Foreign Gods

March 24

Readings – DN 3:14-20, 91-92, 95; JN 8:31-42

Our first reading today is a famous one of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving the fiery furnace.  They are in there, however, because they refused to worship a foreign god. 

In the gospel, Jesus is squaring off with the crowd and calling them to task for their anger and intent to harm him.  They say he’s not a legitimate messenger from God and that they follow Abraham.  Jesus makes no friends when he says that if they were “true sons and daughters” of Abraham then they would recognize him.  Somehow the people had gone astray and were worshipping something other than the God of Abraham.

For me this is a hard message to hear. 

The first reading asks what we’re willing to sacrifice to stay true to our faith commitments.  And the gospel questions whether we’re even on the right track at all – that what we have come to think of as “the faith” may not be what was intended.

We might ask ourselves questions like

Are there “foreign gods” that we may be giving our time and attention to these days that distract us from what is most essential?

What sacrifices, refusals or resistances does our faith ask of us (and if the answer is none we may need to rethink things a bit)?

What commitments are we making (due to our faith) that might put us at odds with the wider culture?

It also raises bigger questions for me about how we might be like the crowd in Jesus’ time.  If we have lost our way from the original tradition, how do we recover it?  How do we even recognize that we are lost?  What modern prophets are calling to us that we might need to listen to more intently?

Today I also am thinking about Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who was gunned down by an assailant while he was saying mass on this day in 1980.  Fr. Oscar Romero started as a pretty conservative priest who made few waves serving the wealthier classes of people in his priestly ministry.  But over time, he saw more clearly the violence, poverty and suffering of the masses in El Salvador and became increasingly vocal.  He saw his church serving the foreign gods of wealth, power and status and could not go along with it. He saw a church that had collectively lost its way and called them back to the gospels. Ultimately it cost him his life (a lot like Jesus in today’s reading) but it highlights for me the what is underneath today’s readings.

For today, take some quiet time to reflect on Jesus’ words to the people of his time.  There is both room for feeling unsettled and feeling invited into something more.  Ask him what we might be missing and need to recover.  Ask him what you need to remember about your life that you might have become disconnected from.