19A23.      1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a.    The Almighty God is not God because of his might or limitless power but simply because he is God with no need to prove anything to anyone.   We only need to recognize God in his glorious goodness.  We ought to allow God to be the God he wants to be and really is; and not try to impose on him any of our notions or ideas of what we feel or demand that he be.  Our God is a God whose love for us calls upon him to be eternally active and present in our lives.  How wonderful it is to have him as our God!

Matthew 14:22-33.  Jesus “went up on the mountain by himself to pray.”  Instead of seeking to rest after a hard day’s work, he sought to nourish himself by drawing close to God his Father.  After he was finished his praying, he apparently sought to join up with his disciples despite the fact that it was night and they were out at sea with waves being churned by the winds.  His disciples were terrified at the sight of “him walking on the sea.” “At once Jesus spoke to them, ‘Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.’”  Peter responded by not only not being afraid but audaciously calling upon Jesus to “command me to come to you on the water.”  The mighty sound of “how strong the wind was” overwhelmed his self-confidence and he became frightened and began to sink.  He had put his faith in himself and not in the Lord.  Recognizing the power of God at work in Jesus, his disciples said, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”  This same thing is said of Jesus by the Roman soldiers at Jesus’ death on the cross when there came up a great darkness and an earthquake.  (Matthew 27:54)

Romans 9:1-5.  Paul exclaims, “I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart” because the Israelites had not accepted Jesus as their Messiah, their Christ.  How infinite is the love of our God who offered up his Son to throw open the gates of heaven so that that we could live in his love!  Yet so many walk away from that love!

19A20     1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a.    “The Lord said to Elijah, ‘Go outside and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will be passing by.’”  Jesus also went to the mountain to pray.  Traditionally the mountain represented the highest point man could get closest to the Lord and it was the lowest point to which the Lord would come down.  Next the Lord manifests four earthly phenomena that might indicate the presence of the Lord.  We might think that the mighty, all-powerful Lord would be in the strong, heavy wind that crushed the rocks OR in the earthquake OR in the fire but the Lord was not in any of them.  He was in the tiny whispering sound.  Elijah, a man of God, knew that was the sign of the presence of the Lord. “Elijah hid his face in his cloak” because he knew that no one could look directly at God and live.  “One of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that God is in the quiet that is ever around us, working with us, for us and with us, without any visible or audible indicator of activity.”(Christopher  Davis)

Matthew 14:22-33.  “Afterwards Jesus made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side.”  “After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.”  Somewhat before dawn, Jesus came walking on the sea in the midst of a storm.  “When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified.  ‘It is a ghost,’ they said, and they cried out in fear.  At once Jesus spoke to them, ‘Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.’” I think that it is Peter’s natural bravado that impels him to say to Jesus, “Command me to come to you on the water.”  As long as Peter’s faith is in Jesus, he walks on the water; but he lets his faith be sucked out of him by the forces of this world.  Then he begins to sink and cries out, “Lord, save me!”  Jesus “caught Peter, and said to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’”  Much later Peter would again doubt when he was in the courtyard of Pilate.   Our humanness has a natural power over us.  While in this world, we must endlessly go to the Lord to imbue us with his spiritual power. Otherwise this world will bury us with its natural power.  Struck and astounded with his walking on the stormy water, they proclaim his divinity.  However, much later when he is taken down dead from the cross, the disciples hid shivering with fear.  Yet again the Lord goes and rescues them from their lack of faith.  Faith is living always with the Lord who shares his life with us.  Paul writes in Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”

Romans 9:1-5.  Paul says: “I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart,” because the Israelites have cut themselves off from their Messiah.  Through all their history the Jews belonged to God and God to them.  Jesus, the Messiah, came not only in the flesh but in Jewish flesh.  Ours is the choice also.  To whom or what do we belong?

19A   1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a.  Not in the spectacular demonstrations of natural might: the strong and heavy wind; the crushing rocks; the earthquake; not even the fire; but rather in the tiny whispering sound does God make his presence known!   Elijah stood at the entrance of the cave where he had previously taken shelter, but now with his face hidden in the cloak, for no one can see the face of the Lord and live.  In this world our God is often found in the tiny whispering sound because our life in prayer has given us the ears to hear.

Matthew 14:22-33.  Jesus dismissed the crowds after having fed them; yet he himself hungers for the presence of his Father.  So “he went up the mountain to pray.”  Jesus in his divinity was always united with his divinity and so did not need to pray but Jesus, in his humanity, teaches us that we in our humanity need to unite ourselves with the divinity, who is the only true source of goodness forever.  Jesus, truly man, by his incessant desire to pray teaches all humanity what it needs to know: with God we have everything; without God we have nothing.

The disciples were in a boat a few miles offshore that “was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it.”  Jesus “came toward them walking on the sea.  When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified.” “At once Jesus spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”  When we take Jesus as our strength, there can be no fear or worry.  Peter is overwhelmed with the sense of strength that the Lord gives him and so asks for the privilege to likewise walk on the water as the Lord does.  “But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened.”  Peter did not remain in God’s strength but naturally went back to his own inadequacy.  Don’t we all do the same?  We can all slip back into ourselves and out of a life dependent on the Lord.  Thanks be to the God who never leaves us, if we but call back to him for his help.  “Lord, save me,” and he does reach out to let his divine life surge back into us again to save us from our little faith in him. Our natural instinct is to live our lives within ourselves, independently and without God.  However, without God we sink into difficulties and problems we cannot solve on our own.

Like the transfiguration, Jesus has provided yet another sign of his divinity.  So “they did him homage, saying, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’”

Romans 9:1-5.  Paul writes, “I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart” “for the sake of my own people.”  The great majority of his own heritage, the Jewish people, did not accept Jesus as their Messiah and God.  They had received so very much from God as the Chosen People but they did not choose God when he came to them, Jesus who lived among them.  “He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.” (Jn. 1:11.)  “From them, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.”  Jesus was a Jew as were his mother and adopting father.  The vast majority of the people that God chose rejected the God that chose them to be his people.  Will we reject him too, or all too half-heartedly, accept him?   Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, our God who is blessed and cherished forever.

Transfig23.     Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14.   The book of Daniel is not written for history but to convey an apocalyptic imagery of our glorious God, ruling in heaven.  In this Sunday’s reading there is a scene where “one like a Son of man received dominion, glory, and kingship; all peoples, nations, and languages serve him.”  To me this seems to give us the image of Jesus who comes in humanness or as one of humanity but is the ultimate in divine authority over all the created world now and forever.

Matthew 17:1-9.  This scene of the transfiguration of Jesus comes right after Jesus tells his Apostles that he must suffer and die on the cross but nonetheless will resurrect. Jesus seems to be helping his followers deal with the horrors of his passion and death by seeing them through to his unconquerable, glorious divinity.  The voice of God the Father coming from a cloud asserts Jesus’ divine origin and authority, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”  With that command, God’s rule over his People was no longer to be the Old Testament Law or Torah but the words coming from the mouth of Jesus.

2 Peter 1:16-19.  Peter relates that he was an eyewitness to the transfiguration of Jesus.  Peter encourages us to be attentive to Jesus and to the manifestation of his divinity, “as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

TransfigA    Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14.  Daniel, like Revelations, is a Scriptural book written in a poetic, prophetic form out of a sense of the awesomeness of God who is infinitely beyond and above this world and who would save all through those who remained loyal to him through the trials of this world.  This passage brings out how spectacular our God is, shining brighter than all the universe put together, with a fieriness mentioned three times to bring out how unspeakably powerful he is, beyond anyone’s imagination.  “Myriads upon myriads attended him,” who witness to his infinite magnificence.  “One like a Son of man” “received dominion, glory, and kingship; all peoples, nations, and languages serve him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion.”  The Church takes this as an obvious foretelling of the transfigured Jesus.

Matthew 17:1-9.  “And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and clothes became white as light.”  What the world saw in the humanity of Jesus was an ordinary human being who grew up to adulthood in the ordinary way, all in accord with the times in which he lived.  The transfiguration of Jesus offers to the selected three Apostles a view of his divinity, which, except for the miracles, had been hidden from human eyes.  “Moses and Elijah represent respectively law and prophecy in the Old Testament and are linked to Mt. Sinai;  cf. Ex 19, 16-20, 17; 1 Kings 19, 2, 8-14.  They now appear with Jesus as witnesses to the fulfillment of the law and the prophets taking place in the person of Jesus as he appears in glory.” ({Mark} p. 1129, note 9,5, The New American Bible, 1987).  “A bright cloud cast a shadow over them, then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’”  This parallels the passage from Daniel, testifying that the Son is from and in accord with the Father.  The phrase ‘listen to him’ expresses the desire of the Father that we obey his Son.  What had just happened was truly fearsome to the Apostles, so Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and do not be afraid.’”  Through the Spirit, Jesus dwells in us daily to touch us with his gentle power, so to protect us from all fear.  Then Jesus commands them not to tell anyone until the resurrection so that they then can witness to his divinity, that is, his capacity to conquer death.

2 Peter 1:16-19.  Peter testifies to what he himself had seen along with the other two Apostles.  Besides the honor and glory given him by God, Peter testifies that God the Father also declared, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  Peter writes further, “You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place.” In other words, let Christ be the light that takes away any darkness in your soul.

17A23.     1 Kings 3:5, 7-12.    Solomon asks God for an understanding heart so to be able to judge right from wrong in his duty in governing God’s people.  God was pleased with Solomon’s choice to enable him to carry his God-given responsibility of governing God’s People.   To have the right and proper desires and affections in our hearts enables our mind to think of and organize what is best for us to do and act upon.  Only God has the capacity to truly assist us to ‘get it right’.

Matthew 13:44-52.  In this week’s and last week’s gospel Jesus instructs his disciples in the way they needed to organize their thoughts and hearts to live as people who live by the ways of the kingdom of heaven rather than the ways of this world.  Earth is a world where we go day by day meeting our daily needs as they arise.  Heaven is a world where everything belongs to God and God belongs to us out of his love for us.  God is the “treasure buried in a field,” the “pearl of great price.”  If we have God, we have it all forever.  If we do not have God, we are in hell.

Romans 8:28-30.  “Brother and sisters: We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  The Holy Spirit is always working within us who believe in God, moving us to draw ever always closer to God our Father.   God our Creator made us to live gloriously with him.

17A20.   Solomon said to the Lord: “I am a mere youth, not knowing how to act.” “Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong.” ‘The Lord was pleased that Solomon made this request. So God said to him:” “For understanding so that you may know what is right–I do as you requested.”  Solomon was like the scribe of third reading who brings from the store room of being raised as a good Jew what, was best for his new assignment from God, to be king of Israel.

Matthew 13:44-52.   Among the Jews the scribes had the necessary and important task of mining the Law and the Scriptures to make them understandable and digestible to the people so to lead them to holiness.  Jesus in his humanity is like that scribe who brings from the storeroom what the Holy Spirit makes available to him the stories and parables that enable his followers to understand what it is to be a truly holy people.  The first parable explains that to become people of the kingdom of heaven while here on earth is to give over all of one’s self to a life of faith in the Lord.  The second parable asserts that the pearl of great price is to possess a life in heaven by giving over oneself completely over to living a holy life in the Lord here on earth. The third parable, like that of the separating of the wheat from the weeds that grew together, is the separating of the good fish from the bad that lived in the same sea and then throwing the bad into the fiery furnace of hell.  Then Jesus asks his disciples,  ”’Do you understand all these things?’” They answered, ‘Yes.’” Jesus is like David and that scribe who is the head of his household.   However, now he leads his earthly people to his heavenly kingdom.

Romans 8:28-30.

17A   1 Kings 3:5, 7-12.  King Solomon asks for the wisdom to best be able to serve the people of his kingdom.   God grants his request because he wants what God wants of him.  Though Solomon was given the gift of wisdom, later he did not always do the wisest thing.  Knowing how to act and doing it are two different things.

Matthew 13:44-52.  These three parables all start off with: “The kingdom of heaven is like a,” and then they all go out seeking something.  In the first two, when what is sought after is found, then the seeker “goes and sells all that he has and buys” what they are searching for.  Really what is being sought after is “the kingdom of heaven.”  In order to obtain it, we must, so to speak, “sell all we have” to obtain what is most valuable to us, i.e. give all we have and all we are, which is the death on the cross, to acquire what is most valuable to us, the resurrection.  In Matthew 19:21, Jesus said to the rich young man, “If you wish to be perfect, go sell what you have and give to [the] poor, you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.” If he had actually done that, today he would probably been one of the greatest saints in heaven, which is to say, one of the richest men who has ever lived in terms not of earth but of heaven.

As an aside thought, Jesus is not saying that to be perfect or holy we must be without possessions, although that is what he, in fact, did call the rich young man to.  In Matthew 5:3, Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  I believe that to be ‘poor in spirit’ means to live in complete dependence and confidence  in God always willing to submit to God’s Will no matter what we have or do not have in terms of earthly possessions.

In the third of this Sunday’s gospel parables there is “the end of the age” separation of the good from the bad with the bad thrown “into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  This is followed by the statement that every scribe or student of the Scriptures, “who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven,” which was the subject of the three parables just spoken of in this gospel, “is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.”  That is to say, the scribe will draw on the wisdom of the New and Old Testaments what he needs to bring his household into the kingdom of heaven.

Romans 8:28-30.  The terms in this epistle: called according to his purpose, foreknew, predestined to be conformed, called, justified and glorified, were interpreted in John Calvin’s writings as God having predestined us to heaven or hell, and no one has the power to change the destiny assigned to them by God.  In the first sentence of this epistle, Paul writes, “that all things work for good for those who love God, according to his purpose.”  In other words, all things work for the good of those who have freely chosen to love God and who work in union with God to their sanctification which is God’s Will and purpose for all of us.  God, in his capacity as God, already foreknew but did not coerce what decisions we would make.  As any good parent, God had the best of wishes for our future and, in that sense, predestined us “to be conformed to the image of his Son,” which is that we work be a holy people who daily obeyed the Father’s Will for us.  In John 15:16a, Jesus says, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.”  In Mark 1:17, Jesus says to Simon and Andrew, “Come after me,” and then in vs.20 he calls James and John to follow him.  I truly believe he calls us all but some say yes sooner or later and others, no.  It is our decision and we must all answer for our decision that we have lived out.  And then he justifies us, i.e., he empowers us to follow our calling to holiness through the work of the Holy Spirit.  This past Sunday’s Epistle (Romans 8:26-27) states that the Spirit “intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s Will,” which is that we be a holy people.  In John 15:16b&c, Jesus says, I “appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.”

Paul writes in Romans 8:16-17, “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”   1 John 3:2 says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.  We do know that when it has been revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”  Paul writes in Philippians 3:20-21, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.  He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.”  God will share his glory with those who truly love him and his Will.

16A23.       Wisdom 12:13, 16-19.  Our God has limitless power to do whatever he wishes but uses that power to be just, kind and caring without limits.  Since we are his children, we must be like him: just, kind and caring.  We can be confident that our God permits repentance for our sins so that we can be reinstated into his good graces.

Matthew 13:24-43.  When we choose to be people of the kingdom of heaven, even though we live on earth, we belong to the king of heaven, God.  While we are on earth, we live in the midst of people who choose to be citizens of the kingdom of this world or earth.  They reject God as their king and choose to follow the rule of other rulers.  Every day the forces of this world who oppose God challenge us with their powerful allurements to change or lessen our loyalty to God.  Belonging to the kingdom of God requires of us to grow more and more in God’s loving goodness.  Belonging to God is not a single stance in one’s life but a on- going drawing closer and closer to the God who is the center of our lives.

Romans 8:26-27.  “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.”  We rejoice that we are weak so that, all the more deeply, we can live in the strength of our almighty and all-loving God.

Ps.86: Oh Lord, “abounding in kindness to all who call upon you,” “turn toward me, and have pity on me; give your strength to your servant.”

16A   Wisdom 12:13, 16-19.  For me two points stand out in this reading.  First, our God is the one and only almighty God. Words or phrases that indicate this that are used in this reading are:  ‘your might,’ ‘your power,’ ‘master of might,’ ‘your mastery over all things’.  Secondly, our God is just and caring: ‘you who have the care of all,’ ‘source of justice,’ ‘lenient to all,’ ‘judge with clemency,’ ‘with much lenience you govern us,’ ‘permit repentance for their sins’. Because God is almighty he can afford to be lenient and caring without losing control over all people and things.  The gods of other peoples could care less about anyone else and have only certain areas of competence.  We are spectacularly blessed by the infinite power of our God who uses his power with loving care for us.  Praise be to our wondrous God!

Matthew 13:24-43.  The wheat of the first parable are the children of God’s kingdom; the weeds, the children of the devil.  They grow together which makes the world a difficult place to grow up in because we are, at the very least, uncomfortable, if not antagonistic, to one another, which is probably why Christianity has had so many martyrs for the faith.  The harvest is the judgment and the harvesters, the angels.  “They will throw” the weeds, i.e. the children of the evil, “into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.  The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”  Of course, by the way we choose to live our lives we are weeds or wheat and so we will be punished or rewarded accordingly.  Jesus gives to those who have ears to hear the stark truth or reality.  However the weeds are those who have chosen not to have ears to hear.  Putting our faith, putting our lives in the hands of someone we do not see or cannot physically hear requires taking a risk.  Jesus spoke in parables to shield “what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world” from those who were unwilling to take risk of believing or trusting what is beyond the physical or visible, beyond what the eyes and ears of flesh see and hear.  Faith requires that we come to the God who comes to us, putting our lives in the hands of someone who is beyond the grasp of this world.  The journey to heaven through this world is a struggle, a carrying of the cross, always going forward but never seeing the way clearly because we must trust in a God who sees us through.

Romans 8:26-27.   We journey on our way to heaven with the necessary aid of the Holy Spirit.  He intercedes for those who struggle to be holy according to God’s will.  The Holy Spirit prays for us with inexpressible groanings so that we achieve the holiness that the Father desires for us.  The disciples “said, ‘Who then can be saved?’  Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’” (Matthew 19:25b -26)