1 Sam 4:1-11 / Mk 1:40-45
I found something quite astonishing in our church the other day, a stack of nine copies of a perfectly fine little prayer to St Jude. But typed on the bottom of each one was this instruction: “Make 81 copies of this prayer, deposit nine copies in your church every day for nine days. No later than the ninth day, your prayer will be granted.” As if the Almighty God and Lord of the universe could be manipulated so easily and made to do our bidding! As the title of that old book says, “Your God Is Too Small”!
It was the same kind of mechanical, magical approach to God that the Israelites tried when they sent for the Ark of the Covenant as they faced the Philistines in battle. It didn’t occur to them to look inward for the source of their recent defeat. “We just forgot to use the right magic,” they said to themselves as they repeated their mistake yet again.
The quest for a quick fix and for cheap salvation is a perennial one, and it can leave us dangerously impoverished within. There is no valid religious practice or experience which is not about transformation, our transformation on the inside. Wherever that is lacking, we are wasting our time, and fooling ourselves into thinking that God can be manipulated or fooled.
He can’t! So let’s get serious about transformation.
