Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 27, 2019: Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life...

Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life…

How are we transformed by the Word of God?

  When, in the Book of Nehemiah, the priest Ezra brings the law before the assembly, he is in fact introducing his congregation to the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible that had been brought together by a priestly source while the people were in exile, a text they may never have heard before.  Upon hearing the words Ezra reads from the scroll and listening to his interpretation of God’s law, the people weep, recognizing themselves in the story of salvation history and their failures to follow through on the law.  But their tears are to give way to joy in response to the extraordinary gift God bestows upon them once again:  covenant relationship.  The reading of holy scripture seals their identity as a community that blesses the Lord and rejoices in his presence in their lives.  For them, it is truly as Psalm 19 suggests:  Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life.

  In Ezra’s time, as in Jesus’ time and in our own time, an absolute openness to God’s words is the purest state we can hope for, one in which we are willing to embrace God’s will, unhindered, with nothing standing in the way of our finding favor before the Lord.  Like Ezra, Jesus will stand before his own community in Nazareth, where he had grown up, and read from holy scripture. In Luke's Gospel, the text he proclaims, from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, announces his own identity and invites his listeners to a common identity with him:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor,… to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, he says.  The text from Isaiah suggests that, if the people believe in the Son of God, if they recognize that the Spirit of the Lord is indeed upon Jesus, then they will do as he does and God’s love will be manifest in their lives.  They will become, as St. Paul will later tell the Corinthians, one body, restored to proper relationship with God through their other-centered activity, belonging to one another, and to God. 

  Jesus is our Spirit and life; we are all called to drink of the one Spirit, listening intently to his words, that we might enter more profoundly into God’s love, into the depth of relationship he calls us to.  May God’s words rejoice our hearts as we embrace the love they communicate, open to the life God promises.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source:  www.wordclouds.com

Sunday Gospel Reflection, January 24, 2016: And all the people listened attentively...

  And all the people listened attentively…  

How are we formed by the Word of God?  

   In Nehemiah's time, Ezra the priest has the people stop what they are doing to listen to him read plainly from the book of the law of God.  It is the first time the Torah is heard in its entirety, and all the people are weeping to hear their identity described to them in such detail, for before the restoration, during a period of exile and enslavement, it was easy to lose any sense of one's identity in God.  Ezra's reading of the Torah helps the people to see how their ancestors have failed by being unfaithful to covenant, but it also demonstrates the grace of God's mercy, for God repeatedly reached out to them, calling them back to relationship.  And so they also perhaps weep for joy at knowing once again what it means to be a people of Israel, defined by a new law, identifying with a community of believers, experiencing a connection with one another they have not known previously.  Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life, Psalm 19 reminds us:  God's law reminds us that our relationship with God is an opportunity to access all that is necessary; it offers insight into our lives and world that is profound and complete.

   In Luke's Gospel, Jesus also shares the Word of God with the people when he stands up in the synagogue to read from the Book of Isaiah.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus and the passage he chooses to read is fulfilled in their midst:  the blind are getting to see, and the poor are being lifted up.  Because of Jesus' coming, it is a jubilee year, a year of favor from our Lord.  Through his proclamation of the Word, as lector, Jesus is offering the people a new identity and a new unity.  As Paul reminds the Corinthians, we were all baptized into one Body, in union in Christ; we come to Eucharist as part of that Body, as part of a whole, sharing in one common identity at our core. 

   Our readings this Sunday thus prompt us to ask:  Do we feel connection with one another when we hear the proclamation of the Word at Mass?  Does that Word form and inform our identity?  And do we indeed believe we are Christ's body, so constructed by God to be necessary to the salvation of all?

This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.

Image source:  Wordle