Sunday, August 18, 2013

Light My Fire



20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C

Nice, sweet, cuddly Jesus has left the building. Love your neighbor has just turned into pyrotechnics.

The paradox of Jesus Christ is that his message is one of unity and yet he causes division. He calls all his disciples to live in unity with him just as he is in unity with the Father and the Spirit, yet that very call is what will cause us to be divided. Because his message and his demand to follow him have always gone against the wisdom of the world. 

This is nothing new. Jesus not only acknowledged that this is the case, he embraced it. He knew that if people were truly living their discipleship they would be rejected by the world. He knew his very being would ignite a firestorm in the world. And that’s what he so desperately wanted. 

Being a Christian is to live in tension. We speak of love of neighbor, yet sometimes that love has to be tough love. Sometimes we show our love of our neighbor by opposing what they believe. Love is not acceptance and tolerance of bad behavior. But that is what’s so difficult for us as Christians, because that is where the divisions happen. It’s easy to just live and let live, even when we know that a person’s actions will lead to their ultimate and eternal death. Live and let live means I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to stick my neck out and make a stand for what is good and right. I can just hide behind my “good example” and “good intentions” and claim I’m a Christian. I won’t be attacked.  Jesus demands more than that. 

Jesus Christ demands a choice. Of all the religions of the world, Christianity is fundamentally different. We do not follow a philosophy, we follow a person. And that person demands something from us that we are usually reluctant to give. Our entire selves. You cannot be a part time or a partial disciple. St. John says in his first letter that if we love God we will keep his commandments. 

Jesus doesn’t demand our allegiance because he wants to enslave us. On the contrary, if we follow his commands we will be living as we were created to be. If we are free from sin we are truly free. 

In my lifetime, I cannot remember a time where there has been so much division along moral lines both within the Church and without. In the past, it seemed that there were one or two big issues that caused people to turn to their consciences. In the 60s it was the anti-war movement. In the 80’s it was the nuclear freeze. In the 2000s it was the Iraq war. Today, it seems there are dozens of issues we can disagree on. Abortion and euthanasia and same sex marriage and terrorism and religious liberty and sexual morality and immigration reform, all being debated at the same time. It seems to be coming at us in a frenzy and from all directions. As soon as one crisis is over another one springs up. 

Maybe it’s because we all have instantaneous access to news from around the world. And we are bombarded with thousands of opinions on everything, most completely uninformed. It is harder than ever to discern the truth about issues, and everybody is an expert.

When I was growing up, there were three things that were never allowed to be discussed at extended family gatherings. Politics, religion and sex. It seems that today that’s all we talk about. Well, at least the politics and sex. It seems the more we talk about those two things the more the religion stuff gets pushed to the side.
Today all sides of an issue claim to be following the commandments of God, and that their cause is the righteous one. They change the language of the argument, calling good evil and evil good. Heck, Nancy Pelosi even says her Catholic faith demands she be pro abortion, calling abortion a sacred right. All sides are sincere in their beliefs, even if some of them are sincerely wrong.

The divisions that will naturally spring up if we are true disciples run very deep. Jesus says they will hit our most basic relationships, those within our families. The choices Jesus demands of us are the most basic of all, cutting to the very heart of who we are as persons, so of course they would affect the most basic building blocks of society. We will face these issues whether we like it or not. Society is also demanding we make a choice.

We all see it within our own families. Jesus didn’t say he came to sow division among political parties, or nations, or ethnic groups. He said he’s going to hit us at the most basic level. And yes, those same divisions will spill over from the family to politics and nationalism and ethnic struggles. Because it’s the age-old struggle between good and evil. We’re in a war and we always have been and we always seem to be losing.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. Is that what we will be ultimately called to do, shed our blood? 

Just this week in Yemen, 50 Christians were locked in a church and then the church was burned to the ground. Today, Islamists in Egypt are hunting down and attacking and killing Coptic Christians. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights says at least 25 churches were torched on Wednesday and Thursday, and that attackers also targeted Christian schools, shops and homes across all 27 provinces. Last year alone, the Vatican estimates that over 100,000 Christians were martyred for their faith. 

And it’s not just blood being shed. In England, two men are suing the Church over the right to have a church wedding, not because they consider it to be their right as Christians but because they want all the pomp and circumstance surrounding a big church wedding. In Canada, you can be prosecuted for a hate crime if you speak out in public against certain lifestyle choices. The same applies in the Netherlands.

That’s other countries, you say. We have laws and it won’t happen here. Just last week, a federal judge in Texas ruled that Catholic hospitals that take federal funding of any kind have to give privileges to abortionists. And we all have been following the battle over the Health and Human Services mandate that religious institutions such as hospitals and universities provide for contraception and abortion services in their employee health plans, even if those services are contrary to the very foundational beliefs of those institutions.

In the court of public opinion last year, the Susan B. Komen Foundation was viciously attacked in the press by Planned Parenthood and their surrogates and the founder was ultimately forced out simply for wanting to redirect funding away from the abortion provider. 

I take these attacks of religious liberty very personally and seriously, because if we go the way of other Western nations, I may stand to lose a lot if I simply live up to the teachings of my church. I am a bit unique. I am a clergyman who’s also a small businessman. I have assets to go after that are not protected by the Church. I am not an employee of the parish or the diocese. I am a volunteer. Therefore, I am not protected as an employee would be from lawsuits. Once same sex marriage becomes the law of the land, do you think people would sue the big institutional churches that have the resources to fight back? Do you think they'll go after the poor priests who make $25,000 a year? I think probably they’d go after someone like me.

Don’t think it can’t happen? Am I being alarmist? What prophet isn’t an alarmist? Well, the state of Washington is currently suing a small flower shop because they didn’t want to provide flowers for a same sex wedding. And in Vermont, a gay couple sued a bed and breakfast for not wanting to hold their wedding reception there, and settled for $30,000. The laws they’re using to prosecute these people are equal access and anti-discrimination laws. Everybody wants equal access and is against discrimination, right?

A lawsuit does not to have any validity for it to hurt you. You settle it because it is ultimately cheaper to do so. I don’t know about you, but $30,000 would put a bit of a dent in my finances. It’d bankrupt me.  And what about my government contracts? Do I stand to lose one half of my business because I don’t comply with some policy? Military chaplains are not being allowed to read letters to Catholic soldiers from the Archbishop for the Military regarding their Church’s position on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or the Defense of Marriage Act. Right now, no furniture in any military chapel can have any Christian symbols on it. I know, I build it. 

And you know the saddest thing for me? It’s that many of you would think that I would be getting what I deserved, for denying people their God-given civil rights. Many of my closest friends would interpret my position as being against the teachings of Jesus to love our neighbor. You would be full of righteous indignation because you have God on your side. You not only wouldn’t support me, you’d condemn me. You’d throw me down the well.

Why would you be any different from members of my own family who believe that now? I have come to establish division. A father will be divided against his son, and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter, and a daughter against her mother.

I don’t know how we fix it. Maybe it all comes down to how you view your church. Is the church just one of many equally good ways to find God; just a bunch of teachings and stuff that you can agree with or not, based upon your politics? Or is the Church the truth as taught by the Son of God and passed down through the Apostles unbroken for 2000 years? Ask yourself what Pilate asked Jesus; “what is truth?” And then remember how Jesus replied. Is the Church truly Jesus Christ in the world today?

Jesus is demanding a choice. He is calling you to stand up and be counted. He wants you to put your faith into action. Do something! Light the fire! That’s what a prophet does. That’s what Jeremiah did. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what your Church does today.

Make your choice!

Persistence



17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Gn 18:20-32
Col 2:12-14
Lk 11:1-13

A good priest friend of mine came by the house last week to talk. He was extremely depressed. He’s an interesting guy. Part of him wants to go off and be a hermit and part of him wants to teach at a university. Like many people, he sees the last forty years as a disaster in catechesis; we have raised three generations of Catholics – us included – with little or no or incorrect formation in the faith. He is eager to correct this and has lots of wonderful programs he’s put together to engage teenagers and young adults.

And he’s frustrated. He’s frustrated because he thinks that if he can get just ten percent of the young people in the parish to go through his programs he can form them into a strong leadership team that would then go out and evangelize the rest of the parish and the community, and they could turn things around. Problem is, he can’t get ten percent of them to commit. He can’t even get three percent. And so, I told him it’s a bit like the reading from Genesis today.

I love this story. Abraham has real guts, pushing God to see exactly how just a judge he is. What if I can find only ten faithful people? Will you do it anyway? I turned it around and told my friend, “What if you can’t find ten percent? What if you only find two or three people to go through your programs? Will you still go through all the trouble for the few? Will you spend two years of preparation and presentation for only two or three people? It’s that whole idea that has him depressed.

I can relate to his problem. We do have a crisis in catechesis in this country and in this parish. I think that most of us would admit that we don’t know enough about our faith and what it teaches us and calls us to do. We get most of our information on what the Church teaches from sound bites and headlines, not from reliable sources. We’d love to know more, but don’t know where to look for the truth or don’t have the time or inclination to take the initiative ourselves. And so we’re frustrated. I’ve found that every time I put on any sort of in-depth teaching programs I get a lot of folks who enthusiastically say they’ll come, then end up talking to the same six ladies who come to everything anyway.

Is it worth it to put in all the effort for just a few folks? That’s the issue.

My friend Fred Engel likes to tell the story of the little town who sent for a new preacher to serve them. The preacher showed up on Sunday morning to meet his new congregation. Ten o’clock came and went, and he looked out and saw only one old farmer sitting in the back row. Despondently, the preacher walked down the aisle and stood by the farmer. “I guess it’s just you and me today,” he said. “It’s not really worth it to go on; perhaps there’ll be more folks next week.” “Preacher,” the farmer replied, “if I go out in the morning to feed my cows, and only one heifer shows up to the trough, I feed her anyway.”

The preacher perked right up, strode back down the aisle, and climbed up in the pulpit. He gave it his all, waxing eloquently for over an hour and a half. He was preparing to go on even longer, when he looked up and saw the old farmer dozing off in the pew. Indignantly, he walked back down the aisle and shook the farmer awake. “What are you doing sleeping?” he asked, “You said that if even one cow showed up to eat, you’d feed her. Well, I’m feeding you.” “Reverend,” he replied, “I said if one cow showed up I’d feed her, but I wouldn’t give her the whole load.”

So yes, even if only one or two show up, we are to feed them. But maybe we give it to them in small bites. We are to do our very best, but it’s not our responsibility that they accept it. It’s theirs. My job is to lay it out for you, it’s your job to accept it or not. The truth is the truth. My job is to be faithful, not successful. I can’t convert you, only the Holy Spirit will. And that’s what Jesus says this morning. He doesn’t say ask and you shall receive a new Mercedes, or a new job or television set. He says how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.

That is Jesus’ greatest gift. The Holy Spirit.

We heard the same thing last Sunday in the story of Martha and Mary. Mary had chosen to learn from the Holy Spirit at the feet of the Son, and that would not be taken away from her. Not because Martha’s hospitality was less important, but that if you have the Spirit all else will follow. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all its righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. The first gift Jesus gave the apostles on Easter night was the Spirit. He gave them his peace and then told them to receive the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is not about programs. The Spirit is about people. Jesus taught, but he did so to folks just where they were. He didn’t sit in the synagogue or a university and wait for people to come to him because he had a great program. He went to their homes and their sick beds and fed and healed them there. He dealt with them on the most basic level, sometimes only with a short parable or two to make them stop and think. And he never imposed his will on anyone. He only proposed.

And that’s what we are called to do. We should never impose, only propose. Pope Francis said this week at World Youth Day, “We do not want to be presumptuous, imposing ‘our truths.’ What must guide us is the humble yet joyful certainty of those who have been found, touched and transformed by the Truth who is Christ.”
We are to lay the truth out for all to see, and then let the people decide what they’ll do.

But Jesus calls us to be persistent, even annoyingly persistent like Abraham. St. Paul told the Thessalonians, “Never tire of doing what is good.” Jesus never gave up. Even on the cross he made a disciple of the good thief. Jesus knew that some would accept and follow him and most wouldn’t. He knew that some seed would fall on barren ground and never sprout and some would fall on good ground and bear fruit. Even then he continued to sow the seed. Jesus had realistic expectations because he knew human nature. But he still sowed the seed.

My priest friend’s expectations are too high. He has put too much pressure on himself to be successful. He doesn’t realize that he does not control the outcome. None of us do. And he expects too much from his people. He expects them to be as excited about Jesus as he is. It’s natural when you’re excited about something to want everyone to be just as excited. And it’s easy to get discouraged when they aren’t.

You can never control what other people do. You can only control your own actions. You can’t control whether or not anyone else will be formed in the faith. You can only control your own formation. But do you? How persistent are you in learning about your own faith? How persistent are you in practicing it? How persistent are you in prayer? It’s no coincidence that Jesus linked prayer with persistence.

Why aren’t our prayers answered the first time we ask? Is God sitting up there with a counter in his hand, just waiting for you to ask for the three hundred thirtieth time before he answers? And then gleefully says no? Persistence in prayer forces us to relax and forces us to be humble. It helps us understand our true place in our relationship with God. It’s not about us, it’s about him. Not in our time but in his. Not our will but his.

Prayer is not just saying prayers. Prayer must be in a lived context. Jesus didn’t just say prayers. He treated people with compassion, he healed them, he taught them, he lived and he died for them. That is what made his way of praying different. He really lived it. And that’s what made it so effective.

It doesn’t really matter what you say. The fact that you want to pray is a prayer in itself. What matters is that you pray consistently and constantly, so that it becomes a part of the fiber of your life. The simpler the better. And your actions become a part of your prayer. Your life becomes your prayer life, and your prayer life becomes your life.

As Calvin Coolidge once said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”