Beyond No

One of the first words a toddler learns is "No!"  As he gains more freedom of movement, he tests out newly available opportunities.  On the other hand, his older, wiser, and loving parents want to keep him safe from  harm.  One theory suggests that "if they touch that hot burner once, they'll never touch it again."  That's probably true, but for me, I have always hoped to head off that painful lesson with a firm "No!"  Sure, I would eventually explain why this is not a good idea, why it would be harmful, but my priority was preventing certain pain.

Even as adults, we need these firm No's in our lives - things we just should not do.  What if we all decided that red lights were just silly restrictions on our freedom to drive as we wished?  Chaos would ensue.  Most of our civil laws similarly are "No" laws, written to keep chaos and anarchy at bay.  They keep us safe.

When God first revealed His law to the Hebrews, they were primarily "No" laws, or as we have them in our minds, "Thou shalt not" laws.  They were good laws, for they set limits on actions and attitudes that destroy relationships - relationships between us and God, relationships between us and our neighbors.

They are still good laws, but they are just the beginning, the basics.  We need more than laws that keep us from destroying relationships.  We need tools to nurture, to enhance and to enrich our relationships with God and our relationships with each other.

Enter Jesus.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus insists that we get beyond the No.  We are not to ignore the No, but we must go far beyond it.  Jesus' life and his teachings challenge us to follow him to that which lies far beyond the No and into the land of "Yes."  For Jesus' "Yes" rules teach us what we should seek and what we should do.  Jesus' "Yes" rules form us into who we should be.

Speaking to the disciples on the night before he was to die, knowing his time was short, Jesus summarizes all of his "Yes" rules into something new: "I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another." (Jn  13:34)

This is really hard.  I've lived most of my life under the discipline of "No."  It is a simple life, and I am really good at it.  The objective nature of the law appeals to me.  It is generally easy to tell if I've broken a "No" law. It helps that most of these "No" laws actually make sense.  It is clear to me that their purpose is to avoid harm, destruction, or chaos, so I've trained myself to almost naturally conform to the "No."

But to love as Jesus loves, without condition and without limit, who can do such a thing?  How would I even know if I was doing it enough?  It seems I can never be good at this, for I am constantly falling far short.  No matter how hard I try, I'm not feeling the love when I see someone who is not all like me, who doesn't appreciate me, or who may even hate me.  Jesus' "Yes" even seems dangerous.  How can I be safe if I love the one who tries to hurt me?

But despite the difficulty, despite the seeming lack of sense, despite the seeming danger, something in my heart tells me to follow.  I sense that despite my success and apparent happiness in conforming the limits of No, there is something worthwhile beyond those limits.  I sense that beyond my selfish wants, beyond my selfish fears, there must be more.  I sense, as St. Augustine intuited so long ago, that my heart will always be restless until it rests in Jesus' land of Yes.

Step beyond the self-centered world of No and follow Jesus into the God-centered life of Yes.  Step beyond the temporal world of No, and follow Jesus into the eternity of Yes.  Step beyond the safety of No, and follow Jesus into the salvation of Yes.

The bottom line

This morning’s gospel passage (Jn 12:44-50) closes out "the Book of Signs" (Jn 1-12) in John's gospel.  In this final speech before the crowds, sensing that his great passion, death and resurrection looms before him, Jesus urgently “cries out” to us.  This short passage echoes themes that pervade John’s gospel.  See Jesus, see God.  Remain in Jesus, remain in God.   Have faith in Jesus, have faith in God who sent Him out of his great love for us.

However, even if we reject Jesus, and thus reject God, Jesus will not condemn us, just as he did not condemn the woman caught in adultery.  Yet we will still be utterly lost.  Jesus won’t have to condemn us; we will have already condemned ourselves to lives of darkness and fear, lives of angst and anger, lives of pain and hatred.  For when we reject Jesus, we reject the love the God has for us.  We reject the salvation won for us by Jesus.

This seems simple, yet – like the rule-following Pharisees, who, at the very moment of Jesus’ speech, are plotting to kill him – I am often uncomfortable with this message.  I always look for the cookbook, some list of instructions – a rule book, if you will – to ensure that when I follow the recipe precisely, I get what I want. 

But there is no rule book, for there is only one rule, and his name is Jesus.  Pick up the cross and follow him.  Be a slave to all.  Don’t count the cost, for the cost is your entire life.  All that you deemed important before; all that you held dear before; all that you considered fulfilling before was a mere grain of wheat.  Hold tight to that grain, and that’s all you have, a bagatelle.  Let that grain die, trusting that the new life Jesus offers will be so much greater, so much richer, and so much fuller than anything you could possibly make for yourself, and this new life will yield great fruit.

Live this life of love, generosity and kindness, sharing God’s unconditional love will all of children, each created in His image and likeness. 

Live this life of peace and joy, free of anxiety and joyfully celebrating the great gift of salvation God offers out of love through His gift of Jesus. 

Be patient in suffering and adversity, for Jesus suffered much for you.  Live gently and humbly, faithfully laying all of your needs in prayer at the feet of Jesus – your Lord, your Savior, your sustenance, your way, your rule, your life.

This is the message that Holy Spirit directs Paul and Barnabas to proclaim to the Jews and to the Gentiles.  This is the message that will change the world as all the nations come to believe in Jesus.  This is the message we celebrated with great joy just one month ago.

Out of God’s great love for you and me and everyone from sea to sea, Jesus Christ, son of God, son of Man, died on the cross and rose again to save us from sin, save us from evil, save us from death. 

Believe, and the kingdom of heaven is yours. 

Being a sheep

Okay, who wants to be a sheep when they grow up?  Certainly, this was never my ambition. When I was boy, if we played a game as to which animal you could be, I’d go for the top – make me the lion, king of the beasts.   Growing up in the fifties and sixties, our image of success was the “leader of the pack.”  In the seventies and eighties, we really set our sights high – we were going to be masters of the universe.  Can’t go much higher than that, eh?

Well you can.  You can be a sheep.  Not just any sheep, but Jesus’ sheep.  In John 10, Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd.  My first thought is of the parable of the lost sheep, where Jesus goes out and finds the one sheep that has wandered away from the other 99.  It’s a nice parable God seeking out every last wandering soul, and, as a wandering soul myself, it is quite consoling.  But it is not Jesus means in John 10.

When Jesus makes this claim, he says,  “I am the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” (Jn 10:11)  Jesus contrasts his shepherding with that of hired shepherds who merely flee when danger approaches and leave the sheep to the wolves, the bandits, or whoever.  In contrast, Jesus lays down his life for his sheep.

Jesus offers the ultimate security – by laying down his life, he wins eternal life for his sheep.  And nobody, not the lion, not the leader of the pack, not even those who seek to master the universe can take that eternal life away.  For Jesus knows his sheep and his sheep know him.  They hear his voice and follow him to where only he can lead.

In Jesus’ day, the entire town’s sheep may have been kept in a common enclosure during the night.  They didn’t use branding to tell the sheep apart, and, as you might imagine, one sheep tends to look pretty much like any other.  To separate the sheep in the morning, each shepherd would simply call out to their sheep.  The sheep knew to follow that one voice and no other.

Our problem is that the world is filled with many voices and only one of them is Jesus.  Many try to sound like Jesus so that we follow them.  How do we tell if we are following Jesus into the eternal life that he won for us?

Everyone here in church today already knows one answer to this problem – we arrange our lives to spend time with Jesus in prayer, to join with others at the wonderful prayer of praise and thanksgiving called the Mass, to make Jesus a part of us by participating in the Eucharist.  To keep the world’s voices from distracting us, we may devote some of our time to reading the Bible, studying the lives of the saints, doing other spiritual reading.

We also see in today’s reading from Revelation that when Jesus laid down his life, he was, in essence, the sacrificial lamb, dying that we might be saved.  Ironically, he becomes the Good Shepherd by dying as a lamb. 

Following Jesus’ call, as the sheep follow the call of their shepherd – literally living our vocation – from the Latin, vocare, to call – entails this same sacrificial love.  For example, when we live our vocation as married persons, we lay down our single lives to join with the other as one.  As we live our vocation as parents, we figuratively lay down our lives to raise our children.  And while we would hope this never happens, what loving parent would not literally lay down their own life, as Jesus did for us, if that would save their child. 

Jesus is calling each one of us to our own particular vocation.  When we choose to ignore the call of the Good Shepherd, preferring instead to follow our own voice and our own desires, to be our own shepherd, we will certainly lose our way and fall prey to the wolves of pride and the bandits of fear.

Following his call, living the vocation he has called us to live, we rest easy and secure in the knowledge that we live not because of who we are, but because of whose we are – the Good Shepherd’s, the one who died that we might live, the one whose voice we heed and follow.

His sheep we are, His sheep we’ll be, forever and ever, Amen.    Alleluia.

Bread of Life

I like to think of myself as a rational being, one who thinks logically and is not easily duped.  Show me, as our friends in Missouri would say, and I’ll believe.  After all, seeing is believing.  In our modern, scientific world, I am in good company. 

But for Jesus, seeing may not be enough.  Oftentimes, I put on blinders that hinder my sight.  As a physical, material being, my blinders limit what I see – and thus what I believe in – to those things which are also physical and material.  And thus I see, but do not believe; at least I do not believe that which is truly important. 

The people Jesus addresses in John 6 have just seen an amazing miracle – the feeding of the 5000.   But like me, they only see with earth-bound eyes.  They see that Jesus, like the good kings of old, might be the one that will provide for them, protect them from their enemies, and bring back the same earthly glory that they enjoyed in the times of David and Solomon. 

Jesus tries to remove their earth-bound blinders.  In yesterday’s passage, we heard him warn the crowd that this miracle, much as it satisfied their bodily hunger, was simply pointing to something much greater – food that feeds their souls, food that sustains eternal life.

Today, Jesus drives the point home by identifying himself as the Bread of Life, a life which is more than mere temporal existence, but true life that endures forever.  And like the bread that is essential for our survival here on earth, our belief in Jesus as the one who is sent by the Father, who gives us everything that the Father gives him, and who will lead us to the Father, is the essential nutrient for the new life that Jesus has won for us.

When we believe in Jesus, the Bread of Life; when we let ourselves be fed and nourished by Jesus, the Bread of Life, we do not simply survive, we thrive.  We do not simply exist; we live truly and deeply.  We are transformed. 

Fed by the Bread of Life, leavened with God’s mercy and justice, our hunger for revenge is sated that we might seek reconciliation and peace.

Fed by the Bread of Life, leavened with God’s almighty power, our hunger for power is sated that we might be gentle and without fear.

Fed by the Bread of Life, leavened with God’s infinite love, our hunger for prestige and respect is sated that we might live with humility and kindness.

Fed by the Bread of Life, leavened with God’s benevolent providence, our hunger for possessions is sated that we might be generous and compassionate.

See and believe.  Believe and eat.  Eat and live – on earth as you will in heaven.

The verse

Many years back, as a baby deacon, I was mindlessly driving home from work, heading up I-684.  I quickly came up on a truck painted white.  Not a semi, just a fairly large white truck.  On the back of the truck, in bold black writing, was "John 3:16".  As I passed the truck, I looked to see whose truck it was, what other markings might be on the truck.  There was nothing, just a white truck with "John 3:16".

It brought back for me the many times that I saw this same sign appear during football games, or the World Series, or another major sporting broadcast.  You remember the guy: colorful clothes, equally colorful and outrageous hair, and a big placard, "John 3:16."  I don't watch nearly as much TV sports nearly as I used to, but I imagine that guy is still showing up at big events, still attracting our eye, still waving his sign.

I also remembered that many, many years ago, after seeing this guy countless times, I finally picked up a Bible and looked up the citation.  I always had a Bible, but rarely read it.  However, I was smart enough to know that this was a citation from the Bible.  We heard it this morning: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life."  And I remembered one more thing...I just didn't get it.  And, on passing the truck, I still wasn’t sure I got it.

I mean, it was a nice enough sentiment, but why this verse?  How did this tell me – or anyone else – how to get to heaven?  For I thought I had figured that one out already.  I was the dutiful son, the good Catholic boy who went to Mass every Sunday, contributed my share to the collections, helped out when I was asked, obeyed the rules.  I didn't smoke, didn't drink, and didn't swear – at least not much.  And I was a deacon!  On top of all that, I earned a great salary, with a promising career ahead of me.  I was the very personification of respectability.

Of course, what the funny looking guy in the funny looking wig was trying to tell me – and what I was too blinded by my proud respectability to see – was that I was completely, utterly, and hopelessly lost.

I thought that getting to heaven was something that I could earn just as I earned the respect of others.  In fact, I believed that earning the respect of others, acting ethically and fairly, following the rules, was exactly the same thing as earning heaven, as gaining eternal life.  To paraphrase an old commercial: "I got saved the old fashioned way, I earned it!"

I was certainly lost.  As John tells us of God's infinite, unimaginable love, we come to understand that there is nothing to be proud of in our salvation, for it is something we cannot earn or deserve in the least.  St. Paul reminds us that our only boast is in the cross of Christ (Gal 4:14), on which He died for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8).

My good works, if done in expectation of some heavenly reward, are utterly worthless.  My prayers, my fasting, my religious observance, if done in expectation that God will somehow love me more and more readily accept me into his kingdom, are counterproductive, for they deny God’s very nature.

Unless I accept that God's love for me is already infinite, cannot be made any greater no matter what I do, is so intense that Jesus willingly suffered the cross just so that I, a sinner, would be saved, I cannot possibly follow Christ.  There would be no room in my heart for Christ, for it would be already full of myself.

Yet there are still times when I just can't seem to get it.  After all, I have spent what seems like my entire life desperately, urgently, and sometimes pathetically, trying to earn the respect of others, and only a relatively brief time trying to simply accept the love of God.

Will I ever really truly get it?  I don't know.  What I do know is that God will never stop trying to open my eyes, to open my heart, to open my soul, for even if I am faithless, He will remain faithful (2 Tim 2:13).

He has given me his holy word in the Scripture to read and to study.  Through his Church, He has given me tangible reminders of his love for us, like the crucifix, the Eucharist, and the gathering at Mass here today.  And every once in a while, when, in the hardness of my heart, I still don't get it, He sends me a funny looking guy with funny looking hair, or a truck passing by on the road, with a simple sign: "John 3:16"

Lucky Thomas

Happy Easter!

Does that sound odd to you?  I know it would have sounded odd to me not so long ago.  Easter was last Sunday, so why is this crazy person wishing me a happy Easter one week too late?

The calendar tells us that this is the first Sunday after Easter, but our missals insist that it is the second Sunday of Easter.  This infers that Easter is not a single day, but a season.  In fact, it is a season that lasts seven weeks, until Pentecost.  Moreover, our readings during these next seven weeks tell us that Easter is even more than a season – it is a way of life.  Those people who truly believe in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ are forever changed – they are an Easter people.

During the Easter season, our first reading is not from the Old Testament, as it is during every other time of the year.  During Easter, we read from the Acts of the Apostles, the story of how the Resurrection transformed the first disciples into Easter people.  In today’s passage, we hear that Peter and some of the other disciples were acting much as Jesus did during his ministry.  Allowing the grace of God to work through them, they were curing and healing many people, so many that people clamored to just be near them so that they could be healed – much as a woman in Mark’s gospel simply thought that touching Jesus’ garment would heal her.

In today’s Gospel story, we gain another insight into being Easter people.  Now poor Thomas has really taken a bum rap.  He not’s just “Thomas” to us, he is “doubting Thomas.”  However, Thomas was really quite a fortunate fellow.  Of course, he was fortunate because Christ eventually revealed himself to Thomas and assuaged his doubts.  However, even before this revelation, Thomas was one lucky guy.

Think of the situation at the beginning of today's Gospel reading.  The disciples are a bit wired; nobody knows what is going to happen next, everyone sort of scared to stick their heads out the door.  Perhaps food is running low, so Thomas draws the short straw and heads to the market.  On coming back, after he gives the presumably secret knock and gains re-admittance, he hears an incredible story.  Jesus, who just a couple days earlier was dead and buried, had appeared in that very room!

If we were Thomas, what would we think?  I know what I’d be thinking: “Boy, these guys are nuts!  The pressure finally got to them!  I'm outta here.”

If we were the other disciples, what would our reaction be to Thomas' disbelief?  Again, my initial reaction to Thomas’ doubts could easily have been anger and indignation – “Are you calling us liars?  We have seen the Lord!  You are the fool!  There’s the door, don’t let it hit you on the way out!”

Yet, one week later, where do we find Thomas – still in the company of his friends.  When Jesus breathed his peace on the disciples, when they received the Holy Spirit, they became Easter people, they were able to live with Thomas’ doubts, and perhaps their change, their sense of peace impressed Thomas enough that he was willing to cut them some slack, too.  Easter people filled that upper room.

Today, Easter people fill this church of St. Rose of Lima and all of Newtown.  It’s as clear to me as it was in that upper room.  Faced with the darkness of death, we choose to dwell of the light of the resurrection.  Faced with horrific evil, we choose to pray to the one who is all good.  Faced with hatred, we choose love.

And as others flocked to the early disciples that they might witness and perhaps benefit from the grace and mercy so obviously present in those first Easter people, we’ve seen many come to Newtown to witness the faith, grace and mercy that they may have simply seen or read about.

And yet…is it enough?  It’s nice that people care, but can’t we get on with our lives?  And none of this will ever bring back what we’ve lost, will it?  If God is so good and we are his disciples, why did this even happen to us?  Can’t someone just wake us from this nightmare?  Doubts and more doubts.  Perhaps we are much like Thomas who doubted that first Easter night.  But while we may share Thomas’ doubts, we also share his good fortune.

The same cross and the same death that redeemed Thomas, that redeemed the apostles, and that redeems all humankind for all time, redeems each of us.

The same resurrection that filled Thomas and the earliest apostles with hope and joy fills us with that same hope and joy.

The same Spirit and grace that flowed over the apostles in the upper room, the same Spirit that energized the earliest disciples in their zeal to live and love as Jesus did, flows over each one of us, gives us energy, unites our hearts and our minds in the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, and empowers us to be Easter people.

Christ has risen.  Alleluia!  Lucky Thomas; lucky us.

Happy Easter!

Easter eyes

There are twelve days of Christmas, but that’s nothing compared to the fifty days of Easter.  We can be wishing each other happy Easter and shouting out our alleluias until May 19^th this year, when the Easter season ends at Pentecost.

But even then, Easter doesn’t really end, for we are Easter people, a people who have been transformed by the resurrection of Jesus.  So, how have we been changed?  How do we know we have been changed, that we are, in fact, part of this “Easter people?”  The readings this morning give us a clue.

Easter people are people who see the world – past, present and future – with new eyes, Easter eyes.  The two disciples on the way to Emmaus were quite confused.  They knew their history and the prophets.  They knew that God had promised his people a Messiah, a king from David’s house who would conquer Israel’s enemies and reign with justice for ever and ever.  They had hoped Jesus would be this king, but their hopes were dashed when Jesus was crucified.  They couldn’t see where they could have gone so wrong.

Then, after the stranger explains the Scriptures to them, joins them for dinner, and breaks and blesses the bread, their Easter eyes are opened to see in a new way.  They see Jesus not as an earthly king, a mighty general who conquers Israel’s enemies, but a divine savior who conquers humankind’s enemy, death itself.  They see those past few, fateful days with eyes of faith.

Peter and John come to the Temple to pray and see a man who had been crippled since birth.  Both of them “look intently” at the man.  What do they see?  Do they see as they did when Jesus came upon a man blind from birth in John 9?  Do they simply see this man as a victim of his parents’ sin?  No, they see the man in a new way, with Easter eyes.  They see the man as a child of God, as one for whom Jesus died.  They see him as Jesus saw each person he came across, with eyes of love.

Peter then says something very odd.  Peter asks the man to look at John and him.  The man does so, “expecting to receive something from them.”  The man doesn’t know it yet, but he is about to become part of the Easter people.  He has been primed by Peter to see as all Easter people see, with eyes of hope.

Like Cleopas and his companion, like all Easter people, we see our past with eyes of faith.   We see the historical Jesus not simply as a good man who lived, taught and died as all men do, but as the Christ of faith.  We see in the crucifix not an instrument of torture and death, but a sign of God’s infinite and unconditional love for each of us.

Like Peter and John, like all Easter people, we see the world and the people around us with eyes of love.  We see times of great tragedy and evil not as unmitigated darkness, but as opportunities to shine the light of God’s love. We see those who hate and despise us not as enemies, but as fellow sons and daughters of God, fellow creatures in the image and likeness of God, and though they may not know what they are doing, we see them as fellow objects of God’s love.

Like the man at the Beautiful Gate, like all Easter people, we see our future with eyes of hope.   We look to the future not with anxiety over what we are to eat or wear, but with confidence in God’s benevolent providence.  We see death not as an end, but as a transition to an eternity with the source of all joy, peace and love.

We are an Easter people, for we see the past with Easter eyes of faith, the present with Easter eyes of love, and the future with Easter eyes of hope.

Happy Easter!  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!