One of the strangest things about human existence, it seems to me, is that human beings can love someone before they even get to know them. Most of us, if not all of us, have concrete experience of that.
Because when we were born, our parents didn't hedge their bets. They didn't say, for example, well, I will wait to get to know who this child of mine is before I make the decision about whether or not to love them.
In my experience of seeing others, because I don't have children of my own, I can say that it's immediate, absolutely immediate. There's not even a moment where there is a doubt. At this point in your life, there may be some doubts, but not when you were first born. You were loved immediately.
And so on the one hand, this gospel, well, we could say, well, it's not very hard. Loving God with everything we have and loving our neighbor, because we have the experience of loving children, parents, brothers, sisters. But the first reading really is the challenge.
The first reading really is the difficult time to love. And when we talk about the people mentioned in the first reading, it usually brings some real difficulty in our conversation. We might get angry. We might be concerned that there isn't enough. We might suggest that people shouldn't really come to us when they're in need.
Because in the book of Exodus, the people are reminded about something very powerful. That they lived in Egypt, were not free, left their country, and had been aliens, strangers, people not familiar, people who had tremendous needs, and they had to rely on God and ultimately others. But of course we know the temptation. Well, yeah, but that was different. That was us.
When other people in the same situation come in, well, they have to understand that that's not the same. And that's what Moses and the Lord are concerned about. You see, the people of God that left part of the Exodus and left Egypt, they weren't the most faithful. They were like having little kids in the back of the car on vacation. Are we there yet?
Or as one of the memes I've seen, Moses leading the Israelites and everybody following behind him saying, recalculating, recalculating, because they wandered in the desert and did not know where they were going. They trusted in God until they didn't. They were not an easy bunch.
I don't know that, well, I know probably that I would not have been able to put up with them. Because no matter what happened, no matter how many miraculous deeds God did in their presence, they did not believe. They doubted.
And so God is trying to make it clear to them, you were once in these horrible situations and I took care of you. Now it's up to you to take care of those who are in the same situations. Don't be difficult to an alien, because you know what it's like to be an alien. Don't wrong any widow or orphan who in those days had no one to care for them, because I will hear their cry. Don't act like an extortioner when you help someone. If you lend them money, don't be an extortioner.
Now in Jewish law that meant don't charge interest. You give them money to help, you get paid back the same amount. For nothing is really your own. Everything you have came to you as gift from God. If the pledge for a loan is a cloak, give it back when it gets cold at night, because that's the only thing they have to sleep in, and so forth.
See that's when it gets hard to love. When those people show up that we don't know or don't like, sometimes we allow our fear to overtake us. Sometimes we forget that we have not been always in the best spot and people have helped us. I've seen it here at CBC. Alums who had some difficulty and the community comes forward to help in this moment of difficulty. . .
