4th Sunday of Lent 2023

Sometimes we pray and pray for God to do something we believe is good for us and the world, but God doesn’t answer our prayers. Other times God allows a child or young person with great potential to die of cancer or some other fatal disease, and it seems as if their life was wasted. Occasionally, we feel God puts roadblocks in our way, making life needlessly difficult. Sometimes God doesn’t make sense.

Since Lent began, I’ve been reflecting on “When God doesn’t make sense” as the theme of my homilies. I’ve been telling you that when we feel that way, we must remember three principles. First, it makes sense that God doesn’t make sense sometimes because God is all-knowing and has complete wisdom. God has the big picture; only God has total recall of the past and a clear perspective on the future. On the other hand, humans only see through a narrow window. Our understanding of history is biased and distorted, and our visions of the future are shortsighted and restricted. God seems not to make sense because God’s vision is so much greater than we can perceive.

Sometimes it isn’t God who doesn’t make sense but the world that doesn’t make sense. Much of what upsets us in life isn’t God’s will but a result of our sinfulness. God doesn’t will accidents, bank failures, or other catastrophes. So many of the harmful things that happen in our world are the results of our sinfulness. Our human greed, anger, and selfishness cause so much of the suffering we experience.

A couple of weeks ago, we heard that God wanted only good to prevail in our world, but our first parents disobeyed God and allowed sin to enter the garden. Theologians propose God has both a preferred will and a permissive will. God’s preferred will is God’s generous plan for creation, and God’s permissive will is what God allows to happen in our world. God’s permissive will occurs through our free choices between good and evil. God gave us free will- the ability to choose between right and wrong- because that is the only way to learn to love as wholeheartedly as God loves.

Our third principle to explain why God doesn’t always make sense is because God is so immense we can’t hope to know Him completely. We can spend much time studying and reflecting on God, but we will only scratch the surface of the grandeur of God’s majesty. That doesn’t mean we can’t use reason to get to know God, but reason is not where we need to start. Our starting point must be in the heart and not the head.

We can completely know God’s heart because God revealed it to us through Jesus Christ. Jesus came to show us God’s goodness, mercy, and compassion. Jesus showed us God’s desire for our healing and becoming whole, so we could experience all the goodness God intends for us. Too many Christians know about God intellectually but don’t know God personally. They don’t have a heartfelt, prayerful relationship with God, so their faith is challenged when God doesn’t seem to make sense to them, and they lose faith in times of trouble. We get to know God’s heart through prayer, the scriptures, and the sacraments. To get to know God, we must commit to daily prayer time.

Today I’d like to discuss another situation when God doesn’t seem to make sense. It is when God allows the wrong people- corrupt, abusive, and hateful people- to gain positions of power. I read in the newspaper today that March 18 is the anniversary of Hitler and Mussolini, two of the Twentieth Century’s most brutal leaders, becoming allies. This alliance would precipitate World War II. We can’t help but wonder why God allowed these two men to cause such suffering and death.

We’ve been experiencing a similar situation since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. When Vladimir Putin first ordered the invasion of Ukraine, we were shocked that it could occur. Many in the media speculated whether Putin was physically or mentally ill. They wondered if more rational leaders or citizens of Russians would rise to seize power from this madman. It didn’t seem logical to us that Putin could lead the world down a road to war, and certainly, we believed more rational Russian leaders would step in. Here we are a year later, and Putin seems to be in even stronger control. He has not died a sudden death, and the leadership of Russia and even most Russians seem to support his plans. We can’t help but wonder why God is letting this happen.

We don’t have to go to politics and the world stage to find examples of people who abuse power to the anguish of others. We often run into such people in our lives. They might be teachers, youth sports coaches, and bosses. It might be someone on the Board of Directors of your homeowner’s association or condo board. They have a little bit of power and authority, and they abuse it. Unfortunately, we can see it happen in the Church, and we don’t have to go back to the Borgia popes to find it. We can discover abusive leaders, even among those supposedly chosen as leaders, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Abuse of power by leadership is a frequent theme in the scriptures and one we find in today’s Gospel. Today we encounter it in the Pharisees, who are often portrayed as abusing their power. The Pharisees date back several hundred years before Jesus. They were a relatively small group of about a thousand members, founded when the Greeks under Alexander the Great invaded Palestine. They were a sincere group of men who wanted to preserve the Jewish faith in the face of foreign cultural influence and their pagan gods. They were especially vigorous in their observance of the Law.

They gained people’s respect and loyalty because of the suffering and persecution they endured because of their faithfulness. But the people’s deference caused some Pharisees to turn into despots. The early Church faced quite a bit of opposition from the Pharisees, so the evangelists often lumped all the Pharisees into Jesus’ opponents. However, if we read today’s Gospel closely, we see they were divided in their opinions about Jesus. One group opposed him, and another was willing to consider He might be a prophet.

The story of the curing of the blind man illustrates how people who abuse power carry it out. First, they strictly interpret and enforce rules and lack compassion when implementing them. Since Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath, it caused quite a stir, and like children, the crowds go to tattle on Jesus. They go and ask the Pharisees what they think about Jesus healing on the Sabbath.

For the Pharisees, strictly keeping the Sabbath was very important. According to them, a person couldn’t do even the most basic tasks on the Sabbath. They could not cook and only could walk a prescribed number of steps that day. It had to be a life-and-death situation for a person to violate the Sabbath, and because they believed curing a blind man wasn’t life and death and it could have waited until the next day, they condemned Jesus for performing a Sabbath-day healing.

Poor leaders try to burden people unnecessarily. They enforce their authority with fear. They develop rules and regulations to follow and establish severe consequences for a person caught breaking the rules. Jesus often confronted this tendency among the Pharisees by telling the crowds that God gave the Sabbath for man and not man for the Sabbath. He didn’t delay bringing healing and restoring wholeness if He saw suffering or pain. Jesus wouldn’t allow the Law to get in the way of doing good.

Corrupt leaders try to preserve power at any cost. They refuse to admit they can be wrong and keep heading down the wrong road. They persecute people. That is what the Pharisees do in today’s Gospel. They summoned the parents of the man born blind and interrogated them. Knowing that if they challenged the Pharisee’s power, it could bring exclusion from the synagogue and, therefore, the community’s life, his parents sidestepped the issue. Their son, however, confronts the abuse of the Pharisees, and they use their authority to excommunicate him.

Knowing that the Pharisees have abused the man He cured, Jesus seeks him out, and he goes to comfort the man. Jesus helps him grow in faith despite the mistreatment from the Pharisees and reveals Himself to the man. When we face abuse because of our faithfulness, Jesus will come to us too. Jesus will lift us and heal us too.

God sometimes takes his time destroying those who abuse their authority, but goodness and justice prevail over time. That is what we learn from our first reading. God sends Samuel to Jesse’s home to find a new king to replace King Saul, who had turned away from God and become a despot. God instructed Samuel to anoint the young man David as the new king. It will take several years and much conflict and suffering before Saul is killed in battle and David becomes the king, but then Israel gets its greatest king.

God plans to allow good to overcome evil eventually. Sometimes it takes having to endure suffering and pain. We must remember that God’s purpose isn’t to make our life on earth always comfortable and without challenges. God plans to build up our character. It is so important because, in the end, our good character is all we can present before the judgment seat of God in Heaven.