A Reflection for Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
“Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?
And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
A few years ago, I taught theology to children in grades four through eight at a school in North Omaha. I was a Jesuit novice on my last assignment before professing vows. After finishing a lesson on the books of the Bible, one of my sixth graders raised his hand and asked, “Mr. B, the New Testament is the one we believe in, right?”
In words much calmer and more accessible to a sixth grader, I let him know that if he remembered one thing from my lesson, it had to be that we believed in both the Old and the New Testament. While my student’s question was funny and innocent, I think it reflects a more common experience. For many Christians, the expansiveness of the Old Testament can feel overwhelming. The language, detailed history of trials, and hard-to-pronounce names can feel inaccessible, tempting us to want to hold the Old Testament at a comfortable distance.
This past fall, I participated in a graduate course on the Old Testament. The course was asynchronous, so I would watch the lectures and complete the readings in the evening. While I’d love to joke about trudging through the Book of Kings or Job with glazed-over eyes, that wasn’t my experience. Despite approaching the Scripture in an academic setting, it proved to be a truly prayerful experience.
To be sure, there were definitely nights that I wasn’t exactly thrilled upon opening my professor’s note about the weekly reading. Along with the chapters from books on exegesis and hermeneutics, the assignment would indicate “To Read: 1 Samuel, ALL,” “Hosea, ALL,” or “Jeremiah, Chapters 1-25 and 30-52.”
Mass and daily prayers certainly familiarized me with the words of the prophets and the history of the trials endured by the Israelites. But as I was given the opportunity to examine these texts more slowly and closely, God’s voice began to resonate much more deeply.
I recall one evening being moved reading through Jeremiah, who spoke on behalf of God saying, “I remember the devotion of your youth, how you loved me as a bride, Following me in the wilderness, in a land unsown… What fault did your ancestors find in me that they withdrew from me, went after emptiness, and became empty themselves?” (Jer. 2:2-5).
As I read these words, heartbreak came to mind. This is not the voice of a God who is a harsh, distant judge. This is the voice of our God who intimately cares for us and has long labored for us. Our God who has not neglected or forgotten us because he cannot, it is not within his nature. Far from a cold indictment, these lines convey the sorrow of a lover who has been ignored by their beloved.
I think our readings today invite us to sit with a similar image of God. It can be difficult to hear Genesis’ description of “man’s wickedness on earth,” and we may be tempted to either tune it out or seize up in scrupulous self-loathing. Whichever path we may feel prone to take, I fear that if we don’t sit with and receive this message, we’ll miss what God is ultimately saying: that “his heart was grieved.”
In our Gospel, Jesus puts his disciples through a line of questioning, sensing a misunderstanding among them. The disciples can recall the number of baskets full of fragments they collected after Christ fed the crowd of five thousand and four thousand. Hearing their responses, Christ asks one final question, “Do you still not understand?” They have witnessed Jesus’ labor and his love for them, yet they remain attached to their previous ways of thinking.
The provocation we receive from today’s reading is not an indictment but an invitation. We are forgetful simply because we are human. I believe this image of God’s grieved heart offers us a chance to awaken to this reality. Recalling God’s attention and labor in our own hearts, the only response we can offer in return is our love and gratitude.
