The Word of God in the Old Testament continually proclaimed the coming of the Messiah who would re-establish a right relationship between God and all creation. Many in Israel chose to live out their relationship with God as a simple completion of the rules and rituals in the Old Testament. Some of them had goodwill – waiting in hope. Others simply got lost in the rules and turned to a rigid, mechanical observance of the rules to maintain their hope and relationship with God. Still others, who had much less good will, developed a tendency to live the letter and privilege of the rules while having no hope or intention of maintaining a relationship with God.
Jesus had a different way of looking at and living out our relationship with God the Father. Jesus speaks of the spirit of the law and therefore looks into the heart and soul of each of us for faith and hope. The purpose of the rules, law, and Word of God was to produce faith and hope. That faith and hope became a reality in the person of Christ. All the hopes of Israel were present in Jesus. What a joy. Without abandoning the tradition of the Old Testament, Jesus called his disciples to a much deeper relationship with God, to be a much deeper sign of God’s presence in the world.
Lent is a time to abandon our concerns for ourselves, to abandon our tendency to organize our lives based on our selfish concerns and lifestyles, and to abandon our desire to reduce our relationship with God to a few mechanical pious rules and activities. Rather than place our hopes in our own activities, power, external pious religiosity, and desires we are called to change the center point of our lives. The greatest in the Kingdom of God is the one who has made that change and has a lifestyle of service that shows hope and joy to everyone around them.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven
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