We may find ourselves
smiling at the seeming naïveté of the disciples in their reply to Jesus (perhaps he
smiled too). ‘Do you understand all these things’, he asks them. ‘Yes’, they
say, with what seems like enthusiasm. All
these things? Yes! We know their track record for misunderstanding the teaching
of Jesus. We know also that they really have no idea what lies ahead, either
for Jesus or for themselves.
Perhaps what they mean
is ‘we understand the parable’: it is about the last judgement, about the
angels separating good from bad. Is it not good that it is angels and not human
beings who make this discernment? Perhaps they see this point. It will have
more hope of being a discernment done without prejudice, more just than we
could manage, more objective.
The first reading
speaks of a moment of tranquillity in the understanding of God’s people as they
make their way through the desert. On the journey God is with them, directing
things. The Tent and the Dwelling mean He is present, His glory fills that
space, they know He is with them in the cloud by day and in the fire visible by
night. For now there are no laments, no complaints.
Is it that the chosen
people, like the disciples, have come to ‘understand all these things’
(represented by the ten commandments placed in the ark and the parable of
judgement in the gospel)? Both groups might feel that they can say ‘yes, we
understand’. But in the case also of the Hebrews we know better, and not only
from reading about them. We know it from our own experience. Soon they will be
weighed down once more by tiredness and hunger, by fears and anxieties.
In one way we also
understand all of it: God is always with us, God is always guiding things, God
is love and God’s act is always creative, so all will be well and all manner of
thing will be well. Even sin is behovely, as Julian of Norwich says, has its
strange place in witnessing to God’s mercy. In principle we know all this and we
hold to it by faith. But there are moments when we lose the awareness of it, an
awareness that at other times can be so strong in us.
Truth be told we need to lose that awareness from time to
time. Truth be told we have not yet understood everything God wants to reveal to
us about Himself nor do we understand everything about our place in His plan. We
might actually want to confine God in His Tent. The ‘all’ we think we
understand may simply be the ‘enough’ that we can manage. But God is always
journeying ahead of us, leading us into new places and new experiences, calling
us to face new challenges and new possibilities.
So the old comforts
us, even in its mix of good and bad, success and failure, strength and weakness.
We know where we are. Problems in individuals, families, communities and
institutions persist as long as they do – across many years sometimes – because
we become accustomed to our old problems. Of course we lament and complain
about them, but they are familiar, we have worked out ways of living with them,
and somewhere inside we are happy for them to remain because who knows what new
problems might come along with change? The devil you know is better than the
devil you don’t know – so they say.
But God, Creator of
all things, Lord of the Hebrews, Father of Jesus, is ever ancient and ever new.
He is always with us. But if we are to remain with Him we must be ready to move
with Him, to up our tent and move forward. Wisdom means cherishing what is good
in what is old, certainly, but it also means being ready to follow Him along
new paths. Because God is ‘I am who I am’, the One who will be with us, we can be confident
that the new thing He is building will mean, in the end, a fuller revelation of
his glory and a deeper joy and fulness of life for us.
Do we understand all
these things? Of course not. But let us not give up on the journey. Let us
continue to follow where He leads for He is always with us.
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