Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B 2024

Title

Responding to Revelation/ Truth

Outline

In my reflections I hope you see both exegesis of the texts in their contexts and a Thomistic approach to the demonic and the battle we are in - and perhaps a bit of C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

I love the early chapters of Genesis

They are in mythic form to speak to the cultures of their day, but in that way deeper truths, unseen truths become visible.

The human (Adam) has been made regent over creation to order it under God. He is in close relationship with God, naked and unashamed and unafraid, a friendship, as he is with his wife. They are innocent, not good or evil, for they have made no choices.

But there is another created being, which is why Satan is pictured as a snake not as something that could be confused with God, who suggests God has lied and that they should grasp Godhood through the experience of good and evil. While the fruit seemed to be good, the eating of it against the divine will was evil, and Satan’s falsehood is revealed as all unravels towards death,

In our reading the human has tried to hide from God whom he fears because of the alienation caused by sin. He is highly anxious. When questioned by God he scapegoats his wife (thus erecting a greater alienation between them) and she scapegoats the snake.

God then declares what is, how his viceroy’s choosing evil works out. The snake, whom humans were to rule, will eat dust, other animals, and will try to consume the woman and her offspring, but in the end an offspring will kill the snake.

The story continues with humans bringing offspring to birth, but the evil son (who does not repent) kills the good son. The snake has struck, but there will be a third son. Yet death and chaos is in the world.

This is historically and psychologically true as well as spiritually.

Paul knows that this is Christian experience

Even though Jesus has come, even though Paul has experienced new life in Jesus, even though he brings life to others, his outer self is wasting away, death is at work in him, his earthly tent will be destroyed. But that is on a this creational level. Paul has experienced the resurrected Christ, he has “seen” with his inner eye the unseen, he knows the good, that all will result in the glory of God. The snake can only thrash about on a this creational level. Paul’s oneness with God is being restored day by day.

This conflict is what Jesus experienced

The passage is bracketed by his relatives trying to “save” him from “the snake” - they love him and think he is crazy to take on the powers.

The scribes, the literate Bible scholars, flip reality. They see the power of God and call it Satan. He is not God incarnate but Satan incarnate. They call evil good and good evil. Jesus points out that this is illogical and dooms one. When one calls the revelation of the Spirit evil and Satan good and really believes it, one gets locked into one’s false perceptions and cannot repent. The false news in this case will lead to the destruction of the Jewish people in AD 70 and 130.

But Jesus is not taking on Satan on his own, but doing so at the direction of the Father. In so doing his relatives, those joined to him and the Father, are not those of physical relationship such as the Jewish leaders, but the one who “does the will of God.” So Mary was his mother because she did the will of God and at least some of his relatives were likewise his brothers, for Jesus saw beyond the physical body to the renewed body in which the devil is defeated and glorified humans rule over angels.

These scary truths are for us

The devil was into false narratives and false identifications long before the internet. And he is into alienation and division and death that we see in the world today and even in the Church. But though he aggrandizes himself and/or his agents/ victims the truth is that they will end up in alienation from themselves, shame, and death as he will end up in total alienation.

One of his narratives is that our suffering is ultimate, our death final, and that God does not care about us.

We need to speak the truth to ourselves, the truth revealed by the Spirit, that Jesus is the risen Lord, that suffering is “brief” and temporary, that our suffering leads to God’s glory and our glorification, and that what matters is doing the will of God, for that will unite us with God and bring about our rule in total intimacy with God over the whole renewed universe, physical and spiritual, while Satan and those who believe the lie exist in alienation from all this in an eternal dying.