the 7th century BC, and the Edomites were conquered in the 6th century BC. Survivors and descendants shifted to Idumea and commingled with other peoples, including the Judeans, losing their national and cultural identity entirely.

Let's return to Jesus' command in today's Gospel reading. His mission is to provide redemption, and He wants to first give the descendants of the Israelites an opportunity to atone and repent for their failures. Jesus may have wanted to give the Judeans of that time one last opportunity to become a nation of priests and to atone for their rejection of the mission of salvation. The Israelites had stood at that same crossroads over and over again in salvation history; rather than act to provide salvation to the victims of the powers of the world, they had chosen to become one of those powers instead, over and over again. If they did not choose to embrace that mission of salvation and re-establish the protection of the Lord for it, then Jesus would establish a pilgrim church instead to carry the Word of God to all nations.

A loving Lord would want to give His people one last opportunity to choose His mission over their own desires. Jesus may well have crafted His ministry to provide that opportunity, only for the descendants of ancient Israel to reject His true Messiahship for their own concept of it – a warlord that would conquer the world in their name for their power and ambitions. Jesus spent three years trying to get His people to stand at the crossroads and choose the Lord, and instead, they handed Him over to their enemies for destruction. Within a generation, their temple was destroyed, and a century later, Judea followed Edom into the hazy mists of world history.

What does that say to us today? We are also called to the crossroads as Christians, and asked whether we want to serve the Lord or serve ourselves. We have the words of everlasting life and salvation. Do we share that with the lost and broken, fleeing the consequences of sin and rebellion? Or do we push them back into the hands of our Enemy in order to gloat over their failures, as though their failures somehow redeem our own? We are called to actively work for salvation at all times, to testify to the Lord and to do His will, which is to give every one of His children a chance for salvation and redemption.

Why? Because we are all His people, the sheep of His flock. We are all brothers and sisters under the Lord. Our faith is always tested at the crossroads.

Addendum: Nils Glenn focused his reading of Obadiah on the first Jerusalem council in Acts. Click through the link above to hear his argument; it's very good.

Previous reflections on these readings:

The front page image is "Sea Port With the Lecture of Christ" by Jan Brueghel the Elder, c. 1600-1625. Currently on display at the Alte Pinakothek museum in Munich, Germany. Via Wikimedia Commons.

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections can be found here.