Faith

Crippling faith- Tuesday, 4th Week of Lent- John 5: 1-16

Announce a ‘healing service’ in your Church and you will have to provide for many more chairs. Lead your congregation in prayer before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and you may have to take away a couple of benches. Ironic but true! The gospels don’t mince words, “its a wicked generation that wants a sign.” The gospel of John teaches us that Jesus’ words are the real source of faith and not the signs (John 4:50).

Let’s look at some of the issues that this Gospel raises. Why did Jesus choose this cripple? Why not the rest? We are told that ‘many invalids’ lay there (5:3) and there were great ‘crowds’ (5:13). What about the intention of the cripple? He does not seem to even want to be healed! To Jesus’ question, “do you want to be made well”, he launches into his problems (sounds like us) rather than a direct yes that should have been on the lips of one suffering for “thirty eight years”.

Clearly this cripple was ungrateful, if not a coward. He does not know who Jesus is, but does not care to ask.  When confronted by the Jewish authorities, he blames Jesus; thus deflecting and absolving himself from breaking the law, by carrying his mat. On being found by Jesus who cautions him not to sin again, he rushes to the Jews to tattle that it was Jesus who healed him, thus revealing his identity and consequent ‘persecution of Jesus by the Jews.’

So why choose an ungrateful, un-cooperative, scheming cripple when there was so many that Jesus could heal. The miracle narrative is part of a greater text (5: 1-47), and serves merely as an ‘occasion for a discourse on Jesus’ relationship to the Father and His power to give life.’ In simple words, the ‘sign’ or miracle as we would call it, is merely a tool to discuss a larger issue, namely the divinity and nature of Christ’s words and actions. In this case, the Lord is calling us to believe in HIS WORDS AND NOT LIVE FOR MIRACULOUS ACTIONS!

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Faith

Miracle at lunch time- Monday, 4th Week of Lent- John 4: 43-54

 Yes, the gospel is precise! “Yesterday at one in the afternoon, the fever left him” and with those words, the royal official realized that this was a lunchtime miracle. We are told that this royal official and his whole household believed. So who was this royal official? If he was ‘royal’, we can only surmise that he was a member of Herod Antipas’ family; the very man who put John the Baptist to death. Why would Jesus help an official from the household of His cousins’ killer?

But Jesus was no stranger to helping those who were considered His enemies. Take a look at the preceding verse of the same chapter. Jesus had encountered the Samaritan woman at the well and then stayed two full days in her village; shockingly as their guest! It was the Samaritan folk who acknowledged Him to be, “truly the saviour of the world.” That’s not all, John 4:41, the very chapter from where our text is taken, tells us that these ‘traditional enemies of the Jews’ had believed in Jesus because of His WORD.

So what’s common so far? BELIEF in Jesus’ WORD!  The Royal official asked Jesus to make a physical trip to Capernaum to heal his son.  To the official’s request to ‘come’, the official was told ‘go’; and in faith he believed and went. ‘MANY Samaritans’ (verse 39) believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony BUT (verse 41) ‘MANY MORE’ believed in Him because of His WORD.

Now let’s come to our text where we are told that Jesus heads from Samaria to Cana in Galilee. He has testified (verse 44) that a prophet has no honour in his own country and now He does the strangest thing; He goes back to his ‘own country’, Galilee. Surprise, Surprise! Unlike His own prediction in verse 43 of not being received with honour in ‘his own country’, we are told one verse later (verse 45) that the Galileans WELCOMED Him. Now why would Jesus contradict himself?

The answer lies in the same verse. The Galileans ‘welcomed Him’ not because they BELIEVED (like the royal official) or that they accepted His WORD (Like the Samaritans) they ‘welcomed Him’ because they had ‘seen the miracles He had done in Jerusalem during the festival for they were there too.’ It is for this reason that the words of Jesus stand true in condemnation of His ‘own people’, for they welcomed Him merely for the ‘signs and wonders’ He performed and not because they ‘believed in Him’ per se ( verse 48).

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Faith

Heading into the LIGHT direction- 4th Sunday in Lent – John 3:14-21

This text forms part of the discourse that Jesus has with Nicodemus. It begins with 3:1 and extends to 3:21. The Gospel text of today brings to a close this discourse between Jesus and Nicodemus. It is to Nicodemus that Jesus quotes these lines that have become the much loved central message of Christian life. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

God did not just give us ‘a son’; if He did, our salvation would never have taken place. He gave us ‘His Son’ to be our Saviour with a clear mandate that believing in Him we would have eternal life. Not only is the Son given but His purpose is set clear. Just as the purpose of commanding Moses to erect a serpent on a pole was to save the people from death so also believing in Jesus, the world will have life and death will be defeated.  

John 3: 16 is Jesus’ big announcement; that He came to save us all, at God’s bidding. All this happened because God loves the world.  It is as if Jesus is saying, ‘I’m here because the God who loved you of old, still does. He sent me to tell you, to show you, to gather you up into life with him forever.’

But this saving action on the part of God also has a demand. We are called to believe in the Son’s name so that we may not be condemned. The love of God also demands that we walk in the light and not live as children of the darkness. In short, believing in Jesus must involve a change of heart; a movement from darkness to light.

As Christians, the question that crosses our mind is, can we really stay neutral in the midst of wrongdoing? Should we fight this rapidly growing darkness that threatens to constantly invade our life?  For St John, belief in Jesus cannot be a neutral decision. A Christian is called to make a choice between believe and dis-believe, between the darkness and the light and between succumbing to evil and doing what is true.

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Faith

Artist: David LaChapelle

When sinners go marching in- Saturday, 3rd Week of Lent – Luke 18:9-14

Jesus makes clear who the intended audience is and He categories them into three sections; those who trusted in themselves, those who were righteous and those who regarded others with contempt.  The Biblical passage is strewn with little clues and gems and one has to look for them to see both, the clear meaning that lies in each parable and the little details that help narrate the characters in the parable.

The parable has two characters that enter and exit differently. The Pharisee takes a place in the temple in avoidance of anyone else; he is as we are told “standing by himself”. His very physical posture betrays the “righteous” class he believes himself to fall in and thus holds a belief of superiority. To make matters worse, his prayer is directed to God but in comparison to not an equal but what was considered in those days the worst; the tax collector.

The Pharisees fame to claim is that he is not “like other people” who are thieves, rogues, adulterers or tax collectors. Then he goes on to spell out his case of righteousness which includes his fast twice a week and a tithe of ALL his income.  Interestingly, the Pharisee speaks nothing about keeping the law for nowhere in the law was it required for one to fast twice a week; this was an introduction into Judaism based on human precepts. Interestingly also, while the law called for a tithe ( tenth of one income) it never called for a tithe of ALL of one’s income; for example there was no tithe require on property. It’s interesting to note that the righteous Pharisee had maintained human precepts more than he had kept the commandments of God, an accusation that Jesus makes often in the Gospels.    

The Tax collector on the other hand is not without guilt. Tax collectors were hated because they both connived with the Romans and then over taxed the people using the might of the Roman army as their cover.  The tax collectors words however were few, his actions were louder. He beat his breast as a sign of repentance for he truly desired forgiveness. He was aware of his own failing before God and shame loomed so large that he could not even “look to heaven”.

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Musings

Have I lost my reward?

Every odd season of Lent I feel led to fast for all the forty (six) days. It means eating a very light breakfast, a cup of tea for lunch and a frugal vegetarian meal for dinner. Perhaps you might ask yourself why am I telling you all this. Have I not read Matthew 5: 16? Haven’t I lost my reward?

I don’t fast for a reward and if I have lost it, so be it. The truth is that for forty six days, all that crosses my mind is food and all that I have chosen to give up in Lent. I am sure I share a very similar experience with many good Catholics as they fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Ironically, the minute you decide to fast, the thoughts of feasting creep in. How powerful is the human mind!

For a long time in my spiritual life, I used to chastise myself for focusing on food while fasting; I don’t any more. I have grown to accept this as part of the discipline of fasting. Yes, there are great spiritual benefits when you fast, great graces of God that you experience, but all of that is still dominated by the thoughts of food!

When Christ chastised satan, He used strong words when He said, “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God.” By saying that, Christ called us to focus on Him in the season of Lent. The season is not so much about what we don’t do or even about what we do, but about the reason behind the season. The focus is not on the sinner as much as it is about the Saviour.

Having said all that, I want to get back to food because I do believe that what we do not consume in Lent, we should also end up sharing with others, especially those in most need of it. In the parish of St Jude, Malad East, where I am a priest, we decided to share our meal with the hungry. We called these Sunday outreaches, ‘Lenten Lunches’.

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