THE FLESH OR THE SPIRIT

READINGS: SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Building life on stable foundations; pillars of trust that can hold us in place, just in case, is what most people desire. Such a pillar could be God, a person, or a thing. In the first reading on this 6th Sunday in Ordinary Times, year C, the prophet Jeremiah contrasts casting our hope and trust in human strength and effort and casting our hope and trust in the Lord. He writes, “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth. Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: it fears not the heat when it comes; its leaves stay green; in the year of drought, it shows no distress but still bears fruit”.

We all have the natural tendency to rely on each other for many things. Yet, our daily dealings with fellow humans show that the flesh is feeble and unreliable and, even when we do not mean to fail, we often do, driven by our self-centered needs and appetite. There is the story of an old man who was about to die. He badly wanted to take some of his money with him for the journey. In trust, he called his priest, his doctor, and his real estate agent to his bedside and gave each of them an envelope with $30,000 cash and urged them to put it inside his coffin when he dies. At the funeral, each of them put an envelope in the coffin. Riding back home together in a car, the priest suddenly broke into tears and confessed, “I had only $20,000 into the envelope because I needed $10,000 for a new baptistery.” Moved by this confession, the doctor confessed, “I only put $10,000 in the envelope because we needed a new machine at the hospital which cost $20,000. Aghast by their confessions, the real estate agent said, “I am ashamed of both of you, and I want you to know that my envelop had the full amount of $30,000 made out to him in my personal check.”

No wonder, Jeremiah said that those who put their trust in human strength are like a dry, malnourished, and impoverished desert-plant condemned to a hard and unfruitful existence and described them it “cursed”. When our trust is in the flesh, security and assurance become very unpredictable. Human beings, intentionally or unintentionally, are so unreliable. A science teacher told me that he doesn’t trust atoms because if you run them through a background check, you'll see they always carry charges. Another friend said to me that One thing he has learnt is to never trust acupuncturists because they'll stab you in the back the first chance they get. Yes, while these are jokes, they say a lot about human beings. Moreover, man is alive today and could be dead the next minute.

On the other hand, there is the choice to anchor our hope and trust in God; a promise-keeping God; the God of unfailing grace. Jeremiah describes those who make this choice as ‘blessed’ and ‘happy’ because God has them covered, providing them an endless source of blessing and strength to the extent that, even though the times of draught come, they will not experience distress or unfruitfulness because the channels of God’s grace will continue to flow to provide windows of opportunity, sustenance, forgiveness, power, wisdom, graces, and blessings for needed help. So, the question is “How do we want to choose?” A deep relationship with God with total dependence on His Word or an attachment to human strength and its brokenness. Is it God and His word or Hollywood, social media, and liberal outlets that guides our human choices. Remember what Scripture says, “Cursed is the man whose hope is in the flesh” and “Blessed is the man whose hope is in the Lord”.