Third Sunday of Lent (Year C) March 3 (Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9)

God has always been invoked by many names and has carried many labels. But when God had the opportunity to reveal a name, label or doctrine it was a different story.

The faith-filled understand that life has purpose, meaning

Second Sunday of Lent (Year C) Feb. 24 (Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28-36)

First Sunday of Lent (Year C) Feb. 17 (Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13)

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) Feb. 10 (Isaiah 6:1-2, 3-8; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11)

The shame and fear felt by Adam and Eve in the Eden story is still with us. The sense of separation and unworthiness led them to hide from God’s presence. Most people still respond in similar ways — we would be aghast if we knew that we were about to be in God’s presence even if it didn’t involve death.

Isaiah found himself — in an inner vision rather than a physical journey — in the heavenly court. The experience was overwhelming and terrifying. There was a long tradition that no one could see God and live so Isaiah was sure that he was done for. The seraphs chanted “Holy, holy, holy” in adoration and praise, which is the source of the Sanctus in the liturgy. To say something was holy, however, meant that it was set apart from the arena of normal human activity and of the utmost purity. In ancient Israel the holy was approached with a fair amount of awe and dread. Wide and deep indeed was the gulf between God and human. Isaiah was unwilling to speak, especially in a prophetic manner, for he was convinced of his own sinfulness — the words themselves would be affected. The action of the seraph symbolized what God does with those whom God calls — the purifying hot coal was “touched” to Isaiah’s lips in order to cleanse him of sin and unworthiness. It was nothing that Isaiah did; in fact, there was nothing that he could have done on his own. The grip of fear and shame fell away and he was able to respond to God’s mission with a hearty “Here I am Lord, send me!”

The fear and guilt we feel before God is of our own making — we fear judgment and punishment. God is not interested in that but wants to transform, heal and empower all who are willing to respond. We come to God as we are and surrender; God does the rest. Praising God with the seraphs takes our mind off the self and focuses it where it belongs: on God.

Paul reminded the Corinthian community of the message in which they had first believed and begged them not to stray from it. These few verses represent the earliest Christian “creed.” The message was stark and simple. Jesus died for our sins, was buried, rose again in fulfilment of the Scriptures and appeared to many of His followers. There was no complicated theology, just the joyous proclamation that Jesus was alive again and that His life and death had momentous consequences for undeserving humanity. It was this gracious kindness that enabled Paul to rise above his own pain and regret over his years as persecutor-in-chief of the Christian movement and become its greatest apostle. Paul acknowledged that the good that he had done and the person he had become was purely God’s grace. The only fitting response for Paul — and us — is gratitude and passing it forward.

Jesus did so many things well, but what did He know about fishing? This question might have been on the minds of Peter and his friends as Jesus told them to put down their nets again. They tried again, this time with divine guidance rather than their own, and not only did they catch fish, but it was a huge haul. Peter was overcome and fell at the feet of Jesus, begging Him to just go away. Peter was made acutely aware of his flaws and sinfulness and felt unworthy to be in Jesus’ presence. Jesus would not hear of it — with the oft-repeated admonition to let go of fear, He raised him up and gave him a new mission. He was to be a fisher of people — far more difficult!

Fishing was a biblical apocalyptic end-time symbol, so its use here signaled that with the coming of Jesus the ingathering of souls for God had begun. Patience is essential. One cannot be discouraged at an empty net or hook but be willing to try over and over again at God’s direction.

The Lord invites us to continue this holy work of reconciling souls to God. We are to rely on the power and compassion of God rather than allowing our insecurity, preconceptions and weaknesses to paralyse us.

While the Lord is experienced in positive and negative ways, He is always love

A man’s heart cries out. For years, Jeff has tried to follow God, but hasn’t found his dearest dream: a woman he could love and be loved by, who wants God as the foundation of their marriage. Why the rejection? Isn’t God love? Isn’t this cruel?

Other Christians have experienced God as silent, steel, remote, distant, stingy, unyielding, ruthless, “the great vivisectionist.” At other times we know Him as tenderness, gentleness, beauty, life, creativity, kindness, compassion, intimate presence. Who is He really?

“You’ve got to learn to wrestle with God!” Our model is Jacob, who spent the night wrestling someone (Genesis 32). At dawn, Jacob’s adversary wounded him, blessed him and gave him his name, Israel. In the struggle with God, we may discover our true name, and our real self — wounds and all. At least by wrestling, we dare to show what’s going on inside us.

The Church helps us wrestle by giving us Lent. Ash Wednesday, Feb. 13, shows Lent is physical as well as spiritual: we mark our bodies with a reminder of mortality, we take on spiritual disciplines that affect us in the flesh. It’s total; we use everything we have and are to communicate with God.

In its early centuries, the Church wrestled with many questions about God, including this: how could there be any true communication, any meeting-point, between the real God and us? Wouldn’t humans be lost in God’s vastness or God somehow be made less by being grasped?

Wrestlers get so intertwined that they look almost like one person. They feel each other’s strengths and weaknesses, bodies and spirits. Could it be like that between us and God? Could Jeff, by not giving up but coming back and back with his question, be in true communication with the living God?

Among us humans, communication happens through electronic forms known as “social media.” These involve much self-presentation: showing photos and videos of ourselves, our friends, food or pets or silly moments; we write bits of news about what we were thinking just before breakfast; we put together montages revealing our thoughts and desires, without discrimination, the painful and the odd, the beautiful and delightful. It allows for creativity as well as self-exposure.

It’s as though people are holding their faces up to an invisible mirror. Through it, they see their own reflection and invite others to see it too. Like the ordinary, visible mirror, this sort of self-study can be destructive, as in the myth of Narcissus: the youth whose handsomeness broke many hearts. One day he saw his reflection in a still pool. He had nothing to prepare him or help him understand it. He fell in love with his own beauty, but died because he couldn’t touch or fulfill his love of the image he saw.

Underneath the Narcissus story, and behind the passion for electronic self-exposure, lie understandable human desires. We want to see and know ourselves, to contemplate our image — though we can’t see our own faces. We want to show ourselves to others, be reflected back, have someone find us beautiful and interesting and love us. We want to dig inside ourselves and find creative ways to bring forth what we discover inside. We want these things even though we fear they’re impossible, since we also experience ourselves as ugly, unimportant and unlovable.

These desires reflect a divine movement: God beckoning, reflecting back our true image, the image of beauty He called forth in us. God “bending the heavens,” as the psalm says, to show us we’re beloved. God doing the impossible to call us to this truth of ourselves, beyond the scars of sin — our own and others.

Deepest, truest, wildest in us is our desire for God, without whom we can never find rest. Our need to communicate, to be seen, can’t be fully satisfied by any human communication, by electronic self-disclosure or song and dance or feasting, by studying ourselves or even by loving one another — though all these things may, and some must, bring us closer.

That’s why human communication always involves frustration, even when it’s exhilarating. Whatever we seek is never truly found except in God. And He’s completely beyond us, though nearer to us than our fingernails to our fingers.

How could there be a meeting-point between God the Creator and us His creatures? Only in the one who in Himself unites human with divine. There’s no humanity without God — and because of Christ, there’s no God without humanity.

That’s the intimacy we seek, whether through electronic media or dances in the village square. It’s what we invite through our Lenten spiritual practices. They prepare us to receive the fullness of God’s love without any shadow or cruelty or pain.

No wonder we experience Him in negative as well as positive ways: thirst and hunger, pain and longing, cruelty and ruthlessness. Gentleness, kindness, wonder, delight. And love.

He’s in everything, even in Jeff’s long longing.

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) Feb. 3 (Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; Psalm 71; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30)

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) Jan. 27 (Nehemiah 8:2-4, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21)

Conversion is not always easy or joyful — in fact; it can sometimes be a very painful experience. The reviewing of one’s life with all of the “should haves” and “could haves” can bring grief and shame.
Nehemiah recounted the story of the returning exiles and their conversion and renewal. They had spent a couple of generations in Babylonian exile and their way of life prior to the disaster of 586 B.C. was but a dim memory. Only a small group of prophets, priests and scribes had kept the traditions alive. Now that they were back in the land of Israel they had to put the collective life of the nation back together. Jerusalem and the temple lay in ruins and the land had been devastated.

During the exile, there had been much soul-searching and reflection. Why had God permitted this disaster? How could they prevent such a thing from happening again? They did not blame God but themselves. In their own eyes, they had not been obedient to the covenant and the Law. They had been guilty of injustice and idolatry. Only a firm recommitment to the Law would save them and put them on the right path again. In the scene described in our reading, the Law has just been read in its entirety before the assembled people. They were devastated and grief-stricken, for it was very clear to them how far they had fallen from the ideal. Nehemiah and Ezra gave the people excellent advice. Guilt, self-condemnation and sorrow are all useless. A conversion or repentance should be a joyful time. Move resolutely forward and don’t look back unless it is to learn from one’s mistakes. They were told even to celebrate and have a good time — the joy of being in harmonious relationship with God would provide them with the strength they needed. It is never too late to make positive and even radical changes in one’s life or in the collective life of a group.

Paul’s mini-essay on the body of Christ and the community was deflating news for many in Corinth. They had been engaging in the age-old practice of competition and one-upmanship to the detriment of the community’s unity. The bad news from Paul to the Corinthian community is that in God’s kingdom no one is more important than another — all are different but equal in worth and dignity. Every part of the body has an important role to play and injury to any part affects the whole. The body is a symbol of interdependence and harmony rather than hierarchy, domination or exclusion. We still have so far to go in understanding and appropriating this lesson.

Jesus returned from His testing in the desert filled with the Spirit of God and on fire for His mission. He made a favourable impression on most of those who heard Him. Luke lets us in on his debut in the synagogue of his hometown. Isaiah’s words that were read aloud cut deeply for they revealed the gap between ideal and reality. In the passage from Luke, Jesus read from Isaiah 61 and proclaimed that its promises were fulfilled in Him. The words were meant to be joyful and to give hope — how could such wonderful promises do otherwise! But they also carried a challenge that became evident in the part of this story not included in the lectionary. There would indeed be sight for the blind, liberty for captives, hope for the oppressed and good news for the poor. These marvelous acts were seen as signs of the divine presence and would go hand in hand with a more expansive and universal view of God. We might ask if the promises have in fact been fulfilled since we still have a world full of captives, oppressed and poor.

The arrival of Jesus signaled a sign of compassion and favour on the part of God for suffering humanity. They described perfectly the earthly ministry of Jesus and what He did for those whom He met. As we return to the long journey through human history, these promises serve as ideals and goals for us to implement with the aid and guidance of Jesus. Building a just, compassionate and peaceful world is the way we continually proclaim a year of the Lord’s favour.

Second Week in Ordinary Time (Year C) Jan. 20 (Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 96; 1 Corinthians 12:4-11; John 2:1-12)

What is in a name? More than we might think! The ancients believed that a person’s name was a reflection of their nature and the direction of their life. The Old Testament is filled with odd names and mid-life name changes that reflected changing relationships with God.

A young couple was crossing the Atlantic by boat. During the trip, they got to know their fellow passengers, some of whom were Christians. The couple were atheists, and having Christian friends was a new experience for them. They were astonished to discover that people of faith could also be people of intelligence and sense. Then, they were astounded to realize that they’d always assumed otherwise. Why shouldn’t faith and intelligence go together?

Baptism of the Lord (Year C) Jan. 13 (Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Psalm 104; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22)