euphemos

The End.

Last time I preached I took way too long to get to the end. I’m sorry about that. I was super excited about what I learned from my experience being the kinda-ok shepherd. Please forgive me. I’ll make it up to you by being particularly brief the next few times I get to preach, so we average out to the 7 or 8 minutes that Pope Francis and our Bishop have asked us to target.

So. The End.

No, not really. Not the end. I’m not done quite yet.

Have you ever experienced the supernatural? Something you cannot deny, and cannot explain? Something that challenges what you know about the world?

That is very much what happened on Pentecost.

Do we believe Jesus is the good shepherd?

Do we somehow think that Jesus is going to, as the saying goes, “fleece us?” Sometimes we act like Jesus is our enemy. We act like he is trying to trick us or take something from us.  He isn’t.

Sometimes, we are like Bilbo Baggins, at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings. He has this burden he carries, this… addiction… that he cannot release. Gandalf, an “angel” of that world, who appears as a wizard, offers to help, and Bilbo responds as if Gandalf were trying to rob him. “You want it for yourself…”

“Bilbo Baggins!” Gandalf replies, “do not take me for some conjurer of cheap tricks. I am not trying to rob you. I’m trying to help you. All your long years we’ve been friends. Trust me as you once did….”

(5th Sunday of Lent, Year B) On these five Sundays of Lent, we’ve been reminded of God’s covenants with us. These are the ways that God was made known to us, and was united with humanity. The first Sunday, God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants. The second Sunday, God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants, which would bless all the nations of the earth. The third Sunday, the covenant with Moses laws for the nation of Israel. The fourth Sunday, God’s covenant with David, who in many ways lived in the power of the Spirit of the Lord, as if our new covenant was already in place.

Today, God promises through Jeremiah a new covenant. A covenant in which God will write the law on hearts. A covenant where nobody has to know God for us (remember how in the desert, the Children of Israel asked for a human mediator who could talk to God for them? Not any more.), but each can know God for themselves. A covenant with all Israel and Judah, the whole people. A covenant from the least to the greatest. A covenant in which not only is our evildoing forgiven, but even forgotten by God entirely.

In each of these covenants, we learn a bit more about God, and we also become more familiar with God. This is God’s desire. Not just that we would know “about” God, but that we would “know” God. In Spanish, this is the difference between saber, to know facts and learned skills and information about a person, place, or thing, and conocer, to be familiar with a person, place, or thing. English is lacking in this area. Even in previous times, in English, we would say that Abraham knew his wife Sarai, and she bore a son. We know (saber) from the context, that Abram did not know (saber) his wife, but was intimately familiar (conocer) with her.

The point being… God desires that we desire and acquire an intimate knowledge of God. When God says “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” it is a direct reference to the marriage covenant: I will be your husband, and you shall be my wife. That is because it is not in knowing (about), but in “knowing” (as persons) that we are fruitful.

So. Do you know God?

(2nd Week of Lent, Year B) God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham! Take Isaac, your only beloved son and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a burnt offering on a height that I will point out to you.