3rd Sunday of Lent - Year C - Who Is Our God & “Were You There”
The third Sunday of Lent is not so much centered on an event in Christ’s life, but is concerned with Jesus’ teaching on the patience, mercy and love of our God. The three readings assigned for this Sunday all touch on the importance of placing hope in God, the All-Merciful and Giver-of-life, who is always ready to forgive transgressors.
The first lesson recounts the memorable event of Moses before the burning bush at Horeb, the mountain of God. This profound experience of God’s presence elicits such immense awe and even fear, that Moses hid his face. This confirms the notion that God’s majesty is so great that no human being can gaze at it and live. But God is likewise near enough to tell Moses that the time has come for the Israelites to be freed from slavery in Egypt and that Moses would be the chosen instrument for bringing it about. The prophetic vocation of Moses shows clearly God’s love and compassion, especially for the oppressed and downtrodden.
Continuing along the same line of thinking, Jesus uses in his preaching an image for God as a gardener and the challenge of growing plants and trees, which includes weeding out what is not-productive or dead. In the case of the fig tree being described in the Gospel, the chief gardener or owner of the vineyard notices a fruitless tree and orders it to be cut down. The vinedresser, though, pleads for another year, a further chance for the tree, in the hope that it may indeed bear fruit. The point being made by Jesus is that God is truly patient and merciful, more than willing to give innumerable chances for a change of heart, a deeper union, a fuller communion, with the living God.
There comes a point, though, when in fact the human heart may be so far from God that nothing less than God’s all-powerful grace can redirect it. The reality of free will always has to be taken into account, of course, with the reminder that God never forces us to act against our will, but lovingly invites us to share in God’s life. In this Sunday’s Gospel passage, Jesus is teaching his disciples never to let their lives be so out of control or far from God that the turning to God becomes more and more difficult, though never impossible. Our free will is just that: not being forced to choose to worship God and the ways of the Gospel, but truly free, leaving us with the ability to choose to follow God and life, or seek the way of error and separation from God. That we want to avoid at all costs. It is never too late to turn to God.
Someone has said that we Christians speak much about God but in fact very little to God. In Lent we are being called to speak to God, to be people of prayer, striving for union with our Maker, at all times and everywhere. Our annual observance of Lent, forty days of special prayer, fasting and almsgiving or doing good, is a golden opportunity to meet our God and belong more fully to the One who ultimately satisfies the longings of the human heart.
In honor of the Lenten Season, we’d like to share our latest video, “Were You There”, an African-American spiritual that was first printed in 1899 and is normally sung during the Lenten Season and during Good Friday Services.
Video can be watched by clicking here or on the picture below:
