My husband and I enjoy watching movies, re-watching some of our favorite movies over and over again. Each time we watch a film it seems that we discover something new. Little things, incidents, objects, words, that did not catch our attention on a first viewing often become important when we know the whole story. My husband is doing some screen writing so he watches from a particular vantage point, looking for the ways that the screen writer or director plants seeds that unfold as the story progresses. Clues given early in the film can go unnoticed until the movie is watched a second or third time. Thus, every viewing can provide insight into the writer’s, actor’s, or filmmaker’s intentions. Sometimes, we catch discrepancies that slipped by the film editors. There are often times when we imagine a better ending.
The first reading for this weekend’s fourth Sunday of Lent in Cycle B comes from II Chronicles. It is the only time that a reading from II Chronicles is read on a Sunday. One other passage from II Chronicles is read on Saturday in the eleventh week of Ordinary time. If this sounds obscure, it is. We don’t often hear from Chronicles I or II. The writer, or chronicler, wrote with the purpose of filling out details, or clarifying some of the events found in the Books of Samuel and Kings, and worked to harmonize episodes that seem disconnected. As the forward to Chronicles in my New American Bible points out “ancient biblical history, with rare exceptions, was less concerned with reporting in precise detail all the facts of a situation than with explaining the meaning of those facts. Such history was primarily interpretive, and, in the Old Testament, its purpose was to disclose the actions of the Living God in the affairs of men (sic).”
Thus, the concise message that is heard in II Chronicles 36: 14-16, 19-23, is the result of a thorough knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and a desire to write more clearly what Temple scholars had come to believe about their sacred history. That is, that because the people had not heeded the prophets, God was angry and allowed the enemies of Israel to sack the temple and carry survivors off to Babylon until the time of Cyrus the Persian whom God authorized to send the exiles home and to rebuild the Temple. This priestly perspective promoted the need to abide by the Law and cultic practices. But it has never nurtured a particularly compelling understanding of God.
The Gospel reading for this weekend is once again from John. John, like, Chronicles, is written to promote a particular theological perspective gained over time in a community that had lost their temple, and their Lord. The Johannine community expressed what they had come to believe about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus using symbols and language that reflected their particular moment in time within the Greco-Roman world they inhabited. In the Synoptic Gospels, (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus does not speak in long discourses. In John, long discourses are prevalent. In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus speaks often of the Kingdom of God. In John’s Gospel he speaks of Eternal Life. The Gospels are generally more concerned with explaining the meaning of Jesus’ life than with reporting in precise detail all the facts. The further away in time that authors are from an event, the more opportunity authors and their communities have to reflect on events and come to understand their meaning.
John was the last Gospel written. It includes a lot of unique material, and while it may not be the first choice for details about the life of Jesus, it certainly offers us a more reflective look at who Jesus was for the early Christians, and the meaning of his life for believers then, and now.
In John 3: 14-21 we hear two of the most beloved and familiar verses. “For God so loved the world that (God) gave his only Son that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.” And “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” These two verses should be recited, reflected on, and held in the heart of every believer, especially in our own day when the world seems so out of balance, or violent, and filled with discord of all kinds. For God so loved the world. For God so loves the world. God loves the world.
A couple of days ago I went for an exceptionally long walk. I was feeling down when I set out and my goal was to walk until enough endorphins were released from my brain to lift my spirits. At the same time, I was trying to reflect on the verses from John’s Gospel. As I walked, and thought about everything that was wrong in the world, the war in Gaza, American politics, climate change, etc., I wondered, how God could so love this world? It seemed at that moment that people really did prefer the darkness to the light. And that truth telling, especially in the media, was a thing of the past. As it turned out, my feet and knees began letting me know that it was time to turn back home before I felt as good as I had hoped. So, I headed to the closest MAX station to catch a ride to the end of the line, which is close to my home.
All the time that I had been walking I was pretty wrapped up in my head, but on the MAX, I began to pay attention to the people and places around me. There was a man with his shopping cart of belongings on the MAX. He was friendly and wanted to assure me that he was not a threat. He apologized for the odor he was exuding. (I didn’t really smell anything, but I was wearing a mask.) We had a few moments of friendly talk. When I got off the MAX I waved at the operator, and she lit up with a smile and waved back. As I passed by some early daffodils, I remembered the pink dogwood tree bursting into bloom that I had walked past down by the river. I saw a neighbor that I had not seen for a while, and he was cheerful and happy to chat for a few moments which made me remember the elderly man who had cheerfully greeted me earlier as I was walking. There was a murder of crows that made me remember the flocks of geese that had been swooping over the river. So many little things that I hadn’t paid full attention to. Signs of hope. Promises of new life. Offers of friendship. Little affirmations of love swirl about us every day.
Sometimes it is important to reflect on the stories we tell ourselves, even rearranging some of the details to better tell the story in terms of what we have come to believe. We may get off track sometimes, but nonetheless, God is traveling with us. We need not despair, for God so loves the world – and we are part of it
.