Bringing God Back into our Lives
Isaiah 49:14-15; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34
Our topic for this eighth Sunday sounds ironic, “Bringing God Back into Our Lives.” Our topic sounds like the statement of a woman who kept saying to her husband, “God is the answer,” and her husband said to her, “what is the question”? Good enough for us, we have the question of the week, from our first reading: “Sion said, the Lord has abandoned me.” This sounds like an old marriage, when the memories of honey moon, the nuptial guests and the gifts are all gone. It sounds like a woman in labour, when all she thinks about is how to push out her baby, and get over with the pains and pangs of birth. Moments like that are ungodly because unpalatable; inconveniencing because uncomfortable. But what is “Sion” and why should Sion recriminate against God? If God abandoned Sion, it follows that either God or Sion has gone into exile!
“Sion” is a dream, which awaits realization. It simply means “protection.” When the children of Israel were in captivity in Babylon, they longed for Jerusalem, where the presence of the Tabernacle and the walls of the city were symbols of protection and guarantee of God’s presence; but now in exile, their vulnerability was palpable, and their insecurity concrete: they ate other people’s diet, spoke a foreign language, worshipped differently, and behaved strangely. Slavery was their lot, they were at the mercy and beck and call of their captors. Their very existence was dependent on the benevolence of their lords and masters, the Babylonians. But this was a people once proud of their heritage, once sure of God’s presence and protection, once the masters of other people: how the mighty have fallen!
“Sion” becomes the concept that anchors a people in the hope of restoration and restitution. “Sion” became the slogan of a people who have fallen but awaited a new dawn, when they will rise again. It was the determination of a people not to give up on life and God, in difficult times. “Sion” became a preparation for a return journey to God; a first step at keeping hope alive; a temporary anchor to life and God. Yes, their anchor was not baseless, and their hope was not without a solid foundation because they had seen worse and survived it – Egypt was worse that Babylon. They were learning a lesson that the physical is not a sure foundation on which either to build or stand, but the invisible and the metaphysical – there was a need for a dream of greater things to come, and a new relationship with their creator.
The actual meaning of “protection” is what God puts before Israel in the first reading: a solid rock of moral probity, which guarantees the presence of God. God’s masterful rhetoric comes to the fore: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). Yes, the answer to Israel’s predicament is the ability to look back at God’s fidelity in the past, in order to project itself into God’s present and utter fidelity to Israel. If the human person, though material and physical, is capable of protecting its young, the invisible God of Israel is capable even of more.
The advantages of the Babylonian slavery are the realization that there are consequences to every sin committed, and that the grace to go beyond the physical to meet God in Sion is readily available. What is more, every exile has a double dimension – physical and metaphysical. Physically, Israelites underwent a geographical displacement; spiritually, Israel was orphaned of its God, Yahweh. Indeed, the physical does not exhaust God, but Sion, the metaphysical and ideal, is God’s abode. It is always necessary to go above the mundane in order to meet the creator of the physical and ephemeral. This is also the message of the gospel, locating God’s presence and receiving his protection like the lilies of the fields.
The concretization of sin or the things that send human beings into spiritual exile are outlined in today’s gospel – “mammon.” Now, “mammon” is a general term for what causes human beings to doubt God’s presence and capacity to provide for human needs. However, the examples given to us, in the gospel, summarizes “mammon” as the cares of life: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” The solution the gospel provides to this mindset is a return to God. As the gospel puts it, human beings are of better worth than the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air: “Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. . . . Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.”
What the gospel does is to put Christians on guard against paganism – pagans worry about material goods, but Christians shouldn’t. Here is the attitude of a Christian: “So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” In addition to this attitude, there is a fundamental element to be added – the kingdom of heaven/God. The spiritual should tromp the physical in the life of a Christian: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”
In simpler terms, to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” is what we have termed “Bringing God Back into our Lives,” because materialism is a sign of God’s absence in our lives. And this is where the second reading becomes instructive for Christian living. To worship mammon is to anticipate everlasting exile from God. The major consequence of materialism is eternal damnation, which is the human exile from God. According to our second reading, God will judge human beings and apportion either praise or blame to each person. This is what Paul says: “Therefore do not make any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes, for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts, and then everyone will receive praise from God.”
Here and now, a Christian is called to fidelity to God. Those around a Christian should be able to speak to his detachment from this world and attachment to God. If that is not the case, we are not with God and are not ready yet to return to him. According to Paul, “Thus should one regard us: as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”
Assignment of the Week:
Do something in your neighbourhood that will make people know that you are a Christian!