Sunday Sermon: Life experience teaches us that you can’t square a circle

The liturgy of our eighth Sunday in ordinary time is based on the following readings: Isaiah 49: 14-15; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34. The main theme across these three readings is on trusting in divine providence. We are given the example of Jews in the first reading who had settled in the land of Babylon in exile with lots of success. They had achieved so many things as freedom, wealth, and friends that they had lost the fascination and the attraction of the Promised Land. But God sends them the prophets to remind them that the Promised Land appeals to them to build up the people of God again, in the land that he had given to his fathers. But the new generations of Jews felt that God had abandoned them and forgotten them and they did not see the point in walking their grand fathers’ walk. But the God-sent prophets were very convincing: They explained them that a mother cannot abandon or forget the child of her womb. Hence they built in the new generations of Jews a great confidence in their God and instilled in them the nostalgia of the Promised Land. Next they impelled them to return to Israel, looking towards the future. They all liked the message of the prophets as they repeated to them: Leave Babylon, get going towards Jerusalem, and have trust that along the way Yahweh will accompany you maternally, and in Jerusalem he will bless you with his beneficent presence in the sanctuary! That is the wonder of confidence and trust in God. In the second reading, St Paul treats this theme of trusting in God from both a practical and doctrinal point of view. Paul speaks to the Christians at Corinth with great liberty of spirit and he dares to tell them to take him as their example. He says that he is not afraid of any criticism or any opposing views to his own. He says that the judgment of men on him is of no great value, nor the judgment of his own conscience but what matters for him is the judgment of God. He says: “God is my judge.” And this shows that Paul had full trust in his only judge who is the Lord himself, “who loved me and gave himself up for me,” he insists. And Paul continues to warn us against false trust today. This is a great danger in our modern time and we must learn to be on guard against it. Human history, let alone our own recent experience as Rwandans, continues to show that human beings are very, very easy victims of such false and unworthy trust. It is a frequent mistake for man to put too much trust in the great advances of technology and medicine, in individual or social well-being, in bodily beauty, and in the power of money. But a challenging situation, an illness, a miscalculation in this or that, a misfortune or something similar, is enough for such securities and false trusts to crumble and send the whole community into regrets. When such things happen, many people learn Paul’s lesson only too late. Then some find themselves helpless, others fall into depression, and those who survive such a situation may even try suicide. That is why it is good to pay heed to the teaching of St Paul as he says: “in God I trust and have no fear”, that “those that trust in You will not be shaken”; they will stand any bad times or circumstances, with courage to face any ups and downs of life. In the Gospel, Jesus Christ points to something that tends to be very tempting to man: to want to serve two masters. (and even more). He had watched this in his own society and he warns all generations the same danger. Man has to make a choice and to ‘prioritise. And Jesus formulates it in crystal clear words: “No one can serve two masters.” Later on, popular wisdom expressed it in a rather direct way: “You can’t serve both God and the devil” Others still say “God and Money”. Today in order to show the falsity and hypocrisy involved in such a practice of pretending to do the impossible, younger generations may say that “you can’t square a circle.” Just to say that impossible solutions do not work out. What Jesus was telling us is that God – only God – is worthy of our trust because he alone is “the Rock” of our salvation here on earth and in eternity. The rest are good weather friends! They may be of use to us if we are lucky and the opposite is not so alarming because they are just human! But in God we must trust. Ends