3rd Sunday of Lent – Year C (March 7th 2010)
March 1, 2010 by Fr John SJ
Filed under Gospel Reflections
3rd Sunday of Lent – Year C (March 7th) – Reflections by Fr Nick King SJ
Readings: Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15 Psalm 103:1-4, 6-8, 11 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12 Luke 13:1-9
One thing that should happen in the course of our Lenten journey is that we should grow in our understanding of God; our attention, that is to say, should be on God, not on ourselves, and our own wretched progress in sanctity.
It is appropriate, therefore, that next Sunday’s first reading gives us the splendid picture of Moses encountering God in the burning bush, and, in the same breath, receiving his vocation to be God’s instrument of liberation for the oppressed people of God. Moses is in exile, having had the misfortune to commit murder, and looking after the sheep of his father-in-law, who is certainly not a worshipper of the true God. Moses is at first enticed by the remarkable phenomenon of the bush, and the fact that it was not consumed by the fire; but he must go deeper than that. The first lesson that Moses has to learn is about the need for obedience: “Moses, Moses”, comes the cry, to which he responds, with the generosity that we all need to imitate, “here I am”, meaning, of course, “I am ready for whatever you want”. The second lesson is about the holiness of God; and Moses is instructed to give symbolic expression to that holiness by taking off his sandals, because (and here Moses is taken deeper into the mystery) “I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. Moses’ response is entirely appropriate: God does not simply stop there, however, with a selfish wish to be noticed. God seeks always to make things better. Moses must now learn his vocation; he is to be God’s agent of liberation for his fellow-Israelites. And that in turn takes him back into the mystery of God; what, he wants to know, is the name of this “God of the ancestors”? Then comes the utterly mysterious, yet compelling, response, “I AM WHO I AM”. That is not the answer to his problem, only an invitation to further enquiry.
The psalm for next Sunday is a familiar passage, from one of the loveliest of all psalms, circling round this mystery of God. “Bless YHWH, my soul”, it begins, and reverently contemplates the mystery of the one who “pardons all your iniquities, delivers your life from the Pit…does acts of justice, and judgements for all who are oppressed.” Moses gets a mention, of course, but above all God is “merciful and gracious…slow to anger and mighty in love”. This is a God to get to know.
In the second reading for next Sunday, Paul performs a remarkable feat, re-reading the story of Moses and the Exodus in the light of Jesus (“they were baptised into Moses…all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink…and the Rock was Christ”). So for us, getting to know God means also getting to know Christ; but that means we have to watch out; “so let the person who thinks they stand firm watch out that they do not fall!”.
The story recounted in next Sunday’s gospel appears only in Luke. It too has something to say about the knowledge of God. Jesus has evidently been asked certain awkward questions about the fate of various characters who have suffered horrible fates: being blasphemously treated by Pilate (as Jesus himself will also be) and being killed in a construction-site disaster. Jesus will not allow us the lazy belief in a God who allows that kind of happening as a punishment for those who desire it. However, we have to pay attention to God, and the gospel warns us, in the starkest possible terms, that we have to repent, which means to “turn it around”, make our lives as close as possible to what God had in mind. God is, the argument goes, extremely patient; but we have no right to rely complacently on that patience. And to make that point, Jesus retells a story that has been told many times before in the history of Israel, of the tree that does not produce food. The landowner wants to cut it down as useless, but the farmer pleads for “one more year” for him to “dig round it and put down manure”. However after that, the farmer concedes that “if it does not [produce fruit] – you will chop it down”. Getting to know God is not necessarily the comfortable option. But it is better than the opposite.
