4th Sunday of Lent B

As Lent began three weeks ago, I invited you to recognize how the three elements which lie at the heart of this season address directly the roots of the current economic crisis facing the world. In a society obsessed with what is empty and superficial, prayer invites us to go deeper. Penance and fasting confront head-on the ‘I must have it and I must have it now’ philosophy of consumerism. And almsgiving, which emerges out of prayer and fasting, addresses the inevitable consequence of a world dominated by market-forces, which is that the rich grow richer and poor grow poorer.

Then, on the second Sunday, when we read the story of the Transfiguration, I suggested that, apart from moments of insight which come directly from God, another way in which we can contemplate a world transfigured is through the use of the imagination. I pointed out that every advance in human history has begun life in someone’s imagination. Before anything can become a reality we first have to imagine it. And I invited you to see that that is as true of the kingdom of God as it is of anything else. If we cannot first imagine a world free of violence and injustice, then how can it ever happen? If we cannot imagine new ways of living, new ways of organizing the world, new ways of doing things, then, like cattle in a field, we are doomed to repeat for ever what we have always done.

And then, last week, we explored the fact that, to be a Christian and begin to imagine a world different from the one we currently inhabit, it is necessary to be, in the world’s eyes at least, a little bit mad. And the reason is simple. God does not think as we think. His foolishness, as Paul told us last Sunday, is wiser than human wisdom. The gospel with its command to love our enemies, turn the other cheek and so on does not make sense in human terms. To people who live by the values of the world, such things are madness. And yet, unless we are willing to embrace the madness of the kingdom, we cannot enter it.

And now, on the fourth Sunday, we confront one particular aspect of God’s foolishness which, in the end, is beyond our comprehension. And yet, paradoxically, until we begin to understand it, we haven’t understood anything. And it’s in today’s second reading, where Paul tells us in words which which those of you who attended last month’s Church History Course on the Reformation will remember well; that it is by grace that we are saved: not by anything of our own, but by a gift from God. These deceptively simple words, properly understood, turn on its head most of what many of us learned as children and take us once again to the heart of the difference between religion and faith. So what do I mean by this?

Well, the image of salvation presented to me as a child -and I suspect to many of you too - was classic religion without faith. It told me that, to get to heaven, I had to do certain things and not do others. First and foremost, I had to go to Mass every Sunday. This was the key to everything and if I didn’t do that and died without going to confession, I would go to hell. There were many other things I had to do or not do to keep God from getting angry and sending me to hell, but, if I stuck to these rules, I would make it into heaven. It might be via purgatory, but that wasn’t so bad, because it didn’t last for ever. And what I came to understand many years later and say to you again today is that none of this is true. As Pauls tells us, it is by grace that we have been saved...not by anything of our own, but by a gift from God.

And yet it is so difficult for us to understand this in a world which does not think in this way; a world where people love those who love them; where people fall in love and fall out of love again; where we have to be careful we don’t upset our friends so much that they might stop being our friends; where people take the huff and stop talking to each other. But with God it is not like that. Nothing we do can make God love us any more or any less. With God there is no earning, only receiving what is freely given. God does not have to be pleased or kept happy. He is already infinitely pleased with us and nothing can change that. We are, as Paul says today, God’s work of art.

Except that for those of us who inhabit the world of religion, this way of thinking presents a serious problem. Religion, from the days of our primitive ancestors, has been about fear of what will happen if we don’t please God. It is essentially about keeping an angry God happy so that he doesn’t do bad things to us. Fear of not going kept generations of people going Mass each week and the removal of that fear in recent years has been one of the main reasons why fewer people attend Mass now than once did. What’s the point, really, if God loves us all the same and nothing we do can change that one way or the other? If going to Church, keeping the rules and behaving ourselves is not what gets us into heaven, then what’s the point in doing them?

And so we come to something which lies at the heart of faith and makes no sense in the world of religion, the concept of a free and loving response. Love, of its very nature must be free. Nothing we do here is worth a light if it is not freely chosen. To the extent that it grows out of fear it is worthless. There is only one valid reason for being here and its name is gratitude. People of faith come to Mass, not to keep God happy, but to give God thanks for who God is. And everything that flows from that – the whole Christian life – is a freely chosen response to God whose love moves and inspires us to love others the way we have been loved ourselves.

And so I invite you to look into your inner self and see what lies there. What has brought you here today? What moved you to come? Is it fear, and therefore religion, or is it love, and therefore faith. Or are you, like so many of us today, somewhere in the middle, struggling to make the life-changing journey from one to the other?


BIDDING PRAYERS

A month ago, at the Church History Course, we saw how what St Paul says in today’s second reading was central to the Reformation. What St Paul teaches today, Luther taught then, and in 1999 a joint statement by the Vatican and the Lutheran Church finally acknowledged that Luther was right and that that, in reality, had always been the authentic teaching of the Church. And so we pray for greater and greater understanding among the followers of Jesus in our time....................Lord hear us

Today, in one of the best known passages from the Gospels, - John 3:16 - one we often see on placards at international sporting events, we hear how God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that, through him, the world might be saved. And so we pray that we will have that same attitude to the world of our time, not condemning it, but loving it, believing in its fundamental goodness and doing everything we can to show it what the love of God is like...............Lord hear us

Today’s Gospel also speaks of how the light has come into the world and the world has shown that it prefers the darkness to the light. The person who lives by the truth, we heard St John say, comes out into the light, while the person who loves what is wrong hates the light and avoids it. And so we pray for the courage we need to live in the light of truth, always open wherever it takes us, and willing to move beyond our personal prejudices, no matter how deeply felt ................Lord hear us

The first reading this week speaks of how God tirelessly sent his people messenger after messenger. The people, however, despised his words and laughed at his prophets, despite the fact that God’s whole purpose was to save the people from the effects of their own foolishness. And so we pray that the world of our own time will learn to listen to the prophets God sends: men and women who challenge us, point out the error of our ways and call us to new ways of living.....................Lord hear us

The first reading also speaks of Cyrus, King of Persia, the man who, having defeated Babylon in battle and succeeded them as the great power of the ancient world, brought the exile to an end and allowed the people to return to Jerusalem. The book of Chronicles sees Cyrus as God’s instrument in history even although Cyrus himself did not know God. And so we pray that the great leaders of today’s world will continue that tradition in our own time............ Lord hear us

Today’s psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon,” is one of the great songs of a people far from their homeland. And so, on this Sunday when the SCIAF collection is being taken up at Masses throughout Scotland, we pray in a special way for the millions of exiles and refugees in the world today. Some move through fear of violence, others for economic reasons, in search of a better life. And so we pray for the openness and generosity we need to welcome them here in Scotland............Lord hear us