Response-Ability March 26

Prayer

God, your eternal love and eternal patience gave rebirth and renewal to people of all ages, creeds, races and nationalities. Help us to overcome our transgressions so that we might believe in you. Help our belief run deep and strong. We don’t want to have a bumper-sticker faith that easily peels off at the first sign of risk. Please give our faith the strong roots it needs so we have confidence and fortitude to take out faith to the public square and speak up for you when you are being condemned. Amen.

Study

On this Fourth Sunday of Lent, God offers to us sacred scriptures for today to read, to study and to hear. You are invited to study and reflect on today’s readings:
http://www.usccb.org/nab/032606a.shtml

We can debate whether today’s Gospel includes the most important verse ever. However, we probably can agree that John 3:16 is certainly the most advertised. References to John 3:16 is everywhere. I first looked up this famous verse as a teenager when I saw a sign repeatedly show up at Football Games. Right there in the end zone it just said John 3:16. There are imprints of it on bumper stickers, milkshake cups, license plates, and on and on and on.

If you didn’t know what that passage meant, then you had to look it up. You had to take the initiate and be pro-active. If you didn’t know what it was, you had the “response-ability” to pick up a Bible and find out. There it was before you but you had to dig a little deeper to know what it meant. Then, when you found out, the real challenge of Christianity lay before you. Just like when Nicodemus embraced the truth as it was made known to him privately, it spurred him to action. Our obedience in faith spurs us to live out that faith in Christian acts. It challenges us to be “reborn” and to realize the love of God.

The conversion of Nicodemus begins here in the Gospel of John. As Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, he learns that he has to be born again, born from above, born of the spirit.

Today, we see examples in all of the readings of people who experience rebirth and renewal. In Chronicles, when King Cyrus rebuilds the house of God in Jerusalem, he declares that “Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him!” So the people enslaved for seventy years can start over again.

St. Paul tells the Ephesians that, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ.” Re-birth here again.

And then there is John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Not the temporal life that we have now here on earth. That life will end. However, this covenant promises us eternal happiness with God n heaven.

Further, this doesn’t just promise eternal life to the Jews, or the Gentiles or the Italians or the Americans. It promises eternal life to the whole world collectively and individually. It also could say that, “God so loved Kurt and Leslie and Ken and Peg and Gerry and Judy, and Jack and Caryl and undocumented workers and people on death row and St. Mary of Sorrows and Cursillo and the Diocese of Arlington and Fairfax County and Virginia and the United States and every country and all the people throughout the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

If we have the faith and openness to let Jesus into our lives, he will work on us until we experience that conversion.

Jesus began working on Nicodemus that night. We meet him again in Chapter 7:50 when the Pharisees are plotting to have Jesus arrested. Nicodemus speaks up trying to encourage the crowd to listen to Jesus before condemning him. Nicodemus may have already embraced the truth when it was made known to him in his encounter with Christ.

Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a person before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” John 7:50

Finally, when all the disciples who have been with Jesus daily have scattered after the trial and crucifixion, it is Nicodemus who comes with Joseph of Arimathea to remove Jesus body from the cross for embalming and burial.

Action

What actions does God so loving the world spur you to take up today? In God’s world there are no “illegal” people.” Will you speak up for just and righteous immigration laws? Will you consider adding your voice to those of the Bishops of Richmond and Arlington who called upon our elected officials in the Senate to work for comprehensive immigration-reform legislation, and to reject “the enforcement-only approach taken by the House of Representatives.”

In letters to the two Virginia senators dated March 17, the Commonwealth’s two Catholic bishops stated, “We wish to underscore that our Church affirms the right of a sovereign nation to secure its borders, especially at a time when security is of particular concern. In our view, however, our nation’s immigration crisis can only be addressed effectively by a comprehensive approach.” In criticizing H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Act of 2005 passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December, the bishops observed that the measure “reaches well beyond the issue of national security – so far beyond it, in fact, that it would even punish church workers for the ‘crime’ of feeding and sheltering people instead of screening their immigration status.” The bishops urged Senators Warner and Allen to support “elements of genuine immigration reform – the type of reform that would protect our national security, respect our common humanity, and reflect the values upon which our country was built,” including an earned legalization program for undocumented workers, a temporary-worker program with appropriate labor protections, a reduction in waiting times for family reunification, and due-process protections against prolonged and indefinite detentions.

The letter also stated:

All sides in the debate, however, agree on one thing: Our nation’s immigration system is broken and needs to be repaired. We come to you today because this broken system has weighty moral consequences. On a daily basis, our Church sees the products of current immigration policies -- families are separated, workers are exploited, and migrants are abused by smugglers and sometimes even die in the desert. In response to these sobering realities, you and your Senate colleagues have a significant opportunity to fashion reforms that are humane, while at the same time serving our nation’s economic and national-security needs.

Will you speak up?