Friday of ninth week in Ordinary Time, June 8,2007

Scripture: Tobit 11:5-15. Psalm 146. Mark 12:35-37. Lectionary # 357:

Jesus now interfaces with the crowds and it is he who will now start asking
the questions; not to trap or hurt anyone, but to get them thinking more
about what God's revelatory words say. He has warded off the others who
have questioned him from the scribes, Pharisees, Zealots, Herodians, and
Sadducees; now it is his turn to help the ordinary listeners with his
questions. The topic is that of the Messiah as expressed in Psalm 110
verse 1. Apparently, the Jews or some Jews who had favorably listened to
Jesus and now are some thirty years later followers of Christianity did
take this Psalm and Psalm 2 as resonating with Messianic promises. The
Christians would frequently find these two psalms in the New Testament
writings as supporting the messiahship of Jesus. Jesus is remembered as
having addressed this very thought in what we read today in Mark's Gospel.
The Psalm reads, "The Lord says to my lord, "Sit at my right hand until I
make your enemies your footstool." The fact that this Psalm verse one is
cited 18 times throughout the New Testament shows that it was an important
text for seeing Jesus' messiahship within it. It is found in all the
Synoptics and is a key text in the Epistle to the Hebrews where it is cited
6 times. Recently, in a Christian-Jewish Dialogue this Psalm 110 and Psalm
2 were observed and commented upon by a Protestant, a Jew, and a Catholic.
Only the Catholic saw it as a messianic psalm despite the evidence of its
being so frequently cited in the New Testament. It is a "hot" text for
such a discussion and shows us how we can disagree about it, but still stay
at table with each other in meaningful dialogue. Certainly, everyone would
agree that the Messianic promise started with David and if there is a claim
to Messiahship the person would stem from the line of Judah and David--the
kingly line. This is a necessary requirement from what we know from the
Bible about the Messiah. In the interchange of Jesus with the people we
hear him saying that the Messiah is also to sit at the right hand of God--a
place of authority and power. In my reflection upon the passage I see this
referring not to the worldly kingship of the messiah but to his spiritual
relationship to God as the Messiah who is promised in the Scriptures as the
one to bring total freedom to the people. Verse 36 of Mark chapter twelve
says, "How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? David
himself by the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my
right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet." Jesus is
interpreting the text in the light of what the Holy Spirit is revealing
through the Psalm and the Spirit is not in the realm of the political or
worldly concept of messiahship but in the realm of God's kingdom. Perhaps,
Jesus, later in another Gospel is offering another insight when he says to
Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world." For Mark we know that Jesus is
the Son of God and the Messiah. He also is the Son of Man and thus fulfills
the essential requirement of being of the family of David according to the
flesh (Romans 1:1-4; Matthew 1:1-18). Everyone who probes into who Jesus
is enters into the other important question Jesus asks of us in the
Gospels, " But who do you say I am?" Amen.