4TH SUNDAY LENT (B) 15 March 2015

 Fr. Gerard Kelly

Here in this country we all know to be careful of snakes, particularly when we are out in the bush.  We know that many of them have venom that can kill those who are bitten.  We are not surprised then to see people being afraid of snakes.  There aren’t too many references to snakes in the Bible, but those that are there always present the snake a source of evil and death.  The first place we hear of a snake is in the Book of Genesis and the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve.  Here the snake is the one who brings about their downfall and, consequently, the punishment of the whole of creation.  They are expelled from paradise because of the snake.  So, the snake becomes a symbol of evil and sin.  It is a symbol of the break of the relationship with God, but also the breakdown in human relationships, and even the breakdown of the harmony between humankind and the rest of creation.

Another place where we hear of snakes is when the people are wandering for forty years in the desert.  The people had been complaining that God had brought them out into the desert to die, so God sent snakes to punish them.  The snakes would bite people and they would die.  Moses prayed that God might do something to save the people.  So God told Moses to make a bronze snake and to put it around a pole and lift it high so that it towers high over all the people.  Anyone who looks at the snake will be saved.  This seems an odd command.  But let’s think about what is going on.  By lifting the snake high the people are forced to look on the very thing that is bringing evil and destruction on them.  It is as though they are forced to see more clearly the evil around them.  And, of course, this snake would symbolise their own complaining and turning away from God.  But God wanted it to be the way that they would be healed.

It is this scene with Moses in the desert that it referred to in the Gospel today.  However, it is not a snake that is lifted up; Jesus himself will be lifted up.  Here on this fourth Sunday of Lent, we are being invited to begin to contemplate Jesus lifted up on the cross.  We are invited to begin to reflect on the fact that his death on the cross is the source of our being saved, and healed, and offered a secure future.  It seems very simple: we just have to look at Jesus on the cross.

But it may not be as simple as it seems.  It may be that we are so familiar with the image of the cross that it no longer has much of an impact on us.  We no longer see its horror, or the evil that is associated with it.  Think for a moment of what images you have seen recently that do shock you and cause you to pause and ask questions about good and evil.  Perhaps it is starving children who are trapped in refugee camps.  Perhaps it is random acts of killing that we have seen on our TV screens when a lone gunman who gone into a school in the USA.  The cross no longer has the same impact on us.

Just this week I heard one of our Australian bishops talking about a visit a small delegation of bishops made to Lebanon and Syria at the end of last year.  They visited many Christians who had been forced to flee from their homes and towns.  These people had been expelled so quickly that they were not even allowed to take anything with them.  This bishop commented that the cross he wore around his neck was the most powerful thing he had to offer.  The people would come up and touch the cross or kiss it.  In the midst of all that had happened to them the cross was a sign of the hope that they still carried in them.  They had nothing; so all they could do was to trust God.  I am sure too that the cross was also a symbol of the evil that they had experienced and were fleeing.  Jesus on the cross stood in solidarity with them.

In the Gospel today Jesus speaks about light and darkness.  When the light shines the darkness is exposed.  God is the one who shines a light on our world.  Jesus makes it clear that God loves the world, and that God is not condemning the world, but rather offering it salvation.  But to see that salvation we need to look at the cross.

In this time of Lent we look at the cross in order to see the love of God.  As Jesus said, God loved the world so much that he gave his only son, so that anyone who believes in him may have eternal life.  The more clearly we see the love of God the more clearly we will see the darkness of our own lives.  Lent is a time to shine a light on whatever darkness is in us.  Often we don’t even recognise the darkness in our lives – we don’t see it; we are blind to it.  However, if we listen to the word of God and if we gaze on the cross we will begin to see more clearly what it is that stands in the way of our relationship with God, our relationships with the people around us, and even our connection to the larger creation.  God desires that we learn to love more deeply.  Let us during these weeks of Lent see in the cross the great sign of God’s love for us.  And when we see this love, let us recognise where we need conversion in our own lives.

20th SUNDAY(A) 17 August 2014

Fr. Gerard Kelly 

There are some things that are troubling in the Gospel story that we have just heard.  But there are also things that encourage us.  It can be good to recognise that the gospel can speak to us at a few different levels.

Perhaps the easiest level to appreciate the gospel is to note the attitude of the woman who approaches Jesus.  She is a woman who is determined to be heard and to make sure that Jesus understands her needs.  But she does this with the greatest respect for him.  She is persistent in calling out to him.  Perhaps another way we could express this is to say that she keeps knocking at his door, even when there is no answer.  She is convinced that he will respond to her.  In the end Jesus praises her for her faith.  What was her faith?  Faith can be hard to define.  In the case of this woman, the best way to know her faith is to look at how it was demonstrated.  She begins by falling at the feet of Jesus and addressing him as Lord.  Here she shows that she recognises him as someone who comes from God.  This gesture is basically one of worshipping him.  In worshipping him she acknowledges that he is God and that she is depends on him.  This is why her prayer – and that is what it is – is “help me”.  She knows that her life and her daughter’s life depend on Jesus.  This tells us something about faith, namely that faith is always saving faith.  This woman has an encounter with Jesus who saves – saves her and saves her daughter.

There is an important message here for us.  We learn something of how our relationship with God, in Jesus, works.  We learn a number of very profound things about prayer.  One is that before all else, our prayer is an act of worship.  We worship Jesus as Lord, as did this woman.  In worshipping him as Lord we acknowledge his power to transform our lives and our world.  We also acknowledge our own neediness and our dependence on him.  We also learn that prayer is an honest and direct encounter with Jesus.  The woman was not afraid to keep going back to Jesus while ever her need lasted.  Yes, she was respectful, but this did not stop her from speaking in a forthright manner to him.  We can learn from this that there is nothing that we can’t raise with Jesus in prayer.

This gospel can also speak to us at another level – one that is a little more difficult to comprehend.  We can be troubled by the way Jesus begins his response.  This woman is from foreign territory.  She does not belong to the People of God.  Jesus’ initial response is to say that his message is not meant for foreigners like this woman; it is for God’s chosen people, the Jewish people.  Jesus uses the phrase that he was sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.  It seems that he only reluctantly responds to this foreign woman.  Because she was a foreigner, she would have been considered to be an enemy.

These facts can tell us a few things.  One is that Jesus is in a line of prophets who proclaimed God’s message and called the people of God back to that original relationship God offered them.  God was never going to revoke that relationship.  In fact he wanted to offer a similar relationship to the whole world.  So, his message goes out from the Jewish people to the whole world.  That is how all of us have received it.  Of all the people who appear in the gospels, this woman is the person who is most like us.  So this gospel story today marks an important development in God’s plan.  We learn that his is message for the whole world.

We, then, become part of the new people of God who continue to take that message to the whole world.  The Christian faith is always spreading out.  The most important way that it spreads is by its attractiveness.  Recently, Pope Francis made the important point that effective Christian witness is not bombarding people with religious messages.  We can bombard Jesus with our prayer, but we become witnesses of his message by showing to the world that he is concerned with our doubts, our hopes, our sorrows, our joys, our pain and our needs.  To put it simply: he is interested in our salvation; he saves. 

Just as the story of this foreign woman remains in the Gospel as a witness to us of Jesus’ concern for everyone, so too our own stories of his saving action can show others that he also cares for them.