Don’t Throw Away the Pearl 不要買櫝還珠

Thirtieth Ordinary Sunday, Year A
Theme: Don’t Throw Away the Pearl 不要買櫝還珠

I thank the merciful Lord for permitting me to teach a five-lesson course on the Pentateuch so that I may refresh my knowledge on the topic as well as deepening my relationship with Him. Throughout the weeks of preparation and presentation, I could feel the accompaniment of the Lord who fed me with ideas which I needed desperately. I acquired a better understanding of the significance of the Law and how Jesus came, not to abolish but to fulfil them.

When we study the Old Testament, we always fall into the trap of measuring their values against ours and we obtain an impression that their morals were irrelevant, outdated and even savage! Jesus’ word is a good reminder which we should constantly bear in mind in full, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all thing have taken place” (Matthew 5:17-18). How dare you, hypocrites, to lift a piece of text out of context to achieve your agenda and ignore the less convenient or even embarrassing ones!

Nowadays, we enjoy reading the books of Genesis and the first half of Exodus because they are juicy. Most of us skip the portions of laws in the second half of Exodus, the whole of Leviticus and the first half of Numbers. Few have the patience to read through the farewell speeches of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. However, if readers know that during the 40-day temptation in the wilderness, Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy to defeat Satan, they should be able to appreciate the importance of the Law in the salvation project of God! Indeed, the Torah is like a piece of sandwich for the Jews. The juicy stories in Genesis, Exodus and Numbers are like the pieces of wrapper bread of the sandwich. They are only containers of more valuable “pearls”. Modern readers buy the containers but throw away the pearls! Brethren! Try to put on a Jewish hat and find out why those boring, outdated and tedious laws are “pearls” for the Jews!

Simply put, the Law defines the Israelite identity as the Chosen People of God! Moses says, “For how can it be known that I and your people have found favour with you, except by your going with us? Then we, your people and I, will be singled out from every other people on the surface of the earth” (Exodus 33:16). While pagans continued to do business and feasting on Sabbath, Israelites kept it holy. That was the reason why they chased after and persecuted Jesus and his disciples for working miracles on Sabbath! While it was not a Gentile custom to circumcise, Israelites were ordered to kill the uncircumcised males in their community (Genesis 17:14). God would not spare even Moses or the son of Moses (Exodus 4:24-26). That was the obstacle the early Church needed to overcome in order to evangelize and to admit Gentiles into the community of the redeemed People of God. The book of Leviticus was important because it teaches the Israelites how being sinners, they were able to approach God safely without getting harmed or killed. From Leviticus, the Israelites learnt that they might pacify God’s wrath with sacrifices. The priests might be deployed as middle men to pass on their oaths, vows and intentions to God without exposing themselves to the hazard of God’s glory and lastly, by keeping themselves clean, they might come to visit God whenever they feel pure and without blemish!

With this background knowledge in mind, let us meditate what the gospel passage today teaches.
When a teacher of the Law challenged Jesus which commandment in the Mosaic Law is the greatest (Matthew 22:36), he was talking about the Torah, namely the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, and not the “613 mitzvot” which was an intellectual construct by Maimonides in the 12^th century. To be sure, the Pharisees had been working along similar lines to extract precepts, regulations, rules and traditions in the big fat book of Torah in order to make them accessible for commoners to follow and observe. Maimonides might be the one who systematized them into 613 mitzvot. In order to appreciate the scale of the challenge, before the time the 613 mitzvot came into existence, let us consider the following statistics¹ . These five books, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, consist of 187 chapters, 5844 verses and 79847 Hebrew words. Beware of the error of asynchronicity². However, don’t be fooled by numbers because one of the laws prescribes that all Jews should recite the Shema, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with you whole being, and with your whole strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) at least twice a day “Recite them … when you lie down and when you get up” (6:7b). That is to say, all Jews were required to recite the Shema before they went to bed and after they got up in the morning! How could they not know this commandment in the book of Deuteronomy? Jesus must have known this book by heart from cover to cover because He quoted it to ward off Satan’s temptations (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). However, it would take a God, who so loved the world as to surrender His only beloved Son to die for all humanity (John 3:16), to institute the second greatest commandment (Matthew 22:39; Leviticus 19:18)! A distant and lofty God would not be able to do so.

Should we throw away the Old Testament whose God was wrathful, “You shall not wrong any widow or orphan. If you ever wrong them … my wrath will flare up, and I will kill you with the sword; then your own wives will be widows, and your children orphans” (Exodus 22:21-23)? Of course not! The Old Testament is the root of the New Testament. Without the Old Testament, our Sacraments would be bland and magical instead of being reasonable channels to convey God’s grace. Furthermore, are you able to read the righteousness of God in His threats of wrath? Even if you do not appreciate the social justice conveyed in the first reading, you should at least listen to what the Responsorial Psalm sings today, “My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!” (Psalms 18:3) Jesus Christ, my God, is my shield and covers me from the Father’s wrath. Indeed, Christ bore the brunt of God’s wrath for all of us obediently on the cross. This is how the Father wants to save us. When will God’s wrath arrive? The threat in Exodus does not mention the time. But it is not a threat without substance because telling lies or fear-mongering are not His modus operandi. He leaves the time open and there can only be one logical candidate --- the Judgment Day. But I’m confident that Christ the King will be our shield to cover us from the Father’s wrath just as He has loved us on the cross. There shouldn’t be any more room for the doubt of God’s love of sinners and all those unlovable ones.

We thank the apostles for their handing down of Christ’s teaching to us. On our own, we’ll never be able to bring the Sacraments down from heaven to nourish ourselves. Most likely, human nature dictates that we would do without Sacraments! We won’t be able to understand why Jesus gave two commandments (Matthew 22:40) when the Pharisees demanded only one (22:36)! Indeed, the greatest and the first commandment (22:37; Deuteronomy 6:5) would be incomplete without the second one. It is because on its own, the greatest commandment is empty without any tangible substance. Alas! We are human and humble creatures. How can we, including the doer himself, know for certain that we love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind? Can people, including we ourselves, see our own hearts or others’ hearts, souls and minds? No way! Only God alone is able to see, hear, touch and judge our conscience. But we are able to see our neighbour. John the beloved disciple of Jesus explains well, “If anyone says, ‘I love God’, but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). In other words, loving the needy gives substance to loving God. Without the second commandment, the first can at most be empty talks. Of course, the King of the Universe makes it explicit and concrete when He teaches later, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

Beloved brethren! Let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 John 3:18). For we know that this is the way, and the truth and the life (John 14:6). Only then can we enter into God’s repose (Psalms 95:11). Amen.

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¹ https://biblequestions.info/2019/04/27/what-are-some-statistics-about-the-torah/
²The system of dividing Christian Bible texts into chapters and verses came in 1557 AD, and the Hebrew Scriptures at around 10^thcentury AD! Ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapters_and_verses_of_the_Bible
2020 Reflection
Picture Credit: whctwh.org