Anyone who has grown up in or around Chicago knows that when it comes to city politics, there is a dirty word that involves more than four letters; that word is “patronage.” Political patronage, indeed, any kind of patronage employs a system that plays favorites. In politics, the patron is usually the head of a city department who has the power to hire his family and friends for city jobs that pay well. Chicago has long been known as a city where the patronage system has held sway even though many attempts have been made to destroy it.
While most of us would view this system negatively, understanding patronage is absolutely necessary if we are to understand the position that Jesus holds in our faith. The sacred writers often describe Jesus as the steward of God’s graces. God is the patron, Jesus is the mediator of God’s abundant love, and we are the clients who benefit from the largesse of God’s patronage. This kind of description comes up often in the Gospel parables and in the letters of the Christian Scriptures. One perspective on today’s Gospel reading is best understood from the perspective of patron, mediator and client.
Jesus declares: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” The patron (the Father) knows the mediator (Son, Jesus), and the mediator (Jesus) knows the abundance that is available from the patron (the Father). Jesus, the faithful steward can and does distribute the abundance of God’s graces to those he wishes, indeed, to his favorites. So obviously, it is in our best interests to be one of Jesus’ favorites if we wish to share in the abundance of God’s love.
However, where a political patron is usually looking for some kind of kick back from those he favors, Jesus has a different set of criteria for choosing to whom he will distribute God’s largesse. Jesus apparently favors the little ones, or in the words of the Gospel, “the childlike.” Here again, it is important for us to understand the role of children in the culture of Jesus’ time.
These are the hard and harsh facts about children in first century Israel. Children in the ancient Middle East were the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. About 30 percent died at birth or soon after. Thirty percent of live births died by the age of six. Sixty percent did not live past their sixteenth birthday. They had little status within the community or family, and until the age of maturity, the child was considered equal to a slave. In a famine, the elders would be fed before the children. It is people who are in this vulnerable position that Jesus favors.
In this familiar passage from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus contrasts the “powerless” or “childlike” as the primary objects of his Father’s patronage with the “wise” and the “intelligent,” words which are probably being used to describe the Pharisees and the Jewish authorities who, rather than dispensing the blessings and graces of God upon the people, burden them with the 613 commandments of the Law of the Sinai Covenant, a heavy burden indeed.
It is in this context that we come to understand what Jesus means when he describes his yoke as easy and his burden as light. Come to me, Jesus asserts, and I will give you rest from the burden of the Law. Rather than memorizing and obeying the 613 commandments of the Jewish Law, Jesus asks us simply to love God and to love one another. Who can argue with the notion that these two commandments are easier, a lighter burden, than what the Pharisees ask of the people?
Jesus appealed to the rustic folk who lived subsistence lives, allowing them to live only from day to day, never knowing where tomorrow’s bread would come from. Instead of caring for the poor, a part of the Sinai Covenant that the religious leaders of Israel seem to have forgotten, they grew fat on tithes that they hoarded in the Temple treasury. Is it any wonder that Jesus was loved by the poor people of Galilee while the Jerusalem officials were busy plotting to get rid of him? To drive his point home, he uses an image that the rustic farmers of his time would have known well – the image of the yoke – an implement that the farmers used to join two oxen together so that it was possible for them to work together in pulling the plow or a heavy laden wagon. The yoke was usually a heavy wooden beam that was laid on the shoulders of the beasts, just as condemned criminals would be yoked by being forced to carry the cross beam of their cross to the place of execution.
More than one spiritual writer asserts that the cross has turned the world upside down. History is usually written by the winners, by the rich and powerful. However, in the case of Jesus, history has been written by the one who lost his very life at the hands of the rich and powerful. Jesus, the poor crucified Messiah loses his life but gains a seat at the right hand of the Father despite his loss. Those who live in Him, St. Paul claims in his Letter to the Romans, those in whom the Spirit dwells will share the same reward. “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you.” However, if we wish the Spirit to dwell in us, we must make room for the Spirit.
This means that we must do some housecleaning. There is no room for the Spirit to dwell in us if our lives are filled with the concerns of the flesh. Again let us remember that when Paul speaks of the flesh, he is speaking of anything that will lead us away from God while the Spirit is anything that leads us to God. When we hear the words “flesh” and “spirit,” we sometimes get sidetracked into thinking only of the obvious sins of the flesh. St. Paul has been very explicit in enumerating the sins of the flesh in the Letter to the Galatians. In addition to sexual immorality, St. Paul adds idolatry, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, and dividing ourselves into various factions. There is no room for the Spirit to dwell in us if our lives are filled with such things.
People who participate in the Eucharist must be people who allow the Spirit to dwell within them. This is what Jesus means when he says that we are to come to him, the meek and humble one. This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. This is, as I have said before, the cost of our discipleship.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M.