SOAP BOX

Romans 3:21-30; Ps 130 With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption; Luke 11:47-54

Soap box moments happened to all of us.  These are moments where we get on a rant about something, some topic and we just let it roll.  It happened to me a few sunday's go.  It was sunday evening, the last mass for the weekend, and I threw away my prepared homily and got on my soap box about "doing something because it was the right thing to do" as opposed to continually needing a reward or a bonus or some other motivation.

It was a rant.  I was on my soap box.

Have you been on your soap box recently.

Jesus is definitely on a soap box into the gospel for today.  He is giving it to the scribes and Pharisees.

He holds nothing back. He is not politically correct.  He doesn't sugar coat it.  He gives is flat as it is.

"Woe to you...who build memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed"

"Woe to you scholars of the law you have taken away the key of knowledge.  You yourself did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter."

When Jesus left, scripture tells us, the scribes and Pharisees began to act wit hostility toward him and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say."

They ganged up on Jesus in hoping to snare him.

Rather than take the correction Jesus was offering and be transformed they got more rigid and self-defensive.

Sometimes soap boxes dont't work as planned.

The seed can be planted but the root doesn't always take.

This is a good lesson for us.  We cant force the seed to grow deeper or faster.  We can only plant.  JEsus plants the seed.  What the scribes and pharisees did with it well was up to them;  it is up to us.