The God of the Bible Is the God of Our Life
A centerpiece of this journey for God’s people was the Exodus: the liberation from slavery, the passage through the desert and the entry into the Promised Land. The power of this experience guided the people all through an often-torturous history. Again and again, in their times of trouble, the children of Abraham reflected on the faithfulness of God setting them free. They found strength and fortitude in encountering the revelation of this God of the Exodus in their troubled plight over the centuries.The same is true of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This ultimate expression of God’s saving love has become the gateway to the new day, the New Exodus, in Christian history. The Cross and Resurrection are our constant hope no matter where life leads us in this valley of tears.
The central point of the story of salvation in the Bible is that the books in all their variety and depth are the result of the people’s experience of God. The power and significance of the Bible is that the very same God of the Chosen People is the God in our own life. The word in the Bible is the light that enables us to encounter the reality of God’s continuing presence in our time. We are invited to participate in the call and promise, the pilgrimage through history to the Kingdom of God. The gift of God’s word in the revelation of the Bible is always a call to new life and new horizons.
The Gift of the Prophets
In the twelfth week of Ordinary Time, there are some exceptional daily readings from the Second Book of Kings. The first event in 721 BC deals with the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. The second, in 587 BC, describes the destruction of the temple and the exile of the Southern Kingdom. To all appearances, God had abandoned his commitment to his Chosen People. There were few darker moments in the entire history of Abraham’s family.At this most intense period of despair and hopelessness, God inspired three of the greatest prophets of the Jewish Scriptures to proclaim his presence once again.
Jeremiah was a prophet of doom. He confronted the comfortable and materialistic prosperity that led to negligence of religious practice and a self-centeredness in total neglect of their religious heritage. He foretold the chaos that was coming,
Ezekiel shared the same message of Jeremiah but he joined the people in the exile. This led him to change his tone. Caught in the total despair and complete poverty of the life in Babylonia, he switched to a message of profound hope and compassion.
Isiah spoke only a message of consolation and deliverance. His voice rang out in the final and darkest days before the return to Jerusalem. His message of beautiful trust in God is often described as the foreshadowing of the gospel.
While these prophets spoke in the bleakest of times, they spoke in the most decisive of times in Israel’s long search for the true experience of God. The people were stripped down to their most feeble and empty condition. They came to God with truly empty hands.
These prophets had a powerful message of renewed faith in the God of their ancestors. They called for a revitalization the old traditions of seeing God acting in history. They led the fight to return to true worship and the practice of observing the teachings of Moses.
Out of the darkness and desolation of fifty years of the Babylonian banishment, we encounter some of the most insightful spiritual teachings of the Jewish Scriptures. Particularly strong is the unrelenting commitment to monotheism. There is no God but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
In the experience of the exile, we have an invitation into our own experience. Our darkest times find us stripped down to our most feeble and desperate condition. We are free to see with a new clarity and power our total dependence on God. In our poverty, we are drawn to a new burst of insight: only God can save us and set us free!
Now the words of the bible, with a lifetime of a tired familiarity, are transformed with a new authority and light to reveal a God who always hears the cry of the poor. In our weakness, we now know this is our cry. God will not forsake us.
Whether it is in the pandemic or a family crisis, a loss of a job or a troubled child, a lifetime of racial or sexual hostility, a continuing surge of a gun-spawned violence, or the constant violation of nature’s gift, there is hope. The Word of God has spoken. Love will win out. We need to embrace that message in the reality of our darkness and tears. The story of salvation is truly our story.
Union with God
“The Word of God is something living and effective, sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account.” Heb 4:12-13.At the heart of the Bible’s story of salvation is the call. From Abraham to Jesus, the call is always a central part of the message. As the clarity of the message evolves, the call opens to the final destiny, the pilgrimage to God. We are called to be one with God. This union with God is the shared and final vocation of all God’s children.
As we steadily become aware of how God is clearly and convincingly in our lives, there are consequences for us. God always wants more and is working to transform us in the image of his Son. This call to change is never easy.
The word of God is indeed a two-edged sword that opens up the part of our life we work hard to keep hidden. We are called by the word, expressed in the Bible and also in our life experience, to be the seed that falls into the ground to die, only to sprout to new life and bear the fruit of God’s Kingdom by our surrender to God’s call.
