September 25, 2005: TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

September 25, 2005: TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Ezekiel 18:25-28
Philippians 2:1-11
Matthew 21:28-32

One of the most consoling, yet difficult realities to deal with in living lives of faith is that we humans are always capable of changing. Our biblical authors often reflect on this troubling possibility.

More than 500 years before Jesus’ birth, Ezekiel proclaims Yahweh’s take on the subject. “When a virtuous person turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die. But, if a wicked person, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life . . . , he shall not die.” God gives us an opportunity we rarely give to one another: the freedom to become someone new, whether good or evil.

Matthew’s Jesus falls back on that belief in defending his habit of hanging with sinners. In his example, the elder son says, “I am on my way!” when his father asks him to work in the vineyard, but he never goes. Meanwhile, the second son who originally replies, “No I will not!” when asked to do the same, later thinks better of it and goes off to work for his father. If the historical Jesus didn’t believe in the possibility of change, he would have dumped his ministry of repentance before it ever began.

Is it possible that Jesus was certain of the possibility of change not because he read about it in some philosophy book or heard it in the Scriptures proclaimed during synagogue services, but because he had already experienced such a transformation in his own life?

Because of our traditional emphasis on Jesus’ divinity, we feel uncomfortable delving into his humanity. Yet Jesus’ human dimension is what the author of the letter to the Hebrews is reflecting on when he makes the famous observation, “We do not have a high priest (Jesus) who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.” (4:15)

With this in mind, could we be interpreting Paul’s well-known Philippians hymn about Jesus’ emptying of himself in a way Paul never intended?

We usually hear the words of our second reading against the background of the first chapter of John’s gospel; the prologue in which the evangelist speaks about Jesus’ pre-existence as God. “In the beginning was the Word,” John writes, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (1:1) With John’s theology in mind, we reason that when Paul says Jesus “. . . emptied himself, and took the form of a slave . . .” he was referring to his coming to earth from heaven and becoming human. We forget that Paul wrote Philippians almost 40 years before John developed his particular pre-existence theology.

Is it possible that Paul was thinking, as we did last week, about Genesis 1 instead of John 1? If so, when Paul speaks about Jesus being “in the form of God” and “regarding equality with God something to be grasped,” could he simply be stating his belief that Jesus, a human like us, was created in God’s image and likeness?

Though we’re both human, the main difference between Jesus and us is that he successfully resisted the temptation to so deeply identify with God that he couldn’t identify with the most helpless of humans: slaves. Before he began his public ministry, he emptied himself enough to become one with the most worthless people on this planet.

Perhaps that’s why he was 30 years old before he “made his move.” His human emptying might have taken that long. Of course, following Paul’s theology, this drastic change in the human Jesus was why God eventually “highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name (Yahweh) above every other name.”

Jesus seems never to have expected his followers to go through any transformation which he himself hadn’t first experienced.

September 18, 2005: TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Isaiah 55: 6-9
Philippians 1:20-24, 27
Matthew 20:1-16

I still remember the definition of mystery I learned in my grade school religion classes. A mystery was something that you’d never understand – no matter how long you studied or thought about it. I also remember the story accompanying the definition. It described St. Augustine of Hippo walking along the seashore meditating on the Trinity. He encounters a small boy pouring buckets of sea water into a hole he had dug in the sand. When the famous theologian asks what he’s doing, the boy responds, “Emptying the sea into my hole.” Pointing out the impossibility of his endeavor, Augustine receives the warning, “Neither can you, Augustine, get the Trinity into your mind.”

After hearing that, whenever someone mentioned that a particular dogma or article of faith was a mystery, I simply pushed the concept out of my mind, and never thought of it again.

We find many mysteries in Scripture, but, contrary to my approach, our sacred authors presume we’ll think about them for the rest of our lives; not because we’re theologians, but because we’re followers of God. Biblical mysteries aren’t holy brain teasers; they’re concepts which convey the tensions embedded in the everyday living of our faith.

We hear about three such tensions in today’s three readings.

Deutero-Isaiah begins the reflection, bringing up a subject that always bugs those who give their lives to God: God’s immanence and transcendence.

On one hand, no other being is closer to us than God. As the well-known theologian Faith Hill puts it, “I can feel you breathe.” The prophet doesn’t express his experience in those terms, but the concept is the same. “Seek Yahweh,” he commands, “while he may be found, call him while his is near.”

But on the other hand, no one is further away from us than God. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Yahweh. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

In any relationship with God, it’s almost never either/or; it’s more frequently both/and.

Paul finds himself in a similar dilemma. Which is better: to die and be with Jesus in heaven, or continue to live and minister to his communities here on earth? “I am strongly attracted to both,” he tells the Romans. “I long to be free from this life and be with Christ, for that is the far better thing; yet it is more urgent that I remain alive for your sakes.” Our faith usually brings us more questions than it provides answers.

Matthew’s Jewish/Christian community is also experiencing a faith-given tension. If Jesus’ dying and rising is the saving event all Jews have been anticipating, how come Gentiles are not being welcomed into discipleship without first having to become Jews? They’re receiving benefits for which they never worked.

It’s no accident this particular parable is found only in Matthew. He’s the only evangelist writing for a community for whom the entry of Gentiles into the church is a problem. Instead of concentrating on the “fairness” of the estate owner’s actions, Jesus invites us to zero in on his generosity. “I am free to do as I please with my money, am I not? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

No matter how hard we try, no one can psyche out God. God’s actions are beyond anything our human brains can conjure up. That seems to be why Jesus closes the pericope with the disconcerting statement: “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.”

There are many days when I’d like to encounter some kid on a beach encouraging me to stop thinking about tension-filled situations. But instead of the boy, I keep encountering God’s tension-filled word.

September 11, 2005: TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings
Sirach 27:30-28:7
Romans 14:7-9
Matthew 18:21-35

Too bad we can’t make today’s second reading our first. Paul’s advice to the Romans, “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself!” holds the key for interpreting the passages from Sirach and Matthew. Both address our obligation to forgive others.

The second century, BCE, author of Sirach summarizes his theology in two lines: “Should they nourish anger against their fellows and expect healing from Yahweh? Should they refuse mercy to their fellows, yet seek pardon for their own sins?”

Matthew’s Jesus delivers a parallel statement to his disciples. “So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

Why does God’s forgiveness of us depend on our forgiveness of others?

Most of us learned about forgiveness within the structure of sacramental confession. Drilled in the things necessary for being forgiven by the priest in the confessional, we were careful to adequately examine our conscience, tell all our serious sins by kind and number, be sincerely sorry for them, and quickly perform our penance. We were taught that when we successfully completed these requirements, God forgave our sins. To forgive those who had sinned against us was, at most, something we did for “extra credit.”

The only problem with such a legalistic, secure approach is that both Sirach and Jesus turn an element, which many of us consider incidental, into an essential part of the process of forgiveness.

As I mentioned above, their reasoning is based on Paul’s comments to the community in Rome. He immediately follows his statement about living for oneself with the remark, “If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

Paul is trying to get his readers to look at themselves from a perspective most people never notice. As a good Jew, the Apostle deeply believes in the Priestly author’s statement in Genesis 1:27: “God created man in his image, in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.”

Archaeologists have never discovered a statue, fresco or bas-relief of Yahweh. We know from the Ten Commandments that Jews are forbidden to create an image of their God. They believed Yahweh had already taken care of that by creating human beings. We are the “idol” or likeness of our God.

I remember, as a child, asking one of my teachers, “What actual part of me mirrors God?” I don’t remember the exact response, but it wasn’t very satisfactory. Years later, as a student of Scripture, I learned that the part of me which best demonstrates I’m made in God’s image and likeness is the part which forgives others.

As the late Ursuline Scripture scholar Suzanne Schrautemyer once observed, “The only thing of God we humans can consistently imitate is God’s forgiveness.” If we’re not a forgiving people, we can’t be God’s people.

Notice how Matthew’s Jesus completely reverses Lamech’s Genesis 4 boast. “I have killed a man for wounding me,” the bully brags, “a boy for bruising me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” Jesus commands his followers to forgive one another “. . .not seven times, but seventy times seven times.”

If we’re to reflect God’s likeness to those around us, it’s essential that we forgive. To refuse pardon has dire consequences. Among other things, we’re announcing to everyone that God doesn’t pardon.

How can we expect to be absolved by someone who, as we’ve already demonstrated by our lifestyle of non-forgiveness, doesn’t forgive? Unless we show by our acts of forgiving that God forgives, we’ve really up a creek when we sin.

September 4, 2005: TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

RVC’s Weekly Spiritual Essay

Readings
Ezekiel 33:7-9
Romans 13:8-10
Matthew 18:15-20

The easiest definition of a biblical prophet to understand and memorize is that of the late Fr. Bruce Vawter: the prophet is the conscience of the people.

But our sacred authors include other definitions of prophets and prophecy in their writings. Today’s Ezekiel passage contains one of the most significant. “You, son of man,” Yahweh says, “I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel; when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me.”

The watchman image conveys a picture of someone out in front, ahead of everyone else, in a position to see now what others will only see later. In a scriptural environment, the prophet is someone who lives on the cutting edge of morality. As Hans Walter Wolff always reminded us, “The prophet is the person who provides us with the future implications of our present actions.” The prophet/watchman sees what most of us have yet to notice.

That’s why we frequently label as modern prophets such people as the 19th century abolitionists and suffragettes, or Dr. Martin Luther King, or even Ralph Nader. Almost everyone today appreciates the wisdom and justice of their causes. Yet during their day and age they stood almost alone. (Remember how Jesus once sarcastically remarked that people honor the tombs of the prophets their ancestors killed?)

Paul assumes a prophetic stance when, in our Romans passage, he encourages his readers, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law . . . Love never does any wrong to the neighbor, hence love is the fulfillment of the law.”

In the midst of all the dos and don’ts of the 613 laws of Moses, the Apostle reminds him community of the poignant simplicity of Jesus’ prophetic teaching. Whatever isn’t done with love, isn’t from God. No human-made laws should ever stop us from loving.

In our gospel pericope, Matthew zeroes in on the community dimension of prophecy. Though Christians are expected to surface individual prophets in ministering among them, they also must acknowledge that they, as the Body of Christ, are likewise gifted and burdened with prophecy.

As prophets, Jesus commands us to confront evil in our midst and not ignore it. Starting with individual confrontations, Christian practice eventually ends up with the whole community – the “church” – playing a role. (Of course, when Jesus, in today’s pericope, tells us to treat someone as “a Gentile or tax collector,” we can never forget the loving way in which he related to such individuals.)

This belief in the community’s prophetic power and obligation is rooted in the statement with which Matthew ends our liturgical selection. “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus teaches, “there am I in their midst.” That’s why Jesus can categorically state, “Whatever you (the church) bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Because of an exaggerated reliance on the hierarchical structure of our church, few Catholics ever think of themselves as the community’s watchmen or watchwomen. We hear the words about binding and loosing directed to Peter in chapter 16 and forget Jesus directs those same words to everyone here in chapter 18. It’s evident from today’s gospel that Jesus never envisioned his followers as being so morally passive, waiting patiently for some authority figure “from above” to tell them what’s right or wrong.

Maybe the most valuable thing our individual prophets are stressing today might be the prophetic ministry of the whole Christian community. Hopefully their prophetic words might eventually compel us to develop our own God-given consciences.