Thursday, September 24, 2009
Bible Alive: An Old Testament Analysis of Faith
An Old Testament Analysis of Faith
1. Think of the word amen. When do we use it? What does it mean?
2. Read Ex 17:12 and Is 33:6. What do the images used here speak about faith called aman? What does aman imply Is “aman” an individual experience?
3. Israel placed its aman in Yahweh. Describe Yahweh according to Ps 36:5-7. Is Yahweh faithful? If so, to what? What is this faithfulness founded on?
4. Read Deut 9:23 and Ps 119:66-67. If Yahweh is faithful this way, what must his people do?
5. Can we call this aman only intellectual assent or an emotional state? Does it involve something deeper? If so what?
6. In this sort of aman, or faith, who is our founding father? Gen 15:1-6. What is significant about this figure’s aman?
7. Read Is 28:16. What is faith for Isaiah? Say I am a king descended from David and the dreaded Assyrians are at my front door having devastated the land … and I am next! What should I do, according to Isaiah, assemble an army? Why or why not? What, for Isaiah, does faith consist of?
8. The intellectual quality of faith is more prominent in Isaiah 40-66. Read Is 43:8-10. Israelites are deemed “faithful” inasmuch as they do what, according to this passage? Is this a purely intellectual activity? Why or why not?
9. What is the foundation stone to Old Testament faith? Why? Consider Gen 1-2, Ex 3.
10. Read Gen 6:9, 22, 7:5 and 22:1-18. How is Old Testament faith expressed? The response of faith is primarily emotional, intellectual, or something else? If something else, what is it?
11. Read Deut 6:17 and 7:11-13. What is Old Testament faith essentially related to? What does this reality between God and Israel grant the people? What is humankind’s response in faith? Is faith ever a one-on-one affair between God and individual believer?
12. Read Job 4:6. With what in the righteous man does faith unite? What does this generate?
13. Read Ex 20:3 and Deut 5:7. Can Old Testament faith have any compromises?
14. Think of the Books Daniel and Judith. What becomes of faith after the Babylonian captivity in 538 BC?
15. Let’s summarize Old Testament faith. Gather all these themes.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Praying as Listening: The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Below are the Readings (NAB) from this Sunday's liturgy. Under each passage there are clarification notes to better help us see the literal sense so that we can journey prayerfully into the Spiritual sense. Then this is followed by a sermon by Fr. Robert Barron which is hyperlinked for your listening pleasure. Enjoy, and your comments are welcome.
The First Reading: Isaiah 45:4-7a
Thus says the LORD: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.
Isaiah 40-55, though collected together under the name Isaiah, was not written by Isaiah son of Amoz (born sometime in the 8th century BC). These chapters were written much later, the oracles recorded here being far different in tone than Is 1-39. Scholars believe a Second Isaiah, called “Deutero-Isaiah,” wrote this “Book of Consolation” down at the end of the Babylonian exile (539 BC) long after the original Isaiah had ministered and died. Today’s first reading comes from a section of Deutero-Isaiah dealing with the Persian Messiah. The overall message stresses that the fall of Babylon and the reign of Persia, which Deutero-Isaiah and his audience experienced, is the work of God.
The Book of Isaiah presents us with an opportunity to reveal false and naïve assumptions in biblical fundamentalism as well as challenges for the modern Christian Bible reader. For over 1500 years Christians regarded this book in its present edited form as the product of a single author, Isaiah of Jerusalem. But due to critical scholarship and its analytical tools (endorsed and taught by the shepherding authority of the Catholic Church in Divino Afflante Spiritu, a papal encyclical by Pope Pius XII; the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, or Dei Verbum; and the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 1993 document “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”; see also Catechism of the Catholic Church # 110), we are urged to read it distinguishing Proto-Isaiah (Chapters 1-39), Deutero-Isaiah (40-55), and Trito-Isaiah (56-66).
Likewise fundamentalists, under the false assumption that prophets are predictors of the future, treasure Isaiah because it seems to foretell important moments in Jesus’ life. This is contrary to historical critical analysis which demands we grasp the Isaian texts in their historical context FIRST. All three “Isaiahs” wrote for THEIR OWN TIMES. They required NO FOREKNOWLEDGE of future events hundreds of years later in order to give their message.
When the Gospel writers use Isaiah, therefore, we learn more about the Apostle’s faith than we do about Isaiah’s own message. Indeed, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the Apostles understand God’s work as interpreted by “Isaiah” as initially fulfilled in the times “he” spoke of, but ultimately fulfilled in the Mystery of Christ, died and risen.
In the First Reading we see motifs of healing and liberation from ailments of blindness and deafness, paralysis and being mute. How it relates to today’s Gospel should be clear—the manifestation of divinity happens in the brokenness of our humanity. This is the UNCOMFORTABLE Gospel. God comes where and when we least expect it. Our God is BEYOND what we expect. We need to open up to God. The Good News is that we must be AWARE.
Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10
The Responsorial is:
Praise the Lord, my soul! or: Alleluia. The God of Jacob keeps faith forever, secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets captives free. R. Praise the Lord, my soul! or: Alleluia. The LORD gives sight to the blind; the LORD raises up those who were bowed down. The LORD loves the just; the LORD protects strangers. R. Praise the Lord, my soul! or: Alleluia. The fatherless and the widow the LORD sustains, but the way of the wicked he thwarts. The LORD shall reign forever; your God, O Zion, through all generations. Alleluia. R. Praise the Lord, my soul! or: Alleluia.
This hymn was written for people to rely on God alone and as a warning NOT to rely on mortal human beings. Notice it is the God of Jacob—the supplanter, the trickster, the one who trips, the one who deceives, the cheater. If we are “Jacob,” what tendencies do we have to the family of humankind? But look at Jacob’s God—God secures justice for the oppressed, God gives food for the hungry, God sets captives free. What a paradox is the expression “the God of Jacob”! And how are we at the work of this God? How are we to the homeless?—do we work to secure their justice, or rather do we exclude them, work to banish them, frightened for our dwindling property value and safety? How are we to the sick of our society? Do we honestly help them, see them with our sacramental faith (and, thus, see Christ in them), or do we banish them to exist under bridges forever as outcasts and pariahs?
Notice that this “God of Jacob” is Yahweh, the God who gives sight to the blind, who raises up the lowly, who loves those who do justice, who protects the stranger. Is this our God, Jacob? Do we do these things and live this way? Is it not we who ARE blind by choice? Is it not we who celebrate the Great and the Famous and the Celebrity and the Popular? Is it not we whose hands bleed with injustice? Is it not we who idolize the familiar, who attack the alien, the strange, the not-familiar? But God is the not-familiar. The Psalm invites us to wrestle with God, like Jacob-Israel. Praise God, who comes to embrace the blind and the miserable!
The Second Reading: Jas 2:1-5
My brothers and sisters, show no partiality
as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.
For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes
comes into your assembly,
and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in,
and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes
and say, “Sit here, please, ”
while you say to the poor one, “Stand there,” or “Sit at my feet, ”
have you not made distinctions among yourselves
and become judges with evil designs?
Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him?
Are we Christians better than anyone else? NO! Here we are called to mirror God’s actions in the structures of the Church. If God is impartial, how should the Church be? If the poor and the marginalized be favored by God, how should the Church be? Is this how we are? In what ways do we need to change? Someone said metanoia (repentance) is more about “I’m awake” than “I am sorry.”
The Gospel: Mk 7:31-37
Again Jesus left the district of Tyre
and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee,
into the district of the Decapolis.
And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment
and begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man’s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
“Ephphatha!”— that is, “Be opened!” —
And immediately the man’s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly.
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
But the more he ordered them not to,
the more they proclaimed it.
They were exceedingly astonished and they said,
“He has done all things well.
He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Please enjoy Fr. Robert Barron’s words on the Gospel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
