JOSHUA 24:1-2, 15-17, 18b
Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel at Shechem and summoned the elders, leaders, judges, and officials to present themselves before God. Joshua said to all the people:
– If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
The people answered:
– Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! The Lord is our God; he brought us and our ancestors up out of Egypt, from the land of slavery. He did great signs before our eyes and protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.
The book of Joshua narrates the conquest of “the Promised Land.” It is a book that is scarcely historical (according to our concept of “history”). The events are constantly altered by their significant value to express the fundamental message: the conquest is actually a gift from God that makes his insignificant people prevail against powerful enemies.
The passage we read today is equally unhistorical but very significant: at the end, when the conquest has already been completed (which will not happen until centuries later and will never be entirely complete), Joshua gathers all the tribes and authorities of Israel for a solemn final act of acceptance of the Covenant. Whether it happened this way or not matters little. What matters is the message: will you serve God or prefer other gods?
Of course, the answer is intended to be instructive: all Israel accepts to serve God. But the question interests us much more, because it will be present throughout the history of Israel, as a true and constant challenge.
EPHESIANS 5:21-32
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
The message of today is frankly unpleasant. Without any foundation in any word of Jesus, a patriarchal marital structure is proposed, in which the man precedes the woman. It is the mentality of the time, obviously, but we do not have to canonize it by proclaiming at the end “word of God.”
We must draw two conclusions: firstly, that in Scripture, even in the New Testament, not only is the Word of God present, but also much human word, which is undoubtedly what those understood, but which has not been illuminated with The Word. If anyone has any doubt about this, read the prescriptions of Leviticus on food and slavery, or the law of the Anathema, and you will be convinced of how lightly we qualify all of Scripture as “Word of God” without any discretion.
Secondly, that we should not read this text at today’s Eucharist. It only serves to create displeasure, surprise… it has no religious message, much less from Jesus. But if we read it, we should not change it, modify it to make it sound good. If we read it, let us do so to show that the author (who is not Paul) has ideas that we do not share, and to teach how to read Scripture well.
José Enrique Galarreta