Week 13, Wednesday, Year 1

Readings: Genesis 21:5, 8-20; Psalm 34; Matthew 8:28-34

Abraham had a son with his slave girl Hagar, a boy called Ishmael. At first it seemed as if he would be the one to carry forward the covenant the Lord was establishing with Abraham. When Sarah is later blessed with a son, Isaac, she feels threatened by the existence of this earlier son of Abraham, the elder half-brother of Isaac. Her maternal interest in the promotion of her own child leads her to ask Abraham to send the others away. Initially Abraham - a man of honour - hesitates but he is assured by the Lord that all will be well. And so he sends Hagar and her boy away, giving them some food for the journey.

At first they wander aimlessly and find themselves stranded without food or water. But true to his word the Lord comes to their help, he hears the boy's cry, and provides them with what they need. They are not restored to the household of Abraham however. Ishmael, son of Abraham and half-brother of Isaac, is not the one on whom the promise rests. And yet he does not fall outside God's providential care for he is connected with Abraham and therefore with God's purposes in history.

We saw yesterday Abraham's interest in the well-being of Lot. Until the birth of Isaac it would have been Lot, Abraham's nephew, who was heir to all he had, including, we can suppose, the call and promise he had received from the Lord. Now the focus is on Ishmael: does he not have some right to inherit from his father? He will be a great nation, the Lord says, and God was with him as he grew up. But he was not the son who carried the call and the promise that was special to Abraham. That was to be Isaac.

Something is being made clear through these stories - not Lot, not Ishmael, but Isaac is the child of the promise. The Lord is making it crystal clear for us that it is on him, Isaac, and on him alone that the future of the covenant with Abraham rests. All the stranger then the story we will hear tomorrow when God will ask Abraham to sacrifice this son of the promise. It must be absolutely clear, unambiguous beyond doubt, that the promise is a matter of sheer grace, a pure gift of God to Abraham, something given and guarded by the Lord from the beginning until its ultimate fulfillment. It must be absolutely clear also that the contribution of Abraham to this relationship is simply his faith, his sheer faith, put to the test beyond anything imaginable before in what we will hear about tomorrow.

Meanwhile the story of Ishmael continues in a line that serves as a kind of counter-point to the line of Isaac and Jacob. Ishmael was the father of twelves sons, tribal leaders in the territory that was his. Then Esau, the son of Isaac and elder twin brother of Jacob, married a daughter of Ishmael. The stories continue to inter-weave. But always the younger ones are chosen and the elders must give way to them. It is to Ishmaelites that Joseph is sold by his brothers who must later submit to Joseph, their younger brother, in order to save the patriarchal line from dying out. It becomes a theme in the Bible: the younger is chosen over the elder.

Hagar and Ishmael make a final appearance in Galatians 4 where Paul contrasts these two mothers and their sons, Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael. Now it is not on the basis of one being younger and the other older but on the basis of one mother being free and other being a slave. In a curious argument he says that Christians are to think of themselves as children of the free woman who represents the heavenly and spiritual Jerusalem which is free. The earthly Jerusalem is fleshly and enslaved. He is thinking once again of a younger child being called ahead of an older one, this time the children of the new covenant accepting Christ before the children of the first covenant. Once again the stories continue interwoven, the story of Judaism, the elder son, and the story of the Church, the younger son. Each might try to understand itself without the other but it is not possible.

Something persists in the way the Lord deals with his people, to remind us that it is all grace, a pure gift. When we forget this, as we often do, the Lord raises up a child younger than us to remind us, for we who once were the younger can easily begin to live and act as if we are the elder. And then we must move to a different role in the never-ending story and wait for the time when our youth will be restored and our freedom re-established. But always, in whatever wilderness we wander, God is with us, sustaining us and helping us as we grow up.

Week 13 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 19:15-29; Psalm 26; Matthew 8:23-27

Thoughts on Lot and his Wife 

On the face of it, the instruction of Jesus in Luke's gospel that we should ‘remember Lot’s wife’ (17.32) is a bit strange. ‘Do not forget the one who was turned to salt because she could not forget’, is what he seems to be saying to us. Keep in mind this woman who suffered because she was keeping something in mind, turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back. 

Although it is found in that section of Luke that is most distinctive (Luke 9.51-18.14), the passage in Luke 17 in which Jesus refers to Lot’s wife has a parallel in Matthew 24. Both texts speak about the coming of the Son of Man and the events associated with it. Both refer to the days of Noah when people ate, and drank, and married until suddenly the flood came and destroyed them all (Luke 17.27; Matthew 24.37-39). The warning is given in apocalyptic terms: life will go on pretty much as normal until suddenly the end comes. 

Luke adds a further Old Testament reference. ‘Just as it was in the days of Lot’, he says, ‘they ate, drank, bought, sold, planted and built. But on the day Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulphur destroyed them all and so it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed’ (Luke 17.28-30). The message is the same as that drawn from the reference to Noah: life will go on pretty much as normal until suddenly the end comes.

On that day, Jesus continues in Luke 17.31, people will be on the housetop or in the field. They are not to re-enter the house or turn back. This instruction is mentioned elsewhere in Luke (21.21) and also in Matthew 24.17-18 and Mark 13.15. The immediately succeeding verse, however – ‘Remember Lot’s wife’ (Luke 17.32) – is unique to Luke who then strengthens the general warning by citing two other familiar sayings. The first of these is that ‘whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Luke 17.33; Matthew 16.25; John 12.25). The second is ‘there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left, … there will be two women grinding meal together, one will be taken and the other left’ (Luke 17.34; Matthew 24.40). 

This is the only reference to Lot in the gospels and there is only one other reference to him in the New Testament (2 Peter 2.7). It is easy to see why Lot’s wife comes to mind in a text warning that the appearing of the Son of Man will be as unexpected, for most people, as was Noah’s flood or the destruction of Sodom. The instruction to leave what you are at and not turn back brings Lot’s wife immediately to mind.

The other New Testament reference to Lot is another apocalyptic text, a warning about wrath and judgement to come (2 Peter 2.7). God, we are told, is quite capable of sifting and picking out the few or solitary righteous ones from a mass of sinners. We know this from the stories of Noah and Lot (2 Peter 2.4-10). 

Lot’s wife is to be remembered as one who looked back to, and was held by, what she was being asked to leave behind. It paralysed her and meant that she missed the moment. This is how preachers have often used Lot’s wife and the warning of Jesus to remember her. A certain kind of attachment makes it impossible for us to enter the kingdom. We must be alert, watchful, detached, ready to go out to meet the Son of Man when he comes.

Jesus had already made the same point earlier in the gospel of Luke when he said that ‘no one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven’ (Luke 9.62). According to Jeremiah 46.5, warriors fleeing in terror do not look back, and there are other Old Testament texts which also speak about ‘not looking back’ in situations of fear, terror and threat (Exodus 14.10; Joshua 8.20; Judges 20.40; 1 Samuel 24.8; 2 Samuel 1.7; 2.20). 

Luke 17.20-37 contains elements that are found elsewhere but combined with elements that are not, and in an order that is distinctive, it gives us a unique teaching about apocalyptic and vocation. For example, although Luke 17.31 and 17.33 are found elsewhere in the New Testament, they are never linked in the way that they are here and it is the instruction to remember Lot’s wife that provides the link. The saying of Luke 17.33 about losing one’s life and gaining it is a very familiar saying of Jesus but nowhere in the New Testament, perhaps, is its radical requirement so clear as it is here, illustrated by the case of Lot’s wife.

In Genesis 19, today's first reading, we find the only explicit reference in the Old Testament to this unfortunate woman. Lot and his family were warned to run for their lives in order to escape the destruction of Sodom. They were told not to stop and not to look back (Genesis 19.17), but Lot’s wife disobeyed these instructions with disastrous consequences. 

‘Lot’s wife’, The Jerusalem Bible says, seems to have been the name of an oddly shaped boulder or column of rock-salt somewhere near the Dead Sea, long since dissolved or at least changed beyond recognition. Josephus, Clement of Rome, and Irenaeus all speak about this unusual geological phenomenon which, in their time, was still to be seen in Palestine. Scientifically minded exegetes suggest that perhaps Lot’s wife, not moving fast enough, was overtaken by the salty waters of the Dead Sea or was caught in a salt storm being literally covered and petrified with salt. Very recently scientists have gone looking once again for the location of Sodom and speak of Lot’s wife as a salt floe in the shape of a woman.

The famous haggling scene between God and Abraham comes just before the destruction of Sodom. How many just people would be enough to lead God to spare the city? At this point in the story Abraham is childless so that his nephew Lot, the son of his youngest brother Haran (Genesis 11.27), is the one on whom the fulfilment of God’s promise rests. This explains the solicitude of Abraham for Lot and his family. When Lot is captured in a war between various kings, Abraham goes to release him (Genesis 14.16). When God informs Abraham of his intention to destroy Sodom, Abraham once again acts on behalf of Lot, seeking to save them from the coming destruction (Genesis 18). But the conclusion of the story of Lot’s rescue from the destruction of Sodom is that ‘God thus remembered Abraham’. It is about securing the promise to Abraham and once Isaac is born Lot disappears from the patriarchal narratives. 

Abraham and Lot had travelled together from Ur to Canaan, and had separated there (Genesis 13.10f) with Lot settling in Sodom, a city already notorious for being full of great sinners. In opting for life in the big city, Lot was taking serious moral risks. A theme running through these events is that urban life is bad and rural life good. Lot stubbornly resists the warnings of the angels, and does not take them seriously. They have to take him and his family by the scruff of the neck and deposit them outside the city. They tell them to get away from the cities and go into the hills. Lot suggests the compromise of moving to Zoar, a city nearby, which is ‘just a little one’ (Genesis 19.22). It will not be as dangerous to his morals, then, as the great metropolis that is going up in smoke.

The angels of the Lord go to Sodom to warn Lot and get him out in time. The sin of the Sodomites is not so much the one to which the city later gave its name, and perhaps not even the sin of failing in hospitality as is often suggested, but rather the desire ‘to see the genitals of God’. Bring them out that we might know them, they say to Lot. Sin, for the Book of Genesis, is an inappropriate knowing, or the desire for a knowledge beyond proper boundaries. A city of such blasphemous desire, we may be being taught, deserves everything God can throw at it.

It is arrogance, according to the Book of Sirach, that explains the destruction of the neighbours of Lot (Sirach 16.8) whereas wisdom saved Lot, the Book of Wisdom says, in a passage that anticipates 2 Peter 2.6-8: in witness, a desolate land still smokes where shrubs bear fruit that never ripens and where, monument to an unbelieving soul, there stands a pillar of salt (Wisdom 10.7-8). Lot’s Wife, whatever it is, stands as a memorial to folly.

Week 13 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 18:16-33; Psalm 103; Matthew 8:18-22

What moves Abraham in his bargaining with God? Perhaps it is his concern for Lot, for his family and herdsmen. We know from an earlier passage in Genesis that Lot and his entourage settled near Sodom and it would be quite natural for Abraham to seek to save his nephew from the destruction soon to be visited on that notorious city.

The Lord is also bargaining with Himself, it seems, since two of the men who visited Abraham go down to check whether things are as bad as has been reported. Abraham is in God's confidence and so can engage in the oriental style bargaining that we see. The outcome of the bargaining is that if there are even ten innocent people there, the city will be spared. It seems there were not, for Sodom was destroyed, though not before Lot and his family managed to retreat to the hills (the consequences for Lot's wife for disobeying the instructions for their departure leading to consequences that are well known).

What are we to focus on in this story? One thing is the growing intimacy between God and Abraham who is now admitted into the inner circle, as we might say, of divine deliberations. How can God hold back from him, whom He has taken into His friendship, what He is about to do? It anticipates one of the most powerful points in Jesus's teaching: 'no longer do I call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business, but I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father' (John 15:15). Abraham is the first person to be called a friend of God (2 Chronicles 20:7) and in the offspring of Abraham, Jesus Christ, all human beings are admitted to that friendship (Galatians 3:16).

However, it might be the fact that God punishes wrongdoing by dealing out death and destruction that catches our attention. It is mitigated somewhat by the fact that God wants to confirm how bad things really are and that He is also open to sparing entire cities if a remnant of innocence is found in them. But if not, then it seems to be necessary by some kind of fatalistic law that these communities should be destroyed. Abraham does not protest this, and God seems to be acting out of a required obedience to this law rather than out of angry vindictiveness or wilful destructiveness. We saw it earlier in Genesis, at the time of the great flood, when again it seemed better to God to call the whole thing off - except to change His mind on account of Noah who found favour in His sight.

So in one way the picture of God presented here is very comforting - God who takes Abraham into His friendship is faithful to that friendship as Abraham is also faithful to it. (We will see to what extent Abraham is prepared to be faithful as we read on in Genesis.) Abraham carries the promise not just for himself and his own family and people but for all the nations of the earth. We believe this promise gets its fullest realisation in Jesus.

On the other hand the picture of God is challenging, God who is either powerless to act other than He does or chooses not to act other than He does, raining death and destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah. On this point there will be radical developments over the course of time until we come to the situation where the Son of God - once again Jesus Christ - becomes 'the righteous one who stands in the breach before God on behalf of the land so that He would not destroy it' (Ezekiel 22:30). Instead it is the Son Himself (one of the men who went down to check out Sodom?!) who is prepared to die on behalf of the ungodly, not just to save a human city from destruction but to lay the foundation of a new city, established on a radically new basis, the City of God of which He is the cornerstone.

SS Peter and Paul -- 29 June

Readings: Acts 12:1-11; Psalm 33(34); 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18; Matthew 16:13-19

'He who sits in the heavens laughs.' We can speculate as to what might bring a smile to God's lips. Religion is often presented as a very, very serious business and yet today's feast brings to mind many amusing things. Peter for example is called 'rock' and he is as changeable as the weather. He is a stone invited to float on water. Paul seems to have been something of a control freak, taking charge and breathing fury, and yet he is led by the hand into Damascus and later escapes from the city by being let down over the wall in a basket.

There are echoes of Jonah in the way Peter and Paul are pulled and shoved this way and that. Their releases from prison, Peter in Acts 12 and Paul in Acts 16, are pieces of comedy also. Paul has been rescued out of the mouth, not of a sea monster, but of the more familiar lion. Peter begins to sink as soon as he remembers what he is doing and is, not for the last time, rescued from the deep by his Lord. They are thumped by angels and beaten by men, we can say, pushed around and reminded again and again that they are instruments of the gospel, instruments in the hands of the Lord they have come to love.

This may seem cruel until we see its results. For example, their experiences make it clear that human beings are not gods. In Acts 14 Paul is mistaken for a god and, when he disappoints, is subsequently stoned. God uses human personalities, even and especially their limitations and weaknesses, to make them instruments of his grace and glory. He takes them up into his work but when we see their weaknesses and smile at their foibles there is no danger that we will mistake them for the God they serve.

Another good result from seeing the humanity of Peter and Paul is that we can think again about what is really serious. God's love is really serious. The gates of hell will not prevail against the kingdom of that love. Nothing else compares with it as both Peter and Paul testify, Peter with his question 'Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life', Paul with those magnificent texts scattered through his letters that neither success nor failure, illness nor health, poverty nor riches, strength nor weakness, things present, past or to come, nothing in all creation compares to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, sharing in his sufferings so as to share in the glory of his resurrection.

In 751 BC two brothers founded a city, Romulus and Remus, the wonderful city of Rome, established on pride, ambition and eventually murder. In the first century, and without setting out to do it, two brothers in the Lord, Peter and Paul, founded a city on the same spot, as instruments of God, witnesses to God's love by their preaching and teaching, in how they lived and in how they died, a city founded on faith, and hope, and love.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary

Readings: Isaiah 61.9-11; 1 Sam 2.1, 4-8; Luke 2:41-51

The day after the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church's liturgy honours the Immaculate Heart of Mary. There are two explicit references to Mary's heart in the Gospel of Luke. They speak of her keeping in her heart the things she was experiencing at the time of Jesus' birth along with the things that were being said about him (Luke 2:19; 2:51). She pondered these things, not surprisingly, for they were strange and wonderful things, what the shepherds had to relate about the vision of angels they had received, and what Jesus himself said to her and to Joseph when they found him teaching in the Temple at Jerusalem.

In the Bible the heart refers to the centre of the person, the deepest core of a person's being, from which originate all good and evil things a person does. It is the place of moral responsibility, of energy and life, the place where intentions are formed and commitments are decided. Hearts can be hard or soft, they can be open or closed, hearts can lose hope so that people need to be encouraged anew, to take fresh heart. The great commandment is to love, with your whole heart, God and our neighbour as ourselves. The seed that falls on good soil refers to those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and upright heart. Where a person's treasure is, there also is their heart.

All of this can be applied to Mary as we ponder in our hearts what we hear and read about her. She is contemplative, meditating on all that is happening. She is good soil, holding fast the word of God and bearing the fruit of that word. She is one who loves God deeply and tenderly, without compromise, with all her energy, life and commitment. 'I am the handmaid of the Lord', she said to the angel Gabriel, 'let what you have said be done to me'.

What is caught by adding the adjective 'immaculate'? Literally it means without sin, without spot or stain. We can gloss it to mean without deviation or distraction, without qualification or condition. Her heart is given, and it is given completely. Her heart is open and pliable, ready to be used for the work of her Son. We can imagine her saying 'did you not know that I must be busy with my son's affairs? So do whatever he tells you'.

Her son's affairs are the salvation of the world, the healing of the sick, the reconciliation of sinners. So she is fully given also to that work, the work of the Father. It is not unusual to meet a mother who is totally dedicated to the affairs of her son or daughter. There is something fierce and uncompromising in the natural love of a mother. Mary is at least as passionately devoted to her Son's mission, and is devoted in that way not just by nature but by grace. Her devotion is fittingly described as immaculate - pure, unconditional, absolute.

We can turn to her with confidence therefore for we are among those affairs with which Jesus is busy and so we already have a place in her heart. Let us do it using the oldest known prayer to  Mary, from the 3rd century, which already recognises her love, her heart, as immaculate -

Beneath your compassion we take refuge, Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in time of trouble but rescue us from dangers, only pure, only blessed one.

Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Year C)

Readings: Ezekiel 34:11-16; Psalm 22(23); Romans 5:5b-11; Luke 15:3-7

In the early days of his pontificate Pope Francis spoke often, and powerfully, about the need for a 'revolution of tenderness'. The world is so often a cruel and heartless place, and how transformed it would be by such a revolution.

Two images in particular represent this tenderness, that of the Good Shepherd, who carries the lost and straying sheep home on his shoulders, and that of the Sacred Heart, the divine humanity of Jesus, the human heart of flesh which symbolises the tender love and kindness of God towards humanity.

What Francis called for was a 'revolution', however, and there is no revolution without opposition, often violent and bloody. Not necessarily on the part of the revolutionaries, something impossible in this case: you cannot pursue a revolution of tenderness violently! But on the part of those who might feel threatened by such a revolution. Might there be 'vested interests' who will resist the revolution of tenderness? Are there fears and anxieties deep in the human spirit that might be provoked to prevent it or to act against it?

The first reading, from Ezekiel, paints a beautiful picture of the tender shepherd, the God of Israel, who will come in person to shepherd the sheep, seeking out the lost, bringing back the strayed, binding up the injured, healing the sick. It is easy to see in Jesus the fulfilment of this prophecy and we often (perhaps too quickly) assume he is also the shepherd in the parable who leaves his ninety nine sheep to go searching for the one who is lost.

So what of the ninety nine? Is it not reasonable to think that the shepherd is actually foolish to risk losing even more by abandoning the majority of his sheep? And what of that final action of the tender hearted shepherd in the reading from Ezekiel: 'the sleek and the strong I will destroy, shepherding them rightly'? What could that mean?

A religion, like a politics, that plays to people's fears finds it easier to succeed in our world. A religion, or a politics, that appeals to our tenderheartedness will find it much harder to make progress. Superficially, for a moment, our hearts are moved by the plight of the strayed and injured, the lost and the sick. But in how many of us, and for how long, does this compassion become a true revolution?

And perhaps this is the point of the shocking ending to the first reading. The sleek and the strong need to have the carapace broken open that prevents them from really beginning to live in tenderness, a tenderness that is not just superficial and temporary, but which becomes central, and foundational, to a way of living. A tenderness that becomes the heart of who we are and what we do. Who or what will save the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son? Or the labourers in the vineyard whose concern for 'justice' closes their hearts to the needs of those who come later?

What we need, we who are sleek and strong, is the love of God to be poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. The revolution of tenderness inaugurated by Jesus, is not superficial or temporary. It is profound and it is permanent. It is established through blood that is shed and violence that is endured: but who did it threaten, and why?

If we are sleek and strong by His grace - 'now justified by his blood' - all the more will we be participants in His revolution, alert and committed to be after His own heart, seeking out what is lost and straying, carrying home what is injured and sick.

Week 12 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 16:1-12, 15-16; Psalm 106; Matthew 7:21-29

One summer many years ago I acted as chaplain for a week in a home for old people. It was about this time of the year and we were reading these sections of the Book of Genesis. Some of the older people were scandalised at what Abraham was getting up to in his old age and complained to me that 'we should not have to listen to this kind of carry on during Mass'.

It is indeed a bit shocking. Today's reading, for example, speaks about a kind of surrogate motherhood involving Sarai, Abram and Hagar. Sarai is keen to give her husband a child and does so using the womb of her servant Hagar. As soon as the maid is pregnant, however, she begins to feel superior to her mistress who is, for the moment, childless. Sarai's mood changes and she is not as keen on the situation as she was before it happened. Sarai wants to get rid of Ishmael and his mother, and Abram goes along with this. Ishmael is a wild ass of a man, not the son of the promise as Isaac was to be, but still not falling outside the reach of God's providence. Sarai and Abram might want to see the back of Hagar and Ishmael but God has a place for them in his plan - a plan he is working out through Abram - and it gives Ishmael some entitlement in the household of his father. What exactly the story of Hagar and Ishmael is trying to explain remains obscure, though they will figure later in Christian reflections on grace, freedom, and God's choice.

One of the issues raised here is that of legitimacy: how does a son become entitled to the inheritance of his father? Ishmael has a problem because he is the son of a servant. He is, it is true, the son of Abraham but not a fully legitimate one. He has, it seems, some rights in the household but not the full rights of a son born to a free woman. This is Paul's use of the story later, in Galatians, where Hagar represents the earthly Jerusalem, an unfree city, and Sarah represents the heavenly Jerusalem, the place of freedom God has established for all the children of Abraham.

The gospel reading blows apart all these older, more primitive, understandings of legitimacy and entitlement. The key to the door of the Father's kingdom is not now anything to do with the circumstances of one's natural birth. It is connected simply and exclusively with whether or not one acts on the will of the Father. It is not enough to hear it and to know it. The man building his house on rock is the one who not only hears the words spoken by Jesus but also acts on them. This is the new family of Abraham. He is our father in faith, and it is a faith in practice, a faith formed by the new commandment of love that characterises and unites the members of this family of Abraham.

In a text that anticipates Paul's hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13, Jesus says that it is not enough to say 'Lord, Lord'. It is not enough to prophesy or to drive out demons. It is not enough to work mighty deeds. It is not enough to claim Abraham or Moses or David as our father. What is required is that a person hear the words of Jesus and act on them. It is at once simpler, and much more difficult, than any other way of belonging. We simply have to act on the teachings of Jesus which we have been listening to in the Sermon on the Mount. But if we are to act on those teachings in the way Jesus has asked, then we need the love of God to be poured into our hearts. It is the Holy Spirit, the bearer of that gift, who makes us to be the children of God, heirs with the Son, practitioners of the Law, people entitled to be in the household of the Father with an entitlement that is, purely and simply, His gift, renewed each day.