SEPTEMBER 17, 2006: TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Isaiah 50:5-9a
James 2:14-18
Mark 8:27-35

Last week's readings were a good introduction to today's readings. What we surfaced about the Christian's ability to hear, will now be amplified by the Christian's obligation to hear.

One cannot have been Carroll Stuhlmueller's student without bowing reverently when approaching Deutero-Isaiah's third song of the Suffering Servant - today's first reading. Carroll always stressed that it presents Scripture's best definition of a disciple of God. "Morning after morning," the prophet reflects, "Yahweh opens my ear that I may hear . . . ."

True biblical followers of God aren't people who adhere to a strict regimen of prayer and penance, or get theology or Scripture degrees. Faithful disciples hit the floor every morning listening, attentive to what God is saying today that they didn't hear God say yesterday.

Mark agrees with the hearing definition of discipleship, especially when he treats a huge problem in his Roman community. Some had developed ways of following Jesus which left out imitating his death.

Of course, no one believed they died with Jesus by actually having themselves nailed to a cross. Dying can take different forms. But before anything else, a Christian is expected to die in the same way the historical Jesus died, long before his physical death. We're actually called to imitate the kind of dying which led to his physical death.

Mark creates three significant narratives to remind his readers about the forms their deaths are to take. Found in three successive chapters (8, 9, 10), each has been constructed using the same pattern. Jesus always begins by predicting his passion, death and resurrection, then one or more of his disciples says or does something to show they're not willing to die. The passage ends with Jesus clarifying what it means to die.

Today's gospel is the first in Mark's series. Peter is given the honor of making a Christian fool of himself. After Jesus' initial prediction, "Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him." Jesus doesn't appreciate Peter's concern. "At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, 'Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as humans do.'"

Mark closes the passage by having Jesus remind his followers of the first way of dying with him. "Those who wish to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me."

Scripture scholars believe it wouldn't have made sense until after his own crucifixion for the historical Jesus to use the word "cross" in this context. He probably told his followers to carry their "tau."

Tau is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet - a "T." Pious Jews used it to show they were totally open to Yahweh's will. (More than 1,000 years later, Francis of Assisi would use it in the same way.) In our culture we say someone did something from A to Z; they said from Aleph to Tau, or simply, to the Tau. Carrying your tau means, like Deutero-Isaiah, to listen for and respond to God speaking in your life. It's easy to understand, after Jesus' death and resurrection, how Christians converted the tau into a cross.

Mark believed the first step in dying with Jesus revolved around a willingness to imitate Jesus' determination to accept God's will as his own. Only by losing one's life on that level would one eventually save one's life. According to James, it's the sort of "work" which gives life to faith.

No wonder early Christian communities turned to Deutero-Isaiah's four songs of the Suffering Servant when they attempted to understand Jesus and his effect on their lives. Especially in the third, they discovered what Jesus discovered: having an open, listening relationship with God always trumps having a relationship with a set of laws or a religious institution.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2006: TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 2:1-5
Mark 7:31-37

Many of us believe the reason each of the four evangelists allots so much space for Jesus' miracles is to prove beyond doubt that he's God. Serious students of Scripture tell us that's not correct. Christians believed the Capernaum carpenter was God before they even heard of gospels. By the time gospels were composed, Jesus' divinity was taken for granted. Our Christian Scriptures were directed to believers, not unbelievers. Besides, in the biblical world, working miracles wasn't necessarily a sign of divinity. A near-contemporary of Jesus, Apollonius of Tyana, supposedly worked hundreds of "documented" miracles, yet never claimed to be a god.

Our sacred authors include miracles in their narratives to demonstrate what kind of a God Jesus is.

Accustomed to a catechism faith, when we modern Christians feel an urge to surface God's attributes, we just turn to the appropriate section of the book, track down the proper question, and "Voila!" we find a comprehensive list of God's characteristics. We forget that the people who produced our Christian Scriptures had no catechisms; they had only their experiences of the risen Jesus present and working in their lives, experiences the writers wanted their readers to reflect upon. Only by surfacing how Jesus changed their lives could they surface what the divine Jesus was like.

That's why it shouldn't surprise us that in today's pericope, Mark invites us to think about how Jesus, as God, both opens our ears and gives us the ability to speak. Those who first heard this passage were amazed their faith in Jesus had enabled them to hear things they never heard before, not because the sounds hadn't been hitting their ears, but because they didn't have the ability to distinguish those specific sounds from others. The risen Jesus had pronounced "Ephphatha!" over each of them. And because they now heard new things, they were also able to speak new things, things that almost no one around them spoke.

James gives us an example of these new insights. Because each Christian had felt God's love in a special way through the presence of Jesus among them, they began to hear the cries of the poor in a way they had never heard before. Once they discovered that they're all equal in Jesus, they knew they never again could discriminate. That's why James urges his community, "My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly . . . ." Once our ears are open to new voices, we begin to act in new ways.

No wonder the early church loved to quote today's Isaiah reading. They had experienced the very things the prophet had assured his people Yahweh would eventually bring about. "Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing." They had stepped into a new world. It was like ". . . streams (bursting) forth in the desert and rivers in the steppe." They were able to live like they'd never lived before.

Jesus didn't come just to get us into heaven. He came also to help us enjoy a life we couldn't imagine experiencing without his being in it, a life that will carry us into eternity with him.

Jesus' gospel miracles are just one way second and third generation Christians gave voice to the newness they had achieved in their Christ-filled lives. It would be interesting, after reflecting on today's gospel, to compose some new gospel miracles, miracles which mirror our experiences of Jesus changing our lives. We might come up with a few the evangelists never thought of.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2006: TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8
James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

I grew up trying frantically to keep all sorts of religious rules and regulations. I was afraid of spending eternity in hell, or a big part of pre-eternity in purgatory. It didn't make a lot of difference whether God or the church created the laws. The only way to get into heaven was to obey them.

Moses obviously wasn't raised Catholic. In today's Deuteronomy passage he commands his people to ". . . hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe . . . ," but he never mentions anything about getting into heaven or avoiding purgatory. He gives only two reasons for obeying those God-given laws: ". . . that you may live, and may enter into and take possession of the land which Yahweh . . . is giving you."

There's a reason for Moses' omission: he lived 1,100 years before Jews began to believe in a heaven as we know it today. For the greater part of the Hebrew Scriptures, people obeyed God's laws only because, by doing so, they achieved a long, fulfilling life. All their moral perks revolved around this world; the only world ancient Jews knew.

But even Jesus and his first followers didn't put all their eggs into the eternal life basket. Though as Pharisees they believed in an afterlife, they seemed, like Moses, to be more concerned with the quality of this life than I was taught to be as a child.

Notice, for instance, when Jesus emphasizes the difference between divine laws and human laws in today's gospel pericope, he never mentions anything abut getting into heaven. On the contrary, in the example he offers of creating human loopholes to avoid God's commands - an example which, for some unexplained reason, is omitted from our liturgical passage - he points out how the poor quality of life which older parents endure is made such by the human-created belief that doing God's will permits one to ignore one's responsibilities toward others. (He'll return to this theme in chapter 12 when he complains about the poor widow giving her last penny for the upkeep of the temple.)

Mark's Jesus is determined to remind us of the kind of life we live when we not only confuse God's laws with human regulations, but give priority to the latter. Chances are the human laws will come flavored with the "within" of our human nature: ". . . evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly."

No wonder, as James teaches, we must continually reach "outside" ourselves to surface God's laws; as he puts it, to discover what is "from above." Only God's word can offer us a "religion that is pure and undefiled." It's that word which tells us ". . . to care for orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

As I mentioned above, one of the problems we had before Vatican II was confusing God's laws with church laws. Somehow they were presented to us as being of equal value and force. One could go to hell as quickly for missing Mass on Sunday as for murdering one's neighbor. Though human regulations are necessary for the smooth and efficient operation of any institution, they don't change the quality of our lives as deeply and permanently as God's regulations do.

Shortly after my mid-sixties ordination, I remember reading the results of a national survey of Catholics which revolved around one question: "Which is the more important law, to give up meat on Friday or to love your neighbor?"

A majority responded, "To give up meat on Friday."

No wonder we Catholics needed Vatican II. Though we were obeying all the church laws, we weren't making much headway in changing the way people lived and benefited from their lives. That only comes from obeying God's laws.