Sunday, July 31, 2011

Vanity

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

Most of us who are middle aged are sooner or later confronted with the reality of our parents’ dying. Oftentimes it is a long, slow, painful process, and we struggle to retain their, and our, dignity amongst all the medications and equipment and medical personnel and dirty linens and family squabbles and tears of joy and pain. But most of all we are forced to view our parents, the towering heroes of our youth, as fragile and weak and helpless. And we feel useless and the whole process seems to be in vain as we wrestle with our conflicting feelings. We wonder if it is all worth it, and we are humbled by the sight of what our loved ones have been reduced to.

But in the middle of the night, when we sit in vigil around the bedside, we are confronted by our thoughts and get ourselves focused on what is truly important in our lives, and it’s not all the things we thought were important before. All the peripheral stuff does seem to be vanity. It is our relationships that last. It is our relationships that give our lives meaning.

But I don’t agree with Qoheleth; all things in life are not vanity, and all things we possess are not empty and worthless. The treasures we store up most of all are our memories of those people and events that have formed us, both positively and negatively. Because it is through those experiences and the memories we have of them that we become the people we are today. That is how we grow in wisdom, because wisdom comes from learning from life’s experiences. We become wise when we use those experiences to improve on the way we treat other people. Wisdom helps us become better in our relationships and our relationships make us wise.

We all have possessions. The thing is not what we possess, but what possesses us. We know that it is so easy to receive the gifts but not the hand that offers them. I was visiting one of my little ladies at the nursing home the other day, and we were discussing how much things had changed for her since she had fallen and broken her hip. She no longer could do things for herself but needed help with even the simplest tasks. It was forcing her daughter to spend more and more time with her, and she felt guilty that she was taking her away from her family so much.

I asked her to think of when her children were little, of all she and her husband had sacrificed for them. I asked her to remember all the long nights sitting with them when they were scared or sick. I told her to recall all the times it was difficult to be parents, of all the joy and pain her children had given her. Was she ever resentful of those times? Did she love her children less because of them or did her sacrifice actually strengthen her love? Did she ever regret any time she was there to pick them up when they needed help? Of course not. Those times are often the ones she cherished the most. Why should she deny her daughter the same experience now?

Now her sacrifice for her children is to accept their help. The ultimate sacrifice we make is to submit to the fact that we need other people. We will all need to rely on our relationships at some time or other, when we are stripped of all the trappings of life and all we have is ourselves and those who love us. And we need to accept their help with humility and grace. Because they also have the need to help us. It’s not payback for all the times we helped them. No one’s keeping score. But we all have the deep seated need to sacrifice for those we love. Because we love them. We need to give and we need to receive with the same grace.

Someday it will be us in that bed and our families will be gathered around us in vigil. How we react to that situation will determine how well we die. In that way the gift and the reception of the gift are sacrament, and our death bed an altar.

I just read a book, Evidence of the Afterlife, written by Jeffrey Long, a medical doctor who claims to be an atheist. While in medical school he was struck by the fact that there had been no formal research done on near death experiences, and so he performed a ten year study on over six thousand people of all nations, races, ages and cultures who claimed to have had near death experiences and out-of-body experiences. One of his findings stood out to me. Virtually all the people who had what were considered true dying experiences, you know the white light, the tunnel, etc., also had an experience of a “judgment”. What they all had in common was that they saw their entire lives flash before their eyes in an instant, and what they saw was how all their actions and their inactions had affected other people. Even people who they didn’t really know very well were affected positively or negatively by what they themselves had done. It stunned many of them to see just how important other people were in their lives and how important they were in the lives of others.

We will be judged on our relationships. How we have treated other people, not on what we have accomplished nor on the legacies we have left behind. Jesus said so. It is not all in vain. Jesus said so. We all touch other people in ways we never even realize. We are all building storage facilities for the stuff that really matters, whether we are aware of it or not. Those storage facilities are the hearts of those we touch.

I was just in Las Vegas a week ago. The epitome of materialism. Just like the rich man in today’s parable, Vegas doesn’t remodel, they dramatically blow up the old and build something bigger and bolder in its place.

What is in your storehouses? Are they filled with pretty baubles and toys, thinking that’s what will be your legacy? If so, maybe you need to tear them down every once in a while and start over. Fill them with all those little things that affect others. The gentle smiles, the small hugs, the thoughtful cards, the simple kindnesses we do along with the great sacrifices we make that we may not realize mean the world to others.

It would be a shame for us to live our lives without ever storing up the things that build up relationships. But it would also be a shame for us to never stop and realize that we are doing it. We need to step back and take the time to examine our lives every once in awhile to acknowledge the good we have done and see the deficiencies. And see the hope in our lives.

It may be easier to give up like the fatalist Qoheleth, to see everything as shallow vanity. To live just for the moment’s pleasure. Or to see no purpose to life or death. I choose not to. Because you see, even though I said goodbye to my mother for the last time yesterday, I was godfather an hour ago to a beautiful baby boy and tomorrow I will baptize another. As long as that continues to happen, life will never be in vain.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Seeds of Justice

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle A

Ws 12:13, 16-19

Ps 86

Rom 8:26-27

Mt 13:24-43

Why do you come here and not to some other church? Why St. Mary’s and not St. Ann’s or St. Ambrose, or Shepherd of the Mountains or St. Luke’s? Most likely it is because you like the people. And most likely you like the people because someone has been kind to you here. Kindnesses are the little things we do for people just because we like them or respect them or care about them.

And we also perform little kindnesses to people we don’t even know all the time, don’t we? We hold the door open for them, we smile at them in the checkout line, we make a comment about how beautiful their baby is. We don’t do these little things because we want something in return. We do them just because that’s how we treat other human beings, just because they are human beings. We don’t even think about it, we just do it.

We hear in the book of wisdom today that justice is played out as kindness. We hear a lot about social justice these days, and not just in the religious sense. The big budget battles going on in Washington lately are couched in the language of social justice. What is fair. But justice is not fairness. It’s not about leveling the playing field or taking from the rich to give to the poor. True justice means giving all people what they are entitled to, just because they are human beings with inherent dignity. We tend to think of justice in terms of crime and punishment, but to God, justice is simply treating you as his child, just because you are his child. And because you are his child you enjoy certain rights and are bound by certain responsibilities.

And just because you think you have a right to do something does not make it just. Justice is allowing you to live the way you were intended to live. Just because you want to live a certain way doesn’t mean you were meant to live that way. Just because you want to do it does not make it right. And so sometimes justice seems unfair, because we don’t always want to live as we were meant to. Sometimes justice means we have to say no. Sometimes justice means someone needs to tell us no.

What makes a person kind? I think the thing people desire most is to feel that they are special and appreciated. We are kind when or actions make people feel that way. Most of us don’t go around working for the great causes of justice, but the mustard seeds of justice are the little kindnesses we do for other people. We can protest on the steps of the capitol, or pray in front of the abortion clinic, but it is kindness that changes people hearts. We change the world when we change the individual human heart. And we do that through kindness.

Have you ever had someone’s kindness to you affect your entire day? Has someone ever said or done something to you that just made you feel good about yourself, and changed your outlook on the day? Have you seen the commercials that show people in a city going about their day and one person does something to help a stranger, like pick up a dropped package or something, and then that person helps another person, and that one helps someone else, until finally it comes back around so that someone is nice to the first person who started it all? Paying it forward? That’s how grace works. That’s how our faith is lived out each day. Yes, we are called to stand up against the great evils of the day, but we act most like God when we do simple kindnesses for people.

These little kindnesses are the mustard seeds of justice. If we see the person in the checkout line as someone worthy of respect just because they are them, it makes it easier to make those bigger, tougher decisions later on, even reaching up to Capitol Hill. Social justice literally begins at home. And if kindness is the way we bring forth justice then we must begin by being kind to those closest to us. There are two types of kindness, active and passive. The greatest active kindness we do is to pray for the needs of others. Then there are the little kindnesses we do for those we love. We bring our spouse a cup of coffee in the morning; we pick up after our kids without complaining; we hold the door for someone at the office. But kindness can also be what we don’t do. We don’t blow up when our teenager comes home after curfew. We patiently wait for our wives to put on their makeup. We have compassion and understanding for the friend who is having a hard day.

It may be the small gestures that help us build our faith, too. We all have faith that began small. Grace is like that. The grace we are given never really goes away. It stays in us, and, like yeast, can cause the entirety of our faith to grow. We have no way of knowing if something that was given to us very early on is what we need today in order to make correct decisions.

That’s one reason we baptize infants. Something profound happens to our souls when we are baptized, and God’s grace enters into our lives in a very special way. A baby is incapable of sinning, however, by wiping away original sin God allows his grace to affect us, so that as we grow we will be more able to make correct decisions. The seeds planted in us as children affect the decisions we make as teenagers and adults.

A life of virtue is made up of thousands of small virtuous decisions, just as a life of evil is made up of thousands of incorrect decisions. Just as faith starts out as a very small seed, an idea planted in our hearts which can then affect our entire lives and the lives of the entire human race, so too evil. People are not born evil, we are all born good, and rarely do people make the decision to act evilly all at once in a big way. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to kill someone. Instead, we make decision upon decision upon decision throughout our lives, often beginning as children, that bring us to an evil, or good end.

Faith starts with a very small idea, and then affects all our other ideas as well. Someone once said that there is nothing more powerful in the world than an idea whose time has come. I’d say that there is nothing more powerful than a single person’s faith. The faith of one person affects their entire family, their workplace, their neighborhood, town, and nation. And I think that is the message of hope we hold for the world. Because while that yeast is only a fraction of the ingredients used in the bread, it causes the entire loaf of dough to rise. The world seems to be growing more and more indifferent to God every day. The rest of the dough isn’t very good, but all it takes is us, that small measure of yeast, to help it all to rise. Do you know that there is a bakery in San Francisco that has been making sourdough bread with the same hunk of mother yeast for the past 100 years! The yeast even gives rise to itself, and they keep it in a special refrigerator under lock and key, because without that special yeast the bread would not have its particular taste and texture.

The Church is like that. Though the dough of the world has been mostly poor throughout history, the yeast of the Church has helped it to rise. We must guard it and cherish it and protect it so that it can continue to give mankind its special taste and texture. Our yeast is what God uses to bring justice to the world.

Christians are like mustard seeds. We can and are the yeast for the entire world. The world is a big place, but our faith can raise up the entire world, even if there are only a few of us left. Remember, Jesus started with twelve.

Jesus was kind. If you think back about all he did in his life what he really was was a kind man. He did things, great and small, for other people just because they deserved it simply because they were his children. Pope Paul VI said if you want peace work for justice. I will add, and do it by being kind to one another.

Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that small groups of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has." We can change the world, one heart at a time. And the first heart that must change is my own.