April 15, 2011
Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
By Melanie Rigney
…(T)he Lord is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph. In their failure they will be put to utter shame, to lasting, unforgettable confusion. (Jeremiah 20:11)
In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice. (Psalms 18:7)
The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods’”? If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be set aside, can you say that the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:31-42)
Piety
God, help me, for I am weak and, at times, a persecutor—of myself and others.
Study
I went to lunch last week with a friend. We talked about a million things, as we always do, and she mentioned she’d seen “Soul Surfer,” the movie about Bethany Hamilton, the surfer who lost an arm to a shark attack. “It was so beautiful,” my friend said. “At the end of the movie the real-life Bethany comes on and talks about her faith and how it sustains her.”
When I got home, someone on the radio was reviewing the same movie. “There’s this problem,” the reviewer in essence said. “When you get churches making movies, they put all this God stuff in. ‘Soul Surfer’s’ a good movie if you can get beyond that.”
Now, I haven’t seen “Soul Surfer,” so I don’t know whether I think it’s a worthwhile way to spend an hour and a half or so. But I do know that no matter what we do in life in God’s name, there are going to be people who think it’s beautiful—and people who think it’s good if you get beyond the God stuff. And I also know that at the end of the day, what other people think doesn’t matter a whit. At the beginning, middle, and end of the day, it’s about God.
In his book No Man Is an Island, Thomas Merton put it like this:
The man who loves God more than himself is also able to love persons and things for the good that they possess in God. That is the same as saying he loves the glory they give to God: for that glory is the reflection of God in the goodness He has given to His creatures. Such a man is indifferent to the impact of things in his own life. He considers things only in relation to God’s glory and God’s will. As far as his own temporal advantage and satisfaction go, he is detached and unconcerned. But he is no more indifferent to the value of things in themselves than he is indifferent to God. He loves them in the same act with which he loves God. That is: he loves them in the act by which he has renounced them. And in that love by renouncing them he has regained them on a higher level.
In today’s first reading, the prophet Jeremiah, just scourged and released from the stocks, is telling Pashhur what is coming for the priest and his friends and his household. Was there a human desire for revenge in that prophecy? Possibly. Jeremiah specifically asks that the Lord let him witness the vengeance to come.
In Psalm 18, David describes the dangers he faced, in battle and metaphorically, and gives thanks for both. Later verses in the psalm reflect a certain joy and satisfaction in the enemy’s destruction.
The Gospel reading takes a different tack. In the face of a stoning, Jesus shows the indifference that Merton’s reading reflects. If I’m not doing God’s work, don’t believe me, he says, and even I’m doing God’s work, you don’t have to believe me… just believe the work.
It’s the same for us today. It’s not about whether people like the movies we make or the essays we write or the music we make… it’s about the guy upstairs and doing what He calls us to do.
Action
Next week is Holy Week. Journal about your Lenten journey so far. Have you been doing what God called you to do?
