God’s Word is Sweet and Bitter (Friday, Week 33, Year 2)

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On several instances in the scripture, the word of God is described as food, as something to be eaten for spiritual nourishment just as physical food is eaten for physical nourishment. At the Temptation of Jesus, the tempter wanted him to convert stones into bread; but Jesus responded by saying that man must not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. In other words, what Jesus meant is that physical food can’t provide us with all nourishment that we need; we also need spiritual food (the word of God) for our spiritual nourishment. One thing about food is that it has to be tasty in order to be enjoyed. As it is eaten, it is expected that food should taste nice in the mouth; but whatever that goes on in the stomach (the changes and the processes of digestion and assimilation that food goes through in order to provide nourishment) is something we can’t even stand the sight of. 

Yesterday, the Book of Revelation presents us with an account of St John’s great vision of the Holy One holding a scroll which contained the will and messages of the Most High; and it was the Lamb that was able to receive and open the scroll. Today’s portion of that book (cf. Rev. 10:8-11) is a continuation of that episode. In today’s passage, St John was told to take that scroll from the hand of an angel and eat it as food. As he was eating, it was sweet as honey in his mouth just like tasty food could be. But when it got to his stomach, it became something else; it became sour and bitter as food becomes in the process of digestion and assimilation. This very vision teaches us what the word of God does in our lives. Often, we receive it with applause and excitement; but when we further reflect on it, it challenges our lives and makes our bad lifestyles appear “sour” and “bitter” to us. If God’s word does not do such in our lives, if it does not challenge us, if it does not nudge us to leave our comfort zones of sin, then we have not really accepted it.

That is exactly what happened in the gospel (cf. Luke 19:45-48). Jesus the Eternal Word of God disrupted a bad practice that had come to stay amongst the Jews: the practice of selling in the house of God; converting a place of worship into a place of commerce where items of different types and sizes are bought and exchanged, coupled with the messiness and the dirtiness associated with it. Jesus responded by whipping, overturning the tables of the money changers in order to uproot such an evil practice. 

Are we not sure that such a buying-and-selling might be going on in our bodies which are temples of the Holy Spirit? If such is happening within us, may we allow God’s words to overturn the tables of immorality and whip out those sinful habits that have made our bodies deplorable places of sinful/satanic “commerce”, robbery, bribery and corruption.        


     

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