Readings: Jeremiah 18.1-6; Psalm 146; Matthew 13.47-53
There is a certain naivety in the response of the disciples to Jesus's question, 'do you understand all these things?' 'Yes', they say, and we are inclined to feel a certain doubt. Maybe, at a superficial level, the teaching of the parables is easily understood. For example, the acted parable in the reading from Jeremiah seems straightforward enough: just as the pot is reshaped in the hands of the potter so the people are at the disposal of the Lord who can shape them in whatever way he wants. The analogy is clear but immediately questions arise: are we as dead as clay in the hands of God? what about human freedom and responsibility? and if everything is simply at God's complete disposal why are things not going better than they are?
Likewise with the parable of Jesus about the net catching all kinds of fish. At least the allegory is qualified this time by the phrase 'so it will be at the end of the age'. It is the angels who will make this final discernment which relieves us of the necessity of having to do it. It certainly relieves us of the necessity of having to do it now: better to concern ourselves with our own salvation, hoping for that, rather than trying to divide the world into goodies and baddies beforehand.
With the fragmentation of groups in the Church today, mostly centred on arguments about the Latin Mass and, behind that, about some of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, at least everybody continues to read the same scriptures. So wherever people find themselves in regard to the disputed questions, they know that we are all in God's hands, at the disposal of God's providence, and that God is working his purpose out through us and with us, at least some of the time. At other times God is working his purpose out without us and in spite of us.
The one who is trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom things both new and old. Perhaps that is the phrase to underline today. Back in what many younger people now consider to have been the bad old days of the 1970s, anything new was considered to be good, at least given the benefit of the doubt, whereas anything old was at least suspect, if not simply past its sell-by date. Now, in church circles, we seem to have moved to the opposite pole of that pendulum: anything new, that is, regarded as having been around only since the 1960s, is regarded as bad and anything old, that is. regarded as coming from before Vatican II, is regarded as good. Of course this is a broad stroke of the brush and there are many qualifications and nuances to be considered. But as a broad sweep there seems to be something in it.
The wise teacher - the one instructed in the kingdom of heaven - will bring out things both old and new. At least he or she will not be a victim of any recent past, whether it is the period since 1960 or the period since 1570 (which is still the recent past in the long history of the Catholic Church!). The net has been catching fish for two thousand years and some of the most important of them are to be found in the biblical period, in the ancient Church, in the patristic and medieval periods, in early modern times. The pot has been reshaped again and again according to different situations and circumstances and needs. To try to fix it once and for all in one particular set of cultural expressions is not wise. Whether those cultural expressions come from before Vatican II or after Vatican II does not much matter: such a desire is bound to exclude a lot of the past and a lot of the present while perhaps also closing the door to future renewal, creativity and innovation.
We are blessed if our help is the God of Jacob. We are blessed if we continue to sit at the feet of the Master and learn from him how to bring out things both old and new. Do we understand all these things? Yes and no. On one level we understand everything but in another way we understand practically nothing. Our salvation is in the Lord, the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus, who is shaping our lives according to his will. Eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has in his store for us. But God is working his purpose out through our freedom and our struggle to understand, through our suffering and our mistakes, even through our sins and especially through our struggle to love all people.
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