First Sunday in Advent, Year B
Theme: God Allows Us To Go Astray 上主容許我們走歪
When we study the first two chapters of the book of Genesis, we find two creation stories of humanity. Biblical scholars and the Catholic Church agree that the two stories come from different traditions but they convey the same message, namely that God created men. The first story came from priests who were singing a creation hymn to worship God. They did not intend the hymn to meet the requirements of modern sciences. If the hymn agrees with the Big Bang Theory and Evolution Theory, it is just a coincidence. It is because the Bible cares less about technicalities of how the known universe and all the things it contains came into existence. It tries to answer simply some existential questions that all rational men would ask, namely where did we come from and where shall we go after death etc. The hymn projects an image of God, the Grand Designer, orderly and systematic.
In this first creation story of men, the Bible tries to answer the question of where humankind came from and the position humanity occupy in the whole Creation. Simply put, the first story tells us that God created mankind in His own image and assigned them to be the steward of all other creatures in the known universe (Genesis 1:26). Thus, men were the zenith of God’s creation and occupied the top position in the whole Creation. The story does not tell us how men were created. The second story fills the gap. It contains a number of moral teachings and came obviously from a different tradition in which humanity is less noble. “The Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground” (2:7a). Later, the story continues with the Fall of our First Parents and one of the morals of the story is, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (3:19b). Though men came from not so noble a material, they still occupy a central position, though not the top, in the whole Creation because God settled Adam “in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it” (2:15b). Moreover, God created all the animals for Adam to name. In this story, God is more like a potter than a grand designer.
Isaiah and Jeremiah made use of the image of a potter to describe God 15 times in 12 verses. One of them appears in the first reading today. “Yet, Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you our potter: we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:7). Usually, prophets took up the role of the spokespersons of God to the people. However, in the text today, Isaiah was pleading God for the Israelites. What good does it serve us to have the Lord God to be our Creator if He were to become aloft and distant like a grand designer abandoning us after having created us? The experiences of the Chosen People were otherwise. Not only was the Lord God the Creator, but He is also the Redeemer as well. Isaiah pleaded, “For you are our father. Were Abraham not to know us, nor Israel to acknowledge us, You, Lord, are our father, our redeemer you are named from of old” (63:16). Scholars opine that the disciples of Isaiah wrote this during the Babylonian Captivity. To be more technical, the first reading today is an excerpt of a prayer of “community lamentation”. The people acknowledged their sins and pleaded the Lord God to deliver them!
Wait! It seems that Isaiah was putting the blame on the Lord God for the sins of Israelites. Isaiah says, “Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways, and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?” (63:17a) Similar logics appear in God hardening the heart of Pharaoh resulting in the devastation of Egypt, the tenth plague and the drowning of Pharaoh’s army and chariots in the Red Sea, totalling 17 verses in Exodus and 37 verses in the Old Testament! Firstly, such a logic acknowledges the ultimate sovereignty of the Lord God over all the Creation. We merit nothing, even the charities we do to the poor and needy, the efforts of evangelization and the ingenuity of our creativity etc. are all inspired by Him. Ever since the Age of Enlightenment, humanity has been arrogant to make God irrelevant. Only after the two World Wars of the last century did humankind realize how frail and pale we are in front of the scale of destructions we are capable to make in our selfishness, ambitions and greed. Without God, the responsibility becomes too heavy for us to bear. People begin to swing back and surrender their autonomy to God.
Regrettably, such a swing is flawed because the ultimate sovereignty of the Lord God over the Creation does not necessarily imply that going astray from God’s will, hardening of our hearts and committing atrocities are also inspired by Him because among all God’s creatures, humanity were created in the image of God who is free. Therefore, we too are free. God gives us a freewill and He respects our autonomy and does not impose His will on us so that it is righteous of Him to hold us morally accountable for all our choices and actions. Remember the story of Cain who was angry and dejected because the Lord God did not look with favour on him and his offering (Genesis 4:5). God warned Cain that if he did not act rightly, sin would lie in wait at the door. Yet Cain could rule over sin (4:7). Regrettably, Cain chose to allow anger to take control over him and the rest is history. God laments,“But my people did not listen to my words; Israel would not submit to me. So I thrust them away to the hardness of their heart; Let them walk in their own machinations” (Psalms 81:12-13). It takes a St. Paul to explain more fully God’s ultimate sovereignty and the concept of predestination in Romans chapter 9. He employs the same potter image saying, “Will what is made say to its maker, ‘Why have you created me so?’ Does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for a noble purpose and another for an ignoble one?” (Romans 9:20b-21) Take some time to read Roman 9 more.
The gospel passage today poses a similar difficulty if we don’t interpret it properly. Jesus tells us a parable of a master going away and would return at an unpredictable time. “A man travelling abroad … places his servants in charge, each with his work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch. Watch, therefore, you do not know when the lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: Watch” (Mark 13:34b-37). So not only the gatekeeper needs to stay awake but all servants as well! But how can a master be so cruel as to deprive all his servants of rest which is stipulated in the Third Commandment! Alas! God would not contradict Himself. Therefore, we should rethink the parable. Evening, midnight, cockcrow and morning refer to how a Jewish day passes. I opine that it refers to different ages in which people die. Some die young while some live a fully ripe age of a century like Dr. Kissinger. In death, it is the end of their worlds! Therefore, while we live, keep watch not to harden our hearts.
Beloved brethren! At the beginning of a new liturgical year, let us lend a listening ear in humility to the words of the Lord. Keep watch so as not to allow our hearts to become hardened. Authority and wealth can be good servants but bad masters. When they fall into the hands of people seeking self-interests and vainglory, they produce more damages than goods in others. More directly, they harden our hearts quickly! Amen!
God bless!
2020 Reflection
Picture Credit: biblestudytools.com
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