Year 1 Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 14:5-8; Exodus 15:1-6; Matthew 12:38-42

In ministry circles there are sometimes mentions of what is called “practical atheism.” As Catholics, our category for this would be material atheism, which is opposed to formal atheism. Formal atheism is the conscious and explicit renunciation of belief in God.

Material atheism can be the result of what pastor and author Steve Cuss describes as “a gap between what we believe about God and what we experience from God.”¹ This often results not in people formally renouncing belief in God, but believing God won’t, or perhaps can’t, or, worst of all, doesn’t want to help in concrete ways with life’s inevitable challenges and setbacks.

In short, someone believes in God who made everything from nothing and who can do all things and yet there are things s/he has asked God to do that God hasn’t done. Now, one can be glib and simply say something like, “Maybe it’s for the better or to realize a greater good that God didn’t do what you asked Him to do,” even when what God was petitioned for appears, from an objective standpoint, to be a good thing.

Of course, such an answer is logically possible. It makes sense and, I guess, can be helpful for some people some of the time. But logical possibilities do not amount to ground truth. Plus, cliches and platitudes tend to wear thin pretty quickly.

In his most recent work, Cuss addresses what he sees as three gaps. But there is only one that has bearing on our readings: “I believe God is with me, but I can’t see Him.”² This seems to be the case both with the Israelites in our first reading and the scribes and Pharisees in our Gospel.

In our reading from Exodus, seeing Pharoah and his army rapidly closing in on them, the people say to Moses, with no little biting sarcasm:

Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert? Why did you do this to us? Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? Far better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness³

The scribes and Pharisees in our Gospel are refreshingly straightforward, saying: “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”⁴ Especially in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus’ attitude toward His own miracles can best be described as ambiguous. He seems to be keenly opposed to simply being seen as a miracle worker, a magician of sorts. Hence, the Lord replies to this direct request by saying it is an “evil and unfaithful generation” that seeks a sign.⁵ Note, He does not say He will give no sign. Rather, He points to the sign of Jonah, by which, of course, He points to His resurrection.

In his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, Fydor Dostoevsky observed:

It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles… and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact⁶

In our Gospel, Jesus is telling the scribes and Pharisees who He is. He more than implies that if they do not believe now, they will not believe even when He rises from the dead. By “unfaithful,” He means they lack faith, despite Who is addressing them, speaking words of life and truth.

The Gentiles of Nineveh, who believed and repented in response to Jonah’s preaching, and the Gentile queen of Sheba, who sought Solomon’s wisdom, will "condemn" them for their lack of faith and their infidelity to the Law and the prophets. As the Israelites were saved at the last minute, those who believe the sign of Jonah are not merely saved in the end but are already saved.

I get it, sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are already saved. Nonetheless, you are! When it comes to the expectation gap between what you believe about God and what you may experience from Him, this verse from a song by the late Rich Mullins, “Hard to Get,” helps me attend to the sign of Jonah:

What I really need to know
Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time?
We can't see what's ahead
And we cannot get free from what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screamin' in my ears
All these words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how You're leading me
Unless You've led me here
To where I'm lost enough to let myself be led⁷

Like the Israelites following Moses, following Jesus, even when it’s hard to see where He’s leading you, is the path to the Promised Land, where He "will wipe away every tear from our eyes."⁸

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1 Steve Cuss. The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs and Experience of God, pg.1. ^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Exodus 14:11-12.^↩
4 Matthew 12:38.^↩
5 Mathhew 12:39.^↩
6 Fydor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, Book I, Chapter V. ^↩
7 Rich Mullins, "Hard to Get."^↩
8 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer III when said as part of Masses for the Dead.^↩