Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 395

O my people, what have I done to you,

or how have I wearied you? Answer me!

For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,

from the place of slavery I released you;

and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

Today's first reading from the Prophet Micah sounds like a difficult conversation between two weary, uncomprehending lovers. They just don't understand each other.

"What have I done to you?" asks the Lord, "or how have I wearied you?"
And the people reply, as if talking to themselves, "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow before God most high?"

The resolution is often cited out of context, "You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God."

In context we still hear the sounds of weariness and hopelessness of God's voice in the word only. It's really not difficult! Will they ever get it?

As an "administrator of grace" I sometimes experience that weary frustration when an intoxicated Veteran returns to the hospital for the umpteenth time. He insists he is praying all the time. Why doesn't God hear his voice? He says he is losing his faith!

I tell him his faith is in alcohol; he has never believed in God.

He cannot find that switch of surrender in his heart that will open the channel for God's healing mercy. He cannot shed the burden of himself to take up the easier yoke and the lighter burden of the Lord.

His frustration sounds much like that which Micah hears from his people, "

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 

with calves a year old? 

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, 

with myriad streams of oil? 

Shall I give my first-born for my crime, 

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 

"What do you want?" he asks.

"I want your heart!" is the obvious reply which is not at all obvious.

And so it goes into the dark night as the lovers quarrel.

That same weariness appears in today's gospel: "Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.'"

"No sign will be given." he says, "except the sign of Jonah" -- which is something of a joke. What does the story of Jonah's three day sojourn in the belly of a whale have to do with anything? Or the Queen of Sheba's visit to Abraham?

No sign will appear to those who cannot see the sign that is right there in front of them, that is as plain as the nose on your face.

I think it helps to admit we just can't see in darkness. Perhaps it helps to understand we'll never understand.

The unknown author of The Cloud of Unknowing assured his disciples, God cannot resist the call of the helpless and the hopeless.

"I am sorry, Lord. I just don't understand. But I do love you."

As our responsorial psalm says, "He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”