HOMILY LENT WEEK 03 06
Responding to a Relational God
(Hos 5:15-6:6; Ps 51; Lk 18:9-14)
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Have you ever tried to earn anyone’s love?
The readings today invite us to respond to a relational God through humble honesty, trusting repentance and grateful service.
The tendency to try to earn someone’s love is a rather human one, and I suspect affects many of us. I can attest to this from my own upbringing in a family parented by a workaholic father. Without realizing it, I found myself trying to earn my father’s love by being obedient, dutiful, and especially working hard and doing farm tasks perfectly.
Dad harvesting “on the go”
I remember stacking bales all in line, cultivating straight rows, and hauling fourteen loads of grain to the elevator in one day. At one point as a teenager, I tried to work harder than my father to get his attention – getting up earlier, going to bed later, working at three jobs one summer, getting the highest marks in college – all to no avail, as nothing seemed to make any difference. All I wanted from him was to go fishing and hunting together, something we never did, because of the priority of work.
There are four main survival roles in any dysfunctional family – family hero, scapegoat, withdrawn child, and comedian. The last was my role until grade 12, when I decided it wasn’t working so I would become the family hero by studying hard. When getting the top grade did not get my father’s attention, I rebelled, started partying and drinking, lost ten percent on my average and as a result flunked my first exam ever before Christmas. Shocked, I tried to get back my previous standing but ran out of time and graduated a very angry young man without the honors everyone was expecting of me.
This experience, in a strange sort of way, helps me understand how God must have so often felt towards God’s chosen people, the Israelites. In the first reading, the prophet Hosea points out God always wanted steadfast love and knowledge of God, or an intimate relationship with God, and not the sacrifice and burnt offerings they were giving to God as, I think, a way of subtly trying to earn God’s love instead of trusting in God’s freely given mercy and compassion. How hard it is for us to believe in grace freely given – somehow, we feel compelled to deserve it!
The psalm offers us very much the same message. What God wants is steadfast love and not sacrifice. A broken spirit and a contrite heart are what pleases God, it seems, and not our worthiness or merit, but we resist that as well.
I believe much the same is happening in the gospel with the Pharisee and the tax collector. I am pretty sure the Pharisee, like me, was trying to earn God’s love, pointing out in his prayer all the dutiful and meritorious things he was doing, all the while blindly ignorant of how he was also judging another member of the church praying beside him. Both were doing a holy thing – praying in the temple, but with totally different attitudes.
The tax collector knew he was a sinner, admitted it freely, humbly looked down and pleaded for God to have mercy on him. He repented, trusted in God’s mercy, compassion, unconditional love and forgiveness, and went home justified, changed, transformed. As Richard Rohr likes to write, he got it right by doing it wrong. The Pharisee, on the other hand, got it wrong by doing it right – by self-righteously depending on his own efforts to earn God’s love.
More and more, we are coming to understand God as a relational God, a dynamic interactive exchange of love between three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a perichoresis, or divine dance of love. From the beginning, God has always wanted an intimate covenant relationship with God’s people, so it should not surprise us when God informs us over and over in the scriptures that love trumps sacrifice, and relationship trumps dutiful actions. God wants to go hunting and fishing with us, not grimly working in the fields trying to get our attention!
Jesus as the Messiah came with a two-fold relational mission– to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive and to heal, or as it is reflected in the psalm, to “wash” and to “cleanse.” Our best way to enter into the divine dance with God, to respond to his love, is not to try to earn it, but rather to repent, trust, and come to God for forgiveness of all our sins, and for healing of all our painful emotions and negative attitudes, like the judgmentalism of the Pharisee.
The Eucharist means “thanksgiving,” a very fitting meaning, as the bottom line is we can’t earn God’s love, and so the best attitude with which to approach God in worship is gratitude, praise and thanksgiving.
May our celebration today deepen our faith and trust in our God who is unconditional love, and empower us to both soak up that love with gratitude, and share that love with selfless service.
I tried to earn Jesus’ love by praise and worshipping him with joy and gratitude ;also family members. It is also thanksgiving to receive his Gifts of unconditional love, living out beatitudes and discernments through my own actions. I would like to show this love and joy with people who are lonely, poor and sick then just save it for myself. We are thankful to receive Jesus Christ on this earth. He is the chosen one and Holy one that represents his father. He went through his life, death and resurrection to prove to us that he is the life saviour who will save us from our sins. He sacrifice himself by dying on the cross by carrying all sins on the cross and to be crucified. He is really the Messiah to redeem and sanctify ; to forgive and healed after his resurrection. God’s purpose is for us to be forgiven and healed so we can be closer to him by entering this new creation, new journey that is full of joy and happiness. Amen.
We should repent by washing, cleansing all the sins , faults from our body and entire self so we can be pure from all mistakes. You mentioned it ; we should forgive, trust and ask God to forgive all our sins. It is pretty clear and well written what we need to do during our daily lives . Thanks Bishop Sylvain Lavoie for the teachings and refectikns. Thanks for Sharing your experience and stories. Gracias! Des Coloures!
I felt the same thing by earning my parents love by studying at school earning better grades, doing chores and try volunteering or even working. I did not achieve much until I came to God and enter his world full of love , compassion or even his unconditional love. I agree with your experiences and stories with your father.