Grumpy Jesus

 

July 12, 2022

Reading from the Gospels heard at 8:00 mass this morning at St. Al’s.  Short commentary to follow.

Matthew 11:20-24

20 Jesus began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented.

22 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.

23 And as for you, Capernaum: Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the nether world. For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.”

24 But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”

For the second time in one week, Matthew has the Lord threatening whole towns with same fate that befell Sodom (and Gomorrah).  (See last week’s blog entry “Shake the Dust from Your Feet”  https://tomatopointe.blogspot.com/2022/07/shake-dust-from-your-feet.html.)

Lot and his daughters enjoying a camp-out as Sodom is destroyed in the background.

Again, several points piqued my interest.  The priest who said mass and delivered the brief (as always about five minutes) homily, addressed one of the points right off the bat, saying something like this:

“This morning we’re confronted with an irony, in that the Good News of the Gospel seems more like bad news, at least for people who have not accepted Jesus’ teaching.  Usually, we’re accustomed to hear Jesus preaching love and forgiveness.  In fact, as one of my Jesuit colleagues once quipped, what we have here is an example of Grumpy Jesus.” 

The celebrant went on to explain that if there was one thing that Christ could not abide, it was hypocrisy, and that He was quite justified in getting riled up about it.  However, in today’s reading, there is nothing about hypocrisy.  Perhaps he was thinking about any number of other sayings, maybe this one, also in Matthew 23:

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean."

28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

Getting quickly to his main point, the priest said that Jesus was reminding us that we should expect consequences for our actions, and that includes not acknowledging and repenting our evil deeds.

I wondered also why Jesus was reproaching whole towns for the bad behavior of some of their citizens.  Surely not everyone in these towns was bad and unrepentant.  There had to be at least a few good people in every town, including innocent children.  Maybe He was making the point that in some way, we are responsible not only for our own attitudes and behavior, but that of our neighbors as well.  And the innocent will often suffer because of the wrongdoing of the bad actors, however few they might be.  Guilt (sin), in other words, can be collective.  And so can virtue.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah has over the centuries seeped into our collective psyche, even for people who claim little or no knowledge of the Bible.  Even the Quran contains a version of the story. Those readers who want a refresher can find it in Genesis 19, various verses, as in

24 “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, just last week (July 8) Sodom came up as a Final Jeopardy question in that quiz show to which we are addicted.  The category was Science & The Bible:

Final Jeopardy:  “A 2021 study suggested that an asteroid that struck the Jordan Valley c. 1650 B.C. gave rise to the story of this city in Genesis 19.” 

The answer, of course, was the aforementioned city whose name has become forever negatively associated with non-standard sexual practices.  Readers interested in the actual science can check out

Tunguska-Sized Impact Destroyed Jordan Valley City 3,670 Years Ago | Sci-News.com

One phrase in the passage in particular caught my interest:  “nether world” in verse 23.  It seemed a pretty mild euphemism for “hell,” and it prompted me to check out other translations.  The original Koine Greek has αδου, or Hades. The King James Version has “Hades” also.

  It’s worth noting that Hades was a Greek mythological concept, not a Hebrew one.  He was the god who ruled the underworld, not the place itself.  In Book 11 of the Odyssey, the hero had to visit the underworld to make various inquiries.  In fact, he made it only to the gates, and, though he met the ghosts of Agamemnon, Achilles, Elpinor, Tiresias, and his own mother, he did not have to enter the interior of Hades’ scary realm.

Hades abducts Persephone.  Pot made and found in Tarentum, ca. 350-325 BC.

The Latin Vulgate (Thank you, St. Jerome, late 4th Century AD) has “infernum,” “of the lower world.” At this time, it had nothing to do with fire.

It took a few centuries for the monotheistic religions to evolve ideas about “The Other Place.”

The point here is that at the time of Matthew’s writing, 80-90 AD, the idea of Hell as the other place to go after death was still evolving for the early Christians.  As I reconsider, “nether world” brings out that ambiguity pretty well.