WwtW: Salvation visits us

This week's bible study notes, OT, Week 31, Yr C.  We had an interesting discussion about how the text leaves us with lots of questions about Zacchaeus, but crystal clear about who Jesus is: Salvation.

1^st Reading:    Wisdom 11:22-12:2

Context.          Wisdom is a book written in Greek from the Diaspora shortly before the birth of Christ.  It is directed to educated Jews living in heavily Hellenized areas (such as Alexandria, where it was probably written) to encourage them to remain faithful and keep on loving their revealed tradition.  There are pulls and pushes moving them away from this: the pull of compelling Pagan philosophy and science; the twin pushes of social anti-Semitism and existential questions of theodicy.  The book admits that Jews can admire pagan ‘wisdom,’ but should not be jealous as they have true Wisdom.  Wisdom is from God and touches all subject matters, including the apparently profane.  The second half is a meditation on the Exodus.  It provides hope for current Jews suffering in Egypt and a historical basis for claims that God helps the just and punishes the wicked.

God shares the harvest with us – Rom 8:18-25, Ps 126

Wednesday of Ordinary Time, Week 30; Holy Cross Parish.

As the cold sets in, and we look back the rather mild summer we enjoyed, it can be hard to even remember last year’s summer when we baked and roasted and our fields were parched.  And while our lawns have recovered, Michiana farmers are still feeling the hit of the summer of 2012.  Sowing seed is an anxious time when your livelihood depends on it, because you just don’t know what will become of it.  Your own efforts to tend its growth will amount to nothing in the weather doesn’t cooperate.  In the religious myths of Ugarit and Egypt, sowing season was linked with a festival mourning the death of a god who was buried with the seed and would be reborn with rejoicing with the harvest.  While Israel would not (at least officially) have bought into the mythology, our psalmist can still refer to a shared recognition that sowing is a time of tears, of anxious uncertainty, and rejoicing will have to wait until the harvest.

God exalts us through humbling us – Luke 18:9-14; 2 Tim 4:6-8 16-18

Sunday Year C, OT Week 30; Holy Cross Parish.

Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee!  Oh… wait… oops.  It’s hard not to find some of him in each of us.  You see, that Pharisee was a good person, a generous person.  He fasted twice a week, much more often than was required.  He ignored all the various exemptions concerning what kinds of income you didn’t have to pay tithes on and tithed on his total income.  He fasted, gave alms and here he was in the Temple to pray – a model believer!  Well, almost.  Because he goes through the motions of addressing a prayer to God – beginning it “O God, I thank you…” – but our narrator, Jesus, tells us what’s really going on: “he spoke this prayer to himself.”  And while he says “thank you,” his prayer merely lists his good deeds (genuine good deeds!) and the misdeeds of other mortals: entirely lacking is any mention of God’s deeds.  All the good that God has inspired him to do… all that should be a living icon reminding him of the goodness of God, of God’s gracious acts of creation, of deliverance from captivity and exile, of God’s care and providence, God’s mercy.  But no, this Pharisee takes his own good deeds and instead of letting them serve as an icon of God’s goodness, he makes them into an idol.  “These good deeds of mine, these are what I put my hope in, what I treasure, what I worship.”  What must have started as love of God, and still bears the marks of an impulse towards that, has become idolatrous self-love.  The gift has been seized as a possession, and the giver given no more than lip service.

God speaks life– Rom 6:19-23

Thursday of OT Week 29, St. Antony Claret; Holy Cross Parish.

I think sometimes we crave a little more peace and quiet in our lives.  Certainly, living with undergraduates last year, I often did, and then I’d spare a prayer for parents of young children!  But, there’s a limit to how much quiet we’re able to handle.  The quietest room on earth is Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis.  It’s called an anechoic chamber: double walls and insulated steel, foot-thick concrete and fiberglass wedges make it 99.99% sound absorbent.  The human ear can detect nothing inside it.  The longest any human has managed to stay inside is 45 minutes, and that was a NASA astronaut used to spending time in space.  That amount of pure silence becomes so unnerving, that people start to hallucinate.  It’s so engrained in your brain that it’s going to receive stimulation that if it doesn’t receive any, it starts to make it up.

WwtW: God rescues and exalts us

This week's Bible Study notes.  Sunday, Year C, Week 30.

Gospel:           Luke 18:9-14

Context.           We come to the final stretch of Jesus’ long journey to Jerusalem (9:51-19:48; Wks 13-31), with a section (17:11-19:27, Wks 28-31) summarizing what Jesus has taught previously on the journey and inviting response.  Appropriate response will not be found from the disciples, who are as lacking in understanding as they were at the start of the journey.  Instead, the appropriate response is found in a leper, a widow, a tax collector and (skipped) children.  This passage is closely linked to last week’s reading about the need to pray always.

God conquers our death – Rom 4:20-25

Monday of Week 29; Holy Cross parish.

How could Abraham have kept hoping?  He had been promised a great line of descendants, but he and Sarah were too old for this to be humanly possible.  Wouldn’t you start to doubt your memory, doubt yourself, doubt if your understanding of God’s will for your life was really accurate?  In the verses just before where our reading began, Paul uses strong language, describing Abraham as being as good as dead, as regards his chances having a child.  But as regards faith, we read today, he was very powerful.  More precisely, he was empowered, gifted with power by God.  God had poured into Abraham the power of faith, the power to trust, to cling to hope.  God, we read, has the power to do what he promised, and he shared his power with Abraham.  Abraham, as good as dead, was powerful at trusting, at ascribing glory to God, at confessing in praise that God will raise the dead.

WwtW: The kingdom's still coming, but God's listening now

Yesterday's Bible Study Notes; OT Year C, Week 29.

2^nd Reading:  2 Tim 3:14-4:2

Context.          Second Timothy is one of what are called the “Pastoral Epistles” (the term, as far as I know, was coined by Aquinas).  They are presented as letters from Paul to individual church leaders, in this case, Timothy.  Many scholars think they are the product of a Pauline school, writing in the name of their founder as a mark of respect (much as church documents are ghost-written today).  Regardless of the circumstances of their composition, they are concerned with the continuation of the Church beyond initial proclamation to more settled institution.  Timothy is the only person mentioned in the Bible whose grandmother was a Christian.  The pastorals share a common basic message: hold fast to sound teaching, and you will live a worthy life, though with hardship; good order, structure and hierarchy are needed in the Church; keep on converting people, and look attractive to outsiders in order to do this.