People Love

In the homily today, Fr Richard Healey explores the nature of God, emphasizing His compassion, patience, and desire for personal relationships with His people. The speaker challenges the perception of God as grumpy and easily angered, using examples from the book of Exodus. The discussion also covers the story of David and his desire to build a temple, highlighting God’s preference for personal relationships over grand gestures. The episode concludes with the story of Mary and the angel Gabriel, praising Mary’s openness, faithfulness, and willingness to serve God.

(00:00:00) – Do you ever wonder what God is like? Like, what are the characteristics? What are the the qualities of our God? Is he mostly kind of grumpy? Mostly kind of angry? I think when I grew up, that was a very strong image of God that you had to be always doing the right thing, trying to to keep on the good side of God, because it seemed that he was pretty easily ticked off, pretty easy to to be grumpy, you know, wrath and anger seemed to be one of the, the strong characteristics of our God. And yet when you read the scriptures, we see a God that actually. Well, he defines himself in the book of Exodus, after the people had betrayed the Lord, after, you know, he’d given them the commandments, he brought them into this covenant relationship. He revealed himself to all of the nations gathered around the foot of Mount Sinai. And yet in the midst of that, when Moses was up on the mountain, Aaron and the others led the people astray by creating a false idol.

(00:01:13) – And the midst of that the Lord was angry. But he. Then when Moses kind of was in engaged in this conversation, the Lord revealed himself by saying, Yahweh, a God of compassion, slow to anger, full of faithful love and mercy. And we can kind of forget the way that God is. The God simply wanted to be with his people, wanted to build a community, to be partners with God, to be the image bearers of God. We hear in the very first chapter of of the scriptures in the book of Genesis, this call to to be the signs. And why shouldn’t you build any idols? Because already these people are meant to be the image bearers, the idols, the signs. You know, if someone wants to know who God is, if someone wants to be in relationship with God, all they meant to be able to do is to look at us, to look at someone who claims to know God. And that will be enough that we’re able to understand that.

(00:02:23) – And so God seemed to be quite content to be the the leader of this community. He told them, I don’t want any kings. I don’t want you to be like all the other nations. I will dwell happily just in a tent in the wilderness. But David, the second of these kings, you know, had this this sense he’s built a house for himself. Well, clearly, it’s now time to build a house for God. And as Catholics, we kind of get that sense that we build these places, build these these community halls, places where we can gather in worship. But the first impulse of the Lord, it seems, is to simply be in friendship with us, to not have a whole series of structures and rules and regulations and things that prevent that free flowing of grace and goodness and love and compassion and mercy. But we like structure, we like organization. And so we put all these things in place. And so when David tells Nathan that I’ve got this nice house of cedar, I want to build a temple.

(00:03:30) – I want to build a place where God can dwell. Nathan thinks, yes, sure, that seems like the right thing to do, but it’s only later that night that Nathan the Prophet receives in prayer this insight to say, no, I don’t want you yet to build this house. I don’t want you yet to build this temple. And the Lord addresses David. And there’s kind of a confusion, because the word bayit in Hebrew can mean a whole lot of of different things in English. You know, one of the things about English is that we grab words from different languages. We kind of gather them and collect them all together. And so we have all these different kinds of words for sometimes a single idea, semantic kind of root. And by it is one of those root words that is able to, to kind of be an umbrella term for family, for house, for temple, for dwelling, for dynasty, all these different ideas that in English we, we want to separate and divide into different domains.(00:04:33) – But in the Hebrew it’s just this one would be it. And David says, I want to build you, Lord, obey it. But the Lord says, no, I will build of you. I bet I will build of you this this new sovereignty. I will build of you this kingdom. But ultimately it’s about family. Ultimately, it’s about that personal relationship with God that Adam and Eve were first invited into. And when you see the. Theophany. Those those moments when the Lord reveals himself to a people. It’s always just about be in friendship with me. Come and let me dwell with you. Come and let me be the very sign of my presence here in the world. And we see it especially in the gospel today, when Mary is just there mining her own business, just going about her day. There’s no description that she was doing anything particular. Not even necessarily praying. She was just there, just in her house. Tradition is kind of indicated to us, most likely of just come of age.

(00:05:40) – It was the the age when Jewish girls became mothers, what became women. And so they were potentially mothers. And so that was usually the age when they would enter into to marriage. And so she’s there with a sense of anticipation there with, you know, just this, the sense of wonder when suddenly there is this angel of the Lord there before her. And, you know, we’ve represented that in all kinds of different ways in art over the years, over the centuries, and often really kind of strange and weird descriptions of the angel, and usually with wings and all that kind of stuff where the Scripture doesn’t actually describe angels with wings anywhere across the scriptures there are other forms the the cherubim and seraphim, which is only mentioned once in the book of Isaiah. But the the those angels have wings, for those spiritual beings have wings, but angels themselves are simply human like, simply representations of a different way of being in the presence of God. And so Gabriel is there, and you’ll see in the when you read the gospel again, the Gabriel is quite chatty.(00:06:53) – He’s saying a lot of things to poor Mary. And Mary only has these two short lines across this whole gospel. And yet, in the midst of all of that, there is this openness, this desire to be a faithful Jewish person, to be someone in relationship with God. And that is simply what sets a apart, that she hasn’t done anything extraordinary other than just being open to God, other than continuing to serve the Lord, other than praying regularly, other than reading the scriptures, being familiar when you see when she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth that she’s able to burst into song, almost quoting from the writings of Hannah, one of the great figures that we’ve had during the week that you read her story in the Book of Samuel. And Mary is clearly immersed herself in the story of the scriptures and the story of God’s people. Seeing all the suffering, seen all the ways that people have stuffed things up and got things wrong and continue to disobey, continue to break out of that friendship that the Lord was inviting them into.

(00:08:01) – And so when Gabriel speaks the words of God to her, and when Gabriel offer this possibility of being in friendship, being in relationship, she knows there’s only one response that she can offer. So she simply has to say, yes, let me be the handmaid of the Lord. Let me be the one who is the bearer of this message. Let me be the one who is able to serve the Lord in this way. It’s the only invitation that any of us ever get. It might not be quite as dramatic as Gabriel’s appearance to Mary. In this instance, the Lord is always inviting us to go back into the wilderness, to back into that place of our first love, to return into that place where we can encounter him, where the Lord will hold us in his mercy, where the Lord will forgive us our sins, and invite us more deeply into that union with the Lord. It’s the only invitation that we need to hear today. Will we say yes? Will we respond in our own way to let his love fill us, and to let his love sustain and build us today? Will we be his people? Will we be called into union with the Lord? And when we let God’s love and mercy and compassion so fashion us and shape us, that indeed we do become the image bearers of a God of love and a God of mercy.