We live in a world that’s turned upside down. People are calling evil good, and good they label as evil. It’s not a new phenomenon. They did the same with Jesus. This morning’s Gospel records that they accused Him of doing the miracles He did through the power of Beelzebub, that is from the false gods, from Satan, the prince of demons. Here before them stands God, the Messiah, and instead they accuse Him of being the exact opposite. The teacher who brought them the truth, they were calling the father of lies. The healer who brought them life and freedom, they claimed was the murderer, the oppressor.
Jesus is direct in His response. He doesn’t mince words. He says that He is the finger of God and that the Kingdom of God is upon them. The “finger of God.” That’s an interesting phrase and I can’t imagine how I would have felt hearing it come out of someone’s mouth. There are only three times the finger of God is used in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. First, when Aaron struck the dust of the ground in Egypt and gnats began to swarm from it, the magicians could not replicate the miracle. They exclaimed ‘this must be the finger of God. The other two times are when it speaks of God writing the commandments Himself onto the tablets of stone.
Jesus, by using these words, was proclaiming behold I am. That is, He not only isn’t working with Satan but rather He, Himself, is God. “It is by the finger of God that Jesus cast out demons. If God’s law was written on tablets of stone “by the finger of God,” then the “letter from Christ” entrusted to the care of the apostles, is written “with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.” That’s why our response today from the Psalms is “if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
As we grow closer to Easter, the minor sufferings of Lent sometimes begin to dig in. We sometimes want to put up walls, to build barriers to keep out the suffering. An author named Marina McCoy once wrote: “Hardening our hearts,” though, is a great temptation. To be human means we will sometimes experience pain and suffering, and yet we can choose how to respond. Do we try to toughen up our hearts and try to protect them further, or follow the way of Jesus and allow our hearts to be softened so that we may better love one another?”
We need to continue to grow into our fasting and prayer, to get out anything that keeps Jesus from being at the center of our hearts. As He says to us this morning “When a strong man fully armed has his palace, he is at peace.” We must let Jesus, through the Sacraments write His love into our hearts, with the power of the finger of God. Remove every obstacle in His way, by living out the Faith He gave us through the Apostles, through the Church. Then, we can be assured that with God as the strongman in our hearts, instead of our own weak flesh, no enemy, no pain, no suffering, no amount of sorrow can ever overcome us.