Jesus starts his preaching ministry in his home town of Nazareth. He doesn’t start gently with an engaging story, but boldly he unrolls the Isaiah scroll and announces that these prophecies are being fulfilled.
A huge leap of faith is required on the part of the people in the synagogue. The people are being asked to believe that everything they have heard and read in the ancient prophecies is being fulfilled in the person of Jesus.
It’s little wonder his home town couldn’t accept his message. Jesus stands in a long line of prophets whose messaged disturbed and challenged.
We often long for prophetic voices, but don’t always recognise them when they come.
Who are the people who challenge you today? Who are the prophetic voices in your own life?
This week the Church lays before us a parable that can challenge and comfort us in equal measure. The parable of the Fig tree is particular to Luke and its message comes at a stage in Lent when my initial fervour is usually starting to wane a little.
A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it but found none. He said to the man who looked after the vineyard, ‘Look here, for three years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and finding none. Cut it down: why should it be taking up the ground?’ ‘Sir,’ the man replied ‘leave it one more year and give me time to dig round it and manure it: it may bear fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’
We have probably all had the experience of something that has flourished despite the fact that we didn’t give it the attention that it needed. Likewise some plants and shrubs can look as if they are dead and then they surprise us with a spurt of growth. The parable is in a slightly different mode, things aren’t being left to chance, there is oversight from the gardener and expectation from the vineyard owner. As with many parables, our instinct can be to work out which character represents God and to work from there. I am resisting doing this here and focusing instead on the gentleness and humility of the gardener. The gardener has his own methods. There is no overnight solution. The gardener knows his craft.
I am put in mind here of the Rule of St Benedict and his implicit teaching on mercy. In Chapters 27& 28 on the excommunicated St Benedict speaks of the Abbot being a wise physician. As any doctor would, he is to try a number of remedies. The abbot is to use ‘compresses, the ointment of encouragement, the medicine of divine Scripture.’ You get a real sense of Benedict being interested in the body and the soul. Drastic action can be needed for the good of the whole. Clearly one size does not fit all and the abbot is to adapt himself to each monk as is needed.
The more I turn this parable over in my heart and my mind, the more dimensions I discover. The phrase ‘leave it one more year’ resonates very much with me. A year speaks to me of several seasonal cycles, several opportunities for something to happen. I can see myself as the fig tree, the soil, the vineyard owner and the gardener. Each one of these says something to me about the opportunity for pruning and growth during Lent.
Are there situations in your own life that you are be invited to ‘leave one more year’?
My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours. But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.
These are some of my favourite verses from the Parable of the Lost Son. The father has in fact lost both of his sons. He has welcomed one son back with great festivity, but things won’t be whole or complete until all the family are together. The story leaves us hanging. It is such a powerful story both in what it says and what it leaves unsaid. Did it ever resolve?
Classically the parable is framed in terms of repentance and forgiveness. But Jewish New Testament Scholar, Amy J Levine, sees another strand: counting and searching. She sees the parable as a call to us to count and recognise those we have lost.
‘Recognize that the one you have lost may be right in your own household. Do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so that you can share the joy and so that the others will help prevent the recovered from ever being lost again. Don’t wait until you receive an apology; you may never get one. Don’t wait until you can muster the ability to forgive; you may never find it. Don’t stew in your sense of being ignored, for there is nothing that can be done to retrieve the past.
Instead, go have lunch. Go celebrate, and invite others to join you. If the repenting and the forgiving come later, so much the better. And if not, you still will have done what is necessary. You will have begun a process that might lead to reconciliation. You will have opened a second chance for wholeness. Take advantage of resurrection—it is unlikely to happen twice.’
— Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi by Amy-Jill Levine
Who or what are you called to search for this Lent?
Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46
In just one verse the writers of Genesis paint for us a scene that so easily strikes a chord. We can imagine the first time Joseph appears in his special coat. We can imagine the looks and the mutterings. We just know things aren’t going to turn out too well for anyone in this scene.
In the story of Joseph and his brothers there is outright deception, meanness and the uncomfortable feeling that Joseph may have been a bit of a show off. And yet, through all the twists and turns God’s promise prevails. Co-operation and forgiveness are required on the part of Joseph AND his brothers and then God supplies the rest. All twelve brothers avoid a severe famine and God’s plan inches a little further along.
Where can you see God’s promise in the twists and turns of your life?
Today’s Gospel of the Rich Man and Lazarus is part of a sequence of Luke’s exposition of Kingdom values. We meet the familiar theme of a reversal of the world’s ways. Grace and favour come to those whom the world forgets. The Rich Man is desperate for his own suffering to be eased. Abraham pays no heed and we hear some of the most chilling words in Luke’s Gospel:
‘…between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to stop anyone, if he wanted to, crossing from our side to yours, and to stop any crossing from your side to ours.’
The Rich Man hopes to protect his family from a similar fate.
Hearing this text in Lent sharpens the focus for us. Lent gives us the chance to examine our hearts and ask God to show us where the great gulfs are in our own lives.
How does this story speak to you today? Where are the gulfs in your own life?
We step off the Lenten path to celebrate the Feast of St Joseph. Unlike other saints in our calendar, we have no dates of his birth or death, whether from history or folklore. But what we do have is his silent belief in God’s promise.
The first reading from 2 Samuel reminds us of a turning point in Israel’s history. Up until this point God’s promises have been conditional, but now the dynasty is guaranteed in perpetuity. None of this is David’s doing. David is to be bound in relationship to the Lord: ‘I will be a father to him and he a son to me.’ The tender language of father and son always strikes me. God’s covenant is not a legal contract, but a relationship of love. As the story of salvation unfolds there are many falls from grace along the way. God’s promise remains.
Now Joseph enters the story of our salvation. He is perhaps the archetypal silent man. All that he needs to know God coveys to him in a dream. Dreams are sometimes spoken of as God’s forgotten language. Paying attention to our dreams is writ through our spiritual DNA. So many key biblical characters come close to God and God’s will through their visions and dreams.
Wash, make yourselves clean. Take your wrong-doing out of my sight. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, help the oppressed, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.
This is one of my favourite pieces of Hebrew poetry. It has a rhythm which makes it easy to memorise. It’s an uncompromising message and it’s meant to be. The prophet’s job is to see the world as God sees it. Isaiah is impatient with a way of living which compartmentalises worship and daily life: the two must go together. In just a few verses we have a whole programme for Gospel living.
Wash Take Cease Search Learn Help Be just Plead
In the Rule of St Benedict, Lent is seen as a time when we ‘wash away in this holy season the negligences of other times.’ It sounds a little gentler than Isaiah’s message, but the result can be the same.
Today in the first reading from Daniel the prophet looks back over Israel’s covenant relationship. He fully acknowledges that Israel has strayed far from God and to them ‘the look of shame belongs.’ Israel is now completely dependent on God’s mercy.
In the Gospel today Jesus invites his disciples to ‘be compassionate as your father iscompassionate.’ The love and mercy which is the essence of God in Daniel’s prayer is here held up for our imitation. We learn to be compassionate by expanding our hearts and our perceptions. We learn to be compassionate by being generous with all we have and are.
Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.
I have spent much of my monastic life as the monastery cellarer and I have learnt the importance of how I measure. In the monastic kitchen you are always making substitutes and adjustments. St Benedict is clear in his Rule that it is one of the cellarer’s jobs to make sure that there is enough for everyone. He evens goes to the trouble of instructing the cellarer to divide each monk’s portion of bread (a pound) so that it is spread out over the mealtimes.
And then we come to love. How easy it is for me to measure my love. Weighing things out to the last gram. The Gospel challenge for me today is to be the one who gives first and to that hope my full measure will run over.
Where is Christ calling you to give a full measure?
Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up the mountain to pray. As he prayed, the aspect of his face was changed and his clothing became brilliant as lightning.
Much of the spiritual life involves the following of a fairly ordinary path of joys and challenges, moments of insight and times of darkness. For some there will be a mountain-top experiences. For others there will be the stories of the mountain-top experiences of others.
In this week’s Gospel of the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John have a mountain-top experience. Some commentators suggest that the disciples’ experience of glory is a strengthening for Christ’s impending Passion. Other commentators think that this experience on Tabor might be a resurrection appearance which Luke has mistakenly inserted here. Either way the text presents us with mystery.
Jesuit, Jack Mahoney has speculated as to whether the Transfiguration may have taken place at night. Seeing the aspect of Jesus’ face change and his clothes becoming ‘brilliant’ would be all the more striking by night. The sleepiness of the disciples could easily be explained if this all happened at night.
I am always drawn to the fact that Jesus took with him those whom tradition considers his closest disciples. Though they didn’t and couldn’t understand what was happening, this mysterious experience would change them and bind them together. Lent offers us this experience too. It’s love which will transfigure us.
‘The Lord your God commands you today to observe these laws and customs; you must keep them with all your heart and all your soul.‘
The Book of Deuteronomy is a favourite of mine. Commentators have drawn my attention to the number of times the ‘heart’ is mentioned. What Deuteronomy offers is a way of the heart. Every thought, every action is to be directed towards God. The keeping of God’s commandments is something which frees us and expands our hearts.
Similar themes are echoed in Ps 118 today. Here we are invited to do God’s will and to seek him with all our hearts. The whole Psalm is a long meditation on the disposition of those who seek God alone.
If we want to keep God’s commands we need space in our hearts. Lent offers the chance to do this.
