Waiting for God - Last Week of Lent 2014

Tomb of Lazarus in Bethany

Waiting For God 

If one were to conduct an informal survey on the street where we ask people where food comes from, what would we likely hear from people?  Very likely a great many people would say that food comes from the grocery store.  If we need something, we right away go to the store and there it is whenever we need it, in whatever quantities we want, and in whatever variety we like.  In reality, however, food takes a long time to produce.  Crops must be planted and grown; animals must mature to a certain age before being prepared for market; cheese and other such items take time to prepare.  Food is not instant, and yet for most people their experience is otherwise and we have come to demand instantly whatever it is we want in the world of food.

Has this demand for instant gratification also come to dominate our relationship with God?  Today’s Gospel text challenges us to consider this question for ourselves, for everyone in the story expects Jesus to come when they want and they want him to do what they want.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  The story also tells us quite explicitly that Jesus deliberately delayed in coming to Bethany, even though he knew that Lazarus was ill to the point of death.  Had the people come to expect Jesus to act on command performance?  As in so many other instances, Jesus shatters our expectations and preconceived ideas of who he is and what he can do.

We might do well to step back from this story and put it in context of the stories we have heard over the past two weeks prior to today.  Two weeks ago we met the Samaritan woman, an outcast in the eyes of Jesus’ race and an outcast among her own people.  And yet Jesus talks with her about living water and she comes to understand the identity of Jesus, so much so that she becomes the first missionary who leads her entire village to accept Jesus as “savior of the world.”  Last week we read the story of the man born blind – a Jewish man who becomes an outcast by accepting Jesus as Messiah and Lord.  The man came to see the identity of Jesus, while the religious authorities of Jesus’ day could not get past their own expectations and preconceived ideas.  They could not accept the miracle because it took place on the Sabbath. 

In the story of Lazarus we see Jesus care for one he loved, and it is at this sign that Jesus becomes a complete outcast in the eyes of the religious leaders of the day.  This sign is the last of Jesus’s signs to be performed before his passion, death, and resurrection.  In the raising of Lazarus we receive a glimpse of the great Sign Jesus will perform in rising from the dead.  Lazarus was raised, but he will die again.  Jesus was raised and lives forever with the Father.  All of the previous signs Jesus performed pointed to and led up to his resurrection.  By the same token, it is only in the light of Jesus’ resurrection that we come to understand his earlier signs and what they meant. 

The identity of Jesus was and is not something that can be recognized all at once.  We must wait for his identity to unfold in the Gospel drama.  Different events in the life of Jesus cannot be taken in isolation from the others in order to establish his identity or be used in some hollow apologetic for tangential purposes.  The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus must be taken as a whole.  They must be lived and experienced over time in order for us to understand the full meaning of Jesus’ identity and mission.  And so, like the characters in our Gospel text today, we must wait.  We must wait, put aside all our expectations and preconceived ideas, and allow God to reveal himself to us in the person of Jesus in his time.  When we allow God to do this, we experience more than our expectations and preconceived ideas could have ever imagined.  Only by this patient waiting and self-emptying can we arrive at resurrection and eternal life.

We need one another in order to wait in patience and to overcome these expectations and preconceived ideas.  And so we gather again to pray for the help we need as we draw closer to the Great Feast of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection.  “Let us pray for the courage to embrace the world in the name of Jesus.  Father in heaven, the love of your Son led him to accept the suffering of the cross that his brothers might glory in new life.  Change our selfishness into self-giving.  Help us to embrace the world you have given us, that we might transform the darkness of its pain into the life and joy of Easter.  Grant this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.”

The Gift of God - 3rd Sunday of Lent Year A

The Gift of God – 3^rd Sunday of Lent Year A

The first rule of being a new husband is never to ask this question:  “Dear, what do you want for Christmas/birthday/anniversary/Valentine’s Day?”  Invariably, the answer to the question will be, “Oh, you don’t have to get me anything.”  It takes years of experience to realize that wives really are usually sincere in their answer – they really don’t want anything.  What they really want is someone.  They want to be with their beloved, for that time in the presence of the one they love is truly greater than any material object a husband can buy for his wife.  The readings for today lead us to discover the gift of God that satisfies all our desires.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the gift of God refers to the Law God gave to Moses and the people of Israel at Sinai.  The Law represented for them the greatest love God could express – His will and plan for them in being His chosen people, His choice bride.  All the other gifts God gives to His people in the desert – manna, water (as in the first reading today) – are all intrinsically connected to the fundamental gift of God that is the Law.  The Law, as well as manna and water, represent God’s presence among His people.  These objects are for the people of Israel signs of God’s love for them, and the great liturgical feasts of Judaism celebrate the gift of God and its corresponding symbols – Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles being the most prominent.

However, the people longed for more, a longing that grew into a hope for the presence of God to be manifest not in an object but in a person, the Messiah of God.  Paul expresses this hope in the second reading, a hope that comes to be fulfilled in the person of Jesus the Lord.  Torah as the gift of God obliged the people to love their neighbor, and yet Jesus shows us by example the love to which we are called by God through the giving of one’s life for the sake of others.  Though chosen by God, we made ourselves enemies of God through sin.  While human love expresses itself quite naturally to those who like us and are likable in our eyes, it is rare to be found in us for those who are our enemies.  And yet God shows His loving kindness to His enemies in the person of Jesus in dying for us. 

Coming to understand the identity of Jesus as the presence of God on earth is the challenge presented to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel text for today.  Her immediate response to Jesus request for water is visceral and natural – How can a Jew ask a Samaritan for water, for these two groups are longstanding enemies.  And yet Jesus continues the conversation and makes a startling revelation – “If you knew the gift of God and who is asking you for a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”  The gift of God is not a something, but a someone – Jesus himself.  And Jesus indeed gives the woman living water, for as the story progresses she comes to deeper realizations of Jesus’ identity, first calling him ‘sir’, then moving to the title ‘prophet’, and proceeding on to ‘Messiah’.  At that point the woman leaves behind her water jar, i.e. leaving behind the material object as God’s presence and moving to the true reality of the gift of God as the person of Jesus.  She then becomes the first evangelist, leading the entire village to know Jesus as ‘savior of the world.’

Lent is a time to challenge our love and our understandings.  We have a tendency to relapse into ideas of material objects as our point of focus for God’s presence on earth.  We struggle to love as God calls us to love others in the person and example of Jesus.  Lent is our time to rediscover the gift of God and to receive the life giving water of Jesus the Lord.  Only then can we overcome our natural hatreds and to love our enemies.  Love is the only solution to human conflicts, both personal and collective.  Only the love of Jesus incarnate in our actions can transform the world from cultures of death, violence, and hatred into a civilization of love.

As we progress along our Lenten journey together, we continue to discern the ways in which we can know better the gift of God and how we might love more authentically as followers of Jesus.  We pray together:  “Let us pray to the Father and ask him to form a new heart within us.  God of all compassion, Father of all goodness, to heal the wounds our sins and selfishness bring upon us you bid us turn to fasting, prayer, and sharing with our brothers and sisters.  We acknowledge our sinfulness, our guilt is ever before us.  When our weakness causes discouragement, let your compassion full us with hope and lead us through a Lent of repentance to the beauty of Easter joy.  Grant this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.”  

The Geography of Temptation

The Geography of Temptation – 1^st Sunday of Lent Year A

Everyone has their favorite place, whether imaginative or real.  It makes no difference whether we have actually been to this place or not.  The place in question may for us be the most beautiful place on earth.  A significant event in our lives may have occurred there and hence it becomes our favorite place.  It may be a place where God is more present to us than in any other place.  Wherever it may be for each of us, this place evokes images of happiness, security, peace, and joy.  We cannot imagine a negative thought or experience associated with this place, and we often delude ourselves into thinking that we could not possibly fall from grace in such a place.  The readings today invite us to reorient our lives in relation to these places, and challenge us to begin the Lenten journey from an unexpected place.

The Garden of Eden is often referred to as Paradise, a primeval place of the fullness of God’s presence and love.  Here, our first parents lacked nothing and enjoyed a beauty of a pristine place that defies any just description.  Given such a place of peace, security, and beauty, we might think that nothing at all could come between them and God.  And yet Paradise becomes the very place where sin enters the world.  Even in a place of such tranquility, temptation exists and the possibility of a great fall enters our world.  Still, with all the beauty and goodness God had given them, our first parents had every advantage in the struggle with the serpent from both a human and divine point of view.  And they failed. 

St. Augustine reminds us that we would have fared no better in their place, and if we return to our favorite place above we would find ourselves confronted with the same temptation as Adam and Eve.  We can construct whatever ideal place and situation for ourselves in order to do battle with the devil, and we will lose if we trust that ideal place to help us in the moment.  For the point of the story is that if we fail to remember God’s presence in our lives, we will fail no matter how great the surroundings around us.

By contrast, the Gospel text takes us to a very different place of battle in the realm of temptation.  Jesus is taken to the desert by the Spirit after his baptism, and there he fasts for forty days while encountering the devil and his temptations.  The desert is the furthest place geographically from a lush garden we can imagine.  The harsh terrain and weather of the desert would beat anyone into failure and despair.  And yet, the devil, who had been successful in his wiles with just one attempt in Paradise, fails in three attempts with Jesus.  The appeal to the appetites was enough for Adam and Eve to fail, and yet Jesus overcomes this trial as well as that of fame, riches, and power.  Why was Jesus successful in such harsh conditions while Adam and Eve failed in seemingly better ground?

In the desert we can rely on no material advantage for long.  The desert brings us to rely on God alone, for in the desert we dispossess ourselves of all worldly attachments and illusions.  It is always the place of trial, but it is also the place of refuge – the place God prepared for Israel in Exodus and for the Church in the Book of Revelation that becomes the pathway to the Promised Land and eternal life.  The desert is the ideal place for a showdown with Satan, for there we must abandon material goods and cling to God alone.  It is in God alone that we can succeed in overcoming temptation.

Lent, then, is the time for us to abandon our favorite place and to go into the desert.  Lent is the place for us to abandon our material goods in acts of fasting, mortification, and charity in order to cling to God alone.  Lent must be for us the time to engage in the struggle against temptation and to overcome not through our own efforts or reliance on any worldly thing, but solely through reliance on God alone. 

As we shed the false gods of our illusory favorite places in beginning the discipline of Lent, we come together to be nourished by the Word of God and the Bread from Heaven.  We pray together:  “Let us pray at the beginning of Lent for the spirit of repentance.  Lord our God, you formed man from the clay of the earth and breathed into him the spirit of life, but he turned from your face and sinned.  In this time of repentance we call out for your mercy.  Bring us back to you and to the life your Son won for us by his death on the cross, for he lives and reigns forever and ever.  Amen.”