THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

In last week’s homily, I invited you to reflect on how, in both the story where the Covenant is sealed by cutting animals in half and in the story of the Transfiguration, the role of Abraham and the three disciples, was to say nothing, do nothing and let God be God. And I invited you to see in this a reflection of something fundamental to a life of faith. We saw how, at the heart of all primitive religion lay the notion – still very much with us today – that by performing religious actions we can somehow please God and even persuade him to do what we want, one obvious manifestation of this in our own day being the idea that saying certain prayers a certain number of times in a certain way will somehow make them ‘work’, along with the fear that failure to do so might cause something terrible to happen. This, along with things like not walking under ladders or ‘touching wood’ are pure paganism and a constant reminder to us that our pagan past is still quite recent in historical terms and our emergence from it far from complete. Another example of it is the way so many people, when something bad happens, start telling themselves it must be a punishment for something they have done wrong, an idea that Jesus knocks firmly on the head in this week’s Gospel. This is a relic of the pagan notion that the gods were often hostile and apt to lash out in anger, religious mumbo- jumbo that has nothing to do with genuine faith. The simple truth is that we don’t have to do anything to please God. He already delights in us, loves us with a love beyond our understanding and there is nothing we can do to either increase or diminish that love.
But, of course, that raises a question which I posed at the end of last week’s homily and promised to deal with in this week’s. And it’s a very simple one. If God loves us the way I say he does and if nothing we do or don’t do can increase or diminish that love, then what’s the point in being good? Why live a Christian life at all? Why come to Mass and do all the other things that go with being a Catholic or a Christian? Well, as I indicated last week, the answer lies in the concept of a free and loving response and to help us understand what that means I take you back to today’s first reading where Moses meets God in the story of the burning bush.

And what we see there is something very different from the primitive religion we spoke of a moment ago. In this story, God calls Moses by name and reveals himself to him. He tells Moses his own name, which in the context of the time in which the passage was written – some 2500 year ago - meant that he was entering into a relationship of some intimacy with Moses. And it’s this movement from gods who were unpredictable, fickle and often hostile, to a God who reveals his name and speaks to us as one friend speaks to another that marks the shift from religion to faith. The relationship we are called to have with God is not a Master/Servant relationship based on fear and obedience but a relationship of friendship and intimacy based on love. And, of course, that changes everything. People who love each other don’t need rules and regulations. Those of you who are parents didn’t feed your children because the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights says that they have a right to be fed. You didn’t not abuse your children because it is against the law and you would go to prison if caught doing it. What people who love each other do is done, not out of obligation, but as a free and loving response and only those who relate to God in that same way ever really know what faith, as opposed to religion is.

In the Catholic Church, for example, there is still a rule which says that we should go to Mass on Sunday. That has never changed. But for the man or woman of faith it’s an irrelevancy. He or she does not go to Mass because there is a rule about it. The word Eucharist means thanksgiving and the person who inhabits the world of faith rather than religion goes to Mass, not because he is afraid he will somehow go to hell if he doesn’t, but because she has begun to experience the depth of God’s love and so freely comes together with the rest of the Christian community to celebrate that love, express their gratitude for it and work together for the coming of the kingdom. And one of the obvious reasons for the dramatic drop in Mass attendance in recent years has been that, as the power of the law and the fear of hell have faded, many people have found that they had no other reason for being there and so, not unnaturally, have stopped going.

In the field of morality, too, we are entering a stage in history where the moral decisions we make will depend less and less on rules beyond ourselves and more and more on this kind of free and loving response. In his very first Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est or God is Love,Pope Benedict reflects on the German philosopher Nietzshe’s claim that Christianity, with all its commandments and prohibitions, has poisoned sexual love and turned to bitterness the most precious thing in life. He even acknowledges, in a most un-pope-like turn of phrase, the widely held view out there that the Church – and I quote - ‘blows the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator’s gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the divine.’ And quite simply the Church’s moral teaching, whether on sexual matters or any other matter, will only work when it’s stripped of all those prohibitions, all those ‘thou shalt nots’ and is presented in such a way that people begin to see that, far from being about preventing us enjoying ourselves, it’s about what leads to genuine happiness through just living, respect for other people, control of the worst aspects of human nature and freely choosing to be everything that is best about ourselves. Only when people can see that, stop living out of ‘thou shalt nots’ and embrace a free and loving response to what makes sense because they can see it is true will the values of the Gospel take root in our society.

The we will witness the end of religion and the beginning of the final stage of humanity’s great journey of faith into the inner life of God himself.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayer this week by holding up before God all those people who, in an age when the power of the Church’s law over what we do has diminished and the fear of punishment for not keeping that law has faded, have lost their reason for attending Mass and so have stopped coming. We ask God to lead us through this moment in our history to a new place where we learn to understand the Eucharist in new ways and so have new and deeper reasons for taking part in it...........Lord hear us

Our pagan past still haunts us and influences the way we think. Underneath what passes for faith lies a dark past which has its roots in our most primitive fears and anxieties. And so we ask God to free us from the superstition and magic which are mixed in with our Christianity,and in particular from the absurd and deeply unchristian idea found in today’s Gospel, and so common among us still, that when something tragic happens in our lives, we are being punished for something we have done wrong..........Lord hear us

The idea that millions today have about Churches is that they are against things: against drink, against sex, against having fun, against enjoying ourselves. For many, going to Church is associated with dullness, boredom and a long series of ‘thou shalt nots.’ The last thing they would expect is to find a ‘holy’ person in a pub. But at its heart Christianity is deeply joyful. At its best it is not against things but for things. Above all, it is for life in all its fullness. And so we pray that the world will come to see this.........Lord hear us

Young people in particular have grown up with very negative experiences of Church. The materialistic, consumer-driven world they inhabit seems to offer so much more than faith, which seems dull and boring in comparison. Conned by powerful commercial forces out to exploit them for profit, many seek the happiness they long for in places which can never deliver it. The result is deep, thinly disguised unhappiness in many. And so we pray for them today that they will discover in time the rich world of faith............Lord hear us

On Wednesday evening we have an important meeting for parents in the parish who want to teach their children about the love of God and introduce them to the world of personal faith. These parents are the primary educators of their children and all anyone else can do, whether it be the school or the parish community, is help and support them in this work. And so we pray for the parents and families involved and ask God to bless this week’s meeting and show us the way forward together...........Lord hear us

On Thursday,we have the first of three discussion evenings before Easter. There is a great need for adult education in faith if we are to be able to offer to the modern world a Christianity which is authentic and makes sense in the people of our time. The hope is that over the next few years we will offer in the parish a whole variety of different opportunities to grow in knowledge and understanding and we pray for the courage and commitment we need to embrace these opportunities.........Lord hear us