Rebuild
Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary
Time
I will bring about the restoration of my people Israel; they
shall rebuild and inhabit their ruined cities, plant vineyards and drink
the wine, set out gardens and eat the fruits. I will plant them
upon their own ground; never again shall they be plucked from the
land I have given them, say I, the LORD, your God. Amos 9:14-16
“No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for
its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People
do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the
wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine
into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Matthew 9:16-17
Piety
Study
Rebuild.
Inhabit. Plant. Drink.
The first reading today from the Hebrew Bible
introduces the theme of restoration.
Just a few pages earlier, houses and vineyards were the sources of a
curse upon Israel. Now, as the Prophet
Amos introduced an era of restoration, the Gospel reading from Matthew follows
suit in a table-turning reversal of how to store the fresh wine of the
covenant, so it is ready to drink.
Consider first the curse from Amos 5:11.
Therefore, because you tax the destitute
and exact from them levies of grain,
Though you have built houses of hewn stone,
you shall not live in them;
Though you have planted choice vineyards,
You shall not drink their wine.
Rebuild.
Inhabit. Plant. Drink. In this era of restoration, the Lord
nullifies the curse and the prophet uses these same four verbs and turns it
into a blessing for Israel.[i]
As we turn to the reading from Matthew, we
re-encounter the theme of restoration.
People pour fresh wine into fresh wineskins. If they used old skins, they would burst and
spill the wine. Thus, the new skins preserve the wine while the old wineskins
waste it.
In Amos, the action moves from the deadly curse
to the positive restoration.
Who are the “old wineskins?” Are they those who
are unfit to hold new wine, wasting the very thing they are meant to preserve?[ii] Yesterday (Friday), we contemplated the role
of the Pharisees in rejecting the call that the dreaded tax collector
Levi-Matthew answered.
Who are the new wineskins? Are they the ones who share in the sacrament
for the first time? Are they the ones
who share in Holy Communion as if it was the first time every time?
Action
The
communion cup restores us. When we
accept our calling, we restore the mission of Jesus.
Jesus
led his disciples on a mission to rebuild…inhabit…plant…drink.
The
Lord called St. Francis to “Rebuild my church.”
Rebuild. Inhabit.
Plant. Drink.
New
beginning begins at the beginning again.
Are we called to do any less?
Whether
it is tornado destruction in Joplin, Missouri, or Hurricane Harvey/Irma
destruction in Houston or Puerto Rico, the needs around us call us to rebuild
communities devastated by war or natural disaster.
We also must consider
rebuilding lives at the one person at a time.
Lives may be devastation by alcoholism, opioid addiction, divorce,
separation or disease.
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