Gospel of 16 October 2020
Friday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:1-7
Not one sparrow is forgotten in God's sight
The people had gathered in their thousands so that they were treading on one another. And Jesus began to speak, first of all to his disciples. ‘Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees – that is, their hypocrisy. Everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. For this reason, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in hidden places will be proclaimed on the housetops.
‘To you my friends I say: Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. I will tell you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has the power to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Can you not buy five sparrows for two pennies? And yet not one is forgotten in God’s sight. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. There is no need to be afraid: you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.’
Reflexion
Yeast works gradually, almost invisibly, slowly spreading through the whole lump of dough. It is not easy for us to identify it or to resist it.
Since it only takes a small amount of yeast to transform an entire lump of dough, our Lord must mean that it takes only a little bit of what the Pharisees have to offer to ruin a person. We say “ruin” because Christ is giving a warning statement and because leaven almost always represents sin in the New Testament; only Jesus’ parable of the leaven uses leaven in a positive sense. Just a smidgen of the leaven of the Pharisees suffices to transform what is good and useful into something bad and useless.
What was the yeast of the Pharisees which was corrupting their community? Our Lord names it - “their hypocrisy.” Most of us know that hypocrisy is intentionally pretending to be what you are not. The Pharisees were hypocrites because on the outside they acted as if they were upright, but inside they were full of evil. Though unseen, just like yeast which is hidden from sight after it has been kneaded into the dough, we should never underestimate its power and impact just because it often appears to be invisible. As St Paul tells us “a little leaven leavens the whole lump.” (1Cor 5:6) With this image, our Lord is indicating that what seems harmless if tolerated can have a corrupting influence on the whole community.
With a series of contrasting sayings, our Lord explains that no one will get away with hypocrisy. The concealed reality will eventually be revealed or exposed, what is hidden in the dark will eventually come to light. Our Lord continues to remind His disciples that they should have little fear of the disapproval or even persecution of others; instead, they should only fear God. And since there can be no pretending before God, nothing can be hidden from Him, our hypocrisy would be in vain.
By God’s grace, a different yeast is also at work in our lives and in the world—the yeast of God’s kingdom (Luke 13:20-21). As we immerse ourselves in God’s Word, in the sacraments and in a faithful Christian community, we allow the Holy Spirit to work that yeast into our lives, enabling us to grow into a more sincere, less hypocritical, faith and love.