Sunday, August 26, 2007
A Multitude No One Could Count
A Multitude No One Could Count
August 26, 2007: 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66:18-21 Hebrews 15:5-7; 11-13 Luke 13:22-30
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Jesus passed through towns and villages, teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” He answered them, “The door to heaven is narrow, so work hard to get in. Many, I tell you will try to get in but will not succeed. After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ He will say to you in reply, ‘I do not know who you are and where you come from. And you will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’ Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know who you are and where you come from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!’ You will wail and grind your teeth as you stand outside and see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the prophets within the kingdom of God. Yes, and people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south to take their seats in the kingdom of God. And note this: some who are despised now will be greatly honored then; and some who are highly thought of now will be least important then.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
An old question
As Jesus was headed towards Jerusalem someone along the way asked him, “Will only a few be saved on the last day” (Lk 13:22)? Down through the centuries that question has often been asked and variously answered. In the 1st century shortly after Jesus had ascended into heaven, a dispute arose in the early church, which occasioned a council in Jerusalem. Some Jewish converts to Christianity were insisting that Gentile converts could not be saved unless they were circumcised and followed the Law of Moses (Acts 15:1-35). If that’s true, then only a few are saved on the last day, for there is a whole sea of people out there who don’t follow the Law of Moses.
In the 3rd century, Origen (an early church father) uttered what became a famous dictum through the centuries: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus -- Outside the church there is no salvation.[3] If you can’t be saved unless you belong to the church, then only a few, indeed, are saved on the last day, for there are one billion Chinese out there who don’t belong to the church.
In the 4th century St. Augustine claimed that all have sinned in Adam, and that humanity has become a “massa damnata” -- a mass of deservedly damned people who have turned away from God. What’s more, Augustine claimed that by means of an utterly unmerited grace God has chosen only a few to be saved. The smallness of the number is God’s way of making it clear what all, in fact, deserve (De Civitate Dei XXI.12) . Gloomy, indeed!
Equally gloomy in the 16th century was the Protestant reformer, John Calvin with whom Predestination is associated. He claimed that God predestined some to be saved and others to be damned, apart from any good or bad they do. It‘s a scary thought. In his autobiography, John Murray, an Englishman who migrated to the New World in 1770, recounts a conversation he had one day with a staunch Calvinistic preacher.
He told me that he traveled nine miles on foot every Saturday to preach. I asked him, “How many people are in your congregation?” “About a hundred,” he replied. “How many of them do you suppose are predestined to everlasting life? “I cannot tell,” he replied. “Do you believe fifty are predestined?” “Oh no, not even twenty.” “Ten perhaps?” “Yes, maybe ten.” “Do you think the non-elect [the ones damned apart from any evil they do] can do anything to get themselves out of this terrible situation that heaven has decreed for them?” “Oh no,” he replied, they might as well try to pull the stars out of the heavens.” “And do you think your preaching can assist them?” “Certainly not. Every one of my sermons will simply sink them deeper and deeper into hell.” So, then, you walk nine miles every Saturday to sink ninety persons out of a hundred deeper and deeper into never-ending misery!
Murray was flabbergasted by the thought that the compassionate Jesus was overshadowed and overwhelmed in some people’s mind by an image of a God determined to prove his absolute power by exercising it arbitrarily. So he went to the opposite end of the spectrum. In the place of an extremely arbitrary God he chose an extremely merciful One. To the question will only a few be saved, he answered, “Everyone will be saved!” That’s called Universalism. Nobody is damned; everybody is saved!
In the late 1870s Charles Taze Russell founded a movement known as The Jehovah's Witnesses. It believes that the number saved is limited to 144,000 human beings – neither more nor less! That number comes from the Book of Revelation which speaks of a 144,000 “who had the seal of God on their forehead” and “who washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:1-14). Only 144,000 people saved, neither more nor less, is but a drop of water in the whole sea of humanity.
A silly question
“Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Luke has Jesus giving a chilling answer. “The door to heaven is narrow, so work hard to get in. Many, I tell you, will try to get in but will not succeed.” Here the Jerome Biblical Commentary takes pain to assure us that, “Jesus is not declaring that many are doomed from the very start, despite their persistent effort.” That isn’t much consolation. Jesus’ answer still seems to say that yes only a few are saved.
Fr Andrew Greeley (the famous outspoken priest of Chicago) writes that this is a chilling Gospel. Jesus, he says, sounds like he’s tired and in a bad mood and probably fed up with people asking him such a silly question like will only a few be saved on the last day. Greeley writes that if the people had heeded all that Jesus had told them about his Father in heaven, they would have known that God is nothing but forgiveness and love, and they wouldn’t have been asking whether only a few are saved.
Parables about the saved
What, in fact, did Jesus tell the people (and us) about his Father in heaven. He told them a parable which likens God to a father who had two sons. The younger said to his father, “Give me my share of the inheritance. I am going off on my own!” He took his share, and off he went into a foreign land where he squandered his money on loose living. He was finally forced to hire himself out to a farmer who sent him out to slop the pigs! While the pigs ate, he was hungry! That brought him to senses. He said to himself, “I will return to the house of my father, and I will say, `Father, I have sinned against heaven and you. Receive me back not as a son but merely as a hired hand.’” When one day the father spied his son on the horizon returning home, he ran out to embrace and kiss him. Thereupon he sent his servants to fetch a rich robe to cover his son’s naked body, a ring to adorn his boney fingers, and sandals to comfort his calloused feet. Then he ordered the fatted calf to be killed for a banquet to celebrate a son who had been lost but now has been found (Lk 15:11-32). That’s what Jesus told the people. They should have known that many more than just a few are saved.
He also told the people (and us) a parable about two men who went up to the temple to pray one day. One was a Pharisee (a stickler on minute religious observances). The other a tax collector (always mentioned in the same breath with sinners (Lk 5:30; 7:34; 15:1; Mt 21:31-32). The Pharisee got up to pray. He thanked God that he wasn’t like the rest of men, greedy, dishonest and immoral. The tax collector got down to pray (close to the ground where humility gets its humus). There he struck his breast and asked God to be merciful to him, a greedy, dishonest and immoral sinner. When the sun set that day, Jesus says the tax collector (the sinner), not the Pharisee (the religious guy) went home that night justified (set right, saved) in the eyes of the Father in heaven. (Lk 18:9-14). That’s what Jesus told the people. They should have known that many more than just a few are saved.
Jesus also told the chief priests and the elders of the people (and us) a parable of about a father who had two sons. He asked the older one to go work in the vineyard. The kid shouted at his father, “No sir! I’m not going!” But later he calmed down, repented and went to work in the vineyard. Then the father went to the other son and asked the same of him. Pacifying his father the kid responded, “Yes sir! I’m going!” But he never went! Jesus delivers the punch of the parable, saying, “When John the Baptist told you chief priests and elders to repent and turn to God, you wouldn’t. When he told tax collectors and prostitutes to repent, they did. I tell you, tax collectors and prostitutes well get into heaven before you do” (Lk 21:28-32). That’s what Jesus told the people. They should have known that many more than just a few are saved.
Jesus told the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who were scandalized that Jesus welcomed and even ate with tax collectors and sinners a parable. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and one of them strays and gets lost -- what do you do? You leave the other ninety-nine sheep in the pasture and go looking for the one that got lost until you find it. When you find it, you are so happy that you put it on your shoulder and carry it back home. Then you call your friends and neighbors together and say to them, `I’m so happy I’ve found my lost sheep. Let’s celebrate!’ In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine respectable people who have no need of repentance”(Lk 15:1-7). That’s what Jesus told the people. They should have known that many more than just a few are saved.
A multitude no one could count
November 1st is the Feast of All Saints. Its first reading from the Book of Revelation liturgically answers the question will only a few be saved on the last day? “I, John, heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal of the living God—one hundred and forty-four thousand marked from every tribe of the children of Israel….After this I looked and there before me stood a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe and language… (Rev 7:4, 9). The gospel for the feast also answers the question will only a few be saved on the last day? Its litany of beatitudes declares as blessed and saved the poor and the hungry of this world. It declares as blessed and saved all those who mourn and all those who make peace. That, indeed, is a multitude which no one can count (Mt 5:1-12).
Conclusion
A multitude no one could count
Will only a few be saved on the last day? Who is right? The Calvinist preacher who claimed that only ten out of his hundred parishioners were saved? Or is John Murray right? Flabbergasted by the thought that the compassionate Jesus was overshadowed by an image of God who proves his absolute power by exercising it arbitrarily he moved to the other side of the spectrum. He declared that all are saved. Murray seems more right than the Calvinist preacher. He’s much more in symphony with the spirit of the New Testament which reflects a compassionate Jesus who tells us parables about a prodigal son who returns to the house of his father, and about a humble tax collector who bows low to the ground and ask for mercy, and about repentant prostitutes who turn their lives around, and about stray sheep which shepherds lovingly seek and save.
In our moments of self-doubt or guilt or fear of our sins and mistakes, don’t feed on the gloom of a doom’s day preacher. Instead, quicken yourself with the optimism of a John Murray. He is more in symphony with the compassionate Jesus. He is more in symphony with the gospel which is good news. The preacher’s ten only saved out of a hundred isn’t good news, but Murray’s hundred saved out of a hundred is, indeed, good news. Murray is more in symphony with Revelation’s “multitude which no one could count.”
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
[3] Origen must have uttered that off the top of his head, for down through the ages it caused a lot of misunderstanding. Always embarrassed by it, we always kept trying to make it say something it does not say. At the end of the day, we should have simply ditched the dictum.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
The Kiss of Peace
August 19, 2007: 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10 Hebrews 12:1-4 Luke 12:49-53
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Luke 12:49-53
Jesus said to Peter: “I have come to set fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! There is a terrible baptism ahead for me and how anguished I am until it is all over! You don’t think that I have come for peace, do you? No, not for peace but for strife and division. From now on a household of five will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against – or the other way around. A father will decide one way about me; his son, the other. Mother and daughter will disagree; and the decision of an honored mother-in-law will be dismissed by her daughter-in-law.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
A strange prince of peace
The great Messiah oratorio by Handel soars to lofty heights many times. It soars at the great Alleluia Chorus. It soars again at the Easter part of the oratorio as the trumpets lift up their voices to summon the dead from their tombs. It soars also at the great Amen bringing the curtain down on a miraculously inspired piece of religious music.
It soars at the Christmas part of the Messiah as it announces tidings of great joy that “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6). When the Prince of Peace grew up, he declared, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God” (Mt 5:9). But then one day he was heard saying to Peter, “I have come to set fire upon the earth…. You don’t think that I have come for peace, do you? No, not peace but strife and division…” (Lk 12:49-51). A strange Prince of Peace who comes for strife and division! A strange Prince of Peace who comes to disturb the peace!
Peace as a patched-up affair
In T.S. Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury (exiled by King Henry II of England), is returning to England. The people are wondering whether the two have made peace with each other. Someone in the crowd remarks, “Yes, peace, but not the kiss of peace -- a patched-up affair.” The patched-up affair didn’t last long. On the night of December 29, 1170, to the shock of all Europe, some of the king’s men murdered the archbishop in his cathedral. The peace Jesus says he has come to disturb is peace that’s a patched-up affair!
King and peace as a patched-up affair
Peace as a patched-up affair was reigning supreme in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made a civil rights march on that most segregated city in the USA. King was thrown into jail. As he sat there, 8 white clergymen (4 bishops, 3 reverends and 1 rabbi) made a public statement to King. The civil rights leader responded with his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. Those men of the cloth in their public statement said in effect, “Marty, be a nice boy! Your agitation is not well-timed! You must be patient and wait!” In his letter King wrote back that black folk had already waited 340 years, and that “wait” had come to mean “never.” In their statement the reverend gentlemen also reminded King that he was rocking the boat and disturbing the placid peace of Birmingham! King responded with very much the same words which Jesus spoke to Peter: “You don’t think I have come for peace, do you?” Like the prophets of the eight centuries before Christ, King said that he had come to carry forth their “’Thus saith the Lord.” That he did, and that, indeed, disturbed the placid peace of Birmingham. At the end of the day, King was, in fact, a true peacemaker. He disturbed the peace of Alabama, which wasn’t really the kiss of peace but simply a patched-up affair.
Pope John XXIII and peace as a patched-up affair
Placid peace reigned undisturbed in the Catholic Church for a good four hundred years. That peace was forged by the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and it lasted till the Council of Vatican II (1962-65). Many of us grew up contentedly under the aegis of that old peace. Then in the papal conclave of 1958 the College of Cardinals chose Angelo Roncalli who chose the name of John XXIII as the 261st successor of Peter. The new pope was 77 years old and somewhat rotund in stature. Word had it that the cardinals had elected the old man because they figured he wouldn’t rock the Bark of Peter and disturb the slumbering peace of the church. To their surprise the new pope said to them in so many words, “You don’t think I have come for peace do you?” Then he summoned the universal church to Vatican II, and that, indeed, disturbed the slumbering peace of the church.
Bishop Gumbleton and peace as a patched-up affair
Thomas J. Gumbleton was formerly an auxiliary bishop in Detroit, the founding president of Pax Christi USA (a Catholic peace movement) and president of Bread for the World (an interfaith organization that fights world hunger). Gumbleton has a brother Dan who is gay, got married and had children. The bishop’s mother one day asked her bishop son whether his brother Dan was going to hell. In 1997 Gumbleton initiated and co-authored a pastoral letter of the US Catholic Bishops entitled Always Our Children. It is a message to the parents of homosexual children with suggestions for pastoral ministers. In a presentation on May 25, 2002, in Lexington, MA, Gumbleton said, “We must further the steps we took in our pastoral letter Always Our Children to overcome the homophobia within our culture and within the Church. We must be a truly welcoming community for homosexual people.... Always Our Children pointed out that homosexuals are a gift to the Church, and we should not marginalize them and push them aside.” Gumbleton, indeed, disturbed the peace of the church.
In America magazine for Nov. 20, 1963, he is quoted as saying, "I can vouch for the fact that very many bishops share the same conviction [that not every contraceptive act is intrinsically evil]. However, sadly enough, fewer and fewer are willing to say this publicly.” Gumbleton, indeed, disturbed the peace of the church.
He also predicted that, “Priestesses will inevitably come. Already, female parochial administrators are proving their competency and laying the groundwork for the ordination of women.” If someone had said to Gumbleton that the ordination of women was, if not impossible, at least untimely, and that they should be patient and wait, he would have answered them, “They have been waiting 2000 years!” Whenever he was told that he, especially as a bishop in the church, was disturbing the peace, he said in effect,”You don’t think I’ve come for peace, do you?” At the end of the day, Gumbleton is, in fact, a peacemaker. He disturbs the peace of church, which isn’t really the kiss of peace but a patched-up affair.
A peace theology for a time of war
The peace disturbed by Vatican II had been forged four hundred years earlier at Trent by a church at war with the Protestant Revolution. Strange to say, when we are at war (as Trent was), we write a theology which makes for peace! We write a theology which puts all moral, theological and liturgical life into deep freeze. We codify everything. We carve everything out in stone in order to save it from being chipped away by attackers. The old Latin altar missal, for example, which we were using daily at Mass right up to the very eve of Vatican II (Oct. 11, 1962) was written by Trent in indelible ink. On the very first page of that old Latin missal which we were still using in the 1960s were written the words Missale Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini -- The Roman Missal as Decreed by the Sacred Council of Trent.
Benedict’s motu proprio
With such indelible ink was that written that last month, on Saturday, July 7th 2007, Pope Benedict XVI was able to revive the old Tridentine ( Latin) Mass which had been slumbering for forty plus years after Vatican II in 1963 stipulated that “a suitable place may be allotted to the people’s mother tongue” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy no. 54). In a motu proprio (a pope’s personal initiative) Benedict now permits any priest to celebrate the Tridentine or Latin Mass without first receiving permission from his bishop! Benedict says he gives this permission in order to make peace easier with conservative groups. That might make for peace, but it’s not the kiss of peace. It’s a patched-up affair.
A war theology for a time of peace
As a result of Trent’s deep freeze, a deep slumbering peace fell upon the church. It was a peace that came from the lid being securely placed on everything. It was a peace that brooked no questions because now all the questions had been officially asked and officially answered. There were no more questions to ask and no more answers to seek. And none were asked and answered for four hundred years! That makes for a peace which is not the kiss of peace but a patched-up affair.
By the middle of the 20th century, however, the fury and hard feelings caused by the Protestant Revolution had well spent itself. Catholics and Protestants grew tired of fighting one another. (You can quarrel only so long, and then you grow tired and bored of it.) In fact, ecumenism started to thrive. The old Question of Justification (How are we set right with God -- by works or by grace?) which fired Luther and his revolution no longer fires us today. We are now exercised by different theological issues. With the fury and hard feelings of the past spent, a kind of peace settled in.
Strange to say, when we are at peace, we write a theology which makes for war! When there’s nobody or nothing around to fear anymore, we can afford to take the lid off of things. We can afford to ask questions and seek answers which we were too pious and too obedient to ask and seek before. When we shed fear we can even afford to invite the Reformers to the bitter-sweet banquet of Vatican II, as, indeed, good Pope John XXIII (filled with love and not fear) did. No wonder Vatican II was destined to disturb the long-standing peace of Tent.
How well we remember the countless little wars that broke out among us shortly after Vatican II. There were wars over what nuns and priests should or should not wear. Wars over Communion in the hand or in the mouth. Wars over Latin or the vernacular. Wars over rubrical or free-style celebrations of Mass. And then there were, and still are, those bigger wars over open-Communion, divorce and remarriage, celibacy, birth control, homosexuality and the ordination of women. Vatican II did not cause those strifes and divisions; it simply surfaced and exposed them. At the end of the day, Vatican II was, in fact, a peacemaker. It disturbed the peace of the church, which wasn’t really the kiss of peace but a patched-up affair.
Conclusion
The Kiss of Peace
We can’t rid our lives of every peace that’s nothing more than a patched-up affair. We don’t have enough time or energy for that. Furthermore, there’s a place in life for compromise and truce, both of which lack a kiss. But there are, at times, critical situations (privileged moments) which challenge us to make war on a peace that’s not the kiss of peace but just a patched-up affair. Sometimes there are critical situations (privileged moments) which challenge us to join the company of Jesus, Dr. King, Pope John and Bishop Gumbleton. They all disturbed a peace which was a patched-up affair. Sometimes we are challenged, as they were, to settle for nothing less than the Kiss of Peace not only in the House of God but also in our households.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10 Hebrews 12:1-4 Luke 12:49-53
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Luke 12:49-53
Jesus said to Peter: “I have come to set fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! There is a terrible baptism ahead for me and how anguished I am until it is all over! You don’t think that I have come for peace, do you? No, not for peace but for strife and division. From now on a household of five will be split apart, three in favor of me, and two against – or the other way around. A father will decide one way about me; his son, the other. Mother and daughter will disagree; and the decision of an honored mother-in-law will be dismissed by her daughter-in-law.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
A strange prince of peace
The great Messiah oratorio by Handel soars to lofty heights many times. It soars at the great Alleluia Chorus. It soars again at the Easter part of the oratorio as the trumpets lift up their voices to summon the dead from their tombs. It soars also at the great Amen bringing the curtain down on a miraculously inspired piece of religious music.
It soars at the Christmas part of the Messiah as it announces tidings of great joy that “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6). When the Prince of Peace grew up, he declared, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God” (Mt 5:9). But then one day he was heard saying to Peter, “I have come to set fire upon the earth…. You don’t think that I have come for peace, do you? No, not peace but strife and division…” (Lk 12:49-51). A strange Prince of Peace who comes for strife and division! A strange Prince of Peace who comes to disturb the peace!
Peace as a patched-up affair
In T.S. Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury (exiled by King Henry II of England), is returning to England. The people are wondering whether the two have made peace with each other. Someone in the crowd remarks, “Yes, peace, but not the kiss of peace -- a patched-up affair.” The patched-up affair didn’t last long. On the night of December 29, 1170, to the shock of all Europe, some of the king’s men murdered the archbishop in his cathedral. The peace Jesus says he has come to disturb is peace that’s a patched-up affair!
King and peace as a patched-up affair
Peace as a patched-up affair was reigning supreme in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made a civil rights march on that most segregated city in the USA. King was thrown into jail. As he sat there, 8 white clergymen (4 bishops, 3 reverends and 1 rabbi) made a public statement to King. The civil rights leader responded with his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. Those men of the cloth in their public statement said in effect, “Marty, be a nice boy! Your agitation is not well-timed! You must be patient and wait!” In his letter King wrote back that black folk had already waited 340 years, and that “wait” had come to mean “never.” In their statement the reverend gentlemen also reminded King that he was rocking the boat and disturbing the placid peace of Birmingham! King responded with very much the same words which Jesus spoke to Peter: “You don’t think I have come for peace, do you?” Like the prophets of the eight centuries before Christ, King said that he had come to carry forth their “’Thus saith the Lord.” That he did, and that, indeed, disturbed the placid peace of Birmingham. At the end of the day, King was, in fact, a true peacemaker. He disturbed the peace of Alabama, which wasn’t really the kiss of peace but simply a patched-up affair.
Pope John XXIII and peace as a patched-up affair
Placid peace reigned undisturbed in the Catholic Church for a good four hundred years. That peace was forged by the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and it lasted till the Council of Vatican II (1962-65). Many of us grew up contentedly under the aegis of that old peace. Then in the papal conclave of 1958 the College of Cardinals chose Angelo Roncalli who chose the name of John XXIII as the 261st successor of Peter. The new pope was 77 years old and somewhat rotund in stature. Word had it that the cardinals had elected the old man because they figured he wouldn’t rock the Bark of Peter and disturb the slumbering peace of the church. To their surprise the new pope said to them in so many words, “You don’t think I have come for peace do you?” Then he summoned the universal church to Vatican II, and that, indeed, disturbed the slumbering peace of the church.
Bishop Gumbleton and peace as a patched-up affair
Thomas J. Gumbleton was formerly an auxiliary bishop in Detroit, the founding president of Pax Christi USA (a Catholic peace movement) and president of Bread for the World (an interfaith organization that fights world hunger). Gumbleton has a brother Dan who is gay, got married and had children. The bishop’s mother one day asked her bishop son whether his brother Dan was going to hell. In 1997 Gumbleton initiated and co-authored a pastoral letter of the US Catholic Bishops entitled Always Our Children. It is a message to the parents of homosexual children with suggestions for pastoral ministers. In a presentation on May 25, 2002, in Lexington, MA, Gumbleton said, “We must further the steps we took in our pastoral letter Always Our Children to overcome the homophobia within our culture and within the Church. We must be a truly welcoming community for homosexual people.... Always Our Children pointed out that homosexuals are a gift to the Church, and we should not marginalize them and push them aside.” Gumbleton, indeed, disturbed the peace of the church.
In America magazine for Nov. 20, 1963, he is quoted as saying, "I can vouch for the fact that very many bishops share the same conviction [that not every contraceptive act is intrinsically evil]. However, sadly enough, fewer and fewer are willing to say this publicly.” Gumbleton, indeed, disturbed the peace of the church.
He also predicted that, “Priestesses will inevitably come. Already, female parochial administrators are proving their competency and laying the groundwork for the ordination of women.” If someone had said to Gumbleton that the ordination of women was, if not impossible, at least untimely, and that they should be patient and wait, he would have answered them, “They have been waiting 2000 years!” Whenever he was told that he, especially as a bishop in the church, was disturbing the peace, he said in effect,”You don’t think I’ve come for peace, do you?” At the end of the day, Gumbleton is, in fact, a peacemaker. He disturbs the peace of church, which isn’t really the kiss of peace but a patched-up affair.
A peace theology for a time of war
The peace disturbed by Vatican II had been forged four hundred years earlier at Trent by a church at war with the Protestant Revolution. Strange to say, when we are at war (as Trent was), we write a theology which makes for peace! We write a theology which puts all moral, theological and liturgical life into deep freeze. We codify everything. We carve everything out in stone in order to save it from being chipped away by attackers. The old Latin altar missal, for example, which we were using daily at Mass right up to the very eve of Vatican II (Oct. 11, 1962) was written by Trent in indelible ink. On the very first page of that old Latin missal which we were still using in the 1960s were written the words Missale Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini -- The Roman Missal as Decreed by the Sacred Council of Trent.
Benedict’s motu proprio
With such indelible ink was that written that last month, on Saturday, July 7th 2007, Pope Benedict XVI was able to revive the old Tridentine ( Latin) Mass which had been slumbering for forty plus years after Vatican II in 1963 stipulated that “a suitable place may be allotted to the people’s mother tongue” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy no. 54). In a motu proprio (a pope’s personal initiative) Benedict now permits any priest to celebrate the Tridentine or Latin Mass without first receiving permission from his bishop! Benedict says he gives this permission in order to make peace easier with conservative groups. That might make for peace, but it’s not the kiss of peace. It’s a patched-up affair.
A war theology for a time of peace
As a result of Trent’s deep freeze, a deep slumbering peace fell upon the church. It was a peace that came from the lid being securely placed on everything. It was a peace that brooked no questions because now all the questions had been officially asked and officially answered. There were no more questions to ask and no more answers to seek. And none were asked and answered for four hundred years! That makes for a peace which is not the kiss of peace but a patched-up affair.
By the middle of the 20th century, however, the fury and hard feelings caused by the Protestant Revolution had well spent itself. Catholics and Protestants grew tired of fighting one another. (You can quarrel only so long, and then you grow tired and bored of it.) In fact, ecumenism started to thrive. The old Question of Justification (How are we set right with God -- by works or by grace?) which fired Luther and his revolution no longer fires us today. We are now exercised by different theological issues. With the fury and hard feelings of the past spent, a kind of peace settled in.
Strange to say, when we are at peace, we write a theology which makes for war! When there’s nobody or nothing around to fear anymore, we can afford to take the lid off of things. We can afford to ask questions and seek answers which we were too pious and too obedient to ask and seek before. When we shed fear we can even afford to invite the Reformers to the bitter-sweet banquet of Vatican II, as, indeed, good Pope John XXIII (filled with love and not fear) did. No wonder Vatican II was destined to disturb the long-standing peace of Tent.
How well we remember the countless little wars that broke out among us shortly after Vatican II. There were wars over what nuns and priests should or should not wear. Wars over Communion in the hand or in the mouth. Wars over Latin or the vernacular. Wars over rubrical or free-style celebrations of Mass. And then there were, and still are, those bigger wars over open-Communion, divorce and remarriage, celibacy, birth control, homosexuality and the ordination of women. Vatican II did not cause those strifes and divisions; it simply surfaced and exposed them. At the end of the day, Vatican II was, in fact, a peacemaker. It disturbed the peace of the church, which wasn’t really the kiss of peace but a patched-up affair.
Conclusion
The Kiss of Peace
We can’t rid our lives of every peace that’s nothing more than a patched-up affair. We don’t have enough time or energy for that. Furthermore, there’s a place in life for compromise and truce, both of which lack a kiss. But there are, at times, critical situations (privileged moments) which challenge us to make war on a peace that’s not the kiss of peace but just a patched-up affair. Sometimes there are critical situations (privileged moments) which challenge us to join the company of Jesus, Dr. King, Pope John and Bishop Gumbleton. They all disturbed a peace which was a patched-up affair. Sometimes we are challenged, as they were, to settle for nothing less than the Kiss of Peace not only in the House of God but also in our households.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Sunday, August 12, 2007
A Brand New God
August 12, 2007: 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Wisdom 18:6-9 Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19 Luke 12:35-38
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Jesus said to his disciples: “Be ready for action with belts fastened and lamps alight. Be like servants who wait for their master’s return from a wedding-party, ready to let him in the moment he arrives and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake and ready when he returns. He himself will seat them at table, don an apron and will serve them. And should he return at midnight or even later, and find them still awake and ready, blessed are those servants.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
An age-old battle
The question of justification is an age-old battle in the Christian church. That question asks what is it that justifies us -- puts us right with God? Is it good works or is it faith? (Faith is distrust in good work, and it is trust instead in the cross of Christ.) The question of justification no longer exercises us as much as it used to in centuries past, but there’s use for ourselves in digging the debate.
Good works don’t work for God (Lk 17)
In the 17th chapter of Luke Jesus tells a parable about a faithful and hard-working servant. After dutifully plowing the fields and caring for the sheep all day long, he heads for the farm house at sunset, feeling good as a dutiful servant. But when he arrives, the master does not thank him for his dutiful labors. He does not reward him. He does not don an apron to prepare a good table, and then seat his hard-working servant down to serve him as in today’s gospel. Instead, the master says to him, “Hey man, you’ve only done your duty. Now hurry up, put on your apron, prepare my supper and serve me, while I eat and drink first. After that you can eat and drink” (Lk 17:7-10). The servant’s good works didn’t work for him! They didn’t move his master! The parable bears a strange message (which at first miffs us) that good works don’t work for God! That’s strange because in human transaction good works usually do work for us. They do have the power to move people.
That strange message that good works don’t work for God is woven throughout the New Testament. It’s in the parable about laborers in a vineyard who worked all day long in the heat, but at sunset receive the same pay as those who came much later (Mt 20: 1-16). It’s found also in the parable about the two men who went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee who got up to pray and told God about his good works -- how he fasted twice a week and paid tithes on all his income. The other was a tax collector who had no good works to show for himself. He simply bowed down to the ground (where humility gets its humus) and asked for mercy. When the sun set that day, the tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home that night justified – set right -- in the sight of God (Lk 18:9-14).
St. Paul was the `Attacker Extraordinaire’ of good works. He made that the heart and soul of his preaching. He distillated his stand on good works with one simple phrase: “We are justified [put right with God] not by works but by grace” (Rom 3: 24).
Luther’s terror
After Paul came Luther (1483-1546). He attacked good works much more soundly than he attacked the corruption of the sixteenth century church. For Luther personally, the more burning issue was the `Question of Justification.’ It asks what must we do to be justified, i.e., to be put right in God’s eyes? There are less lofty ways to express the question. E.g., what must we do to humor or appease God? In the bluntest terms possible, what must we do to buy God off? Even that! To that question, however stated, all religions (Judaic, Christian and Islamic) never seem able to resist the temptation (yes, temptation it is) to answer, “We must do good works!” To humor or appease or buy God off we must do good works.
That characterized the general piety in the church of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther (a devout Roman Catholic Augustinian monk) was a very scrupulous example of that piety. He worked himself to a frazzle trying to get God to feel good about him. In trying to buy God off he spared nothing. He intensely performed all the monastic observances. He subjected himself to an arduous regimen of praying, fasting and scourging his body, only to end up feeling that his good works hadn’t worked for him. At the end of the day, it terrified him to think he hadn’t succeeded in buying God off. Now he was terrified not only by his vices but also by his virtues! Luther spoke very emotionally about his terrores conscientiae (his terrorized conscience) which afflicted him in that period of his life.
Luther’s solution
Many say the Reformation began on October 31, 1546 when Luther nailed his 95 Theses (against the pope’s sale of indulgences) to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Others say it began at a different and very privileged moment in his life. One day as he was studying St. Paul’s Epistle to Romans in his heated study in the tower of the Black Cloister in Wittenberg he came upon the words, “The gospel—the good news-- tells us that God makes us right in his eyes when we put our faith and trust in Christ [not in our works] to save us” (Rom. 1:17). At that moment, Luther tells us, he rediscovered the gospel and all heaven opened for his tormented soul. That rediscovery is often called Luther's great `Tower Experience.’
In a privileged moment of revelation Luther (who was frazzled trying to buy God off with his good works) discovered the wonderful good news (the gospel) that God is for free. The price that Luther couldn’t pay to buy God off Christ had already paid for him by his death on the cross. What incredibly good news: Luther doesn’t have to pay a penny! Salvation is free. Salvation is grace. That wonderful good news freed Luther from the impossible task of having to buy God off. It freed him from a God who till then terrorized him!
So wonderful was that good news that he carved it out with two words into the cornerstone of his movement: Sola Gratia, By Grace Alone. To this very day we see those two words chiseled either in English or Latin into the cornerstones of older Reformation churches. Sola Gratia, By Grace Alone. So wonderful was that good news that it gave birth to the Reformation’s mother of all hymns: Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace! We don’t have to buy God off. Amazing Grace! Christ has bought God off for us! Amazing Grace! God no longer is a terrorist.
God the terrorist
God the terrorist doesn’t die easily in religion, whether Judaic, Christian or Islamic. As I look back over many years of priesthood I now see how much of my effort was spent on ministering to people whose God was a terrorist. (Of course, I had to first get rid of my own terrorist God before I could be of any help to others.) In those days people were terrified of God because they were divorced and remarried. Terrified of God because they hadn’t confessed their sins to a priest or hadn’t confessed them `correctly.’ Terrified of God because they were practicing birth control. Terrified of God because they were gay or lesbian. Terrified of God simply because of a typical unremarkable list of human sins which brings us all down.
Those who didn’t want to put up with a terrorist God simply left the church for another church or for no church at all. Others simply decided to stay put where they were and to believe with Luther in a terror-free God of their own.
A brand new God
Good works don’t work before God. That’s good news because it takes the terror out of God. That’s good news because it frees us penniless people from the burden of having to buy God off. Good works don’t work before God. That’s not only good news, it’s also strange good news, for from mother’s milk our elders and our religion have always been admonishing us to “Be good, and God will love you!”
In a letter my mystic friend writes,
In the bus the other day, there was a little child chanting, “When you are good, I love you. When you are bad, I hate you. When you are good, I love you. When you are bad I hate you. Etc., etc.” He went on and on like that. The mother just sat there and didn’t say a word. Finally the child got confused and said accidentally, “When you are good, I love you. When you are bad, I love you.” When he realized his mistake he broke into a delightful laughter. There was something so innocent and pure in that laughter that it seemed to transform the world around us for a moment. A child had accidentally spoken the truth and had announced the gospel—the good news. A child had corrected our elders who had taught a terrible falsehood: “Be good and God will love you!”
A brand new God
Good works don’t work before God. That’s strange good news, because it introduces us to a brand new kind of God. A God who does not hate us because we are bad. A God who does not love us because we are good. A God who loves us because He is good! Good works don’t work before God. That’s strange good news because it introduces us to a brand new kind of God who does not transact as humans do.
At the end of the day, religion is confronted with a very profound challenge. It is challenged to stop thriving on a God of terror. That’s a temptation hard to resist, especially when religion is bankrupt and has nothing better than terror to offer. On the other hand, religion which is rich and abundant, flourishes on a God of love.
Good works do work for us (Lk 12)
After a theological and scriptural deflation of good works, it’s time now to inflate them. It’s good news that good works don’t work for God; that frees us from a terrorist God we have to placate. But it’s also good news that good works do work for us. That’s the message of today’s parable from the 12th chapter of Luke. A master puts one of his servants in charge of his fellow servants and then takes off for a wedding party. The servant in charge is a good man. He doesn’t eat and drink with the drunkards in the house. He doesn’t beat up on the other servants in his charge. He’s kind and gives them food at feeding time. He doesn’t sleep on the job. He’s vigilant and wakeful. No matter when the master comes home, whether at midnight or even later, the servant is ready to open the door as soon as the master knocks.
When the master returns from the wedding party, he’s very pleased and rewards the good works of his servant. He dons an apron, prepares a fine dinner, seats his servant at table and serves him (Lk 12:35-44). That, indeed, is turning the tables. The master serves the servant, and the servant is served. That’s a parable about good works which work!
Good works do work. Jesus said they work. “I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. I was naked and you clothed me. Come you blessed of my father and take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of creation” (Mt 25:33-40).
Good works do work. They don’t work for God who doesn’t need them because God doesn’t transact. But good works work for us who need them. God didn’t need the good work of the Good Samaritan who stopped to pour the oil of compassion upon the poor man waylaid by robbers. It was the poor victim who needed the Samaritan’s good work. But most importantly of all, it was the Samaritan himself who needed his own good work. That’s what made him be the great human being that he was. That’s what made him be the immortal Good Samaritan of all ages.
Conclusion
Dismissal to a brand new God
The history of religion proves many times over that the God of terror dies hard. Every Mass has its dismissal. Ite Missa est. Go the Mass is ended. Go forth today, and let go of your God of terror. That’s not easy. Let go of religion that feeds and thrives on your fear and your guilt. That’s not easy. Go forth in search of a brand new God who doesn’t love you because you are good but loves you because He is good. That’s not easy. And that God commands us to go forth and love others not because they are good, but because we are good. And that, too, is not easy.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Wisdom 18:6-9 Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19 Luke 12:35-38
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Jesus said to his disciples: “Be ready for action with belts fastened and lamps alight. Be like servants who wait for their master’s return from a wedding-party, ready to let him in the moment he arrives and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake and ready when he returns. He himself will seat them at table, don an apron and will serve them. And should he return at midnight or even later, and find them still awake and ready, blessed are those servants.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
An age-old battle
The question of justification is an age-old battle in the Christian church. That question asks what is it that justifies us -- puts us right with God? Is it good works or is it faith? (Faith is distrust in good work, and it is trust instead in the cross of Christ.) The question of justification no longer exercises us as much as it used to in centuries past, but there’s use for ourselves in digging the debate.
Good works don’t work for God (Lk 17)
In the 17th chapter of Luke Jesus tells a parable about a faithful and hard-working servant. After dutifully plowing the fields and caring for the sheep all day long, he heads for the farm house at sunset, feeling good as a dutiful servant. But when he arrives, the master does not thank him for his dutiful labors. He does not reward him. He does not don an apron to prepare a good table, and then seat his hard-working servant down to serve him as in today’s gospel. Instead, the master says to him, “Hey man, you’ve only done your duty. Now hurry up, put on your apron, prepare my supper and serve me, while I eat and drink first. After that you can eat and drink” (Lk 17:7-10). The servant’s good works didn’t work for him! They didn’t move his master! The parable bears a strange message (which at first miffs us) that good works don’t work for God! That’s strange because in human transaction good works usually do work for us. They do have the power to move people.
That strange message that good works don’t work for God is woven throughout the New Testament. It’s in the parable about laborers in a vineyard who worked all day long in the heat, but at sunset receive the same pay as those who came much later (Mt 20: 1-16). It’s found also in the parable about the two men who went up to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee who got up to pray and told God about his good works -- how he fasted twice a week and paid tithes on all his income. The other was a tax collector who had no good works to show for himself. He simply bowed down to the ground (where humility gets its humus) and asked for mercy. When the sun set that day, the tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home that night justified – set right -- in the sight of God (Lk 18:9-14).
St. Paul was the `Attacker Extraordinaire’ of good works. He made that the heart and soul of his preaching. He distillated his stand on good works with one simple phrase: “We are justified [put right with God] not by works but by grace” (Rom 3: 24).
Luther’s terror
After Paul came Luther (1483-1546). He attacked good works much more soundly than he attacked the corruption of the sixteenth century church. For Luther personally, the more burning issue was the `Question of Justification.’ It asks what must we do to be justified, i.e., to be put right in God’s eyes? There are less lofty ways to express the question. E.g., what must we do to humor or appease God? In the bluntest terms possible, what must we do to buy God off? Even that! To that question, however stated, all religions (Judaic, Christian and Islamic) never seem able to resist the temptation (yes, temptation it is) to answer, “We must do good works!” To humor or appease or buy God off we must do good works.
That characterized the general piety in the church of the sixteenth century. Martin Luther (a devout Roman Catholic Augustinian monk) was a very scrupulous example of that piety. He worked himself to a frazzle trying to get God to feel good about him. In trying to buy God off he spared nothing. He intensely performed all the monastic observances. He subjected himself to an arduous regimen of praying, fasting and scourging his body, only to end up feeling that his good works hadn’t worked for him. At the end of the day, it terrified him to think he hadn’t succeeded in buying God off. Now he was terrified not only by his vices but also by his virtues! Luther spoke very emotionally about his terrores conscientiae (his terrorized conscience) which afflicted him in that period of his life.
Luther’s solution
Many say the Reformation began on October 31, 1546 when Luther nailed his 95 Theses (against the pope’s sale of indulgences) to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Others say it began at a different and very privileged moment in his life. One day as he was studying St. Paul’s Epistle to Romans in his heated study in the tower of the Black Cloister in Wittenberg he came upon the words, “The gospel—the good news-- tells us that God makes us right in his eyes when we put our faith and trust in Christ [not in our works] to save us” (Rom. 1:17). At that moment, Luther tells us, he rediscovered the gospel and all heaven opened for his tormented soul. That rediscovery is often called Luther's great `Tower Experience.’
In a privileged moment of revelation Luther (who was frazzled trying to buy God off with his good works) discovered the wonderful good news (the gospel) that God is for free. The price that Luther couldn’t pay to buy God off Christ had already paid for him by his death on the cross. What incredibly good news: Luther doesn’t have to pay a penny! Salvation is free. Salvation is grace. That wonderful good news freed Luther from the impossible task of having to buy God off. It freed him from a God who till then terrorized him!
So wonderful was that good news that he carved it out with two words into the cornerstone of his movement: Sola Gratia, By Grace Alone. To this very day we see those two words chiseled either in English or Latin into the cornerstones of older Reformation churches. Sola Gratia, By Grace Alone. So wonderful was that good news that it gave birth to the Reformation’s mother of all hymns: Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace! We don’t have to buy God off. Amazing Grace! Christ has bought God off for us! Amazing Grace! God no longer is a terrorist.
God the terrorist
God the terrorist doesn’t die easily in religion, whether Judaic, Christian or Islamic. As I look back over many years of priesthood I now see how much of my effort was spent on ministering to people whose God was a terrorist. (Of course, I had to first get rid of my own terrorist God before I could be of any help to others.) In those days people were terrified of God because they were divorced and remarried. Terrified of God because they hadn’t confessed their sins to a priest or hadn’t confessed them `correctly.’ Terrified of God because they were practicing birth control. Terrified of God because they were gay or lesbian. Terrified of God simply because of a typical unremarkable list of human sins which brings us all down.
Those who didn’t want to put up with a terrorist God simply left the church for another church or for no church at all. Others simply decided to stay put where they were and to believe with Luther in a terror-free God of their own.
A brand new God
Good works don’t work before God. That’s good news because it takes the terror out of God. That’s good news because it frees us penniless people from the burden of having to buy God off. Good works don’t work before God. That’s not only good news, it’s also strange good news, for from mother’s milk our elders and our religion have always been admonishing us to “Be good, and God will love you!”
In a letter my mystic friend writes,
In the bus the other day, there was a little child chanting, “When you are good, I love you. When you are bad, I hate you. When you are good, I love you. When you are bad I hate you. Etc., etc.” He went on and on like that. The mother just sat there and didn’t say a word. Finally the child got confused and said accidentally, “When you are good, I love you. When you are bad, I love you.” When he realized his mistake he broke into a delightful laughter. There was something so innocent and pure in that laughter that it seemed to transform the world around us for a moment. A child had accidentally spoken the truth and had announced the gospel—the good news. A child had corrected our elders who had taught a terrible falsehood: “Be good and God will love you!”
A brand new God
Good works don’t work before God. That’s strange good news, because it introduces us to a brand new kind of God. A God who does not hate us because we are bad. A God who does not love us because we are good. A God who loves us because He is good! Good works don’t work before God. That’s strange good news because it introduces us to a brand new kind of God who does not transact as humans do.
At the end of the day, religion is confronted with a very profound challenge. It is challenged to stop thriving on a God of terror. That’s a temptation hard to resist, especially when religion is bankrupt and has nothing better than terror to offer. On the other hand, religion which is rich and abundant, flourishes on a God of love.
Good works do work for us (Lk 12)
After a theological and scriptural deflation of good works, it’s time now to inflate them. It’s good news that good works don’t work for God; that frees us from a terrorist God we have to placate. But it’s also good news that good works do work for us. That’s the message of today’s parable from the 12th chapter of Luke. A master puts one of his servants in charge of his fellow servants and then takes off for a wedding party. The servant in charge is a good man. He doesn’t eat and drink with the drunkards in the house. He doesn’t beat up on the other servants in his charge. He’s kind and gives them food at feeding time. He doesn’t sleep on the job. He’s vigilant and wakeful. No matter when the master comes home, whether at midnight or even later, the servant is ready to open the door as soon as the master knocks.
When the master returns from the wedding party, he’s very pleased and rewards the good works of his servant. He dons an apron, prepares a fine dinner, seats his servant at table and serves him (Lk 12:35-44). That, indeed, is turning the tables. The master serves the servant, and the servant is served. That’s a parable about good works which work!
Good works do work. Jesus said they work. “I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. I was naked and you clothed me. Come you blessed of my father and take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of creation” (Mt 25:33-40).
Good works do work. They don’t work for God who doesn’t need them because God doesn’t transact. But good works work for us who need them. God didn’t need the good work of the Good Samaritan who stopped to pour the oil of compassion upon the poor man waylaid by robbers. It was the poor victim who needed the Samaritan’s good work. But most importantly of all, it was the Samaritan himself who needed his own good work. That’s what made him be the great human being that he was. That’s what made him be the immortal Good Samaritan of all ages.
Conclusion
Dismissal to a brand new God
The history of religion proves many times over that the God of terror dies hard. Every Mass has its dismissal. Ite Missa est. Go the Mass is ended. Go forth today, and let go of your God of terror. That’s not easy. Let go of religion that feeds and thrives on your fear and your guilt. That’s not easy. Go forth in search of a brand new God who doesn’t love you because you are good but loves you because He is good. That’s not easy. And that God commands us to go forth and love others not because they are good, but because we are good. And that, too, is not easy.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Sunday, August 5, 2007
To Worry and Not to Worry
August 5, 2007: 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23 Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 Luke 12:13-21
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Then he said to the crowd, “Beware of greed in all its forms. Life that is real and meaningful doesn’t depend on a person’s possessions. Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and bins, and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and all my other possessions. Then I shall say to myself, `Now good man, you have possessions stored up for you for many years to come. Rest, eat, drink, be merry!’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and then to whom will all your piled up wealth go?’ This is what happens to the man who hoards things for himself and is not rich in the eyes of God.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
The first signs
Here it is the fifth of August already, and in this neck of the woods by the fifteenth the first signs of fall begin to appear. Soon we’ll see spotty swaths of gold and red on a herd of maple trees grazing on the countryside. Soon we’ll be breathing in cool wafts of autumn air streaming through opened windows at night as we sleep under an added layer of blanket. And soon we’ll be gathering the fruits of the harvest into our barns and bins. The imagery of today’s gospel of a farmer planning to build bigger barns and bins to store a rich harvest is timely.
Bins: a fall word
That word `bins’ resonates mostly with us senior citizens who remember the days when food came from bins and not from supermarkets. For senior citizens bins are sacred repositories of the images, sensations and emotions of fall. Bins bear the blessed scent of apples, onions and grain. Bins burst at the seams with cobs of corn for cattle, and with potatoes and pumpkins for people. For senior citizens bins are filled with sugar loafs of grains to be ground into flour and baked into the staff of life. Bins suggest the crispness of fall drying up the sweat of summer toil and toning life down to winter’s pace. Bins speak of autumn’s bounty snuggly stored away against the long sparse winter night ahead. For a senior generation `bins' bears a stark but snug ethos. For a younger generation, who has no idea of the hard-earned bins of the harvest, there are only supermarkets filled with an easy abundance.
When the first snows started blowing in late fall, the Pilgrim Fathers, grateful for their bursting bins, declared a feast day of thanksgiving. Their bins were full of God’s blessings and were filled also with their thanks. One take on today’s parable is that of a greedy rich farmer who desecrates the sacred image of bins. In them he plans to store not God’s blessings and his thanks for those blessing; in them he plans to store his greed!
Beware of greed
In the second reading today Paul bids us to “put to death greed which is a form of idolatry“(Col 3:5). In the gospel Jesus warns us to,”Beware of greed in all its form” (Lk 12:15). You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
The fall of Enron was the largest scandal in the history of American business and politics. A major corporation went bankrupt because executives hid losses and inflated profit reports with the full blessing of the firm’s outside auditors. Lawyers pretended to investigate reports of wrongdoing and found none. While workers lost their jobs and their life savings, executives got rid of company stock at a huge profit. Beware of greed in all its form. You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
Some years ago Richard Grasso, chairman of the NYSE, and his board were fired because they decided to give the CEO 180 million dollars for services rendered, and he readily agreed to greedily scoop it all up as his just deserts. Beware of greed in all its form. You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
Michael Vick, quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, was born, June 26, 1980, in financially-disadvantaged circumstances, living in a public housing project in a neighborhood community (nicknamed "Bad Newz”) in Newport News, Virginia. In 2004 he signed a 10-year contract with the Falcons worth $130 million with a $37 million signing bonus. That made him the highest paid player in NFL history at that time and one of the highest paid ever in sports. Vick was soon earning lucrative commercial product endorsements as well.
On July 17, 2007, Vick and three other men were indicted by a federal grand jury on felony and misdemeanor charges involving a 6-year long interstate dog fighting venture called “Bad Newz Kennels.” The charges also involved tens of thousands of dollars in gambling based at Vick's 15-acre estate in a rural area of southeastern Virginia. Following a hearing on July 26, Vick was released on bail. On November 26, the Monday after Thanksgiving Day (when Vick should have been giving thanks for his barns and bins overflowing with God’s bounty) he will go on trial. Beware of greed in all its form. You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
The freedom of parables
Parables are literary instruments which give a reader a lot of freedom. There is no one right way to interpret a parable. The truth of a parable seems to simply lie in how one hears it. I used to think today’s parable frowned on those who relax, eat, and make merry. As I reread it now with a more mature heart and mind, I see the parable as frowning on those don’t relax, eat, drink and make merry. I see it now as frowning on those who spend so much time and effort in building the bins of life that they don’t have any time to enjoy the life that’s in those bins. I see the parable now as frowning on those who spend so much time at making a living that they don’t have time to live. I see the parable now as frowning on a poor rich farmer who died before he lived.
A hammed up or unremarkable reading
Parables are literary instruments which give a reader a lot of freedom. Sometimes, maybe often, this parable is given a hammed up reading which turns the rich farmer into a miserly old Scrooge— into “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” When so hammed up, the parable doesn’t bear much of a message for most of us who aren’t miserly old Scrooges at all. Or the parable can be given an unremarkable reading which presupposes nothing gross at all. Then it becomes A Parable for Everyman—a parable about and for all of us ordinary people.
An unremarkable reading
The house I have been living in for a good twenty five years was at one time owned by a nice little maiden lady named Anna. She, her sister and niece lived upstairs. I rented the downstairs flat. Because I shoveled the snow in the winter, cut the grass in the summer and ran various errands (the most important of which was the fetching with religious fidelity the Milwaukee Journal every evening) I was offered a very reasonable rent--100 dollars a month, and even that wasn’t chicken feed in those days.
Anna was a hairdresser by trade. She was also a German by nationality, and that tells you a lot about her temperament. She put her nose to the grind, worked hard and was very thrifty. She didn't grossly deprive herself but neither did she live it up. With religious regularity she deposited all her bucks in bins called banks. I never saw her bankbook, but I suspect she amassed a good 100,000 dollars. In these days that is no big bin at all, but in those days it did, indeed, represent a mighty mountain of work and thrift over the years.
As her bin grew bigger and bigger she grew older and older. All the while, she had in mind the day when she would be able to say to herself: "Now Anna, you have blessing in reserve for many years to come. Relax! Eat heartily, drink well and make merry." But alas, one day the circulation in her foot stopped, it became gangrenous, the leg was amputated, and she was carried off to a nursing home where eventually she died. To whom did all her piled up wealth go? It went to the nursing home industry, which ate up her life-long savings in a very short time. What was left went to her well-off nephew. There was something sadly foolish about this dear rational creature. She didn’t want to be foolish, but society made her so. That’s an unremarkable reading of the parable, and it hits home more than a hammed up one.
These two rational creatures, the farmer and my landlady, were foolish not because they ate, drank, and made merry but because they didn't! They were foolish not because they tasted life, but because they didn't. They were foolish not because they believed in and lived for today (which is the only sure thing there is), but because they believed in and lived for tomorrow which never really comes. They were foolish not because they grew rich for themselves but for their inheritors or for the nursing home industry.
The other half of the gospel: verses 22-30
This parable from the 12th chapter of Luke ends with verse 21, but it really should be read together with the next 10 verses. Only in conjunction with the verses do we get one complete message. After telling the story about the rich farmer (a foolish rational creature) who worried about building bigger barns and bins in which to store his wealth, Jesus moves on to the other side of the spectrum. He points to the birds of the air (wise non-rational creatures) who do not worry about sowing and reaping and gathering into barns but are fed by the Father in heaven. He points to the lilies in the field (again wise non-rational creatures) who do not worry about toiling and spinning but who nevertheless are more splendidly robed than King Solomon himself, for the Father in heaven cares for them. Then Jesus comes to the bottom line and to the one complete message of the whole passage: "So stop worrying! Stop worrying about what you're going to eat or drink, or what you’re going to put on. The Father in heaven already knows you need all these things" (Lk12: 22-31).
Nice but not so nice
“Nice gospel,” said one preacher, “but I don’t like it! It’s embarrassing. In this capitalistic society of ours I feel like a fool telling some father to stop worrying about food, fuel and pharmaceuticals for his wife, his kids and himself, because `the Father in heaven already knows you need all these things.’”
Here my mystic friend writes, "It seems there have always been a few people who don’t mind feeling like a fool. There have always been a few people, some of them canonized and some not, who have taken the words of the Lord literally, at their undiluted face value, like St. Francis of Assisi [who renounced his father's commercial world of bins and banks, and who choose instead to join up with the lilies of the field and the larks of Umbria]. To these few fools,” she adds, “is contrasted the reasonable majority. That's you and me (our name is legion). We go about interpreting the Sermon on the Mount or the Birds of the Air and the Lilies of the Field in such a way that there is not much to get excited about."
Conclusion
To worry and not to worry
The full gospel does not challenge us to choose between worrying and not worrying. Rather, it challenges us to both worry and not to worry, to both care and not to care. The full gospel challenges us to worry like the rich farmer and my landlady, and at the same time not to worry like the birds of the air, the lilies of the field and St. Francis of Assisi. The full gospel challenges us to both worry and not worry about what we shall eat and put on and how we shall pay the bills. The full gospel challenges us to be rational like the rich farmer and my landlady, and at the same time not to be rational like the birds of the air who don’t gather into bins but are fed by God, and like the lilies of the field who don’t spin but are clothed more splendidly than King Solomon himself.
That full gospel sends us forth into our week-day world and bids us to keep one eye focused on our barns, bins and bank statements, and the other eye peeled upon the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. It’s the only mix that makes sense. That full gospel also sends us forth to be mindful that the rich farmer and the landlady are nervous people, but the birds of the air and the lilies of the field are God’s happy creatures. The full gospel bids us to join those happy creatures.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23 Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 Luke 12:13-21
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Then he said to the crowd, “Beware of greed in all its forms. Life that is real and meaningful doesn’t depend on a person’s possessions. Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and bins, and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and all my other possessions. Then I shall say to myself, `Now good man, you have possessions stored up for you for many years to come. Rest, eat, drink, be merry!’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and then to whom will all your piled up wealth go?’ This is what happens to the man who hoards things for himself and is not rich in the eyes of God.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction
The first signs
Here it is the fifth of August already, and in this neck of the woods by the fifteenth the first signs of fall begin to appear. Soon we’ll see spotty swaths of gold and red on a herd of maple trees grazing on the countryside. Soon we’ll be breathing in cool wafts of autumn air streaming through opened windows at night as we sleep under an added layer of blanket. And soon we’ll be gathering the fruits of the harvest into our barns and bins. The imagery of today’s gospel of a farmer planning to build bigger barns and bins to store a rich harvest is timely.
Bins: a fall word
That word `bins’ resonates mostly with us senior citizens who remember the days when food came from bins and not from supermarkets. For senior citizens bins are sacred repositories of the images, sensations and emotions of fall. Bins bear the blessed scent of apples, onions and grain. Bins burst at the seams with cobs of corn for cattle, and with potatoes and pumpkins for people. For senior citizens bins are filled with sugar loafs of grains to be ground into flour and baked into the staff of life. Bins suggest the crispness of fall drying up the sweat of summer toil and toning life down to winter’s pace. Bins speak of autumn’s bounty snuggly stored away against the long sparse winter night ahead. For a senior generation `bins' bears a stark but snug ethos. For a younger generation, who has no idea of the hard-earned bins of the harvest, there are only supermarkets filled with an easy abundance.
When the first snows started blowing in late fall, the Pilgrim Fathers, grateful for their bursting bins, declared a feast day of thanksgiving. Their bins were full of God’s blessings and were filled also with their thanks. One take on today’s parable is that of a greedy rich farmer who desecrates the sacred image of bins. In them he plans to store not God’s blessings and his thanks for those blessing; in them he plans to store his greed!
Beware of greed
In the second reading today Paul bids us to “put to death greed which is a form of idolatry“(Col 3:5). In the gospel Jesus warns us to,”Beware of greed in all its form” (Lk 12:15). You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
The fall of Enron was the largest scandal in the history of American business and politics. A major corporation went bankrupt because executives hid losses and inflated profit reports with the full blessing of the firm’s outside auditors. Lawyers pretended to investigate reports of wrongdoing and found none. While workers lost their jobs and their life savings, executives got rid of company stock at a huge profit. Beware of greed in all its form. You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
Some years ago Richard Grasso, chairman of the NYSE, and his board were fired because they decided to give the CEO 180 million dollars for services rendered, and he readily agreed to greedily scoop it all up as his just deserts. Beware of greed in all its form. You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
Michael Vick, quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, was born, June 26, 1980, in financially-disadvantaged circumstances, living in a public housing project in a neighborhood community (nicknamed "Bad Newz”) in Newport News, Virginia. In 2004 he signed a 10-year contract with the Falcons worth $130 million with a $37 million signing bonus. That made him the highest paid player in NFL history at that time and one of the highest paid ever in sports. Vick was soon earning lucrative commercial product endorsements as well.
On July 17, 2007, Vick and three other men were indicted by a federal grand jury on felony and misdemeanor charges involving a 6-year long interstate dog fighting venture called “Bad Newz Kennels.” The charges also involved tens of thousands of dollars in gambling based at Vick's 15-acre estate in a rural area of southeastern Virginia. Following a hearing on July 26, Vick was released on bail. On November 26, the Monday after Thanksgiving Day (when Vick should have been giving thanks for his barns and bins overflowing with God’s bounty) he will go on trial. Beware of greed in all its form. You can satisfy hunger and thirst and even sex, but you can’t satisfy greed.
The freedom of parables
Parables are literary instruments which give a reader a lot of freedom. There is no one right way to interpret a parable. The truth of a parable seems to simply lie in how one hears it. I used to think today’s parable frowned on those who relax, eat, and make merry. As I reread it now with a more mature heart and mind, I see the parable as frowning on those don’t relax, eat, drink and make merry. I see it now as frowning on those who spend so much time and effort in building the bins of life that they don’t have any time to enjoy the life that’s in those bins. I see the parable now as frowning on those who spend so much time at making a living that they don’t have time to live. I see the parable now as frowning on a poor rich farmer who died before he lived.
A hammed up or unremarkable reading
Parables are literary instruments which give a reader a lot of freedom. Sometimes, maybe often, this parable is given a hammed up reading which turns the rich farmer into a miserly old Scrooge— into “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” When so hammed up, the parable doesn’t bear much of a message for most of us who aren’t miserly old Scrooges at all. Or the parable can be given an unremarkable reading which presupposes nothing gross at all. Then it becomes A Parable for Everyman—a parable about and for all of us ordinary people.
An unremarkable reading
The house I have been living in for a good twenty five years was at one time owned by a nice little maiden lady named Anna. She, her sister and niece lived upstairs. I rented the downstairs flat. Because I shoveled the snow in the winter, cut the grass in the summer and ran various errands (the most important of which was the fetching with religious fidelity the Milwaukee Journal every evening) I was offered a very reasonable rent--100 dollars a month, and even that wasn’t chicken feed in those days.
Anna was a hairdresser by trade. She was also a German by nationality, and that tells you a lot about her temperament. She put her nose to the grind, worked hard and was very thrifty. She didn't grossly deprive herself but neither did she live it up. With religious regularity she deposited all her bucks in bins called banks. I never saw her bankbook, but I suspect she amassed a good 100,000 dollars. In these days that is no big bin at all, but in those days it did, indeed, represent a mighty mountain of work and thrift over the years.
As her bin grew bigger and bigger she grew older and older. All the while, she had in mind the day when she would be able to say to herself: "Now Anna, you have blessing in reserve for many years to come. Relax! Eat heartily, drink well and make merry." But alas, one day the circulation in her foot stopped, it became gangrenous, the leg was amputated, and she was carried off to a nursing home where eventually she died. To whom did all her piled up wealth go? It went to the nursing home industry, which ate up her life-long savings in a very short time. What was left went to her well-off nephew. There was something sadly foolish about this dear rational creature. She didn’t want to be foolish, but society made her so. That’s an unremarkable reading of the parable, and it hits home more than a hammed up one.
These two rational creatures, the farmer and my landlady, were foolish not because they ate, drank, and made merry but because they didn't! They were foolish not because they tasted life, but because they didn't. They were foolish not because they believed in and lived for today (which is the only sure thing there is), but because they believed in and lived for tomorrow which never really comes. They were foolish not because they grew rich for themselves but for their inheritors or for the nursing home industry.
The other half of the gospel: verses 22-30
This parable from the 12th chapter of Luke ends with verse 21, but it really should be read together with the next 10 verses. Only in conjunction with the verses do we get one complete message. After telling the story about the rich farmer (a foolish rational creature) who worried about building bigger barns and bins in which to store his wealth, Jesus moves on to the other side of the spectrum. He points to the birds of the air (wise non-rational creatures) who do not worry about sowing and reaping and gathering into barns but are fed by the Father in heaven. He points to the lilies in the field (again wise non-rational creatures) who do not worry about toiling and spinning but who nevertheless are more splendidly robed than King Solomon himself, for the Father in heaven cares for them. Then Jesus comes to the bottom line and to the one complete message of the whole passage: "So stop worrying! Stop worrying about what you're going to eat or drink, or what you’re going to put on. The Father in heaven already knows you need all these things" (Lk12: 22-31).
Nice but not so nice
“Nice gospel,” said one preacher, “but I don’t like it! It’s embarrassing. In this capitalistic society of ours I feel like a fool telling some father to stop worrying about food, fuel and pharmaceuticals for his wife, his kids and himself, because `the Father in heaven already knows you need all these things.’”
Here my mystic friend writes, "It seems there have always been a few people who don’t mind feeling like a fool. There have always been a few people, some of them canonized and some not, who have taken the words of the Lord literally, at their undiluted face value, like St. Francis of Assisi [who renounced his father's commercial world of bins and banks, and who choose instead to join up with the lilies of the field and the larks of Umbria]. To these few fools,” she adds, “is contrasted the reasonable majority. That's you and me (our name is legion). We go about interpreting the Sermon on the Mount or the Birds of the Air and the Lilies of the Field in such a way that there is not much to get excited about."
Conclusion
To worry and not to worry
The full gospel does not challenge us to choose between worrying and not worrying. Rather, it challenges us to both worry and not to worry, to both care and not to care. The full gospel challenges us to worry like the rich farmer and my landlady, and at the same time not to worry like the birds of the air, the lilies of the field and St. Francis of Assisi. The full gospel challenges us to both worry and not worry about what we shall eat and put on and how we shall pay the bills. The full gospel challenges us to be rational like the rich farmer and my landlady, and at the same time not to be rational like the birds of the air who don’t gather into bins but are fed by God, and like the lilies of the field who don’t spin but are clothed more splendidly than King Solomon himself.
That full gospel sends us forth into our week-day world and bids us to keep one eye focused on our barns, bins and bank statements, and the other eye peeled upon the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. It’s the only mix that makes sense. That full gospel also sends us forth to be mindful that the rich farmer and the landlady are nervous people, but the birds of the air and the lilies of the field are God’s happy creatures. The full gospel bids us to join those happy creatures.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
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