Early and Often

Scripture Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 15, 2015)

Scripture Readings:
2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23;
Psalm 137:1-2, 3,4-5, 6;
Ephesians 2:4-10;
John 3:14-21

Year A Scrutinies:
1 Samuel 16:1B, 6-7, 10-13A
Psalm 23:1-3A, 3B-4, 5, 6
Ephesians 5: 8-14
John 9:1-41

"Early and often" is a phrase more associated with Chicago voting patterns than with sacred scripture, but the Chronicler uses it in the first reading of the Cycle B readings to describe God's attempts to offer salvation to humanity. "Early and often," he says, God had compassion on the community of Israel, and offered them the means for returning to their relationship with the Lord.

This is one of several "covenant stories" that we have in the B Cycle of readings for Lent. We have heard about the covenant that God made with the whole world in the story of Noah; and on the second and third Sundays, we are reminded of the covenants through Abraham and Moses. On the Fifth Sunday of Lent, we will hear the prophet Jeremiah announce God's intention to establish a new covenant, written on the hearts of God's people, that they cannot walk away from any more than they can walk away from themselves.

Today, the Chronicler tells us that it's not just at major moments in our history that God has reached out to us in mercy. It's "early and often." It's through Noah and Abraham and Moses; it's through David's kingdom, as we hear in the first reading for Cycle A. It's through the call of God's messengers throughout human history; through the bronze serpent lifted up in the desert; and as promised through the prophet Isaiah. "Early and often," God, whom Paul reminds us in Ephesians is "rich in mercy," has found ways to extend that mercy to all of humanity. It is a continuing story of a continuing relationship; not one in which a later story replaces a previous one, but one in which each story demonstrates God's ongoing concern for the salvation of the world.

Each of the stories on each of the Sundays of Lent shows us the way in which "God so loved the world." They are the ways in which God, who is rich in mercy, allows us to plumb the depths of that mercy, so that we can better understand God's richness and the extraordinary depth of God's love.

The culminating story that demonstrates the proof of God's love is found in Jesus, whom God sends into the world not as phenomenon (the rainbow of Noah's time), or ritual (circumcision in the Abrahamic covenant), or law (the Commandments through Moses), but as person. Jesus becomes the message of God, not spoken through prophets, but written on the human heart, as Jeremiah prophecies on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. And so our understanding of that message comes ultimately through human relationship with human flesh and blood.

It is the flesh and blood of Jesus that John (in the Cycle B Gospel) and Paul (in the Cycle A second reading) tell us brings light to the world - the light of Jesus and the light we become through Jesus. Through the One who is Light, we are cured of our blindness (the Cycle A Gospel), and able to see clearly and definitively the love which God has shown the world "early and often" because of God's love for the world.

Regardless of whether we use the readings for Cycle A or for Cycle B, we see the continuing work of God, who had created the world "in the beginning" because of love, who "early and often" raised up a world thrust down by sinfulness, and who, in the richness of mercy, showed us the eternal manifestation of love through our relationship with the person of Jesus, who finally and definitively enlightens us to the message that God has been trying to communicate with us from the beginning.

In the Gospel for Cycle B, John says that our response to the light that has come into the world is to live in the truth. In the second reading from Cycle A, Paul says that we ourselves have been made into that light, to produce "every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth." So that in response to God who so loved the world, we do no less.

This reflection was originally published at www.ctu.edu. © Copyright 2015 Catholic Theological Union. All Rights Reserved.

Image: Rainbow after the storm by Marcus Rahm. Found on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.