• Isaiah 49: 8-16a

Although Israel’s international and national fortunes rise and fall, the text of the Book of Isaiah reminds God’s people of God’s “covenant to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritage…” with the result that prisoners and those “in darkness” will be set free and there will be abundant food and water for all.  The Lord’s restoration will bring people back home in time for rejoicing: “for the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion for his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.”  Whenever God s people wonder if God has abandoned them, they should ask themselves: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child in her womb?”  But even if a woman were to forget, “yet I will not forget you,” the Lord promises.  You are “inscribed” in the palms of the Lord’s hands.

• Psalm 131

The psalmist expresses her contentment to/with the Lord: “like a weaned baby on its mother/like a weaned baby I am content.”  Therefore, the instruction for God’s people: “Wait… for the Lord/now and evermore.”

• I Corinthians 4: 1-5

Paul advises his reader to withhold judgment against him, other and even yourself for now.  In God’s good time, “…the Lord… will bring to might things now hidden in darkness and disclose the purposes of the heart.”

• Matthew 6: 24-34

Matthew’s text, which follow Luke (12: 22-31) very closely, records a very remarkable teaching of Jesus who asks his hearers to look at the extravagant  abundance, beauty, and splendor of everything around them and then ask themselves and ask themselves why they should be anxious.  “Strive for righteousness…” and all your presumed needs– and more!– “will e given to you as well.”

The  Lord’s reminder in the text of the Book of Isaiah is still surprising.  And that reminder is: the Lord’s goodness/compassion for you is stonger than a mother for her child before or after birth!  God’s love like a mother’s love, preceded your existence; it was already there before you knew anything about it, could question it or even ask for it.  It was just there, waiting for you.  Actually, you would not even exist without it!

Jesus’ teaching in Matthew (and Luke) still disarms.  Jesus invites us to look at all that surrounds us daily and see it in a different way.  See the sheer abundance and beauty, which preceded you, flourishes on its own with or without your effort and then as yourself: if all this exists by its own synergy and extravagance, why do I get unnerved by anxiety?  Discover the way you can cope with life’ s anxieties, but not be overwhelmed.  Choose to see ourself as a recipient, one who has been gifted, a beneficiary of a world of unimaginable generosity.

The realization/acceptance of one’s “giftedness” is central to the work of Jean-Luc Marion.  In Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Giveness, he ponders this realization that we are, from even before our existence, recipients.  Marion writes:

“The gifted is late ever since  birth precisely  because he [sic] is  born; he is late from birth  precisely he must first be born.  There is none among the living who did not first have to be born, that is to say, arise belatedly from his parents in the attentive circle of waiting for words that summoned him before he could understand them or guess their meaning.  This observation is not at all trivial since it inscribes before and more essentially that mortality the gifted in his gap from the call.  My birth, which fixes my most singular identity even more than my existence, nevertheless, happens without and before me– without y having to know it, or say a word, without my knowing or foreseeing anything.”  “I am born from a call that I neither made, wanted, nor even understood.  Birth consists only in this excess of the call and in the delay of my responsal.”  (pp 289-290)

The  biblical texts appointed for this Sunday, which become amplified as we read Marion’s insights, too, invite each person to try on a new identity, specifically as one whose very existence and position in the world is dependent on a web of caring that preceded you and will outlast you.   We did nothing, indeed we could not do anything, to construct this web.  It was there waiting for us.  In the wonderful imagery of Isaiah, God’s goodness/generosity is like a mother’s love that precedes and surrounds her child extravagantly  If we choose to see ourselves in this light, we are chagrined to discover that we are the beneficiaries  of such abundance and beauty and excessive anxiety.