As we get closer to Holy Week there is a sense of growing tension in every encounter that Jesus has. He is challenged on every level and his responses only add to the confusion of his hearers. Today he makes a very simple appeal: if you don’t believe in me, at least believe in what I am doing.
If I am not doing my Father’s work, there is no need to believe me; but if I am doing it, then even if you refuse to believe in me, at least believe in the work I do; then you will know for sure that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.’
The complexity of so many situations in the world today has focused our attention on governments and their leaders. I think there are many who serve us in public office who would want us to believe in them. We’ve grown weary of some styles of leadership and are less than impressed with what they do. In short, we don’t believe in them or what they do.
The words of Jesus challenge us to live in such a way that others can see God at work in us. Sometimes this will be through the practical things that we do. Sometimes it will be through the subtlety of inner work. One can help the other.
How can you live so that others can see God’s work in you?
Using the responsorial psalm verse as a repeated prayer or mantra can often be a very helpful way into the Liturgy of the Word. It’s especially helpful today as the theme of covenant links our readings. God’s faithfulness to us and our faithfulness to God is the foundational to the story of our salvation. We can trace a path through the Scriptures of God’s desire to reach out in love to the whole of humanity.
In the first reading from Genesis God pledges his faithfulness to Abraham:
I will establish my Covenant between myself and you, and your descendants after you, generation after generation, a Covenant in perpetuity, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
Time and time again God will remind the people of Israel of this bond.
In the Gospel today Jesus confounds his hearers by declaring ‘before Abraham came to be, I AM.’ The Pharisees hear this literally. What Jesus is saying is that every covenantal promise made to Abraham and every generation thereafter comes to fulfilment in Him. This is blasphemy to their ears. It’s easy to scapegoat the Pharisees and pat ourselves on the back because we can grasp what Jesus is saying. The invitation to the Pharisees and to us today is one and the same: live lives of faithfulness and love that the world may believe.
In the remaining days of Lent how can you live in faithfulness?
In much of John’s Gospel Jesus speaks to people who struggle to understand him. He speaks figuratively and his hearers assume he is being concrete. We, however, are so used to quotations from the Gospels and usually can grasp their meaning.
‘If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples, you will learn the truth and the truth will make you free.’
From our vantage point, the quotation from today’s Gospel could be seen as the Gospel in microcosm:
inhabit the Scriptures, grow in discipleship, learn the truth, experience freedom.
Our starting place is so clear. Get to know the Scriptures, make them your home and feel at home with them. This is a very personal journey. In every page of the Scriptures God speaks to our hearts.
Use your Bible today. Find your favourite quotations.
Each year as we get closer to Holy Week I find that the readings are a little more complex than those we read in the early weeks of Lent. The texts from John’s Gospel ask a little more of me. John writes in a register which I feel requires me to hold together several layers of meaning at once.
Today’s first reading from Numbers is the story of the people being bitten by snakes in the wilderness. Moses fashions a bronze serpent, holds it up and whoever looks upon it lives. Whatever we might think of the likelihood of this happening, the point the story is the power of God to heal and save.
Moses’ holding up the serpent links directly with John’s important theological idea of Jesus being ‘lifted up’ on the cross. Jesus is presented as the one who brings healing through suffering and glory. When Jesus is lifted up people will see that his claims about his close relationship with his Father are true.
In today’s Gospel the Pharisees are determined to trap Jesus. The Pharisees are studiers of the Law in all its beauty and power. They want to see the way ahead, but just can’t. They take Jesus literally when he speaks. This isn’t quite enough.
Jesus changes tack and speaks of his relationship with his Father. In the most intimate of language we hear that Jesus and the Father are one and that Jesus does ‘what pleases him.’ The Pharisees still can’t understand.
‘what the Father has taught me is what I preach; he who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself, for I always do what pleases him.’
Doing what pleases God is a hard daily task. The Jesuits have a helpful way of looking at this and speak of ‘wanting to want what God wants’. I can manage this.
This is perhaps one of the most tender encounters in all of the Gospels. We picture the uncomfortable scene of a woman brought by the Pharisees to Jesus. In the eyes of the crowd she is in disgrace. But Jesus diffuses a situation, shifting the focus away from the woman and writing in the dust. With this simple action he makes space for the woman. He makes a frightening situation safe for her. We will never know what he wrote. And this, for me, makes the encounter all the more tender.
The sense of tenderness and safety is echoed so clearly in Psalm 22, today’s responsorial Psalm. There are so many words of comfort:
Jesus then stands before the woman as an embodiment of all of these words.
As I reflect on the story I find myself wondering where I stand. Do I stand with the crowd? Do I stand with Jesus? Do I stand with the woman? Do I stand with the teachers of the law and the Pharisees?
Although I’d like to imagine myself always standing with Jesus and the woman, I need to acknowledge those times when judgment looms large for me. Lent gives us the chance to look again at our assumptions and judgments.
‘The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, let him go free.’
I come to today’s Gospel with several strands which have resisted being woven together. This is undoubtedly a message for me. I offer you each strand.
This week we find ourselves standing with Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus. In their despair and loss they have called upon the help of their friend, Jesus. When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, Martha says to him;
‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died, but I know that, even now, whatever you ask of God, he will grant you.’
I hear in Martha’s words both sorrow and hope. The weaving together of real anguish and hope is something which runs throughout salvation history. One of the things which shaped the people of Israel was learning to deal with disappointment and desolation.
I am put in mind of one of my favourite parts of the Triduum liturgy where on Holy Saturday, at Office of Readings, we listen to this text from Lamentations:
‘The favours of the Lord are not all past, nor his kindnesses exhausted; every morning they are renewed; great is his faithfulness.’
‘My portion is the Lord says’ my soul, ‘and so I will hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those who trust him, to the soul that searches for him. It is good to wait in silence for the Lord to save.
A cantor sings the descant line and the melody is played on a tenor recorder. It is a hauntingly beautiful combination. Every word is poignant. Sometimes all that is left to us is to wait in silence for the Lord to save.
If we imagine ourselves journeying with the catechumens in the Early Church, the time of our baptism is drawing very near. In baptism we will join Christ in the tomb. When we emerge from the waters our new spirit-filled life will begin. Lazarus’ story is pointing us to Christ.
Hearing this story at this point in Lent serves most obviously to foreshadow Christ’s death and resurrection. It also offers us in Martha and Mary two models for our faith journey. Their friendship with Jesus is something which has always exercised my imagination. They must have seen him at his best and at his worst. It strikes me that they are both real with him.
And now to Lazarus- unlike his sisters, he doesn’t speak at all John’s Gospel. We are left to listen to the silences. People speculate as to why his two sisters lived at home with him. Did he need their care in a particular way? Why was it that Jesus gave him such special attention?
Do we ever consider what it was like for Lazarus to come back to life? His sisters may have wanted this, but did he? I am haunted by the last line of Elizabeth Jennings’ poem:
A View from Lazarus
See he is coming from the tomb. His eyes Need shelter from the light. We crowd and press Towards him, some say nothing. One or two Whisper. Others look afraid but stare, Most turn their eyes away. Such a strange Light is coming from behind the man Brought back from death and coughing in the breeze. One by one his senses set to work To ease this man to us. A look of loss Shows on his features but he does not speak. Some begin to question him about What dying felt like and how he did break Back to us. He can relive our doubt,
But he seems dumb and we don’t want to make His rising difficult although we long To look back at the glimmering kingdom he Has left, if Paradise is there But is not for the snatching. Lazarus now Opens his eyes and it’s at us he stares As if we all were strangers. Then it’s odd, But we feel we should stop talking. Lazarus is, Yes no doubt of it, now shedding tears, And whispering quietly, God, O no, dear God.
Lazarus needs the help of those around him to unbind him. His bound hands cannot do the unbinding. Who comes forward first? Does Jesus help? Do they start with his hands or his face first?
Are there things in your own life that need unbinding? Who can help you?
‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High.’
Do you ever stop and wonder how different our faith might be if Jesus had just appeared on earth, fully grown and ready to start his mission? We would lose a great deal in terms of our understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation. There would be no need for Mary or Joseph or visits from angels.
When Luke tells the story of the Incarnation he paints a scene for us with a few sentences and over the centuries artists have supplied the things that the text doesn’t tell us. Whether it is a stylised icon depiction of Mary poised and assured or a contemporary scene of Mary in her kitchen, the artist captures this defining moment in salvation history.
Mary’s ‘yes’ is our ‘yes’ too. Our whole faith journey, begun at baptism, is an invitation to say ‘yes’ to God. Every small ‘yes’ has the potential to prepare us for a big ‘Yes’. All we can do is try to be open and ready to do what is asked.
As we move closer to Holy Week tension begins to mount in our Gospel readings. Today this tension is mirrored in the First Reading from the Book of Wisdom and the Psalm. The text from the Book of Wisdom lays out for us a familiar dynamic where virtue and goodness can be experienced as a threat and judgment:
‘Before us he stands, a reproof to our way of thinking, the very sight of him weighs our spirits down; his way of life is not like other men’s, the paths he treads are unfamiliar.’
There’s a grim truth to be acknowledged that human beings can sometimes want to bring down the good rather than learn from them.
In the Gospel Jesus is portrayed as the archetypal ‘virtuous man’. He is sent by the Father and nothing can shake his internal conviction of the path he must follow. The strength of his conviction angers those who oppose him. It can be hard for us to think ourselves into the position of those who oppose Christ. We like to think that we would never be party to this.
Perhaps for us the dynamic is more subtle. Lent invites us to examine our hearts and our motivations and to seek God’s mercy.
Have we blocked the path that others were following? Have we subtly made it difficult for others to succeed?
In today’s reading from Exodus God challenges Moses about the creation of a golden calf. Moses tries to defend the people and makes appeal to a tradition that stretches far back in biblical memory:
‘Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your servants to whom by your own self you swore and made this promise: I will make your offspring as many as the stars of heaven, and all this land which I promised I will give to your descendants, and it shall be their heritage for ever.’
Memory plays a key part in our life of faith. On a personal level we have the memory of the gifts and promises in our own faith journey, on a communal level we come together in worship to remember and relive our shared faith story. We ritualise those key moments so that they are placed firmly in our collective memory.
There is no doubt that the experience of the pandemic will be lodged in our collective memory. In time studies will be written and perhaps theories proposed. Certain memories will fade and some will remain clear. It may be too early for us to recognise this, but God is speaking every bit as clearly to us now as he did to the Israelites in the desert.
Each year in Lent the Church gives us the opportunity to revisit the story of our salvation. It’s a story of faith and great ideals, of times of bitter disappointment and the utmost courage. In the first readings in our weekday lectionary we are invited to identify with the people of Israel. God chooses a people to be the bearers of hope and light. God chooses a people to a beacon of faithful love. Their initial hope and courage is tested to its limits when they find themselves in Exile. Just when they feel that every last glimmer of hope is lost Isaiah paints a vision of a joyful return to Jerusalem. After years of soul wearying waiting God declares that now is the ‘day of salvation.’ Into the depths of their despair and fear of abandonment, God speaks words of hope:
Does a mother forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you.
Given the situations in our world today it may take more than our usual courage to hear Isaiah’s words and to know that this is a message for our times. We may not be able to influence the world situation, but every small gestures of hope in God’s promise can strengthen us in heart and mind.
Where in your own life do you most need to hear God say: ‘At the favourable time I will answer you, on the day of salvation I will help you.’ ?
