The Corner of Fourth and Walnut
October 28, 2007: 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sirach 35:12-14,16-18 II Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14
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 aimed this parable at those who were self-righteous and looked down on everybody else. "Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee got up to pray and spoke to God saying, 'Oh God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on all my income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.' I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted."
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Feasting on Luke’s parables
These past Sundays we have been feasting on the best of the New Testament parables which are found only in St. Luke: the Parable of the Rich Fool and His Bursting Bins(18th Sunday), the Parable of the Prodigal Son (24th Sunday), the Parable of the Poor Lazarus at the Rich Man’s Gate (26th Sunday). On this 30th Sunday we are treated again to another great parable found only in Luke: the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (i.e. sinner). That parable indicts those who look down on everyone else, and it encourages those who think they are sinners.
Tax collectors i.e., sinners
When the Romans occupied the land of Jesus they hired Jews to collect taxes from fellow Jews. Those hirelings were obviously unpopular. They were traitors. Furthermore, they were often extortionists. As usual, the Living Bible translation of the New Testament presents a descriptive and free-styling version of this passage: “Two men went up to the temple to pray. One was a proud self-righteous Pharisee and the other a cheating tax collector “ ( Lk 18:9-14).
In the New Testament tax collectors (traitors and extortionists that they were) are always mentioned in the same breath with sinners. One day the Pharisees complained to Jesus’ disciples saying, “How come your master eats with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mt 9: 11). They complained on another occasion saying, “Look at this man Jesus. He is a glutton and wine-drinker, and he is a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Lk 7: 34). Jesus also mentioned the two in the same breath but in a startlingly different way, when he berated the chief priests and Jewish elders saying, “I tell you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you people. John the Baptist came preaching and they listened to him, but you fellows did not” (Mt 21:31-32).
Contrasting strokes
Today’s parable is a picture painted with contrasting strokes. When the parable begins, the sun is rising, and the two are leaving home to go up to the temple to pray. In that sacred place the Pharisee gets up to pray and thanks God he’s “not like the rest of men.” But the tax collector goes down to pray; he bends low to the ground where humility gets its humus. The Pharisee defines himself by what he does: “I do my tithing. I do my fasting. I do my Schema prayer three times a day.” But the tax collector defines himself by who he is: “I am a sinner.” The Pharisee confesses other men’s sins (“They are greedy, dishonest and adulterous”). But the tax collector confesses his own sins (“Oh, Lord, be merciful to me a sinner”). In his heart of hearts the strutting Pharisee is really sad, while the confessing tax collector is really glad. When the sun is setting and the two are returning home, the tax collector has been set right with God, but the Pharisee has not.
Self righteousness: a holy feeling
Luke says “Jesus aimed this parable at those who were self-righteous and looked down on everybody else” (Lk 18:9). Self- righteousness is a holy feeling of not being like the rest of men -- greedy, dishonest and adulterous. As a holy feeling self righteousness wears the mantle of God around its shoulders, and with that mantle wrapped around one’s self there’s no limit to what can be perpetrated in the name of God. At the end of the day, self righteousness is the feeling we accord ourselves when we don’t feel good about ourselves. It’s a kind of compensation.
The Nazis’ self righteousness which kills
After their sound defeat in World War I many Germans didn’t feel very good about themselves. They blamed everybody else but themselves. The German Nazis chose to blame especially the Jews. They thanked God they were not like those Jews – greedy, dishonest and immoral. Then they pursued and persecuted them with a vengeance. On the night of Nov. 9, 1938 that holy feeling of self righteousness sent the Nazis rampaging throughout all of Germany and in one night destroyed 7000 Jewish businesses and burned down 191 synagogues without batting an eyelash. What an ocean of self righteousness it took to accomplish such remarkable statistics just in one night! Nov. 9, 1938, goes down in history as the Krystallnacht, The Night of the Shattered Glass. It goes down in history as the moment the Holocaust began. By the time the Nazis’ holy feeling of self righteousness had expended itself the most heinous crime in recorded history had been committed: six millions Jews had been incinerated in the crematoria of Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The Islamists’ self righteousness which kills
Of the three great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) Islam is the youngest. It is founded on the Koran as the scripture revealed to the Prophet Mohammed (570-632). In the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries Islam became the very center of the universe eclipsing Europe in the fields of mathematics, physics, architecture, medicine, chemistry, poetry and spirituality. But for the last two centuries, Islam has been on the losing side of history because of all the modernization and secularization closing in on it. Many Muslims dismiss modernization and secularization out of hand as evil. Left behind by history, many Islamists respond by blaming everybody else but themselves. Andrew Sullivan writes, “Much of the Arab world has withdrawn into a fortress of intolerance and self-righteousness.”
A great part of Islam, consciously or subconsciously, thanks Allah for not being like those Western infidels: greedy, dishonest and immoral. A holy feeling of self-righteousness clothes all Islamist suicide bombers with divine authority to commit the most heinous crimes in the name of Allah. Without any doubt, bin Laden is first and foremost a religious man. On 9/11 that religious man through his missionaries (his suicide bombers) brought down three thousand innocent infidels and two towering trophies in the name of Allah, Most Kind and Most Merciful.
The Rev. Phelp’s self righteousness which kills
Extreme Islamists don’t have a monopoly on self righteousness, but the Rev. Fred Phelps, it would seem, does. He has so much of it it’s hard to believe there’s any left for anyone else. He and his followers picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard (a gay student from Wyoming College) beaten to a pulp by two skinheads who tied him to a wooden fence out in the country and left him there to die in his blood and tears on October 12, 1998. At the funeral they carried signs that read, “God hates fags and buries them in hell.”
He and his group never tire of thanking God that they are not like the rest of men, greedy, dishonest and immoral, as homosexuals are. The Reverend and his Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, announced plans to erect a monument in a city park in Casper City where Shepard grew up, and where he learned it was OK to be gay. The monument would be made of marble or granite. It would stand five to six feet in height with a heavy bronze plaque bearing the face of the slain young man and an inscription reading, “MATTHEW SHEPARD, Entered Hell October 12, 1998, In Defiance of God’s Warning: Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination. Leviticus 18:22.” So read a letter from the Westboro Baptist Church signed by Phelps and sent to the City of Casper.
Behold the Reverend and his bunch confessing this kid’s peccadilloes instead of confessing their own mountainous sin of self righteousness. Imagine all the teachings of Christ and all his parables that they had to ignore in order to get to the point where they could rejoice in putting someone in hell!
The unself righteousness which gives life
The Bible tells Phelps and his followers that, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). For the Bible Tells Me So is a documentary that was shown at the Sundance Film Festival 2007. It explores the issue of religion and homosexuality through personal interviews with five families whose spiritual lives collided with their real lives when they learned a loved one was gay. In an interview Director Daniel Karslake was asked what inspired him to make this film. He replied that about six or seven years ago, he was a religions producer for a show on PBS and did a number of shows on homosexuality and religion. When he started meeting very well-known and well-respected theologians, he asked them about the issue of homosexuality and the Bible. He was very surprised to hear that they had a view very different from the self righteous view of religious stars like Jerry Falwell. Karslake was very attracted to the unself righteous message of these very reputable theologians. In the interview he continued,
So I started keeping track of that. And then also, as I produced for PBS, I did a story about this woman at Harvard, an African-American, with this great life story -- tragic upbringing, but she pulled through and was doing great things with her life. She was a theologian, and she was also a lesbian, and I thought it was important for people to see that. And the day after that aired, I got an email from this kid -- a gay kid in Iowa -- that said: "Last week I bought the gun. Yesterday I wrote the note. But last night I happened to turn on your show, and just knowing that someday I might be able to go back into my church, I threw the gun into the river. My mom never has to know."And I got a number of emails like that over the next few years similar to this, but this was the first that really knocked my socks off!
An unself righteous Gospel (a Gospel which is truly Good News) made the gay kid throw his gun into the river, and that story knocked the socks off Karslake’s feet!
Merton’s joyful unself righteousness
Thomas Merton is the most celebrated Roman Catholic monk of the 20th century. Born in 1915 in France, he grew up in France, England, and the United States and studied at Cambridge and Columbia. In his younger years he lived the life of a real rounder before converting to Catholicism. In 1941 he became a Trappist monk and wrote countless books. Best known are his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), and two volumes on Trappist way of life: The Waters of Siloe (1949) and The Sign of Jonas (1953). Before, during and after Vatican II some of us were reading his books and quoting him.
Trappist monks were always known as a very special breed apart -- “not like the rest of men.” They took a strict vow never to speak except to God and their spiritual directors. They rose daily at 2 AM to chant the Office of Matins. They never left their monastery except to visit a doctor or for hospitalization.
In his book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Merton writes about a rare visit to Louisville, Kentucky, for a doctor’s appointment. He was standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in the center of a shopping district. Suddenly he was filled with great compassion for all the weary human beings passing before him. At that moment he found himself calling into question not his vocation as a Trappist monk but the illusion that he and his fellow monks were a breed apart and “not like the rest of men.” At that moment he felt freed from any gloomy need to look down on others. At that moment he found himself joyfully crying quietly aloud within himself, “Thank God! Thank God! I’m like the rest of men.”
Conclusion
Go and stand on Fourth and Walnut
To this day on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky, you will find a plaque commemorating that powerful moment of revelation for Merton. Every Mass has its dismissal. Ite Missa est! Go the Mass is ended! Go and stand on the corner of Fourth and Walnut with Merton and the tax collector and be consoled.
[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 home or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Keep on Praying (The Prayer of Petition)
October 21, 2007, 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Exodus 17:8-13 II Timothy 3:14-4:2 Luke 18:1-8
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 told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always and not lose heart. He said, "There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, 'Render a just decision for me against my adversary. For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, 'While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her; or else she will keep on coming and wear me out!” Then the Lord said, "Notice how this dishonest judge behaved. Will not God then, patient as he is, see that justice is done to his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when I, the Son of Man, come, how many will I find who have faith and are praying?”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
A parable about not losing heart in prayer
On the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (July 29, 2007) Jesus told us a parable about praying and not losing heart, as we earnestly beg God for some request. At one time or other, sooner or later, we all find ourselves standing before God earnestly begging for something. This is true whether we are strong believers, weak believers, and yes, even no believers at all. (There are no atheists in foxholes.)
The parable that Sunday used the quaint and amusing imagery of God as a father in bed with his kids. The door has already been bolted for the night, and all are snuggly tucked under a nice warm quilt. Suddenly a neighbor is persistently knocking at his door. He needs three loaves of bread because a visitor has suddenly come upon him, and as a good host he wants to offer him the hospitality of food. His persistent knocking pays off. It wears the poor man down. He gets up, unlocks the door and hands the neighbor his three loaves. He does so not so much out of friendship but simply to get rid of the man and get back to sleep.
The parable ends with Jesus’ exhortation, “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Jesus backs up his exhortation with a reminder of how earthly fathers act. “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:1-13)?
Another parable about not losing heart in prayer
On this 29th Sunday of Ordinary time (October 21, 2007) Jesus tells us another parable about not losing heart, as we earnestly beg God for something. This parable does not use quaint but bold imagery. It compares God with a bad judge in town who fears neither God nor man. A tough little lady, who won’t take no for an answer, wants the judge to plead her case. Her constant knocking at his door pays off. It wears him down. He agrees to take on her case if for no other reason than to shut her up. The parable ends with a bottom line: If the corrupt judge can be worn down by a persistent little old lady asking for justice, “how much more will God, patient as he is, hear the plea of those who beseech him day and night” (Lk 18:1-8).
The four kinds of prayers
The catechism lines up four kinds of prayer. There is the Prayer of Adoration -- the prayer of one who feels the mystery of God and gives God silent adoration. Then there is the Prayer of Thanksgiving -- the prayer of one who feels grateful for his many blessings and gives God heartfelt gratitude. There is the Prayer of Forgiveness -- the prayer of one who feels his waywardness and gives God painful but joyful repentance. But then there is the Prayer of Petition. It’s the prayer of one who gives God nothing but needs something from God. It’s the prayer of one who suddenly needs three loaves of bread from a neighbor or who sorely needs justice from a corrupt judge.
The problematic Prayer of Petition
The Prayers of Adoration, Thanksgiving and Forgiveness which give God something present no problem; they are simply what they are. The Prayer of Petition, however, which asks for something from God, is problematic. Sooner or later we all find ourselves earnestly begging God for something, and our prayer doesn’t seem to be heard despite Jesus’ words, “Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you.” We pray that a mountainous burden be lifted from our backs and cast into the sea, but we’re still heavily laden. We pray for the cure of a loved one. Oh how many of us prayed earnestly for the promising and compassionate Dr. Colette Cameron, but she died! We remember and can never forget that six million Jews prayed that God would deliver them from the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald, and their prayers went up in the smoke of the crematoria! Most of the time we are simply too pious to deal frankly with the problematic Prayer of Petition.
Sometime, however, we do deal with it frankly. Not long ago a friend with his wife and daughter together with others dropped in the day before he was going to undergo quintuple bypass heart surgery. They brought their (and my) lunch along. The food helped to lighten up the somber occasion. The day before heart surgery always needs some lightening up. But the gravitas of such a moment inevitably broke through the small talk, and soon we found ourselves not very pious at all and dealing rather frankly with the problem of prayer. Soon we found ourselves wondering out loud whether asking God for a happy outcome to an imminent heart surgery can actually influence God to change his immutable mind. It was a frank discussion about prayer.
Good things or the Holy Spirit?
Luke’s parable about the neighbor who late at night knocks persistently at the door of the father in bed with his kids and asks for three loaves of bread ends with a bottom line: “If you fathers, who are wicked, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” That always puzzles me. I always wonder where in the world did the Holy Spirit come from in the first place. One has asked for a fish or a loaf or an egg but not for the Holy Spirit (Lk 11:13)!
At the present moment I am forced to leave the house which has been my comfortable home for twenty-eight years and seek a safer location and a more benign atmosphere in which to live out my last years. In my prayer these past few months I have been asking the Father in heaven for this good thing: a clean and comfortable apartment on the first floor, two bedrooms, a workroom, garage, washer and dryer, safe surroundings, location close to the Lake (if possible) and, above all, room for my cat and dog. I have been asking the heavenly Father for this good thing because Matthew tells me that He, just like all earthly fathers, gives good things to His children who ask for them. (Mt 7:11). If at this moment I should not get the good thing I ask for but just the Holy Spirit, I know I shall be quite disappointed!
The parallel passage from Matthew is not so puzzling. It reads a bit differently and more the way we might expect it to read: “If you fathers, who are wicked, know how to give good things [like a fish or a loaf or an egg] to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Mt 7:11). In our Prayer of Petition do we get the good things we prayed for, or do we get the Holy Spirit?
Conclusion
Keep on knocking
At the end of the day, whatever might be our theology of prayer, we keep on knocking at the door of God as the man in need of three loaves kept knocking at his neighbor’s door, or as the little old lady in need of justice kept knocking at the door of the corrupt judge. We keep on knocking because Jesus says we should. "Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you." And if, when the door is opened, we are, indeed, given the thing we asked for, i.e., the loaves or the justice or the relocation we seek, that's fine. Praised be God! If, however, when the door is opened, we are not given the thing we asked for but are given the Holy Spirit, that is to say, we are given power from on high (Lk 24:49), that perhaps is better yet. With the Holy Spirit we then have the power not to get the things we want but to want the things we get. With the Holy Spirit we even have the power to forgive God for not giving us the thing we asked for. That’s great power, indeed. It fits us for the arduous journey that lies up front.
[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!
Exodus 17:8-13 II Timothy 3:14-4:2 Luke 18:1-8
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 told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always and not lose heart. He said, "There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, 'Render a just decision for me against my adversary. For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, 'While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her; or else she will keep on coming and wear me out!” Then the Lord said, "Notice how this dishonest judge behaved. Will not God then, patient as he is, see that justice is done to his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when I, the Son of Man, come, how many will I find who have faith and are praying?”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
A parable about not losing heart in prayer
On the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time (July 29, 2007) Jesus told us a parable about praying and not losing heart, as we earnestly beg God for some request. At one time or other, sooner or later, we all find ourselves standing before God earnestly begging for something. This is true whether we are strong believers, weak believers, and yes, even no believers at all. (There are no atheists in foxholes.)
The parable that Sunday used the quaint and amusing imagery of God as a father in bed with his kids. The door has already been bolted for the night, and all are snuggly tucked under a nice warm quilt. Suddenly a neighbor is persistently knocking at his door. He needs three loaves of bread because a visitor has suddenly come upon him, and as a good host he wants to offer him the hospitality of food. His persistent knocking pays off. It wears the poor man down. He gets up, unlocks the door and hands the neighbor his three loaves. He does so not so much out of friendship but simply to get rid of the man and get back to sleep.
The parable ends with Jesus’ exhortation, “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Jesus backs up his exhortation with a reminder of how earthly fathers act. “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:1-13)?
Another parable about not losing heart in prayer
On this 29th Sunday of Ordinary time (October 21, 2007) Jesus tells us another parable about not losing heart, as we earnestly beg God for something. This parable does not use quaint but bold imagery. It compares God with a bad judge in town who fears neither God nor man. A tough little lady, who won’t take no for an answer, wants the judge to plead her case. Her constant knocking at his door pays off. It wears him down. He agrees to take on her case if for no other reason than to shut her up. The parable ends with a bottom line: If the corrupt judge can be worn down by a persistent little old lady asking for justice, “how much more will God, patient as he is, hear the plea of those who beseech him day and night” (Lk 18:1-8).
The four kinds of prayers
The catechism lines up four kinds of prayer. There is the Prayer of Adoration -- the prayer of one who feels the mystery of God and gives God silent adoration. Then there is the Prayer of Thanksgiving -- the prayer of one who feels grateful for his many blessings and gives God heartfelt gratitude. There is the Prayer of Forgiveness -- the prayer of one who feels his waywardness and gives God painful but joyful repentance. But then there is the Prayer of Petition. It’s the prayer of one who gives God nothing but needs something from God. It’s the prayer of one who suddenly needs three loaves of bread from a neighbor or who sorely needs justice from a corrupt judge.
The problematic Prayer of Petition
The Prayers of Adoration, Thanksgiving and Forgiveness which give God something present no problem; they are simply what they are. The Prayer of Petition, however, which asks for something from God, is problematic. Sooner or later we all find ourselves earnestly begging God for something, and our prayer doesn’t seem to be heard despite Jesus’ words, “Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and the door shall be opened to you.” We pray that a mountainous burden be lifted from our backs and cast into the sea, but we’re still heavily laden. We pray for the cure of a loved one. Oh how many of us prayed earnestly for the promising and compassionate Dr. Colette Cameron, but she died! We remember and can never forget that six million Jews prayed that God would deliver them from the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald, and their prayers went up in the smoke of the crematoria! Most of the time we are simply too pious to deal frankly with the problematic Prayer of Petition.
Sometime, however, we do deal with it frankly. Not long ago a friend with his wife and daughter together with others dropped in the day before he was going to undergo quintuple bypass heart surgery. They brought their (and my) lunch along. The food helped to lighten up the somber occasion. The day before heart surgery always needs some lightening up. But the gravitas of such a moment inevitably broke through the small talk, and soon we found ourselves not very pious at all and dealing rather frankly with the problem of prayer. Soon we found ourselves wondering out loud whether asking God for a happy outcome to an imminent heart surgery can actually influence God to change his immutable mind. It was a frank discussion about prayer.
Good things or the Holy Spirit?
Luke’s parable about the neighbor who late at night knocks persistently at the door of the father in bed with his kids and asks for three loaves of bread ends with a bottom line: “If you fathers, who are wicked, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” That always puzzles me. I always wonder where in the world did the Holy Spirit come from in the first place. One has asked for a fish or a loaf or an egg but not for the Holy Spirit (Lk 11:13)!
At the present moment I am forced to leave the house which has been my comfortable home for twenty-eight years and seek a safer location and a more benign atmosphere in which to live out my last years. In my prayer these past few months I have been asking the Father in heaven for this good thing: a clean and comfortable apartment on the first floor, two bedrooms, a workroom, garage, washer and dryer, safe surroundings, location close to the Lake (if possible) and, above all, room for my cat and dog. I have been asking the heavenly Father for this good thing because Matthew tells me that He, just like all earthly fathers, gives good things to His children who ask for them. (Mt 7:11). If at this moment I should not get the good thing I ask for but just the Holy Spirit, I know I shall be quite disappointed!
The parallel passage from Matthew is not so puzzling. It reads a bit differently and more the way we might expect it to read: “If you fathers, who are wicked, know how to give good things [like a fish or a loaf or an egg] to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Mt 7:11). In our Prayer of Petition do we get the good things we prayed for, or do we get the Holy Spirit?
Conclusion
Keep on knocking
At the end of the day, whatever might be our theology of prayer, we keep on knocking at the door of God as the man in need of three loaves kept knocking at his neighbor’s door, or as the little old lady in need of justice kept knocking at the door of the corrupt judge. We keep on knocking because Jesus says we should. "Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you." And if, when the door is opened, we are, indeed, given the thing we asked for, i.e., the loaves or the justice or the relocation we seek, that's fine. Praised be God! If, however, when the door is opened, we are not given the thing we asked for but are given the Holy Spirit, that is to say, we are given power from on high (Lk 24:49), that perhaps is better yet. With the Holy Spirit we then have the power not to get the things we want but to want the things we get. With the Holy Spirit we even have the power to forgive God for not giving us the thing we asked for. That’s great power, indeed. It fits us for the arduous journey that lies up front.
[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, October 14, 2007
Saying Thanks
Saying Thanks
October 14, 2007, 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
II Kings 5:14-17 II Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19
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.
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!" And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:11-19).
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Thanks at Thanksgiving
For us in the northern hemisphere the story of the one leper out of ten who returns to say thanks is timely. The maple trees are now donning glorious garments of gold. God’s bounty of apples and pumpkins is being gathered into bins against the long winter night. Soon our thoughts will turn to Thanksgiving Day, and we, who nine times out of ten have been too busy to return to say thanks, will pause on this very special American holiday to count our blessings, as “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.”
Thanks in the old days
Saying thanks came easy in the old days, even though we didn’t enjoy as many blessings then as we do now. Our forefathers planted their crops in early spring, nurtured them through the warm summer months and then in fall gathered their harvest into bins. That yearly round made it easy for them to feel grateful for the simple blessings present even in their frugal lives. It was easy for them to say thanks, and they were saying it much more frequently than we do today. Scarcity and gratitude strangely are brothers and sisters. It was no surprise, therefore, that sooner or later our forefathers would invent a special holiday for saying thanks.
Thanks today
Even though blessings abound these days, it’s harder now to say thanks. Today when we expend great physical and psychic energy from Monday to Friday to earn a paycheck, and when there’s no money left over after we’ve paid the rent or mortgage and have bought the weekly groceries and have filled the gas tank, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. When in our illness we approach the healthcare industry with three genuflections, and the first thing it asks us is not how sick we are but how insured we are, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. Nor is it easy to say thanks for a healthcare system which admits us into the hospital at early dawn for brain surgery and hopes to have us out by evening. If rural pilgrims had not invented Thanksgiving Day, and if that had been left up to us urbanites today, it probably would still be waiting to be invented.
It’s hard to count your blessings in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere. That’s an atmosphere in which nothing is free and everything costs. Some of us remember the old days when we could get free soup bones at the corner butcher shop and free lunches of rye bread, cheese, sausage, and herring at the local tavern. Today we pay for absolutely everything, and when we pay for absolutely everything, then nothing is gift. And when nothing is gift, there’s simply not much reason to say thanks.
That staunch demand for payment, that ever-hovering cloud of transaction which hangs over us all week long eventually creeps up into the more spiritual realms of our lives. Before we know it, we’re transacting with our spouses, kids, parents, brothers and sisters. Before we know it, we’re making others pay up before we love them. The only one left who’s not in a transactional mode is our dog who loves us unconditionally and reminds us that God loves us the same way. The only one left to whom we find ourselves saying thanks in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere is the family dog.
Jesus’ gratifying experiences of Samaritans
As Jesus and his disciples were making their way toward Jerusalem and the hill of Calvary, they suddenly came upon ten lepers. Nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan. Jesus (Good Samaritan that he was!) stopped to pour the oil of compassion upon them. He cured all ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks, and that one was a Samaritan! A no-good Samaritan! A no-good half-breed and heretic who worshipped God on Mount Gerizim instead of in the temple in Jerusalem (Jn 4:20)! Jesus, the Jew, on his way to Jerusalem had this very gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan, and he never forgot it.
On another occasion he and his disciples were journeying through Samaria and approached a village named Sychar. There they came upon Jacob’s Well located on a plot of ground that Jacob gave his son Joseph. It was high noon, and all were very thirsty. The disciples went into town to buy food while Jesus remained behind at the well. A Samaritan woman, a no-good half-breed and heretic, approached with a bucket to draw water. The two (a Jew and a Samaritan) met and launched off into a long conversation in which the woman owned up to a meandering life with five husbands. When the conversation opened, it was the woman who had cool clear water to offer Jesus, and it was the Lord who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. When it ended, it was Jesus who had cool clear water to offer, and it was the woman who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. Jesus offered her “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She drank deeply of it and was converted from her meandering life (Jn 4:5-42). That was another gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan which Jesus never forgot.
A parable about his experiences of Samaritan
It was no wonder then that sooner or later Jesus would craft an immortal parable in which the hero would not be a fellow Jew but a despised Samaritan. Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a priest (a Jew) who saw the poor man but passed him by. Along came a Levite (a Jew) who also saw the dying man and passed him by. Then along came a despised Samaritan. He saw the poor man and stopped to pour the oil of compassion into his wounds. Then he hoisted him unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn where he paid for his care and cure (Lk 15:1-32). With this parable Jesus did such a perfect job of rehabilitating the good name of Samaritans that we today cannot conceive of a Samaritan who is not good.
A story about ingratitude
When Jesus came upon ten lepers, he cured them all. Only one of the ten returned to say thanks. This gospel story is obviously about gratitude, and we will tell it again at Mass on Thanksgiving Day, November 22nd. But it’s also (and perhaps even more) a story about ingratitude (or at least non-gratitude), for nine out of the ten cured lepers did not return to say thanks. That’s not a good percentage.
We don’t know why the nine did not return to say thanks. Maybe some of them were simply ungrateful pups who think that whatever good befalls them is their just desserts. Such people never say thanks. Maybe some were so overwhelmed with joy at their cure that they went back into society and celebrated with old friends and simply forgot to return to say thanks. All we know for sure is that nine out of ten did not return to say thanks. Does it reflect an all-too-human statistic that out of ten opportunities or moments in our lives calling us to say thanks we probably fail nine times to say it?
The challenge to count one’s blessings
Right now I am in a kind of negative or almost depressed mode. After living for twenty eight years in a very nice house into which I invested much of myself, circumstances force me now to move out of the inner city. (Someone has said there are three woes in life: divorce, death and moving! Yes, indeed!) At this traumatic moment, I think of all I shall have to leave behind. I think of my cloistered backyard with its shrine of St. Francis. I think of the solitary silver maple tree which I planted in dead winter ten years ago, and which has now burgeoned into the cloister’s central gem. I think of the attic transformed into a wonderful Shangri La with a cozy gas fireplace to warm my cold bones in the dead of winter and to help me forget that I am living in the inner city. The impending move is a traumatic moment for me. It has me counting my many banes.
But it is also a profound moment for me. It challenges me to count also my many blessings. For blessings there are. Blessings like being able to move out of the inner city, while there are many who would like to move out but cannot. Blessings like having countless friends who in different ways and with much concern are helping me to make the move. It’s a profound moment challenging me to count my many blessings, and I hope I can do it as well as the little old lady whose story was related to me in the following e-mail.
A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and her makeup perfectly applied (even though she is legally blind), moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 60 years recently passed away, and that made the move necessary. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, the nurse in charge gave her a visual description and preview of her tiny room. “Oh I love it,” she said with the enthusiasm of an eight year old having just received a new puppy as a Christmas gift. “Oh, but Mrs. Jones,” the nurse replied, “you haven’t seen your room yet. Just wait till you do! You’re going to be so happy.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness and her sister gratitude are something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I say thanks for my room or not doesn’t depend on what kind of furniture is in it or how it is arranged. It’s what’s in my mind and how it is arranged there that counts. I have already decided to be grateful for my room. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed bemoaning the difficulties I have with parts of my body that don’t work, or I can get out of bed and give thanks for the ones that do. My recipe for joy and also for a long life is this: a) free your heart from hate; b) free your mind from worry; c) live simply; d) and learn to count your blessings.”
Conclusion
Feel it and say it
Jesus cured ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks. Every Mass has a dismissal. Go the Mass is ended. Go and return to say thanks. It’s not enough just to feel thanks, we must also say thanks. Just don’t feel thanks to the clerk who has met you as a human being and has been very pleasant and very helpful. Say thanks to the clerk. Give her a little speech that says thanks. It can be ever so brief. It can be as brief as the one-liner of a gentleman who said to me as he was passing out of church, “Your mother should have had triplets!” I received that very unique way of saying thanks down deep within myself, and it lit me up.
Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your spouse who goes forth every day to bring home the bacon, or who stays home everyday to take care of the kids and keep house and cook supper. Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your parents who, though they never do a perfect job of parenting, are always wondering how they can do better.
Saying thanks blesses everyone. The gentleman who wished my mother would have had triplets had, indeed, blessed me. But his unique words of thanks returned to bless him as well, for they planted a radiant glow not only on my face but on his as well. The leper’s words of thanks put a glow on the face of Jesus. But they also returned to bless the leper himself. They put a glow on his face as well when the Lord said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:19).
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 “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
October 14, 2007, 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
II Kings 5:14-17 II Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19
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.
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!" And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:11-19).
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Thanks at Thanksgiving
For us in the northern hemisphere the story of the one leper out of ten who returns to say thanks is timely. The maple trees are now donning glorious garments of gold. God’s bounty of apples and pumpkins is being gathered into bins against the long winter night. Soon our thoughts will turn to Thanksgiving Day, and we, who nine times out of ten have been too busy to return to say thanks, will pause on this very special American holiday to count our blessings, as “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.”
Thanks in the old days
Saying thanks came easy in the old days, even though we didn’t enjoy as many blessings then as we do now. Our forefathers planted their crops in early spring, nurtured them through the warm summer months and then in fall gathered their harvest into bins. That yearly round made it easy for them to feel grateful for the simple blessings present even in their frugal lives. It was easy for them to say thanks, and they were saying it much more frequently than we do today. Scarcity and gratitude strangely are brothers and sisters. It was no surprise, therefore, that sooner or later our forefathers would invent a special holiday for saying thanks.
Thanks today
Even though blessings abound these days, it’s harder now to say thanks. Today when we expend great physical and psychic energy from Monday to Friday to earn a paycheck, and when there’s no money left over after we’ve paid the rent or mortgage and have bought the weekly groceries and have filled the gas tank, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. When in our illness we approach the healthcare industry with three genuflections, and the first thing it asks us is not how sick we are but how insured we are, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. Nor is it easy to say thanks for a healthcare system which admits us into the hospital at early dawn for brain surgery and hopes to have us out by evening. If rural pilgrims had not invented Thanksgiving Day, and if that had been left up to us urbanites today, it probably would still be waiting to be invented.
It’s hard to count your blessings in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere. That’s an atmosphere in which nothing is free and everything costs. Some of us remember the old days when we could get free soup bones at the corner butcher shop and free lunches of rye bread, cheese, sausage, and herring at the local tavern. Today we pay for absolutely everything, and when we pay for absolutely everything, then nothing is gift. And when nothing is gift, there’s simply not much reason to say thanks.
That staunch demand for payment, that ever-hovering cloud of transaction which hangs over us all week long eventually creeps up into the more spiritual realms of our lives. Before we know it, we’re transacting with our spouses, kids, parents, brothers and sisters. Before we know it, we’re making others pay up before we love them. The only one left who’s not in a transactional mode is our dog who loves us unconditionally and reminds us that God loves us the same way. The only one left to whom we find ourselves saying thanks in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere is the family dog.
Jesus’ gratifying experiences of Samaritans
As Jesus and his disciples were making their way toward Jerusalem and the hill of Calvary, they suddenly came upon ten lepers. Nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan. Jesus (Good Samaritan that he was!) stopped to pour the oil of compassion upon them. He cured all ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks, and that one was a Samaritan! A no-good Samaritan! A no-good half-breed and heretic who worshipped God on Mount Gerizim instead of in the temple in Jerusalem (Jn 4:20)! Jesus, the Jew, on his way to Jerusalem had this very gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan, and he never forgot it.
On another occasion he and his disciples were journeying through Samaria and approached a village named Sychar. There they came upon Jacob’s Well located on a plot of ground that Jacob gave his son Joseph. It was high noon, and all were very thirsty. The disciples went into town to buy food while Jesus remained behind at the well. A Samaritan woman, a no-good half-breed and heretic, approached with a bucket to draw water. The two (a Jew and a Samaritan) met and launched off into a long conversation in which the woman owned up to a meandering life with five husbands. When the conversation opened, it was the woman who had cool clear water to offer Jesus, and it was the Lord who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. When it ended, it was Jesus who had cool clear water to offer, and it was the woman who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. Jesus offered her “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She drank deeply of it and was converted from her meandering life (Jn 4:5-42). That was another gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan which Jesus never forgot.
A parable about his experiences of Samaritan
It was no wonder then that sooner or later Jesus would craft an immortal parable in which the hero would not be a fellow Jew but a despised Samaritan. Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a priest (a Jew) who saw the poor man but passed him by. Along came a Levite (a Jew) who also saw the dying man and passed him by. Then along came a despised Samaritan. He saw the poor man and stopped to pour the oil of compassion into his wounds. Then he hoisted him unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn where he paid for his care and cure (Lk 15:1-32). With this parable Jesus did such a perfect job of rehabilitating the good name of Samaritans that we today cannot conceive of a Samaritan who is not good.
A story about ingratitude
When Jesus came upon ten lepers, he cured them all. Only one of the ten returned to say thanks. This gospel story is obviously about gratitude, and we will tell it again at Mass on Thanksgiving Day, November 22nd. But it’s also (and perhaps even more) a story about ingratitude (or at least non-gratitude), for nine out of the ten cured lepers did not return to say thanks. That’s not a good percentage.
We don’t know why the nine did not return to say thanks. Maybe some of them were simply ungrateful pups who think that whatever good befalls them is their just desserts. Such people never say thanks. Maybe some were so overwhelmed with joy at their cure that they went back into society and celebrated with old friends and simply forgot to return to say thanks. All we know for sure is that nine out of ten did not return to say thanks. Does it reflect an all-too-human statistic that out of ten opportunities or moments in our lives calling us to say thanks we probably fail nine times to say it?
The challenge to count one’s blessings
Right now I am in a kind of negative or almost depressed mode. After living for twenty eight years in a very nice house into which I invested much of myself, circumstances force me now to move out of the inner city. (Someone has said there are three woes in life: divorce, death and moving! Yes, indeed!) At this traumatic moment, I think of all I shall have to leave behind. I think of my cloistered backyard with its shrine of St. Francis. I think of the solitary silver maple tree which I planted in dead winter ten years ago, and which has now burgeoned into the cloister’s central gem. I think of the attic transformed into a wonderful Shangri La with a cozy gas fireplace to warm my cold bones in the dead of winter and to help me forget that I am living in the inner city. The impending move is a traumatic moment for me. It has me counting my many banes.
But it is also a profound moment for me. It challenges me to count also my many blessings. For blessings there are. Blessings like being able to move out of the inner city, while there are many who would like to move out but cannot. Blessings like having countless friends who in different ways and with much concern are helping me to make the move. It’s a profound moment challenging me to count my many blessings, and I hope I can do it as well as the little old lady whose story was related to me in the following e-mail.
A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and her makeup perfectly applied (even though she is legally blind), moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 60 years recently passed away, and that made the move necessary. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, the nurse in charge gave her a visual description and preview of her tiny room. “Oh I love it,” she said with the enthusiasm of an eight year old having just received a new puppy as a Christmas gift. “Oh, but Mrs. Jones,” the nurse replied, “you haven’t seen your room yet. Just wait till you do! You’re going to be so happy.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness and her sister gratitude are something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I say thanks for my room or not doesn’t depend on what kind of furniture is in it or how it is arranged. It’s what’s in my mind and how it is arranged there that counts. I have already decided to be grateful for my room. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed bemoaning the difficulties I have with parts of my body that don’t work, or I can get out of bed and give thanks for the ones that do. My recipe for joy and also for a long life is this: a) free your heart from hate; b) free your mind from worry; c) live simply; d) and learn to count your blessings.”
Conclusion
Feel it and say it
Jesus cured ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks. Every Mass has a dismissal. Go the Mass is ended. Go and return to say thanks. It’s not enough just to feel thanks, we must also say thanks. Just don’t feel thanks to the clerk who has met you as a human being and has been very pleasant and very helpful. Say thanks to the clerk. Give her a little speech that says thanks. It can be ever so brief. It can be as brief as the one-liner of a gentleman who said to me as he was passing out of church, “Your mother should have had triplets!” I received that very unique way of saying thanks down deep within myself, and it lit me up.
Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your spouse who goes forth every day to bring home the bacon, or who stays home everyday to take care of the kids and keep house and cook supper. Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your parents who, though they never do a perfect job of parenting, are always wondering how they can do better.
Saying thanks blesses everyone. The gentleman who wished my mother would have had triplets had, indeed, blessed me. But his unique words of thanks returned to bless him as well, for they planted a radiant glow not only on my face but on his as well. The leper’s words of thanks put a glow on the face of Jesus. But they also returned to bless the leper himself. They put a glow on his face as well when the Lord said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:19).
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 “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Saying Thanks
October 14, 2007, 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
II Kings 5:14-17 II Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19
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.
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!" And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:11-19).
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Thanks at Thanksgiving
For us in the northern hemisphere the story of the one leper out of ten who returns to say thanks is timely. The maple trees are now donning glorious garments of gold. God’s bounty of apples and pumpkins is being gathered into bins against the long winter night. Soon our thoughts will turn to Thanksgiving Day, and we, who nine times out of ten have been too busy to return to say thanks, will pause on this very special American holiday to count our blessings, as “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.”
Thanks in the old days
Saying thanks came easy in the old days, even though we didn’t enjoy as many blessings then as we do now. Our forefathers planted their crops in early spring, nurtured them through the warm summer months and then in fall gathered their harvest into bins. That yearly round made it easy for them to feel grateful for the simple blessings present even in their frugal lives. It was easy for them to say thanks, and they were saying it much more frequently than we do today. Scarcity and gratitude strangely are brothers and sisters. It was no surprise, therefore, that sooner or later our forefathers would invent a special holiday for saying thanks.
Thanks today
Even though blessings abound these days, it’s harder now to say thanks. Today when we expend great physical and psychic energy from Monday to Friday to earn a paycheck, and when there’s no money left over after we’ve paid the rent or mortgage and have bought the weekly groceries and have filled the gas tank, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. When in our illness we approach the healthcare industry with three genuflections, and the first thing it asks us is not how sick we are but how insured we are, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. Nor is it easy to say thanks for a healthcare system which admits us into the hospital at early dawn for brain surgery and hopes to have us out by evening. If rural pilgrims had not invented Thanksgiving Day, and if that had been left up to us urbanites today, it probably would still be waiting to be invented.
It’s hard to count your blessings in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere. That’s an atmosphere in which nothing is free and everything costs. Some of us remember the old days when we could get free soup bones at the corner butcher shop and free lunches of rye bread, cheese, sausage, and herring at the local tavern. Today we pay for absolutely everything, and when we pay for absolutely everything, then nothing is gift. And when nothing is gift, there’s simply not much reason to say thanks.
That staunch demand for payment, that ever-hovering cloud of transaction which hangs over us all week long eventually creeps up into the more spiritual realms of our lives. Before we know it, we’re transacting with our spouses, kids, parents, brothers and sisters. Before we know it, we’re making others pay up before we love them. The only one left who’s not in a transactional mode is our dog who loves us unconditionally and reminds us that God loves us the same way. The only one left to whom we find ourselves saying thanks in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere is the family dog.
Jesus’ gratifying experiences of Samaritans
As Jesus and his disciples were making their way toward Jerusalem and the hill of Calvary, they suddenly came upon ten lepers. Nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan. Jesus (Good Samaritan that he was!) stopped to pour the oil of compassion upon them. He cured all ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks, and that one was a Samaritan! A no-good Samaritan! A no-good half-breed and heretic who worshipped God on Mount Gerizim instead of in the temple in Jerusalem (Jn 4:20)! Jesus, the Jew, on his way to Jerusalem had this very gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan, and he never forgot it.
On another occasion he and his disciples were journeying through Samaria and approached a village named Sychar. There they came upon Jacob’s Well located on a plot of ground that Jacob gave his son Joseph. It was high noon, and all were very thirsty. The disciples went into town to buy food while Jesus remained behind at the well. A Samaritan woman, a no-good half-breed and heretic, approached with a bucket to draw water. The two (a Jew and a Samaritan) met and launched off into a long conversation in which the woman owned up to a meandering life with five husbands. When the conversation opened, it was the woman who had cool clear water to offer Jesus, and it was the Lord who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. When it ended, it was Jesus who had cool clear water to offer, and it was the woman who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. Jesus offered her “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She drank deeply of it and was converted from her meandering life (Jn 4:5-42). That was another gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan which Jesus never forgot.
A parable about his experiences of Samaritan
It was no wonder then that sooner or later Jesus would craft an immortal parable in which the hero would not be a fellow Jew but a despised Samaritan. Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a priest (a Jew) who saw the poor man but passed him by. Along came a Levite (a Jew) who also saw the dying man and passed him by. Then along came a despised Samaritan. He saw the poor man and stopped to pour the oil of compassion into his wounds. Then he hoisted him unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn where he paid for his care and cure (Lk 15:1-32). With this parable Jesus did such a perfect job of rehabilitating the good name of Samaritans that we today cannot conceive of a Samaritan who is not good.
A story about ingratitude
When Jesus came upon ten lepers, he cured them all. Only one of the ten returned to say thanks. This gospel story is obviously about gratitude, and we will tell it again at Mass on Thanksgiving Day, November 22nd. But it’s also (and perhaps even more) a story about ingratitude (or at least non-gratitude), for nine out of the ten cured lepers did not return to say thanks. That’s not a good percentage.
We don’t know why the nine did not return to say thanks. Maybe some of them were simply ungrateful pups who think that whatever good befalls them is their just desserts. Such people never say thanks. Maybe some were so overwhelmed with joy at their cure that they went back into society and celebrated with old friends and simply forgot to return to say thanks. All we know for sure is that nine out of ten did not return to say thanks. Does it reflect an all-too-human statistic that out of ten opportunities or moments in our lives calling us to say thanks we probably fail nine times to say it?
The challenge to count one’s blessings
Right now I am in a kind of negative or almost depressed mode. After living for twenty eight years in a very nice house into which I invested much of myself, circumstances force me now to move out of the inner city. (Someone has said there are three woes in life: divorce, death and moving! Yes, indeed!) At this traumatic moment, I think of all I shall have to leave behind. I think of my cloistered backyard with its shrine of St. Francis. I think of the solitary silver maple tree which I planted in dead winter ten years ago, and which has now burgeoned into the cloister’s central gem. I think of the attic transformed into a wonderful Shangri La with a cozy gas fireplace to warm my cold bones in the dead of winter and to help me forget that I am living in the inner city. The impending move is a traumatic moment for me. It has me counting my many banes.
But it is also a profound moment for me. It challenges me to count also my many blessings. For blessings there are. Blessings like being able to move out of the inner city, while there are many who would like to move out but cannot. Blessings like having countless friends who in different ways and with much concern are helping me to make the move. It’s a profound moment challenging me to count my many blessings, and I hope I can do it as well as the little old lady whose story was related to me in the following e-mail.
A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and her makeup perfectly applied (even though she is legally blind), moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 60 years recently passed away, and that made the move necessary. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, the nurse in charge gave her a visual description and preview of her tiny room. “Oh I love it,” she said with the enthusiasm of an eight year old having just received a new puppy as a Christmas gift. “Oh, but Mrs. Jones,” the nurse replied, “you haven’t seen your room yet. Just wait till you do! You’re going to be so happy.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness and her sister gratitude are something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I say thanks for my room or not doesn’t depend on what kind of furniture is in it or how it is arranged. It’s what’s in my mind and how it is arranged there that counts. I have already decided to be grateful for my room. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed bemoaning the difficulties I have with parts of my body that don’t work, or I can get out of bed and give thanks for the ones that do. My recipe for joy and also for a long life is this: a) free your heart from hate; b) free your mind from worry; c) live simply; d) and learn to count your blessings.”
Conclusion
Feel it and say it
Jesus cured ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks. Every Mass has a dismissal. Go the Mass is ended. Go and return to say thanks. It’s not enough just to feel thanks, we must also say thanks. Just don’t feel thanks to the clerk who has met you as a human being and has been very pleasant and very helpful. Say thanks to the clerk. Give her a little speech that says thanks. It can be ever so brief. It can be as brief as the one-liner of a gentleman who said to me as he was passing out of church, “Your mother should have had triplets!” I received that very unique way of saying thanks down deep within myself, and it lit me up.
Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your spouse who goes forth every day to bring home the bacon, or who stays home everyday to take care of the kids and keep house and cook supper. Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your parents who, though they never do a perfect job of parenting, are always wondering how they can do better.
Saying thanks blesses everyone. The gentleman who wished my mother would have had triplets had, indeed, blessed me. But his unique words of thanks returned to bless him as well, for they planted a radiant glow not only on my face but on his as well. The leper’s words of thanks put a glow on the face of Jesus. But they also returned to bless the leper himself. They put a glow on his face as well when the Lord said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:19).
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 “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
October 14, 2007, 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
II Kings 5:14-17 II Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19
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.
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!" And when he saw them, he said, "Go show yourselves to the priests." As they were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:11-19).
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Thanks at Thanksgiving
For us in the northern hemisphere the story of the one leper out of ten who returns to say thanks is timely. The maple trees are now donning glorious garments of gold. God’s bounty of apples and pumpkins is being gathered into bins against the long winter night. Soon our thoughts will turn to Thanksgiving Day, and we, who nine times out of ten have been too busy to return to say thanks, will pause on this very special American holiday to count our blessings, as “over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.”
Thanks in the old days
Saying thanks came easy in the old days, even though we didn’t enjoy as many blessings then as we do now. Our forefathers planted their crops in early spring, nurtured them through the warm summer months and then in fall gathered their harvest into bins. That yearly round made it easy for them to feel grateful for the simple blessings present even in their frugal lives. It was easy for them to say thanks, and they were saying it much more frequently than we do today. Scarcity and gratitude strangely are brothers and sisters. It was no surprise, therefore, that sooner or later our forefathers would invent a special holiday for saying thanks.
Thanks today
Even though blessings abound these days, it’s harder now to say thanks. Today when we expend great physical and psychic energy from Monday to Friday to earn a paycheck, and when there’s no money left over after we’ve paid the rent or mortgage and have bought the weekly groceries and have filled the gas tank, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. When in our illness we approach the healthcare industry with three genuflections, and the first thing it asks us is not how sick we are but how insured we are, we don’t feel overwhelmed with gratitude. Nor is it easy to say thanks for a healthcare system which admits us into the hospital at early dawn for brain surgery and hopes to have us out by evening. If rural pilgrims had not invented Thanksgiving Day, and if that had been left up to us urbanites today, it probably would still be waiting to be invented.
It’s hard to count your blessings in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere. That’s an atmosphere in which nothing is free and everything costs. Some of us remember the old days when we could get free soup bones at the corner butcher shop and free lunches of rye bread, cheese, sausage, and herring at the local tavern. Today we pay for absolutely everything, and when we pay for absolutely everything, then nothing is gift. And when nothing is gift, there’s simply not much reason to say thanks.
That staunch demand for payment, that ever-hovering cloud of transaction which hangs over us all week long eventually creeps up into the more spiritual realms of our lives. Before we know it, we’re transacting with our spouses, kids, parents, brothers and sisters. Before we know it, we’re making others pay up before we love them. The only one left who’s not in a transactional mode is our dog who loves us unconditionally and reminds us that God loves us the same way. The only one left to whom we find ourselves saying thanks in a savagely capitalistic atmosphere is the family dog.
Jesus’ gratifying experiences of Samaritans
As Jesus and his disciples were making their way toward Jerusalem and the hill of Calvary, they suddenly came upon ten lepers. Nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan. Jesus (Good Samaritan that he was!) stopped to pour the oil of compassion upon them. He cured all ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks, and that one was a Samaritan! A no-good Samaritan! A no-good half-breed and heretic who worshipped God on Mount Gerizim instead of in the temple in Jerusalem (Jn 4:20)! Jesus, the Jew, on his way to Jerusalem had this very gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan, and he never forgot it.
On another occasion he and his disciples were journeying through Samaria and approached a village named Sychar. There they came upon Jacob’s Well located on a plot of ground that Jacob gave his son Joseph. It was high noon, and all were very thirsty. The disciples went into town to buy food while Jesus remained behind at the well. A Samaritan woman, a no-good half-breed and heretic, approached with a bucket to draw water. The two (a Jew and a Samaritan) met and launched off into a long conversation in which the woman owned up to a meandering life with five husbands. When the conversation opened, it was the woman who had cool clear water to offer Jesus, and it was the Lord who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. When it ended, it was Jesus who had cool clear water to offer, and it was the woman who was thirsty and asking for some to drink. Jesus offered her “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She drank deeply of it and was converted from her meandering life (Jn 4:5-42). That was another gratifying experience of a despised Samaritan which Jesus never forgot.
A parable about his experiences of Samaritan
It was no wonder then that sooner or later Jesus would craft an immortal parable in which the hero would not be a fellow Jew but a despised Samaritan. Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a priest (a Jew) who saw the poor man but passed him by. Along came a Levite (a Jew) who also saw the dying man and passed him by. Then along came a despised Samaritan. He saw the poor man and stopped to pour the oil of compassion into his wounds. Then he hoisted him unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn where he paid for his care and cure (Lk 15:1-32). With this parable Jesus did such a perfect job of rehabilitating the good name of Samaritans that we today cannot conceive of a Samaritan who is not good.
A story about ingratitude
When Jesus came upon ten lepers, he cured them all. Only one of the ten returned to say thanks. This gospel story is obviously about gratitude, and we will tell it again at Mass on Thanksgiving Day, November 22nd. But it’s also (and perhaps even more) a story about ingratitude (or at least non-gratitude), for nine out of the ten cured lepers did not return to say thanks. That’s not a good percentage.
We don’t know why the nine did not return to say thanks. Maybe some of them were simply ungrateful pups who think that whatever good befalls them is their just desserts. Such people never say thanks. Maybe some were so overwhelmed with joy at their cure that they went back into society and celebrated with old friends and simply forgot to return to say thanks. All we know for sure is that nine out of ten did not return to say thanks. Does it reflect an all-too-human statistic that out of ten opportunities or moments in our lives calling us to say thanks we probably fail nine times to say it?
The challenge to count one’s blessings
Right now I am in a kind of negative or almost depressed mode. After living for twenty eight years in a very nice house into which I invested much of myself, circumstances force me now to move out of the inner city. (Someone has said there are three woes in life: divorce, death and moving! Yes, indeed!) At this traumatic moment, I think of all I shall have to leave behind. I think of my cloistered backyard with its shrine of St. Francis. I think of the solitary silver maple tree which I planted in dead winter ten years ago, and which has now burgeoned into the cloister’s central gem. I think of the attic transformed into a wonderful Shangri La with a cozy gas fireplace to warm my cold bones in the dead of winter and to help me forget that I am living in the inner city. The impending move is a traumatic moment for me. It has me counting my many banes.
But it is also a profound moment for me. It challenges me to count also my many blessings. For blessings there are. Blessings like being able to move out of the inner city, while there are many who would like to move out but cannot. Blessings like having countless friends who in different ways and with much concern are helping me to make the move. It’s a profound moment challenging me to count my many blessings, and I hope I can do it as well as the little old lady whose story was related to me in the following e-mail.
A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and her makeup perfectly applied (even though she is legally blind), moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 60 years recently passed away, and that made the move necessary. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, the nurse in charge gave her a visual description and preview of her tiny room. “Oh I love it,” she said with the enthusiasm of an eight year old having just received a new puppy as a Christmas gift. “Oh, but Mrs. Jones,” the nurse replied, “you haven’t seen your room yet. Just wait till you do! You’re going to be so happy.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness and her sister gratitude are something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I say thanks for my room or not doesn’t depend on what kind of furniture is in it or how it is arranged. It’s what’s in my mind and how it is arranged there that counts. I have already decided to be grateful for my room. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed bemoaning the difficulties I have with parts of my body that don’t work, or I can get out of bed and give thanks for the ones that do. My recipe for joy and also for a long life is this: a) free your heart from hate; b) free your mind from worry; c) live simply; d) and learn to count your blessings.”
Conclusion
Feel it and say it
Jesus cured ten lepers, but only one returned to say thanks. Every Mass has a dismissal. Go the Mass is ended. Go and return to say thanks. It’s not enough just to feel thanks, we must also say thanks. Just don’t feel thanks to the clerk who has met you as a human being and has been very pleasant and very helpful. Say thanks to the clerk. Give her a little speech that says thanks. It can be ever so brief. It can be as brief as the one-liner of a gentleman who said to me as he was passing out of church, “Your mother should have had triplets!” I received that very unique way of saying thanks down deep within myself, and it lit me up.
Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your spouse who goes forth every day to bring home the bacon, or who stays home everyday to take care of the kids and keep house and cook supper. Just don’t feel thanks, say thanks to your parents who, though they never do a perfect job of parenting, are always wondering how they can do better.
Saying thanks blesses everyone. The gentleman who wished my mother would have had triplets had, indeed, blessed me. But his unique words of thanks returned to bless him as well, for they planted a radiant glow not only on my face but on his as well. The leper’s words of thanks put a glow on the face of Jesus. But they also returned to bless the leper himself. They put a glow on his face as well when the Lord said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you" (Luke 17:19).
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 “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Let Your Good Deed Glow
Let Your Good Deed Glow
October 7, 2007, 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4 II Timothy 1:6-8,13-14 Luke 17:5-10
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.
(Lk 17:5-10)
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith." The Lord replied,"If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.If one of you had a hired hand who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, would you say to him, “Come here and sit down at table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished'? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'"
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Foul!
In the parable today a farm hand goes out at sunrise and bears the heat of the day and the toil of plowing the fields and tending the sheep. At sunset he returns to the farmhouse feeling good about his good work. But his master reminds him that he’s done no more than his duty and is no more than an unprofitable servant. In fact, the master adds to the farm hand’s fatigue by making him put on an apron and prepare supper for him. The master will eat and drink first, and then the tired servant may satisfy his hunger (Lk 17: 7-10).
The parable makes one cry foul! The boss, you’d think, in gratitude to his farm hand for his good work would have patted him on the back and poured him a rum and coke at the end of a long hard day. And if he were a truly great guy, the boss would even have donned an apron and said to his servant, “Now you sit down and relax while I prepare you a good dish of pasta.” “Not so!” says the word of God today. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways” (Is 55: 8).
It reminds us of another of the Lord’s parables. The owner of an estate hires day laborers to work in his vineyard. Some are hired at early dawn, some at high noon and others in late afternoon. At sunset they all line up for their checks, and the foreman of the vineyard gives the late arrivals the very same pay he gives those who were on the job at early dawn (Mt 20: 1-16). That, too, makes one cry foul! You’d think the early birds would have received a lot more than the stragglers. “Not so!” says the word of God today. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.”
New news
The good work of the farm hand didn’t work for his master. The good work of the day laborer who came into the vineyard at early dawn didn’t work for the estate owner. Both parables seem to attack or at least deflate good works. It’s old news when religion attacks our bad works (our sins). In Galatians Paul recites a litany of our misdeeds: jealousy, anger, ambition drunkenness, and orgy, and then declares that, “Those who do these things will not enter the Kingdom of God” (Gal 5: 20-2). But it is, indeed, new news when religion attacks or deflates our good works. (It is, in fact, a kind of shocker, for from mother’s milk our elders and often our religion tells us to ”Be good and God will love you!”)
St. Paul is the attacker par excellence of good works. In Galatians he writes, “Christ has freed us from the curse of the Law [with its heavy burden of good works]” (Gal 3: 13). Again he writes, “Christ has come to set us free from circumcision and the Law [with its heavy burden of good works]. “So don't ever take up that yoke again" (Gal l5: 1).
Good news
To attack good works or deflate them of power over God is not only new news it is also good news! It’s gospel! For it delivers us from the terrifying fear of a God who needs to be bought off by the sweat of our good works. (Down deep, ever so subliminally, we feel the same about Gods who need to be bought off as we do about people who need to be bought off.) The gospel attack or deflation of good works is good news because it delivers us from the gnawing doubt about whether we’ve done enough of them to buy God off or even whether they good enough to buy God off.
Protestant theologian Paul Tillich thinks our good works are never good enough to buy off the priceless God. All our virtue, he says, is really flawed. There’s always some pride in our humility; always some selfishness in our generosity; always some self-centeredness in our God-centered lives. If it weren’t for the mercy and grace of God, he says, all our works would be basically tragic, and we would be terrified not only by our vices but also by our virtues.
God doesn’t need them
The Protestant Reformation sought to reform a corrupt 16th century church. But over and above that it sought to reform the bad news (rife in the general piety of the day) that God needed our good works to make Him happy and put us right with Himself. Luther’s revolution was personally and urgently more about that than about the corruption of the 16th century church. On the cornerstone of his reformation he inscribed two solitary words: Sola Gratia – By Grace Alone. We are justified (put right with God) not by any good work we do but only by the blood of Christ. That’s called grace. That’s called Amazing Grace. Luther discovered that amazing good news as he was working out his personal and terrifying problem of how to make God feel good about him. In Paul’s letters (especially to Galatians and Romans) he discovered the good news that our works have no power to puts us right with God; only the blood of Christ has that power. That marvelously freed Luther; what he could not do for himself that Christ did for him!
We need them
But while the good news of Amazing Grace liberates us from the hopeless task of trying to buy God off, it does not liberate us from good works themselves. God, indeed, does not need them, but we, indeed, do! Jesus said we need them. “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. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me. Come you blessed of my father and take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of creation” (Mt 25:31-40).
The Good Samaritan needed his good work
One day a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half dead. Along came a Jewish priest who was hurrying off to Jericho and passed him by. Along came a Levite (the priest’s helper) who also was in a hurry and passed him by. Then along came a Samaritan. Seeing the victim dying by the side of the road he came to a screeching halt to pour the oil of compassion into his wounds.
God didn’t need the good work of the Samaritan, but the man waylaid by robbers, indeed, did. And more importantly the Samaritan needed his own good work even more than the poor victim. To ruthlessly pass by the man dying by the wayside would have made the Samaritan a monster like the Jewish priest and Levite. It was by stopping that the Samaritan became the great human being whose praises all the ages sing.
Our kids need their good works
In this new day our kids need ipods, iphones, blackberries, gps, etc. One good father and mother were wise enough to see that their four sons needed something better than such consumerist needs. Their sons needed good works not to buy God off but to buy themselves off. So the parents encouraged their sons to do volunteer work in an animal shelter cleaning out dog and cat kennels (no pay). And to socialize puppies in preparation for leader-dog programs for the blind (no pay). And to tutor kids who were poor in mathematics (no pay). As the mother and father rang Salvation Army bells at Christmastime, they invited their sons to accompany them by playing Christmas carols, one with a guitar, another with a saxophone, a third with a French horn and a fourth with a key board (no pay). God didn’t need the sons’ good works. But the animals did and the blind did and the poor at Christmas did. But above all the sons themselves needed their own good works because that’s what makes them great humans beings.
Conclusion
Let them glow
Today’s parable asks, "Who among you would say to your hired hand who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here and sit down at table’”?
If I had a hired hand who worked hard all day long plowing the field and tending the sheep, I would “turn the tables.” I would rise and say to him, “Come here, good man, and sit down at table.” Then after pouring him a rum and Coke, I would don an apron and prepare a good plate of pasta for him. That’s the way it is with our good works. They have power to “turn the tables.” They have power to set masters donning aprons and serving their hired hands. Our good works have power not over God but over the people around us.
“So let your good deeds glow for all to see, and incite them to the praise of the heavenly Father” (Mt 5:16).
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 “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
October 7, 2007, 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4 II Timothy 1:6-8,13-14 Luke 17:5-10
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.
(Lk 17:5-10)
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith." The Lord replied,"If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.If one of you had a hired hand who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, would you say to him, “Come here and sit down at table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished'? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'"
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Foul!
In the parable today a farm hand goes out at sunrise and bears the heat of the day and the toil of plowing the fields and tending the sheep. At sunset he returns to the farmhouse feeling good about his good work. But his master reminds him that he’s done no more than his duty and is no more than an unprofitable servant. In fact, the master adds to the farm hand’s fatigue by making him put on an apron and prepare supper for him. The master will eat and drink first, and then the tired servant may satisfy his hunger (Lk 17: 7-10).
The parable makes one cry foul! The boss, you’d think, in gratitude to his farm hand for his good work would have patted him on the back and poured him a rum and coke at the end of a long hard day. And if he were a truly great guy, the boss would even have donned an apron and said to his servant, “Now you sit down and relax while I prepare you a good dish of pasta.” “Not so!” says the word of God today. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways” (Is 55: 8).
It reminds us of another of the Lord’s parables. The owner of an estate hires day laborers to work in his vineyard. Some are hired at early dawn, some at high noon and others in late afternoon. At sunset they all line up for their checks, and the foreman of the vineyard gives the late arrivals the very same pay he gives those who were on the job at early dawn (Mt 20: 1-16). That, too, makes one cry foul! You’d think the early birds would have received a lot more than the stragglers. “Not so!” says the word of God today. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.”
New news
The good work of the farm hand didn’t work for his master. The good work of the day laborer who came into the vineyard at early dawn didn’t work for the estate owner. Both parables seem to attack or at least deflate good works. It’s old news when religion attacks our bad works (our sins). In Galatians Paul recites a litany of our misdeeds: jealousy, anger, ambition drunkenness, and orgy, and then declares that, “Those who do these things will not enter the Kingdom of God” (Gal 5: 20-2). But it is, indeed, new news when religion attacks or deflates our good works. (It is, in fact, a kind of shocker, for from mother’s milk our elders and often our religion tells us to ”Be good and God will love you!”)
St. Paul is the attacker par excellence of good works. In Galatians he writes, “Christ has freed us from the curse of the Law [with its heavy burden of good works]” (Gal 3: 13). Again he writes, “Christ has come to set us free from circumcision and the Law [with its heavy burden of good works]. “So don't ever take up that yoke again" (Gal l5: 1).
Good news
To attack good works or deflate them of power over God is not only new news it is also good news! It’s gospel! For it delivers us from the terrifying fear of a God who needs to be bought off by the sweat of our good works. (Down deep, ever so subliminally, we feel the same about Gods who need to be bought off as we do about people who need to be bought off.) The gospel attack or deflation of good works is good news because it delivers us from the gnawing doubt about whether we’ve done enough of them to buy God off or even whether they good enough to buy God off.
Protestant theologian Paul Tillich thinks our good works are never good enough to buy off the priceless God. All our virtue, he says, is really flawed. There’s always some pride in our humility; always some selfishness in our generosity; always some self-centeredness in our God-centered lives. If it weren’t for the mercy and grace of God, he says, all our works would be basically tragic, and we would be terrified not only by our vices but also by our virtues.
God doesn’t need them
The Protestant Reformation sought to reform a corrupt 16th century church. But over and above that it sought to reform the bad news (rife in the general piety of the day) that God needed our good works to make Him happy and put us right with Himself. Luther’s revolution was personally and urgently more about that than about the corruption of the 16th century church. On the cornerstone of his reformation he inscribed two solitary words: Sola Gratia – By Grace Alone. We are justified (put right with God) not by any good work we do but only by the blood of Christ. That’s called grace. That’s called Amazing Grace. Luther discovered that amazing good news as he was working out his personal and terrifying problem of how to make God feel good about him. In Paul’s letters (especially to Galatians and Romans) he discovered the good news that our works have no power to puts us right with God; only the blood of Christ has that power. That marvelously freed Luther; what he could not do for himself that Christ did for him!
We need them
But while the good news of Amazing Grace liberates us from the hopeless task of trying to buy God off, it does not liberate us from good works themselves. God, indeed, does not need them, but we, indeed, do! Jesus said we need them. “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. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me. Come you blessed of my father and take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of creation” (Mt 25:31-40).
The Good Samaritan needed his good work
One day a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half dead. Along came a Jewish priest who was hurrying off to Jericho and passed him by. Along came a Levite (the priest’s helper) who also was in a hurry and passed him by. Then along came a Samaritan. Seeing the victim dying by the side of the road he came to a screeching halt to pour the oil of compassion into his wounds.
God didn’t need the good work of the Samaritan, but the man waylaid by robbers, indeed, did. And more importantly the Samaritan needed his own good work even more than the poor victim. To ruthlessly pass by the man dying by the wayside would have made the Samaritan a monster like the Jewish priest and Levite. It was by stopping that the Samaritan became the great human being whose praises all the ages sing.
Our kids need their good works
In this new day our kids need ipods, iphones, blackberries, gps, etc. One good father and mother were wise enough to see that their four sons needed something better than such consumerist needs. Their sons needed good works not to buy God off but to buy themselves off. So the parents encouraged their sons to do volunteer work in an animal shelter cleaning out dog and cat kennels (no pay). And to socialize puppies in preparation for leader-dog programs for the blind (no pay). And to tutor kids who were poor in mathematics (no pay). As the mother and father rang Salvation Army bells at Christmastime, they invited their sons to accompany them by playing Christmas carols, one with a guitar, another with a saxophone, a third with a French horn and a fourth with a key board (no pay). God didn’t need the sons’ good works. But the animals did and the blind did and the poor at Christmas did. But above all the sons themselves needed their own good works because that’s what makes them great humans beings.
Conclusion
Let them glow
Today’s parable asks, "Who among you would say to your hired hand who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, `Come here and sit down at table’”?
If I had a hired hand who worked hard all day long plowing the field and tending the sheep, I would “turn the tables.” I would rise and say to him, “Come here, good man, and sit down at table.” Then after pouring him a rum and Coke, I would don an apron and prepare a good plate of pasta for him. That’s the way it is with our good works. They have power to “turn the tables.” They have power to set masters donning aprons and serving their hired hands. Our good works have power not over God but over the people around us.
“So let your good deeds glow for all to see, and incite them to the praise of the heavenly Father” (Mt 5:16).
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 “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
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