Daily Reflection Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent

 Our first reading from Exodus today sent me down memory lane. Destination: the Capitol Theater in Davenport, Iowa, a favorite alternative venue for the religious education of my youth. The list of top hits: Ben Hur, The Robe, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Swiss Family Robinson thrown in for good measure, and, of course, The Ten Commandments, billed then as 'the greatest epic of all time.' Even with all the high stakes drama of confrontations between Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, somehow I recall the scene the Lectionary asks us to ponder, as Moses returns from Mount Sinai to find the people in a frenzy of debauchery, worshipping a golden calf. "Oh no," I thought. "This isn't going to end well." And for a short while, it didn't. Because of their faithlessness, forgetting who they were, where they had come from, and where they were going, a whole generation would perish before the people reached the Promised Land. A Psalmist, disgusted with his ancestors, would lament much later, "They exchanged their glory for a grass-fed bullock."

Despite the text that has Moses's pleas changing the wrath of God into a one-last-chance from God ...or the deeply male voice of God in the film, it is the same God (beyond the power of our feeble attempts to name or even imagine) who had heard and saved and protected the Chosen People and who has given us the greatest epic of love -- Jesus. Jesus, portrayed in our Gospel from John, is the one who gives testimony to a God who is always forgiving, loving, calling us to journey to our best selves. How easy it is to succumb to the allure of the golden calves of our own day -- self-centeredness, compromises, gossip, greed, guilty pleasures. (The list can well exceed 10!) Jesus is the 'character witness' to a well-placed trust in the life and love only God can give. The promised land of mercy, abundance, wholeness, lovingkindness -- Jesus is our guide and our destination.  
 
Do you remember the caveat in the VHS tapes we used to rent from Blockbuster? -- 'This movie has been formatted to fit on your television screen.' '"God so loved the world..." is the verse we will hear before the Gospel is proclaimed today. There is nothing puny or squished in that marvelous consolation. That good news calls for the sweep of those majestic, panoramic, red velvet curtains at the Capitol as the house lights dimmed. How we will live large on our stage today? Will our Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving equip us to seize opportunities to give testimony to a God of mercy and love? Let the Coming Attractions begin.