Believing In Jesus Is Believing In Ourselves

Thoughts on the Second Reading

The Feast of All Saints

1 John 3:1-3

"Hey, look; I'm no saint. What do you expect from me?" The person sitting across the room from me wasn't asking a question. He was telling me to stop making observations that put him on the spot. We both laughed and relaxed but, eventually, the issue became unavoidable: not what I expected if him but what he expected of himself.

To live as well as Jesus lived is uncommon but not unheard of. It's not easy but it's not impossible either. The point of Jesus' life isn't that he's better than anyone before or since. The point is that he most powerfully revealed God's love for us and most clearly demonstrated what we humans are capable of.

John's gospel quotes Jesus, "Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father." This is the central focus of Jesus' teaching: God's love frees us to actually love the life God is offering to humanity.

Our countless failures, our dumbness, our cussedness makes such optimism hard to swallow. That's why we're more comfortable believing things about Jesus that we are believing Jesus. But the issue for Christians isn't believing strange and unusual things, it's living strange, unusual lives with an eye to such lives eventually becoming accepted and ordinary everywhere.

The point of honoring saints isn't to put their pictures on the walls and occasionally mutter "Wow!" as we walk past them. It's to acknowledge that their lives demonstrate what we're all capable of. It's to strengthen our own dreams of the persons we can be. It's to open our visions to the scene of a world full of saints: a world full of ordinary people living justly and lovingly on a planet finally at peace.

To have such a vision and live it is to have the Spirit of Christ.

Who Gives To Whom: Keeping It Straight

Thoughts on the Second Readings
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Hebrews 5:1-6

Sacrifice was central to Jewish faith in Jesus’ day. To assure blessings for their nation Jewish priests regularly offered God animals and food in Jerusalem’s temple. Given this experience, Jews could easily make sense of Jesus, God’s perfect son, offering himself to his Father as a sacrifice that would never need repeating. That scenario worked well for them. It doesn’t work so well for many of us.

The idea that God wants something from human beings, let alone a life, in payment for our shortcomings, holds little power over our imaginations. The idea that we offend God who, in turn demands satisfaction for our affronts seems rooted in past ages of kings and despots or contemporary pockets of chaos where warlords and crime bosses rule.

On some deep level the very experience of Jesus who loved so deeply and selflessly that he accepted death rather than abandon us clashes radically with the picture of a God who views us as beholden to him or keeps a ledger of our deposits and withdrawals with him. Such a God is too small, too much like us at our worst.

Sacrifice isn’t passé. It’s necessary for life and beauty and love to grow. Every parent knows this. Everyone who loves a friend, strives to better the world by her work, everyone who brings peace by forgiveness and patience know this. Everyone who absorbs evil rather than passing it on to others knows sacrifice first hand.

We honor sacrifice. We pray for the strength to sacrifice in our lives. We remember Jesus because he brought life wherever he walked and didn’t retreat from it when it cost him everything.

For us, this is Jesus’ revelation: God sacrifices for life. We wouldn’t have believed it if we hadn’t seen it. God doesn’t demand sacrifice; God sacrifices for us – with us. Awesome!

Wanted: A Bigger God

Thoughts on the Second Readings
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Hebrews 4:14-16

I didn’t get to Mass last Sunday. Johnny was sick and I was up half the night with him. I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed. I hope God understands and gives me a break. Okay, that exact conversation never took place but countless people have told me such tales. Their concern is deep-rooted but a few basics can help allay them.

Jesus worried about people’s too-human perception of God. He tried to wrest his listeners away from their small God with instructions like the Prodigal Son. Later, the disciple who wrote Hebrews described Jesus as a high priest who, having lived through human difficulties, sympathetically presented people’s case before God. Both reassured their listeners that, whatever their failings, God understood and loved them.

From the beginning we believers have given ourselves the intimidating task of convincing an unimaginably powerful God to care about us. What makes this task harder is that we harbor the sneaking suspicion that, if we were God, we probably wouldn’t bother. Something about the whole system seems unreal.

We live in a universe measured in billions of light years. Most of reality lies beyond our perception let alone our explanations. The God who creates such immensity is surely more than a blustery old king; an all seeing, strict parent; a kindly, generous old uncle or a nasty, vindictive next door neighbor. The God of our time is either infinitely beyond such figures or the God of our time doesn’t exist.

Still, we have a hard time moving beyond those images. We hang on to the God-as-wary-parent or the God-as high-school principal idea even when their shortcomings are painfully obvious. Why? What do we fear losing?

We’ll never have an adult Church until we have an image of God rooted in our adult experience.

Wanting God's Will (Generally)

Thoughts on the Second Readings
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Hebrews 4:12-13

“Be careful about what you wish for,” my uncle used to tell me, “you might get it.”

We say with absolutely certainty that God watches over us. We know that God loves and stands by us day in and day out. Such security buoys us in rough seas. Still, a caveat whispers in the back of my mind when I hear those assertions: think what you’re saying.

It’s certainly our faith that God is with us, creating us at every moment. It’s also certainly our faith that God creates what he loves and loves what he creates: us. But that would also be all of us. There’s the caution.

We want God to love us and our kids and our friends but do we want God to love our enemy and his kids and his friends just as much. Do we want God to care about our enemy’s welfare and dignity and hope as much as ours? Do we really think we see with God’s eyes when we assume that he’ll bless our enemy only after we’ve whooped him into submission?

Our faith acknowledges, sometimes begrudgingly, that God loves and is faithful to all people, not just the ones we think worthy. God loves my enemy of the moment, be that spouse, relative, neighbor, an opposing politician or a dangerous foreign national as much as me.

When we pray: Our Father, who art in heaven . . ., it’s instructive to stop and think to whom the our in Our Father, refers. When we take solace in the knowledge of God’s faithfulness and care for us, it’s enlightening to recall that God is equally faithful and caring of everyone regardless of how we judge them.

It’s always been a sobering thought that when I pray for the world’s welfare, I may be actually be praying for God to stop me from succeeding in my fondest goals. It’s a reality check.

Keep What's Simple - Simple

Thoughts on the Second Readings
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Hebrews 2:9-11

When the first Christians attempted to make sense of Jesus and explain him to others they faced the embarrassing fact that he had been executed by the Romans as a third rate political agitator. Jews, awaiting a messiah to establish God’s rule and free them from Rome found that heretical. Romans smirked at the idea of a God crucified in of one of their backwater provinces.

Some of his followers placed Jesus among the prophets who, they remembered, had frequently been persecuted, even executed, for speaking God’s will to the powerful. His death credentialed him as God’s reliable spokesperson.

Others noted that Jesus had announced the arrival of God’s promised New Age which, everyone knew, was to be preceded by the persecution of God’s faithful by those who resisted it. His death announced the coming of the Kingdom.

The writer of Hebrews understood Jesus’ death as proof of his solidarity with humans so that we would know that God identifies with our welfare and shares our most difficult hardships. His death guaranteed our participation in his resurrection.

All these understandings of Jesus’ crucifixion shared a focus on God’s relationship, God’s communication, God’s identifying with us.

Christianity suffers from the tendency to obsess over the mechanics of salvation. Just exactly how – at what moment – by what act, did Jesus accomplish our eternal happiness? We sound like teens in love asking one another, just what is it that made you fall in love with me; when did it happen; how did you know? That’s a great excuse to speak sweet nothings but it’s not the occasion of a profound discussion. On a less romantic level, it’s a question geared to gaining some level of control over what is, ultimately, a mysterious relationship.

God loves you simply because God loves you. That was Jesus’ message. Live all your life in total awareness of God’s love for you. If you do that, God’s love will transform you and the world through you.

God’s love assures our happiness and Jesus’ whole life was the touch of God’s love. That can’t be parsed or proven but we know it’s so.

Hope's Execution

Thoughts on the Second Readings
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
James 5:1-6

I learned in grade school that Catholics say confusing things. For instance, my teachers taught that Jesus died for my sins. How could that be since I hadn’t even done them yet? “You’ll understand when you’re older,” they told me. I never did. I learned the theory, of course, but it was more distracting than helpful.

To understand Jesus, and what it means to be his followers, we must focus on Jesus’ message. What he cared about and what he spent his entire public life preaching was the opportunity we have – rooted in the divine promise and power – to be part of God’s future. There’s a new way of living coming, a new way of doing business, a new way of getting along as a human family.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Forgive one another without keeping accounts. Love your enemies. Do good even to those who harm you. Care! Work for the welfare of the whole world because the whole world is your family and it’s where you live. This is the path to your fulfillment. This is the way of God. Jesus was absolutely clear. Absolutely ridiculous; dangerously foolish; impossible; treacherous: those who resisted him were equally clear.

We look at our own times and ask who is killing Jesus’ message? Who’s saying what in the papers, before the cameras and microphones, in public meetings – and around the closely-watched kitchen tables of our land?

The issue isn’t who killed Jesus two millennia ago. It’s who’s killing the hope he brings today; who’s mocking the promise while bowing to the statue.

The faith of a people isn’t measured in the number of or the names upon its places of worship. Faith is measured by the harmony of a people’s hearts with the heart of its God. Where are our hearts; where are our voices?

Weighing the Cost of Winning

Thoughts on the Second Readings
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
James 3:16 – 4:3

Two weeks ago, during president Obama’s address to congress about his health care proposals, a representative shouted, “You lie.” It was an astonishing moment. Everyone knew that people were holding different solutions for our health care problems. Everyone knew that passions were running hot. But everyone also knew that certain behaviors were out of bounds – even in this tense situation – and accusing the president of lying during a formal speech was one of them. The accusation of lying stops conversation cold. There’s no reason to continue.

When our arguments grow heated and we believe that important values are in jeopardy, we tend to grasp whatever weapons will overwhelm our opposer. We forget that we all sail in one very small boat. We need everyone to row if we’re to reach safe harbor. There is no other vessel around if this one sinks. We’re going to have to live together and rely on one another for a long time. Swinging lethal weapons – even with a just cause and victory assured – in such a situation endangers everyone.

The early Church faced many situations when warring passengers put its tiny boat in jeopardy. The contending parties were so caught up in their value that they forgot the fragility of their craft. Historians tell of entire Christian communities that vanished as a result of internal strife.

People can decide that the nobility of their cause justifies a fight to the death. They can convince themselves that they can accept the loss of their boat if necessary. In their passion they can also forget how many others they doom to a deep grave.

Our Church is a relationship among ourselves in communion with God. It exists only with internal good will. The withdrawal of that good will has mortal consequences. The loss is immense to those directly involved; it’s beyond counting when we consider that community’s potential for service beyond its membership. To maintain our trust in one another’s good will is essential if we’re to accomplish the task God asks of us and we’ve accepted.