The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today challenge our tendency to seek out wonder worker solutions for problems we encounter on our journey.
Leading us to Fullness
The reading from the First Book of Samuel outlines how Israel’s request for a king is granted.
* [8:1–22] From this chapter on, the editors of 1 Samuel provide two and sometimes three perspectives on the same event: e.g The selection of Saul as king is recounted in chap. 8; 10:17–24; chap. 12.1
Psalm 89 praises God’s Covenant with David.
* [Psalm 89] The community laments the defeat of the Davidic king, to whom God promised kingship as enduring as the heavens (Ps 89:2–5). The Psalm narrates how God became king of the divine beings (Ps 89:6–9) and how the Davidic king became king of earthly kings (Ps 89:20–38). Since the defeat of the king calls into question God’s promise, the community ardently prays God to be faithful to the original promise to David (Ps 89:39–52).2
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus heals a paralytic.
* [2:5] It was the faith of the paralytic and those who carried him that moved Jesus to heal the sick man. Accounts of other miracles of Jesus reveal more and more his emphasis on faith as the requisite for exercising his healing powers (Mk 5:34; 9:23–24; 10:52).3
Tom Quinn connects the first king, Saul, to Jesus who was labeled “King of the Jews” and a rebel by the Romans, and charismatic, problematic, and blasphemous by the Jewish leaders. Jesus answered the skeptics of his forgiveness of sins by performing a tangible, unmistakable miracle.
If the subtlety of the forgiveness of sins did not sway the people, a person cured and walking home should have. All were astonished. Jesus had posed the question to the crowd, “which is easier,to say to the paralytic,'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say 'Rise, pick up your mat and walk' ? “ We know that it is easier to believe what we see, but on closer examination, which miracle means the most for the good of our eternal souls?4
Don Schwager quotes “Reverse your relation with sickness,” by Peter Chrysologus (400-450 AD).
"Take up your bed. Carry the very mat that once carried you. Change places, so that what was the proof of your sickness may now give testimony to your soundness. Your bed of pain becomes the sign of healing, its very weight the measure of the strength that has been restored to you." (excerpt from HOMILY 50.6)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Mark 2:1-12 comments that Jesus took the world’s sin upon himself. “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Any physical healing that we receive is just one dimension of this bigger miracle that Jesus accomplished on the cross.
The next time you go to Confession, think about what Jesus has done for you in winning your forgiveness. Contemplate how great a salvation he won for you at the cost of his own life. Let this sacrament open to you the doors of mercy, restoration, and healing. Know that when the priest absolves you, Jesus himself is speaking through him. Taste his love for you and be assured that he does not dwell on your sins. With Jesus, forgiven really does mean forgotten! Thank the Lord that you are free to love and serve him. Then go and share his love with your brothers and sisters! “Lord, help me to appreciate your sacrifice for me. May I experience your forgiveness more deeply today!”6
Friar Jude Winkler comments on the replacement of Yahweh as King gives the people what they want. Jesus teaches it is easier to mend a broken body than to heal a broken heart. Friar Jude reminds us of the awe and wonder of God visible to us when we look closely at our daily lives.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, introduces theologian Elizabeth Johnson who envisions how a “revitalized trinitarian theology” might shape both the Church and our own practice of Christianity. Revitalized trinitarian theology makes it clear that a God conceived of as an individualized monarch or as a self-enclosed, exclusively inner-related triad of persons, a God who watches from a distance as an uninvolved, impartial observer, a God who needs to be persuaded to care for creatures—such a God does not exist. This is a false God, a fantasy detached from the Christian experience of salvation. Rather, “God is Love,” related to the world in a threefold pattern of communion. Assimilating this truth we gain fresh energies to imagine the world in a loving way and to act to counter the self-destruction of violence. Relying on Scripture and Tradition, Johnson envisions compassionate outcomes of a renewed commitment to a trinitarian God.
YHWH’s covenant with Israel, the ministry and life of Jesus Christ, and the nourishing bonds of community on earth created by the Spirit are all icons that reveal the one God’s unfathomable, triune, relational nature oriented in compassion toward the world. In light of the trinitarian God we can tweak Irenaeus’s axiom [1] once again to declare: the glory of God is the communion of all things fully alive. Wherever the human heart is healed, justice gains a foothold, peace holds sway, an ecological habitat is protected, wherever liberation, hope and healing break through, wherever an act of simple kindness is done, a cup of cool water given, a book offered to a child thirsty for learning, there the human and earth community already reflect, in fragments, the visage of the trinitarian God. Borne by “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” we become committed to a fruitful future inclusive of all peoples, tribes, and nations, all creatures of the earth. The reign of God gains another foothold in history.7
Our “King of kings” calls us to a servant leadership life empowered by our relationship with the Trinity.
References
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