Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 4, 2023
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070423.cfm
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we resume our readings from Genesis and Matthew – and they’re packed with action and inspiration!
Sodom and Gomorrha by Henry Osawa Tanner
(Note Lot’s wife left behind in white)
If you’re “of an age” like me, you might remember your old Bible History class and first hearing the story of Lot and his “mortonized” wife.
I spent a lot of my 7-year-old energy wondering what she looked like as a salty pillar. I even imagined how she might have melted in the next rain after the meteor set Sodom on fire.
But most of all, I felt bad for her. I mean, really, one glance backward and ZAP! And by correlation, I felt bad for myself because, even at that young age, I realized that I was quite capable of backward glances once God had spoken. And it scared me.
Was God really like that?!
Looking back on those childhood feelings, I consider how my faith and perception of God have evolved over the course of my now long life. The God of my grade school years was not the God of my late teens and twenties. Nor was that God of my young adulthood the God of my 50s and 60s.
Did God grow and change during those years? Of course not. It was I who deepened, widened, and mellowed in experience and grace.
The stories in Genesis, and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, were told and interpreted over many centuries before they were ever written down. After being written down, they have continued to be studied and parsed even into our own times.
Just as we grow in the spiritual understanding of our own lives, we mature in our ability to look through the surface of scriptures to their deep and sacred meaning.
As Christians, we must read the ancient scriptures in the light of the Gospel. We have the advantage and responsibility to seek the deep spiritual understanding resident within these stories. Buried in a sometimes bizarre passage is the fundamental truth of God’s abiding Presence, no matter our circumstances.
The particular words used to convey these stories were designed for and by people of a very different culture from ours. Some of the concepts are relayed in a primitive manner that may not speak to a modern reader. But we can’t let ourselves get stuck on those cultural differences — the way I did when I was seven years old.
The story of Abraham, Lot and Lot’s wife is not a news report about some family that avoids a natural disaster save for one disobedient member.
It is instead a parable which invites us to consider God’s persistent desire for our wholeness despite our own resistance to that grace. If we continually harden our spirits to God’s invitation to relationship, it is we, not God, who make the choice to distance ourselves in spiritual exile.
Yet, Genesis tells us that, even if we make that distancing choice, all is not lost. We cannot cause God to disassociate from us, no matter how hard we might try. There is always a path back to the heart of God – even if it leads through a storm of brimstone.
As our Gospel assures us, even in the scariest of storms, our God is with us:
They came and woke him, saying,
“Lord, save us! We are perishing!”
He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea,
and there was great calm.
Poetry: Lot’s Wife – Anna Akhmatova
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
Music: The Love I Have for You , O Lord – sung by James Kilbane
Lavish Mercy 