6C22.    Jeremiah 17:5-8.    “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.”  The people of Judah had put their trust in their leaders who acted as though they knew better than God.  They went against God’s leadership for his people.  The result was disastrous when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and carried the Hebrews off into slavery.  “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord.”  Anything that depends on what is earthly and not heavenly will go back to dust and dirt.

Luke 6:17, 20-26.    These are the Lucan beatitudes where what is blessed is set against what is cursed or woeful.  The blessed are those who put their faith in what is God-centered and valuable in the eyes of God; the cursed or woeful are those who put their trust in what the world considers worthwhile.

1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20.    Paul is responding to the belief among some of the Corinthians who thought that “there is no resurrection of the dead.”  There were many who accepted the philosophy among the Greeks that the body imprisons the soul and so death frees the soul from prison.  And so for them resurrection meant to return to imprison the soul again in the body.  However, for us life in Christ means death to placing ourselves first so to rise in living God’s will, submitting ours to his, so to live in the eternal happiness that only God can give.

6C19.   Jeremiah 17:5-8 & Psalm1.  In whom or what is our life rooted: the things and people of this world or in God?  If it is in the things or people of this world, then we are “a barren bush in the desert,” cursed, worthless and doomed.  If it is in God, there we are like “a tree planted near running water,” fruitful and green.

Luke 6:17, 20-26.  Matthew’s beatitudes emphasize the spiritual; whereas Luke’s beatitudes center on one’s immediate earthly situation.  It may seem to people who have a worldly perspective on everyday life that what is important is what things and what friends you have that draw admiration from the surrounding world.  Being blessed in the sight of this world where in time everything will rot or simply pass away into oblivion is to be cursed by not having what endures through all time.  This world obscures and perverts what is truly valuable because its vision is myopic or short-sighted, seeing only what is near and physical and not what is spiritual and eternal.  It seems to this world that God sees things in a manner that is upside down and maybe even inside out.  However, God is the only measure of what is genuinely true and real.  The world’s vision obliterates the truth in order to have whatever pleases it.  For the world truth and reality only challenge self-interests and so must be disposed of.

1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20.  Paul writes here to reassert that Jesus physically arose from the dead.  Paul is challenging the teaching that some were putting forth that Jesus’ resurrection was only the fact that he is remembered in peoples’ hearts and mind but that Jesus did not actually, physically arise from the dead.  This is once again truth and reality seen and rearranged through a worldly vision and not God’s.  Paul is clear to point out to the Corinthians that our faith is in a God who has power over death and other natural forces.  If Jesus arose only in peoples’ memories, that will be our fate too.  However, our faith is in the God who is eternal, on whom time has no bonds.  As he is eternal, he shares his never ending life and love with us, his sons and daughters over whom death has no power.

5C22.    Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8.    The people of Judah lived in great fear of the horrific terror of invading Assyrians.   Isaiah’s vision assures them that their God is infinitely more powerful that than any earthly force.  God is choosing Isaiah to be his prophet or spokesperson but Isaiah protests that he is totally unworthy.  God sends an angel to make Isaiah fit for the job.  As a result, Isaiah was able to say, “Here I am,” ”send me!”  It is God’s divine plan to use his human creatures as instruments of his divine will and so accomplish the result he wishes to achieve.

Luke 5:1-11.  After Jesus miraculously orchestrates the overwhelming catching of fish, Peter “fell at the feet of Jesus and said, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,’”   Just as Isaiah had said, “I am a man of unclean lips,” Peter also recognized how undeserving and unworthy he was before the spectacular magnificent goodness of God.  In recognizing their own nothingness, they were putting themselves into the hands of the God who is everything.    They abandoned their sense of self-confidence to leave themselves open to live and act in the strength of God so to do what God had in mind for them to accomplish.  “When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”  They emptied themselves, so Jesus could fill them with himself.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11.    Never to be the least because of the strength of the ego given him at birth, Paul declares, “For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church.” “I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God that is with me.”  It is God that does the good work and we, by the grace of God, who cooperate with his working within us, accomplish his work.

5C19.   Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8.  Isaiah, on feeling that the frame of the house shook and filled with smoke, cried out, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips.”  The seraphim touched the mouth of Isaiah with an ember taken from the altar and said, “Your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”  When the Lord asked, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” Isaiah responded, “Here I am; send me!” Before the great display of the power of the Lord, Isaiah felt his own profound unworthiness because of his sinfulness.  However, it was by God’s power that he was made worthy and so enabled Isaiah to be God’s prophet to his people.

Luke 5:1-11.   Jesus, knowing what he planned to do, got into Simon’s boat so that he could preach to the crowd that was on the shore.  Jesus then ordered Simon to put out into deep water and lower the nets for a catch. Simon, yet to be named Peter, acquiesced to Jesus’ command despite the fact that he thought the effort would be fruitless because they had gotten nothing after fishing all night.  Simon, stunned at the sudden great catch of fish to the point that their nets were tearing, “fell at the knees of Jesus and said, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’” “Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.’”  As with Isaiah, God turned sinful men into people who were missionaries worthy to fulfil God’s calling to bring people into God’s kingdom.  “When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”

1 Corinthians 15:1-11.   When we read the epistles, it should be with the mind that Paul is responding to some issue or need in the church community to which he writes.  In other words, we only know one part of the dialog.  Next week we read further that the issue he is responding to this week is that some said that there was no resurrection of the dead.  This week Paul lays the groundwork to assert the genuine resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Paul says that Jesus himself appeared to many after the resurrection, including to Paul himself.  Then Paul digresses to how unworthy Paul was to be personally called by Jesus, since Paul intensely “persecuted the church of God.”  Paul asserts that it was and is by the grace of God that he is what he is, a very effective missionary for the church of God.  As with Isaiah and Peter, now with Paul, God turns a sinner into a person who was a missionary worthy to fulfil God’s calling to bring people into God’s kingdom.  Without God no one can be holy; with God we cannot be anything but holy.

4C22.    Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19.     Yahweh proclaims that, as God, he knew Jeremiah from all eternity.  Yahweh set Jeremiah to be “a prophet to the nations.”  Because Jeremiah told the Israelites what they did not want to hear, they opposed him.  However Yahweh tells Jeremiah, “Be not crushed on their account;” I “have made you a fortified city” “against the whole land.”  “They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”  This world’s ways are not God’s ways and in the end God is always victorious.

Luke 4:21-30.  The people Jesus grew up with in Nazareth rejected Jesus’ claim that he is anything more than the son of Joseph.  They saw him to be just an ordinary person who is making an unacceptable claim to being extraordinary.  On the other hand, when Jesus points out that they, as Jews, have no claim to be extraordinary in the sight of God, since God singled out non-Jews (the widow in Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian) to receive his special favor and not Jews, they attempted “to hurl him down headlong” “from the brow of the hill.”  However, by the power of God “Jesus passed through the midst of them and went away.”  We grow up with set ways of thinking that the world around us has imbued us with. It is a great challenge to let God be the world around us and to begin thinking as God thinks and not as this world does. (Matthew 16:23c)  Rather than trying to affirm his own messianic claim, Jesus challenged his hometown folks to seek to belong to God’s ways and not to humans’ ways.

1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13.  God is love. (1 John 4:8 & 16)  God’s way is love.  Human beings are, biologically speaking, animals of this earth.  The ways of the animals of this earth are to be the predators and those preyed upon. There are many ways and levels of acting in a predatory way.  While acting civilly may avoid any predatory activity, Christian love, which is to love as God loves, means that we care for others as God cares for us.  Jesus said, “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.” Christian love calls upon us to go infinity beyond the avoidance of being predatory but, far beyond that, to be genuinely concerned for one another.  Jesus crucified defines what love means in Christianity.

4C19.   Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19.   God in his divinity is without the limitations that we live with and take for granted.  He is without beginning or end.  So God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” God knew the horrific opposition Jeremiah would face.  God says, “Be not crushed on their account.”  He makes him like “a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass” against all the rejection he will get from Judah.

Luke 4:21-30.    In saying, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus is saying that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him to bring glad tidings to the poor, in other words, that he is the prophet being sent by God the Father.  The people in the synagogue where he gave his short talk, “asked, ‘Isn’t this the son of Joseph?’”  They were really saying we saw him grow up in our midst just as an ordinary, local person.  How is it that all of a sudden, he claims to be a prophet?  Secondly, the people complained that he has worked many wondrous miracles in Capernaum but not here in Nazareth.  Jesus’ purpose in working miracles was to build faith in those who were open to believe.  It made no sense to work miracles for those who had a closed mind and a hard heart as did those he had grown up with.  In answer to them Jesus replies that God the Father worked miracles for the widow in Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian were not Jews.  They were greatly angered by that reply because as God’s People they thought that they had an irrefutable claim and sole ownership of God’s good works.  In pointing out that God had chosen other people to be generous to instead of the Jews, it challenged the assumption that, in being chosen by God, all other peoples were rejected by God with no right to God’s good works.  Not only did they not know who Jesus was; they did not they were in God’s eyes.

1 Corinthians 12:31- 13:13.  Earlier in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, Paul relates that the Holy Spirit gives varied spiritual gifts to the whole body of the church or Assembly of God’s People coordinating and providing for the various interrelated functions of the body so that the body can operate as a single efficient unit.  The gifts vary in such a way that, working together harmoniously, the body can operate or function as an efficient whole or entity.  Above the ordinary gifts that the Spirit gives, Paul makes it clear that there is a spiritual gift that is greater than all the rest that all of us should strive for.  Paul goes on to say that he has grown in knowledge since his childhood.  He is the point now, he writes, that he has grown to know only partially and indistinctly; but what he does know is that greatest of all gifts is love.  Genesis 1:27 says: “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.”  Since 1 John 4:16b says: “God is love”, and we are made in his image and likeness, then we must be love which is to say that we must, not only be loving, but that our very person must be love as God is love.  In Matthew 6:9, Jesus teaches us to pray by calling God our Father.  As sons and daughters to our Father God who is love we must be love because we are the offspring of the One who is love.  Love is not just something we do but who we are. This is his glad tidings to the poor.  God will make rich in  God’s love.

2C22.    Isaiah 62:1-5.    “Nations shall behold your vindication and all the kings your glory.”  The Hebrews were looked upon as being so lowly because of their captivity.  However now God has made his people to be glorious.  Those who were thought to be forsaken by the Lord, “you shall be called “My Delight.” “As a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoices in you.”  God transformed defeat into victory.

John 2:1-11.   I take the liberty to explain this gospel passage with the help of various commentaries and with my understanding of what took place at Cana.  “There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.”  The wine ran short more than likely because of the presence of Jesus’ disciples.   Mary, Jesus’ mother, recognizing that the cause of the shortage of wine was the fact of Jesus’s disciples being there, put the burden of supplying for the lack of wine on her son.  At first Jesus did not think that God, his Father, had called upon him to perform miraculous deeds at this time, and so refused to intercede.  However, Jesus changes his mind and so with spectacular generosity, made the best of wines available.   John, the Evangelist, takes this physical event and gives it a deeper spiritual meaning, by saying, with the words of the headwaiter, “you have kept the good wine until now,” that God has replaced the Old Testament Torah or Law with the presence of God in the person of Jesus, his Son.  Jesus himself, so to speak, is the new good wine.  The miracle of the wedding feast of Cana symbolizes that what was old is transformed into what is new.  The Old Testament Law is transformed into Jesus, God himself who is present in the midst of his people.

Corinthians 12:4-11.   The Holy Spirit makes the water to become wine, that is, he takes what is natural and raises it to produce supernatural benefits.  The water that Jesus made to become wine also symbolizes the natural attributes that God gives us humans that are now raised to become the divine gifts of the Spirit so to work in us humans his supernatural wonders even while we are here on earth.

 

2C19.   Isaiah 62:1-5.  Isaiah looks forward to the return of the Hebrew captives to Israel.  “So shall your God rejoice in you” as his people returns to his embrace as his bride.  What great things God will do for his people because his love for them is so great!

John 2:1-11.  When reading John’s gospel, it is absolutely necessary to realize that, more often than not, he intentionally writes with two levels of meaning.  First there is the obvious first meaning or understanding that the text is speaking on a physical, everyday layer of meaning, i.e. the text says just what the common understanding is and nothing more or less.  However, then John the Evangelist expects us to delve into the deeper, more profound meaning he really wants us to perceive.  From the first reading we can see that God wants to see his relationship to his people as a marriage that involves the deep caring that the groom should have for his bride and not just as two people passing each other on the street.  In the coming of Jesus into the world God is forming a new bride whom he wishes to marry in yet a deeper love than before.  Returning to the first obvious level of meaning we should recognize that the disciples of Jesus were, what I refer to, as a lower blue-collar class of hard working people who were used to living a hard and hardy style of life.  In other words, there is a good chance that the reason why the feast ran short of wine was that Jesus’ disciples drank most of it.  Mary is confronting her son with the problem of the lack of wine because she feels he has the responsibility to deal with the shortage that his disciples have created.  At first he is reluctant because he seems to feel that “My hour has not yet come” to work miracles.  Yet Mary persists by saying to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”  I feel that Jesus still remains obedient to his Mother and to God the Father who speaks through Mary.  Jesus superabundantly provides for the wine that ran short by turning six stone jars filled with water into 120 to 180 gallons of wine, almost 900 bottles full.  There is a deeper level of meaning to be uncovered in this stupendous miracle.  I believe that Jesus works this miracle at the beginning of his ministry to say that, what was the water of the Old Covenant, he now turns into rich, fine wine, the infinite abundance of his redemptive love that is the New Covenant that Jesus initiates in his ministry. Jesus brings to the world a love that is akin to a deep love a bridegroom has for his bride to make something, new, deeper and better. The headwaiter remarks, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”  Jesus thereby announces that he is taking what was good in the Old Testament times and making it infinitely better by his ministry.  John does not relate the reaction of Jesus’ disciples to this miracle directly but indirectly when writes, “Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.”

1 Corinthians 12:4-11.   “There are different workings (spiritual gifts or service) but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.”  “One and the same Spirit produces all of these (spiritual gifts), distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.”  Through his ministry Jesus is building a new Holy People of God through the work of the Holy Spirit that includes all peoples and not just Jews.  Psalm 96 says, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all you lands.” “Tell his glory among all the nations; among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.”  Through Jesus’ ministry God’s power flowed then and now into all peoples to build his new Church, to create his new bride.