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 31, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Get Off Your Donkey!
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
Dt 30:10-14
Col 1:15-20
Lk 10:25-37
There were two men, Harry and Charlie, who were great friends and avid golfers. Every Tuesday for twenty years they had a regular tee time at a local course, and they rarely missed it. One morning, just as they were finishing the 4th hole, Charlie grabbed his chest and fell down dead of a massive heart attack. When Harry arrived home he told his wife about the harrowing ordeal. "Oh, that must have been terrible," she said. “Yes, it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to endure in my entire life, he said. “All day long it was, hit the ball, drag Charlie, hit the ball, drag Charlie.”
I think many times in our lives it’s “Hit the ball, drag Jesus. Hit the ball, drag Jesus.” We say we love him with our whole hearts, but sometimes our hearts are more into our jobs or our entertainments. And so we drag Jesus. We say we love him with our whole being, but sometimes our being is more centered on ourselves. And so we drag Jesus. We say we love him with all our strength, but usually we rely more on our own abilities than on trusting completely in God. And so we drag Jesus. We say we love him with all our mind, but we’ve got so much to think about that we forget about God sometimes. And so we drag Jesus.
You know, it’s hard work to drag Jesus. It’s hard work to rationalize inaction. We really have to think about it. Like the lawyer in today’s gospel we try to justify ourselves when confronted with moral truth. The man was a lawyer, and it was a lawyer’s job to study stuff. He knew in his head what he needed to do, and he knew all the right things to say, but he was looking for a rationalization for not doing it. I know what it says in the book, but…There’s always a but in there somewhere.
We know what to do but we fight it. As Moses said, it is very near to us, already in our mouths and in our hearts; we have only to carry it out. We talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. We look for ways to avoid doing what we know is right because it’s inconvenient or hard for us to do.
When’s the last time you had to rationalize doing something good?
The natural thing to do is to act with compassion, because that’s how God made us. Like him. Jesus didn’t have to think about it when he healed someone. He just did it. Do you think the priest or the Levite would have hesitated to help if the victim had been one of their own children? If we spent as much time acting with compassion as we do in trying to figure ways to avoid it, how much easier our lives would be. What a waste of energy.
This parable is not a warm and fuzzy, lovey dovey one. It’s all about action. The priest was of the ruling class, a politician, and he knew that if word got out that he had helped a foreigner he would have big political problems. He might even lose his position and status. So he rationalized that his politics were more important than mercy - and he moved on. The Levite was one who served in the temple, and if he touched the Samaritan it would make him impure. He would have to go through an elaborate cleansing ritual before he could serve in the temple again, so he rationalized that his religion was more important than mercy - and he moved on. The Samaritan was the only one who got off his…donkey and did something about it. Without thinking of the consequences. He did what came naturally and both he and the victim were saved.
Jesus didn’t say “the neighbor to the man was the one who studied the Talmud more or who prayed for the victim”. He said the neighbor was the one who actually did something about his situation. Studying and praying are what we do to lay the foundation for our action. Jesus spent a lot of time praying and studying and preparing for his ministry, but he acted upon that preparation. You may be the most pius, prayerful person in the world, but if you don’t act on it with compassion you’re a fraud.
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
With all your heart,
With all your being
With all your strength,
And with all your mind,
And your neighbor as yourself.”
Why does God want us to love him like this? Because that’s the way he loves us. Switch it around a bit: The Lord, your God loves you, his creature, with all his heart, with all his being, with all his strength and with all his mind, and all he asks in return is that you treat other people in the same way.
How do we know that God loves like this? Because Jesus loves like this. We have proof of his love in the Gospels. Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He loved everyone with his whole heart, being, strength and mind, and he loved his neighbor more than he loved himself. He loved us so much that he died for us. That’s how we know.
Moses tells the people today that it’s not all that complicated. The law of love we are to live by isn’t something that’s written in the stars or is in need of someone to come and explain it to us. The lawyer knew the answer to his question before he asked it, just as we all know deep down how we are supposed to act and feel towards God and our neighbor. If we are created in the image of God we have that knowledge put in our consciences at our conception. All we do with our religion is to deepen our understanding of it and carry it out in our lives.
And it is a simple thing to do. If we have our focus on God, we don’t have to worry about having our focus on our neighbor. If we love our neighbor we don’t have to worry about loving God. They’re both the same thing. You can’t love God and not love your neighbor and you can’t love your neighbor without loving God. Love is one, just as God is one. Anytime we love we are in God and God is in us.
But we’ve got to get off our donkeys and do something with it.
Cycle C
Dt 30:10-14
Col 1:15-20
Lk 10:25-37
There were two men, Harry and Charlie, who were great friends and avid golfers. Every Tuesday for twenty years they had a regular tee time at a local course, and they rarely missed it. One morning, just as they were finishing the 4th hole, Charlie grabbed his chest and fell down dead of a massive heart attack. When Harry arrived home he told his wife about the harrowing ordeal. "Oh, that must have been terrible," she said. “Yes, it was one of the hardest things I’ve had to endure in my entire life, he said. “All day long it was, hit the ball, drag Charlie, hit the ball, drag Charlie.”
I think many times in our lives it’s “Hit the ball, drag Jesus. Hit the ball, drag Jesus.” We say we love him with our whole hearts, but sometimes our hearts are more into our jobs or our entertainments. And so we drag Jesus. We say we love him with our whole being, but sometimes our being is more centered on ourselves. And so we drag Jesus. We say we love him with all our strength, but usually we rely more on our own abilities than on trusting completely in God. And so we drag Jesus. We say we love him with all our mind, but we’ve got so much to think about that we forget about God sometimes. And so we drag Jesus.
You know, it’s hard work to drag Jesus. It’s hard work to rationalize inaction. We really have to think about it. Like the lawyer in today’s gospel we try to justify ourselves when confronted with moral truth. The man was a lawyer, and it was a lawyer’s job to study stuff. He knew in his head what he needed to do, and he knew all the right things to say, but he was looking for a rationalization for not doing it. I know what it says in the book, but…There’s always a but in there somewhere.
We know what to do but we fight it. As Moses said, it is very near to us, already in our mouths and in our hearts; we have only to carry it out. We talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. We look for ways to avoid doing what we know is right because it’s inconvenient or hard for us to do.
When’s the last time you had to rationalize doing something good?
The natural thing to do is to act with compassion, because that’s how God made us. Like him. Jesus didn’t have to think about it when he healed someone. He just did it. Do you think the priest or the Levite would have hesitated to help if the victim had been one of their own children? If we spent as much time acting with compassion as we do in trying to figure ways to avoid it, how much easier our lives would be. What a waste of energy.
This parable is not a warm and fuzzy, lovey dovey one. It’s all about action. The priest was of the ruling class, a politician, and he knew that if word got out that he had helped a foreigner he would have big political problems. He might even lose his position and status. So he rationalized that his politics were more important than mercy - and he moved on. The Levite was one who served in the temple, and if he touched the Samaritan it would make him impure. He would have to go through an elaborate cleansing ritual before he could serve in the temple again, so he rationalized that his religion was more important than mercy - and he moved on. The Samaritan was the only one who got off his…donkey and did something about it. Without thinking of the consequences. He did what came naturally and both he and the victim were saved.
Jesus didn’t say “the neighbor to the man was the one who studied the Talmud more or who prayed for the victim”. He said the neighbor was the one who actually did something about his situation. Studying and praying are what we do to lay the foundation for our action. Jesus spent a lot of time praying and studying and preparing for his ministry, but he acted upon that preparation. You may be the most pius, prayerful person in the world, but if you don’t act on it with compassion you’re a fraud.
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
With all your heart,
With all your being
With all your strength,
And with all your mind,
And your neighbor as yourself.”
Why does God want us to love him like this? Because that’s the way he loves us. Switch it around a bit: The Lord, your God loves you, his creature, with all his heart, with all his being, with all his strength and with all his mind, and all he asks in return is that you treat other people in the same way.
How do we know that God loves like this? Because Jesus loves like this. We have proof of his love in the Gospels. Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He loved everyone with his whole heart, being, strength and mind, and he loved his neighbor more than he loved himself. He loved us so much that he died for us. That’s how we know.
Moses tells the people today that it’s not all that complicated. The law of love we are to live by isn’t something that’s written in the stars or is in need of someone to come and explain it to us. The lawyer knew the answer to his question before he asked it, just as we all know deep down how we are supposed to act and feel towards God and our neighbor. If we are created in the image of God we have that knowledge put in our consciences at our conception. All we do with our religion is to deepen our understanding of it and carry it out in our lives.
And it is a simple thing to do. If we have our focus on God, we don’t have to worry about having our focus on our neighbor. If we love our neighbor we don’t have to worry about loving God. They’re both the same thing. You can’t love God and not love your neighbor and you can’t love your neighbor without loving God. Love is one, just as God is one. Anytime we love we are in God and God is in us.
But we’ve got to get off our donkeys and do something with it.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
1 Kngs 19:16b;19-21
Gal 5:1, 13-18
Lk 9:51-62
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Next weekend we will celebrate the 234th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Every year at this time we stop and think about freedom and what it means to us as a nation and as individuals. The Declaration is the defining statement about what we believe it means to be free.
Thomas Jefferson used the Declaration to set forth not only a list of grievances against what the colonists considered to be the actions of a tyrannical British government, he also set the foundation for how we Americans would view ourselves and our inherent rights as human beings, superseding even our rights as citizens. The founders saw freedom as an extension of natural law and acknowledged that it is God who ultimately gives us our freedom.
We have come a long way since those words were written. And we have wandered far from their original meaning. We no longer hold life as an unalienable right for all people, especially when it’s inconvenient for us to do so. Liberty? What exactly is that? We talk about it once a year but I don’t think many of us truly know what it means. We talk about our rights all the time but not about the responsibilities that go with them. But the pursuit of happiness? Ahh, that’s the one we understand, and hold as our most basic right, surpassing all others. For us, freedom has become the unfettered ability to pursue happiness. I should be able to do whatever I like, as long as it makes me happy. You do your thing and I’ll do mine. And we both determine what’s right and wrong for each of us. Freedom is the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want. For Americans today, freedom is something we take for ourselves, not something that is given us by our creator.
George Orwell said that if you control the language you control the people. We use words that all people agree refer to a great good, such as freedom and choice, and we use them to describe things that are actually sinful. We’ve muddied the waters to the point that we have lost sight of what freedom really is. Orwell also said that “doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” We have heard and spoken these words and their twisted meanings so often that we have come to believe in their contradictions. We have descended into doublethink.
What is freedom to God? Has God created us to be truly free, or does He just set up a lot of rules for us to follow? Are we truly free agents or just servants? Actually, it’s both. We are free agents when we are servants. Freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want. That is license. Freedom is not live and let live. It is not license for individuals to act whichever way they want. Freedom is truly the ability to live as we were originally intended to live. As our creator made us.
Freedom to us is really freedom from sin. Because God didn’t make us to be sinful.
He hard wired us for himself, to be like him, and we can only be truly free when we live and act as he wills. It’s not about us and yet it’s all about us.
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t the first declaration of freedom. For that we look to St. Paul. He declared long ago that we have been made free by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Jesus of Nazareth is the example of what it means to be truly human and truly free. Jesus had the power to act any way he chose. He had the ultimate license to do what he pleased. And he was all about the pursuit of happiness. But it was our happiness he sought. He wielded his freedom in the way it was intended to be; by submitting his entire life to the Father’s will. Freedom to Jesus was not living according to his own will but to that of his Father’s.
And he said that he longer considered us to be slaves; we are now called his friends.
We were not created slaves, we were created free persons. In the beginning, humanity was created without the slavery of sin and death. All our needs were supplied by God and we had such a close relationship with our creator that it says in Genesis that God actually walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. As friends. It was through sin that we became enslaved and lost our way. When humanity chose to define freedom as doing our own will in opposition to that of the Father’s, suffering and death came into the world.
We can try and try to fill that hole within us with as much stuff as we can. We can think that we’re the ultimate arbitrators of our own destiny. We can assert our own wills day in and day out, and we will never be happy. Because our pursuit will never end in happiness until we surrender our will to the Father. And that’s hard. Because everything in our culture is pulling us in the opposite direction. Society says that we only have value when we assert our independence. We only have value when we can keep score of our accomplishments. Of our possessions. Of our status. Of our own inner strength. In order to live as we are intended to live we have to fight every day of our lives to keep our perspective clear. We have to declare our independence from the flesh each and every day. That means surrender. Another seeming contradiction. We triumph when we surrender. And it never gets easier, this war against contradiction.
What, did you think that now that you have declared your independence there wouldn’t be a war?
Cycle C
1 Kngs 19:16b;19-21
Gal 5:1, 13-18
Lk 9:51-62
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Next weekend we will celebrate the 234th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Every year at this time we stop and think about freedom and what it means to us as a nation and as individuals. The Declaration is the defining statement about what we believe it means to be free.
Thomas Jefferson used the Declaration to set forth not only a list of grievances against what the colonists considered to be the actions of a tyrannical British government, he also set the foundation for how we Americans would view ourselves and our inherent rights as human beings, superseding even our rights as citizens. The founders saw freedom as an extension of natural law and acknowledged that it is God who ultimately gives us our freedom.
We have come a long way since those words were written. And we have wandered far from their original meaning. We no longer hold life as an unalienable right for all people, especially when it’s inconvenient for us to do so. Liberty? What exactly is that? We talk about it once a year but I don’t think many of us truly know what it means. We talk about our rights all the time but not about the responsibilities that go with them. But the pursuit of happiness? Ahh, that’s the one we understand, and hold as our most basic right, surpassing all others. For us, freedom has become the unfettered ability to pursue happiness. I should be able to do whatever I like, as long as it makes me happy. You do your thing and I’ll do mine. And we both determine what’s right and wrong for each of us. Freedom is the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want. For Americans today, freedom is something we take for ourselves, not something that is given us by our creator.
George Orwell said that if you control the language you control the people. We use words that all people agree refer to a great good, such as freedom and choice, and we use them to describe things that are actually sinful. We’ve muddied the waters to the point that we have lost sight of what freedom really is. Orwell also said that “doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” We have heard and spoken these words and their twisted meanings so often that we have come to believe in their contradictions. We have descended into doublethink.
What is freedom to God? Has God created us to be truly free, or does He just set up a lot of rules for us to follow? Are we truly free agents or just servants? Actually, it’s both. We are free agents when we are servants. Freedom is not the ability to do whatever we want. That is license. Freedom is not live and let live. It is not license for individuals to act whichever way they want. Freedom is truly the ability to live as we were originally intended to live. As our creator made us.
Freedom to us is really freedom from sin. Because God didn’t make us to be sinful.
He hard wired us for himself, to be like him, and we can only be truly free when we live and act as he wills. It’s not about us and yet it’s all about us.
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t the first declaration of freedom. For that we look to St. Paul. He declared long ago that we have been made free by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Jesus of Nazareth is the example of what it means to be truly human and truly free. Jesus had the power to act any way he chose. He had the ultimate license to do what he pleased. And he was all about the pursuit of happiness. But it was our happiness he sought. He wielded his freedom in the way it was intended to be; by submitting his entire life to the Father’s will. Freedom to Jesus was not living according to his own will but to that of his Father’s.
And he said that he longer considered us to be slaves; we are now called his friends.
We were not created slaves, we were created free persons. In the beginning, humanity was created without the slavery of sin and death. All our needs were supplied by God and we had such a close relationship with our creator that it says in Genesis that God actually walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. As friends. It was through sin that we became enslaved and lost our way. When humanity chose to define freedom as doing our own will in opposition to that of the Father’s, suffering and death came into the world.
We can try and try to fill that hole within us with as much stuff as we can. We can think that we’re the ultimate arbitrators of our own destiny. We can assert our own wills day in and day out, and we will never be happy. Because our pursuit will never end in happiness until we surrender our will to the Father. And that’s hard. Because everything in our culture is pulling us in the opposite direction. Society says that we only have value when we assert our independence. We only have value when we can keep score of our accomplishments. Of our possessions. Of our status. Of our own inner strength. In order to live as we are intended to live we have to fight every day of our lives to keep our perspective clear. We have to declare our independence from the flesh each and every day. That means surrender. Another seeming contradiction. We triumph when we surrender. And it never gets easier, this war against contradiction.
What, did you think that now that you have declared your independence there wouldn’t be a war?
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