L5A.  Ezekiel 37:12-14.  “Thus says the Lord God: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” “O my people!  I will put my spirit in you that you may live.”  Where there is death, natural or spiritual from sin, God gives life.  “I will do it, says the Lord.”  Our God is very much alive, active and present in our lives.

John 11:1-45.  “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  Remember when Jesus said of the blind man last Sunday, “it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”  Jesus gave sight to the blind man and now resurrects Lazarus so to give glory to Jesus and to bring people to believe in him.  “Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.”

Look how fully human Jesus is in his humanity that he weeps at the death of Lazarus and is so deeply perturbed and troubled throughout the whole scene of his dealing with the death of Lazarus.  How much Jesus loves!  He loves each one of us as he loved Lazarus.  Our God is not a sin tabulating machine, but a loving brother; a diligent, caring Father.

“Jesus told Mary, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ (Messiah), the Son of God.” For Lazarus, Jesus is the resurrection and the life.  Jesus fulfills God’s prophecy in Ezekiel.  Jesus makes it clear that a person can die physically but still will live forever spiritually in heaven if one believes that Jesus is the One who can raise us from the dead because he is Messiah and God.

After Jesus decided to go to Bethany, which is close to Jerusalem, to be there for Mary, Martha and the deceased Lazarus,  “the disciples said to Jesus, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?”  Jesus not only wants to resurrect Lazarus to give glory to God and to promote belief in him as God the Savior but also soon afterwards, to offer himself on the cross for our redemption, the reason why he came into this world.  After Jesus says, “’Let us go to him (Lazarus).’  So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go to die with him’”.  Jesus sends a strong message with the death and resurrection of Lazarus as to his own imminent death and resurrection.  The power of God conquers sin and death.  The victory belongs to God and to those who entrust themselves to him.

Romans 8:8-11.  “Brothers and Sisters: Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”  If someone is ‘in the flesh’, they follow what their flesh tells them to do, i. e. they obey the desires that come to them through the flesh or they belong to the desires of the flesh.  The Spirit of God dwells or lives in those who are baptized or invite the Spirit into their lives.  The Spirit gives us the desire to please God and leads us to reject the desires of the flesh.  He leads us to belong to God and to nothing else.  Those who belong to the Spirit live righteous lives that are in accord with God’s will for us.  The Spirit of God will then raise our dead bodies to eternal life.

4L20.    1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a.   The Lord was ready to choose his king over Israel.  Samuel looked at Jesse’s first son, Eliab “and thought, ‘Surely, the Lord’s anointed is here before him.’” “But the Lord said to Samuel,” “Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.”  David, the last of the sons who was left out tending sheep, was brought in before God who “said, ‘There—anoint him, for this is the one!’”  Human sight is infinitely limited because our human vision cannot see the fullness of the truth, of reality.  We can so easily think that what we see is all there is.  That is the lie the devil nourishes within us.  God does not have our human limitations.

John 9:1-41.   The people of Jesus’ times thought that any bodily deformity or defect was the result of our sin or that of generations before us.  When questioned, “Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.’”  Our physical, mental or emotional difficulties require that we go to God for help rather than depend on ourselves.  What we lack can make us all the richer, impelling us to fill  what is lacking in ourselves by sending us to the one who lacks in nothing that is good, our loving God.  Jesus is the light of the world, since in his light God, the Father is made visible.

When Jesus saw a man born blind, “he spat on the ground and made clay from his saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes.”  The blind man went and washed, and came back able to see.”  Genesis 2:9 reads: “Out of the ground the Lord God made various trees grow that were delightful to look at and good for food.”  The Lord made the ground and it was good.  Out of that same goodness that is the earth, he still makes and does many good things. The blind man washed and was able to see.

The Pharisees refused to see the goodness of God in Jesus.  If they did, they would have had to surrender their authority to God and have lost some of the earthly goods they were obtaining by their making of themselves the supreme authority on earth.  “Then Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.’” The ways of this world that are self-service but not giving service to God are the ways by which we blind ourselves to the ultimate truth that is God.  By whose authority do we claim to assert the things we think and say are true: by God’s or by ours?

Ephesians 5:8-14.  “You were once darkness, but now you are in the light of the Lord.”  Jesus who is the light makes us ambassadors of the light.  He who ascended now commissions us through the Holy Spirit to bring his light to the world. “Live as children of the light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.”  Darkness swallows us up and renders us lost in a material body that cannot see in the truth of eternal life.  If we continue to live in the coffin that is the devil, we will be in eternal darkness.  Jesus is the sunlight of eternal happiness.  Reality is eternal truth; the lie can be gratifying for the moment, since enables us to invent a world that is pleasing to us. It is so easy to be fooled.  What feels so good is all too inviting. We must deal with the truth or reality as it is and not what we wish it to be. It was not easy for Jesus on the cross; and nor for us with our feet planted on the ground of the real world. The Holy Spirit strengths us.  It is not easy because the darkness of this world and the devil can be so deceptively convincing and leave us lost in the darkness forever.  The Holy Spirit brings us the life of Christ.  Only he is the truth and the light.  All else is darkness and deception. Remain with him; his eternal victory is always ours!

3L20.   “In those days, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses.” “The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord in our midst or not?’” Obviously, the Israelites were experiencing something of a lack of water and so they complained about not having an adequate supply of water.  In effect they were demanding that God miraculously supply the water.  In effect they were testing God to prove that he was with them and truly cared for his People.  It was then and still considered sacrilegious to demand that the Almighty must do what human beings tell him to do. This event was remembered often later to show the hard-heartedness and doubt that the Israelites had at times, despite the fact that the Lord had often show his goodness to his People.

John 4:5-42.   Jesus, tired because of his long journey, stopped to rest at the well that Jacob, long ago had given to his son Joseph.  The water from the well which God had given to Jacob to sustain human life is now superseded in importance by the grace that gives spiritual life that is given by Jesus, who sits at the same well.  John’s gospel often relates two levels of thought at the same time: the first, simply the plot of an ordinary event, such as just Jesus setting at a well; the second, a lesson with a deep spiritual meaning, such as Jesus is now the one who is giving the water or grace of eternal spiritual life which is infinitely more important than the water that sustains physical life.  This sinful woman does not dare draw water in the cool of the morning because the other women that draw water then would mock her for her sinfulness.  So she comes at noon in the high heat of the day to avoid them.  Her thirst for ‘the living water’ is even greater because of her sinfulness.  Jesus clearly reveals himself to be the Messiah, the Christ.  Jesus speaks on that deeper level of meaning, when his disciples try to get him to eat physical, saying, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.”  Next he speaks of the one who sows the seed of faith, the sower and secondly, the reaper, who gathers the crops for eternal life, i.e. the people who have grown spiritually, who are ready to receive the rewards of eternal life.  Jesus then sows the seed of eternal life by preaching to the Samaritans “who began to believe in him because of his word.”

Romans 5:1-2, 5-8.  Jesus says, “Through our Lord Jesus Christ” “we have gained access by faith” to the grace of “peace with God” that gives us “hope in the glory of God.”  “And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” “God proves his love for us in that while we still sinners Christ died for us.”  The water that gives us grace, a share in his divine life, is the love that God has for us.  Jesus dwells in us giving us his love, his life to us so that daily we grow in him.

2LA20.   Genesis 12:1-4a.   To Abram God says, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.”  In last week’s reading Adam and Eve had the potential of being the parents of a paradise world but they sinned and brought the great struggle against sin to all of us to be able to regain the paradise of heaven.    From Abram God promised a great nation who will be enabled to lead the world out of sin.  And in later times all peoples would find a great blessing in the Hebrew peoples that God established through Abram.

Matthew 17:1-9.  On top of the high mountain close to God, Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James, and John.  Moses representing the Law and Elijah, the prophets, were there conversing with Jesus.  Peter wished to give high honors to them. Then God the Father spoke from a bright cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”  The word ‘listen’ here means, ‘Hear what he has to say, then go and do it.’   The authority of God himself spoke through the cloud.  God was to form a new people from Jesus who is still leading his followers, called Christians, though this world to heaven.  The great power of this mighty event left the apostles prostrate and fearful.  Jesus, who is the essence of peace, said, “Rise, and do not be afraid.”  This vision was probably given to these three apostles to prepare them for the resurrection to come.

Romans 5:1-2, 5-8.   “God saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus.”  We have been given salvation which  we struggle to hold on to every day in Christ because the forces of this world seek to tear it out of our hands.   Jesus calls us to a life that is not of this world.  A life that is without death, eternally filled with the brilliance that is his presence.

2A17                         Is. 49:3, 5-6.  Israel was first chosen to be God’s people and they alone, as the text says, “You are my servant, Israel, through whom I show my glory.”  However, through Isaiah, God later expands the call to other peoples, telling Isaiah, “I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” and not just to the tribes of Jacob.

John 1:29-34.  John presents Jesus as the sacrificial offering who will redeem us from our sins, when he says, “Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”   John gives testimony that Jesus is the Son of God.   Also he contrasts his baptism as being merely of water but Jesus’ baptism as being infinitely superior because he baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

1 Cor. 1:1-3.  Paul addresses “the church of God that is in Corinth, to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy, with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.”  This is Paul’s way of saying that not just Jews but all people, who recognize Jesus as their Lord, are God’s people.  We who belong to Jesus are made holy in him.  The blessing at the end says that we as God’s people can bring God’s blessing to one another.

 

1LA20. Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7.   In Genesis One, the first story of creation says: “Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  Genesis 1:27b & c says: In the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.” The second story of creation says in Genesis 2:7: “The Lord formed man out of the clay of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.”  After man’s creation, Genesis 2:22 says: “The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man.”  Genesis 1 & 2 relates that what God had made was good.  If everything was good, where did evil come from?  Genesis 3 relates that evil came from the first human beings that God had created, our first parents.  While they were still yet innocent and had not yet disobeyed God, Genesis 2:25 goes on to say: “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” After they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, they lost their innocence and “they realized that they were naked.”  While they were innocent, they had no knowledge of evil.  Evil was not available for them to choose. Genesis 3:22 relates: “Then the Lord God said: ‘See! The man has become like one of us, knowing what is good and what is bad’”.  Our innocence was lost.  Now we must struggle to choose between what is truly good and the evil that the devil makes seem more desirable than what is truly good.

Matthew 4:1-11.  Adam was conquered by temptation but Jesus was victorious over temptation.  “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”  Jesus was both God and man.  As a man he was vulnerable to temptation but in his humanity he had built up such a powerful relationship and union with God the Father through prayer, he became indestructible.  As with any human being, in his humanity he not only grew physically, yet even more importantly, spiritually.  As such Jesus in his humanity is the ideal, perfect model for what our spiritual growth should be.  Jesus taught us to pray: “Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.”  He wants us to be fearful of the power of the devil and so live every moment under the protection of our loving Father God. If encountered with a spiritual desire to advance in holiness, temptations force us more and more to live our lives growing every day in God’s grace.

Jesus had just gone through a terrible trial under the strain of forty days in the desert and the temptations.  God the Father recognized that Jesus needed to recover from all that he gone through.  So he sent the angels to minister to him.

Romans 5:12-19.  “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.” “For if by the transgression of the one, the many died how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”  Let us all claim our sinfulness so that we may claim Jesus Christ as the one who saves us from our sinfulness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7A20.    Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18.  The Lord commands Moses to tell the whole Israelite community: “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”  Clearly God is telling his people to be as he is, holy and pure; not living as just another animal of this world but as a people close and dear to God, as his own.  In Genesis 1:26, “Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness.  Let them have dominion over” all the animals of this earth.  We are to live in his image and not in the image of the other creatures of this earth.  God in his holiness bears no hatred, grudge, nor revenge.  We must do as God does, because we have been made in his image and likeness.

Matthew 5:38-48.   God never says, “Do evil to those who do you evil.”  God never does anything evil; we do it to one another or the devil does it. In Genesis in its narrative of the creation, after God has done his work of creation we read: “God saw how good it was.”  In chapter 3 & 4 of Genesis we read that evil came into this world by what was done by Adam & Eve and then by Cain.

Jesus said, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil.” However, Jesus clearly resisted the temptations of the devil in the desert.  At Nazareth when the people became infuriated with him and brought him “to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him headlong, he passed through the midst of them and went away.” (Mark 4:29b-30)  Again Jesus resisted their evil intent.  My understanding of what Jesus meant by “offer no resistance” is that there are occasions when things work out better when one offers no resistance and so we do not offer resistance.  The best example of that is when Jesus did not resist his arrest by the band of soldiers and guards that Judas brought into the garden of Gethsemane because he (Jesus) had been brought into this world to offer himself up as a sacrifice for the redemption of our sins.  Jesus said, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  God is infinitely perfect.  In our humanness we have a limited capacity to accomplish what is good.  If we are called to our judgment when we are on the life’s road doing our best in God’s eyes, all will go well.  The measure of the goodness to which we are called is God and God alone.  God’s love embraces us to be holy as he is holy.

1 Corinthians 3:16-23.    “Brothers and Sisters: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.”  By our baptism the Holy Spirit dwells in us and works with us to create that truly holy person that is to be a child of God made in his image and likeness. The Holy Spirit enables us to share in God’s holiness.  Remember that only saints are permitted in heaven.  It is our life’s work and goal to become saints by achieving holiness through uniting our life to the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

7A   Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18.  “Be holy, for I, Lord your God, am holy.”  What does that mean for us?  Later God says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Who is it that commands this of us?  “I am the Lord,” your God who is master over you.  What does it mean to love.  “You shall not bear hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.”  “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge.”

Matthew 5:38-48.  No longer “an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth,” “offer no resistance to one who is evil.” Not only that but indulge and cooperate with the one strikes you, or wants your tunic or your service or to borrow from you.  Should we understand all this in strict sense?  In the Gospel for Monday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time (Mark 8:11-13), the Pharisees demand a sign (miracle) from heaven from Jesus.  He responds, “No sign will be given to this generation.”  The next day’s Book of Genesis reading (6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10) says, “When the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth,” God sends the flood to destroy those evil people, except for Noah who is not evil.  Obviously, Jesus’ words should not be taken literally but as examples of how far God’s love is willing to go, given the proper and appropriate situation and circumstance.  This gospel ends with, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  This means that God is perfect according to his capacity to be perfect which is infinite and we are to perfect according to our capacity to be perfect which is, in contrast, finite.  As God is, so should we be.  His is our Father; we are his children, maturing more and more each day to grow in his image and likeness as we were first made to be (Genesis 1:26-27).

 

1 Corinthians 3:16-23.  Paul writes, “Brothers and Sisters (in Christ): Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells within you?”  We are no longer simply human but God lives in us and raises us above what is merely human by his power.  Do not think you are wise, if you belong to what is of this world.  “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.”  Everything that is good and wise belongs to God and to those who belong to God.  “All belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.” In the Parable of the Lost or Prodigal Son, the father says to the elder (older) son, “Everything I have is yours.” (Luke 15:31b)  This is what Our Father says to us.  Since we have it all because we are temples of God, it makes no sense to seek anything from a world that has nothing.

6A20.   Sirach 15:15-20.   Life is at once a spectacular gift and a threatening challenge.  Choose well and live an unimaginably wonderful eternal life; choose poorly and experience a hell beyond any words or nightmares. “Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”  God “is mighty in power, and all-seeing.”  “He understands man’s every deed.” God is love.  If we reject God, we reject love and shall live forever an existence that is utterly loveless.

Matthew 5:17-37.   Matthew’s chapter 5 is written to contrast the Mosaic law-filled covenant of the Old Testament with the Christ-filled covenant of the New Testament.  What the Torah or Law commanded is surpassed and fulfilled by the requirements of a life in the Holy Spirit.  Matthew’s chapter 5 finishes with the new command that summarizes the whole chapter: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  In Matthew 5:17b-18, Jesus says, “I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.  Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.”  Through his crucifixion, resurrection and kingship in heaven, all things have taken place and the purpose of the former law to make us holy has been fulfilled.  We read in Hebrews 5:7a, 8-9, “In the days when he was in the flesh, Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”  The law of the Old Testament is rendered useless because now all salvation comes through Jesus and no longer through the law.  Jesus said in Matthew 28:18b, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”  Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”

1 Corinthians 2:6-10.   The all-knowing God has a wisdom that is beyond anything that this world can fathom.  God uses his wisdom to work together with his love for us so that we will one day be brought to share in his divine glory.  From Isaiah 64:3 Paul takes: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,” that what “this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”  So great is God’s love that he wished to share it with those who would freely choose to love him more than anything else and despite the fact that we had other seductive choices.  To love God and his will with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and all our strength (Mark 12:30) is to embrace God’s eternal love for us.

 

5A20.   Isaiah 58:7-10.    Love is not only feeling affection for others but also doing good for them.  Love must be both heart and hands.  This is not only common sense but also what God demands.  How can we ask God to help us, if we ourselves will not help one another?  God is often made visible and real through those who deliver help through their human hands and genuine concern.  One way God responds to pleas for help that come to him is through people who live on this earth.  Angels are God’s messengers from heaven to earth.  We too are God’s messengers bringing his love and concern to others.   Often God helps us so that we can help one another.  God relates to us not only individually but also as a community of believers; as a single person but also as a church.

Matthew 5:13-16.  Without salt many foods are tasteless and without light we cannot see.   Salt and light are essentials.  God, who is invisible and not physically present, makes his presence felt through us.  If we do not have God vibrant, alive and thriving within us we are salt that is lifeless and a lamp without light, deserving “to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”  One very important way God is present to this world is through his faith-filled followers.  By his lively presence within us, Jesus’ loving deeds and life-giving words are seen and heard  In this way we give glory to our glorious God.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5.  In the Acts of the Apostles 17:16-34 we read that Paul did go to Athens where the great philosophers had lived and taught.  There Paul did go “with sublimity of words or of wisdom.”  That effort was a failure and he was rejected.  Now in Corinth he comes only with “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” It is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can come to have full faith in Jesus Christ.  Otherwise we will be like the seed (Matthew 13:18-23)  that fell on the path or on rocky ground or among thorns that bore no fruit, good for nothing “but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”