Lolín Menéndez rscj
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No matter how we look at it, the scriptures are full of 'Get up and Go'. It all started with Abraham. "Go out of your country" said God "and go to the land that I will show you". Abraham gathered up his goats, his camels, and doubtless some question marks, and went.
By the same token Jacob was told to go down into Egypt, and he, old and stiff as he then was got himself onto his wagon, and went. Moses of course, as everyone knows was 'on the go' so to speak, for at least forty years.
All the prophets were kept going, some willingly, some not so. Isaiah for example could hardly wait. "Whom shall I send?” wondered God. ”I'll go. Send me" begged Isaiah. Jonah, on the other hand, when told to go to Nineveh, took a boat and headed for Spain! However, events in the shape of a hungry whale made him think again. In the end he went to Nineveh.
Jeremiah didn't want to go anywhere. But his lame excuse was not accepted by God. "Do not say that you are too young, but go to the people I send you to".
As for Hoseah, he was simply ordered to go and get married!
The wonderful thing is that they all did go, right through the Old Testament, a long procession of solitary figures, bewildered, fearful, and often very lonely, but moved relentlessly forward by the spirit of their God.
With the New Testament there is a subtle change of key, a shift in the dynamic of the call. 'The Word became flesh', and now we may hear 'Go', but more often we hear 'Come'. "Come and see... Come and I will make you fishers of people….Come with me and I will teach you... Come to me all you who are tired of carrying heavy loads... Let the children come to me... Sell what you have, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me... Lazarus come out!... Zaccheus, come down!" Wherever we turn the call is 'Come'. True, the twelve are told to go out and spread the Good News, but they keep coming back! "They came back and told Jesus everything they had done... " while Jesus, so glad to have them back said to them "Come away by yourselves to a quiet place, and rest awhile."
And the people came to him, teeming humanity in all its glory and misery, groping for his hand, longing for his radiance. He said "All that my Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I shall not turn away".
However, the hatred and jealousy long harboured by the Jewish leaders finally breaks out into the open and captures the moment. Again there is a change of key. The lonely figure of Jesus "going on ahead of his disciples... his face set towards Jerusalem" is reminiscent of those prophets of old, going it alone. Once again the word is 'Go', but now it is not 'You go 'or 'We go', but 'I go'. "I go up to Jerusalem... I go to my Father... Where I go you cannot come now... "And the ultimate reality of this moment is that he goes alone. ”If you are looking for me, let these others go!"
In the eye of the storm there is stillness, and from that still point a new music comes, music in another mode. "Why do you seek the living with the dead? He is risen, he is not here. . . He has gone ahead of you, into Galilee, you will see him there!"
The Lord of the Dance is 'on the go'. He goes now so that we may be with him. But let's be clear about this, it is not to any exotic heaven that he leads us. "He has gone ahead of you into Galilee".
For the prophet Isaiah, Galilee was the place where God would make himself known to the pagans. "Galilee of the Gentiles" he called it "the land where the foreigners live on the road to the sea, on the other side of the Jordan".
For the Jews Galilee was the last place on earth, despised, a land without frontiers. It was a place of passage, subject to all the hostile influences of foreign nations, alive with the anonymous flotsam and jetsam of humanity. It was a place where, in the eyes of the Pharisees, the Jewish faith was no longer pure. "Can the Christ come from Galilee?" they spat in derision. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" had mused Nathaniel doubtfully.
For the evangelists Galilee was the symbol of hope, the place of open-ness to the world. From it "all the peoples everywhere" could be reached.
For Jesus, Galilee was the place where he had lived and taught and was accepted. It was the place where he chose to be found then, and where he will be found now.
And where shall we find our Galilee? Perhaps we just need to get up and go and find out!
Nan McKinnon rscj
Province of Ireland-Scotland
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