Isaiah 1:10, 16-20
Matthew 23:1-12
Isaiah really knows how to win friends and influence people: "Hear the word of the lord, Princes of Sodom!" Where can you go from there?
He heads right on over to "Listen to the instruction of our God, people of Gomorrah!" When we hear "Sodom and Gomorrah," we often think of sex, but there was more to their crimes than that: they also oppressed the poor.
In the forty-ninth and fiftieth verses of the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel we read, "And look at the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity, and they gave no help to the poor and needy.
?Rather, they became haughty and committed abominable crimes in my presence; then, as you have seen, I removed them."
Isaiah says: "Put away your misdeeds! Cease doing evil! Learn to do good! Make justice your aim! Redress the wronged! Hear the orphan's plea! Defend the widow!"
(Note that "widow" in the Old Testament refers to any woman with children, but without a husband and "orphan" refers to any child without a father.)
The Lord, through Isaiah, is talking about single mothers with children.
Jesus tells us that the greatest among us must be the servant of all. He warns of the dangers of religious and political hypocrisy -- of the tendency of those who rule to do so unrighteously. "They preach but they do not practice.
?They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people's shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them."
Therese Mueller writes,
“Spring occupies a very important place in the life of the tiller of the soil; as far as humans are concerned, spring decides what the crop will be. Similarly in the life of grace, Lent holds an almost decisive position (Lent is but another word for spring).
“The more carefully we put away the deeds of winter, the 'dead' weeds, the deeper we plow in order that the new seed may find a well-prepared soil enriched with the good deeds of fasting and prayer, the more shall we enjoy the vigorous plants that will spring up and the abundance of the harvest.”
Bernard Lonergan has written,
“Conversion is existential, intensely personal, utterly intimate. But it is not so private as to be solitary.
"It can happen to many, and they can form a community to sustain one another in their self-transformation and to help one another in working out the implications and fulfilling the promise of their new life.
"Finally, what can become communal, can become historical. It can pass from generation to generation. It can spread from one cultural milieu to another.
“It can adapt to changing circumstances, confront new situations, survive into a different age, flourish in another period or epoch.”
Posted by John
at 12:01 AM CST
Updated: Friday, March 10, 2006 3:21 PM CST
