WHO IS YOUR GOD?

A relevant question today!

June 27, 2021: 13th Sunday in Ordinary time

Wisdom 1:13-15,2:23-24; 2 Corinthians 8:7,9,13-15; Mark 5:21-43

Who is your God? This is a question the people of Israel were asked every now and then, by those who surrounded them. And the people would say: the one who brought us out of Egypt, the one who gave us bread in the desert, the one who gave us water from the rock, the one who saved us and the one who made us into a people. That was the experience of the people of God - an expeience of the God of alliance who promised them: You shall be my people and I shall be your God. But the problem began when people underwent some trials - they made wrong choices and were reaping the fruit; they lived by wrong priorities and it was getting back on them; they needlessly depended on the forces that they thought would save them but when it misfired they were submerged in troubles - they were trying to make sense of one question: but where is God during these moments? They thought and interpreted that - God had abandoned them, or that God refused to care for them, or worst of all, that God was punishing them! Was it really the right answer or the right way of looking at God?

No!, says Jesus emphatically in his thoughts, words and deeds. This was one of the life tasks of Jesus: to reintroduce God to humanity...to clear the wrong interpretations of  God, to make people look at God from God's perspective and not from human perspective, to make humanity really understand the Love of God and its boundless nature. Jesus had to struggle for it... when Jesus had to explain to the people that God has no favourites, and God's favourites are those who are renounced, negated and relegated to the peripheries of human existence. He had to tell people that God's nature is to forgive, all that they could manage was a maximum of seventy times seven; he had to insist every now and then, that God is a merciful father and mother, but all they could think was rewarding the good and punishing the evil! 

Today, after so much that God has done for us and after all that Jesus has done to reveal the true sense of God to us, do we really know God? Do we really understand who is our God? The experience of the pandemic and many other elements around it, even today, challenges us - do you really know who is your God? 

The pandemic has not ended...it is on and it continues to challenge us in many ways! One of the reflections, as inspired by the Word today, is to understand how compatible our image of God is, with the God that Jesus wishes us to see, experience and believe in.

God of life or death

The first reading speaks to us of the God of life... and we very often make of God, a god of death. Our God is a God of life - life, new life and endless life. We need to work out of the temptation to think of God as someone who has the noose in his hands, threatening us with death. There are two things that we need to understand here from Christian point of view: Death is not destruction! The end of our life here, is not the end of all! The Lord who gave us life, awaits us after life too! And death is not the obliteration of a person. Secondly, anything that appears to be a destruction or a ruin does not come from God, it comes from the evil one. An untimely death, a gruesome death, a painful death, an unexpected death - though the experience they give us is pain and sorrow, for the person who has that experience it is, another experience of his or her existence. It may be difficult to understand, but that is life. In the perspective of eternity, the fact is, whether we live or we die, we are with God. Even in the pain of separation from a person, this is what we need to believe and understand. Reflect on the first reading taking time with God. 

God of prosperity or poverty

The second reading points to us the folly of looking at God as someone who gives is prosperity! This is all due to the craze of the humankind which has prioritised prosperity and idolised the sense of having! Why is it that having in plenty and having in abundance is better than, having what you need and being happy with just the minimum! It looks like a thought out of the world, a thought that does not work! How easily we accept a statement like: you believe in God and you will have every thing you need in life; you submit yourself to God and you will have all the blessings that you think of...what a fallacy it is! St. Paul reminds us today: we believe in a God who made of Godself so poor, a God of total self-giving. God so loved the humanity that God gave everything including God's only son for our salvation; the Son so loved us that he gave us everything, including his own body and blood; the Spirit so loves us that the Spirit has deigned to make us the dwelling place! God became poor that we may feel enriched, blessed, filled with graces. So what should be our mentality? To seek to receive as much as we can? Or to give of ourselves as much as we can? That will decide whether we hold on to a god of arrogant prosperity or the God of loving poverty!

God of healing or punishment

The Gospel speaks to us of the consoling God of healing...specially in these days when everywhere the talk is about disease and death, the God of healing is a great consolation indeed. It is so disheartening to hear some, although they call themselves persons of God, or prophets, or preachers, or evangelists or whatever title they wish to give...but speaking words like: this pandemic is a wrath of God, a punishment from God and so on! How I wish these were dumb, for God's sake! Jesus connects us to the God who is Love. Love does not wish the pain of others, love wishes nothing but good. At times there are things which come as a consequence of our actions, a collective damage that we create for ourselves, the effect of the greed of some which affects even the others and the innocent...but can we attribute that to God? Punishing God was an interpretation that the people of Israel often had recourse to, to explain their sad and unfortunate predicament...but Jesus trashed it...Jesus overthrew it...Jesus has challenged us to grow over it. Whether we touch God as the woman with hemorrhage did today, of God touches us as Jesus did to the girl on the death bed...the result is healing, wholenses, life! God is a healing God. God gives wholeness! God gives life. God gives health! God gives meaning! God gives purpose! God gives eternal life!

Who is my God? God of life! God who embraced poverty out of love for me! God who gives me healing! Can we rest with that question today: who is your God?