The Compass

Palm Sunday
At the Procession of the Palms
Luke 19:28-40; "If they keep silent, the stones will cry out!"
At Mass
Isaiah 50:4-7: A Song of the Suffering Servant
Philippians 2:6-11: He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.
Luke 22:14 - 23:56: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

When I began this blog seven weeks ago, it never occurred to me how hard it would be...

I don't say that for the sake of pity.  It is just that the Gospel is a really hard thing when you actually try to make sense of it, when you actually try to pray it.  And for Jesus, how hard it must have been to live it.

For that is what he did: he lived the Good News.  With all his heart and soul and mind and strength.

We get a sense of that in the contrast between the two moments of the Gospel we hear this Sunday.  We begin with the glorious spring morning when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem to the Song of Ascents, typically sung by pilgrims as they arrived in the Holy City.  And though the people and the disciples are convinced that "this is it," no one--with the exception of Jesus--gets the irony: this is indeed it!  And how hard it must have been for him to accept their genuine rejoicing, their genuine praise, knowing that it would not last.  In a few short days he will leave the Holy City, again accompanied by a crowd and shouts and yells, but this time the shouts and yells of a jeering mob and of Roman soldiers.  And that is the second scene we encounter this morning.

It is the whole compass of human experience, wrapped into one short week.  Triumph and disappointment, welcome and rejection, rejoicing and mourning, friendship and betrayal, gentleness and cruelty, love and hate, life in all its joy and death in all its finality.

During the course of Holy Week we will encounter in the Gospels of the Mass all these in what seems a maelstrom swirling about Jesus, all in the context of the Passover:

• On Monday, Mary will anoint his feet and Judas will reject him; 

• On Tuesday Jesus will share his heartbreak with his disciples, who love him, and one will walk out the door, a sign to Jesus of his Father's call to glory; 

• On Spy Wednesday, Judas will sell him out cheap, and they will celebrate the Passover;

• On Holy Thursday, Jesus makes himself their slave;

• On Good Friday he will offer himself as their Pascal Lamb.

It is overwhelming in its emotional weight.  But even if we were to treat this simply as a story, for all the remarkable ironies, for all the emotional valence, what is most remarkable is the main character.  Throughout the action, he alone remains steady, true to who he is, true to what he is about.  Plots, treacheries, and defeats pile up in front of him, but he continues in his work.  The darkness grows about him, but he remains light.  Each of the major characters fudges, temporizes, denies and betrays everything he holds dear, but Jesus, if anything, becomes more and more truly who he is.  He is simply and consistently Jesus, the true Son of his heavenly Father.  And he simply and consistently continues to do his Father's will, what he has always been about (Luke 2:49).

Luke is remarkably clear about this as Jesus steers his course through all the shifts.  His mien is, from beginning to end, marked with all of God's compassion.  It is this, not vanity, that marks his reply to the Pharisees who complain about the Hosannas his disciples raise.  It is compassion that draws him to this final Passover with his friends, that allows him to open his heart to them, that even allows him to pity the one will betray him and the one who will deny him.

Hence we find the most remarkable gestures as he makes his way along, gestures so in keeping with his character, so much so that we are not surprised.  He heals the wounded servant's ear; he turns without bitterness to Peter as the cock crows; he responds with gentle insistence to his inquisitors; he does not revile his persecutors.

The singularity of his purpose--his purity of heart--grows, quite in contrast to the mendacity of the chief priests, the fickleness of Herod the great king, the squirming of the powerful Pilate.  They, the seeming winners of this contest, look foolish as he takes up the opprobrium they lay upon him.  He wears their contempt in the mocks and the blows and the spittle and the wounds they bestow upon him, but he is not made the less by them.

It comes to a crisis: as the nails are driven into his wrists, there is no cry of anguish but rather the most remarkable prayer: Father, forgive them, they do not know what they do.

As the crowd swirls around him, he alone remains fixed in place.  Come down from that cross and save yourself, they cry.  But he remains on the cross, unselfish to the end, to save us.

And to the very end, he points the true direction of it all.  

A common criminal accepts him; he is greeted as the prodigal son is greeted (Luke 15:22-24). 

The darkness grows unbearable; Jesus places his life completely, resolutely, in a quite final way into his Father's hands.  It was what he had been doing all along.  Now it is clear where it leads.

His is the very steadfastness of his Father, a faithfulness to who he is--even as the Lord explained himself to Moses: "The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin..." (Exodus 34:6-7a).

It is interesting, is it not, that the first words that he says to Peter in the Gospel of Mark, according to the scholars probably the first of the Gospels to be written down, are "Follow me"  (Mark 1:17).  And the last words he speaks in the Gospel of John, according to the scholars probably the last of the Gospels to be written down, are "Follow me" (John 21:22).  The messages never falters.  Peter does, but the Word does not!  We do--sometimes often--but the Word does not!

He is the compass.  He is true to the point.  He shows us the way to true life, to life eternal.  Even through the maelstrom.

It is hard to accept, even today.  Perhaps harder.  I recently read an article about some who claim that the line "Father, forgive them, for they know no what they do" should be expunged from the Gospel of Luke.  In truth, the scholars acknowledge that it is a matter of controversy (Luke 23:34a, and note 5).  But it is so consistent with the character of Jesus.  For the truth is that all too frequently, we--we, the hard hearted, the manipulative, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the scribes--we know exactly what we are doing, but the Son of God leaves us totally disarmed; God knows more!  This judgment of God is not mushy, not weak, not sentimental; it is the foolishness of God that is wiser than all the wisdom of men and women (1 Cor 1:25).

And we too live in the maelstrom.  We have all read the reports from the great authorities of journalism--the New York Times, the BBC, the AP--who never hesitate to remind us how messy things can be, who never hesitate to question anyone or anything that tries point to a greater truth, especially if the person or the thing or the institution does not seem able bear the weight of the truth itself.  It is overwhelming, confusing, brutal, disheartening.  And that is even before we consider how messy, how confusing, how sinful our personal lives can become.  And yet the Truth remains--greater than anyone of us indeed, greater than any crisis we, our world, even our church can face--still always calling, still always commanding: "Follow me."

He is the compass.  His is the way.

AMDG

To Sin No More...

The Fifth Sunday of Lent
Is 43:16-21: See, I am doing something new!
Phil 3:18-24: I continue my pursuit towards the goal.
John 8:1-11: The Woman caught in Adultery.



I have said it all my life--at least all my life as I remember it:

O, my God,
I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,
and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishment,
but most of all because I have offended Thee, my God
who art all good and deserving of all my love.
And I firmly resolve,
with the help of Thy grace,
to sin no more,
and to avoid the near occasion of sin.
Amen.

I don't remember when I learned it but I remember when I knew enough about the world to say it tearfully as my brother and sisters and I knelt down to pray with my mother in the evening, hoping beyond hope that no one would notice my tears, and hoping beyond hope that maybe some day...just maybe...I would not get in trouble!

And later there were those confessions when, as I slipped from behind the maroon curtain, I promised myself that I would never have to confess that again!

And even now, at the end of the day, I really mean it all--to sin no more, and to avoid the near occasion of sin.  Amen!  Isn't that the point, after all?

Indeed, in the Gospel today, Jesus says to the poor woman, happily rescued by his clever response to the mob, "Go, and from now on do not sin any more."  Or as it has fallen into the popular parlance, through many translations: Go and sin no more.


What an easy, happy solution.  And as I have heard and read and contemplated and prayed over this story over the many years, how I have longed to hear those words--really hear Jesus say them to me in exactly the way that Jesus said them to that woman, standing in that awful silence before him.  For if I heard them in precisely that way, I know--I know!--that it would be over, that that prayer of my heart, which has been the prayer of my heart ever since I was a little boy, would be answered; I would indeed go and sin no more.

Well, as you may guess, it hasn't exactly happened yet.  And I wonder if that is what Jesus wants to happen.  Don't get me wrong: I am quite sure that the Lord does not want me to go back and wallow in my usuals--you know--the usual companions--pride, avarice, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, anger--and their consequences--those sinful expressions of the deep sins.  But it is not as though I have not prayed that prayer enough.  And it is not as though I have not prayed it correctly.  And it is not that I have never prayed it--and here I hope I am not being arrogant--with at least an occasional honest note of contrition.  For I have often thought that if I had really prayed that prayer...if I had really meant my confession...if I had really been contrite...well, I wouldn't be praying it all over again, I wouldn't be slouching off to my confessor again, I wouldn't feel so bad all over again, and usually about the same things.  I suspect many of us feel that way.

Perhaps there is a deeper sin--one that I am only beginning to understand, but one which has leapt out at me a lot over the past month of Lent--the sin of believing that I could actually do this...that it would even be good for me to be able to do this.  Because, as I say to myself, if I could only get past this sin, I would never have to confess it again.  And if I never had to confess it again--and this is where the Lord seems to intervene with the truth--I would not have to keep turning back to you, my God, in such need.  As though I could then go and stop in at God's when it seemed convenient (instead of out of my usual desperation) as one might stop and see a friend, but only socially.

Isn't that the great heresy of Lent--Lent as we sometimes pursue it, not as it is meant to be celebrated!  That we will get our acts in order, our ducks in a row, the old leaven out, our souls nice and pure and our metaphors unmixed!  And then we will be fit before God, before God himself!

To what end?  So that God has to love us?  As though we could stand in front of him and say, "Here I am!  I made it!  Now love me!"

The fact is we can't, not even the best of us, as the best of us are perhaps most aware.  Wasn't it Saint Francis of Assisi who became infinitely aware of how unworthy he was of God's love even as God drew him closer and closer and closer to the mystery of His Son?  In fact, isn't that the truth of sanctity?  Not so much that that  saints make themselves lovable in God's eyes, but that they learn to accept God's love as the real gift that it is?  Isn't that what Jesus did in his life, even accepting the end of his life with gratitude and thanksgiving to the Father who had loved him so marvelously through it all.  Isn't that the story of Mary, who accepted a mystery into her life that was far beyond her ken, that indeed would pierce her heart, but which was the very expression of God's love for her.  And good St. Joseph, too, who took the child in with his mother, and gave him a place in his home, and a name, and a birthright, and even a place in his heart?

No, we cannot make God love us, no matter how much we perfect ourselves.  We can only grow in our acceptance of the fact that He already does love us, far beyond our wildest imaginings.  And we can try to live out of that, trusting that He will be faithful to His love for us, far more faithful that we will ever be to our best intentions.

That is hard to admit, especially for a perfectionist like myself.  It would be so much better, I think to myself, to have it all in order.  And yet it wouldn't be; I can trust that because God, in His mysterious, infinite, yet always loving wisdom, simply has not given me the power to be perfect...not in that way, at least.

St Paul reminds us that it is not our righteousness that will save us, for in truth we have none.  Rather, it is the righteousness of God, and having faith in that righteousness, even when we know that what we have done is perhaps impardonable; that is what is necessary for our salvation.  If it were not, then God would have left us to save ourselves; it would have been possible.

And so for now, I have to stand before my God and admit the hard too-true truth that I don't have it all together, that I am still a sinner, and that many of my sins are the same ones that I have struggled with all my life.  And I have to trust once again that God knows that about me, and that his love is still much larger than any and all of my sins, larger even than my sinfulness.  It is not a pleasant place to stand, sort of like that awful moment of silence when the poor woman stands before the silent Jesus.

It may be that he is still writing in the sand.  It may be that he wants me to read what he is writing.  It may be that he is waiting for me to drop my stone too, the one that I so often grab to throw at others, and frequently that I grab to use on myself.  But if I can but stand there in the truth--the truth that he actually already knows and that he has already forgiven in the giving of his life for us--if I can but stand there yet a while again and let him judge in his good time, then I shall hear those words: I do not condemn you.  Go and sin no more.

There is a wonderful poem by John Donne that I recall every once in a while, and that it is always good to read; it is as good a way as any to end this entry.

Holy Sonnet VII

At the round earth's imagined corners blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

AMDG

Choosing Foolishness

Laetare Sunday

Joshua 5: 9a, 10-12: "I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you."
2 Cor 5: 17-21: Be reconciled to God!
Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32: "But now we must celebrate and rejoice.."

(I am very grateful to Barry Sons, and to Chris and Linda Booker--the owners of the painting--for permission to use his painting "Waiting for the Prodigal Son" in the blog this week.  I would encourage you to visit the site to see this work, and Mr. Sons' other work.)


If you run "the prodigal son" on Google images, the results are amazing: about 621,000 images in 0.22 seconds.  I have to admit that I barely remember, though we are all at home with Google now--I can barely remember the cyber-world without it!--that I am still in awe of such results.  Anyhow, not only is the quantity impressive, but the array is as well.  Most, of course, are renderings of the moment we most immediately remember: the great reunion...the son humbling himself before the father...the father bowed down to raise the son up to himself.  I would estimate, just from a flip through the first couple of pages of results, that the most common image is the Rembrandt, as well it might be; it is beautiful.  But the problem with most of the images is the problem with the story: they are so familiar...too familiar.  I read the story and I know it so well that I miss the good news.  And that is sad, for it really is good news!

Among the many images, however, there is one that is truly different: Barry Sons' "Waiting for the Prodigal Son."  It is striking in its simplicity--a slightly abstracted, somewhat impressionist landscape.  A road runs into an autumning landscape to a misty horizon.  It is morning, or evening, or sometime in between.  There is no one on that road.  There is no hint there ever will be.

Since I first spotted this painting, I have been thinking a lot about who's view this might be;it is most likely the father's of course, but it could be the son's--either of them.  For each of these characters has an experience of waiting in the story.  And the painting looks so different through each set of eyes.  The empty road holds a brightness, perhaps, for the father, though one cannot ignore the passing of time, the falling of each leaf. It holds a question for the younger son: there is an end to his journey hidden in that mist, and it was perhaps spring when he first set out.  And there is a gathering of consequences for the elder one, an already troubling problem: what to do when that one returns?

But I am convinced that these were the only eyes for whom the scene was painted.


There are, after all, our eyes--mine and yours.  How we look down that road says so much about us, so much about how we receive this story...how we will really receive this story.  We all know how the story is supposed to end, but it is so much up to us to bring it to the conclusion that Jesus asks of us.  We are the ones who have to make the story real, the ones who have to look down that road and deal with the issues--our issues.

The setting of this story in the Gospel of Luke is critical to our understanding what the Lord is really asking of us.  The scribes and the Pharisees again condemn Jesus for hanging out with tax collectors and sinners.  So he tells them not one, but three parables, each familiar to our ears: the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  But the first two stories begin with explicit questions: What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? and : Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house searching carefully until she finds it?

The truth is that none of us would waste our time on these fruitless tasks.  The foolish shepherd would lose all his sheep to save the dumb one who didn't know enough to stay with the flock.  The foolish woman would waste all her time to find the coin, and then spend so much more again to entertain her friends.  No, the lost sheep is a nuisance, and lost coins generally turn up.  It is not so much that we would be well rid of them, it is just that they are not worth that sort of time and effort.

It is only when we admit what our true answers would be that the Parable of the Prodigal Son begins to challenge us; when we admit our own hard and calculated responses we learn that the parable is more the story of a miracle than a fable.

The truth is that the Prodigal has left, and there is no hope of his returning.  That road is so empty.  And yet, the old man, getting older with each day, with each falling leaf, through hours unending, watches.

The truth is that an empty road stands before the Prodigal, asking him to journey on it, trusting as best he can, an unseen outcome.

The truth is that there is a lost brother out there somewhere, and everything will depend on how the elder child--the righteous one--receives the Prodigal.

We are each of these characters.  And we--we alone--have the power to make Jesus' story real.

For only when we look down that road with loving, compassionate yearning, can the Prodigal come home.

And only when we look up that road with trust--real trust, not the I-already-know-the-end-of-the-story trust, which is not trust at all--with the trust that tells us the truth about ourselves--that we are the prodigal, that we do not deserve what we are asking, no matter how good and manipulative our little pre-prepared speeches are--that the father can receive us.

And only when we face the hard decision that we have to make--the real and consequential choice that we can keep this sin alive forever or we can walk into the banquet and rejoice in the return of the sinner--well, it is just that simple.

And each one of those choices is foolish, utterly foolish.  As foolish as leaving ninety-nine sheep to save one.  As foolish as wasting time and effort to find a coin and then squander everything to celebrate the finding.  Everyone knows the answers: that Prodigal should be dead to the father, at least as a son; the Prodigal should get on with his life, either to find his own success or whatever; and the elder brother should tell that doddering fool of a father what he really thinks--he is right, after all.

And the frightening truth--which is the only context in which to understand the Gospel--the Good News--is that God chooses none of these sensible, responsible alternatives.  God chooses foolishness.

And he asks us to do exactly the same.

Only in choosing foolishly to look for the lost sheep and the lost coin, to wait for the Prodigal who will never return, to go up the road to face the truth about ourselves, to go into that feast over all our correct objections--only in choosing these do we take the first steps on our own journey home. Home, indeed, with a sad hard truth: I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I no longer deserve to be called your son, your daughter...a truth, which peculiarly sets us free (John 8:32), free at last to face the truth about ourselves, free at last to go home.

Home to a Father who awaits us.

Home to a Father whom we have come to resemble in the choices we make.

Home to a Father for whom the party will never begin until we are all there...all of us.

AMDG

The Good Gardener

The Third Sunday of Lent

Ex 3:1-8a, 13-15: I AM sent me to you.
1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12: We should take care that we do not fall.
Lk 13:1-9: The Parable of the Fig Tree




Liturgists are funny guys: you gotta wonder what they're thinking sometimes when they put together the readings for any given Sunday.

Today, the Third Sunday in Lent, Year C, is one of those times.

At least on the face of it, the common theme is trees.  Okay, so maybe a bush and a tree, but you get the point.  Moses finds a burning bush.  Jesus discusses a fig tree.  Plant life.  Botany.  Is this like a freshman bio joke.?

But the stories in themselves are interesting...the parts that aren't really about trees.  For instance, when Moses find the burning bush, he's attracted to it.  And when he gets close enough, God tells him to take his shoes off.  Weird.  But there's something significant about that.  God, of course, is the original Holy of Holies.  Wouldn't someone who was really holy turn his nose up at something that was not-so-holy.  And Moses is certainly not-so-holy; he's a virtual Egyptian, after all, and one who's done murder--even the Egyptians won't have him!  But God puts a burning bush out there as though he wants Moses to come close.  And when he gets too close, God tells him to take his shoes off as though he wants real, direct contact with Moses.  I know that in the Middle East of the day, you removed your shoes when you came into someone's home; you didn't want to carry the dirt and the dung of the road inside.  But I am struck by the thought that God is not afraid of this direct contact with Moses, and with his feet, for heaven's sake! It's almost as though God wants his holiness to soak into Moses from the very ground he treads, as though God wants Moses to be rooted in his holiness as the bush is in the ground.  As though God wants Moses, like the burning bush, to catch fire with his holiness.

The other thing that is striking is about God's name: I AM WHO AM is the traditional translation.  It is this God who is always present, in a permanent state of the present tense.  No past.  No future.  Always present.  Present to Moses.  Present to the Israelites far off in Egypt, stuck in their slavery, for whom God is but memory--the God of the ancestors.

The Gospel is interesting in the same weird ways: Jesus tells the story of a vineyard owner who has a fig tree in his vineyard (weird place for a fig tree!)  He looks for fruit and finds none, so he prepares to cut the tree down; after all, it is just wasting the soil and using up space.  But his servant says no, give the tree some time.  He'll work on it, he says, and fertilize it.  And then, well...maybe next year, like the eternal Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

Now many of us immediately assume that there is an easy allegorical interpretation to this story: we are the fig tree, God wants us to bear fruit and we don't so God is angry, but Jesus cuts us a break.  But if we read the whole passage--all that stuff about the Galileans slaughtered by Herod and the victims of the Siloam tower collapse--we might get a glimmer of something more.  Because the people who tell Jesus about the massacre of the Galileans by Herod assume that there was something wrong with their sacrifice; they assume that God must have been really, really angry with those Galileans.  But Jesus says that doesn't make sense.  They were killed by Herod, not by God.  And the people killed by the tower's fall...they were killed by falling bricks and morter and the laws of gravity.  God has nothing to do with it.  But then he warns them that they have to repent, or they too will perish.

Weird.  Again, weird.

But what does it mean to repent?  We all know (or think we know) that repent means turning back to God (it does) and perhaps doing hard things, like giving something up during Lent (it can).  But at its root, one of the things repent means is to rethink--to rethink ourselves and our ways, to rethink who God really is, and to rethink our relationship with God.  And certainly that is one of the things Jesus needs for these people to do, for just like the scribes and the Pharisees, they have passed a harsh judgment--a harsh judgment about the people caught in these tragedies, and also a pretty harsh judgment about God.

If we look at the Parable of the Fig Tree in this context, the roles suddenly change.  We are the ones who are disappointed, we are the ones who make the harsh judgment: Cut it down!  It's a waste of time and space and good soil and effort.  Enough already.  How often do find that attitude in ourselves?  We sometimes say that about others, we say that about situations, and most hauntingly, we sometimes say that about ourselves.  How many times do we look inward and see how little has changed in us?  How many times are we tempted to give up, to let go of our best hopes about ourselves because we know--we know!--they will never be realized?  But it is God who says, very concretely in his son's life with and for us: No, let's give it another season.  Let's give it another try, and see what happens.  And then it is God who works like crazy, who gives his own sweat and blood and tears, to help us grow, to help us to become fruitful.

So really, both readings are really about compassion--the compassion that draws us near and holds us sacred, the compassion that hopes that we will catch fire.  The compassion that hears the our cry when we are far-off, enslaved, estranged.  The compassion that is always present if we will but turn to accept it.  The compassion that gives everything it has--all its labor, all its days which are endless, that we might be holy as he is holy.  The compassion that hopes that we will absorb him like a tree absorbs from its roots, so that we can offer the fruits of compassion to all who come to us in need.

 That's what Paul is talking to us about in Corinthians too, that we have to learn from the goodness and the generosity of God so that we don't become ungrateful, forgetful, so that we don't make God a thing of our past, but rather that we make him the center of our present.  If we can do that, our baptisms will not have been in vain, and all the work that God has done for us will not be squandered.  No, we shall reflect him, and reflecting him, become the true sons and daughters he longs to see.  We will be compassionate, even as he is compassionate.  For like every good father, God hopes to see a little bit of himself in his children.  And wehn we are compassionate, he recognizes us immediately!

One last thing that strikes me is that Jesus so often uses agricultural imagery; he grew up, after all, in a world of flocks and farms.  And so he often talks of the good earth, the weeds and the wheat, the vines, the sheep that wander.  But it is important to remember something about ourselves that I think God remembers each time he looks upon us: the parables are parables, and just that, and that we are not fig trees, or weeds, or dirt, or wheat or sheep. No, we are human, profoundly human, sometimes terribly human.  We are dust and clay indeed, but dust and clay into which God has breathed.  We may be like vines, but we are like vines connected to a root--to Jesus.  And as human beings, we can make decisions that earth and vines and weeds and wheat and sheep can never make; we can choose to be like our Father, loving, forgiving, compassionate.   And in the moment we choose so, we are changed.  And that is the fruit, a fruit so much better than a fig, that the God looks for.  And he, the good gardener, is so glorified whenever, wherever, he sees it in us.

AMDG