Serve to be served? Wednesday, 5th Week in in Lent – Daniel 3:14-20, 24/91-25/95 – John 8:31-42

We always admire young people who live and profess their faith. Several saints died for the Lord but many more lived for him.  While we rightly glorify martyrs who died for the faith, we must also admire those who lived the faith, for as someone said, “It is easier to die for the Lord than to live for him.”

The reading from the book of Daniel tells of three young Jewish exiles who were brought into the Babylonian court. They, like Daniel, after whom this book is named, lived exemplary lives of faith even in the court of a pagan king. Chapter 2:49 tells us that the three young men were appointed by the King himself, over the “affairs of the province of Babylon.”

Now King Nebuchadnezzar builds a golden statue and demands that it be worshipped. The three young men refuse and are reported to the king. They are threatened with death in a fiery furnace. What happens next is the stuff of heroes.

Today’s teaching is presented in a series of six reflections. Reflect on the ones that you need to build your faith on and not the ones that you think apply to someone else you know.

  1. The young men refuse to allow a bully to get to them and even more the fear of death to get to them. Bullies are to be found in varying age groups; from the playground to the halls of political power. Bullies thrive on creating a sense of fear. They may indeed beat you to the ground physically or break you down in their prisons but even a bully knows that while they can kill the body, they can never kill the soul. Nebuchadnezzar was a bully who thought that his superpower status would scare three Jewish youths into submission.
  2. The three young men refused to apostasy. That’s a big word for quitting on God for other gods. People apostasy under fear and duress but even worse to please people. In our day, there is no dearth of people who bow down before any god with fervour to win favour. If you can’t obey the first commandment, how will you get to the tenth? I AM the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me. God is a living God, the great I AM, not an ‘I was’ or ‘I will be’. He is to be worshipped exclusively and if you can’t fall in line then quit the fold.
  3. The three young Jewish men teach us another valuable lesson in answering the dictator that Nebuchadnezzar was (you can add your dictator here). Their love for God was governed by a deeply spiritual principle, ‘the God we serve does not need to serve us.” For most of us, our relationship with God is a quid pro quo. You have to scratch my back Lord, I scratched yours! The young men are emphatic, “If our God, the one we serve, is able to save us; he will save us and even if he does not, then you must know that we will not serve your god or worship the statue you have erected.’ Have you made God your spiritual grocer?
  4. These were the young men that Nebuchadnezzar had appointed over the affairs of Babylon. This was no small post in arguably the biggest superpower in the world at that time. They found favour in the king and he let his favour rest on them. Now that they have stood up for their beliefs his “expression was very different.” Sadly, people love us not for who we are but for the fact that are agreeable to their thoughts and views. We too strive for human approval by submitting to that which is immoral and, in the process, lose divine favour.
  5. God came through for the three young men. In the history of salvation, many young women and men have died in their fiery furnaces, at the gallows, in prisons, in the arenas of Rome and in prisons in Mumbai….We remember the blood of the martyrs (Fr Stan Swamy) whose blood is both the seeds of Christianity and the fertilizer for the faith.
  6. Finally, the pagan king blesses the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Our WITNESS makes the world bow down to Christ, not our cowardice. Will we suffer martyrdom? the answer is an emphatic yes! Ironically, the Cardinals of the world wear red not as a princely colour (they were and some still refer to them as princes of the Church) but rather as a reminder that they are the first to shed their BLOOD for the Church. It is time we throw political correctness into the garbage where it belongs and profess like St Peter, our unworthiness to be put to death like Our Lord.

 

Leave your reflections in the comments below. I am sure you have thoughts of your own that are inspired by the divine.

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Looking in the right direction – Tuesday, 5th Week in Lent – Numbers 21:4-9/ John 8:21-30

If anything, today’s first reading seems like we have a vengeful God. The evidence seems to be in your face. The people of Israel have been wandering the wilderness for forty years. They were on the threshold of entering the promised land (the land of Canaanites) from the south but were denied permission by their ‘cousins,’ the Edomites, (sons of Esau, brother of Jacob -Genesis 36:6-8) to cut through their land, thus forcing them to take a longer route.

The promised land which was in eyesight has once again become a distant reality.  For the last forty years, they have had to eat “unsatisfying food” that tasted like cakes baked in oil (Numbers 11:9). So, what choice do you have? What do you do if not grumble? And should your ‘punishment’ be snakes that bite you and cause death? This sounds like a petty vengeful God.

Life is all about what coloured glasses you wear. Change your glasses and you see things differently. Yes, these were people who wandered for forty years but in reality, they were not ready for what God desired for them; a land for themselves. They were not ready because THEY repeatedly turned against God and broke his covenant. How do you entrust such a people with a nation when they can’t be trusted to return your love? Yet, all through THEIR ‘wandering’, God provided for their needs. He did give them water and food, yet they lied and said that there was no food and water.

The desert does not provide for garlic and cucumber which they remind God that they got in Egypt. But they got these meagre treats along with slavery and the whip (which in their grumbling they conveniently forget). The people received what could be provided, but for them, it had become ‘detestable food’ that was ‘miserable.’ We too think we deserve much more than what is placed on our table. The grace that we say each day is not a formality but an act of gratitude for what has been provided.

So, did God punish them? Very strictly speaking, the RSV translation does not say, ‘Therefore the Lord sent poisonous snakes.’ It says, “Then the Lord sent poisonous snakes.” The obvious conclusion that we infer is that God is wrathful in the face of sin. If that was the case, then why was God not wrathful when they grumbled several times previously about food and water and when they made a golden calf?

Even if this was a wrathful God, I would put it down to frayed nerves; they had pressed his buttons so often with their ingratitude that even God would snap. This was a self-goal, a self-inflicted suffering brought by the people of Israel; they bit the hand that fed them now the snakes did the biting.

It is interesting to note whom they approached for relief; they go to Moses. They were too ashamed to go to God whom they should have accused of “attempted murder.” (21:5) Moses knew what to do and whom to approach. He goes to God in prayer. One can only imagine the prayer that Moses made. It was a prayer that he said several times in forty years for a people who never knew gratitude.

Read the text carefully. This time, God does not take away the cause of pain and death, namely the serpent. He simply provided a solution for death but only IF THEY CHOSE TO LOOK IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. This is no longer a God providing a quick fix aid for sin. Sin is a serious business. Sin is the serpent we brought into the world by the choices we made.

God is a holy God; he did not provide serpents rather he provided the garden of goodness. We chose the wrong tree and invited the serpent to bite us. God is not vengeful. If He was so then he would have never provided the instrument of salvation that saves us from death; Jesus on the cross.

The cross without Jesus is merely an instrument of shame; criminals were nailed to it. The cross with Jesus hanging on it is an instrument of Salvation; Our Lord hung on it. Our sin was nailed to the cross so that looking at the cross we may be saved. Yet the sting of death may be preferred by many rather than gazing at the instrument of salvation. No one can force us to accept this truth, but should we do then we have to choose to look in the right direction when we sin. Look to Jesus on the cross.

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No free pass at Lent – Monday, 5th week in Lent – Daniel 13:41-62/ John8:1-11

We tend to repeat our sins because we commit them behind closed doors. No one has seen what we have done and so the shame of our sin eludes us. But if we were caught in the act of sin, we would wish the earth would open and swallow us so that we would not have to face the shame of what we have done.

A woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. The Bible is sensitive, her name is not mentioned unlike the unmerciful on WhatsApp today.  For this woman, this was not just a matter of shame it was a death sentence. The law of Moses mandated death for adultery; such was the gravity of the sin and the desire to protect the sanctity of the institution of marriage. Today, infidelity would at the most, cause an eyebrow to be raised not a head to be chopped off.

We know from Chapter 7 of the Gospel of John that Jesus has come to the temple for the third time. It was the feast of Tabernacles. The religious authority made their hate for Jesus quite clear and they had murderous thoughts that they wished to inflict on Jesus.

Today’s text tells us that Our Lord has spent the night in the Garden of Gethsemane. This must have been his go-to place when he came to Jerusalem. It is here that he spent his last night before his passion and death. Judas knew Jesus’ go-to place in Jerusalem. He had no problem finding Jesus when he betrayed him. To get there Jesus would have left Jerusalem by one of the Eastern gates and crossed the Kidron valley. We are told that he returns to the temple early the next morning where he teaches in the temple.

They bring him a woman (it could be a man; it could be you or me) caught in the act of committing adultery. Public shame and a religiously sanctioned death now await her. Ironically, even though she was caught in the act of committing adultery her partner in sin seemed to have conveniently disappeared. Now she is paraded before Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees with a clear intent to ‘trap him.’

They want to know what Jesus thinks of the law of Moses that ‘permitted them to stone her to death.’ The law of Moses did sanction death for adultery, but it never sanctioned the manner of death that they claim Moses gave them. In any case, this was a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-dont situation. The religious sanction of death had been suspended by the Romans and appropriated as a civil right that could be enforced only by the Romans. If Jesus fell in line with the law of Moses, he would have broken Roman law and if he condoned the woman’s sin to any lesser penalty then the accusation of the Jews, that Jesus had come to change the law and the prophets, would ring true. The author of life is being asked to sanction death.

“Let he who is without sin, be the first to cast a stone” is not just a clever answer that helped Jesus get out of a rock and a hard place. Our Lord is addressing both, the frailty of life that succumbs to sin and even more, the reality of religious arrogance that points fingers knowing that their very lives are sinful. We are told that Jesus, bent over and writing on the ground, straightens up to straighten the self-righteous religious leaders.  The Pharisees and the scribes walk away. It’s a walk of shame led by the elders.

Jesus is left with the woman. The circle of shame that surrounded her has disappeared. This was her opportunity to make ‘her case,’ and defend her sinful action; she was tricked by the man, this was her first time, and this happened by mistake. Yet she says none of this. She stands in her shame before one who has not shamed her but saved her.

Scripture tells us that Jesus who has still been writing in the ground straightens up again but this time not to straighten her but to look at her straight in the eye. He offers her forgiveness but not a free pass. She is to sin no more.

Lent is that time when the circle of shame is lifted and you stand face to face with Jesus but Lent is not a time when we get a free pass. Like the woman, we are to sin no more.

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We serve not a cause but a cross – Fifth Sunday in Lent – Year B – Jeremiah 31:31-34/ John 12:20-30

The Gospel of today is a little more than the halfway mark of the Gospel of John. John has 21 chapters and we are in chapter 12 and Jesus has entered Jerusalem (12:12). Unlike the synoptic Gospel where the triumphant entry of Christ is towards the three fourth mark of the Gospel, John places it almost in the middle.

Today’s Gospel is the last public teaching of Jesus before his death. Look carefully and it Palm Sunday when Jesus teaches this text. In chapter 13 Jesus washes the feet of the disciples (found only in this Gospel) and then proceeds to deliver a very long ‘farewell discourse only to the twelve. This discourse spans from chapter 13 to 18.

The Gospel of John has recalled for us the raising of Lazarus and we know that because ‘the crowds’ ‘believed in him’, the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish religious body, plotted to kill him. Interestingly, they justify his death, “it is better that one man die for the nation than have the whole nation destroyed.” (11:50).

Jesus is in the temple and has now got the Jewish religious authorities all riled up. Verse 19 of our text has the Pharisees exclaim in horror, “look the world has gone after him.” Don’t put this down to mere sour grapes. The Jewish religious authorities were walking a tight rope with their Roman overlords. The Chief Priest himself was a Roman appointee and the one flash point that would bring the might of the Romans down on them was talk of a liberator; a Messiah.

The Gospel of today tells us that there were Gentiles who approached Jesus. We are told they are Greek. It was not uncommon for Gentiles to travel to Jerusalem. The temples outer court was called the court of the Gentiles. Perhaps these Greeks had come to the temple but it is not the temple they now seek but the Lord of the temple. We may build beautiful houses of worship but never seek the Lord in whose name we have built it.

The Gospel does not tell us if they are granted a private audience through the good offices of Philip and Andrew but it does tell us that it prompted Jesus to teach publicly for the last time. At Canna, Jesus told his mother, “My hour has not yet come.” Now in 12:23 Jesus tells us that ‘the hour” has come. He speaks of it as the hour when he is to be ‘glorified’.

On reading the passion of Christ, none of it sounds like glory; it is suffering in its worst form. It is futile to approach this text with our human mind, rather with the mind of God. We seek human glory that has crowns and castles; Jesus sought to win the favour of the Father with a crown of thorns and a cross. HE sought to do the will of his father.

That ‘will’, is spelt out in this last public teaching. It is the will of humility and obedience. The grain of wheat is to fall to the ground in order to produce fruit. It is the will that demands that we chose to be nothing in order to become everything for God. It is a will that demands that we hate our life (to be understood as love less) in order to love God more. It is a will that demands a life of service to cross rather than a life of service to a cause. It is to this ‘glory’ that we work and it is this life of glory’ that pleases the father.

Christ made no bones about his hour of glory. It took him to a cross; it nailed him to a cross and he made an instrument of shame into the instrument of glory. What you wear around your neck is not an ornament but an advertisement and a testimony of your faith. Wear it with pride

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Shooting the messenger does not kill the message – Saturday, 4th Week in Lent – Jeremiah 11:18-20/John7:40-52

Reading the prophets of the Old Testament in our New Testament times can often be hard, especially when we apply our understanding of life to this text. When we read texts such as the first reading from the prophet Jeremiah, we may conclude that the prophets often sound petty, harsh, vengeful and wrathful. But dig deeper, go beyond the surface of a text, read more and discern the context and your mind opens up entirely.

For six centuries before Jeremiah, God kept his covenant with his people. They had a clear understanding in place, one that God repeated several times to them and one that is repeated in this very chapter of Jeremiah, ‘You shall be my people and I will be your God.’ (11:4) But we know that they chose Ba’al (vs 17) the lord of dung or the god of flies. (humans seem to have a brilliant sense of choice even when what they choose is the lord of dung)

It is in this context that Jeremiah is sent by God. He is plucked against his will from a non-descript town of Anathoth to prophecy to a people who, as we know from this text, plot to kill him. The text of today pops at you even if you don’t want it to; the comparisons to the life of Jesus are in your face.

Both Jeremiah and Jesus are sent by God with a message. The message does not begin with destruction it begins with a call to come back, to make restitution for a broken covenant; at its heart, it was a message of love. Was the message harsh to hear? All messages of warning are harsh to the ones who have broken that law. Both Jeremiah and Jesus were rejected by their own; Jeremiah’s people from Anathoth wanted to kill him (verse 21) Jesus came to his own and his own did not accept him, they rejected him and finally killed him.

Shoot the messenger all you want, the truth of the message stays. This is a lesson we ought to learn because wishing God’s message away and pretending we got rid of the messenger does not stay the hand of God in executing his anger.

Is God’s wrathful response justified? Is wrath becoming of a loving God? Would you not be if your love was spurned for six centuries? Would you not be if all you did over six centuries was to send messengers hoping for a reconciliation? Would you not be if all you got in return was the plotting of your innocent prophets and the death of your son? Don’t arrive too quickly at a shallow accusation that God is vengeful at heart; it speaks poorly of your shallow approach to the divine.

Interestingly we also hear in our closing verse the lament of Jeremiah. This text, by the way, is the first of six such laments of Jeremiah. In this lament which is identified by the words, “for to you I have committed my cause” (yes it sounds familiar..into your hands I commend my spirit). In this lament of verse 20, we hear Jeremiah ask for retribution (verse 20) against those who conspired against him (verse 9). Does that make a prophet, a holy man of God sound petty?

What I take away from this text is not that which sounds petty (attempted murder is not petty) but his approach to those who wanted to kill him. Jeremiah did not become judge, jury and executioner. He did not execute his brand of justice on them, he rather left it to God. There are several people whom you understandably have murderous thoughts against. Take your case to God and leave it there. Vengeance is mine says the Lord (Romans 12:19).

When you read this text, don’t get caught up with our understanding of it but look at it from God’s eyes.

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