奇跡
キリストが奇跡を行うことが出来たと認めても、福音書で記された奇跡は、私にとって奇跡とならない、奇跡の物語に過ぎない。
なるほど、キリストがある人に良いことをしてあげたな、と。それで終わり、私に何のこうかもありません。
奇跡を行うキリストを信じて、初めて奇跡の効果が働き始める。
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Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
3th Sunday in Lent Year A
Third Sunday in Lent –Year A
Rev. W. Thomas Faucher
READINGS:
Ex 17: 3-7
Rom 5: 1-2, 5-6
Jn 5: 4-42
The Gospel of John, unlike the gospels has some long stories in it. Three of these we take out for use during this year in the Lenten season. The first one is the woman at the well. The second one is the man born blind and the third is the rising of Lazarus from the dead.
Each of these stories picks up in a very important way one of the great themes of John’s gospel. John’s gospel is very different from the other gospels in what it does and the way it is written. One of the things that make it different is this enormous sense of symbolism in John’s gospel. One of the symbols that dominates his gospel is this idea of water.
We start with this gospel. Jesus had to pass through Samaria. His journey brought him to a Samaritan town, and there is Jacob’s well. Jacob’s well is the well of Jacob. It was the well from the Old Testament. I visited there a few years ago – right now it is in the middle of a Palestinian refugee camp, and it’s an incredible thing to even get there, but you get there and you walk down and it’s the same well. There’s incredible sense that you are standing in one of the places where one of the great Bible stories took place.
You have to remember that in those days, and anyone who read this when John wrote it would realize that Jewish men did not speak to women. You might speak to a woman inside a building, but you would never speak to a woman in public. Jews didn’t speak to Samaritan. So you have a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman, and she starts out with two strikes against her. So Jesus says to her, “I need some water,” and she looks at him and she’s just astonished, and she said, “You are a Jew, how can you ask me, a Samaritan and a woman for a drink?” Then Jesus says, “If only you recognized God’s gift and who it is who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him instead (she would never have done that – address a Jewish man), and he would have given you living water. She’s no dummy, she said, “Look, you don’t have a bucket, and this well is deep, so how can you talk about living water?” Then Jesus said, “Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never be thirsty. The water I give shall become a fountain within him leaping up to provide eternal life.”
So, as John writes this and tells this story, this water becomes a very important thing. Then a few chapters later in John we have a fascinating line. This is the crucifixion of Jesus and finally after that Jesus realized that everything was now finished, said to bring the scriptures to fulfillment said, “I am thirsty.” How can the person who has eternal water, how can the person who has this wellspring of water, how can he then say that he is thirsty when he’s just told this woman at the well that anyone who drinks from this water will never be thirsty again. What is this living water? What does it mean because it is obviously a whole lot more than water, and the rest of the story in John’s gospel as he weaves in and out, this idea of water appears again and again.
2
When we get to the story in John’s gospel of the Last Supper there is no mention of the
institution of the Eucharist. That’s in the other gospels, but there is the story of the washing of
the feet that is only present in John’s gospel. The feet of the apostles are washed with water.
After Jesus dies, they throw the lance into his side, and water and blood pour out – very
important that it is both of them, the water and the blood; the blood is the humanity.
What does the water mean? In John’s gospel water is a symbol for God; water is a symbol for
the presence of God; water is a symbol of what God means to us. So when Jesus said, “I am
thirsty” what he’s saying is “I need God, I need God.” He is God, but he is dying on the cross as
a human being. He is suffering, and he is saying “I need the presence of God.” What Jesus is
saying to the woman at the well, and what he is saying all the way through these passages that
talk about water is that we need this presence of God. We need this overpowering nature of God.
Jesus pours water on the feet of the apostles. Peter says to him, “Oh don’t just wash my feet,
wash me all over.” And Jesus says, “No, your feet are just fine, Peter, that will take care of it.”
Because you have this presence of God; this God presence comes into you.
This great symbol of water comes from all the things that come before it. Between the Masses I
had a baptism, and as we bless the water during a baptism you list these time after time where
water is mentioned in the Old Testament. It’s always a symbol of the presence of God. The first
reading today, you have Moses out in the middle of the desert, and the Jews as they usually do in
the story of Exodus, are complaining. They’re grumbling, as it says, or murmuring. At some
point, if I’d been Moses I’d have just left them there and walked away, but Moses is much more
patient and kind, and he says to God, “You need to help them.” So he gives they water. What
they need is the presence of God, and he gives them water.
This is what is happening in the scriptures, and so John’s gospel whenever you read about water,
you’re reading about the presence of God. The people of John’s time knew this, and we need to
know this. We need to be able to use the symbol of water. We need to be able to understand the
symbol of water. Whenever water is used, it talks about God - God overflowing us; God
washing us; God changing us; God enabling us to live. We need water. Water is symbol of
God’s presence. That is not an out-of-date symbol, one of the dominant stories in the news in
Idaho in this past week was about water, and the use of water, and what is going to happen with
water, and the irrigation with water, and we don’t have enough water in our hills. And the
Californians now take it even before it rains – they get more water than we do.
That’s the idea of water that happens with us. The use of our water, that’s all there. That’s how
important water still is today. We need to be conscious of that, and what I ask us to do for the
rest of Lent, just look at water as a symbol of the presence of God. Every time you take a drink;
every time you wash your hands; every time you use water in any sense, let that be a symbol of
how much God wants to be part of your life. Take the symbol of water into you in exactly the
way that John’s gospel intends it to be used. Because when we do that, water takes on a
richness, and the Gospel of John takes on a richness, and we realize how wonderfully God loves
us. God is as present to us, and is needed by us, as water. This is the lesson the woman at the
well learned, and it is a lesson that we all need to learn. May God bless us with His peace.
Thirst
(Homily for Third Sunday of Lent, Year A)
Bottom line: As we enter into these more intense weeks of Lent, we recognize a longing in our hearts - a thirst that has its source in God's thirst for us.
We have just listened to John, chapter 4 - Jesus and the woman thirsting for living water. This Gospel brings to mind a conversation between a young man and a priest.
The young man came to the priest with tears in his eyes. His girlfriend had left him. The priest knew her and was not surprised by her capriciousness. Still, he tried to show as much sympathy as he could for the brokenhearted boy. At one point the young man stated she was "the most perfect girl" he had ever met.
The priest stopped him, "Was she really all that perfect?"
"Well," he admitted, "she did have her faults." For example, she always got him to do things for her but never reciprocated. But that only made him more crazy for her. And, yes, she did criticize a lot of things about him, the way he dressed, his friends, his job, how he ate, his driving... Once again that habit bonded him even closer to her.
The priest was going to point out that those traits might not be so endearing in ten or twenty years, but what he said was, "Um." The young man continued. Talking about her put him in a kind of melancholy trance. The thing that most tore him apart was how she flirted with other guys in his presence. Jealousy now stabbed him as he thought about her with someone else.
Unable to restrain himself, the priest asked him, "Do you think you would have been happy with her?"
The young man was silent. He then answered honestly, "No." Then he quickly added, " But I would rather be miserable with her than happy without her."
"John," the priest said, "she is not the one you want."
Puzzled, he asked, "Who?"
"The one you want," the priest said, "is God."
All of us have this longing - not for pleasure or comfort or tranquillity. We would gladly sacrifice those things - and more - if we could only have that for which our heart yearns. Like the woman in today's Gospel, we thirst.
St. Theresa of Avila wrote, "Thirst expresses the desire for something, but a desire so intense that we would die if we lacked it."*
Our problem is that we think something in this world will satisfy our thirst. It will not.** The woman in today's Gospel had five husbands. None of them filled her longing. None of them could.
No person, place, thing or combination of circumstances can satisfy man's inner longing. The reason is this: Our thirst comes not from ourselves, but because Someone thirsts for us. One of the early Christian preachers, Gregory of Nazianzus, exclaimed, "God thirsts for the one who thirsts for Him!"
It is hard for people today to imagine God thirsting for us. We are used to hearing about the hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. The universe is so enormous: How could God concern himself with beings so small and insignificant as us?***
We are small, of course, not only in relation to the cosmos, but even in relation to the nearest mountain range - or even the nearest tree. But size is not everything. Some scientists speak about the "anthropic principle." The universe gives the appearance of being fine-tuned to produce humans. It seems to need all those galaxies and stars to make possible the blue dot that we live on.
However all that be about the universe, we know from the Bible that God goes to great lengths for our salvation. In Jesus we see how much God thirsts for souls. In the Creed we say, "For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven."
As we enter into these more intense weeks of Lent, we recognize a longing in our hearts - a thirst that has its source in God's thirst for us.
************
*Quoted by Gianfranco Ravasi, Segun las Escrituras. p. 70.
**The Buddha saw this clearly - that insight is the basis of his enlightenment and his continuing appeal. Jesus and the Buddha both identify the human dilemma, but they offer very different solutions. Or to put it a different way, the Buddhist insight could prepare a person for Jesus.
***St. Augustine wrote:
There are those who consider that only the world itself was made by God, and that other things come into being through the world itself, just as He ordained and commanded, but without God's doing the work Himself. The statement of the Lord, however, is proposed against them: "My Father is working even until now.
Thus let us believe, or if we are able, let us even understand that God is working even to the present in such a way that if He were to withdraw His operation from the things He created, the would fall apart.
(Faith of the Early Fathers, Volume III #1694 by William A Jurgen)
Rev. W. Thomas Faucher
READINGS:
Ex 17: 3-7
Rom 5: 1-2, 5-6
Jn 5: 4-42
The Gospel of John, unlike the gospels has some long stories in it. Three of these we take out for use during this year in the Lenten season. The first one is the woman at the well. The second one is the man born blind and the third is the rising of Lazarus from the dead.
Each of these stories picks up in a very important way one of the great themes of John’s gospel. John’s gospel is very different from the other gospels in what it does and the way it is written. One of the things that make it different is this enormous sense of symbolism in John’s gospel. One of the symbols that dominates his gospel is this idea of water.
We start with this gospel. Jesus had to pass through Samaria. His journey brought him to a Samaritan town, and there is Jacob’s well. Jacob’s well is the well of Jacob. It was the well from the Old Testament. I visited there a few years ago – right now it is in the middle of a Palestinian refugee camp, and it’s an incredible thing to even get there, but you get there and you walk down and it’s the same well. There’s incredible sense that you are standing in one of the places where one of the great Bible stories took place.
You have to remember that in those days, and anyone who read this when John wrote it would realize that Jewish men did not speak to women. You might speak to a woman inside a building, but you would never speak to a woman in public. Jews didn’t speak to Samaritan. So you have a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman, and she starts out with two strikes against her. So Jesus says to her, “I need some water,” and she looks at him and she’s just astonished, and she said, “You are a Jew, how can you ask me, a Samaritan and a woman for a drink?” Then Jesus says, “If only you recognized God’s gift and who it is who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him instead (she would never have done that – address a Jewish man), and he would have given you living water. She’s no dummy, she said, “Look, you don’t have a bucket, and this well is deep, so how can you talk about living water?” Then Jesus said, “Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never be thirsty. The water I give shall become a fountain within him leaping up to provide eternal life.”
So, as John writes this and tells this story, this water becomes a very important thing. Then a few chapters later in John we have a fascinating line. This is the crucifixion of Jesus and finally after that Jesus realized that everything was now finished, said to bring the scriptures to fulfillment said, “I am thirsty.” How can the person who has eternal water, how can the person who has this wellspring of water, how can he then say that he is thirsty when he’s just told this woman at the well that anyone who drinks from this water will never be thirsty again. What is this living water? What does it mean because it is obviously a whole lot more than water, and the rest of the story in John’s gospel as he weaves in and out, this idea of water appears again and again.
2
When we get to the story in John’s gospel of the Last Supper there is no mention of the
institution of the Eucharist. That’s in the other gospels, but there is the story of the washing of
the feet that is only present in John’s gospel. The feet of the apostles are washed with water.
After Jesus dies, they throw the lance into his side, and water and blood pour out – very
important that it is both of them, the water and the blood; the blood is the humanity.
What does the water mean? In John’s gospel water is a symbol for God; water is a symbol for
the presence of God; water is a symbol of what God means to us. So when Jesus said, “I am
thirsty” what he’s saying is “I need God, I need God.” He is God, but he is dying on the cross as
a human being. He is suffering, and he is saying “I need the presence of God.” What Jesus is
saying to the woman at the well, and what he is saying all the way through these passages that
talk about water is that we need this presence of God. We need this overpowering nature of God.
Jesus pours water on the feet of the apostles. Peter says to him, “Oh don’t just wash my feet,
wash me all over.” And Jesus says, “No, your feet are just fine, Peter, that will take care of it.”
Because you have this presence of God; this God presence comes into you.
This great symbol of water comes from all the things that come before it. Between the Masses I
had a baptism, and as we bless the water during a baptism you list these time after time where
water is mentioned in the Old Testament. It’s always a symbol of the presence of God. The first
reading today, you have Moses out in the middle of the desert, and the Jews as they usually do in
the story of Exodus, are complaining. They’re grumbling, as it says, or murmuring. At some
point, if I’d been Moses I’d have just left them there and walked away, but Moses is much more
patient and kind, and he says to God, “You need to help them.” So he gives they water. What
they need is the presence of God, and he gives them water.
This is what is happening in the scriptures, and so John’s gospel whenever you read about water,
you’re reading about the presence of God. The people of John’s time knew this, and we need to
know this. We need to be able to use the symbol of water. We need to be able to understand the
symbol of water. Whenever water is used, it talks about God - God overflowing us; God
washing us; God changing us; God enabling us to live. We need water. Water is symbol of
God’s presence. That is not an out-of-date symbol, one of the dominant stories in the news in
Idaho in this past week was about water, and the use of water, and what is going to happen with
water, and the irrigation with water, and we don’t have enough water in our hills. And the
Californians now take it even before it rains – they get more water than we do.
That’s the idea of water that happens with us. The use of our water, that’s all there. That’s how
important water still is today. We need to be conscious of that, and what I ask us to do for the
rest of Lent, just look at water as a symbol of the presence of God. Every time you take a drink;
every time you wash your hands; every time you use water in any sense, let that be a symbol of
how much God wants to be part of your life. Take the symbol of water into you in exactly the
way that John’s gospel intends it to be used. Because when we do that, water takes on a
richness, and the Gospel of John takes on a richness, and we realize how wonderfully God loves
us. God is as present to us, and is needed by us, as water. This is the lesson the woman at the
well learned, and it is a lesson that we all need to learn. May God bless us with His peace.
Thirst
(Homily for Third Sunday of Lent, Year A)
Bottom line: As we enter into these more intense weeks of Lent, we recognize a longing in our hearts - a thirst that has its source in God's thirst for us.
We have just listened to John, chapter 4 - Jesus and the woman thirsting for living water. This Gospel brings to mind a conversation between a young man and a priest.
The young man came to the priest with tears in his eyes. His girlfriend had left him. The priest knew her and was not surprised by her capriciousness. Still, he tried to show as much sympathy as he could for the brokenhearted boy. At one point the young man stated she was "the most perfect girl" he had ever met.
The priest stopped him, "Was she really all that perfect?"
"Well," he admitted, "she did have her faults." For example, she always got him to do things for her but never reciprocated. But that only made him more crazy for her. And, yes, she did criticize a lot of things about him, the way he dressed, his friends, his job, how he ate, his driving... Once again that habit bonded him even closer to her.
The priest was going to point out that those traits might not be so endearing in ten or twenty years, but what he said was, "Um." The young man continued. Talking about her put him in a kind of melancholy trance. The thing that most tore him apart was how she flirted with other guys in his presence. Jealousy now stabbed him as he thought about her with someone else.
Unable to restrain himself, the priest asked him, "Do you think you would have been happy with her?"
The young man was silent. He then answered honestly, "No." Then he quickly added, " But I would rather be miserable with her than happy without her."
"John," the priest said, "she is not the one you want."
Puzzled, he asked, "Who?"
"The one you want," the priest said, "is God."
All of us have this longing - not for pleasure or comfort or tranquillity. We would gladly sacrifice those things - and more - if we could only have that for which our heart yearns. Like the woman in today's Gospel, we thirst.
St. Theresa of Avila wrote, "Thirst expresses the desire for something, but a desire so intense that we would die if we lacked it."*
Our problem is that we think something in this world will satisfy our thirst. It will not.** The woman in today's Gospel had five husbands. None of them filled her longing. None of them could.
No person, place, thing or combination of circumstances can satisfy man's inner longing. The reason is this: Our thirst comes not from ourselves, but because Someone thirsts for us. One of the early Christian preachers, Gregory of Nazianzus, exclaimed, "God thirsts for the one who thirsts for Him!"
It is hard for people today to imagine God thirsting for us. We are used to hearing about the hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. The universe is so enormous: How could God concern himself with beings so small and insignificant as us?***
We are small, of course, not only in relation to the cosmos, but even in relation to the nearest mountain range - or even the nearest tree. But size is not everything. Some scientists speak about the "anthropic principle." The universe gives the appearance of being fine-tuned to produce humans. It seems to need all those galaxies and stars to make possible the blue dot that we live on.
However all that be about the universe, we know from the Bible that God goes to great lengths for our salvation. In Jesus we see how much God thirsts for souls. In the Creed we say, "For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven."
As we enter into these more intense weeks of Lent, we recognize a longing in our hearts - a thirst that has its source in God's thirst for us.
************
*Quoted by Gianfranco Ravasi, Segun las Escrituras. p. 70.
**The Buddha saw this clearly - that insight is the basis of his enlightenment and his continuing appeal. Jesus and the Buddha both identify the human dilemma, but they offer very different solutions. Or to put it a different way, the Buddhist insight could prepare a person for Jesus.
***St. Augustine wrote:
There are those who consider that only the world itself was made by God, and that other things come into being through the world itself, just as He ordained and commanded, but without God's doing the work Himself. The statement of the Lord, however, is proposed against them: "My Father is working even until now.
Thus let us believe, or if we are able, let us even understand that God is working even to the present in such a way that if He were to withdraw His operation from the things He created, the would fall apart.
(Faith of the Early Fathers, Volume III #1694 by William A Jurgen)
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