Homily for Tuesday, 17 February 2015– Ferial

Optional Memorial of the Seven Founders of the Order of Servites

Tuesday of the 6th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10; Psalm 29:1a-2, 3ac-4, 3b, 9c-10; Mark 8:14-21

What do our readings today say about God? What do they say to us about ourselves; about human nature?

At first glance, does God not seem in our readings to be harsh and destructive? In our reading from Genesis, God is about to send a catastrophic flood upon the earth. This flood will be the exact reversal of creation, by which God created order and life from chaos. Now, chaos will once again reign.

But is it God’s chaos that will reign, or ours? Human beings seem hopelessly depraved in our first reading today. God orders the flood “when he [sees] how great” is our “wickedness on earth.”

Jesus’ own disciples are not much better in our Gospel reading. Not only have they “forgotten to bring bread.” This is the least of their worries. No, the disciples have been infected by “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” Their “hearts” have been “hardened” by legalism that lacks compassion; by leadership that lacks courage; by failure to see and act by the signs of the reign of God reaching its fulfillment before their very senses. Are these not still challenges in the lives of faith of many Christians today? We are challenged to act with compassion and not out of legalism or partisanship. Our Gospel challenges us to have courage to stand up both to relativism and its just-as-harmful opposite in our culture, absolutism that does not allow for uncertainty; that over-categorizes; that limits both God and us.

Jesus ends our Gospel reading today with a pointed challenge to his disciples: “Do you still not understand”? But is Jesus, or is God who orders the flood in Genesis, actually acting harshly? Perhaps we are being invited to understand today’s readings differently than we are used to understanding them.

Today’s scene from Mark’s Gospel is not an end but a beginning for Jesus’ disciples. They will continue to grow in knowledge of God’s reign and of their place in it as they continue to journey with Jesus.

Likewise, the flood in Genesis is a new beginning, not an end. “Noah found favor with the LORD,” not that a cruel God was to bring a destructive flood on the earth, is the central message of our first reading. Noah does not stand alone as the righteous character in the flood story; the one God chooses to save. Noah stands for everything good still in creation. Indeed, our sin; our abuse of free will has corrupted creation, initially designed by God as “very good.” But there is still something worth saving; worth redeeming in creation; in us. And so “Noah found favor with the LORD.” In this way we find favor with the Lord also.

Perhaps then God does not appear as harsh as at first glance in our readings. We human beings are not bad or depraved, but redeemable. We are living our redemption now in Christ, through which God challenges us; strips away what is sinful in us as though by a flood of compassion and mercy. We are living a new beginning, not an end, because, like “Noah,” we have “found favor with the LORD.”