Read­ing Time: 3 minutes

Introduction   

Hav­ing sent the dis­ciples on mis­sion and hav­ing exhausted the theme and the neces­sity of hos­pit­al­ity, Jesus can now take up oth­er teach­ings. Isai­ah was not wrong when he affirmed that we have all gone astray like sheep, each tak­ing his own dir­ec­tion (Isa 53:6). We have gone astray because we are like sheep without shep­herds (cf. Matt 9:36). Like branches that are cut off from the vine, we have become fruit­less, unpro­duct­ive, inca­pa­cit­ated, wor­ri­some, lost, unspir­itu­al, and without hope (cf. John 15:5–6). As Jesus rightly said, when salt loses its salt­i­ness, it is good for noth­ing except to be thrown away to be trod­den under­foot by people (cf. Matt 5:13). Under this con­di­tion, it becomes impossible to ful­fil the wish of the psalm­ist to give glory to God; to bless his holy name; to bless him day after day; and to praise his name forever. The Lord is faith­ful in all his words and actions; he is lov­ing; he sup­ports those fall; and he raises all who are bowed down. (Respon­sori­al psalm). Those people that are bowed down are invited by Jesus to come to him for rest, and learn from him, who is meek and humble. To ignore such invit­a­tion is to con­tin­ue wal­low­ing in the desert and without hope. 

Jesus’ invitation

“Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28). The Com­plete Jew­ish Bible (CJB) trans­lates this pas­sage as “come to me, all of you who are strug­gling and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Nat­ur­ally, labour or labour­ing implies strug­gling. And he or she who struggles, tends to be tired and invari­ably, needs rest. In place of labour or toil, some trans­la­tions prefer weary. The mes­sage of this verse is con­tained in these words: labour/weary-burdened-rest. The Greek term kopi­aō could be used both in the lit­er­al and emo­tion­al senses. In the phys­ic­al sense, it means to become tired or weary. Such wear­i­ness could be as a res­ult of work or after walk­ing for a long dis­tance (cf. John 4:6). As regards its emo­tion­al usage, it is an invit­a­tion not to be dis­cour­aged nor to give up (cf. Rev 2:3). Besides the lit­er­al and emo­tion­al usages, kopi­aō could also be used in the gen­er­ic sense. In this sense, it means to work or strive hard, to struggle. Phort­izō has both lit­er­al, fig­ur­at­ive and meta­phor­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ances. In the Chris­ti­an (New) Test­a­ment, it is used espe­cially meta­phor­ic­ally and fig­ur­at­ively. In our con­text, Jesus used both verbs lit­er­ally and fig­ur­at­ively. In oth­er words, while people get wear­ied because of their aimless.…

Conclusion

Basic­ally, leg­al­ism involves abstract­ing the law of God from its ori­gin­al con­text. The gos­pel invites people to repent­ance, faith­ful­ness, holi­ness, and god­li­ness. Because of this, the world finds the Gos­pel offens­ive. But woe to us if we add unne­ces­sar­ily to that offense by dis­tort­ing the true nature of Chris­tian­ity by com­bin­ing it with leg­al­ism. Because Chris­tian­ity is con­cerned with right­eous­ness, justice, mor­al­ity and eth­ics, we can eas­ily make that subtle move from a pas­sion­ate con­cern for godly mor­al­ity into leg­al­ism if we are not care­ful. Leg­al­ism means obey­ing our unspir­itu­al selves and liv­ing unspir­itu­al lives. If God has really made his home in us, then, we must allow ourselves to be pos­sessed by the spir­it of God (cf. Second Reading).

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SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 14^th Sunday of the year (A) is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 359–367. Happy reading!

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