Do you trust in Something Greater?

A reflection by Heidi Knofczynski

Do you remember the trembling glasses of water in the movie Jurassic Park?  In this scene some park guests being treated to a grand tour are stranded just outside the now de-electrified T-rex paddock.  Then the sounds of thundering footsteps are heard off in the distance moving towards them.  The footsteps are so powerful that even from a distance they create a vibration that causes the water inside the glasses to ripple slightly.

BOOM!  Something great and terrible is coming this way… BOOM!  Something powerful….BOOM!  Something greater, and if you endure it you will never be the same!

It is a terrifyingly effective scene.  Something like that feeling grips me as I read today's Gospel from Luke.   As Jesus speaks to the crowd His words fall with such portentous weight that, for me, it triggers a trembling inside.   His unfathomable reality exposes my fragmented, abstract, Christ-haunted spirituality.  He has come to take us beyond our superficial expectations into the unknown of eternity.  He has come to cast off all that we cling to to distract us from our nothingness.  Fear is a natural response to death.

BOOM!

In Ecclesiastes Solomon saw how we “chase the wind “in search of something greater, something that will help us outlast death.  Riches, pleasure and even wisdom may serve to distract us, but ultimately they only give the illusion that our life “under the sun” has meaning.  Solomon’s wisdom kept running into the same unavoidable obstacle:  Death means inevitable nothingness.  We are shadows that cannot overcome that darkness.  Until then, don't do evil and cast your bread upon the waters.  In other words, don't cling to stuff, rather enjoy life before nothingness of death absorbs you into its shadow.  Vanity of Vanities! 

But there is something greater than Solomon here.

BOOM!

 

Solomon’s wisdom goes to the brink of death, but there all he sees is darkness.  Jonah is taken further; he goes into the belly of a fish, which should have been a tomb, in order for God to bring an urgent warning to the notorious city of Nineveh.  This city, whose ruthless reputation filled all who heard of it with fear and loathing, listened to the man who came from a tomb bringing them a fearful message.  They listened and cast off their evil identity, through prayer and fasting and placed their hope in a power that overcame a tomb.

And there is something greater than Jonah here.

BOOM! 

We must cast everything upon the waters; our hopes, dreams, who we think we are and even (like the crowd that gathered around Jesus) who we think
that Jesus is.  What is only a shadow within us must be overcome. We will be left with an acute awareness of our nothingness,  But Something Greater has come to us, in all His earthshaking reality.  Endure it, do not run and hide.   Let His perfect love overtake you to cast out the fear of death to this world, because death cannot absorb Jesus into its darkness.  Jesus is no shadow. 

BOOM!  Something greater has arrived!

What are you clinging to today that needs to be cast off?

Update:  I forgot to add this Switchfoot song, BA55...."I believe you're the fire that could burn me clean"

Something Greater

Do you follow the daily readings?  I try to, but it does get away from me, especially when daily Mass is not an option with noisy little ones. Lent is always a good time to make a greater effort to clear out the obstacles that prevent us from hearing the Word of God proclaimed.

 Sometimes the readings are hard to piece together.  I find myself straining to figure out what is being proclaimed in the way the readings have been put together on a particular day.  Today's readings are obvious.  They are about hearing a call to repentance and responding with a contrite heart.  Deep and true repentance that will open your eyes and to the heights you were created for and  free your heart to be healed by the one who is beyond all understanding and is quick to console a broken heart.

But it is the Gospel of Luke that causes me to listen and reflect back on the other readings.  In this reading we here from Jesus about The Queen of Sheba who responds to the wisdom of Solomon by traveling from the ends of the earth, sparing no cost so that she can receive it.  And in this Gospel Jesus says:  "there is something greater than Solomon here."  Can you feel it?  Do those words uttered from the mouth of Christ cause you to take in a quick breath?  Does your soul ache just a little when you hear them?  Is there a stirring of desire for truth, and the deep wisdom that heals superficiality?

 Going on, the notorious Ninevites immediately respond to the preaching of a reluctant prophet by donning sackcloth and ashes, by  fasting and mourning.  Again, Jesus says, "there is something greater than Jonah here."  And again these words seem to reverberate inside me, they call me to react to Jesus in a far deeper way, to repent in a more profound way.  They are ripples in the waters of my soul that could become of tsunami of contrition if I just let them flow and wash away all the soft and fuzzy notions of the majesty of God that I have blindly allowed to accumulate in my heart. They have calcified and hardened over the years, and it is so hard to see the depravity of sin without the awesome majesty of God.   If you want to grow in love for Jesus, you have to let them go, or you will never, never realize that there is something greater in Him than is contained in all the wisdom of this world, and in all the prophets that have perceived and proclaimed the Word of God.  You will never recognize the tragedy of your sins.

I don't think this means we should turn overly scrupulous.  The two extremes of scrupulosity and presumption on the Lords mercy both block our realizing that, as it says in Sirach 2:18:   God's mercy is equal to His majesty.  However, I think that presumption is the more prevalent problem of our time.  I think our image of God is a weak and pathetic one, and so our vision for sin is treacherously myopic.  The Queen of the South will indeed condemn us for having Jesus Himself on our tongues, yet barely giving up a Sunday to celebrate Him.  Without an inkling of God's majesty it is terribly hard to recognize sin and how it works like a cancer from within our calcified hearts unless it is repented of.  As terrible as the Ninevites were they could perceive the Almighty, even through the preaching of a distant (and not very sympathetic) prophet.

So listen to the Gospel again, listen with your imagination.  These words were spoken by the Lord Himself, and they are active.  Feel that aching in your soul, let the ripples become a torrent that can wash away the debris and the blindness.  Or at least spur your awareness of what "something greater" means.  Let them break your heart so that you can offer the Lord the sacrifice He desires, and he can pour out His great mercy upon you.  "There is something greater than Jonah here." 


Peace and Grace,
Heidi