Reflection
Lent is Coming
The God of Israel spoke to David through Nathan saying that He enjoyed putting his tent next to the people of Israel in the desert. How easy to listen to his people – parents loving one another and their young, hearing stories of His divine romance shared with children, prayers, a parent pointing out the pillars of fire at night or the cloud leading in the daytime. God was getting to know the new generation that would cross the Jordan.
Years later, those who know the story will prepare to welcome God among them into a beautiful temple. The glory of the Lord fills the house of the Lord. God whose now is forever, whose presence is the love that fills the space between us. For Israel what a time of joy. It is like when God covered Sinai in a cloud and Moses seized by God’s intimacy asks to see God but can not. Still the people hear in their memory the words of God to Moses, and to them,
“The Lord, the Lord a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…
Exodus 34:6
On Thursday, as we move through the beginning of the Book of Kings, we hear something not entirely surprising: ‘The Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel…he did not observe what the Lord commanded.’ He offered sacrifices to other gods. His heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. Israel the bride of God wandered away from their Bridegroom.The story ends with the kingdom divided, a division never healed; a story of human sinfulness never escaped.
The two days before Ash Wednesday we will read the beginning of the Letter of James, ‘…the sun withers the flower, its beauty perishes, so the way of the rich, they will wither away. (James 1:11).
Our gospels this week, like the first readings, are leading us to Lent. How privileged the disciples to see what they see as they accompany Jesus. But note how the apostles seem at best spectators, not in tune as friends of Jesus, not embracing him in their hearts. Before our gospel today there seems an argument between Jesus and the apostles, ‘do you really think we have two hundred days wages to feed this crowd?’ Their cynicism does not resonate with the compassion Jesus feels for the shepherdless crowd. Later Jesus alters his course on a nighttime walk across the lake to help his frightened friends. Astounded, still they did not understand about the loaves, their hearts were hardened! In the second multiplication of loaves that will follow, Jesus again asks them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’
These days before Lent, position us to enter the time of ‘trying to live fully’ our Christian lives; a time when the Bridegroom welcomes us in all of our poorness. This will be a time when the temple torn down is replaced. The newly baptized are embraced by the Lord at the banquet table with hearts not at all hardened. And all of us know that we are more that spectators because the Lord who calls each of us by name, like a Good Shepherd, embraces us again even in what we do not understand and with the gentleness of a loving bridegroom.
