Commentary
Monday, 6/24/2013
Abram Begins His Journey
The Lord told Abram to leave the land of his kinsfolk and made this promise: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you.”
This promise was made more than twenty years before God told Abram to take the name of Abraham and God made a covenant with him after he was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
God told Abram to go to a new land and that he would be blessed. When God told Abram that all communities would find blessing in him, God was saying that everyone would see Abram’s blessings and that they would want to be blessed like him.
So Abram set off for Cannan, the land of the Cannanites with his wife, Sarai and his nephew, Lot and reached the sacred place of Shechem. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So Abram built an altar there and then moved on to a place between Bethel and Ai. He built an altar there, invoked the Lord by name and then moved on to Negeb.
If you look at an ancient map of Cannan, you will find that God had Abram moving close to Jerusalem. This is the first part of Abram’s journey which will take him throughout much of the Promised Land, into Egypt and back again. For the next couple of weeks, most of the first readings for our daily liturgy will focus on events in the life of Abram (Abraham).
This is the beginning of Abram’s story and we learn right away that he was a man who was blessed by God because of his faith. But even the best of us can have our faith challenged. We saw that in yesterday’s gospel with Peter. As we continue with Abram’s story, we will learn that his faith was challenged and so was his wife’s faith challenged. That is why God put Abraham to the test. I will have more to say about that when we get there. For now, let’s get ready to engage in a little bible study on the life of Abram who has much to teach us.
Remove the Wooden Beam from Your Eye First
Jesus said, “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged…” Can a parent discipline a child without passing judgment first in order to determine what the discipline should be? No they cannot. But that is not the kind of judgment that Jesus is talking about.
The kind of judgment that is associated with looking down on another person or making derogatory remarks about another person is what Jesus is talking about. When we are prejudiced against another person, we judge them in the kind of way that Jesus is talking about.
Jesus said, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” That’s a clear and straight forward message. All of us have faults. We all make mistakes. We all sin and the sins we commit may be bigger and more grievous than the sins of the person that we are judging.
So Jesus added, “You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” Yes Jesus is telling us to go to Confession because that is the only way that we are going to remove that beam from our own eye. But even if we do that, we still cannot judge others and there are two very good reasons why.
The first reason is that none of us are so perfect that we will never sin again after Confession. Most of us keep repeating the same sin over and over again. We may not want to and we may not mean to, but we do. That’s why the sacrament of Confession is there for us virtually anytime we want to use it.
The second reason is that the Father gave the authority to judge to the Son and no one else and the Son did not pass that authority on to you or to me. It simply is not our place. That is why capital punishment is wrong. No matter how you explain it or try to justify it, capital punishment is wrong because it is not our place to take another person’s life for whatever sin they commit. God gives life and God takes life. We are not God.
There are a lot of good people who will disagree with that stand. To them I say, “Consider this”: Jesus also tells us that if we judge, we will be judged with the same measure. Therefore, if we execute someone here on earth, we may have our eternal life taken away from us when we are judged by Christ on the last day.
