Twelve

Wednesday, July 12th Gospel Reflection

Today, I want to make a “big picture” connection between the Old Testament reading and the New Testament reading:

In Genesis we read, “When hunger came to be felt throughout the land of Egypt and the people cried to Pharaoh for bread, Pharaoh directed all the Egyptians to go to Joseph and do whatever he told them. When the famine had spread throughout the land, Joseph opened all the cities that had grain and rationed it to the Egyptians, since the famine had gripped the land of Egypt. In fact, all the world came to Joseph to obtain rations of grain, for famine had gripped the whole world.” (Gen 41:55-57)

Joseph, through the power of God, was given the gift of dream interpretation as well as the brilliant skill set of logistics. He knew of a seven-year famine preceded by seven years of plenty in which he was to store enough grain to provide for the people of Egypt. Unbeknownst to him, his brothers, who many years before plotted to kill him and instead sold him to Egyptian slave traders, would come into the country starving and looking for food.

These brothers would later be known as the twelve tribes of Israel, and over the course of several centuries (following the Mosaic Exodus) would inhabit lands promised to them by God. “We know that the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. The southern Kingdom of Judah thrived until 587/586 BC, when it was overrun by the Babylonians, who carried off many of the inhabitants into exile. When the Persians conquered Babylonia in 538 BC, Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to their homeland, where they soon set to work to replace the magnificent Temple of Jerusalem that the Babylonians had destroyed. The history of the Jews from that time forward is predominantly the history of the tribe of Judah.”[1]

From this tribe of Judah came the Messiah – Jesus. While the Roman Empire was expanding its kingdom, Jesus was expanding His. At a time when the Jewish people had to balance living out their religion, their faith in God, under the rule of the Roman Empire, Jesus implored them to live under the rule of a Different Kingdom that fed its people, not on stored grain, but on the continuous and unending supply of the Bread of Life.

Jesus establishes the authority of the new kingdom with the twelve apostles: “Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus.” It is through the hands of these holy apostles that Jesus told them: "Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: 'The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" It was not until after Christ’s death and resurrection that he then instructed his apostles to, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Mt 28:19-20)

The Judaic history is rich in its prophetic hindsight as we move from Old Testament to New Testament. It gives one pause as we focus, not on the nuances of the stories and their applicability to our daily life situations, but on the established authority that oversees our entire faith and has promulgated what we believe for over 2,000 years. To God be the glory forever!

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[1] Encyclopedia Britannica, “Twelve Tribes of Israel,” (3 July 2023).