20180803 TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT
3 AUGUST, 2018, Friday, 17th Week,
Ordinary Time
Readings at Mass
Liturgical
Colour: Green.
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First reading
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Jeremiah 26:1-9 ©
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Jeremiah preaches in the Temple of the Lord and is threatened
with death
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At the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of
Judah, this word was addressed to Jeremiah by the Lord, ‘The Lord says this:
Stand in the court of the Temple of the Lord. To all the people of the towns of
Judah who come to worship in the Temple of the Lord you must speak all the
words I have commanded you to tell them; do not omit one syllable. Perhaps they
will listen and each turn from his evil way: if so, I shall relent and not
bring the disaster on them which I intended for their misdeeds. Say to them,
“The Lord says this: If you will not listen to me by following my Law which I
put before you, by paying attention to the words of my servants the prophets
whom I send so persistently to you, without your ever listening to them, I will
treat this Temple as I treated Shiloh, and make this city a curse for all the
nations of the earth.”’
The priests
and prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah say these words in the Temple of
the Lord. When Jeremiah had finished saying everything that the Lord had
ordered him to say to all the people, the priests and prophets seized hold of
him and said, ‘You shall die! Why have you made this prophecy in the name of
the Lord, “This Temple will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, and
uninhabited”?’ And the people were all crowding round Jeremiah in the Temple of
the Lord.
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Responsorial Psalm
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Psalm 68(69):5,8-10,14 ©
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In your great love, answer me, O God.
More numerous than the hairs on my head
are those who hate me without cause.
Those who attack me with lies
are too much for my strength.
How can I restore
what I have never stolen?
In your great love, answer me, O God.
It is for you that I suffer taunts,
that shame covers my face,
that I have become a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother’s sons.
I burn with zeal for your house
and taunts against you fall on me.
In your great love, answer me, O God.
This is my prayer to you,
my prayer for your favour.
In your great love, answer me, O God,
with your help that never fails.
In your great love, answer me, O God.
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Gospel Acclamation
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cf.1Th2:13
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Accept God’s message for what it really is:
God’s message, and not some human thinking.
Alleluia!
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Or:
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1P1:25
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Alleluia, alleluia!
The word of the Lord remains for ever:
What is this word?
It is the Good News that has been brought to you.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Matthew 13:54-58 ©
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A prophet is only despised in his own country
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Coming to his home town, Jesus taught the people in their
synagogue in such a way that they were astonished and said, ‘Where did the man
get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son,
surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and
Joseph and Simon and Jude? His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So
where did the man get it all?’ And they would not accept him. But Jesus said to
them, ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country and in his own house’, and
he did not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith.
TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ JER 26:1-9; MT 13:54-58 ]
Quite often,
beautiful, thought-provoking and well-meaning messages are taken out of context
and the centrality of the message is lost because it has been
jeopardized by people, some vindictive, some malicious, some innocent and some
politically, religiously and economically motivated. A case in point was
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s address at the University of Regensburg in
2006. The crux of his speech was to champion the correlation between
faith and reason. Faith cannot exclude reason; neither can reason exclude
faith. The Pope’s diagnosis for the division in the world is the battle
between secularism and religion. Secularists tend to see the world
through reason alone, excluding the transcendence. On the other hand,
some faith believers see life through faith alone, excluding the use of
reason. The former will lead to a lob-sided and incomplete understanding
of reality, but the latter will lead to fundamentalism and fanaticism.
However, this
profound speech of Pope Benedict was hijacked by fundamentalists and the press,
which focused on a quote that he took from the erudite Byzantine Emperor
Constantine regarding the Prophet Mohamed and Islam. It was cited with the
intention to show that “violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the
nature of the soul” and that violent conversion is “not to act in accordance
with reason” which “is contrary to God’s nature.” Because this quote was
taken out of context, it gave the impression that the Pope was portraying Islam
to be a violent religion. Furthermore, when that part of the quote was
circulated through mass media, there was an uproar, demonstration and attacks
on Catholics.
This is a
clear example of how messages can be distorted and cause harm and division when
they are taken out of context. There is a greater danger today because of social media,
where people just quote the words of a person out of context and post it on the
internet, facebook, WhatsApp’s, etc. I am sure all of us feel unjustified
when people interpret us out of context. And many of us innocently pass
on messages we receive without verifying the larger context of what has been
said. When we selectively pick and choose part of the message and
circulate it, we are engaging in fake news, or worse still, half-truths,
because news that is distorted is even more damaging. For preachers and
teachers, we are often quoted out of context or our messages are read out of
context! As a result, it can cause much misunderstanding.
This was
certainly the case of Jeremiah in today’s first reading. He was instructed by the
Lord to warn the people of the consequences if they failed to repent of their
sins of injustice, discrimination, dishonesty, murders and worship of the pagan
gods. “The Lord says this: ‘If you will not listen to me by following my
Law which I put before you, by paying attention to the words of my servants the
prophets whom I send so persistently to you, without your ever listening to
them, I will treat this Temple as I treated Shiloh, and make this city a curse
for all the nations of the earth.'” The focus of Jeremiah’s speech
was on the need for repentance and to follow the Law if they were to find peace
and security. Instead of acknowledging their evil hearts, the priests,
prophets and nobles whose stakes were challenged, turned the whole thing into
an accusation that Jeremiah was insulting the religion because he spoke of the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. For the Israelites and the Jews,
the Temple was the pride of the people. Through the Temple too, they held
the people together and this was where their income and status were
derived. So for Jeremiah to prophesy the destruction of the Temple was to
insult their faith in God who dwells in the Temple. Hence, they seized
him and sought to put him to death.
It was so in
the case of our Lord as well when He preached in His home town. He came back with the
noble intention of sharing the Word of God with them and to heal the
sick. Instead of being edified by what He said and did, the townsfolk
were not thinking about His message or what He could do for them. They
became envious of Jesus and started to entertain doubts in their mind, not
because of what He said and did, but because they knew Him when he was
young. “Jesus taught the people in their synagogue in such a way that
they were astonished and said, ‘Where did the man get this wisdom and these
miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son, surely? Is not his mother the
woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude? His
sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So where did the man get it all?’
And they would not accept him.”
Again, Jesus
was seen out of focus. What was more important was what Jesus is today
and not what He was. We must judge the tree by its fruits. They
should have evaluated the Lord’s words and deeds so that they could come to a
conviction of His mission and message. Instead of focusing on the
identity of our Lord, they were more concerned about the fact that He was one
of them. The remark of our Lord was very telling when He said, “‘A
prophet is only despised in his own country and in his own house’, and he did
not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” How true in
daily life. Our peers will not accept what we say but they will listen to
what others say. We have an emotional and psychological block in
receptivity to the entire message when we are prejudiced against a person.
In the light
of what we have reflected, what does it mean for the one who is called to teach
the truth, the one who hears the message and those who transmit them? In
the case of Jeremiah, the Lord instructed him, “You must speak all the
words I have commanded you to tell them; do not omit one syllable. Perhaps they
will listen and each turn from his evil way: if so, I shall relent and not
bring the disaster on them which I intended for their misdeeds.” Like
Pope Benedict and Jeremiah, we must be ready to speak the truth even when it
makes us unpopular. We must not hold back what the Lord commands us to
tell the people. Failure to do so would be a betrayal of our conscience
and of God.
The question
is how we should convey the message of God. This is the most important question
today beyond the truth of the content of the message. Should we preach like
the prophets of old, like John the Baptist condemning the people so that they
could be awakened from their ignorance and stubbornness? Perhaps in those
days and even now for some people, it works. Through fire and brimstone,
some people are shaken up. Using a soft and gentle approach will not
strike their hearts. However, in today’s world, because of higher
education, most people are thinkers. For such people, a softer approach
that is rational and appealing to the heart would be more palatable.
Indeed, in the gospel, Jesus said, “I am sending you out like sheep among
wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
(Mt 10:16)
He also remarked, “The people of this world are more shrewd in
dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” (Lk 16:8)
So today, in view of the fact that our message might be quoted out of context,
we need to be more careful in calibrating our message.
Secondly,
those who are the recipients of the message must look for the substance, not
the presentation. The content is more important than the packaging.
Unfortunately, today, people only are interested in the packaging, not the
content. They prefer to listen to a speaker that entertains rather than
enlightens. Some speakers are not good at delivery but their talks have
lots of substance and content. Yet others can make people laugh, but
gives nothing for them to bring home. So we must go beyond the
packaging. Rather, we must examine the content of what is said or
written. We can disagree with the way it was presented or we might not
even like the speaker. However, we should be objective enough not to
focus on the secondary issues but consider if what is said is true, edifying
and helpful to our lives.
Finally, for
those who are spreading and passing on the message, we must verify the truth of
what we pass on, especially when it is something negative or highly
sensitive. Passing on fake news, which is not merely untruths but distorted
truths, can cause division, disorder, riots and killings. So we must be
extremely cautious before we forward such incendiary news and messages.
It is not just our duty to verify the truth of what was said but also to know
the context of what was said so that we will not misrepresent the person.
Failure to do so is to be an accomplice of fake news and to be lacking in
charity and honesty. Unfortunately, newspapers, especially when they are
looking for soundbites, often take the quote out of context and people who read
the text without bothering to know the whole story are prejudiced right from
the start based on what they have read. However, with good news, let us
forward and pass on generously to all so that all can be edified and inspired.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Singapore © All Rights Reserved
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