Jesus comes for all

Accustomed to thinking about our Church's hierarchy when we hear lists of the Twelve Apostles, we often ignore what Scripture scholars have been telling us for a long time about this specific group.

The historical Jesus traveled with the Twelve not to show His intention to divide His followers into clergy and laity, but to demonstrate His passion to include all Jews in the reform He was preaching.

The Twelve are symbolic of the 12 tries of Israel. Each Jew descends from one of Jacob's 12 sons. (That's why no women are in the group.)

First of all

Two of the tribes were dominant during Jesus' earthly ministry: Judah and Benjamin. Except for those two and the priestly tribe of Levi, the other nine were on the fringe of Jewish society.

Karen Armstrong, a British theologian, reduces significant first-century Jews even further. She believes that only those who could trace their pedigree back to the Babylonian Exile (six centuries before Jesus was born) thought they were true Jews. The rest were second-class Jews.

Jesus employed the Twelve as His sign of inclusivity. He invited and welcomed all Jews to return to the earliest beliefs of their faith. Jesus' arrival in a town created a good news/bad news situation: The Messiah's visit was good news; His coming accompanied by the Twelve was bad news because it demonstrated that the Messiah's message was wider than a lot of Jews wanted it to be.

Sunday's first reading (Exodus 19:2-6) must have been one of Jesus' favorites. Yahweh tells Moses to inform all Israelites, "If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation."

The author was reminding the community that all Jews were important, not because they belonged to a special tribe, descended from nobility or accomplished great feats. They were somebody because they were committed to forming a covenant relationship with Yahweh.

St. Paul bought into the same belief. In the second reading (Romans 5:6-11), he's amazed both at how much Jesus loves all people -- even non-Jews -- and at how Jesus' love goes beyond anyone's response to that love: "Christ, while we were still helpless, died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find the courage to die. But God proves His love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Paul takes Jesus' determination to invite all Jews to follow Yahweh and transforms it into a determination to invite all people to follow Jesus.

Expansive view

It's clear from Sunday's three readings that God demands we expand the limited faith that brought us to the true faith. We're to break through the restrictions our "old-time religion" imposes on us.

Notice in the Gospel (Matthew 9:36-10:8) how "Jesus' heart was moved to pity for [the crowds] because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd."

When Jesus encourages His disciples to "ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest," He presumes some laborers are already out there. But He wants new laborers, people convinced everyone's worthy of being harvested, not just a special few.

It's precisely to those "unworthies" that Jesus sent the Twelve: "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

We can't leave this weekend's liturgy without examining our consciences on how we relate to our Catholic Church's lost sheep. Who, because of our hierarchical structure and triumphant self-righteousness, have we pushed to the outskirts of our religion?