A GOD LIKE NO OTHER!
16th Sunday Year A
July 20, 2014
A GOD LIKE NO OTHER!
I can never claim to be like God … no … not by any stretch
of the imagination! “There is no god besides [him] who has the care of all …”
So says the first reading, to which I heartily agree. He is clear about
justice. He is master of might. But He is a God of clemency of heart, not just
clarity of mind.
I can never claim to be a model pray-er. I often mumble, if
not ramble, through the time set aside for prayer. I do not even know what to
pray for, on occasion. But God, like no other, in and through the Holy Spirit,
actually – fortunately! – prays for me, and “comes to the aid of my weakness.”
I can never claim to be patient like God is … He allows
weeds to grow alongside the wheat. He even “sleeps with the enemy” and allows
him the freedom to deny Him. Clarity in terms of justice with might does not
take away God’s compassion matched with clemency and inexhaustible mercy.
But I sometimes do wish I were like God! For life in this
world and everything associated with it, sorely pushes my clemency, mercy and
patience to the limits. I have little patience, for example, with leaders who
love to call themselves “honorable” but who do patently dishonorable things.
Men could be cruel to fellowmen, as some wise philosopher of old once wrote:
“Homo homini lupus” (Man is wolf to fellow man). Could that man who pulled the
trigger and downed an airliner with 295 people on board really have no clemency
at all? Could any one, in the name of ideology and in the name of the group he
claims to represent really forego all clarity and compassion and resort to mass
murder, and still rejoice that he did it?
Here is a telling lesson for me, for you … for everyone. I
am not god, but like you, I believe in a personal God! But you and me who
believe may not be godly, and this, my friend, is the big problem. We can
proclaim one thing and live quite apart and different from what we claim we
hold onto. There is a gnawing gap and a glaring mismatch between what we say we
believe and we actually do. Right worship is, oftentimes, not accompanied by
right behavior.
Here is a piece of good news for you and, most especially,
me. And the good news is this. God cares. God loves. God is mighty, yes, but He
is master, too, of leniency and clemency. God cares enough to even help up to
pray “in sighs and groans that words cannot express.” God is patient, loving
and kind enough to allow weeds to grow alongside the wheat. He even allows evil
to triumph temporarily, so that good might come out in the end.
There is evil in the world. And we don’t have to go around
looking for someone to blame all the time. We, too, by allowing ourselves to be
co-opted into joining “sinful solidarity,” can unwittingly be instrumentalized
by the evil one and thus, constitute what we described last week as “secondary
evil.”
But in the end, God’s might triumphs. At the end of the day,
God’s mercy wins and his justice is done for all the world to see. God Himself
goes in solidarity with men and women, with the “Spirit coming to the aid of
our weakness.”
God’s love triumphs and God’s clemency, characterized by
clarity and compassion, challenges us all. Though mired in so much impatience
and impulsiveness, we learn what it means to be like unto God, every step of
the way, one step at a time, in all days, in all ways, and for always. We learn
to be like unto God, a God like no other!
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