5th Sunday of Lent B - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2009

I love the way the First Reading started today: See, the days are coming when ... The days are coming... The words touch into, and set racing, expectations .. hopes - lifting us out of the present sense of constriction, and limitation and dissatisfaction. The days are coming when ... 

When what? Jeremiah looked forward to a few future happenings; but the one that catches my imagination and ignites my deep desires is what he describes in this way: There will be no further need for brother to say to brother: 'Learn to know the Lord'. No, they will all know me .. for I will forgive their iniquity and never call their sin to mind. It would seem that, until then, they did not really know God. That would have surprised them and disconcerted them – because they prided themselves on their special relationship as a people to God. But, to Jeremiah's mind, as far as God was concerned, they did not really know God: the heart, the essence, of God. The God they did not know was the God who forgives iniquity and never calls sin to mind. 

We pride ourselves on knowing that God. We are sometimes inclined to dismiss what we call the Hebrew God as a harsh God, and claim that the Christian God is a God who loves, a God of mercy. We have the right words, but, in my experience, a lot of Catholics, despite what they think and how they see themselves, don't really believe in the God who forgives iniquity and never calls sin to mind. I think that a lot of us, despite what we say, don't even want a God like that and feel unconsciously  uneasy with a God who never calls sin to mind. We want a God who's fair. We need a God who's fair. We're at ease in a world like that. We can relate to it. Really, we don't need a God of mercy - though the thought does give a sort of warm glow, or of comfortable cosiness. 

Most of us aren't in touch with our own sin - so basically we think we're fairly safe. We might have to do a bit of time in Purgatory, but, ultimately, we're pretty right, and don't fear anything too drastic. We've never really faced our selective and restricted levels of loving. We haven't seen our radical self-interest, our own actual or potential harshness and instinctive (and pervasive) judgementalism. 

But, when it comes to others ... when it comes to the real sinners, we feel rather glad that God is fair. I'm not sure we want a God who loves Caiaphas as much as Jesus, Hitler or Stalin as much as Mother Teresa, abortionists as much as me. Do we want a God who never calls sin to mind? Surely, that's somehow not right! But, for Jeremiah, that's the only God that is. [Certainly, Caiaphas, Hitler or Stalin, and many others, may have  closed themselves off from the God who loves them, and thereby locked themselves into an eternity of absolute self-absorption, of total, and undistracted, aloneness and emptiness. God made them free. They may have preferred the ways of non-love; they may, accordingly, have chosen their own hell - but God does not put them there. The utter lovelessness of Hell is our creation – not God's.]   

Perhaps it takes a lifetime to come to terms with the mystery we call God, with the mystery of total and unconditioned love, with a God who forgives our iniquity and never calls our sin to mind. Perhaps it takes a lifetime to explore the heart of  God. ... Perhaps it takes eternity to explore the heart of God. But, slowly, we can begin to let go of our self-righteousness, our instinctive, never-ending, comparing ourselves with others, those securities based on fairness and retribution  and reward for services rendered. Slowly, we can come to see that all is gift – all is gift. The gift is ours to receive if only we can cut loose from our compulsive self-reliance, and trust the God whose only love is unconditional and absolutely certain. 

The days are coming ... Indeed!