Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor.
By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor
A reflection on the daily readings, for Friday of the Second Week of Lent, by Father Perry.
+ Well, unlike most of the time in Ordinary Time, where the scriptures are told in a continuing narrative fashion, the Lenten scriptures bounce around, not so much in a continual narrative fashion, but rather embracing huge and important themes of our faith.
So looking only at the first reading for a moment, we bounced from Jeremiah yesterday to Genesis today; then we will continue bouncing over the next few days to Micah, then to 2 Kings, then to Deuteronomy.
We are moving not from chapter to chapter of one book; instead, we move from theme to theme, and building our biggest case that will bring us psychologically and spiritually, and scripturally, to the great theme of sin and redemption played out and realized in the passion and death and entombment and resurrection of the Lord.
“It is too early,” one might say, to be gazing at the eventual and prophetically predictable rejection and murder of the Christ.
But not so. Scripturally, we are faced today with the sin — the human reality — of jealousy and hatred, and murderous thoughts and actions that have played out, and do play out again and again in the human condition that we call sin.
And we see the great redemptive love poured out from the cross as this sin-and-grace dance is played and portrayed a thousand times and more in the word of God.
“They they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.”
Today — with Joseph and his brothers!
This echoed again in Psalm 105.
Then Jesus tells a story, a parable, to the chief priests and elders of the people. It is a story about tenants who had leased land from an owner and were working the land.
“At vintage time,” as the scriptures tell it, “the owner sends his servants to collect on the produce of the land.”
In other words, it was “pay up time.”
But sin reared its ugly head as greed and murderous actions followed — first, of the servants of the owner, then eventually his own son.
This, they thought, might allow them to steal the son’s inheritance — sinful greed to the max.
+ But Jesus had more in mind than just retelling the story of sin; there was a bigger theme in mind.
This story was about rejection of God’s purposes and rejection of God’s kingdom that was being preached and opened before the chief priests and elders’ very ears and eyes.
As they began to plot the eventual death of Jesus, the same murderous and sinful hatreds of the story of Joseph and his brothers and mankind is told, prophesied, and laid out for us to prepare for as the holiest week of weeks comes nearer and nearer to be prayed and meditated on by all.
Is it too early to move in this direction? Is it outlandish that the theme of rejection of the Lord is placed before us?
And most startling of all, is there any truth that we all have a bit of this same sinfulness wrapped around, or at least at times, snipping at our feet or our hearts, or tainting the kingdom-lives we want to live
Little in life is black or white; most of life is made up of shades of gray.
And so we reflect upon sin and grace, and redemption and love, and echo the verse before the Gospel so eloquently, embracing us all: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son; so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.”
Father Perry D. Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com. Follow Father Perry on Twitter: @MrDeano76.
