Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Knowing

Hello, my name is Norman, and I am a nerd.  I always have been, and with sixty years of nerdhood behind me, it’s a pretty safe bet that I always will be.

I read voraciously; number games spin around in my head; I revel in crossword puzzles and jigsaws, Sudoku and Ken-Ken, cryptograms and acrostics.  I was never very athletic, but I know about all the strategies and statistics.  And like most nerds, I would have been voted “most socially inept” in high school if we had had such a superlative.

Today, I’m still more wallflower than butterfly, but at least I understand the rationale behind my nerdy social ineptitude.  Like most nerds, I know a lot about a lot of things.  Yet knowing about things is not the same as knowing things.  As long as I remain in the world of things, this distinction is not that important.  But when I enter the world of people, it becomes critical.

I can learn a lot about another person by simply applying my highly developed nerd study skills.  That’s okay, but if I don’t go beyond that, I’m simply an extra in The Big Bang Theory.  The only way to move beyond “knowing about” a person to “knowing” a person is to be with that person, to share experiences and feelings, likes and dislikes with that person, to laugh and mourn with that person, to celebrate and commiserate with that person.  It is only in relationship that we can truly know a person.

By definition, this relationship thing is awkward for most nerds like me, for it takes us far beyond our “knowing about” comfort zone.  But if we’re lucky, we get past this at least once in our lives, and, if we’re really lucky, as I have been, one of those times can lead to a lifetime relationship with a spouse whom we come to know as well as we know ourselves, with whom we become as one, and without whom we are incomplete.

Since our very creation, the Bible tells us, God has desired this same intimate relationship with each one of us.  He wants us to know Him that we might feel one with him, desperately incomplete without Him.  And yet, in our pride, in our desire to simply know ourselves, we shy away from God, refusing his invitation to relationship, to knowing.  Perhaps this is natural, for there was and is an unimaginably vast difference between the infinite, almighty God and our mere mortal and temporal world.  It makes sense that we are more comfortable in a world we can see and hear, touch and taste.  Yet, God will not abandon us.

God becomes one of us.  He becomes Emmanuel – “with us” – taking on our creatureliness and our frailty, taking on our pains and our sufferings, our life and our death, that we might come to know Him better, that we might be one with Him forever.   We will soon enter into great celebration of this amazing gift of incarnation, as we do each year at Christmas time. 

And yet, and yet, how often I can still resist the relationship.  Surely, I know a lot about Jesus – and it's good that I know a lot about Jesus – but it’s not good enough. 

How well do I share my successes and my failures with Jesus in prayer?  How well do I celebrate with Jesus in the sacraments, opening myself up to his presence, his mercy and his love?  How well do I join with Jesus in service to others, as he has served me?  How well do I see my spousal relationship with Mary – a relationship I know I would be completely lost without – how well do I see this relationship not simply as my good fortune, but as a blessing from God, a sign of the relationship God desires to have with me?  How well do I know Jesus, Emmanuel who has always been with me, and who promises to be with me until the end of the age?


These are the Advent questions we ponder as we prepare to rejoice in the relationship that God has desired to have with us from the very beginning, that God made possible through the incarnation of his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and that God strengthens and encourages us to live through the Holy Spirit who abides in us.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Expectations

Expectations can be deadly.

Among people of Jesus' day, many different expectations existed about the Messiah and what he would bring.  Some expected a prophet like Moses, leading the people from slavery and bringing God's final laws to them.  Some expected a great military leader like David, someone to conquer the Romans, and bring Israel back to its former glory.  John the Baptist expected the Messiah to bring final judgment, laying ax to the root of the tree, burning the chaff in unquenchable fire.

No one expected Jesus.  They expected laws; they got beatitudes.  They expected conquest, they got humility.  They expected vengeance and human justice; they got love and divine mercy.  They expected vindication; they got reconciliation.  They expected pain; they got healing.

Some of those around Jesus let their pride – their certainty as to what they needed – keep them from changing their expectations.  They were blind to Jesus' messiahship, deaf to Jesus' teachings, and stumbled over Jesus' divinity.

But have things changed that much in two thousand years?  As Christmas nears, what do we expect?

Do I expect to find true joy in the presents under the tree or will I look to the presence of God in my heart?

Do I expect to vindicate myself with gossip and sarcasm, or will my prayers heal and reconcile me with others?

Do we expect to protect ourselves and defeat our enemies with bombs and bullets or will we build peace with the compassion of Jesus and with God's divine justice?

Do we expect to eliminate evil by destroying life with the executioner's chair or will we conquer evil with good, seeing the image and goodness of God within ourselves and within every other person?


As was true two thousand years ago, expectations can determine how we accept Jesus.  We can be blind, we can be deaf, or we can be lame – if we wish.  Or, we can ask God to open our eyes that we may see Jesus as our divine savior and Lord, to open our ears that we may hear Jesus' words of truth and salvation, and open our hearts that we might have the courage and strength to walk with Jesus, to love with Jesus, building up the kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

An Easy Yoke

This morning, we hear what is perhaps the most personal of Jesus’ metaphors recorded in Scripture – my yoke is easy, my burden is light. (Mt 11:30)

In his day, as it is today in much of the less-developed, agricultural societies, a yoke, whether a single yoke that a person may use to carry a heavy load, or a double yoke that may have joined a team of oxen to plow a field, would have been made of wood, the work of a carpenter.  And if the carpenter was particularly skilled and had custom-fit that yoke precisely to the person or team which was to use it, it would ride easy on their shoulders, it would make their burden light.  Presumably, St. Joseph and Jesus would have made many an easy yoke in the carpentry shop of Nazareth.  It could not have been more natural –and perhaps more personally pleasing to him – for Jesus to use this as a metaphor for the peace he would bring to those who accepted him and his love.

Yet this pleasing prospect – certainly good, even great, news – seems contradicted by a more well-known metaphor.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus insists that we must shoulder not an easy yoke, but a heavy cross, following him to Calvary.   Does the heavy cross also make our burdens light?  How can we reconcile these seemingly contradictory images?

A year ago today, we could not have imagined how urgent this question would be for us in Newtown.  This weekend, we will face this conundrum head on. 

On Saturday, we will gather to remember and mourn for the great loss we suffered, a hole carved out of our hearts that will never be filled.  We remember the pain and grief we endured that still throbs within us to this very day.  

On Sunday, we light the pink candle in our Advent wreath and don the pink vestments for Mass, recalling St. Paul’s admonition to rejoice always, for Christ’s coming into the world shows us that Jesus’ yoke is not made of wood, but made of the unconditional, eternal, infinite love of God.  God so loved the world, he gave his only Son. 

When we accept in our hearts that we are loved despite our sins, despite our failings, and despite our weakness, we are filled with profound joy.  It is a joy which cannot be engendered by a beribboned Lexus, a joy more lasting than the most perfectly-cut diamond, and a joy which the festive tree and its trimmings can only begin to hint at.  In turn, this joy leads to a profound peace, a peace which cannot be won by any army or secured by any treaty. 

This joy and peace becomes a great light within us – the light of Christ’s love which the darkness cannot overcome.  It is a yoke that makes the heaviest cross bearable.

This weekend, we will gather to not only remember our loss, our pain and our grief, but also to recall the thousands of people who mourned with us that weekend and in the months to come; the millions of prayers offered in our support; the countless gifts of consolation showered on us from around the world.   Each person, each prayer, each consolation reminds us to this day of God’s great and powerful love, the love which we chose to be our shield, our light, and our yoke.

It is Jesus’ yoke, and he guarantees us today that no matter how heavy the cross, his yoke is easy, his burden is light.


We believe.  We choose love.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Peaceable Kingdom

When I listen to our reading this morning from Isaiah (Is 11:6-9), soft flutes and violins are playing a lilting pastoral melody in the background.  The lion with the goat, the leopard with the kid, the world at peace…it is such a comforting vision.

But, we turn to the Gospel passage (Mt 3:1-12) and are bombarded with clashing cymbals, booming bass drums, and discordant horns blaring.  John the Baptist is yelling at us to repent, calling the Pharisees a brood of vipers, chaff burned in everlasting fire.  What happened to the flutes and violins?

Yet, there is a connection.  To get to the peace of Isaiah’s vision, to hear the flutes and violins, we have to listen to John, and repent, reforming our lives to account for the coming of Jesus.  This is why we have seasons like Advent and Lent.  In the “ordinary” times of the year, I often become lost in the chaff of daily tasks and troubles and miss the big picture completely.  Advent and Lent are times to put aside our preoccupations with our mundane, daily concerns and think about the bigger picture.

John calls us to repent, to change our minds, to re-form our lives, to break down the walls which keep us from the one who brings real peace to the world, to re-form ourselves into members of the Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom.

Jesus’ coming impels us, as John reminds the Pharisees, to live lives of faith which bear good fruit.  For much of my life, my faith meant that I should keep the rules, follow the commandments, and keep to the straight and narrow. 

It was that narrow part that got me in trouble.  My religion was essentially a private religion.  It was just about me, as narrow as my own person.  It was a religion that was only visible on Sunday morning, when I went to church.  What happened in the world was not so important, how I affected the world was almost immaterial, as long as I kept the rules.

But the peaceable kingdom is one of relationships.  It is a kingdom where all have fully realized the unconditional love that God has bestowed on them, burning away the chaff of fears and wants and filling their lives with hope and abundance.  This not only transforms individual lives, but transforms our relationships with each other.  Desperate enemies become fast friends.  Today, the Psalmist tells us that the poor are rescued, the afflicted are helped, the lowly are treated with compassion, and, as a result, justice and peace shall flower (Ps 72:1-13).  St. Paul reinforces the communal nature of the peaceable kingdom, as he prays that we think in harmony with one another, that we welcome one another as Christ welcomed us. (Rom 15:5-7). 

This compassion and unity is the fruit that the Pharisees were missing, that I was missing, that I can still miss when my religion remains my own, private affair; that I can still miss when I am consumed by my desires to earn love and honor through my own hard work and self-righteousness.


This Advent, I pray for me as I pray for you, that Jesus shows us the chaff in our lives, the parts that keeps us from realizing that his love is a gift, undeserved, yet infinite and everlasting.  I pray that he gives us the courage to burn that chaff, that we may become the flutes and the violins accompanying His peaceable kingdom.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

The Power of Advent

Throughout the Bible, food is seen as a sign of God’s providential love.  The miraculous feeding with a few fish and loaves is the only miracle – other than the resurrection of Jesus – that appears in all four gospels.  In fact, it appears six times, for both Matthew and Mark relate two versions of this story. 

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, the first of the works of mercy which the Son of Man considers a marker of those who were to be admitted to the kingdom was, “I was hungry and you gave me food.” (Mt 25:35)

As we see in today’s passage from Isaiah (Is 26:6-10), heaven itself was often imaged as a great and bountiful feast of food and wine.  Jesus uses this same imagery in several of his parables. 

In an economy of subsistence agriculture, desperate, life-threatening hunger is just one bad harvest away.  Virtually everyone in Jesus’ day – as is true in many places of the world today – would have known times of extreme hunger.  Thus, the presence of food was an occasion to give great thanks and praise to God.

For me, not so much.  Like the air that I breathe, food is just there.  I’ve always known that the next meal is only hours away; snacks are even closer!  In some sense, I take food for granted.  And this is my great loss.

For whenever I take something for granted, I begin to think that it is my right to have it.  I deserve it.  I’ve earned it by my hard work or my goodness.  Ultimately, this becomes true of everything that comes my way.  I deserve the good food, the big house, the fancy car, the warm clothes, and all the comforts of life.  And if I feel that I deserve everything I have, why should I be grateful?  Who would I need to thank?

When I am completely lost in this world of ingratitude, I find that I even take my life for granted.  I wake up in the morning and immediately start thinking of all the things I must do, the people I must see, and the places I must go.  I’ve taken for granted, of course, that the day would be there, and that I would wake up to live this day to see to my oh-most-important tasks.  I have taken my life for granted.

My ungrateful world, while seeming at most times to be a most warm and pleasurable place, is actually cold and ugly, for at its center is a stony heart, shut off from the love of God.

When someone threatens what I take for granted as my just desserts, I become indignant and angry.  I strike out at those who threaten me or take what is mine.  And yet I am never satisfied with what is mine, for I see others who have even more.  Why is this more not also my rightful due?  I become grasping and greedy as I crave to have the things that others have, the things that I don’t have, yet must have. 

Advent is a season to reawaken my heart to God’s great love, to break the chains of ingratitude which bind my heart in selfishness and greed.

Advent prepares us to celebrate the greatest gift we could possibly receive, a greater gift than life itself.  In a few short weeks, we will celebrate the gift of salvation, of God-become-man, God sharing our humanity that we may share God’s divinity.  We could not have done this by ourselves, and we did not do anything to deserve this wonder, for this gift was tendered “while we were still sinners.”  (Rom 5:8).  It is a gift of unimaginable, unlimited, unconditional love.

Opened up by gratitude, we become more aware of this great love God has for us.  A virtuous cycle ensues. 

Aware of God’s great love, we begin to see our very life as a gift from God, an occasion for thanks and praise.  We begin to see our possessions as precious not because they are our right, or because they make our life more pleasant or easy, but precious because they are gifts from our all-loving God, the source of all happiness, the source of all joy.

As we begin to see our lives and our possessions as precious gifts, gifts which God continues to provide each and every day – the day itself being God’s gift – we become generous in sharing these gifts with others, serving Christ who comes to us each day in the guise of one of his children in need.

In sharing God’s love today, we prepare ourselves to receive the culmination of God’s gift, the promised final coming of Jesus, bringing the fullness of God’s kingdom to earth.

This time of year, we often wish people a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.  We don’t seem to have a similarly apt adjective for Advent.  Here is my thought.


Have a most grateful Advent.