Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
RCL – Proper 27 C – Sunday 07 November 2010
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38
By the mouth of the prophet Haggai, God tells us; My spirit abides among you; do not fear.
These days, I frequently read a French translation of the Bible that attempts to cleave more closely to Hebraic literary styles. This translation (by the late French Jew Andre Chouraqui) has Haggai’s message as (my translation in English);
My breath rises within you, quiver not.
I will ruminate this godly entreaty as we consider our readings today.
And I enjoin you; let God’s breath rise within you!
Quiver not, for God’s desire is to make us all his children, and heirs of his Kingdom. The way is laid out before us: live into the Holy Spirit’s sanctification, believe in the truth, and follow Jesus.
The Beloved says: My breath rises within you, quiver not.
*****
Today’s gospel recounts one of the many instances of challenge and riposte in Jesus’ journey. The public challenge is usually a crafty presentation of a situation with a question. The question is usually designed to stump the one who is challenged or to force him to expose flaws in his thinking. It’s another honor transaction where the winner gains honor and the loser gets shamed.
Jesus comes out of this instance of challenge and riposte with heightened credibility and honor in the eyes of the onlookers. And as is often the case, Jesus uses his riposte to not only shame the would-be shamers but also to teach the teachable who are witnessing the challenge.
This time, it is the Sadducees who offer him a challenge. It can’t always be the Pharisees who get cast as the bad guys! The Sadducees were a priestly group, an aristocratic sect associated with the leadership of the Temple in Jerusalem. They and the Pharisees didn’t always see eye to eye. But they agreed on the opinion that Jesus was a troublemaker that Jesus needed to be curbed.
In today’s encounter, the Sadducees hope their challenge will force Jesus to make a response that shows gaping cracks in his teaching about resurrection (which the Sadducees did not believe in).
Jesus’ response silences his sadducean dissenters; but not before Jesus also opens up the glory of our hope as children of God.
God tells us: My breath rises within you, quiver not.
*****
Jesus tells us about the age to come. In the age to come, we are like angels and are children of God, we are children of the resurrection, we cannot die anymore.
But Jesus does not deflower the mystery of this age to come. How we are to be resurrected, when, and in what form, is not revealed in this text. Our fully human Saviour does not attempt to wear out the mystery of God’s actions.
Yet, Jesus assures us that all those “deemed worthy“ of adoption by God will be alive to God. In case you missed it, in this text, we are kept wondering whether we will be adopted or not.
I take comfort in the expression “deemed worthy”. It speaks to me of God exercising judgement beyond a legalistic assessment of whether I am actually worthy or not. If God deems me to be worthy, that will be good enough. And what I believe about God makes me think that God will exercise a lot of leniency in that “deeming” whether we are worthy or not.
And remember, sacraments such as baptism and the Eucharist, in which we will take part shortly, renew to us the generous offer of God’s grace to us, the ongoing offer of our adoption, the grace of our salvation. God ardently desires us to be saved.
Still, we are always left free to live into that grace, or not. God desires us to live in Him forever. Indeed, that is our purpose. And God continuously works on our souls to enable us to live into that purpose.
One needs to be awe-struck at such a magnanimous God who gives us utter freedom and yet shows concern and constant love for God’s creatures. Hopefully, we keep giving our full assent to God’s working in us and we fully collaborate in his generous design.
But often enough, I’m afraid to say, it seems to me God has to work on my soul even despite myself.
But our Lord says: My breath rises within you, quiver not.
*****
There are ways, though, to help us participate in the wonder of God saving our souls. The beauty of contemplative prayer, for example, is to help us to consent to God’s working in us. Such prayer reminds us to keep intending to be present to God’s presence. It asks us to keep our awareness on this moment in which God is actively at work through us whether we feel it or not. It asks us to return again and again to consenting to that presence and that action. It is an image of the journey of ongoing conversion.
*****
In Luke’s gospel today, Jesus also suggests that human institutions, even very good ones, are only transitory instruments of our salvation. Mariage is certainly not condemned here but neither is it made to be an eternal truth. No human institution is to curtail the eternal grace of God. We are to work out our purpose in this age, maybe through its existing institutions. But neither the present age nor any of its institutions are to become the object of our adoration; no matter how profitable to our souls they may seem to us.
Don’t get too attached to your “dream life” as you dream it in the here and now. God’s dream for us is likely immeasurably bigger and different than most of it anyway.
We are to unflinchingly focus on God’s desire not ours. We need to remain oriented to God and let God lead us in all things. We are to embrace our adoption here and now; that we may enjoy it forever in God.
Our God says: My breath rises within you, quiver not.
*****
In studying today’s gospel throughout the week, I found yet another hopeful gift to me. I realized that we cannot but imagine God’s coming age in terms of our own experience of time.
And God doesn’t need time, one of God’s nifty creations, for the coming age to be present to God. God is God not of the dead, but of the living. Already in the time of Moses, Jesus reminds us, forebears of Israel were alive to God. It is only in my present experience of time that the age to come seems to lay in the future. The age to come is already actual and present to God.
And if, as myself, you hope that some of your bygone beloved are forever adopted in God, it is a consoling concept to imagine them currently alive to God and interceding for us to become worthy of such adoption.
*****
So, in one single answer to the Sadducees of his time, Jesus has rejected our anxiety to figure out God’s rising Kingdom. And all the while, Jesus is flinging open the gates of a wondrous adoption to eternal life in God. Thanks be to God for the stupendous offer that is always before us.
The Lover of All Souls says: My breath rises within you, quiver not.
*****
Let us finish with the Apostle Paul’s prayer on behalf of his Thessalonian flock:
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word. (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)
Amen.
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