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Exclusively published to the Touchstone website each week, these Daily Reflections are brief commentaries on the lectionary readings contained in the St. James Daily Devotional Guide. The reflections are penned by Patrick Henry Reardon, editor of the Daily Devotional Guide and a senior editor of Touchstone. Father Reardon provides here a very brief directional clue for one of the readings each day. Long-time readers of the Daily Devotional Guide will find these reflections an additional help to their reading of Holy Scripture which they can print and keep with their Guide. The Daily Reflections will be updated weekly. Sunday, February 17 Matthew 4:1-11: Among Western Christians this account of the temptations of Jesus has for many centuries been the Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Lent. It was chosen for the obvious reason that it has to do with our Lord’s forty days fast, on which the season called Lent is modeled. On the other hand, in observing a forty day fast, Jesus Himself was following the example of Elijah, who in turn was following the example of Moses. (Thus, it is not surprising that in many ancient lectionaries, this reading was preceded by the account of the Lord’s Transfiguration, at which both Moses and Elijah were present.) Monday, February 18 Matthew 13:10-17: In the Gospel dialogue that immediately follows the parable of the sown seed, only Matthew quotes at length the text from Isaiah found in verses 14f. This text well fits the pattern of growing obstinacy on the part of Jesus’ enemies, a theme that has been advancing steadily since 11:16. The argument that the Lord uses in these verses is obscure, for the plain reason that hardness of heart is an obscure and mysterious subject. If the workings of divine grace are difficult to comprehend, perhaps even more difficult to grasp is man’s willful refusal of that grace. Because human choice is both an effect and a cause, there is a tautology in it (that is, it is because it is), and like all tautologies it can only be expressed by what seems a circular argument. That is to say, we choose because we choose. Mysteriously, then, the refusal to believe is also the punishment for the refusal to believe. These verses are also a sort of foreshadowing of the following section, particularly verses 19 and 23, which contrast the “understanding” and “non-understanding” of God’s Word. Tuesday, February 19 Matthew 13:18-23: In Matthew’s version of this parable-interpretation, one notes his special emphasis on “understanding” in verses 19 and 23. According to Matthew, a special type of understanding is characteristic of true discipleship. Thus, Matthew omits both references to a failure of understanding on the part of the disciples in Mark 4:10, 13. And at the end of the parables, in Matthew 13:51, the disciples admit that they do understand what the Lord has been saying. For more evidence of Matthew’s emphasis on understanding as a characteristic of discipleship, one may compare Mark 9:9-13 with Matthew 17:9-13; and Mark 9:30-32 with Matthew 17:22f. Wednesday, February 20 Matthew 13:24-35: Matthew replaces the parable in Mark 4:21-25 with this parable of the wheat and the darnel, which is proper to his own gospel. It is joined to the parables that follow by the common image of growth. So much is this the case that Matthew postpones the explanation of the wheat and the darnel until after the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven. As we shall see in that delayed explanation, the first of these parables is about judgment, and in cases of judgment there is usually the danger of misjudging. The difficulty of distinguishing the darnel from the wheat is that, in their early stages, they look very much alike. So the Lord commands that both plants be allowed to grow to maturity, because only in their maturity are they easily distinguished. Thus, the point of the parable is that finality in judgment should be delayed until “all the facts are in.” Indeed, by delaying the explanation of this parable until verses 36-43, Matthew is illustrating its point. Thursday, February 21 Matthew 13:36-43: Like the parable that it explains, this explanation is proper to Matthew, who has taken care to report it because he saw it as addressing a problem of his own time. Namely, the Church was seen to contain both faithful Christians and those who were Christians in hardly more than name. Indeed, the latter seemed to have been placed in the Church by the devil chiefly for the purpose of making life difficult for the Christians in the Church. The parable thus stands as a warning to Christians not to be overly eager in separating the two. Although the New Testament certainly authorizes proper excommunication from the body of believers (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:1-5), the explanation of this parable suggests a certain measure of caution in its application. Sometimes, we are warned, the good may perish with the evil in such a case, because a high degree of discernment is required for the proper application of the principle. At the final judgment (cf. 25:32), there will be no mistaking the separation of good from evil. Friday, February 22 Matthew 13:44-52: The parables of the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, and the dragnet are all proper to Matthew. The first two, concerned with the cost of discipleship, are a corrective against any notion that, because grace is absolutely free and undeserved, grace makes no demands on us. The divine irony is that what is free does, in fact, cost us everything. The parable of the dragnet takes up again the theme of the final judgment, when there is no danger of confusing the good and the bad. Here in 13:49, as in 24:31, the ministers of the final judgment are the angels. These parables are followed by one final parable, having to do with the “understanding” of those scribes who have been “disciplized” (13:52 — the same verb as in the Great Commission in 28:29). These are the authorized preachers of the Gospel, whose authority comes through those very men who received it from the Lord in that scene described at the end of Matthew. On the transmission of this authority, see 2 Timothy 2:2. Saturday, February 23 Matthew 13:53-58: Matthew now returns to the sequence of Mark 6, with the story of the Lord’s mother and brothers and sisters. As the ancient Fathers of the Christian Church were careful to insist (along with Luther, Calvin, and all of the major Protestant Reformers except Zwingli), the reference to Jesus’ brothers and sisters is no evidence that these persons were children born of Mary. Because neither Hebrew nor Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus and the apostles) has a special word for cousin or a generic word for blood relative, the words “brother” and “sister” in these Semitic languages do not necessarily mean what we would mean by their equivalents in English. In fact, because individuals usually have more cousins and other relatives than they do actual brothers and sisters, these words in Hebrew and Aramaic not even normally mean what we would mean by their equivalents in English. (Those of us today who have friends from the Middle East and North Africa know that this characteristic of their native Arabic has also permeated their speaking of English. Thus, a Sudanese who refers to his “brother” only rarely means what we would mean when we use the same word.) Consequently, it should not be a matter of wonder that the Lord, as He was about to die, entrusted the care of His mother to someone outside of His immediate family (John 19:27), for there is no evidence that He had any other immediate family.
For the Daily Reflections archives, please return to the current page. Copyright © 2002 by the Fellowship of St. James. All rights reserved.
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