Bound in Love

The readings this Sunday focus on baptism, Exodus, and repentance.

The Exodus of the Old Testament is the story of Moses leading the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea. Christians see in that passage through the Red Sea a prefiguring of the waters of baptism. It was through the waters of the Red Sea that the children of Israel passed from slavery under the Pharaoh to freedom in the promised land. If you recall from last week’s gospel passage on the Transfiguration, we are told that the three figures — Moses the lawgiver, Elijah the prophet, and Jesus the Christ — were discussing the Exodus that Jesus would lead. Where Moses walked with all the tribes of Israel through the waters of the Red Sea to complete his Exodus, Jesus walked alone through the passion on the cross to complete his Exodus. The passage from Egyptian slavery to freedom in the land of milk and honey was reserved to the Israelites. The passage from slavery to sin and death in the passion of the Christ is offered to all who accept it.

We know that not everyone who passed through the Red Sea fully accepted the gift of freedom. The Israelites almost immediately began to doubt the word of God and his prophets, and they initially refused to go into the promised land. God gave them 40 years of wandering in the desert to purify them and prepare them for a successful entry into the promised land.

In a similar way, not all of Jesus’s disciples and followers accepted the gift of redemption. Many turned away when presented with a challenging teaching on the necessity of eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus. In the approach to the passion, Judas Iscariot lost his faith in Jesus and betrayed him. After the resurrection, the disciple Thomas doubted the reports until he touched the wounds himself. In the first generations of the church, factions arose regarding the question of whether or not to be a good Christian you had to follow the Mosaic law. Centuries later, Christians split over the question of whether or not Jesus was truly God and also truly man. 

Throughout the history of the church we have struggled as we tried to open the gift of salvation given to us by Jesus through his passion, death, and resurrection. Division and dissension within the Church have been with us since the beginning. The readings today remind us of the need for ongoing repentance. Here in the season of Lent, we have taken on additional prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We have taken on some special seasonal mortification; we have denied ourselves some good we can rightfully enjoy. All of this is done in the spirit of repentance. And we were warned directly by Jesus in the gospel today, when he says, “if you do not repent, you will all perish.”

Our initial embrace of the gift of salvation requires constant and renewed conversion. If we were born into the faith and baptized as children and received the other sacraments of initiation in first Eucharist and confirmation, then we still need ongoing conversion. They are the sacraments of initiation; they initiate us into a life of perfection, in which we are gradually reformed into something closer to the mind and life of Jesus Christ.

The parable that Jesus tells about the man with the fig tree planted in his orchard presents the problem plainly. He says that the man, “came in search of fruit on the fig tree but found none.” The tree that was planted to bear fruit did not bear fruit. We sometimes are that tree. We received sanctifying grace through baptism and the other sacraments of initiation, but we didn’t cooperate with that grace and therefore we did not grow in holiness. As a matter of justice, it is fitting that a fruitless fruit tree should be cut down. But our Lord is a loving administrator of justice, and so he proposes to work with the fruitless fruit tree in order that it might bear fruit eventually. In the parable, the gardner suggests that he, “cultivate the ground around the tree and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future.”

Our lives as Christian disciples should be that process of cultivating the ground around the tree that we are. We are redeemed through the passion of Jesus Christ. But we are not ready to meet him because we don’t bear much fruit. We need cultivation in order to bear fruit. We need the cultivation of ongoing conversion to be ready when he comes back at the end of the story.

Spiritual cultivation is a combination of the Lenten disciplines. We need to pray. We need to read our scriptures and pray on them. This is an ancient practice known as lectio divina.

We need to fast. We always think of fasting as not eating food, but fasting more generally is any process of detachment from worldly things. So we can fast from spending money, we can fast from social media, we can fast from inordinate curiosity about other people’s lives. It doesn’t have to be about food. It’s ultimately about becoming detached from the urges and pressures and seducements of the world.

We need to practice almsgiving. The things that we have were ultimately given to us by our loving father in heaven. In a fundamental way, they are not really ours at all; we are stewards of the gifts that he has given us. Giving away some of what he has given us is a form of active charity. Charity can be understood as us trying to love as Jesus loved on the cross. It is a sacrificial love. When we give our money to somebody who doesn’t have as much, we are sacrificing control over how that money gets spent. It means less extra stuff for ourselves, which is a sacrifice. To grow in charity is to grow closer to the mind and life of Jesus Christ. To grow in charity through prayer and fasting is repentance and ongoing conversion.

The Exodus of Moses meant that the Israelites would eventually find their way to their new home in the land of Canaan. The Exodus of Jesus means that all who claim him can eventually find their way to their new home at the foot of his throne in heaven. Our lives are the time to cultivate ourselves so that we can bear fruit in the future. If not, we will be cut down.