Loosening Our Grip

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Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Today's Readings:
[ Gen 22:1-14; Ps 13; Rom 6:12-23; Mt 10:40-42 ]

Today’s readings bring us face to face with the question of trust. In Genesis, in one of the Bible's more challenging stories to read, Abraham walks up the mountain with Isaac, not knowing how God will provide, only trusting that God somehow will.  Psalm 13 gives voice to the agony of waiting: “How long, O Lord?” Paul, in Romans, calls us away from slavery to sin and into the strange freedom of belonging wholly to God. And finally Jesus, in the Gospel reading, reminds us that even a cup of cold water, given in love, matters in the kingdom.

From a Franciscan perspective, these readings invite us into poverty of spirit. Not poverty as misery, but poverty as surrender: the open-handed life that refuses to possess even our own certainty. Abraham cannot control the outcome. The psalmist cannot force God’s timing. Paul reminds us that freedom is not doing whatever we want, but becoming free from the powers that diminish life. Jesus shows us that holiness is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is as simple as receiving another person, welcoming a messenger, or offering a small mercy.

Francis of Assisi understood this kind of freedom. To follow Christ meant letting go of ownership, status, fear, and self-protection, so that the heart could become available to God and neighbour. That is not easy. Most of us would rather have guarantees. We want the ram already visible in the thicket before we climb the mountain.

But faith often begins before provision is obvious.

The good news is that God meets us there. Not always in the way we expect, and not always as quickly as we would like, but faithfully. The God who hears the cry of Psalm 13, who provides on the mountain, who frees us from sin, and who honours even a cup of cold water, is present in both our great sacrifices and our smallest acts of love.

Today, may we loosen our grip, trust God’s mercy, and offer whatever simple kindness is placed within our reach.

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