We can choose to have one of 2 kinds of relationships with Jesus: either we see our relationship to him mainly in terms of master-servant or in terms of friend. As a child I remember seeing Jesus more as a master to be feared, respected and obeyed than as a friend to love in intimacy and familiarity. But somewhere along the way, something made me rethink that relationship. I’m not sure what it was, but I came to read the scriptures in a new way, and when he said: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing. But I have called you friends.” It became clear that he wanted to be my friend. Not my master, but my friend.
Later I began to wonder, If that’s true, and that’s what Jesus said, then why had I, and so many others I know, been so afraid to move from a master servant relationship with Jesus to a relationship based on friendship and love, since we had to know it would change the way we prayed, the way I lived, the way we loved.
What I heard, and what I felt was: “But Father, I’m not worthy.” And then it dawned on me, of course we’re not worthy, but we’re not taking the lead here. Jesus is. He was clear about that when he said: “You did not choose me, I chose you.” And, if he chooses to love us and to accept us as friend, not as servant, our question shouldn’t be “who am I Lord that you should love me?” because that makes it all about “me.” It makes it about my being good enough to deserve his love. The question we should be asking is: “Who are you Lord, that you love me so much?” This focuses our attention on a God who is love and forgiveness. And there is no doubt that God loves us, and accepts us, just as we are, warts and all, and there’s also no doubt, that, because of that love, God doesn’t want to leave us where we are. God continually calls us to become the person he created us to be.
It’s not unlike the love a mother has for her infant child. Mothers love them just as they are, night-time feedings, dirty diapers and all, but, as cuddly and wonderful as they are, they sure don’t want them to stay babies forever. They want them to grow and be all that they can be! More than anything, we want them to be happy, to be filled with joy. And they work hard at giving them the skills they will need to be happy, to be all that they can be.
In the same way, Jesus wants us to grow in his love and be all that we can be, all that he created us to be. He wants us to be filled with his joy.
“Remain in my love,” he said. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love. Just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”
If we really want to be filled with the joy, the happiness, the peace that only Jesus can give, if we really want to be his friend as much as he wants to be ours,
if we really want to move from a child’s faith to an adult faith,
we need to take him at his word: when he says:
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
Jesus chooses to be our friend, but that friendship is possible only if we choose, in return, to be his friend. And, just as Jesus showed his love, his friendship, for us not only in words, but in deed, when he died for us, so we show our love, our friendship, for him in return, not just in words, but in deed, when we love one another. “You are my friends,” he said, “ if you love one another as I love you.”
Friend or Master. The choice is ours.
If you ask me, it’s not much of a choice!
In our Psalm today we heard: “Let the coming generation be told of the Lord that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born the justice he has shown.”
“Proclaim to people yet to be born the justice he has shown......”
That prompts a question: What kind of a legacy are leaving for a people yet to be born?
In his book NEW TESTAMENT BASIS OF PEACEMAKING, Fr. Richard McSorley does not give us very high marks.
He writes: “A person who knew nothing about Christ but who decided to discover what Christ taught by observing the way Christians live, might decide that Christ taught as follows:
Blessed are the rich for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are the violent for they shall possess the land.
Blessed are those who afflict others, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for power, they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciless, they will get ahead.
Blessed are the war-makers, they are God’s children.
Blessed are you when men honor you and say all manner of praise about you for your reward is also great in heaven.
We know the truth is different, but unfortunately, McSorley’s version of the beatitudes describe too many in our world:
“Proclaim to people yet to be born the justice he has shown......”
Today’s readings should indeed cause us pause to see, if in fact, we practice in word and deed, what we profess to believe. And, our 2n reading tells us how best to do that: “Little children, let us love in deed and in truth and not merely talk about it. This is our way of knowing we are committed to truth and are at peace before God.”
I wonder if anyone here would disagree with me when I say: Our world is in trouble, or when I say: It could be different if only we began today to really live what we profess to believe. If we did, there is no doubt a giant step would be taken toward bringing about that Kingdom we pray for every time we say the Lord’s prayer.
Does our value system correspond with the beatitudes as Jesus taught, or as Fr. McSorley described them?
The way we answer that question may well determine whether we are a fruitful branch on the vine of Christ, or a withered, rejected branch worth nothing more than to be thrown into the fire.
In his autobiography, Mahatma Gandhi wrote that during his student days he read the Gospels seriously and considered converting to Christianity. He believed that in the teachings of Jesus he could find the solution to the
caste system that was dividing the people of India.
So one Sunday he decided to attend services at a nearby church and
talk to the minister about becoming a Christian. Gandhi left the church and never returned. “If Christians have cast differences also,” he said, “I might as well remain a Hindu.”
“Proclaim to people yet to be born the justice he has shown......”
Today’s readings should indeed cause us pause to see, if in fact, we practice in word and deed, what we profess to believe. And, our 2n reading tells us how best to do that: “Little children, let us love in deed and in truth and not merely talk about it. This is our way of knowing we are committed to truth and are at peace before God.”
I wonder if anyone here would disagree with me when I say: Our world is in trouble, or when I say: It could be different if only we began today to really live what we profess to believe. If we did, there is no doubt a giant step would be taken toward bringing about that Kingdom we pray for every time we say the Lord’s prayer.
Does our value system correspond with the beatitudes as Jesus taught, or as Fr. McSorley described them?
The way we answer that question may well determine whether we are a fruitful branch on the vine of Christ, or a withered, rejected branch worth nothing more than to be thrown into the fire.
When we deeply deeply invest ourselves, over a long period of time, in an attitude, a way of life, a belief, an idea – whatever, it can be really difficult and even impossible t times, to walk away from that investment and make a new commitment to a different attitude, way of life, belief, or idea – whatever. And that can be true, when whatever it is that I’ve invested myself in not only isn’t serving me well anymore, but may, in fact, even be defeating the goals I’m trying to achieve.
We see an example of this in today’s reading from Acts. Even though Peter and John pointed out their curing of the man who was crippled was a good deed, they were still imprisoned, because, that healing, was so terribly threatening to the elders and the leaders of the people. And it was threatening, because they had invested their lives in a belief that the Messiah would be a political and military leader, who would free them from Roman rule. And Peter’s curing of that crippled man in the name of Jesus challenged that belief and they simply were not able to let go of it and accept the notion that the Messiah represented a spiritual order, not an earthly one. And so they tried to defend their investment in a belief that the messiah was a spiritual not a military leader, by either trying to discredit the healing as coming from God, or by proving the healing just didn’t happen. Hence, Peter and John’s arrest.
I suspect over our lifetime most, if not all of us, have invested in a belief that consumed us.....at least for a time.. At the moment it seemed to be the be all and the end all of our lives. It demanded all of our energy. But then something happened to challenge that belief. Some of the teaching flowing from the II Vatican Council did that to some people... Latin to English; Freedom of conscience; Communion in the hand and drinking from the cup; Changing the altar to face the people.
The issues and the beliefs change from time to time. Today some of them are: the role of women in the church; married priests; all kinds of issues surrounding sexuality; These are just a few.
I’m not saying these issues aren’t important or that we shouldn’t wrestle with them. We can and we must, but in today’s reading Peter reminds us that there is only one truth, one belief, one issue in all this world that is worth, that demands the investment of the totality of ourselves .
Referring to Jesus, Peter tells the leaders and elders and us: “He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”
It’s a belief that’s almost paradoxical in that it gives us, on the one hand, a cross to carry, and on the other, the strength to carry it.
We may get tired, we may get discouraged, we may not want to carry the cross we’re given, but deep down we will be at peace because we know nothing is more important than our belief in Jesus as our Savior. It’s an investment in a belief that will never betray us.
“There is salvation in no one else................” Can anything else be more important? Does anything else really matter?
The one who asked his Father to forgive for his executioners, those who were killing him, murdering him, and mocking him, as he hung on that cross in Golgatha, left forgiveness to his community both as one of its most outstanding characteristics, and, I believe, its most difficult demand.
Along with love, will always be the hallmark of our faith.
Certainly the kind of forgiveness Jesus lived and taught, and breathed into his disciples after his resurrection, was as profoundly shocking to his contemporaries, as it is for us today. But there are those among us who do understand it and live it – even in the face of death. One example.
Their prior, Dom Christian de Cherge suspecting their possible deaths as early as December 1992 wrote the following testament. I’ll read just part of it.
On the night of March 26-27 1996, seven monks from the monastery Notre-Dame de l'Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria, members of the Trappist Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, were kidnapped from their abbey, held for two months, and then on May 21 1996 their headless bodies were discovered. Their deaths have been documented in the movie “Of Gods and Men.”
“If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. To accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure, I would like them to pray for me: how worthy would I be found of such an offering?
“I would like them to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity. My life has no more value than any other. Nor, any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a space of lucidity, which would enable me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.
“And you too, my last minute friend, who will not know what you are doing, Yes, for you too I say this THANK YOU AND THIS “A-DIEU”-—to commend you to this God in whose face I see yours. And may we find each other, happy “good thieves” in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both. . . AMEN!”
It’s this radical concept of forgiving love, grounded in Jesus’ own example, that sharply distinguished these martyrs and others like them from the terrorists in today’s world. Both – martyrs and terrorists - are prepared to die for a cause, but the terrorist, in dying, adds to the violence of the world, hating and cursing what he has killed and encouraging others to do the same, while those who respond to violence by begging God to have mercy on their persecutors, imitate Jesus and add to the redemption of the world.
Whenever we see that kind of forgiveness practiced, we are reminded again just how clearly it speaks not only to the world’s deepest needs, but to our own personal needs as well. There are probably very few of us here today who have not been hurt or know people how have been hurt deeply: Maybe
a spouse has walked out of our lives, our children have disappointed us, parents or other trusted adults have abused us, friends or siblings have cheated us or betrayed us, the company to which we gave so much devotion refused us a promotion or fired us without notice.
If you were Travon Martin’s parents could you love & forgive Robert Zimmerman?
If you were Sue Krentz could you love & forgive the murderer, whoever it was of your husband Robert.
If your mom or dad treated all of your siblings like kings & queens, and you, like your didn’t exist, can you still love & forgive?
If you were Jesus, could you love and forgive those who were killing you?
Sometimes it’s so very hard to forgive. Sometimes it’s so very hard not to want revenge. To surrender our right to get even in this nation of Rambo’s with their UZI machine guns blasting bodies all over the silver screen is almost un- American, BUT, the point is, we are not just anybody. We are a community that was born out of Calvary’s love and forgiveness, a community that is called to practice that same love and forgiveness.
Christ’s Easter gift was to breathe into his followers the power to forgive. He didn’t promise us it would be any easier for us than it was for him, but He did promise us it was possible.
We can’t get away from it. We cant say: It’s impossible for me to forgive. It’s impossible for me to love. If the world is to be redeemed, If the world is to be renewed in Christ; if we are to be redeemed, if we are to be renewed in Christ, we must learn to forgive, we must learn to love - on every level of our lives. It’s the only way the chain of evil and the vicious cycle of revenge can be broken. It’s the only way we can experience God’s forgiveness and healing and peace.
Our recent pilgrimage retreat to the places of the martyrs in El Salvador reminds me of a Spanish story about a priest, not a very good priest, but one who was consumed with art and sculpture, with good food and fine wine – in other words, with living the good life.
One day he was looking through antique shops for that hidden treasure when he came across a large replica of Christ that had been ripped off a crucifix. Half of one leg was missing. An arm had been broke off, and the face had been badly scarred.
Despite the damage, the priest decided to purchase it. He knew that if he had it restored to its original splendor, it would be worth a great deal of money.
That night he dreamt that he was speaking to Christ. He shared his anger at what had happened to the figure and his plans to restore it, to make it beautiful again. In response Christ said: “let me ask you a question. Why do you care so much about this broken, mutilated wooden image of me, and at the same time, care so little about my broken, mutilated living body all around you?
Don’t repair it. Leave it as it is. Look on it often, and when you look at it and see me scared and broken, think of the many people who are lonely and hungry and homeless; who might as well be missing an arm because they have no possibility of work, who might as well be without feet because there’s no possibility of getting out of their poverty who might as well be without a face because their self respect had been taken from them!”
Not a new lesson, but one we all need to heart over and over and over again. Sometimes I wonder if we really ever even hear it. Thirty Three years ago Monsignor Romero wrote, “Very nice, pious consideration that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like preaching to be.”
I hear that too. Don’t talk to me about immigration. Don’ talk to me about capitol punishment, or what budgets or taxes are doing to the poorest in our country. Don’t you dare be critical of what great men like Rush Limbaugh say. (even, I guess, if they misrepresent what someone says and calls that person a slut! That’s politics. Talk to me about God!
But Jesus made it clear: We can’t simply call out Lord, Lord. We can’t simply pray before beautiful statues and crucifixes and pictures. The Gospel calls us to so more. “A church that doesn’t provoke any crisis,” Monsignor asked, “a gospel that doesn’t unsettle a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed – what gospel is that?”
Read the Scriptures closely. They call us to live every day, boldly and without fear, applying the scriptures & the teaching of our church to the realities of our own day just as The Bishops of Central and South America applied the scriptures, the documents of Vatican II and those of Medellin and Pueblo to the realities of his own day.
If Monsignor were alive today and living in our country, I have no doubts he would be as strong a voice for the poor, for those who have no voice, for organizing, for reminding those of us who have, of our Gospel obligation share with those who don’t, and of our government’s responsibility not to oppress or repress its people.
Who will be that voice today
Monsignor desperately longed for the coming of God’s Kingdom, a Kingdom ruled by love. At the beginning of Holy Week in 1978, commenting on Jesus words, “Let those who would follow me deny themselves.” He described what was necessary for one would build that kingdom.
As we being Holy Week this year I want to share those words with you. “They must be violent to themselves, repress in themselves the outburst of pride, kill in their hearts the outbursts of greed, of avarice, of conceit, of arrogance. Let them kill it in their hearts. This is what must be killed, this is the violence that must be done, so that out of it a new person may arise, the only one who can build a new civilization: a civilization of love.”
Don’t waste this week. Try to clear your calendars for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Make them as special as you possibly can. Think of them as the most important retreat of your life. Set aside ordinary activities and give full attention to the holiest days of our year. Don’t go to movies or concerts. Cancel your appointment with the hairdresser. Forgo sporting events or your work-out at the gym or your daily Starbucks. Fast. Really fast. Don’t turn on the television or the radio or the computer. Use the phone only for emergencies. Attend as many of the services as possible. Savor the silence. Enter the mystery. Become that new person, as committed as Monsignor Romero was to building a civilization of love.
Delivered at Southside Presbyterian Church | March 11, 2012
Texts: Exodus 20:1-17 | John 2:13-22
Friends, it is an honor to be with you again to reflect on our scriptures during this Lenten season.
Today we are presented with two iconic passages. The first is the 10 commandments; the second is what is commonly called, “Jesus’ cleansing of the temple.” I invite us to consider these two stories as pivotal moments of liberation and revelation, particularly, liberation from gods, and revelation of God.
Reference to the commandments is so common and popularized in our society, that at times we may simply think of them as an overdone list of “thou shalt not’s.” To refresh our memory and imagination, let us briefly explore the context in which these commandments are given.
This famous passage occurs right in the middle of the book of exodus, and to be exact, it occurs at the beginning of chapter 20 out of the 40 chapters that make up the book. If we look at exodus as a dramatic story, the giving of the commandments and it’s surrounding context can be considered the climax of the drama, a drama where God establishes a covenant with the Hebrew people.
The physical location where this action takes place is Mt. Sinai, a mountain along their journey into the wilderness as they continue to get further and further from Pharaoh, their former master and oppressor.
Like every good drama, the climax of exodus is intense: there are loud trumpet sounds, there is lightning, there is thunder, there are earthquakes, and in the midst of all this, on top of the mountain is God, personified as fire and hidden by clouds of smoke. In all its grandeur, one could describe the scene as the place where the realm of God converges with the realm of the human, where the infinite converges with the finite, where the liberator—GOD—comes face to face with God’s liberated people.
And then, from the top of the mountain, God speaks his commandments directly to these former slaves without any need of Moses or of any other intermediary to stand between God and God’s people.
But before God speaks the commandments, God frames them with the radical reality of what God has already done for them and with them—for as Exodus says, God has already brought them “out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” That God is a liberating God who chooses to enter into a relationship with his liberated people will be the cornerstone for the commandments that follow.
In this unprecedented encounter at Mt. Sinai, God removes the yoke of their former slavery and makes of them one people who will be bound unto God through a common identity rooted in their fidelity to God and to each other. At the heart of the commandments then, lies not a legal system of behavior, but a relationship.
And so we can say that the command to have only one God is to free us from the pantheon of gods and their demands and oppressive sacrifices; to not have idols is to free us from putting our trust in any created thing or system, however holy that system may seem; to not misuse the name of God is to free us from using God for our own ideologies; to honor the Sabbath is to free us from excessive production and oppressive ambition; to honor father and mother is to free us from the temptation to forget our human history as a people delivered by God; to not murder is to free us from the belief that life is expendable; to not commit adultery is to free us from taking lightly the mystery of love and the gift of sexuality; to not steal is to free us from the temptation to appropriate at any cost the livelihood of another person or community; to not bear false witness is to free us from using the public sphere and legal systems for our own gain; and lastly, the command to not desire that which belongs to our neighbor is meant to free us from the violence we do to ourselves and to others when we become fixated on desiring things rather than on desiring God.
In the commandments then, right relationship with God is intrinsically bound with right relationship with neighbor, and worship of God cannot take place at the expense of neighbor.
I invite us to keep this framework of the commandments as a lens to help us nuance the second chapter of the gospel of John, when Jesus goes to the temple and drives out the sacrificial animals and overturns the tables of the moneychangers. In that story we are given a glimpse into an institutionalized relationship between the Hebrew people and God that is no longer marked by the narrative of liberation, but by a narrative of sacrificial violence. It is a story of a people who have forgotten the meaning of their history and of God’s liberating action.
Unlike the synoptic gospels where the story is placed toward the end of Jesus’ ministry as he begins his passion, John places the story at the beginning of the Gospel, right after Jesus’ miracle at Cana. The miracle at Cana beautifully foreshadows what Jesus is going to do at the temple, for at Cana, Jesus takes the stone jars that were meant for the Jewish rites of purification, and transforms their purpose from instruments of purification, to instruments of celebration, from jars that divided the pure from the impure, to jars that provided for all. Similarly, in overturning the tables, Jesus will transform the system of purification and sacrifice into a relationship with God where all are invited to the feast.
Scholars tell us that during Passover in Jerusalem, as many as 100,000 people would make the pilgrimage to the temple, to offer their sacrifices of cattle, sheep, or doves, and to pay their annual temple tax of a ½ silver shekel per male. In order to purchase these offerings for sacrifice, which could only be purchased at the temple, these pilgrims would have to exchange whatever currency they brought, into the temple currency, for only special temple shekels were accepted. It goes without saying that in a system where you control the currency, the goods, the supply, and the religious laws that demand certain sacrifices, there is bound to be abuse.
Just imagine the scene of 100,000 people frenzying around the temple; imagine the rivers of blood of 100,000 animals being sacrificed on the altar one after another after another; imagine the noise of the moneychangers haggling to offer you the best exchange rate; imagine the very poor on the margins of the temple, who would also love to offer a sacrifice to the lord, but who have no money to change, much less money to buy a sacrifice; imagine the gentile, the “other”, who has also made the pilgrimage and who longs to come to the altar and worship God, but who is not considered worthy of God; imagine the overwhelming influence that the very building of the temple and the temple priests held on the people who journeyed from far away to pay their due.
For what, we may ask, are these people paying? Is it for acceptance in the temple grounds? Is it to quench God’s thirst for blood? Is it to be purified? Is it to have God bless their endeavors, however sinful? Is it to have God forgive their faults, however small? Or, was it to honor God for having delivered them and their ancestors from Pharaoh, for after all, it is that act of liberation that Passover commemorates both then and now.
In overturning the tables of the moneychangers and driving out the animals of sacrifice, Jesus is not simply protesting a corrupt system that benefited financially from the 100,000 people that came to worship, rather, Jesus’ active resistance is a direct challenge to their, and our, understanding of God and worship of God. Jesus’ resistance is against any system that demands sacrifice, violence, and exclusion; and at the temple, Jesus enters into a sacrificial system that does violence in the name of God and excludes all whom it deems unworthy of God. It is by entering this mechanism and not being ultimately consumed by it, that Jesus can transform it from within.
In this gospel story we also hear that the disciples remembered the words of the psalmist that say, “zeal for your house will consume me.” This phrase is often interpreted as referring to Jesus’ zeal for the temple, and thus we are quick to appropriate it as illustrative of the zeal that we think we also should have. But in fact, these words can also refer to that zeal that the temple authorities and all who benefited from the temple had for their institution, and from this perspective, the zeal is no longer life giving, but destructive. It is such zeal that consumes and kills Jesus, making him the ultimate scapegoat and sacrificial victim of the temple.
Zeal for our religious institutions, when separated from love of neighbor, leads to a system of scapegoating that demands sacrificial victims in order to defend what is falsely termed the “common good.” Our Christian history is littered with the names of those whom we’ve sacrificed in the name of Christ and the "greater good": heretics, pagans, Jews, witches, gays, Muslims, and all those who were moved by the spirit to speak out against the violence and exclusion of their religious institutions.
Friends, we don’t have to perpetuate such systems, for through his resurrection Christ proves once and for all that it is forgiveness and not revenge, love and not hate, mercy and not sacrifice which constitute true worship. Jesus becomes the great commandment that was not ultimately consumed, upon whom we are to establish our worship of God based not on the gods of sacrifice, violence, or exclusion, but on the God who is revealed to be love and who asks us to love.
In this Lenten season, our call is not to offer sacrifices to appease God, but to overturn and transform our complicity in all that which perpetuates violence and exclusion and which keeps us from building up a community where all have access to God, where all are worthy of the divine, where none are left outside the temple grounds.
As we reflect on our church communities, let us ask ourselves what violence we continue to perpetuate in the name of God, and who are those excluded from our altars.
As we reflect on our families, let us ask ourselves what violence we continue to perpetuate in the name of tradition, and who are those excluded from our homes.
As we reflect on ourselves, let us ask what violence we do to self in the name of sacrifice, and how we continue to exclude our deepest understanding of who God has called us to be.
May this be our prayer, and as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says, “the issue of prayer is not prayer…the issue of prayer is God.” Amen.
Today’s gospel reminded me of the story about how Martin Buber came to write his famous book – I and Thou – where he describes how we can relate to people as objects (the I-it relationship) or as persons having feelings, dreams and needs like our own (the I – Thou) relationship.
In that book he write about a student who came to him about not wanting to serve in the German army in WWI. Although he was a fiercely patriotic German he simply did not want to fight an kill and he wanted advice on what he should do.
Buber was in the midst of writing a book and without even looking up he snapped at the student saying something like: Yeah, that’s really a serious problem; just go do what you want, and went back to his work. The young man, in despair for lack of guidance, committed suicide. For the rest of his life Buber felt a measure of guild for seeing that young man only as an interruption, and not as a human soul in torment.
It’s easy to treat others as objects. We do it all the time. Sometimes it a waitress or a waiter or a busboy; Maybe it’s the person to tends our yards or cleans our house or disagrees with us politically or morally. Sometimes we see it in the way we treat our spouses, parents, children co-workers. We treat them as objects, demanding all kinds of things, forgetting they are human beings with feelings too.
The Samaritan Woman in today’s gospel is one such victim. He role has been distorted because of the assumptions about women’s sexuality, intellect, and interests we bring to the text. No where in the text itself, for example, is this woman judged to be a sinner. Jesus certainly doesn’t judge her. You and I do because we presume her marital history is the result of some moral laxity. But the text doesn’t say that. On the contrary, she’s presented as person who gradually comes to believe this man really is the messiah. She’s able to do that because, instead of avoiding her, instead of not talking to her because she was a woman, because she was a hated Samaritan, he not only held a serious conversation with her, he revealed to her who he was. In return, she brings the towns people to Jesus that they may come to believe as well.
Instead of treating her as an object, Jesus treated her as a human being and offered her the living water of life, and called forth from her such a sense of joy and faith that she was able to share it with others in a way that they no longer needed her witness because “we have heard for ourselves.
There are many lessons in this parable. Here are three: First, the woman’s evangelization of her town was so successful that I believe it destroyed forever any notion that men have a privileged position as witnesses and disciples of Jesus. Secondly, the way Jesus treated both the woman and the townspeople, models for us the way human relationships can and should be transformed. And finally, I believe the whole story summons us as individuals, as a society, and as a church,to reexamine the way we treat women as objects.
Two immediate examples of women being treated as objects today come to mind.
The first is Sandra Fluke and Rush Limbaugh’s public rants against her. Both what has been said, and what hasn’t been said, is shameful and sinful. Everyone of us should be raising our voices in protest not only in this instance but every time anyone degrades and objectives a woman.
The second is found in a book we’re reading for Just Faith. The title is Half the Sky. In the introduction the authors write: “In the 19th century the central moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”
What follows in the book is both inspiring and devastating. From sex trafficking to genital mutilation, from honor killing to forced prostitution, and on and on Half the Sky takes an unflinching look at the many of the ways that women and girls are oppressed throughout the World every day, and they do it through the stories of many of the women who have suffered and survived these crimes and injustices, some of whom have escaped with their lives and have come out better on the other end,and some who have not.
The real power of the book, I think, is that it seeks to offer some ways to really change the world so that the women and girls who are oppressed today, will be empowered tomorrow.
As one of the women highlighted in the boo, Edna Adan says: “If you feel strongly about a particular situation or practice, follow your heart. Often you will find others who have been looking for the same courage to speak out about the same subject. The more of you who collaborate together, the better and stronger you will be.”
I would love to have a group of women, and men, read this book, discuss it and commit themselves to finding ways to involve themselves and others in working to bring women out of oppression. If any of you are interested, let me know and I’ll help facilitate getting it started. I’d be more than happy to order the books.
At any rate, the lesson for each of us today is that we never treat others – women or men - like objects that serve our purposes, but rather, that like Jesus, we offer them the same living water Jesus offered the woman at the wellby treating them as men and women, boys and girls made in the image and likeness of God just as you and I are made in God’s image and likeness, that through us they too will meet Jesus and bringhis life giving grace to others.
The story in today’s gospel is but another example of how Jesus compelled people to live a new reality. Where people were overburdened and without hope, with just a touch of his hand or a word from his lips, he healed their pain and gave them hope. But note. Forgiveness came first. Then came healing. And in the healing, he gave them a new way of living, a way of living that demanded they also learn to forgive and accept forgiveness.
Let me give you an example. I knew a person who, after her parents divorced, became consumed with anger at them because they were no longer the same mommy and daddy she had grown up with, that she wasn’t able to have a decent relationship with either of them. Unable to forgive them she couldn’t move forward with her own life. She functions, but she was, and is miserable.
Refusing to forgive is like rearranging the furniture in you house, but then walking through it as if you hadn’t done a thing. Obviously your going to walk into chairs and couches, trip over foot stools and electric cords and end tables, and probably end up with a bunch of bruises you won’t remember where they came from.
It works the same way with our spirits. When we forgive, when we experience forgiveness from others and from God, our spiritual house is rearranged, but we don’t have to worry about bruising ourselves on the clutter of our former sins.
In our first reading we read: “Thus says the Lord: Remember not the event of the past, the things of long ago consider not; See I am something new.............It is I, I, who wipe out for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.” And, in our second reading Paul encouraged the Corinthians to accept God’s “Yes” and allow God to put his seal on them, and his Spirit in their hearts.
If we refuse to forgive or to accept forgiveness from others or from God, we’ll keep on tripping over old hurts, old sins, God will not be able to put his seal on our hearts, and we’ll never be able to move forward with hope.
What do you think God’s forgiveness feels like? What do you think his “Yes”, his seal on our heart feel like?
I read a story that I think comes close to describing it. Let me share it with you:
An elderly woman told a story about the time when she, as a small child noticed a teacup on a shelf,
a teacup that belonged to her mother’s great-grandmother. Now her mother really loved that teacup, and she wanted to love it too. So she took it down from the shelf, examined it and played with it and served some tea to her cat it in. But then, the teacup slipped from her little hands and shattered on the floor.
She was frightened and upset, not quite sure what was going to happen to her or to her mother when she found out. When her mother came and saw what she had done, she saw on her mother’s face a mixture of shock and anger and sorrow. As her mother picked up the broken pieces of the antique teacup, through her tears she looked at the little girl and asked, “What happened here?” The little girl confessed that she had dropped it.
But instead of anger, instead of accusing words, “how clumsy can you get?” or “I’ll get you for this this,” or “You’ll pay for this,” or “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” or “Go to your room” – instead of those words, her mother took the girl in her arms and told her why the teacup was special to her. And then she told her daughter just how special she was to her.
It’s a story not unlike the story of the prodigal son where the father runs out to meet his son, embraces him, and throws a party for him. My son who was lost has returned. That experience. that forgiveness is ours for the asking. All we have to do, like the little girl or the prodigal son, is to be sorry, to admit our sin and to ask God for forgiveness, but as I said, to receive it, we also have to offer it.
Until my friend can forgive her parents for not being able to hold on to the love that first brought them together,
whatever the reason for their separation, I don’t believe she will ever be able to experience God’s forgiveness, because if she can’t forgive, how will she ever really believe God can or will either? She’ll never be able to move forward filled with hope, because she will continue to trip over her old hurts, preventing God from ever putting his seal on her heart.
When we believe in the depths of our hearts that, there is nothing we’ve done that is so bad, or done so often, that God won’t forgive it, and that whatever that sin was, it is forgiven, forever gone from God’s memory, and, when, like the prodigal son or the girl who broke the teacup, we can almost feel Jesus holding us, and rocking us back and forth, and kissing away our tears, and telling us how much he loves us, then, at that moment, I believe we will know what real forgiveness feels like and we will find ourselves walking into the future, still subject to sin, but filled with renewed grace and hope that we can control it, not the other way around.
Next Sunday we begin the season of Lent. It’s a perfect time for us to forgive all who need our forgiveness, and to come to God with that sin in the sacrament of reconciliation, so that we may experience God’s forgiveness and healing,better equipped to imitate him in brining forgiveness and healing and hope to a broken world.
The gospel tells us that those in the synagogue in Capernaum were spellbound by the teachings of Jesus. What about the people in the church of Most Holy Trinity? Are those of us gathered here today spellbound or astonished by the teaching of Jesus? Have we ever been?
It would be so simple to give the easy answer and say, sure, of course, why do you think I’m here? But would that be honest? Unfortunately there are many reasons people come to Mass, and I would be surprised if being “spellbound” by the teaching of Jesus,” was the reason that brought most of us here today.
In fact, I think many Catholics, rather than being spellbound, rather than hearing his words as a “new teaching with authority,” are rather masters at rationalizing his teaching. Be honest, how often and how strongly do Jesus’ teaching affect our day in and day out decisions; how often don’t we excuse ourselves from this teaching or that, because “He couldn’t possibly have meant that literally,” or, “that might have made sense in his day, but certainly not ours”.
Let me give two examples: How spellbound are we when he tells us to love our enemies and to pray for our persecutors? Are we held spellbound when he said to Peter: “those who live by the sword will parish by the sword? How do these and so many other passages in the scriptures, including the commandment ““Thou shat not kill,”affect our attitude toward taking another life including: abortion, war, capital punishment, euthanasia, whatever Is taking another life ok in one instance and not another? Jesus didn’t make any distinctions. Do we? Do his words, in any way, affect our beliefs and our actions? Do we even bother to wrestle with what he said? Or more importantly, Do we know what he said? Do we try to find out? Do we even care?
Another example. This one from today’s political scene: Do we have any responsibility for one another? There are those who insist we do not. There are those who insist we do? What about you and me? Does Jesus’ parable about the man building a bigger barn so he can “eat, drink and be merry” or the story of the rich young man? or the last judgment scene in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s gospel? or any one of the many, many, many similar passages throughout the gospels influence what we do with the gifts god gives us.
“The people were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one having authority.” Did you ever wonder why many of his contemporaries did hear, and did embrace what he taught, while many others did not? It’s no different today. Some of us do. Some of us don’t? Why? There are probably a lot of reasons, but I think at least part of the answer can be found in Jesus’ cure of the man with an unclean spirit.
There are so many activities distracting us, and so many other voices calling for our attention, that we easily give into the temptation to believe that the promises of those voices are far greater than the promises offered by God,
When that happens an unclean spirit, not unlike the one in our Gospel possesses us and when God’s love calls us to conversion, to a change of heart, to himself, that unclean spirit also cries out: “What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Have you come to destroy us.”
And, we don’t want to hear the rebuke: “Quiet! Come out of him!” because we know the letting go will be convulsive and painful
Today’s liturgy calls us to experience conversion, and let go of the spirit that keeps us from being spellbound by the fullness of his teaching. That requires a certain discipline on our part, a discipline that helps us keep our focus on the Christ, not a discipline in the sense of developing our will power, but a discipline that makes it possible for you and to be so astonished by Jesus’ teaching, that no distraction, no other voice, can take its place as the center of our lives.
Then we will really know what happiness is.
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