3rd Sunday of Lent - March 20, 2022

Radical Repentance – a call from the heart of God
On this third Sunday of Lent, we turn our attention to the God who reveals himself. A single thread runs through today's readings. It is indicated by the name of God as revealed to Moses: “I am who I am.” Our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers —that is to say, not an abstract, impersonal reality, but the transcendent One who intervenes powerfully in human history. God calls Moses and sends him to lead his people out of Egypt through the wilderness. Here is a tender, loving God, grieving over the troubles of his people. “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt …” God speaks these words miraculously to Moses from the midst of a burning bush that is not consumed by its own flames! Great compassion from the depths of the transcendent God. If there is a “Top 10” list of Bible passages conveying the essence of the Jewish and Christian idea of God, the one about Moses and the burning bush is surely included. Scholars find here the paradox of the fire that burns the bush without consuming it. What better way to portray the intense presence of Creator to creature?  God can be intensely present in us without violating our distinct essence. At every time we receive Holy Communion; don’t we represent this paradox of the ‘burning bush’? Jesus, in the  Gospel  for Sunday, sounds angry and threatening and we must talk about that. “Repent or you will perish,” he says. The tower at Siloam fell on eighteen people. Cursing a fig tree, etc. Is the loving Lord whom we have known actually furious and offended? News comes to Jesus that Pilate has murdered a number of Galilean people. Still worse, Pilate has mixed their blood with that of sacrificed animals. This is a terrible, gruesome story, worthy of denunciation. He tells a parable in the second half of the Gospel that might help us understand. An orchard owner orders his gardener to chop down a sadly unproductive fig tree. The gardener advises him to leave it one more year and see if, with some tending, it will bear fruit. Give it one more chance. Who does the heartless orchard owner represent? We always assume that it is God. We half-remember the story in Mt 21:18-19 of Jesus actually cursing a fruitless fig tree. But, on the contrary, Jesus is not the orchard owner but the gardener, asking mercy for the disobedient fig tree. God is the God of ‘second chances.’ At the same time there is a clarion call for repentance. Lent is a season to turn away from our false idols and call on the merciful and gracious Lord, who is “slow to anger and abounding in kindness.” We are called in Lent “to prayer, fasting and works of mercy” because, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, “you will all come to the same end unless you begin to reform.”   The Jewish concept of repentance at Jesus’ time is a very good practice for reflection: Teshuvá was the key concept in the rabbinic view of sin, repentance, and forgiveness. The Jewish rabbis taught that repentance required five elements: recognition of one’s sin as sin; remorse for having committed the sin;  desisting  from repeating this sin;  restitution  for the damage done by the sin where possible; and confession. “Confession” for the Jews had two forms: ritual and personal. Ritual confession required recitation of the liturgies of confession at their proper moments in the prayer life of the community. Personal confession required individual confession before God as needed or inserting one’s personal confession into the liturgy at designated moments. One who followed these steps to  teshuvá  was called a “penitent.” In fact, Jesus invited his Jewish listeners to such repentance. “Repent” (Greek, metanoia), implies not just regret for the past but a radical conversion and a complete change in our way of life as we respond and open ourselves to the love of God. We hear a lot about repentance during this season of Lent and get away with ‘cheap repentance’ – that is feeling sorry for ourselves! A radical conversion calls for receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation followed by the rearrangement of our value system to reflect the ‘mind of Christ’. Begin by giving a serious thought about what occupies your mind most of the time and how you spend your time on daily basis! Does the ‘pattern’ fit the image of a ‘son/daughter of God’?
Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O