Man's Call To Salvation

1st Reading: Rom 4:1-8

Gospel: Lk 12:1-7

Such a numerous crowd had gatherd that they crushed one another. Then Jesus spoke to his disciples in this way,

"Beware of the yeast of the pharisees which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered that will not be uncovered, or hidden that will not be made known. Whatever you have said int he darkness will be heard on daylight, and what you have whispered in hidden places, will be proclaimed from the housetops.

" I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who put to death the body and after that can do no more. But i will tell you whom to fear: Fear the one who after killing you is able to throw you into hell. This one you most fear. Don't you give five sparrows for two pennies? Yet not one of them has been forgotten by God. Even the hairs of your head have been numbered. So do not fear: are you not worth more than a flock of sparrows?"

Jesus warns the disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees. Yeast, of course, has a permeating influence, whether for good or for evil; but the warning of Jesus includes the comment that the Pharisees are an example of what to avoid. The dichotomy is evident: he criticized the Pharisees' hypocritical practice of the law, whereas he correctly expounded the law. The Pharisees, in their zeal for the law, were opposing the purpose of God, whereas Jesus was fulfilling God's will. All this was not only a confrontation between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees, but also between Jesus' revolutionary understanding of purity and virtue, versus the system, found in the Jewish culture of the scribes and Pharisees. In fact, Jesus remained a figure of unsurpassed holiness: holy in pedigree, holy in observances; he was classified as a reforming insider. To further this point, Jesus was not only unaffected by contact with impurity, he actually imparted purity and wholeness to the impure.

As a limit breaker, Christ today possesses the authority to cross bounderies of purity or impurity and He also invests us with that power to cross boundaris of costum and convention. We only have to ask!