IN THE HANDS OF GOD

October 15, Friday

TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

 

Abraham was saved not by what he did but because, when he was a pagan and a sinner, he discovered a caring God in whom he believed. He knew that he stood before God with empty hands and consented to receive gratuitously from the hands of God.

Christ continues to denounce the Pharisees. In the contradictions of a life that wants to be faithful to the Gospel, Christians have to go God’s ways, not their own. They entrust themselves into the hands of God who cares and to whom we are very precious.

 

First Reading: Romans 4:1-8

 

So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.”

If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

David confirms this way of looking at it, saying that the one who trusts God to do the putting-everything-right without insisting on having a say in it is one fortunate man:

Fortunate those whose crimes are carted off,
    whose sins are wiped clean from the slate.
Fortunate the person against
    whom the Lord does not keep score.

Do you think for a minute that this blessing is only pronounced over those of us who keep our religious ways and are circumcised? Or do you think it possible that the blessing could be given to those who never even heard of our ways, who were never brought up in the disciplines of God? We all agree, don’t we, that it was by embracing what God did for him that Abraham was declared fit before God?

 

Gospel: Lk 12:1-7

By this time the crowd, unwieldy and stepping on each other’s toes, numbered into the thousands. But Jesus’ primary concern was his disciples. He said to them, “Watch yourselves carefully so you don’t get contaminated with Pharisee yeast, Pharisee phoniness. You can’t keep your true self hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known. You can’t whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day’s coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town.

 “I’m speaking to you as dear friends. Don’t be bluffed into silence or insincerity by the threats of religious bullies. True, they can kill you, but then what can they do? There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in his hands.

 “What’s the price of two or three pet canaries? Some loose change, right? But God never overlooks a single one. And he pays even greater attention to you, down to the last detail—even numbering the hairs on your head! So don’t be intimidated by all this bully talk. You’re worth more than a million canaries.

 

Prayer

Lord our God,
we stand before you with empty hands.
Our good intentions, the things we do
are powerless to save us.
God, help us to accept this truth,
for it hurts our pride.
Teach us to receive gratuitously
your grace, your merciful love
and also the help and love of our neighbor.
Save us from ourselves and from sin
by the grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:

Don’t let yourself be wasted

According the Gospel of Luke, one reason for Jesus losing his temper was hypocrisy of the people. In Chapter 11, he presented an angry Jesus who came strong against the Pharisees and religious scholars for not being truthful and for their hypocrisy. “Be on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees,” Jesus tells his disciples. The Jews regarded yeast as a corrupting agent, which corrupted the food. That is why they insisted on using unleavened bread at the Passover. When Jesus talks of “the yeast of the Pharisees”, the reference is about the behaviour that corrupts their lives –hypocrisy.

In contrast to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees the followers of Jesus must practice transparency. The Church is not a secret society. Its purpose is to share the vision of Christ with the whole world. This is crucial to the reign of God in the world. “What you have whispered in locked rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.” This, of course, will involve dangers. The Gospel will be resisted, and those who proclaim the Gospel will face persecutions and death. This has been the history of the Church. Thousands have sacrificed their lives simply because they were followers of Jesus.

But for a Christian, death is not an enemy. It is something that every Christian awaits eagerly – to return to his Father’s house. That’s why Jesus reiterates his disciples not to be afraid of those who kill you. The following sentence could be confusing: “Be afraid of the one who after killing, has the power to cast into Gehenna.” The one we are really to fear is the one who can make us deny Christ and all that Christ means, and to die in that state of denial.

‘Gehenna’ in Hebrew meant ‘Valley of Hinnom’ or ge-ben-hinnom, ‘Valley of the Son of Hinnom’. This valley was situated on the south-west of Jerusalem. In the time of the kings, it had been the center of a cult in which children were sacrificed (cf. 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31) and hence, seen as a place of abomination. In the time of Jesus, this valley was turned into the dumping site for all the wastes of the city of Jerusalem. When Jesus talks about casting someone into Gehenna, he must have meant, “ to waste one’s life or throwing one’s life into the dumping pit.”

If you allow yourself to corrupt your life through hypocrisy and falsehood, you choose to ruin your life and is not worthy of anything other than to be wasted in the dumping pit of Gehenna! But, whatever threats hang over us, we are not to fear because, Our Faith is in a God who values the lives of the children of God.

 

Video available on Youtube: Don’t let yourself be wasted