The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today grab our attention with a challenge to change our mind and action as the Spirit prompts us to fuller life.
Care and the Gardener
The reading from the Book of Exodus describes Moses at the Burning Bush where the Divine Name calls and commissions.
* [3:14] I am who I am: Moses asks in v. 13 for the name of the One speaking to him, but God responds with a wordplay which preserves the utterly mysterious character of the divine being even as it appears to suggest something of the inner meaning of God’s name: ‘ehyeh “I am” or “I will be(come)” for “Yhwh,” the personal name of the God of Israel. While the phrase “I am who I am” resists unraveling, it nevertheless suggests an etymological linking between the name “Yhwh” and an earlier form of the Hebrew verbal root h-y-h “to be.” On that basis many have interpreted the name “Yhwh” as a third-person form of the verb meaning “He causes to be, creates,” itself perhaps a shortened form of a longer liturgical name such as “(God who) creates (the heavenly armies).” Note in this connection the invocation of Israel’s God as “LORD (Yhwh) of Hosts” (e.g., 1 Sm 17:45). In any case, out of reverence for God’s proper name, the term Adonai, “my Lord,” was later used as a substitute. The word LORD (in small capital letters) indicates that the Hebrew text has the sacred name (Yhwh), the tetragrammaton. The word “Jehovah” arose from a false reading of this name as it is written in the current Hebrew text. The Septuagint has egō eimi ho ōn, “I am the One who is” (ōn being the participle of the verb “to be”). This can be taken as an assertion of God’s aseity or self-existence, and has been understood as such by the Church, since the time of the Fathers, as a true expression of God’s being, even though it is not precisely the meaning of the Hebrew.1
Psalm 103 is thanksgiving for God’s Goodness.
* [Psalm 103] The speaker in this hymn begins by praising God for personal benefits (Ps 103:1–5), then moves on to God’s mercy toward all the people (Ps 103:6–18). Even sin cannot destroy that mercy (Ps 103:11–13), for the eternal God is well aware of the people’s human fragility (Ps 103:14–18). The psalmist invites the heavenly beings to join in praise (Ps 103:19–22).2
The reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians is a warning from Israel’s history against overconfidence.
* [10:6–13] This section explicitates the typological value of these Old Testament events: the desert experiences of the Israelites are examples, meant as warnings, to deter us from similar sins (idolatry, immorality, etc.) and from a similar fate.3
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus' admonition to repent or perish is followed by the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree.
* [13:6–9] Following on the call to repentance in Lk 13:1–5, the parable of the barren fig tree presents a story about the continuing patience of God with those who have not yet given evidence of their repentance (see Lk 3:8). The parable may also be alluding to the delay of the end time, when punishment will be meted out, and the importance of preparing for the end of the age because the delay will not be permanent (Lk 13:8–9).4
Cindy Murphy McMahon asks how often do we pass by someone or something that could transform us, if we were open to them or it? Would God necessarily speak to us directly and give us a message as important as the message God gave Moses? Maybe not, but maybe. God does have desires and plans for each of us, just as God had desires and plans for Moses.
When I first started my career in journalism as a photographer for the local newspaper, I encountered many amazing and some famous people. Two people that made enormous impressions upon me were the opposite of famous. One was an unassuming, elderly man who lived in a very humble home and used his meager income to buy food to feed wild birds who had come to depend on him. He was generous and kind and he touched my soul. Another person I photographed was a loving, energetic, older blind nun who lived in a contemplative community. Again, she was definitely a messenger from God, and she taught me many things about life and faith as we remained friends for years and she came to know my whole family. Each of us have many special encounters like these, and more, if we are open and responsive to the Lord. Let us pray that we use the remaining time in Lent to reflect upon the many times God has spoken to our hearts throughout the course of our lives, and to ask for a renewed sense of the Divine here and now, and in the days and years to come.5
Don Schwager quotes “The Lord's three visits through the Patriarchs, Prophets, and the Gospel,” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.
"The Lord also has something very fitting to say about a fruitless tree, 'Look, it is now three years that I have been coming to it. Finding no fruit on it, I will cut it down, to stop it blocking up my field.' The gardener intercedes... This tree is the human race. The Lord visited this tree in the time of the patriarchs, as if for the first year. He visited it in the time of the law and the prophets, as if for the second year. Here we are now; with the gospel the third year has dawned. Now it is as though it should have been cut down, but the merciful one intercedes with the merciful one. He wanted to show how merciful he was, and so he stood up to himself with a plea for mercy. 'Let us leave it,' he says, 'this year too. Let us dig a ditch around it.' Manure is a sign of humility. 'Let us apply a load of manure; perhaps it may bear fruit.' Since it does bear fruit in one part, and in another part does not bear fruit, its Lord will come and divide it. What does that mean, 'divide it'? There are good people and bad people now in one company, as though constituting one body." (excerpt from Sermon 254.3)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on Luke 13:1-9 comments that our heavenly Father is a God of second chances! When our sin separates us from him, he wants nothing more than to draw us back, to free us from its effects, and to give us new life. Every day is a chance to be like a healthy, fruitful fig tree and receive the nourishment he offers. We can receive his grace to restore us when we return to him in repentance. We can let him cultivate the soil of our hearts as he teaches us in Scripture or through our life experiences. And we can come to the altar to be fed by Jesus himself.
So don’t think that God is out to get you if you’ve let him down. He loves you and wants to welcome you back to himself. He will give you the strength you need to return. “Lord, you are doing everything you can to bring each person back to yourself, including me! Help me repent and return to you.”7
Friar Jude Winkler comments on two responses to an encounter with the Divine. Rabbis have offered at least two explanations of the Divine Name in Exodus. Friar Jude explains how the traditional care of fig trees indicates the perfect mercy of God that is offered before judgement.
Rev. Leah D. Schade, Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary (Kentucky) and author of the book Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology, and the Pulpit (Chalice Press, 2015), invites us to rethink the Parable of the Fruitless Tree.
Who is the one looking at the tree and seeing nothing but a fruitless waste of space? Who is the one ready to pronounce judgment on the tree, chop it down, see it as deserving nothing but death. It’s not the tree that needs to change. It’s the owner of the fig tree whose mind the gardener is trying to change. That means those questioners are the owner of the tree! They are the ones looking at people affected by tragedy and making judgments about them, ready to chop them down, seeing them as deserving nothing but death because of their fruitlessness, their sinfulness, their stupidity, their skin color, their economic level, their immigration status, their sexuality, their addictions, their mistakes.8
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, focuses on Saint Paul as a mystic, beginning with Paul’s transformative encounter with the Risen Christ.
Paul must have wondered: “Why does he say ‘me’ when I’m persecuting these other people?” This choice of words is pivotal. Paul gradually comes to his understanding of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12–13) as an organic, ontological union between Christ and those whom Christ loves—which Paul eventually realizes is everyone and everything. This is why Paul becomes “the apostle to the nations” (or “Gentiles”). This enlightening experience taught Paul nondual consciousness, the same mystical mind that allowed Jesus to say things like “Whatever you do to these least ones, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40). Until grace achieves the same victory in our minds and hearts, we cannot really comprehend most of Jesus and Paul’s teachings—in any practical way. It will remain distant theological dogma. Before conversion, we tend to think of God as “out there.” After transformation, as Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) wrote, “The soul . . . never doubts: God was in her; she was in God.” [1]9
Our burning bush experiences in events or through others are nudges from the Spirit to renewal of our fruit bearing mission.
References
No comments:
Post a Comment