AUGUST 26, 2007: TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Isaiah 66:18-21
Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13
Luke 13:22-30

When we think about discipline, we often conjure up thoughts of being restricted from doing or experiencing things we enjoy. So we're not really excited today by the Hebrews author's remark, "Do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him." Just one more limit on our freedom.

Perhaps we've forgotten what the historical Jesus was all about. Given our own historical background, it's easy to forget this Galilean carpenter didn't spend the precious few months of his public ministry founding a new religious institution. Those who paused long enough to listen to this itinerant preacher's message discovered he was interested not in providing them with new information to store in their minds, but in changing the way their minds processed the information they'd already stored and were continuing to receive. Jesus was driven to help change the way people looked at reality; to see aspects and dimensions of the situations, things and people around them that they'd never before noticed. Only when they began to do this would they begin to experience God working in their lives.

Expanding our minds is one of the most difficult things we'll ever do. Over the years we've reached a plateau in our mental development. We're comfortable reflecting on our experiences from a particular perspective. We've developed certain categories into which we place (or squeeze) those who cross our paths. Long ago we squelched the wonder and amazement which is such an essential part of a child's approach to reality. Now we often know the answer before we've even heard the question.

Jesus was in the "mind-expanding" business. We know from his "missionary" advice to his followers that he didn't stick around long when people refused to expand. He spent most of his time evangelizing those willing to take that all important, expansive step.

In today's gospel pericope, Jesus fields a closed-minded question and gives an open-minded response. "Someone asked him, 'Lord, will only a few people be saved?'"

He instinctively informs the person, "You're asking the wrong question. How does the number of people saved affect your own salvation?"

Jesus then explains part of what it means "to enter through the narrow gate." The concept doesn't revolve around being a member of an "in group." Those who don't even share our religious affiliation are just as (often more) likely to join in that great heavenly banquet as we are.

Another mind-expander, Third-Isaiah, delivered a similar message five hundred years before Jesus. Instead of viewing the two Jewish exiles as punishments from Yahweh, the prophet is convinced they provided a way to introduce Gentiles to faith in Yahweh. These non-Jewish believers will not only join their Jewish brothers and sisters in rebuilding Jerusalem, but God will reward them by taking some of them as priests and Levites - professions reserved for just one family within one tribe of Israel - something unheard of among Jews.

Through the centuries we've discovered our Hebrews author is correct. The open-minded discipline of Jesus often "seems a cause not for joy, but for pain." Those who develop and practice Jesus' open-mindedness will always suffer as Jesus suffered. Many of those we encounter in our daily lives have no idea how to deal with such a unique frame of mind. Often their only recourse is to try to annihilate it or the person possessing it.

Yet the writer encourages us to persevere in practicing this discipline. It alone "brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it." We can never forget that the righteous scriptural person is the one doing what God wants her or him to do.

AUGUST 19, 2007: TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10
Hebrews 12:1-4
Luke 12:49-53

Real faith is real work.

Most of us join a religion as part of our growing up, often taking on the faith our parents professed. We don't have much choice. We were "brought up" in their religion.

In the late 60s I began to teach junior boys religion in one of our diocesan high schools. My students often reminded me they'd had no choice in their religious training. So, they contended, I shouldn't expect them to accept "the stuff" I was trying to "cram down their throats." Part of their teenage rebellion revolved around rejecting their parents' faith.

Our sacred authors wrote nothing for 16 year old high school students. Their goal was to demonstrate the implications of faith for people who had freely committed to that faith.

Yet in some important sense, we don't give ourselves over to faith; faith "overtakes" us. In the title song of her recent album, The Calling, Mary Chapin Carpenter reflects on this phenomenon in her own life: "Deep in your blood or a voice in your head, on a dark lonesome highway, it finds you instead. So certain it knows you, you can't turn away, something or someone has found you today . . . . There's no other way, there's no other way."

Of course, no matter how deeply we're convinced there's no other way, we're constantly tempted to find one. Though Jeremiah freely committed himself to be Yahweh's prophet, he continually must deal with "outsiders" who attempt to stop him from being the conscience of his people.

In today's first reading, "the princes" try to have him killed because he proclaims peace during a time of war. They complain to the king, "He is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in the city, and all the people, by speaking these things to them; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin."

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews offers a suggestion to those in his community who might be tempted to chuck their faith's calling because of "opposition from sinners." They're to focus on that "great cloud of witnesses" who have gone before them in faith, especially Jesus. (It might be good to remember that the Greek word for witness is "martyr.") "Consider how Jesus endured such opposition from sinners, in order that you may not grow weary and lose heart."

Yet, even if we had no outside opposition, we'd still have to face the internal tensions Jeremiah refers to in his famous (and depressing) chapter 20 "confession," some of the same tensions Luke's Jesus brings up in today's gospel pericope. There's an "anguish" which comes from simply carrying out the call we accept - especially when we experience the effect it has on others. "Do you think I have come to establish peace on the earth?" Jesus asks. "No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on . . . ."

We might be as convinced as Jeremiah that our calling was an essential part of us even before God "formed us in the womb," yet we still might not like the place it assigns us in our everyday lives. If we're normal human beings, we don't look forward to being a bone of contention for the "good folks" we daily encounter. Left to our own desires, we'd much rather live a more peaceful existence. We'd prefer someone else be the person "to set the earth on fire." More than anything else, the opposition of our loved often stops us from fulfilling our faith commitments.

Perhaps that's why Carpenter ends her song with the question, "Who would believe me? I can't really say. Whatever the calling, the stumbling and falling, I followed it knowing there's no other way."

I've discovered through the years that most junior boys, even in Catholic high schools, have yet to reach that dimension in their faith.

AUGUST 12, 2007: NINETEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Wisdom 18:6-9
Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19
Luke 12:32-48

Long before people of faith were introduced to specific dogmas and doctrines, they demonstrated their faith by how they lived their lives. Only toward the end of the period in which the Christian Scriptures were composed - especially in the "Pastoral Letters" - do we begin to hear emphasis on faith's content instead of faith's actions. Fortunately faith's content dimension had not yet crept into today's three readings.

In our Hebrews pericope, the writer spends verse after verse encouraging us to continue living by faith even when the odds of achieving the goal which faith tantalizingly sets before our eyes seems impossible to achieve. For the sacred author, one only need flip through the pages of Scripture to be assured that, in the end, our faith will win out.

Of course, for the authors of the Christian Scriptures, "the Scriptures" are the Hebrew Scriptures. (Not before the third century would Luke's gospel, for instance, be put on a biblical par with Jeremiah's prophecies.)

Faith revolves around looking beyond our own lifetime. Speaking about Yahweh's promise to Sarah and Abraham that they one day would have "descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore," the Hebrews author states the obvious, ". . . These (Abraham and Sarah) died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised . . . ."

A priest friend once remarked that only his coal miner father's faith in a better future could explain why he so often went out on strike during the 30s and 40s. "He never did make up the money he lost by missing all that work," the priest said. "My dad put up with that nonsense for the sake of us kids, so we'd have a better life."

In one of my most commented-upon columns, I mentioned it takes five generations of monarch butterflies to complete the amazing migration cycle with which we're all familiar. No one butterfly ever sees more than a small part of the trip. Such a limited experience in an overall experience applies to humans as well as butterflies.

Though the Genesis authors knew nothing of an afterlife, the Hebrews author can judge Abraham and Sarah's actions from the viewpoint of eternity, and even look at Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac from the perspective of God raising Jesus from the dead. Time brings deeper insights.

No wonder the historical Jesus centered his ministry on the conviction that God is present and working in our lives. We're not only expected to trust that our actions eventually will achieve our goal, we're also expected to trust that God is doing things in our lives today on a level we might not be able to perceive. This latter kind of trust, as our Wisdom author writes, carried the Israelites into a "glory" they never could have imagined. More happened to the Chosen People than they ever anticipated.

Luke's community also fits in this category. Like all early Christians, they expected Jesus' quick return. But by the mid-80s, they began to suspect they'd be in the faith business for the long haul. This new dimension of faith demanded they acknowledge God working in their lives in a new way. God's not just going to be the force who suddenly appears to escort the faithful to heaven. God's already giving us a "kingdom" right here and now.

The problem is that we've constantly got to get rid of the things in which we've already placed our security in order to benefit from the new security of God's kingdom. It takes a lot of faith to do that.

Many of us would rather just hold onto the old vision, go around lamenting, "My master is a long time a coming!" instead of noticing and being grateful for the new way in which God is continually working in our lives.

AUGUST 5, 2007: EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Readings:
Ecclesiastes 1:2-2:21-23
Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11
Luke 12:13-21

When we're deep into a specific gospel we often forget the driving force behind Jesus' historical ministry. Though scholars consistently remind us he had no intention of founding a new religion, we often need to be reminded of what he actually tried to accomplish. Luke clearly tells us in chapter 4 that Jesus conceived of his role as someone announcing that God is accomplishing in our lives today what most thought God would achieve only in the future.

The carpenter from Galilee had a passion to inform people about God present and working effectively in their daily lives; present whether they notice that presence or ignore it. Jesus was convinced our lives would be more fulfilled once we surface that presence. But to accomplish that, we have to "repent:" to totally change our value systems, to do a 180 degree turn on what and whom we normally focus.

Jesus insists that people be the center of our focus, not our jobs or a quest for social recognition.

Paul, writing to the church in Colossae reminds his readers of the new direction they're expected to pursue. "If you were raised with Christ," he writes, "seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth."

Among other things, the risen Jesus expects his followers never to fall into the trap of concentrating on what divides us. "Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all." Only those who can cut through the incidentals and surface the unity all people share will notice God working in their lives. (I don't see how anyone could be in doubt about Paul's idea of where the risen Jesus stands on our current "illegal immigrants" debate.)

Another point of repentant focus in our 1st and 3rd readings revolves around our attitude toward wealth.

The author of Ecclesiastes looks at acquiring riches from the perspective that one day someone who hasn't worked for them will inherit them. In other words, we're working to make someone else wealthy.

The sacred author's general advice is to back off, don't spend so much time and effort acquiring wealth. Others, not ourselves will benefit from our labors after we die. Enjoy life right here and now. Never work so hard and long that we ignore the pleasures all people should be experiencing throughout their lives.

Luke's Jesus, presuming his followers are trying to achieve repentance, approaches wealth from a somewhat different point of view. Both he and our Ecclesiastes author agree that one day our riches will belong to others, but Jesus stresses the aspect that God's plan for us includes neither greed nor a life directed only to accumulating wealth.

"Take care to guard against all greed," Jesus warns the person who wants him to mediate a family dispute. "Though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions."

Jesus illustrates his point with a parable about a person so obsessed with wealth that he overlooks his own mortality. The words Jesus pronounces over this rich, but unfortunate individual have echoed down through the centuries. "You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong? Thus will it be for all who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God."

Though our sacred authors expect us to "make a living," they're concerned that doing so not stop us from living. God working in our lives through those around us is too valuable an experience to be ignored. Nothing should ever block our vision of that reality.