Week 13 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: Amos 5:14-15, 21-24; Psalm 49; Matthew 8:28-34

Deus humanissimus - God most human - is a phrase associated with the theological work of the Belgian Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx. It comes to mind in thinking about today's readings which present us with various kinds of monstrous creatures, surreal activities and confusing human behaviour. In the midst of so much distortion and confusion stands one who is simply and wholly human, one with a heart of flesh, Jesus, radiating truth and compassion.

Away with solemnities and feasts, says Amos, with holocausts and oblations, with fattened cattle and noisy liturgies. Today's passage is a short summary of things Amos says frequently and more stridently throughout his book. Why not be simply human, he asks, showing your religious devotion and your faith in God by living justly and practising goodness? It is how you treat other people that is most important. Let justice and goodness guide your actions and characterise your personality: they are simple things but preferred by God in place of elaborate ceremonies accompanied by the distortions of corruption and injustice.

The gospel reading then takes us into a world that is like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, weird and wonderful, surreal and unsettling, dark and twisted. The demoniacs are human beings but possessed by evil spirits and so they are not in their right minds, they are not simply human. The demons themselves are not human either of course and their agenda is to distort and fragment, to disturb the balance of creation, and to distract people from justice and goodness. The ways and means of doing this are not important, they will try anything, and many things work. Neither are the unfortunate swine human, innocent victims in this tale, carrying the curse of being classified as unclean in earlier parts of sacred scripture.

The swineherds, like the disciples in yesterday's reading, are out of their minds with fear, running away to tell everything that had happened, including what happened to the demoniacs. It is a strange gloss: one would have thought that the main thing they had to tell was what had happened to the demoniacs. Instead we are told that they told the whole story, they reported everything ... including what happened to the demoniacs.

The whole story - how far back did they go in telling the story? The story they have to tell is about Jesus. Paradoxically, the figure in the story who is simplest and most straightforward is the one who is most terrifying. Having received a full report, the whole town set out to meet him and as soon as they saw him they implored him to leave the neighbourhood! One would have thought that a neighbourhood familiar with demons, demoniacs and swine would have been able to bear the presence among them of one who is simply and wholly human. But it is not so. He is, it seems, the most fear provoking character in the story and they ask him to leave them alone. Whatever it is about him.

Among the strange and startling creatures that appear in these pages of the gospel, screaming demons and demented pigs, the would-be followers, the doubting disciples, the terrified townspeople - there is one who is fulfilling the plan of creation with integrity and clarity. His, in the words of the Scottish poet Edwin Muir, is 'the right human face' and humankind cannot bear very much of that simple reality, of the judgment implied in it, of the holiness it reveals. Edwin Muir's poem is cool spring water compared with the distortions recounted in the scripture readings:

Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face. / I in my mind had waited for this long,

Seeing the false and searching for the true, / Then found you as a traveller finds a place

Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong / Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you, 

What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste, / A well of water in a country dry,

Or anything that's honest and good, an eye / That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,

Simple with giving, gives the primal deed, / The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,

The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea, / Not beautiful or rare in every part,

But like yourself, as they were meant to be.

- Edwin Muir, 'The Confirmation', published in The Narrow Place, 1943

Week 13 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: Amos 3:1-8; Psalm 5; Matthew 8:23-27

The series of questions in the first reading seem to be all of the kind 'is the Pope a Catholic?' The answer seems to be obvious, easy and simple in each case: the connection between the two parts of each question is perfectly clear and well known. The lion's roar, the falling bird, the effect of a trumpet sounding - there are immediate and predictable connections of 'cause and effect' in each case. So Amos implies.

Some aspects of the relationship between God and the people are as obvious as these connections in nature and in human affairs. If God is angry, it will be particularly with the ones He has chosen that He will be angry. (The more you are given, the more will be expected of you.) If God is acting, then He will not do so without revealing his plans to the prophets. And if the Lord speaks to His prophet, the prophet in turn must speak (remember that Amos, who knows what it involves, is reluctant to take on the task of prophesying.)

There is causality - 'therefore' - between the Lord's choice and what is expected of the people. There is causality - 'therefore' - between the prophet's vocation and what he must do. There is causality - 'therefore' - between the people's behaviour and the way God must react in response: 'prepare to meet your God'. Is it a threat or a promise?

This last kind of causality is deeply problematic. Is it true that we know how God must act in response to human behaviour? Is God obliged to anything? Has God bound Himself to particular ways of acting which cannot be suspended even if God, in the words of the prophet Jonah, repents of what He intended to do?

The gospel reading gives us two more examples of causality, one is obvious, easy and simple, and the other is mysterious, takes us beyond the merely problematic, and raises the deepest possible questions.

The easy one is the connection between a sudden storm at sea and the fear it provokes in those on a small boat caught in the storm. Even experienced fishermen - they more than anyone else - fear the sea, for they know what it can be like and what it can do. Does a storm break out at sea and the fisherman not fear? Does a man rebuke wind and sea and the storm stops?

The mysterious 'therefore' in the gospel is the one that connects Jesus rebuking the winds and the sea and the storm ceasing. This provokes astonishment: 'what kind is he?', they ask (what sort of human being, what kind of agent, with what force or power working in him or through him?) that even the wind and the seas obey him? For one who knows the Bible the obvious answer seems shocking, even blasphemous: it is the Lord who commands the waters, divides them, and sets limits to their flowing.

It sends us back to the last kind of causality that the first reading seemed to express. God can only act as God and that is always with full freedom, out of love, in order to create. A God of retribution, anger and appropriate punishment fits more neatly into the framework of cause and effect that we can manage. He would be an agent within our world, subject to its laws, just bigger and more powerful than any other agent in that world. But if this is all we say about God then we are speaking of an idol. Instead we are invited, by Jesus and by the Father he reveals to us, to open our minds and hearts to the vast spaces of divine freedom, to the infinite creativity of divine power, to the unpredictable and revolutionary tenderness of One who is, always and everywhere, Everlasting Love. We must learn about God's retribution, anger and punishment by studying Jesus, his words, his teaching, his experience.

Prepare to meet your God. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Threat or promise?

Week 13 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: 2 Kings 4.8-11, 14-16a; Psalm 89; Romans 6.3-4, 8-11; Matthew 10.37-42

What kind of analogy is it, the one that is spoken of with the little words 'as' and 'so'? What kind of comparison? It is found often in the Gospel of John, for example 'as the Father sent me, so I send you' (John 20.21) and 'as I live because of the Father, so you will live because of me' (John 6.57). In today's readings we find it in St Paul's Letter to the Romans: 'as' Christ was raised from death, 'so' we, in being baptised, die with him in order that we too might live a new life'. 

As the resurrection of Jesus is not just a restoration but a new creation, so all who are in Christ are a new creation also (2 Corinthians 5.17). Whenever creation is involved the power of God needs to be engaged and we see that power working through the prophet Elisha in the first reading. He promises a son to a woman who has no children, a veritable new creation also, to make her be a mother.

As it was with Christ, so it will be with us. And this continues in the gospel reading where he asks us to let go of every attachment in order to follow him. Even our attachment to ourselves. That seems very demanding, practically impossible for the kind of creature that we are. But by God's grace - and nothing is impossible for God - it becomes as simply as giving a cup of cold water to one of the 'little ones'.

Reading on in the Gospel of Matthew we soon come to the passage where Jesus calls us to learn from him and to take his yoke upon us, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. As the yoke was shouldered by Jesus and as the burden was carried by him, so we are empowered by God's grace to follow him. It is love that makes the yoke easy and the burden light. As he loved us so we are to love him and one another (John 13.34).

We should perhaps call it the 'Christological analogy': as things are for Christ in relation to the Father, so they are for us in relation to Him and to the Father. It means taking seriously, literally, what St Paul means when he speaks of us 'being in Christ', or when he says 'it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me' (Galatians 2.20).

Let us give thanks for this gift of grace which enables us to live for God as Jesus lived - and lives - for God.

Week 13 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 27:1-5, 15-29; Psalm 135; Matthew 9:14-17

The blessing promised to Abraham and his descendants meanders. It does so to some extent in the experiences of Abraham himself and it certainly begins to do so in the lives of his son and grandson. But God is working his purpose out even through the cunning and deceit of human beings. In spite of base motives at work in those who are his instruments, the purposes of God are not to be thwarted. Jacob, whom we might be tempted to see as an operator, becomes in his turn the father of Israel, in fact the first to bear that name, and someone who, in spite of his character, sees God. 'God writes straight with crooked lines' is a traditional way of putting this. Our sins and other wrong turnings do not baffle God who can work them into the revelation of His glory and the salvation of His world. But it is not without conflict and difficulty, at every step.

Mary's involvement in the working out of God's purpose we believe to be quite different: forthright, honest, and sincere. The gifts of grace in her, the character with which God endowed her, her holiness, entitle her to be called Queen of Peace. It is Saturday, Mary's day, the Sabbath. Her day is the day of Shalom, of blessing, peace and rest. It is a time to think of the one in whom the promise ceased to meander and came to dwell and bore fruit in the conception of the Incarnate Word.

Of what kind is this peace called Shalom? Well it is not the peace we find on the Moon. In fact the Moon is not at all peaceful: it is lifeless, colourless, sterile. Neither is the peace of Hades the peace for which the human heart longs (some kind of 'eternal rest'). We want also to be alive while enjoying peace, eternally alive. And it is only where there is life that there can be peace in the true sense of Shalom. Only where we find all that goes with being alive, can there be peace in the rich, biblical sense. Where the things that mark our life - anxiety, threat, fear and need - are ordered and attended to in a way that is just, then we have Shalom, a justice-filled peace that is the fruit of integrity and truthfulness. Mary who is Queen of Peace is also Mirror of Justice, reflecting it in the words of her Magnificat and in the integrity of her life.

The Book of Genesis helps in revealing the human world of the patriarchs, a world frail and anxious, constantly threatened by injustice and war. It paints striking pictures for us of the human world as it always was, it seems, and as it is always likely to be. And yet God is present and involved in that world, close to those people, bearing with their unreliability and infidelity. God (and Mary too) remain close and available particularly to the poor, to all who work with them to help them, to all who work for justice and development, reconciliation and peace. In spite of so many problems, many people continue to work for God's Kingdom, to build, by God's grace, the Shalom promised by Jesus and reflected in the life of Mary.

Week 13 Friday, Year 1

Readings: Genesis 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67; Psalm 106; Matthew 9:9-13

Abraham's faith has been tested and tried through dark nights, not least in that extraordinary night of the spirit which was the sacrifice of Isaac. Having come through that he could come through anything, his union with God's will complete, his fidelity and trust now untouchable. He is happy for his wife to be buried in the land of Canaan and buys a plot there for that purpose but insists that his son Isaac, the child of the promise, must marry a woman from his own land and from his own people, the ones he had left to follow the call of the Lord. On no account is Isaac to return there for Abraham has complete trust that God will see to it that a woman from his own place will agree to marry Isaac.

And so it happens, Isaac and Rebekah see each other, and love each other, and he is comforted for the death of his mother. It is one of the few occasions in the Bible where we are actually told that one human being loves another: Isaac loved Rebekah.

The gospel reading is the call of Matthew from the gospel of Matthew. We are not told that Jesus looked at him and loved him, as Mark tells us Jesus did in relation to the rich young man, but we are told that Jesus saw Matthew. It is in such seeing, such noticing of others, that friendships and relationships begin. It is in such seeing and noticing of others that the earliest understanding of grace is to be found: finding favour in the sight of someone, being found attractive, of interest, deserving attention. The relationship that begins here is the following of Christ on the part of Matthew. Pope Francis chose as his motto a phrase from the commentary of Bede the Venerable on this passage of the gospel. The phrase is miserando et eligendo: the Lord has mercy on Matthew and calls him.

The phrase illuminates Jesus' comments to the Pharisees who criticise him for eating with tax collectors and sinners. These people are seen by Jesus, all of them, sinners and Pharisees alike, and he knows what is in them. His mercy towards sinners is not just to rectify their errors but to make them to be disciples. It is not just a grace that heals but a grace that elevates, promotes to a new and higher dignity. At least this is what happens in the case of Matthew as it had happened in the case of Abraham. Seen by the Lord, called to follow Him, the response must be free and faithful. As is the response of Rebekah to Isaac and his to her, a response in love that binds people to each other, equips them for the dark nights yet to come, and begins the work of establishing faithfulness between them.

To be with Jesus is to receive such gifts just as Abraham travelling with the Lord received comparable gifts. We do not need to worry about our point of departure, the condition in which we come before the Lord. He has come to call sinners, a call that inserts them in his mission of mercy. There is no price to be paid apart from being with Jesus and allowing him to work his healing in us. In calling us to himself he calls us back to ourselves, and beyond ourselves, to a greatness and an adventure we would not have considered for ourselves.

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 read in Genesis 22 where God asks 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 fulfilment. 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 (see the so-called 'sacrifice of Isaac' in Genesis 22).

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.

Week 13 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: Amos 9:11-15; Psalm 85; Matthew 9:14-17

St John of the Cross says that a bird held by the slightest of threads is still a bird held. Only when things have been thoroughly purified and a complete detachment has been arrived at are we finally free to serve the Lord, to love, in the way in which we believe God wants us to be free to love.

So Amos paints a beautiful picture of restoration, when the cities of Judah and Israel will be restored, and the people will enter into prosperity and peace. The ploughman will overtake the reaper and the hills will flow with wine. People will enjoy the fruits of the vineyards and of the orchards without fear of ever losing that land again, free from the fear of being snatched up and removed to a place of exile.

We will be tempted to think of some historical period, or perhaps the eschatological age at the end of time, as the place, the time, the environment in which we can finally relax into prosperity and peace. To think we will find this in one historical period or one geographical place is very dangerous, of course. We cannot really be trusted with something like that because we will inevitably begin to take it out on our neighbours, to lord it over them, and the cycle begins all over again.

Jesus seems to speak in a similar way in the gospel reading. There is a time for fasting and a time for feasting. The time of feasting is the time when the Bridegroom is present. The time of fasting is the time when the Bridegroom is absent. This gives us a simpler and clearer criterion: restoration, prosperity, peace are all found in the presence of the Bridegroom. The times of difficulty, division and conflict characterise the absence of the Bridegroom.

The message is clear: get ready for radical renewal, for root and branch reform, for finally snapping the last thread that holds us in the land of lies and deception. Let us take flight – new wine, new wineskins, new cloth, new cloak, fruit aplenty and wine overflowing – into the land of truth and sincerity. It is the land where the Spirit constantly hovers over the waters of renewal and rebirth. It is never too late for such an entry into freedom.

There is a nostalgic beauty in Housman’s poem about the land of lost content where once we went but cannot come again. The readings today speak of a land that lies ahead of us, a land of great content that is yet to be tasted, where we have not yet gone but to which we are invited. That land is called ‘the presence of the Bridegroom’.

Week 13 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Amos 8:4-6, 9-12; Psalm 119; Matthew 9:9-13

The gospel of Matthew can seem ordinary compared with the other three. Each of the others seems more exotic in some way, more unusual. Luke, represented by the ox, gives us more of the compassion of Jesus, more about women, and great parables not recorded elsewhere. John, represented by the eagle, soars to mystical heights and theological depths. Mark, represented by the lion, is more existentialist, surreal in parts, focused on secrets and suffering.

But Matthew is represented by the human being and is more ordinary. It is concerned with keeping things going and with holding things together. In this it is more social, perhaps even more 'churchy'. It is concerned with tradition and community, ways in which things will be held together. It gives us more of the history of things, the time before Jesus in his genealogy and it speaks of the time after Jesus, with the sending of the disciples. It speaks of continuity in the fulfillment of Old Testament promises. It stresses the abiding presence of Jesus in the community of his disciples: where two or three are gathered in his name, behold I am with you always, and the figure of Peter with his particular responsibility in the church is a confirmation of the continuing help of the Lord.

Matthew is more ordinary, more human, then, than the other gospels. The call of Matthew is encouraging as the conversions of Paul and Peter, of Augustine and Teresa of Avila, are encouraging. Grace is not powerless before sin because where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. But neither is grace powerless before the ordinary, routine, perhaps mediocre, turning of our days.

Christ came to call sinners, not those who are well. And he came to call ordinary and mediocre sinners not just the dramatically apostate, the desperately corrupt, the cruel and the callous. He came for those whose sins are mainly cowardice and weakness. Likewise he came not just for those tuned in to the mysticism of John or the existentialism of Mark or the dramatic emotional power of Luke. He came also for those who feel more secure in Matthew's world, a world of law and tradition, of social organisation and custom, of continuity and reliability.

Week 13 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Wisdom 1:13-15,; 2:23-24; Psalm 29; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-43

'Talitha kum', 'little girl, arise'. It is one of the places in the New Testament where we find Aramaic words. There are a number of these places, especially in the gospels, and particularly in Mark's gospel. It is believed that Aramaic was the mother tongue of Jesus. It is a language still used today, for example by the Christian communities in Iraq.

 

We can speculate about why these words and phrases survive in the New Testament. There seems to be no scholarly consensus about why they are there, and why they appear at precisely the places where we find them. The following seem like the three most importance occurrences of Aramaic words in Mark's gospel: the passage we read today in which Jesus says 'talitha kum' to the little girl, the passage from Mark 14 which tells of Jesus' agony in the garden and where he prays to his Father as 'Abba', and the words spoken by Jesus from the cross as recorded by Mark, 'Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani'.

 

What is common to all three is death. In all three moments Jesus is confronted with death. They are all times when faith or trust in God is put to its most extreme test, when Jesus engages with death, the final and ultimate enemy, the last weapon in the arsenal of the kingdom of Satan. And death seems like the victory of that kingdom. Having shown that he has power over illness and  demons, over sin and the forces of nature, what about death? What can the Messiah do in the face of death? He proclaims that the kingdom of God is at hand, a kingdom that is about life, the fulness of life, eternal life. How does he fare in the battle with death? Will his kingdom be able for that?

We can imagine that the Aramaic words survive because these encounters with death are the most intense, emotionally, of Jesus' ministry. We know from his reaction to the death of Lazarus how profoundly moved he was at the power of death. It is easy to see that Gethsemane and Golgotha are the most emotional moments for him personally, the times of deepest struggle: will he remain faithful even in this deepening darkness? Seeing a young girl dying, perhaps even dead, would touch even the hard-hearted and move them to compassion. All the more the One who is the source of life, who loves that little girl infinitely.

 

Here is a common factor, then, in what seem like the most significant uses of Aramaic words in Mark's gospel: they are recorded where Christ clashed with death. They are used in times of high emotion in the face of death. As if for the witnesses who record these encounters the experience was also deeply emotional, so that actual words and phrases, in the Lord's mother tongue, were seared into their hearts, minds and memories. Today's first reading reminds us that these encounters with death bring the Lord of Life face to face with the poison that was introduced into creation through the Devil's envy: 'God made the human being imperishable, in the image of God's own nature, and it was the devil's envy that brought death into the world'.

 

It is a speculation, a meditation, but it is at least interesting. And perhaps a lot more than interesting, because it raises the key question: how does faith fare in the face of death? My faith? Your faith? The faithfulness of Jesus? Our trust in him? Can we keep our balance in the face of death? Do we continue then to believe, and to hope, that with God all things are possible?

 

Week 13 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: Amos 9:11-15; Psalm 85; Matthew 9:14-17

The picture of a restored people dwelling once again in a fruitful land has something of the Keystone Cops about it. Older people will remember those early silent films where the police moved around at twice normal speed, dashing in front of trains and trams, running up streets and over bridges, falling over each other things were happening so fast. So it seems in the first reading, where God is so exuberant in his restoration of the people that the harvest comes straight after the ploughing and the grapes are being trodden as soon as they have been sown. Everything is speeded up, there is such urgency, such desire, to restore the fortunes of the people.

God's 'repentance' is always so, immediate, swift, and complete, as extravagant in its generosity as it is dazzling in its speed. Really the first reading today should be read very quickly, almost breathlessly - for so is the desire of the Lord to settle the people once and for all in the land that He has given them.

We can think of the miracle at Cana fulfilling this prophecy of Amos, an extravagant and immediate vintage given in generous quantities, before the hour, through the powerful intercession of Mary. Here is the Lord, moving among His people, agreeing to act prematurely, and doing it with characteristic love. There is certainly no fasting at this wedding, celebrated in the presence of the Eternal Bridegroom. What is lacking and needed is supplied immediately and generously.

In the celebration of the Eucharist each day we receive this plentiful harvest gathered before its proper hour, we drink this premature vintage ready before its time. The bread of our earthly pilgrimage is also a forestaste of the wedding feast of heaven. The wine to sustain our joy in this vale of tears is also a pledge of the glory that is coming to us. Come Lord, do not delay. The Lord will hear the prayer of his servants and will avenge them speedily. The one you are awaiting will suddenly enter his temple.

Even while we are still at a distance the Bridegroom is already with us. We are not yet living the fulness of life in the Kingdom and yet we already feast on the gifts that belong to that Kingdom. We are not to hang around but to act quickly and decisively, in the decisions we are asked to make about faith, in the ways in which we are called to serve others, in hearing the call to prayer coming from the heart of Jesus.

It would be too much to try to develop a 'Keystone Cops spirituality' but there are many places in the gospel that teach us to be alert and watchful, ready and waiting and swift, watchmen keen to see and quick to respond. Take plenty of time to consider and reflect, Thomas Aquinas tells us in writing about the virtue of prudence, but once you have understood the situation and seen what needs to be done then do not hang around: do quickly what needs to be done. It is so in all matters of faith, charity, justice. In the words of Mary at the marriage feast of Cana, 'do whatever he tells you'. Do it now.

Week 13 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: 1 Kings 19:16, 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62

Jerusalem is central to the experience of Jesus and Luke brings this out more clearly than any of the other evangelists. One way he does this is by writing a second work, after his gospel, which tells of the beginnings of the Church. The gospel is all towards Jerusalem and Acts is all away from Jerusalem, the work of Jesus carried by the apostles through what they said and did beginning in Jerusalem, and then in Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Today we come to a passage in Luke's gospel which is decisive in this regard and which introduces a long section of the gospel containing material that is found only in Luke. 'He resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem' is one translation of 9:51, or literally 'he set his face to go to Jerusalem'. Jerusalem is the place of triumph and of loss. It is a place of unparalleled joy and unique sadness. Jerusalem is the place of the presence of God and then of God's absence when he withdraws from the Temple. These alternating moments of joy and sadness, of presence and absence, are the way in which the people gain a deeper understanding of God and enter into closer intimacy with God.

The devastation of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon was the most cataclysmic event in the Old Testament. But in the hands of the prophets, and from their lips, it becomes a moment of new freedom as the people are helped to gain a new understanding of God. The second destruction of the Temple (the killing of Jesus, the sack of Jerusalem in 70AD) is a cataclysm at the beginning of our era. But these events also are understood as opening the way to a new freedom, a new intimacy with God, a new way in which God, who seems to have been expelled from this world, is actually more radically present than was understood before.

The Christian life may be understood as 'a pilgrimage to Jerusalem'. It is a way of radical discipleship and Jesus will speak frequently about this in the gospel readings over the coming Sundays. The road to Jerusalem is the road to the cross. But the road to Jerusalem is also the road to freedom. To live in Jerusalem, in the Jerusalem that is coming, means entering into ever greater freedom. This is because it brings with it a clearer understanding and love of what is good.

We look for a New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Jerusalem, a new experience of loss and restoration as we travel through death into the kingdom prepared for us. The kingdom that is to come, and is coming, will mean an ever deeper knowledge of God and an ever closer intimacy with God. In each moment of loss and restoration, centred on Jerusalem, there is a new and deeper understanding of God, a closer intimacy with God, a fresh understanding of transcendence and immanence, that God is at once more universal and more local, more removed from this world and more intimately present to it.

Jesus goes to Jerusalem because he is a priest and Jerusalem is the place of the Temple and of the sacrifices. He goes to Jerusalem because he is a prophet and Zion is always central to a prophet's mission. He goes to Jerusalem because he is a king and Jerusalem is the royal city, the city of David, the place of enthronement and rule. He is priest, prophet and king, but in ways that transform the meaning of these roles. And he calls us to join him in the Messianic people, to join him on the road to Jerusalem, and to learn from him as we journey towards the city that is to come.