AUGUST 27, 2006: TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17,18b
Ephesians 5:21-32
John 6:60-69

As a student at Rome's Gregorian University during the early 60s, I was especially influenced by those moral theology professors who were beginning to explore the field of the "fundamental option." These teachers encouraged us to look beyond some of the small actions which made up our grade school examination of conscience, and to zero in on the root choices we make in life. By concentrating on such life-altering decisions, we would better be able to deal with the "little stuff" that caused us so many moral problems.

Though not everyone agreed with their approach, they received a huge vote of confidence ten years later when the Vatican II inspired reforms of the sacrament of reconciliation were promulgated. We confessors were then encouraged to help penitents go beyond their surface sins and begin to explore the deeper choices they had made, choices which eventually led to the sinful things they were confessing. We were first to assist them in discovering the fundamental options which governed their lives, then help them reflect on how those choices meshed with or differed from the choices Jesus had made in selflessly giving himself to God and others. No longer was there to be just a quick recitation of sins, a little pep talk, penance, act of contrition and absolution. If this new approach were put into practice, experts at the time thought the average confession should last at least 20 minutes!

But except for creating a "face to face" space in our confessionals, few of those reforms were ever implemented. That's why some of us priests must be having a few guilt feelings as we hear today's three readings. Each revolves around a fundamental choice which people are presumed to make, a choice which determines how they live their lives.

Joshua offers his people a clear alternative. "If it does not please you," he announces, "to serve Yahweh, decide today whom you will serve, the gods your ancestors served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are now dwelling. As for me and my household, we will serve Yahweh." Their lives and those of their descendants will be determined by the choice they make.

Paul also offers husbands and wives in Ephesus an option. Will they live out their marriage as single, independent people, trying selfishly to get as much from their formal relationship as they possibly can? Or will they imitate the risen Jesus' selfless relationship with his church; "nourishing and cherishing" one's spouse, concerned only for the other's good? Such a decision isn't made just once a life-time. It's made every time a person gives himself or herself to another, as Jesus constantly gives himself to us. The more we accept his giving, the more we should give ourselves.

John asks his community to reflect on an option they once made in order to help them understand the new dimension of the Eucharist which his gospel offers. Though some Christians at the time were no longer "accompanying" John's Jesus down this new, unexplored road, those who were willing to start the journey could only fall back on the choice they made years before. "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."

Having put Jesus at the center of their lives, they looked at everything through the lens of that option. They had decided to give themselves to the risen Jesus working among them, even if the life he offered led them into new ways of understanding reality.

Even if we don't get lots of fundamental option theology in the confessional, we certainly get it in Scripture. But no matter where it comes from, "Try it, you’ll like it!" It's guaranteed to change your moral life.

AUGUST 20, 2006: TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Proverbs 9:1-6
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Centuries before John composed his gospel, the Greek philosopher Plato became well-known because of his unique explanation of our human condition. In his view of the world, we're slaves chained together facing the rear wall of a cave, unable to turn around and look at what's going on at the entrance behind us. All we know of reality are the shadows of objects which pass by the mouth of the cave, projected on the wall One of the goals of Plato's philosophy is to help us break our chains, turn around and experience things as they really are, to discover the "true" in life.

Many experts on John are convinced that he's referring to Plato's belief in those passages of his gospel in which he calls something or someone "true." He believes that only our experience of the risen Jesus helps us break our chains and lets us see the real instead of the shadow. If these scholars are correct, today's liturgical pericope is one of the best known instances of John employing that Platonic concept.

"Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood," Jesus warns, "you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that one on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh remain in me and I in them."

Some of us were brought up to believe this passage simply promises that the more communions we receive, the better chance we have of getting into heaven. That doesn't appear to be what John's Jesus is saying. First, he doesn't promise that one day we'll have eternal life; he teaches that we already possess it. We're not going to receive something new "on the last day." We'll just be raised into a different dimension of the true life Jesus gave us on the day we began to believe and imitate him. Second, for John the actual reception is less important than our frame of mind when we receive.

Each Christian biblical author contends that belief in Jesus means we commit ourselves to dying and rising with him by giving ourselves to others. John has Jesus express that reality in a disturbingly direct way during the Last Supper: "This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." (15-12-13)

Those who break their chains, turn around and begin to live in the true world in which Jesus lives will eat the food and drink the cup that people who have moved out of the cave must eat and drink in order to maintain their new, eternal, true life. Our oneness with Jesus implies that we live completely different from the way those who are still chained live.

That's why Paul expects his Ephesian Christians to stand out from others in their community. ". . . Be filled with the Spirit," he writes, "addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs . . . giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father." Such unique behavior demonstrates that they're no longer facing the wall.

No wonder Jewish members of the early church found something in our Proverbs passage which many of their fellow Jews never noticed. "Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed! Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding." These first converts to the faith of Jesus were convinced that they had stepped across the line which separated the true from the shadow. They had discovered real wisdom.

The problem Jesus faced is still the problem we face today. How do you get people to "turn around," to die and rise enough to experience the reality of God working in their lives?

AUGUST 13, 2006: NINETEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
I Kings 19:4-8
Ephesians 4:30-5:2
John 6:41-51

Most tours of the Holy Land offer the option of a side trip to Mt. Sinai. Though the vast majority of biblical archeologists doubt the mount to which the tourists are brought is the actual Mt. Sinai we hear about in Exodus, the modern practice of visiting the mountain of the covenant is interesting. In Scripture only one person - the prophet Elijah - ever visits the sacred mountain (Horeb) after the original covenant-making Israelites depart its premises, and when he finally arrives after his forty day and forty night trek, Yahweh tells him he shouldn't have come.

The ancient Jews never seemed nostalgic for the mountain which witnessed their agreement with Yahweh. Though they built many shrines in Israel after they defeated the country's original inhabitants, no Jew ever goes back into the Sinai to build a shrine at Mt. Horeb.

On the other hand, no Jew can ever forget what happened on that special piece of real estate. The 613 laws which their ancestors, at that place, agreed to keep is a central focus of their faith.

Early Christianity imitated early Judaism. No disciple of the historical Jesus seems to have returned to the land he inhabited for over 30 years to create shrines out of the places he frequented. It was almost 300 years before Helena, Constantine's mother, made a serious attempt to even locate those special places. (That's why there's little certainty about the authenticity of many of the Holy Land's sacred Christian places.)

Like our Jewish ancestors, our Christian ancestors were more concerned with the meaning of what happened than with the place where it happened.

When, for instance, John's community gathered for the Lord's Supper, its leaders didn't want them to get bogged down in the externals of the event. We know from the evangelist's chapter 13 foot washing pericope that he expected Jesus' disciples to go beyond the actual ritual in order to appreciate the value and worth of everyone joining in the Eucharist.

But it's also clear from today's gospel passage that John was specifically concerned that his readers not get bogged down in just one interpretation of the bread and wine employed during the meal.

In today's narrative, John stresses that the bread we consume is more than just a guarantee that one day we'll reach eternal life. It's actually a part of that eternal life. "Amen I say to you," John's Jesus proclaims, "whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life . . . . This is the bread that came down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die."

Some of us probably don't understand the unique meaning John gives to our participation in the Lord's Supper. He believes when we gather for this meal, we leave this world behind and take a step into eternity. If we understood, we'd have outlawed clocks and watches in eucharistic communities centuries ago, just as Moslems outlaw shoes in mosques. We'd have a sign in every vesting area forbidding ministers to leave with a watch on his or her wrist. Time, as we know it, doesn't exist during the Eucharist.

Yet as Paul reminds his community in Ephesus, there are always time-conditioned dimension in everything our faith expects us to experience. No matter how close-knit we are, our community constantly faces the danger of "bitterness, fury, anger, shouting and reviling." The Apostle reasons that God doesn't relate to us in those ways. How then can we relate to others in those ways? No matter how our formal Eucharist is structured, it must always show that we're imitating Jesus' sacrificial love for all.

Just as we're to leave our watches on the vesting table or slip them into our pockets and purses during the Breaking of Bread, so should we also leave behind our human, time-conditioned view of others during the celebration.

AUGUST 6, 2006: TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS

Readings
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
II Peter 1:16-19
Mark 9:2-10

Do you remember what happened when your parents first met the person who eventually became your spouse? Probably they weren't too impressed. Later, when you were alone with them, you tried to explain why he or she was so special. You had experienced things about and with this individual which most people, at first glance, had never noticed; things which not only attracted you, but if you followed through on your insights, could change your life.

The first disciples of the historical Jesus faced the same problem. Most of the inhabitants of Capernaum saw only the town carpenter when Jesus crossed their path. Probably they talked only about "carpenter stuff" during their brief encounters. Yet the small handful who had heard him talk about God's kingdom among them, who had seen how he related to the unfortunates on society's perimeter, experienced something in Jesus that others never noticed. They also knew that what they experienced could change the way they lived their lives.

Like all of us, they would have put their experiences of Jesus into categories with which they were familiar. Being Jews, they reflected on their Scriptures, surfacing ideas which demonstrated how he was the one who fulfilled many of the dreams they shared; dreams of God and the Messiah working among the Chosen People, bringing the kind of life they longed for.

That's why Moses and Elijah are always included in transfiguration narratives. In Scripture, the Bible is never called the Bible. It's simply referred to as "the law and the prophets." In this situation, Moses represents the law, Elijah the prophets. Their appearance demonstrates that the only way to understand Jesus is within the context of the Scriptures on which he based his reform.

His disciples also realized Jesus was going to usher in a new era, the time all Jews anticipate every fall when they participate in the fest of Booths. The celebration shows their belief that one day Yahweh will again come among them, as Yahweh had done during their wandering in the wilderness. When that happens, they will return to living in tents or booths as their ancestors had for 40 years. That's why Peter talks about setting up three tents. He's really saying, "What we expect in the future is actually happening now!"

These initial disciples also found Daniel's well-known "Son of Man" pericope helpful in understanding Jesus. As Alexander Di Lella states in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, the original apocalyptic writer of this book probably intended the one "coming on the clouds of heaven" to be a symbol of God's kingdom. "However, because in Daniel the thought of 'kingdom' often shifts imperceptibly into that of 'king,' the concept of the 'son of man' eventually shifted from a figure of speech for the theocratic kingdom into a term for the messianic king himself." That's exactly how the authors of the Christian Scriptures interpreted the phrase.

On the other hand, we must be careful how we interpret II Peter's comment, ". . . We did not follow cleverly devised myths . . . ." Though the experience of perceiving Jesus' real personality wasn't a myth, all Scripture scholars agree that Mark used mythic concepts in his description of that insight.

One last point. The CBS Evening News practice of daily highlighting one of our military killed in Iraq or Afghanistan bothers me a little. Had these individuals not died, probably few people would have reflected on their personalities deeply enough to surface the outstanding characteristics profiled in those brief segments. In the same way, had Jesus not died and rose, few of his contemporaries would have noticed the qualities in him that our sacred authors have passed on to us.