The Gentle God (14th Sunday Ordinary A)

For many of us, it is a matter of course to believe in a powerful God.  We easily associate God with power. After all, the first assertion of our Christian faith is the belief in God, the Father Almighty. So, chances are your own image of God is one who can do just anything you can imagine with just a single snap of his fingers or perhaps, like how Harry Potter does it, with a simple wiggle of his magic wand.  He is a God who can make all his wishes come true no matter what, because if he cannot then he is not God.  This is how our human logic goes. We understand God’s power as his ability to bring just anything into existence. He has a say, therefore, on everything and exercises control over anything.  Hence, an awesome God... one in whose presence we tremble for in his hands rest the very existence of just everything under the sun.

God's power revealed in meekness. But wait a minute. Today’s readings offer us a glimpse of a quite different side of God.  A gentle and humble God.  The first reading for instance (Zec. 9:9-10) foretells the coming of the king as a just savior, meek and riding on an ass rather than on a majestic chariot.  This foreshadows the entrance of Christ to the city of Jerusalem.  He comes on an ass. Not majestic but humble. He brings not war but peace. Furthermore, the Gospel reading (Mt. 11:25-30) reveals the Lord as one who invites those who are tired to come to him for refreshment, for he is “gentle and humble of heart.” 

Can power, on the one hand, and gentleness and humility, on the other, come together?  It appears difficult but yes.  We find the juxtaposition difficult because we easily associate power with ability to dominate and control, with force, with authority, with the ability to make things happen despite all forms of resistance. Here power becomes imposing and far from being gentle.

The real power though, I submit, is not imposition or coercion. It is persuasion.  God’s power is persuasive. He invites. He presents what is good; manifests what is beautiful and true; offers what we can embrace as values. In other words, He attracts. Unlike the coercive power which works from outside by imposing its will, the persuasive power works from within and gently achieves cooperation.  Such is the power of God—the Gentle God. Another term for this persuasive power of God is love.

The Gentle God invites the weary to carry the yoke of love. “Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart” (Mt. 11: 28-29).

Here is a God who invites. He invites not the high and mighty but the weary and those burdened by life.  To them he offers refreshment and rest.  He assures them of his heart which is gentle and humble. But we have to take note that he does not dispense of the yoke to be carried: “Take my yoke upon your shoulders.”  Coming to him for rest does not mean a responsibility-free life.  To have rest in Christ does not mean doing nothing in life.  It means carrying the yoke of Jesus, which is the yoke of love.

The gentle God offers a gentle yoke—the yoke of love as alternative to the imposing yoke of law. The yoke of law renders the people tired and unappreciative of life.  The people of Israel, for instance, had been bombarded with endless laws prescribed by the scribes.  Their lives had been all about fulfilling every letter of the law. The yoke of law became the be-all and end-all of their existence so that they gradually forgot about the loving relationship with God.  The ‘little ones,’ the poor especially, could not measure up to the demands of the law, so they were the ones who found life burdensome.  Life for them was an experience of imposition and coercion that led to their alienation.

Jesus reached out to them by offering his yoke. “My yoke is easy, my burden light.” This is the yoke of love offered by the gentle God. This yoke is inspiring and liberating because it works from within. Jesus’ message then is this:  Learn from me. Carry your responsibilities not because they are imposed upon you.  Carry them not because you are obliged by law. Follow me and carry your responsibilities because of love.  

Our response: Living each day with love in our hearts. All of us who have loved will agree by experience that anything we do out of love, however difficult and demanding, becomes easy and light.  The power of love works from within. It inspires and liberates. Life becomes worthwhile, enjoyable, easy, and peaceful when we put upon our shoulders the yoke of Jesus, the yoke of love.

Do we find life burdensome? Perhaps it would help if we examine what we do. We might have been spending our energies and time to things that are imposed upon us. We need to have a change of paradigm.  Let us approach Jesus and learn from him. Let us live each day with love in our hearts and let everything we do flow from that persuasive power of love.

Or do we find ourselves wielding power vested upon us by our status or position in society? Jesus offers himself as a model.  He invites us to come to him and learn from his gentleness and humility. To be powerful does not always mean being coercive and imposing. Again, change of paradigm—real power works not from outside but from within. It is the persuasion of love we need to exercise. It is the way of the gentle God.

  

Go and Do Likewise (15th Sunday Ordinary C)

The Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam published his article, “American Grace,” revealing his discovery that the loss of community in America is counterbalanced by a social capital that is kept alive in one place more than any other—in the house of worship. His study reveals that church-goers are more likely to engage in charitable works than their secular counterpart. Those who go to church are more likely willing to do voluntary work, give donation to homeless people, donate blood, help a neighbor in need, help someone find a job, etc.

(Picture from twitter # Sendong)

This is an affirmation of the message of today’s gospel (Lk 10: 25-37) which places love at the heart of Christian ethics. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is a timeless story of everyone’s primary responsibility in love to take care of those who are in need, the neighbor.  Putnam’s study somehow reveals how the message of the parable continues to be incarnated in today’s Christian commitment to loving service in our communities.

Let us reflect more deeply on this primary responsibility to love as taught by today’s gospel reading.  Two things for our reflection: First, the primacy of love over any other law; second, the active nature of love.

Primacy of Love. The gospel reading presents a dialogue between Jesus and the scholar of the law. The conversation leads to an agreement that, according to the law, what brings eternal life is following the greatest commandments, that is, love of God and love of neighbor.  This is illustrated, then, by the parable of the Good Samaritan which effectively employs irony to bring the message across quite powerfully.

The priest and the Levite, who enjoy respectable religious status and are expected to be more loving than others, are portrayed to have fallen short of the duty to love. They have placed more importance on the laws governing ritual purity so that they avoided helping and having to touch the blood of a dying man.  They seemed to have been more concerned about their ritual functions in the temple than their duty to show mercy and love to someone in dire need.

On the other hand, the Samaritan, who is a social outcast due to religious, cultural and political reasons, is described as being readily concerned and compassionate to the robber’s victim.  The Samaritan’s act of love becomes a criticism of the misplaced priority of the ritualistic priest and Levite. Love is the greatest of all commandments.

Our religious piety is not bad as it is an integral part of our faith expression.  But it should not become our comfort zone where we feel secure as we hide from and avoid the demands of loving. Instead, an authentic piety must lead us to greater sensitivity to the neighbor’s needs and even bring joy to our commitment to the works of charity.

Love in Action.  It is one thing to know and understand what love is and its significance in our faith; it’s quite another to actually do it. Love is not so much an idea as a commitment to act.  When the scholar of the law correctly presented the two greatest commandments of love as the way to eternal life, Jesus agreed: “You have answered correctly.”  He did not stop with this simple affirmation though.  Jesus emphasized the necessity of acting according to the greatest commandments as he continued to say: “Do this and you will live” (v. 28).

The scholar of the law wished to justify himself and continued to ask Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” It is to this question that Jesus narrated the parable of the Good Samaritan where both the priest and the Levite refused to extend their helping hand to the dying man while the Samaritan compassionately assisted him. It is important to note that Jesus, then, changed the question.  It is no longer about “who is my neighbor.” Jesus asked the scholar of his opinion that among the three “who acted as a neighbor.”

The scholar got the correct answer again of course: “The one who treated him with mercy.” And Jesus finally gave him this instruction: “Go and do likewise.” The scholar of the law was seeking understanding and knowledge, or was just testing Jesus’ wisdom; but Jesus was directing him beyond knowledge of the law. Jesus was challenging him to act according to the greatest of all laws—the law of love.

The same challenge is thrown to all of us his disciples: Go and do likewise. We easily know who our neighbor is. Any one in need is our neighbor.  But the real question is, “am I willing to act as a neighbor?”

Robert Putnam’s discovery about the availability of church-goers for charity works is an encouraging observation.  Let us make that same observation true to all the communities we belong to. Let us make the message of the parable of the Good Samaritan alive in our communities. Let us listen to Jesus instructing us, “Go and do likewise.”