Third Sunday of Lent

Year C Readings Lectionary: 30

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all of them were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was the Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.

The human being is the only animal with a powerful memory. I heard recently of a successful attempt to rid Pacific islands of invasive goats. (Captain James Cook had seeded these islands with goats to provide wool, milk and meat to stranded sailors.)  They use a doe, a "Judas goat" to lure a flock of rams into one place, and then shoot all but the female. Time after time, this hapless nanny gathers her admirers and time after time they're exterminated until the island's three hundred year history of goats has ended. The Judas goat sees it happening but her experience cannot overcome her instinct; she has no memory of what happened; she records no history.

The human animal recalls not only personal experience, we remember hundreds and thousands of years. As he initiated gentile Corinthians into the new Christian tradition, Saint Paul begged his friends not to be "unaware that our ancestors were all under the cloud..." They must know of the rock which produced water at Moses' command if they would understand Jesus' saving mission to them. No one knows the Lord who does not know our history. The Corinthian gentiles should ponder these stories and wonder why "God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert."

Many observers today deplore the sad state of religious education. It is shocking how often Jeopardy contestants -- some of the brightest people -- miss the simplest questions of scripture and religion. It seems they cannot make the answers dumb enough! In our own congregation, not only do Catholics fail to distinguish between Mary's Immaculate Conception and the virgin birth of Jesus -- a forgivable offense -- many do not know the Apostles Creed, Hail Mary or Glory Be. If they have not heard these prayers in church they do not know them. It is easy to deplore the ignorance of children who cannot recite an Act of Contrition, but neither can their parents. Pastors in the largest Catholic parishes often invite their faithful to adult education only to sit with the same half dozen elderly women. I have invited Knights of Columbus to watch a Bishop Robert Barron​ video series with me. The mostly-retired men did not politely decline my offer, they ignored it. I wasted my breath and their time.

In today's gospel we hear a frightening pronouncement on such ignorance, "For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none.

So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?"

A generation ignorant of its past is hopelessly cut off. Enemies will cut them down like the Judas goat and her companions on a south Pacific island.

However, if the landowner in today's parable is eager to cut down the barren tree, the gardener is more conservative:

He said to him in reply,

'Sir, leave it for this year also,

and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;

it may bear fruit in the future.

If not you can cut it down.'"

Our first reading today takes us back to the very beginning. (There is a prehistory of the patriarchs but the history of Israel begins with Moses.) Here we recall the hopeless condition of an enslaved people; after four hundred years in Egypt they had nearly forgotten the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Suffering continual oppression they would betray one another to find favor with their enemies. Moses knew that from personal experience. The Egyptian army had cutting edge technology in its chariots; its charioteers were feared throughout the world. Their scythed wheels​ would slice and dice a fleeing mob of runaway slaves. The only hope of the Hebrews was the nearly forgotten Friend of Abraham; he must overcome the most powerful nation in the world, a sophisticated, well-organized nation with an advanced civilization.

Those who attend the Easter Vigil services will hear the end of the story. They will have a better grasp of our history. Those who do not may never know it.