26th Week, Monday, Sept 27
Zechariah 8:1-8 / Luke 9:46-50
God makes a promise; “I will rescue my people.”
Emerald Fields is a movie about a father whose small son gets lost in the rain forests of South America. The father never stops searching for his boy. Finally, after years of looking, he finds him. The movie is a good parable of God's loving concern for his people. Israel wandered from God and got lost. They got so lost that many people despaired of ever seeing God or Jerusalem again. When their despair was deepest, God assured them through Zechariah that he had not forgotten them.***
Do we ever feel lost and depressed? Do we ever feel that God has forgotten us? “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have written your name.' Isaiah 49:15-16
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Today’s chapter of Zechariah is a later addition by his disciples. It pictures the restoration of a remnant, with faithful people, young and old, in the streets of Jerusalem, and God living among them.
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The relationship between God and His people is often like that of a romantic relationship between a man and a woman. But as it was often the case, and as it is often the case still, it is a love relationship that is certainly not love at first sight. God loves His people and it was He who chose them to be His own.
Yet God's Chosen people were also often portrayed as a woman who scorns this loving and sincere suitor and instead flirts with other men. But God the suitor does not give up on His beloved and relentlessly continues to go after her and win her heart.
As we heard from the 1st reading from the prophet Zechariah, the Lord God says this: I am burning with jealousy for Zion, with great anger for her sake. Yes, God still loves His people and wants to win back their hearts even though they have sinned and turned away from the Lord God.
Does all that sound rather incredible and even impossible that God should be like this? Does it also sound rather incredible and ridiculous that one who has the heart of a child would be the one who is great in the eyes of the Lord?
What is incredible and ridiculous and impossible for us is certainly not for God. We only need to turn back to God in love and then we will realize that nothing is incredible and ridiculous or impossible.
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The Bible is an honest book. It speaks not only of virtues and holiness, but even of the faults of the important biblical figures. So here, for narrow-minded pettiness, we get two instances. The apostles discussed who was the greatest among them. And later John, of all persons, wanted Jesus to forbid a man to use the name of Jesus in driving out demons. They did not think that it is not the opinion of others that makes them great but what they are before God, who alone can objectively assess the greatness of man. John did not think that it is more important that a devil has been driven out, than it is to ask who did it and, in whose name, it was done. These faults gave Jesus the chance to give two important lessons: What counts before God is not what people think, but real greatness can be found in what is smallest in the esteem of the world like the child that God loves. God's love of men is tolerant. It values the good that has been done more than the narrow-minded question "who did it?"
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Childlike, but not childish... We are God’s children, yet not infants. We have to grow up constantly to the maturity of Christ, to remake with the help of the Spirit, our unity, the center of ourselves.
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Opening Prayer
Lord our God, your Son Jesus Christ became a child of people. He made children the privileged symbol of the truly adult disciple. May we have the openness and receptivity of the child: humble, authentic, and open to your love and to your gifts. For only then, will you fill our emptiness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
