3rd Sunday of Lent B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2006

The First Reading started today with the words: I am the Lord your God. There is always a problem talking about Yahweh, our God.. Yahweh is the name we give to the Mystery we sense beyond our world of direct experience, giving it meaning, giving it existence. There are no adequate words to help think and speak about this Mystery, so the early Hebrews (and we following them) used a word already there – the word “god”. Most people had their gods (little different, in fact, from humans like us, except that  they were more powerful). The commandments were clear: You shall have no gods except me. Yahweh isn’t a “small-g god”. Yahweh is Mystery that defies our naming.

The Hebrews had this sense that the most significant thing about this Mystery was that it was to do with freedom. They saw Yahweh as the one behind their own national experience of liberation: I am the Lord your God who led you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. We think that we like freedom: world leaders talk about it constantly – But we’re all frightened of freedom. That’s why we have “small-g gods”.

The commandments went on: You shall not make yourselves a carved image or any likeness of anything... In our modern world we don’t have three-dimensional idols – our “small-g gods” are national security, military power, wealth, bigger and bigger mortgages, good looks, popularity, etc.. We make them, in one shape or another, the goals of our national and personal lives; we become addicted to them. We surrender not only our little freedoms to have them; we sell our souls for them.

Since we are frightened of freedom – our own, and the freedom somehow associated with the Mystery we call “capital-G God”, we try to control the Mystery – to reduce it to something that we can understand and feel comfortable with. In their world it was carved idols, likenesses of what they already knew. In our world, we still try to domesticate God: “the God who is on our side” (a small and tribal god). If not by controlling, then how else do persons relate? How do we line up before this Mystery? The Hebrews had a glimpse of the answer, like through a fog. They thought of a jealous God. Jealousy, as distinct from envy, comes out of possibilities of love. The only alternative to relating on the basis of control is love - intimacy. They believed, we believe, that we can relate to the Mystery in intimacy, in love. Indeed every action of our lives is lived in the context of the Mystery, is lived in the context of love – offered or withheld - but never neutral.

But intimacy, like freedom, is scary – so we seek to somehow control or domesticate God by manipulation, by bargaining, essentially by magic. We seek ways, other than by love, to use God to meet our needs. You shall not utter the name of the Lord your God to misuse it, or, as many of us learnt it in the catechism, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. (The Commandment had nothing to do with swearing, and everything to do with superstitious behaviour – with every devious way of approaching the Mystery, God - of praying even - other than the way of trust. Mistaking their real purpose, we had our fail-safe Novenas, sacraments we accumulated, etc. 

 We need to keep things in perspective. It is so easy to get wrapped up in our pursuit of the “small-g gods”, the ones I mentioned earlier – national security, military power, wealth, bigger and bigger mortgages, good looks, popularity, etc.. that we  need to step back. More than simply keep things in perspective, we need to learn to enjoy freedom. So the commandments add: Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy... you shall do no work on that day. Perhaps not good for the GNP, but excellent for our sanity! The Hebrews even imagined a God who enjoyed a day off! And they saw leisure as an expression of our intimacy with Mystery that is freedom, that is love, that is God.