Gospel reflection for March 16, 2025, Second Sunday of Lent
God heard the cry of the Israelites who were under the oppression of class slavery, and he sent Moses to rescue his people and to show God’s glory to them. While the history of their wilderness sojourn was fraught with rebellion, sin, and death, God mercifully still held them in the “palm of his hand” and carried them as, “on the wings of an eagle.” In the new covenant, forged in the Paschal Events, Jesus frees us from the slavery to sin and opens for us a pathway to eternal life. Although Jesus walks this trek with us, it is still fraught with danger when we stray, thinking we can do this all on our own.
Moses encounters God in the most dramatic and intimate ways of all of the figures in the Hebrew Tradition. In this first act of God’s revelation to Moses through the burning bush, God clearly demonstrates the great attributes of love and mercy. Those who protest that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is angry, vengeful, and a warmonger, need to be confronted with the beauty of God’s revelation to Moses and elsewhere throughout the Scriptures.
Jesus opens a dialog with the crowd by citing a genocide which they all witnessed. Pilate, who was brutal in his treatment of the Jews, had mixed the blood of martyrs with their sacrifices, an act of defilement abhorrent to the Jewish Law. Jesus also speaks of the collapse of a tower in Siloam which killed eighteen people. The teaching here, though, takes a more spiritual and theological perspective. This insight is expressed by St. Paul in First Corinthians.
Reminded them that all of Israel passed under the same cloud and endured both the period of forced labor and the miracle of the exodus. Yet so many of them in the wilderness doubted God’s mercy, some even accusing Moses of leading the people into the desert so that they might die there, alone and abandoned. Some even grumbled that they had been abandoned by God.
It is easy to become hardened and de-sensitized by suffering. We can take for granted, unfortunately, acts of violence and the sentiments of despair as they are manifest in the world around us. Perhaps even our own families and workplaces foster attitudes which lead us, instead, to apathy and anger.
It is our response in such circumstances that matters the most. The Lord is open to us when we call upon him, but his response is seldom immediate, and seldom what we were expecting.
The Israelites were four-hundred years in Egypt, enduring a period of preparation for their eventual release. Had some abandoned any hope — yes? Were all satisfied when the moment came to leave — no! Some were hardened along the way. They desired no change, wanted no growth, and were satisfied with their situation. They knew no other way and wanted no other way.
If we prefer to keep God at arm’s length, he will stay there, while yet prodding us to get closer to him. He doesn’t abandon us, though we abandon him.
Jesus reminds us often of the need for persistence in prayer and to keep open to the possibilities that lie ahead of us.
As the Jews that Jesus addressed were struggling under their own yoke of oppression at the hands of the Romans, some desired freedom and engaged in acts of warfare against the empire, and others were perfectly happy to compromise with Rome.
Jesus shows yet another way. A way that leaves us open to the possibilities that God has prepared for us.
Like the tree that the landscaper implored the landowner to save, giving it more time to blossom, so the Lord is patient with us. We must not, however, squander that patience, for the Lord’s time is not our time.
“Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”
Father Garry Koch is pastor of St. Benedict Parish, Holmdel.