We’ve been hearing from Paul’s letter to the Romans these last several weeks. I think of how we can have different callings in our ministry: to serve as a priest, to serve as a cloistered monk or nun, to serve as a youth minister, to serve as a catechist or a eucharistic minister or a lector, to serve as a missionary in a foreign land. Paul received a special calling from God: to bring the Good News to the Gentiles. However, today, Paul appeals specifically to the Jews, to his own people. Paul was not only a Jew, but, specifically, he was a Pharisee. And he approached the Pharisees in the book of Acts by announcing, “Brother, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.” Paul knew from where he came, and he spends several chapters in his letter to the Romans addressing the Jews as the chosen people in the history of salvation. Paul expresses a sense of sadness in our reading today, because the Jews had been offered salvation in Christ before any other people, and yet many of the Jews had rejected that offer.
We hear about the Pharisees in today's Gospel as well. The Pharisees try to trap Jesus as they scrutinize his every move. Jesus tries to explain to them that it is not bad to do a good act for someone on the Sabbath, that it is not breaking the spirit of God’s law.
God calls out to us no matter who we are – whether we and our ancestors have lived in the same town for generations, or whether we are newly arrived in a place. It does not matter if we were born into Christianity and have always had a strong relationship with God, or if this is something new for us. Maybe we have been struggling with our faith for a while. Maybe we are doing the best we can do. No matter where we are on our journey, our faith calls out to us, and God hopes for us to respond. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ.
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