20210726 ZERO INTOLERANCE
26 July, 2021, Monday, 17th Week, Ordinary Time
First reading |
Exodus 32:15-24,30-34 © |
The golden calf
Moses made his way back down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, tablets inscribed on both sides, inscribed on the front and on the back. These tablets were the work of God, and the writing on them was God’s writing engraved on the tablets.
Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting. ‘There is the sound of battle in the camp’, he told Moses. Moses answered him:
‘No song of victory is this sound,
no wailing for defeat this sound;
it is the sound of chanting that I hear.’
As he approached the camp and saw the calf and the groups dancing, Moses’ anger blazed. He threw down the tablets he was holding and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He seized the calf they had made and burned it, grinding it into powder which he scattered on the water; and he made the sons of Israel drink it. To Aaron Moses said, ‘What has this people done to you, for you to bring such a great sin on them?’ ‘Let not my lord’s anger blaze like this’ Aaron answered. ‘You know yourself how prone this people is to evil. They said to me, “Make us a god to go at our head; this Moses, the man who brought us up from Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So I said to them, “Who has gold?,” and they took it off and brought it to me. I threw it into the fire and out came this calf.’
On the following day Moses said to the people, ‘You have committed a grave sin. But now I shall go up to the Lord: perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.’ And Moses returned to the Lord. ‘I am grieved,’ he cried ‘this people has committed a grave sin, making themselves a god of gold. And yet, if it pleased you to forgive this sin of theirs...! But if not, then blot me out from the book that you have written.’ The Lord answered Moses, “It is the man who has sinned against me that I shall blot out from my book. Go now, lead the people to the place of which I told you. My angel shall go before you but, on the day of my visitation, I shall punish them for their sin.’
Responsorial Psalm |
Psalm 105(106):19-23 © |
O give thanks to the Lord for he is good.
or
Alleluia!
They fashioned a calf at Horeb
and worshipped an image of metal,
exchanging the God who was their glory
for the image of a bull that eats grass.
O give thanks to the Lord for he is good.
or
Alleluia!
They forgot the God who was their saviour,
who had done such great things in Egypt,
such portents in the land of Ham,
such marvels at the Red Sea.
O give thanks to the Lord for he is good.
or
Alleluia!
For this he said he would destroy them,
but Moses, the man he had chosen,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn back his anger from destruction.
O give thanks to the Lord for he is good.
or
Alleluia!
Gospel Acclamation | cf.2Th2:14 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Through the Good News God called us
to share the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!
Or: | James1:18 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
By his own choice the Father made us his children
by the message of the truth,
so that we should be a sort of first-fruits
of all that he created.
Alleluia!
Gospel |
Matthew 13:31-35 © |
The smallest of all seeds grows into the biggest shrub of all
Jesus put a parable before the crowds: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest shrub of all and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and shelter in its branches.’
He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.’
In all this Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables; indeed, he would never speak to them except in parables. This was to fulfil the prophecy:
I will speak to you in parables
and expound things hidden since the foundation of the world.
ZERO INTOLERANCE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [Ex 32:15-24. 30-34; Ps 106:19-23; Mt 13:31-35]
Today, the world is ironically very intolerant of those who do wrong, commit evil or hold different views from them. I say it is ironical because it is hypocritical since we are all sinful and weak, prone to temptations like anyone else. Perhaps, the only difference is that we are not exposed or caught in our wrong doings. But the refrain chanted by the world today is, “zero tolerance.” The story of the Golden Calf seems to present to us a God who also acts in this manner, showing zero tolerance for those who break His commandments or betray Him. The response of God to their infidelity was to destroy the people. The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” (Ex 32:9f) God was exasperated with the people and wanted to go back to square one by reinventing His divine plan beginning with Moses rather than with the Patriarchs. The response of God was justified since He is a God of justice. God does not tolerate sin.
However, the scripture is careful to balance the God of Justice with the God of Compassion. When Moses appealed to the Lord to turn away from His wrath against His people, he reminded God of His promise made to the patriarchs, how He swore to them by His own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.” Indeed, “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” (Ex 32:13f) Was God fickle-minded? The truth is that God is both just and forgiving. When we do not repent, our sins will bring down disasters upon us. But when we repent, then no harm will befall us. To say that God changed His mind, was a way of saying that the people repented and changed their ways.
But the real irony is that it is not because God has zero tolerance for the sins of man, rather it is we who are intolerant of the sins of our fellowmen. Moses who pleaded for God to forgive the people for their sin of idolatry, did not himself turn away from his wrath when he went down the mountain and saw what they people were doing. “Moses’ anger blazed. He threw down the tablets he was holding and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He seized the calf they had made and burned it, grinding it into powder which he scattered on the water; and he made the sons of Israel drink it.” In smashing the tables, Moses showed himself to be impulsive and enraged. But at the same time, it had a symbolic meaning, that the Israelites did not deserve the Laws from God since they were not willing to obey Him.
But most of all, the breaking of the Tablets served to underscore that they could not create their own religion according to their design. Faith is given by God and God must reveal Himself. We do not create God in our image as the atheists claim this is what we have done. The Israelites sought to create God according to their image, like the pagans around them. But they did so because they felt the absence of God when Moses, who was their main contact point, their mediator, went missing for forty days. Feeling lost and anxious in the desert, they asked Aaron to construct a God for them so that they could worship Him. They said to Aaron, “Make us gods who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” (Ex 32:23) And Aaron moulded an image of a calf which was a pagan symbol of the god of fertility and strength. Aaron sought to appease the vacuum in the hearts of the people because of the absence of Moses and God in their life by designing their own gods. And they even offered worship to the Golden Calf. Aaron said, “‘Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.’ They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.” (Ex 32:5f)
But the rage of Moses did not stop here. He asked them, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!” All the sons of Levi gathered around him. Moses instructed them to kill those who sinned against the Lord and three thousand were slaughtered. Indeed, Moses had zero tolerance for the grave sin committed against the Lord. So filled with remorse and regret for the sins of his people, he wanted to make atonement for their sins by offering himself as a sacrifice by asking the Lord to remove him from the face of the earth. But God did not accept his personal sacrifice as he was not an “unblemished lamb” worthy for such a sacrifice. Moses too had his weakness, as seen in his uncontrollable anger and rash actions he took against his people. What he asked of God, he himself did the contrary. Nevertheless, Moses’ offering of himself as a living sacrifice for the sins of his people anticipates and foreshadows the offering of God’s only Son who was the innocent, sinless and blameless lamb of God for the salvation of the world and the atonement of our sins.
But what is the main lesson we can learn from today’s scripture readings? Namely, that anger, retaliation and rash actions will not change the hearts of people or even get them to obey the laws. Indeed, the history of Israel was a history of infidelity, punishment and repentance. The story of the Golden Calf would be repeated in the lives of the Israelites. They would repeatedly break the commandments of God. Then they would suffer the consequences of their own sins. When they suffered misery, they would then turn to God and then they would repent. But soon they would forget, just like those Israelites in the desert. Throughout the history of Israel, the leaders and the people would turn to idolatry, the worship of false gods, but worse still, like the Israelites, they offered worship to God but they did not live their lives according to the Law. Instead they cheated and oppressed the poor.
But God has always been patient and forgiving. He showed zero intolerance. God is ever ready to forgive. He knows that we need time to grow in life and be perfected in grace. Our whole life on earth is a miniature history of Israel, a life where goodness and evil are mixed. Earlier on, Jesus told the Parable of the Darnel and the Wheat. Instead of uprooting the darnel, the Lord urged patience, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Mt 13:29f)
In today’s parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast, Jesus once again asked us to be patient. The Kingdom of God is growing in a hidden manner like the seed and the yeast. We cannot see the result as yet but it takes time. We must be patient to wait for the tree to grow and for the yeast to act on the dough. We might not understand why God allows us to sin and fail. We might not understand why we keep on falling into sins and unable to resist the temptations of the world, the flesh and the Evil One. But we must continue to trust in Him. His grace, as the Lord told St Paul, will be sufficient for him, “for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12:9)
A time will come when we arrive at “full maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ”, then we will “no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” (Eph 4:13f) Then like the Mustard Seed and the Yeast, we will be the ones who will in turn be the mentors for others who could take refuge in us and be inspired by us. We will be able to transform the world like the yeast through our transformed life. Indeed, the best way to transform the world is to live the life of Christ, through our kindness and compassion. When we are tolerant, forgiving and compassionate with those who are weak and those who fail to live up to the gospel life, eventually, they will encounter the true mercy and love of God in us. When that happens, their hearts will soften and their minds receptive to the Word of God. So we must be like God, exercising zero intolerance for sins. Instead, we must forgive and encourage them never to give up trying and working out their salvation. We must offer hope.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment