Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

What makes a family holy?

In today's readings, we have two "holy" families; Hannah's son, Samuel, is a blessing that ends her infertility, whom she returns to God by dedicating him to the priesthood.  Our second holy family is the holy family of Mary and Joseph.  What can these families possibly teach us about the nature of what makes a family holy?

Hannah's dedication of Samuel to God seems odd and completely counter-intuitive. Just when her prayers had been answered, and she had given birth, she returns to the spiritual center where her prayers were answered and gives the child to Eli, the local priest, to raise him dedicated to the priesthood.  Of course, Samuel goes on to become chosen of God to be both a priest and prophet of his people.

A woman's sterility in those times was a serious problem that many regarded as a sign of God's disfavor.  Even today, among couples trying to conceive a child, being childless is disheartening.  Hannah's prayer was answered not in the life with Samuel, but in simply being able to bear Samuel.  A difficult idea for us today, but understandable for a woman of her time.  Her gratitude to God was in letting go of her most precious gift to become a gift to her people.

Mary and Joseph's experience of Jesus, who "increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men” might seem ideal, but consider the growing awareness of the burden of letting such a child face the eventual scorn, rejection, and crucifixion as Messiah.  Mary "keeping all these things in her heart", patiently enduring the death of John, and likely foreseeing the road to the crucifixion her son was traveling must have been a test of faith few would readily embrace.

Even without the heroic sacrifice of Hannah and Mary, facing the initial distancing of adolescence, and later the "empty nest", couples can find family life too stressful to be holy.

The quality of holiness is built around setting something aside for the purpose of worshiping God.  A holy family, then, is a family whose dedication moves beyond the typical familial ties to a sense of serving as a family the God whom they worship.  In such a family, children are regarded as a gift, but a gift not only to the family, but a gift their care whose ultimate purpose is not service to the family itself, but to God.  Likewise, a couple's love, when animated by holiness, is ordered not only to mutual fulfillment but is itself a gift from God that reaches beyond family, tribe or national boundaries.  

When, like the holy family, Christ is at the center of the family made holy by God's gift of the couple's love, the love of God becomes embodied in the life of the children.  Family constitutes a great sacred potential for revealing God's love to humanity.  

        

The Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord "Midnight Mass"

"Do not be afraid;  for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."

Who Woulda Thought?


I want to begin this Christmas season by focusing on the call of the shepherds rather than moving right to the Nativity.  In fact, if you follow the various gospel readings that the Church offers, you would find the vigil Mass (afternoon of the 24th) through the daytime Mass (Sunday mid-morning) you would find the Christmas story and the theology of the Christ across three of the four gospels--quite a rich fare which few, unfortunately, experience.

Back to the shepherds, then.  Shepherds were a despised lot in Jesus' time. You can lump them in with tax collectors, prostitutes and Samaritans.  Of course, as we have seen throughout God's interaction with humanity, this makes them prime candidates for a special grace.  So, it was to them the invitation was extended.  The much discussed "wise men" or magi, come later (probably didn't arrive until a year or so after the birth).  

So, as the story goes, as with all angelic visitations, it begins with fear.  It takes a lot to scare a shepherd who defends his flock from any number of hazards; they are a grizzly lot.

  

But, as the gospel records, "...they were struck with great fear".  The appeal of the angel not to fear is based upon the message of a savior that will "be for all the people."  This is followed by a "multitude of the heavenly host" singing "Glory to God in the highest".  Quite a night for the shepherds, and some essential truths about the nature of God and salvation for us tonight.

Like God's appointing David as king (the least likely candidate), God's favor rests on Mary, Joseph, outsiders like the magi and shepherds.  Notice the absence of anyone really important like Temple priests, scribes, pharisees, important legates or even the chief priest.  God's dealing once again with the consummate outsiders, widely believed to be outside of salvation history.  How ironic, then, that these were the people most intimately associated with God's arrival as the Christ.

If Advent has sharpened our senses for seeking justice and finding a place with the poor to be in the right place; this visitation of the shepherds remind us that we are now in the right place at the right time---with the poor, alone, late in the night. Dismal.

But it is with the outcast, far from the comfort of day, deep in the night, that God's greeting arrives proclaiming joy and salvation.  The line from T.S. Eliot's poem Four Quartets comes to mind "...and now, under conditions that seem unpropitious."  Like so much of what God has done in his relationship with humanity: "Who woulda thought?"

In your deepest moment of darkness and doubt,  when your prayers are bouncing back off of the ceiling, ridiculing  your attempt to reconnect with God after seemingly failing every time, I want to remind you that those prayers that you think mock your devotion made it through.  They were in God's heart before they ever left your lips. Like the shepherds, the most unlikely folks in the most unlikely place, God finds us.  Search no further than your need, your loneliness, your feelings of being left out. For the still small voice of God speaks to you here, now, in this blog, inviting you to come home and find the sign of God being with you in the most humble of circumstances.  Join with Christians world wide to not give up following the light until it rests over the manger where Christ is to be found---in the most unlikely place, at the most unlikely time. 

Fourth Sunday of Advent

“Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Mary believed the words of the angel.  She didn’t demand proof, sign a contract to cover all reasonable contingencies in case the whole mother-of-the-Messiah thing didn’t work out.  Her response to the word: “May it be it done to me according to your word.” In our faith, we have Jesus as the Word--the embodiment of God as human—Emmanuel, “God with us”. 

We also have the word of holy scripture that is our link to the living tradition of our brothers and sisters in faith, used by the Church as a tool of furthering the inspiration of the original community of believers. Unlike Mary’s time, we are overwhelmed with words.  It is estimated that nearly 300 million books will have been published this year alone!  That doesn’t include the words of advertising spoken on television, splashed across computer screens, covering bus shelters, billboards, and car bumpers.  It is hard to set your eyes on an object that doesn’t ask you to read something.  We are awash in more words than at any other time in history, yet we seem to have less and less to say. 

Cutting through this clutter is one righteous quest to enter the Christmas season that begins Tuesday (Christmas, for us, begins on Tuesday). In today’s gospel, John the Baptist as an infant still inside Elizabeth, responds to Elizabeth’s hearing of Mary’s greeting.  This chain of events reveals something important about how we exist in relationship to God and to one another.  

 Since baptism, each of us has been comforted, protected, educated by and imbued with the presence of the Holy Spirit residing within us.  Like Mary and Elizabeth, pregnant with promise and God’s Spirit, our bond with God and one another is powerful. Our spiritual journey of Advent, distinct from Lent, is essentially communal—we prepare as a community, much the way both Elizabeth and Mary were in a strong bond of having received and believed God’s promise.  Each gave birth to the fulfillment of that promise, but also had to be sustained by it because of the difficulty to remain faithful during the rough times ahead for each woman.

We receive the Word if we are open to its life within us as a community who listens, who is attentive to God's promises.  Holy scripture can only become Word through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and our willingness to, like Mary, have it transform our lives.  With Mary, our faith-filled response is "May it be done to me according to your Word".

Third Sunday in Advent

"Thy Kingdom Come", but we're not done!


Fire and water: two compelling, dynamic images linked to communion with God and the salvation of Christ.  In today's gospel, John the Baptist famously denies he is Messiah, but rather preaches repentance and conversion to high ethical standards as preparation for Messiah.  The two pericopes in Luke fit well into the theme of Advent, as we focus on preparing for God to touch humanity in a new way.

John exhortation to ethical integrity is in response to a disciple asking "Teacher, what should we do?"  It seems the fitting question to John's earlier (outside today's reading) proclamation that "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  When faced with such destructive wrath, the disciples needed to know what to do, because they needed to get started.

What is interesting is John's focus on doing before becoming; he is the quintessential existentialist---existence before essence.  You want justice? Become just.  You want peace? Become peaceful.  You want salvation from the wrath of God? Welcome God into your midst.

The great line from Matthew 25:41-45 resonates with these leading questions:

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
⁴⁴ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

 Preparation is awareness of Christ in our midst for the post-Easter church.  Some have envisioned the second coming of Christ as dependent on the "right time" that we have control over.  When the world has sufficiently become The Kingdom, Christ will come again.  A nice sentiment, but such a Kingdom isn't possible without Christ's presence now.  Christ comes, Christ is bid, where there is a need for restorative justice and a faithful disciple answers the call by offering her or himself to the cause of helping ex-felons return to society.  Christ is bid in the heart of an older, retired woman who runs a simple soup kitchen that feeds the local homeless.  Christ shows up, Messiah comes, the Reign of God has begun in the presence of the graced relationship between ex-felon and justice worker, and between the retiree and those who are hungry for food and human companionship.  We aren't preparing for Christ to return in loving the poor and the marginalized, we are welcoming Christ in the poor and the marginalized; when they show up, Christ has come.  The Kingdom is here.
  

The Solemnity of Christ the King

"My kingdom does not belong to this world"  --Jesus, The Gospel of John

There is that famous line from the Mel Brooks's movie History of the World: Part I,"It's good to be king!"  Being king brings up beautiful imagery of elaborate court ritual, absolute authority and feasting; sounds a lot like the institutional church!   But Jesus' words to Pilate betray this image of opulence.  When asked about his kingdom, Jesus replies, "My kingdom does not belong to this world" (New American Bible).  Another translation has it as "My kingdom is not of this world"(New International Version).  The sense of Jesus' reply is that his kingdom is neither the kingdom of Rome nor the kingdom envisioned by the religious authorities; both groups lose.

The Solemnity of Christ the King that embraces Jesus as king is relatively new.  It was established in 1925 to counter what the Church saw as an increasing tendency to worship human wisdom and power, which was loosely defined as modernism.  By later positioning the solemnity at the end of the Church's liturgical year in 1969, it further enhanced its standing as the summit of Christ's rule, and, implicitly, the Church as Christ's kingdom.

The songs and imagery associated with this celebration, however, often blunt the irony of Christ as king.  The usual image is of a resurrected, non-bloody, Jesus hovering (rather than being nailed) on the cross.  The image of Christ as king is ironic because he is the king with a crown of thorns with a procession of humiliation and a knightly court of cowards.  It seems, as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians  "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

The ironic image of Jesus as king nailed to the cross speaks of a different kind of power than the power of earthly kingdoms.  In a general audience at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI suggests ". . .the Cross reveals ‘the power of God’ which is different from human power; it reveals, in fact, His love.” 

The power of God's kingdom as embodied by Jesus' death isn't exclusively revealed by the resurrection, although the saving power of God is most apparent here. It is the magnitude of God's love for His creation in self-sacrifice that shows Christ's true power as king.  

The ultimate love is the love that sacrifices self for another. This is the true power that defines Christ's kingdom.  This is why evil can never ultimately triumph over good; evil avoids self-sacrifice.  Evil always seeks what is best for the self over and against the other.  It destroys community and ultimately destroys itself.

Self-sacrificing love, on the other hand,  is the ultimate Christian act where one falls into the opened arms of Christ on the cross, trusting in the power of God's ability to bring life from death.  Christ's kingdom, indeed, is not of this world, but it is for this world.  Nothing is of more importance than conforming ourselves to this likeness of Christ as King.

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

From Barrenness to Blessedness: Giving from One's Poverty

Today's gospel is a couple of stories sewn together by Mark.  The first story is about the victimizing of the poor by the religious authorities of Jesus' time, the scribes.  The poor were represented by the widows who had no social standing and were even less reputable if not associated with a man (husband, older brother, or father).  They were truly "the least and the last".  The focus of this story is the ostentatious behavior of the religious elite whose worship was more show than substance in their grand robes and places of honor at worship (as a priest, this part of the gospel always gets a little uncomfortable).  As is written: "They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation".

Juxtaposed with this narrative is the account of the widow who gives what little she has, but is accorded greater praise than those who give much more but give from their abundance. The widow's gift is truly a sacrifice; the gift of the rich is simply for show.  These two elements of the narratives complement one another: sacrifice versus show.

Unfortunately, the deeper meaning of this gospel is often lost in how it is used to elicit more money from congregations--"Give till it hurts, like the widow."  But what Jesus is getting at is more profound than being generous with one's money. 

As our lives are gifts, it is incredible to realize that our blessedness lies not only in our talents and riches but also in our sheer incompetence.  I'm not suggesting that our gifts are worthless, but too often our gifts are where we find gratification for our egos.  We can easily lose our gratitude by hiding our incompetence and displaying our gifts, so that communities take on a competitive nature for a type of ego-gratifying perfection, whereas Gospel perfection comes in our vulnerability to one another---our willingness to share our weaknesses as well as our strengths.  God's great love of humanity resulted in his self-sacrifice in Christ.  Love compelled this.  We, too, when we are living from our love for one another don't hide behind our strengths and make a show of our competencies, but allow others to see our in-competencies as well; giftedness embraces both our strengths and weaknesses.  Paul's famously paradoxical statement now is a bit less paradoxical: "That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2Cor. 12:10).

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Unworthiness is not Worthlessness: "Go your way; your faith has saved you."

Faith is a gift, freely given, immeasurably valuable, but rarely embraced.  Why?  Consider Bartimaeus in today’s gospel.  He is blind and wants to see.  In his blindness, he yells out in his darkness at the passing healer, Jesus, whom he knows will save him.  The folks around him probably wondered what he had done to displease God such that he was blind; and what does Bartimaeus do?  He makes a scene—a very annoying distraction for those trying to get a glimpse of Jesus.  Bartimaeus seems also to attribute his blindness with sinfulness because he doesn’t yell out “Make me better!  Over here, Jesus.  I’m blind.  Make me better”.  Bartimaeus gets Jesus’ attention by yelling "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me."  He yells this out twice.  By addressing Jesus as son of David, he implicitly acknowledges Jesus as successor to David and Messiah. Jesus’ reply is intriguing: “"Go your way; your faith has saved you."  Jesus didn’t say “I have healed you”, but rather focuses on the power of Bartimaeus’ faith. There is no recording of Bartimaeus even having been touched by Jesus.  Jesus simply declares him healed by Bartimaeus' faith and to “Go your way….”

Bartimaeus’ healing is a wonderful instruction in faith, healing and mission.  In leading with the phrase “Have mercy on me”, he understands healing begins establishing the correct relationship between himself and Jesus.  He, perhaps more than anyone else in the crowd, knows he is the least entitled; but his faith in the nature of Jesus’ compassion gives him the courage to call out. If our sense of unworthiness doesn’t compel us to call out, our real need isn’t healing, but faith. Realizing our unworthiness isn’t the same as worthlessness.  God’s love gives us our worth; we cannot generate it ourselves.  William Sloane Coffin, a famous preacher, wrote of this dynamic eloquently:

“Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value.  It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value.  Our value is a gift, not an achievement.” 

Bartimaeus understood the source of his worth by faith, and this is what gave him the courage to call out for healing from Jesus.  Approaching God in a humility that is based upon establishing this right-relationship is essential.  Too often a sense of worthlessness keeps our prayers silent or redirected towards a favorite saint.  We might be unworthy, but we are far from worthless.  God’s love establishes our worth for all time, independent of our actions.  Recognizing God’s love can allow us to cry out to God “Have mercy on me, a sinner….unworthy, but not worthless, because you love me, God!”  Faith, then, at its essence is letting God know you’ve received the gift and want to claim it despite all the negative voices telling you to “be silent.”

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The last few weeks we have been dealing with the desire of the disciples to be regarded as great, to be first, and now to be seated in a privileged position next to Jesus.  This taking place in the context of Jesus committing to his journey to Jerusalem where he knows his death at the hands of the Romans and Temple authorities is immanent.  Still, his closest followers don’t seem to get it.  Again, Jesus admonishes his disciples to embrace humility, and in doing so, embrace the way of the Cross, so that they might truly be great in the Kingdom. 

He asks the question: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"  The enthusiastically answer “yes!”  Then Jesus alludes to the true communion as being a way rather than a single act of devotion of statement of faith.  Jesus follows up their enthusiasm not with a pledge, but with a declaration that indeed they will walk the way of the Cross:

"The cup that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized”

Can we “drink the cup” and “be baptized with the baptism” that is Jesus’ way?  He then goes on to give them the means of this communion and initiation: 

“…whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

We pick up again on the link between being a servant (Jesus uses the more powerful image of being a slave) as key to the way of the Cross.  The servant/slave is giving one’s life, of living one’s life, for everyone.  A slave has no claim to regard, wealth or power; slaves do only one thing: serve.  Of all the images Jesus develops in the gospels—healers, disciples(students), exorcists, brothers and sisters—none is more potent than the challenge to give up the claims of a free man to become a slave to all; but, it is precisely in this renouncing of one’s freedom that Jesus knows true freedom exists.  What we cling to other than Christ and the Kingdom leads us to the imprisonment of ego,  pride and greater distance between oneself and God.

Until we become like children, servants, we cannot receive the grace that frees us because our hands are full of those things that truly enslave us rather than free us.  St. Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians:

"For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'" (Gal 5:13-14).

This is where we decide, and upon which we decide, whether or not to be true disciples of Christ. Whom do you serve?

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

All things are possible for God

I grew up with this Bible story of the Rich Young Man's entreaty for eternal life. Sadly, the Young Man, cannot part with his possessions.  Jesus then uses this as a teaching moment, not to excoriate the rich, per se, but to show how powerful we cling to that which impedes us from entering the Kingdom.

There is a popular story that attempts to deflate the hyperbole of a camel struggling to go through the eye of a needle. Without any historical evidence, some claim that there was a lesser gate in the wall surrounding Jerusalem that was opened at night, and to be able to move a camel through it, the camel had to crouch and kneel; it becomes inconvenient, but far from impossible. The rich feel better.

Both the Jerome Biblical Commentary (Catholic commentary) and the Interpreter's Bible (Protestant) dismiss this "urban legend". What is telling isn't that this myth of the "eye of a needle" has had so much traction. This parable, however, isn't a story about the rich, but a story about the nature of faith.

The power of the hyperbole is essential for this parable. It is more comfortable to believe that God rewards Christians who "do their duty", who obey the ordinances of the institution; however, Jesus is asking us to live this impossibility of dispossession---to get rid of anything that stands in the way of living the gospel.

Sometimes this can be rather a spectacular grace, but more often than not, it is "whispering grace",  grace that comes through a "chance encounter"with a stranger, or a growing sense of being loved by others who have experienced God's grace.  We then enter the Kingdom; we breach the impossibly narrow gates we've constructed to keep God's riches out.

Later in this gospel passage, Jesus declares to his disciples: "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God".  The nature of the Kingdom isn't an earthly institution we can control, or through our wits gain an advantage.  The Kingdom is ubiquitous.  It is all around us; we are swimming in it.  The Kingdom is revealed when we open our eyes to the grace of our poverty in Christ.  There is no greater act of downsizing than committing oneself to seriously following the way of Christ rather than the commands of the Church.  

The wealth we need to jettison is the wealth of the false faith that is the security of conforming ourselves to the will of the Church rather than the will of God.  When the institution doesn't reveal the Good News, we must live the Good News, not by fighting the church, but by modeling to the church what the Good News looks like.  We must live for the sake of Christ and the gospel, not the institutional grace of following rules. 

 

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will not lose his reward."---Jesus  The Gospel of Mark

Thirst Slakers,  Children, and Prophets

The gospel reading in Mark unites two completely different events and renders a fascinating connection.  The first excerpt, or pericope, is Jesus reproving John for preventing a man who is not Jesus' disciple from casting out demons by declaring "...whoever is not against us is for us."  The second pericope is taken from the context of warning his disciples not to scandalize children (the pais), or "little ones."  By linking these two passages together, Mark gives the moral force of punishment for those who lead astray the least and last (those in need of healing) with the "outsider" exorcist.  Remember last week when I told you that the word for child and servant was the same?  Today, we get an explicit linking between the two.

The Old Testament scripture is also about cautioning against limiting God's work to only "approved" sources.  Moses remonstrates Joshua of Nun for complaining that there were two outside of God's chosen seventy elders who were prophesying (Eldad and Medad).  Moses asks, "Are you jealous for my sake?  Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets.  Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!"

These readings suggest quite clearly that the true authority does not reside in human institutions as such, but in what is done in God's name.  Gospel authority is doing the will of God.  Period.

How does one, then, discern who is working in God's name?

Paul helps us with recognizing the "fruits of the Spirit" in " "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."(Gal.5:22-23).  In a sense, when you recognize goodness, there God's Spirit is at work.  The other element besides the work is time.  Are these works true and good over time.  The ruse never lasts; the wolf must eventually shed its sheep's clothing to breathe.

At the conclusion of all the Eucharistic prayers, the priest declares "...from whom all good things come." God is not only the source of all that is good, but God is also perfect goodness in essence.  Much of what is good is apparent, but finding the Resurrection looking at the Cross can be a bit more difficult.  Again, time reveals all.  Given enough time, the Cross becomes the Resurrection.  How long do we wait?  How deep is your faith?

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

"Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me,

receives not me but the One who sent me."

The Spirituality of Imperfection

We continue this week with the second of three passages where Jesus describes his fate of persecution and suffering that awaits him.  Last week we took a look at the cross from a different angle, the "Tao" of the cross emphasizing sticking it out until the end with Jesus as being the cross of discipleship.  This week we look at the cross of servanthood and humility.

Mark's gospel resonates with the Suffering Servant of Second Isiah where biblical scholar Reginald Fuller notes that in verse 13 (not included in the reading), God's suffering servant is called pais, a term used to denote both servant and child; both were at the very bottom of power in society.  So then Jesus uses children as an example of the types of people whom the disciples must embrace (Jesus embraces the child).  For us, who exalt children, this may not seem unusual, but in Jesus' time such an act of concern for the least and last was profound. 

After being told to get in line last week, Jesus address the rest of the herd as they vie to be " the first disciple".  Jesus tells them to become servants (pais).  In a sense, they should compete to become last and least.

In Matthew, this discourse about humility and greatness occurs in chapter 18 and more fully develops the concept of "receiving these pais".  Jesus declares that beyond "receiving", the disciples, one must become as pais to enter the Kingdom.  Clearly Jesus' words speak as much against the triumphalism rampant in the church today as it did for Jesus' disciples in the First Century C.E.

Simon Tugwell writes eloquently about the need to not count the success of the church with the world's standards of power and domination.  In his book Ways of Imperfection, Tugwell writes 

"There is a kind of unsatisfactoriness written into her [the church’s] very constitution, because she is only a transitional organization, keeping people and preparing them for a new creation . . . .Christianity has to be disappointing, precisely because it is not a mechanism for accomplishing all our human ambitions and aspirations, it is a mechanism for subjecting all things to the will of God"(1)

 Inevitably, our human ambitions always creep into our communities, and into the church as a whole, but today's gospel reminds us how Jesus regarded such attitudes of a triumphalist church.  We need to become like pais, servant/children, who, as Tugwell has written, are not valued by Jesus for their innocence, but for their vulnerability.  They receive everything as gift.

Imagine the transformation from a church of control and power to church as vulnerable as the wounded Christ; the vulnerability that grows gratitude becomes the mechanism for being Good News.  When people turn away from the church because they can't abide such a powerless institution unable to be an extension of their need for power and control, we shouldn't change to accommodate that sinful need.  The church's real gift is its witness of the Suffering Servant of Christ---vulnerable and committed to distributing God's grace to the least and last, and inviting transformation into that life of vulnerability, compassion and gratitude.