Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

“'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'"  Luke 16:31

                Sometimes when I am not presiding at Mass, my mind wanders (actually, it wanders when I’m presiding, too, on occasion).  What I imagine seeing is a great white light descending from the crucifix and a low, soothing voice proclaiming: “Everyone here today who is sick is healed; everyone who cannot pay your monthly bills, your debts canceled; everyone whose relationships have become broken is healed.”  Of course, there is stunned silence, and then great rejoicing.  The Eucharist becomes energized with profound thanksgiving as befits its name.  Thousands flock to the next Mass, etc…you get the idea.

            These daydreams arise, I suspect, from what I call “faith fatigue.”  So often in our daily lives, we are confronted by problems and suffering that overwhelm us and our perceived ability to make a "meaningful" response.  As the psalmist laments in Psalm 73:

“This is what the wicked are like-- always carefree, they increase in wealth. Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.  All day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning.”

            This story of the rich man, Dives, and Lazarus was familiar to Jesus’ time and was used to encourage its listeners to act with justice towards the poor.  But, in true form, Jesus re-works the common line of “treat the poor with justice” by revealing the source of why folks fail in living with compassion towards the poor.  Jesus uses the story about the rich man(Dives) suffering in the afterlife and Lazarus resting comfortably in “Abraham’s bosom,” a type of Heaven, as being more than a punishment-reward story; it is more than a kind of “poor man’s revenge” tale.  The story gets at why people ignore the prophetic in their lives.  I say “prophetic” rather than prophets because prophecy comes to us in many different forms.

            The gist is that spectacle will not convince if people are not disposed to see it.  In other words, you can’t grow faith from spectacle. Using the typical figure of a “leap of faith,” William Sloane Coffin once preached “First you leap, and then you get wings.”  One must embrace Faith before “Moses and the prophets” become credible sources of wisdom.

            It would seem self-evident that treating the poor with justice is an ethic that needs no faith; however, what constitutes “justice” is always the part most easily rationalized.  Jesus, after all, is famously quoted that “the poor you will always have with you.” This, taken from when the poor woman anointed Jesus’ feet at Bethany with expensive perfumed oil and the disciples were indignant at the apparent waste of something that could have been sold and used to help the poor.  The lesson in connection to what constitutes “justice” reveals that it isn’t simply a matter of raising money and giving it away, but living your “justice” as something that flows from one’s worship of God.  To paraphrase a famous advocate and social justice worker, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, “God has not called me to be successful; he has called me to be faithful.”  The social justice of the Christian is animated by how we view every human, not just the poor ones. It comes from a faith lived that is oriented towards loving the world, but its source is distinctly divine.

            If we would simply do good to avoid punishment in the afterlife, then our works are in vain; such dedication to humanity cannot be sustained out of fear, but only out of love.  The saints were all first in love with God before they loved humanity with such passion.  We seek the Kingdom first in relationship, a living and dynamic relationship with the Divine so that the words of “Moses and the prophets” mean more than yet another voice “crying out in the wilderness” telling us to act with justice.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

"You cannot serve both God and mammon"--Jesus, Luke 16:13

The word “mammon” means more than money.  At its root, it implies anything that we rely on for our life.  Luke Timothy Johnson suggests in his commentary on Luke that Jesus might have been using the word as a bilingual pun with the word for faith.  An intriguing prospect; instead of the pairing of God vs. Money, it now is a pairing of “what we place our faith in other than God” versus “our faith in God.”  This isn’t to suggest that we can safely exclude money from our understanding.  Clearly, given the context of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples, money is the key element; however, it does broaden our concern not to exclude anything else that we might place our faith in other than God.

            As in Jesus’ time, money is a fundamental source of security. Money provides for our basic needs, but it can also afford us an independence that is inimical to the gospel.  Paul Piff, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, recently completed a study which suggests that the wealthiest Americans are less likely to engage in ethical behavior than the poorest. Most striking was, however, the relative likelihood of giving to charity.  Piff found The wealthiest Americans donate 1.3 percent of their income; the poorest, 3.2 percent.  Piff speculates that the poor live dependent upon one another more than the wealthy.  In a nutshell, independence from one’s neighbor is the defining social aspect of being rich.

            The gospel understanding of wealth regarding insulating the wealthy from the community is at the heart of Jesus’ and Amos’ admonitions in today’s readings. William Sloane Coffin once declared in a sermon “To believe you can approach transcendence without drawing nearer in compassion to suffering humanity is to fool yourself. There can be no genuine personal religious conversion without a change in social attitude”.  This is key in today’s gospel. 

            The spiritual toxin of wealth is the building of barriers between oneself and those who suffer. But we can do this wall building, to some extent, without great riches.  All it takes is the desire to avoid those who suffer, and make it a priority to avoid any form of suffering at all cost. If the gospel teaches us anything, it teaches us to join in the mess and suffering of those on the margins of society, to need less so that we may share more of what we have.  Wealth, for St. John Chrysostom, was associated with thievery:  

"Not to share our wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own wealth, but theirs." [St. John Chrysostom (+ 407 A.D), On Wealth and Poverty, p. 55, SVS, Crestwood, NY 1984]

For Christians, the wealth we have to share is the amount we have that we do not need.  Jesus needed nothing and admonished his disciples to “carry nothing with you.”  Poverty as a Christian virtue isn’t the poverty of not having enough, but rather it is the grace of not seeking more than we need.  The widow who gave from her need was blessed rather than the person of means giving proportionally less from his wealth.  One gave in faith; the other gave secure in the knowledge that his sacrifice could not result in any hardship. Ultimately, for the Christian, it is the giving of our greatest gift, our life, for others.  To live for others and with others, is the real ethic of Christian wealth. God gave himself to humanity, all he had to Jesus, that we might have all that God has; he has held nothing for himself. He came into the world poor, and died with only a purple cloak on loan, but gave humanity the gift of Himself.

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Lost and Found

"God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home.”
 ---Henry Nouwen The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

              The longer of today’s gospel reading includes the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  Because we will hear that parable again in the season of Lent, I have decided to save it for later; however, I will mention it, since it is known by every Christian. It has a unique place with the other two parables: the Parable of the Lost Coin and the Parable of the Lost Sheep.  Atonement is the common thread that unites these three parables.  For those who need brushing up in theological-speak, atonement is God’s action to save humanity through Christ’s sacrifice. An easier way to think of atonement is at-one-ment; that we are united to God through the suffering and death of Christ who sacrificed himself for humanity.

Both parables today end with the idea that the salvation of a single sinner is vital.  Put another way: God is saying, “I’m saving humanity one soul at a time.”

            Often when we consider salvation, we think of a blanket of mercy encompassing the entire globe, kind of like a divine dome of safety.  But what today’s gospel parables suggest is a very personal salvation, of God seeking the one who needs to be found.  It is the personal image of the shepherd placing the lost sheep on his shoulders and carrying it home; it is the picture of a woman who has lost one of ten coins lighting a lamp and sweeping the house for the single lost coin.  God’s salvation is universally offered not through a vast network of spiritual energy, but as an individual initiative.

            The personal aspect is further enhanced, though, with the very clear notion that God is in pursuit of us.  He is looking for us like some beleaguered shepherd or a miserly woman who refuses to give up a single coin; there is no “acceptable loss” count with God.  That God seeks the individual is tough for us to imagine.  The eternal creative and redemptive force of the universe worries that a single human might slip through the cracks unnoticed is extraordinary.  Very often I encounter people who say with great exasperation, “I looked, and I haven’t found God.”  The good news, I tell them, is that is okay, He is looking for you, too, and I doubt he will fail.  They look at me incredulously and usually say something like “If that is true, what is taking so long.”  I put my hand on their shoulder, and say “Welcome home; you are found.”

            Being found by God isn’t what most people think.  It isn’t accompanied by the trumpet sounds of angels or a large hand descending through the clouds to tap one on the shoulder.  Rather, it is that we are found, slip away, and are found again in a cosmic game of hide-and-go-seek with God. We are found, experience the joy of a new love and then are drawn away when times get tough, or things go wrong, and wonder why God isn’t with us.  God is always with us and has never left since the day we opened our heart to Him. Rumi, that great Sufi mystic tells of God’s closeness:

God is "what is nearer to you than your neck-vein,"
You have cast the arrow of speculation afar off.
O you, who have made ready your bow and arrows,
The game is close to you, and you shoot too far off.
The further a man shoots, the further off he is,
And the more removed from the treasure he seeks.
The philosopher kills himself with thinking,
Tell him that his back is turned to that treasure;
Tell him that the more he runs to and fro,
The further he is removed from his heart's desire.
The Almighty says, "Make efforts in our ways,"
Not "Make efforts away from us," O restless one.

Finally, God is in the image of the Prodigal Son’s father who has sighted his son from afar, and lifts up his garment and runs out to greet him.  How can God find us again? Sit still.  Open your heart and call to mind who last showed you love, and to whom you loved last; God is in your midst.

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

How much is this going to cost me?

               

“…grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.” ---Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship

                I think it is important to notice in today’s gospel that “great crowds” were following Jesus.  Let’s face it, after curing the sick, raising the dead and “sticking it to the man” publically, Jesus’ popularity grew, and the setting of today’s teaching parables is the home of a local prominent Pharisee on the Sabbath.  Jesus wasn’t there for a salon of philosophers, but to cure the Pharisee of “an abnormal swelling of his body”.  This time, it is Jesus asking the difficult question: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”  The gospel records that everyone remained silent, and Jesus healed the man. This healing was preceded by last week’s gospel of the Parable of the Great Banquet that was chiefly about humility.  Today’s gospel follows and is about the cost of discipleship.  Imagine the great interest in what Jesus had to say on the heels of healing on the Sabbath, and healing a Pharisee to boot! But instead of handing out applications for discipleship and encouraging his audience to enlist, Luke’s gospel shows Jesus admonishing his followers to consider the cost of discipleship; that following Him involves renunciation, the “hating” of one’s family, and one's security, and “yes—even life itself.” What follows is a couple of illustrations of the prudence of calculating the cost; ironic, since the demand from Jesus is that unless you give up everything, you cannot be a disciple of his. Notice the two actions that are essential: carrying one's cross and renouncing all that you have.  If your hands are busy holding on tightly to things, or even to relationships such that you can't  pick up your cross, you need to let something go; multitasking is as dangerous behind the wheel as it is in the spiritual life.  It is called a divided heart.

            Of course, Jesus isn’t suggesting that one hates his family as a precondition, but rather be willing to find one’s security and honor apart from one’s family—a tall order in first-century civilization.  Those without families were those without standing in society, without security.  This is what Jesus means by “hating” one's family.  But what about “life itself”?   Jesus knew the ultimate cost is martyrdom.  Jesus knew he was headed for the cross that awaited him in Jerusalem, and he knew those who followed him could suffer a similar fate.  Even today, Christians around the world are being martyred for their faith.

            A genuine sacrifice of Christians today, though, is not primarily the sacrifice of one’s life in a decisive moment but comes less apparently in the sacrifice of oneself lived for others over a lifetime.  The gradual giving away of one’s youth and figure to mother a family; the life of those dedicated to living among the poor to ease their suffering, or to love the stranger whom no one has time to love.  We can sacrifice our time to listen to a friend whose life is a train wreck, or go without something we like to share what little we have with a stranger who has even less.  Let our fasting also arise from refraining from eating that we may be free to stay longer with one who needs us rather than default to the need for bodily sustenance.  These “crosses” may not make headlines, but they transform the hearts of those for whom we sacrifice, and they change us; that is the point of Jesus’ message: to sacrifice “even life itself” for others outside our family, friends and those for whom we are naturally inclined to sacrifice. So many of us, myself included, are not condemned by our great lives of scandal and sinfulness, but our regular lives of prudent engagement where sacrifices are far to carefully planned and controlled.  Christianity, when lived as good news for the world, is less about acquiring interior peace and tranquility in mystical rapture, and more about realizing that mystical rapture is always preceded by sacrificial love. What transforms us into a disciple is ultimately our commitment to following Christ on the way to the cross and praying every step of the way for a resurrection.