Varieties of Bread

Gospel: Mark 8: 14-21

Jesus warns his disciples against the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod, contrasting their bread with the loaves he himself multiplied for the crowd.  Both the Pharisees and Herod are about the business of power, influence, and wealth.  Herod was in allegiance with the Roman Empire, doing whatever it took to retain power, committing atrocities, abusing the populace, and engaging in the pleasures of the world as any Roman leader would do.  

The Pharisees were zealous for the law, but not as a means to holiness and care for others.  They too wanted political power and influence.  They wanted the overthrow of the Roman occupation and the restoration of the kingdom of Israel.  They would go on to ally themselves with zealots, committing violence and revolting against the occupiers, only to see nothing but ruin for the people.  The quest for political power, influence, and wealth leads to ruin.

But the leaven of Jesus is the leaven of love and mercy.  He multiplied the loaves in order to feed people, nothing more.  The action was not a means of securing influence and worldly power.  It was simply to feed people, to extend the mercy of God to others.  Jesus went from place to place doing exactly this work by healing, liberating, and feeding people.  That too is the mission of the authentic disciple.  When shopping for bread, we must choose wisely... 

A Vain Search

Gospel: Mark 8: 11-13

We human beings look incessantly for signs.  We play Bible roulette to seek for answers.  We consult mediums, tarot cards, the entrails of chickens to see what the gods portend.  We stare at the skies and pore over our English muffin to see if the Virgin Mary is appearing there.  We strain every ounce of our body to see if God is speaking something aloud to us, some allocution - anything at all - in the hopes that we might get some sign, even though we could not explain what it is we are looking for.

Why do we do this?  We are not content with God's language which is silence.  Silence makes us uncomfortable.  It makes us uncomfortable, for silence reveals God fully to us.  Silence reveals us completely to ourselves.  And we like neither, for what we learn therein is often unpleasant.  We learn that we have work to do.  We have repentance and conversion to undertake, and we do not want to do that.  So we create some other reality, some false religion filled with sign seeking.

Jesus was completely comfortable in silence.  He would spend entire nights alone on a mountain in silence.  This is how he came to know God.  This is how he came to understand himself.  This is how he came to clarity regarding the world around him.  We too can come to these places of awareness if we but give up the vanity of sign seeking and learn to be in silence, listening to the voice of God within.  Lent is coming, a perfect time to enter the desert and encounter the silence. 

Minding What Matters

Gospel: Matthew 5: 17-37

After first giving us the Beatitudes, Jesus then oddly tells us that not one bit of the law is to be ignored until all has been fulfilled.  The statement is odd because we have seen, and will see, how Jesus repeatedly ignores different aspects of the law himself.  He ignores the Sabbath law when healing others or when the disciples pluck grain while traveling.  He disregards the cleansing and purification laws while interacting with those who are unclean.  So what is happening here?

Jesus goes through various parts of the law, but notice carefully what parts he emphasizes: those that involve our interaction and relationships with other people: murder, oath taking, divorce, adultery.  In each case he will quote the law and then apply the Beatitudes to them.  Do not murder means not thinking or saying anything harmful of another - the law of mercy.  Not committing adultery means not even looking at another lustfully - purity of heart.  

What matters in the law is the law of love - love God, love others.  And we only love God when we love our neighbor.  God is not loved by building shrines or adorning altars.  God does not need these things.  God needs us to love others.  If we want to build a shrine, build one within our hearts and in the hearts of others.  Use the values of the Beatitudes - mercy, meekness, purity of heart, peacemaking, empathy - to care for others, building a shrine of love in our hearts and in the hearts of those for whom we care.