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

...that we are here!

The Second Sunday of Lent

Gn 15:5-12, 17-18: Abram put his faith in the Lord.
Phil 3:17—4:1: Our citizenship is in heaven.
Lk 9:28b-36: They saw his glory.





I am sorry: I am late with this post.

I don't know why but as I have been preparing this week's readings, I have been recalling the refrain from Carly Simon's 1971 hit "Anticipation."  Perhaps it is because she has been in the news, perhaps it is because transfiguration--the subject of the Gospel--rhymes with anticipation--the title of the song and it's most prominent word--but one way or other it runs through my head, as fresh as the 1970's Heinz Ketchup commercial:

Anticipation, anticipation
Is makin' me late
Is keepin' me waitin'

Perhaps, however, it has to do with what the Transfiguration signifies to me, to many of us.

The story is wonderful: Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain with him, where he prays.  As he prays, he is transfigured: Luke specifically refers to his face changing and his clothing becoming a dazzling white.  Moses and Elijah were seen conversing with him in his glory about his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.  Peter, ever the enthusiast, blurts out: "Lord, it is good that we are here..." and proceeds to discuss his plans--his architectural plans for the site.  But the voice interrupts--the same voice we heard earlier in Luke, on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord back in January: “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”  And then it is just Jesus, alone.  And they do not know what to say.

I don't know about you, but I would love to see Jesus this way; I would love to have been there, and I look forward to it perhaps someday.  I suspect that we all do.

Anticipation, anticipation

Is makin' me late

Is keepin' me waitin'

And of course, this is the irony--did you ever notice that there is always irony when dealing with the things of God--we've just missed the point.

There are many things that can be commented on in this story.  For instance, "the mountaintop experience" that Peter, James and John have with Jesus.  Many will point out that Peter, trying to build his booths, is trying to make that experience permanent.  A friend of mine--a wonderful evangelical Protestant who would not call me Father because "Ye have but one Father, your Father in heaven"--as she was dying of cancer said one day to me that we all love mountaintops--people always have--it's so lovely and clear on a mountaintop.  You can see forever up there.  But, she reminded me, we cannot live on the mountaintops; there is no water.  No, she said, we have to live in the valleys, where we cannot see too far and where it can be crowded and hard to move around.  But there is water in the valleys; that's where life is.  That is why God chose to come into our valleys, she said.  It was her way of reminding me about where to look for God, just before she died.

There is also the context; it is vitally important to recall what is going on the the Gospel of Luke if we are to make sense of this mystery.  Jesus has been doing wonderful ministry all over Galilee and even beyond--healing, expelling demons, even feeding thousands of people.  He is being followed by adoring masses.  His disciples have been going out and doing wonderful things in his name.  But there is a dark side at work too: the masses who follow him are the simple, the poor, the country folk, the workers; the really good people--those who actually know something about God, like the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees--have begun to oppose him.  His cousin, John the Baptist, has been first imprisoned and then killed.  So when the disciples show some evidence of beginning to understand who he is--"The Messiah of God!" Peter exclaims when he asks them--he has to tell them the hard truth: that it is not going to be what they think it will be, that he will have to suffer and die, and that being a disciple will mean going along for that ride!  Luke does not record that story quite the way Matthew does, but there is evidence that the disciples--even Peter--do not get that.

So when Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James and John, my suspicion is that he wants them to know a little bit more of the truth--as much as they can--so that they will be able to hear the hard news and not be discouraged by it.  But I suspect that the Father also takes the opportunity to give Jesus something every son or daughter needs from a loving father or mother--a bit of the affirmation that any parent would give to a beloved, obedient child who is having a really tough time!  I do not think Jesus doubts his Father's love, but I do think he is struggling--even as we will see him struggle on another mountain of prayer with the same three disciples, when he faces the hardest truths of all in his prayer on the Mount of Olives, that his Father's perfect love asks of him a perfect trust, a perfect sacrifice.  So the Father speaks to the disciples for Jesus here, but I am sure it is also important to the Father that Jesus knows exactly what he thinks of him!  And I have no doubt that this  helps Jesus to go down that mountain, where the disciples still don't get it, and decide that he will go to Jerusalem--the phrasing is apt: he sets his face toward Jerusalem (Lk 9:51b, cf note 25). 

As a disciple, it is such a consolation to know that at a human level Jesus struggles with these things too!  When he asks us to trust and believe, he knows what he is asking about.  When he asks us disciples to pick up our crosses and to follow him, he is not asking it lightly.  Jesus knows, and he understands!  These things are not easy for him either.  So when we have to undertake them, we can be sure that he is with us--not against us, but really with us, for that is what his name, Emmanuel, means: God with us! (Mt 1:23).

Isn't it funny, though, that the disciples did not see the other thing that happened on the mountain; I guess they could not have.  But as they looked up and saw Jesus as he truly is, the light of his face and the brightness dazzling off his clothes, is reflected upon them.  Their own faces brighten with his brightness, their own clothing shines as in the rays of a new sun.  No wonder Peter cries out, "It is good for us to be here!"  For his glory changes them.  Granted, Peter doesn't really understand, no more than he did when he confessed his faith in Jesus' relationship to the Father just a few verses earlier in the Gospel.  It is very good that they are there, not for the reason Peter enunciates, but for what happens to them there.

Remember what my friend said about mountains?  Well, Jesus takes them back down into the valley.  The valley full of life and all its problems, where things are not so clear and easy.  Because there is work to be done, God's own work!

But you know, what the disciples experienced on the mountain is not less true in the valleys.  Jesus is still the beloved son, and his words are still authentic, the very words of God.  Even when the disciples cannot see the glory, it is still truly there.  And that is true for us too.  Often we do not see the glory, more often than not, in fact.  But it does not mean that it is not there!  Perhaps it is even more present when we cannot see it.  I think of Mother Theresa, who early in her life saw the glory of God with some frequency.  But later in life, all she saw, by her own testimony, was the crying need of the poor, the ill, the starving, the outcast before her.  And she ministered to them.  And we all saw it, even as those she ministered to saw it: in her own way she reflected the glory and the love of God, though she herself could not see it.

It is good that we are here!  Peter is so right, so much more than he understands.  For that is Jesus' attitude in our world, when he meets the poor, the ill, the starving, the outcast.  When he meets the sinners.  When he meets the disciples who still do not--or will not--get it.  With each--with each of them and each of us--he knows it is good for him to be with us, for he sees before him a brother, a sister, another child of his Father.  It is this constant love that allows him to keep reaching out, even until his last moments on the cross when he greets the repentant thief with no less joy than he would greet the best of saints:  Today you shall be with me in Paradise!

It is good that we are here; we may not understand that anymore than Peter did.  Bu whenever we say that, whether we are at those infrequent peaks of mystical union with God or in the more frequent valleys of human reality, facing and struggling with our own sins and human frailties or facing and struggling with the sins and human frailties of those around us, we are like Jesus.  We reflect his glory and his love no less--perhaps even more-- than Peter, James and John did on that mountain top.

No, then, it is not just about some anticipated future; it is also very much about now.  Jesus took those friends to the top of the mountain so that he might be transfigured for them.  But he comes into our valleys to transfigure us.  And to show us that we too, even when we cannot see it, reflect the great glory and the love of God whenever we are willing to be with him here!

AMDG

Manna in Our Desert

The First Sunday of Lent

Dt 26:4-10: The Lord brought us out of Egypt.
Rom 10:8-13: If you confess with your lips, and believe in your heart...
Lk 4:1-13: Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.


How to begin Lent?  Well, it helps to get the ashes--to turn to the Lord with the truth of our need, our mortality, our sinfulness--we all know that.  And it helps to give something up.  And to think of something good to do, and then to start doing it!  And it certainly helps to give ourselves time to pray.  And when we have done these things, we have begun!

But we have only begun!  There is something much greater, much deeper that we are called to.  And that is why the account of Jesus being tempted from the Gospel of Luke is interesting on many counts, and so consoling.  Such a great Sunday Gospel to start with.

First, it is consoling because Jesus--Jesus, mind you!--was tempted, as tempted as he could possibly be.  And that means much more than we might think.  We all know, of course that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, but do we really take seriously what that means?  Or again, that he became human in all things but sin.  Do we really appreciate that?  Put bluntly, it means that the only difference between Jesus and us is that he did not sin...not that he was not tempted.  And how tempted was Jesus?  My suspicion was that he was thoroughly tempted, perhaps more than we can possibly understand and appreciate.  After all, do you honestly think that "the mortal enemy of our human nature, " as St. Ignatius calls him (Spiritual Exercises, Meditation on the Two Standards, 136) would simply sit back and let God attempt to save the likes of us?  Of course not!  So I suspect that Jesus was thoroughly tempted--all Ten Commandments, all seven deadly sins, the whole Law, even every standard of simple human decency...you name it.

As I said, I find this tremendously consoling.  Because I am certainly tempted, and I suspect you are too.  We all are.  And temptation, even when we do not give in to it, is tough.  It is not just that it's so hard to resist, it is that it makes us feel so isolated, so alone.  Ignatius claimed that one of the tricks of the tempter is always to make us close in on ourselves: we feel odd, disgusting, as though no one could possibly understand us in our sinfulness (Sp. Ex., Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, 13th Rule, 326.)  In precisely this way, the evil spirit seeks to keep us isolated, to thwart the plan of God, which is to reach out to us (Luke 4:17-21.)  That Jesus , in obedience to his Father, allows himself to be tempted, is such a relief; we are not alone there...it is just a trick of the tempter, a trick that God anticipated and that even Jesus experienced.  Jesus is in the desert with us!

If we admit that Jesus was really tempted--I know that the Gospels of Luke and Matthew note three specific temptations; I will meditate on those in a few minutes--and tempted in all the ways that human beings are tempted, and that he did not just go through the motions; he did not hide behind his divinity, that he really was human, then he really had to fight temptations the same way I have to.  And perhaps by meditating on what happened to him and how he handled it, we can come to an understanding of how we might handle temptation and even sin. 

But it's funny, isn't it, that neither Matthew nor Luke, mention the things that we usually associate with temptation--things like sex, overeating, drunkenness, revenge, meanness, greed, arrogance--all the self-indulgence that our popular culture associates with the word temptation.  Now, it may be that the Evangelists are being polite, but I don't think so.  Or it may be that Jesus never experienced those temptations, but if that where true, he would be quite different from you and me, wouldn't he?  So I don't think either of those are the case.

No, I think that the Evangelists are pointing to something much bigger, much more important.  And what they are pointing to may really help us as we seek our Lent--our lengthening of days unto the Resurrection itself.

Jesus experiences three explicit temptations in his forty days in the desert (although neither Matthew nor Luke state that these are the only temptations he undergoes) immediately after his baptism, when he heard the voice of his Father call out from Heaven "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased" (Luke 3:21-22).  The proximity of this experience to the temptation is critical, and remembering this helps to understand what these temptations may be about, both for Jesus and for ourselves.

The first is to turn stones into bread.  The obvious motive is that Jesus was hungry after fasting.  But notice what is really going on in the temptation when Satan says, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread."  Satan is not just tempting Jesus to satisfy his hunger, he also tempting Jesus to prove his identity--his worth--and to use it.  Just think what Jesus could accomplish in this one small trick?  I doubt he would turn the stone to bread for himself, but think of the great good he could do for others, feeding them!  And how that would be an opening to tell them about the wonders of God's kingdom!  This could draw so many people to the Father!  Jesus would truly prove his worth!

But notice how Jesus responds: No, as it it is written, "One does not live on bread alone."  Responding this way, Jesus explicitly rejects this appeal to his divinity and places himself squarely with our humanity; the writing comes from the Book of Deuteronomy: "He (the Lord) therefore let you be afflicted by hunger and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and to your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live but from every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord" (Dt 8:3).  And Jesus remembers well that word of his Father; he has just heard it: "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased."  Jesus will trust that, not his own power.  He will be the Father's son...no one else.  And the Father has asked him to be one of us. His worth is the love that the Father has for him, nothing else.

The second temptation is not unlike the first: Satan shows him all the kingdoms of the world and says: “I shall give to you all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.”  Just think what Jesus could do with all that power, what any good person--truly good person--could do!  He could set things right; he could pass just laws; he could punish the evil and raise up the good; he could establish the Kingdom on earth!  Oh my goodness, aren't those things that we all wish for!

But Jesus answer is like his first: No, only God will be his God; there can be and there will be no other.  And the Father has asked him not to create a kingdom of this world--not even to create a really just and excellent kingdom of this world--but to trust and obey Him, so that we would know how to trust and obey, so that we would have the confidence to do so, even when things get as hard as they possibly can get for human beings, even as they did for Jesus.  So Jesus once again places himself squarely in our camp, in the hands of his Father.

And finally, the last temptation: Okay, says Satan, if you are going to play that trust game, “if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you, and: With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”  Imagine what a star Jesus would have been--the guy who did a swan dive off the temple with everyone there to see him, and flying to a gentle landing.  How the crowds would love and listen to a star!  What great good a star could do!

No, says Jesus, that is not trusting God, that is testing him...that is no way to love God....that is not the way to love my Father.  He loves me, says Jesus; I do not need to test that!

What is Luke pointing to here?  Each time it comes back to Jesus trusting what the Father said...trusting it completely.  That he is the Father's son; in him the Father is well pleased.  That is his worth.  That is what he will build his life on.  That is what he will not test. 

But aren't we called to that same trust?  After all, isn't that what the Father says to each of us in our baptisms: "You...you are my son...my daughter now!  In you I am so pleased!  And through Jesus, my Son, you will pass through every death to life!"  Isn't that our true worth?  After all, on our own we are but "grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower wilts, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it. (So then, the people is the grass.)  Though the grass withers and the flower wilts, the word of our God stands forever" (Is 40:6b-8).  And Jesus is that word, the word that speaks the undying, eternal love that the Father has for us, the word in which we will never die.

Jesus faces temptation with a  deeper and deeper trust in his Father.  And perhaps that trust is what is too often what is lacking behind our own sins.  I know I give into my anger because I forget that the offense of another can not really harm me; the Kingdom of God has already been won for me.  I give into my avarice, my gluttony, my lust and my envy because I forget that the things that will really give me life and joy are not the things of this world that I will regret.  I give into my sloth because I forget that the things that just seem to big for me to handle are already covered; that God's love is so much bigger than my success and failure rate.  And I give into my pride because I forget that it is not all about me.  Jesus remembered, and he trusted.  And he reminds me, constantly, to trust.  And even when I forget, he trusts for me; that is the story of the cross--the great sign of Jesus' trust for the Father on my behalf...on behalf of all of us.

So it seems to me that I have to try to remember that voice from the heavens and to trust what it is really saying to me.  It is not a trick to spare me from all my hungers, not even to lessen them, but to see through them, to see beyond them to the truest hunger I have, which is for the fullness of God's love.  It doesn't claim that everything in my life will be set at right, that there will be perfect justice, but rather that the injustices of this world are not the final word, not even the injustices that still dwell in my own hard heart!  Nor does it  mean that I will never fall, or that God will rescue me from my physical, emotional, or moral stupidity.  But it means that since God sets no conditions on his love for me, I ought not set conditions on his love either.

It seems to me that these are the big temptations--that is why both Luke and Matthew explore them in depth in their Gospels--they are the big temptations of being human.  And it strikes me that for this very reason--for the fact that Jesus faced these--that I really should take some time to think about where I am tempted by them just the way he was.  I am sure that as Jesus sat out in that desert, in the heat and hunger, he may have felt very far from God.  But he trusted.  I have a feeling that it wasn't a sentimental trust, maybe not even an emotional trust.  I suspect it was a determined trust, a commitment to trust.  And I have to expect that the same is asked of me.

These are the big temptations.  The other ones--they are temptations, for sure, but maybe we need to look beyond them to see what is really going on, maybe they are more distractions--serious distractions, even grave distractions perhaps--but distractions that keep us from noticing what the Lord is asking of us at a deeper level, which is a trust that he is greater than our temptations, even than our sins!  I know for myself that it is so much easier to count my obvious sins than to look at the hard truth of the way that I treat my God--as though I don't need him, as though I can do it on my own, as though he should prove his love.

Finally, it occurs to me that we often take temptation as a sign of weakness.  They may be...they are at least good reminders that we are weak!.  But as we begin out Lent, our forty days in the desert, perhaps we can trust that something else, something much greater than the enemy of our human nature is at work.  Maybe we are asked to be like Jesus, really be like Jesus now!  Yes, we will be tempted, because no enemy of our human nature would let us do this...would let God do this in us...without putting up a fight. But God is more powerfully at work than we can possibly imagine, making us...transforming us, in the heat and the hunger of the desert, into the sons and daughters we long to be, that He created us to be!

If we can trust that, then our Lent--the lengthening of our days even unto the Resurrection--is well begun.  And God is so, so pleased.

Trust him!

AMDG

Poverty sucks, but....

The Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Jer 17:5-8, Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD.
1 Cor 15:12, 16-20, But Christ has been raised .
Lk 6:17, 20-26, The Beatitudes, and the Woes.



 Ugh!  The Gospel today contains difficult things.  He says that the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the hated and excluded and insulted are all blessed.  And that the rich, the full, the happy and the well-esteemed are cursed.

Uh, Jesus, with all due, don't you have that a little backwards?

And this isn't even the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus says "the poor in spirit," and those "who hunger and thirst for justice."  This is the literally poor, the literally hungry.  Those other passages are much easier...a little buffering goes a long way.

I don't know about you, but as I write this, I am digesting what was a very pleasant dinner, I am warm in my room in a somewhat snowy New York,  WQXR is playing lovely classical music in the background, and I a relatively content, save for a slight cough and cold.  Probably, if you are sitting at a computer reading this, you're are not in all that different a situation, maybe listening to different music, maybe at a different time of day.  But probably not struggling.  So what are we to make of Jesus' words--we, who are not poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, insulted?

Oh, I imagine we could find all sorts of ways to make ourselves into the people Jesus esteems; we could claim little social disadvantages for ourselves, we could dig up a few wounds from childhood, we could find little ways in which we might merit the blessings and dodge the curses--I'm really not that rich...I come from a working class background...I have had it tough...I have come by it all honestly at any rate...

Or we could, I guess, take Jesus at his word.

Once we do that, it is funny how freeing the words become, how much latitude we suddenly find in them.  Jesus is quite serious when he talks about these blessings and curses, as upside down as they may seem to us.  But if we let his words be truth for us, we are suddenly freed, in a marvelous way.

What do I mean?

Well, the truth is that all the things of this world are only blessings if they bring us closer to God.  And all the lacks are only curses if they keep us from God.  But we know that nothing--nothing!--will separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:31-39).  This is his promise to us through Christ; God even took the worst we could offer and made it the means of salvation, if we are willing to accept it.

If then we build our lives on what brings us closer to our God, and not on our own comfort, or on the opinions of others, or on what our advertising culture tells us is necessary for a good life, then the values of the Beatitudes, even as baldly as they are stated by Luke, make great sense.  But if we build our lives on the praise of our friends and our neighbors, if we concentrate on filling our bellies and getting whatever pleases us, if we fill our lives with whatever will amuse us, then we have a number of problems.  First, we will not face the truth of how hard life can be, and probably will be for each of us, or for those whom we love.  Secondly, we will become compulsive about filling our lives with these things; they will become addictions, and we will be slaves to those addictions.  Thirdly, we will never learn the truth about ourselves, the truth that we are terribly contingent creatures.  Even if one does not believe in God, we still all have to face the fact that our lives have been built on the shoulders of many others, and upon a great deal of good fortune.  Fourthly, we will come to regard things as the measure of God's love for us, which they are emphatically not! Finally, we will probably hurt many people--even people we love--along the way, for like addicts we will sacrifice anything to get our fixes, to keep ourselves full, well-liked, happy and comfortable.

And what a shame it would be to find ourselves at the end of the game, having won Monopoly by hook and by crook, but having no one left to play with.  How cursed--how lonely and wretched!  As Jesus asks so directly: "What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?" (Mt 16:26).

Now truth be told, once I let Jesus' words mean what they mean, I am hung out to dry.  I am not poor, and I don't think I really could ever be poor; I have all the advantages of an over-educated, pretty well-bred, white, middle class, American male, including the fact that I have time to write a blog.  My health is pretty good because my parents worked very hard to make sure that my brothers and sisters and I ate well; they made sure we were educated well; they held us to very high standards.  Even if I were to lose everything, including my mind, and tossed out on the street, much of that would still probably come through.  I have abundant resources I have never had to rely on; the poor really do not.  In fact, most of us do.  As Lear cries out in his earliest madness, "Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous!"

But despite what I may think--despite what our culture thinks--all those advantages are not advantages before God.  The fact is that God does not love me for these advantages.  Nor did he give me these advantages because he loves me.  They amount to nothing--indeed they may amount to worse than nothing--on the day of judgment.


There is a wonderful and salutary parable in the Gospel of Luke about a rich fool who, having had a successful crop, decides to pull down his barns and build larger ones to store the abundance of his harvest.  But God calls him a fool (Luke 12:16-21).  The issue is for God is not that the man has much, nor that he was successful or lucky.  Rather, I suspect, it was that the rich fool could have done something greater with his good fortune and his skillful farming: he could have cared for the people around him who were in need.  But it never enters his mind; he is possessed by his possessions and his life, in the end, is a sad waste.  No one to miss him, no one to bless him, no one to pray for him!  He could have done so much--he could have been a blessing.

Perhaps that is what Jesus is trying to correct in us rich fools; perhaps he is trying to help us to rethink our possessions and advantages and privileges; perhaps rather than thinking of it all as a game of Monopoly, we would do better to think of it as Hot Potato--whoever gets caught at the end with the stuff gets burnt.  Perhaps he wants us to understand that the stuff is a curse unless we let it be a blessing--unless we ourselves are blessings--to someone else.

 I always find Jesus' example instructive, and in this scene no less so.  Interesting, isn't it, that Luke places Jesus on a level plane for this discourse (in contrast to the Matthean version, which takes place on a mountain).  Isn't it amazing that the Lord of the heavens and the earth should come sit face-to-face with us.  How much he had to set aside to do that!  In the "Meditation on the Two Standards" in the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius alludes to this scene when he describes Jesus summoning the army of the elect "in a great field of that region of Jerusalem, in lowly place, beautiful and attractive," quite in contrast to Lucifer, "the enemy of our human nature," who is enthroned on a high and fiery throne, inspiring awe and fear.  The message is so clear: Jesus became poor for us; Jesus became poor in becoming one of us.

Years ago, there was a poster with an overdressed guy with his foot on the fender of a limo and a dolled-up babe on his arm; the caption underneath read "POVERTY SUCKS!"  Well, you know, it does--ask any poor person; ask someone from Haiti.  And let's not be romantic about it; poverty can do terrible things to people--degrading them, reducing them, forcing them to do terrible things.  But wealth does not necessarily make us any better.  One needs only to read the papers or watch the news to follow the seriously messed up lives of the rich and the famous.  And the salacious headlines do not even begin to describe the more serious heartbreaks and agonies they experience, just like the rest of us.  We have seen anew in the past few years how hard the rich and powerful have to work to keep themselves on top, often going to terrible lengths in their effort to stay on top, betraying all trust--of family and friends, as well as colleagues and employees--along the way.  Think of the names we have come to know well: Bernard Madoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Kenneth Lay, Elliot Spitzer.  In so many ways, they are more to be pitied.

In the end, then, there is really only one question for us: what will bring us closer to our God?  Jeremiah says that trust is what the Lord asks of us, trust even when our little kingdoms are falling apart, even as Jeremiah experienced as he watched the Kingdom of Judah in its destruction.  Trusting in God's way, even when all the world says that we are fools for doing so.  Jeremiah pointed to this; Jesus lived it, trusting his Father even to the end, when there was barely breath left in him.  His trust, as Paul makes so clear, was vindicated.  Ours, too, if we will but give it.

AMDG