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, September 30, 2018: Whoever is not against us is for us...

 Whoever is not against us is for us… 

What does it mean to act in the name of God? 

   In the Book of Numbers, Moses needs help:  he’s having trouble dealing with the people of Israel, so God takes some of the spirit that is on Moses and bestows it on seventy elders – even on the two who are absent that day, Eldad and Medad, who then go on to prophesy in the camp.  Joshua objects:  Moses, my lord, stop them.  But Moses knows that God has worked beyond human expectations, laying God’s spirit on all seventy men, and they are changed by it:  they are able to play a part in God’s activity, sharing Moses’ burden and acting in the name of God, for the sake of other.  That spirit will enable them to embrace the precepts of the Lord described in Psalm 19, precepts that give joy to the heart, allowing them full participation in God’s plan.

   Jesus’ disciple John is similarly misguided.  Teacher, he says in Mark’s Gospel, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.  John’s thinking is out of focus; Jesus works beyond human expectations, allowing the man to perform mighty deeds in his name.  Look at the good that is done in my name, Jesus is telling John – transcend the limitations you have set on these circumstances and be willing to change, be willing to see the positive effect that that man might have on another.  And beware any limitations that might cause you to do harm!  The community to which James writes is not all that different:  they, too, are misguided, unclear about the effect their actions are having on others.  They have blinded themselves to reality, living only for self, ignoring the cries of the harvesters who suffer because of their actions, and the corrosion of their hearts will be a testimony against them.  James’ job is to help them see clearly, that they might act with justice in the name of God.

   God always works beyond our limited human expectations, and we aren’t always aware of God’s actions.  But if we strive to live in a way that brings joy to God, aware of the good we and others are capable of, then we will be able to participate in God’s plan, and act in God’s name.   Would that God might bestow his spirit on us all!

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

Image source:  www.wordle.net

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 4, 2018: Lord, you have the words of everlasting life...

 Lord, you have the words of everlasting life… 

How do we understand the law of God? 

   In the Book of Exodus, God delivers a series of commandments to Moses, ten words in the Hebrew tradition, that speak of the people’s relationship with God and with neighbor. The people can show their love of God, they are told, if they remain faithful, call out to God in love alone, and keep God’s day holy; moreover, how they care for their neighbor says a good deal about how they care for God.  As people of the covenant, the people of Israel are to love one another with a covenant bond as they love God.  Psalm 19 notes that The law of the Lord is perfect.  God’s law is sweeter than honey from the comb, enhancing our existence, if only we embrace it as a set of guidelines that teach us to love.

   If the message wasn’t clear in the Old Testament, God’s love, made manifest in the coming of Jesus, becomes crystal clear in the New Testament.  As Paul tells the Corinthians, we proclaim Christ crucified – a means of death that would have dismayed the Jews of Jesus’ time and utterly puzzled the Greeks.  Yet the bottom line is this:  Jesus died for the sake of all mankind, to redeem all mankind; his love is stronger than anything, even death, for this love is the very power of God.  Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, in John’s Gospel, is an occasion for him to foretell this death and resurrection:  Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up, he tells his spectators.  I have come to die for you, in other words, and that death will be an expression of God’s great love for you.  Jesus is the ultimate law, the ultimate Word, the ultimate sacrifice – it is this law we are to embrace, for it teaches us, at every step, to love.

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

Image source:  www.wordle.net

Sunday Gospel Reflection, July 10, 2016: You shall love the Lord, your God, and your neighbor as yourself...

 You shall love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself… 

 Is it possible to love on command? 

   When Moses repeatedly shares the commandments and statutes of God with the people of Israel in the Book of Deuteronomy, he clearly stresses that obedience to the law is within their power:  For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you… Indeed, he goes on to state, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.  Like the psalmist in Psalm 19, Moses knows the law of the Lord is perfect, more precious than gold…  if only we have the sense to embrace its core, which is love.  To keep love in our mouths is to give it voice unceasingly; to recognize it in our hearts allows us to act so as to reveal God’s love constantly to others.  Moses intends for the people of Israel to be a people of love first and foremost.

   It is not surprising that in Luke’s Gospel, when challenged to state the most effective path to eternal life, Jesus echoes the Shema or daily declaration of faith of the Jewish people:  You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.  Privileging love over legalism, Jesus stresses that the path to life is through generous acts of kindness and compassion, overt demonstrations, in other words, of care and concern for others.  This is not necessarily the way ordinary people act, as illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan – the priest and Levite both pass by on the opposite side, remember – but it is the way God acts, it is the way Jesus acts, and it is our call as well. 

   For, as Paul reminds the Colossians, in Jesus, all fullness—all love—was pleased to dwell and Jesus was thus able to reconcile humankind to God, making peace by the blood of his cross. Through his death, Jesus became the ultimate manifestation of God’s love for all of us; it was his command act, so to speak, a radical act of redemption so that we might live.  Do this – love! – and you will live, Jesus tells the scholar of the law.  It is our command as well, to act constantly for other, giving out of the very depths of our being, allowing the commandments of God to be Spirit and life in us, so that we might be life-giving in our turn.

This post is based on OLMC's Scripture class.
Image source:  Wordle