Sunday Inbox Inspirations
2nd Sunday of Lent
Cycle C
March 13, 2022
Rothschild Mansion
There is a story that back in the nineteenth century (the 1800s), some tourists were passing by the famous mansion of the Rothschild family in London.
These tourists noted that on one end of the mansion, the cornices and exterior wall were unfinished. They wondered why this was so since the Rothschilds were such a wealthy family.
Lord Rothschild explained that he was an orthodox Jew. According to Orthodox tradition, the house of every Jew was to have some part left unfinished.
Why? To bear witness that the occupant of the house is like Abraham, in a sense unfinished, a person on a journey with no lasting home on this earth.
Life as Circle
Today’s first reading and gospel express this same belief.
The message is that we are all on a journey. About fifteen years ago, I read a book entitled The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill.
Cahill states that up until the time of Abraham, ancient peoples viewed life as a circle. They believed that what had happened in the past would happen again in a continuous circle.
They also believed that everything was determined by heavenly powers. It was not so much our free will, but heavenly powers that determined what would continually happen.
And so, our task was to meditate on the ceaseless, circular flow of life. We were to do this until we came to peace with it.
Now, as I said, that was the ancient view of life. But one of the gifts of the Jews, as Thomas Cahill says, is that Abraham changed this way of thinking.
Life as Journey
The background to today’s first reading is that Abraham has listened to God’s call and set out to an unknown land.
He sets out on a journey, and ever since then the way to look at human life is as a journey. This change of outlook now means that there is much more to life than the past simply repeating itself and this being determined by some heavenly power.
Now there is the possibility of a different future, and we are responsible for creating it. The Old Testament also reveals that this journey is not just from one country to another, as it was for Abraham and Moses.
It is not just an outer journey, a journey outside of me. Instead, it is primarily an inner journey, a journey to our inner self where we can find God.
It is a journey of becoming more and more like God. And in the long run, it is a journey back to God.
A Journey with No Tents
This understanding carries right over into Christianity.
The gospels consistently show Jesus on a journey to Jerusalem. They also call us to see our lives as a journey and they add an important caution about this.
The caution is that we have to resist the temptation to pitch our tents, to stay put. In today’s gospel, Jesus will not let Peter do this because he knows that there is still a lot of the journey ahead.
Today, like Peter, we might be tempted to pitch our tents. We might be doing this when we say things like: “This is the way I’ve always done it.”
Or, “This is the way I learned it and have always understood it.” Statements like these might be saying that we are closing ourselves off to looking at things differently or doing things differently.
For example, we can pitch our tents in the understanding of ourselves. Maybe we just turn off any comment that calls us to examine our attitude about others.
We can also pitch our tents in the understanding of our faith. Maybe we resist understanding faith as being more inclusive than exclusive of others, especially others who are different from us or think differently than we do.
And maybe we also pitch our tents in our prayer life. Maybe we resist any openness to a new way of praying.
The point is that like Peter in the gospel, we need to resist the temptation of pitching our tents. This is what the Season of Lent calls us to do – to keep growing, to keep on the journey of life.
Fr. Michael Schleupner
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