There is a persistent Biblical inaccuracy that I like to dispel. It says that the God of the Old Testament is a mean, vengeful, God of wrath while the God of the New Testament is kind benevolent, and nice. I like to dispel this inaccuracy for three reasons. First, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. There is but one God. Secondly, it can lead to a kind of anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism in which the Jews had a mean God and then Jesus came to show us God’s love. But, another just as important thing is that it ignores those times when Jesus gets angry at people, like when he went into the Temple and turned over the money changers tables. It disregards the times Jesus got frustrated with Pharisees, lawyers, or even his own disciples, at one point saying to the prince of Apostles, Peter, “get behind me Satan”. It also ignores the number of times the Old Testament talks about the tender relationship that God has with his people, Israel.
One such instance of the tenderness of God in the Old Testament is from our first reading from the book of Hosea. This three-movement reading shows the compassion God has for his people using some very shocking phrases. First, it says that God will take his people back into the desert. The desert is a place of fasting – of removing the complications of life that tend to interfere with our relationship to God. Yet, the desert is also a place of feasting, feasting on the unique relationship God has with his chosen ones. It was through the desert that God led his people from slavery in Egypt to a new life in their Holy Land. In taking his people to the desert, God wants to renew the relationship he first made with them there.
The second movement in this reading says that Israel must respond. God is not like the false gods of the nations that surrounded his people. He isn’t going to interfere in their lives and take away their free will. He is neither Baal nor Zeus. Israel will respond like she did when she was young.
Which leads us to the third movement, that God will espouse her, she will become his spouse. In the second chapter of Genesis, it says that marriage involves a partnership. This engagement, then, is surprising because it acknowledges a partnership on the part of God to his people. This means that the Israelites are expected to live by the statutes and decrees God has given to them and that God will always care for them. In a sense, it is an exclusive relationship that God had between himself and our elder brothers and sisters in the faith, the Jewish people.
Thank goodness, therefore, that the gospel widens things. In a debate on fasting and feasting, Jesus identifies himself as the bridegroom, thus revealing his divine person to those who were paying attention, and he acknowledges that something new is happening. The new movement, his followers, will still have times of feasting and times of fasting but they will be different than the Pharisees and the disciples of John. Something new is happening here. You can’t just expect that these new followers, new faithful, will do the old practices. The new movement, the church involves an inclusive partnership with God for all people created in God’s image and likeness. As members of this new faithful, we must feast on those things that draw us closer to God – prayer, almsgiving, Eucharist. And we must fast what whatever draws us away from God whatever that may be, maybe Internet, television, alcohol. Above all, we must be honest to decide what it is we need to feast upon and what we need to fast from in order to be partners with God.
As we move closer to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the season of Lent, we the call of the bridegroom who takes us into the desert to fast and feast. We must respond by deciding when we need to fast from something and when we need to feast on something in order to remain faithful to the God who calls the church to be his bride.
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