In, but not of

This morning, we hear Jesus praying for his disciples – that would be us.  He makes what seems to be a rather strange claim.  He states that we "do not belong to the world," that we are not "of the world," any more than Jesus belongs to or is of the world.  How can this be?  Unlike Jesus, we not have a divine nature.   We are not God.  We certainly live in the world.  How can we not be of this world?

The answer is clear in John’s gospel.  We have been redeemed from this world through the gracious, merciful, infinite love of God.  Out of God’s love, we receive his only Son, so that those who believe may not die, but may have eternal life.  As the Father loves Jesus, Jesus loves us, and we are to love one another.  And this love unites us with each other as Jesus is one with the Father.  In this love, God dwells in us, and we in him.

Filled with the infinite love of God, we are free of the need to slavishly seek love and approval from others; free of the need for status; free of the need to put others down to raise ourselves up.

Filled with the infinite love of God, we are free of the need to possess material goods; free of the envy of others' possessions; free of the rivalries which can lead to hatred of our fellow children of God.

Thus freed by the infinite love of God, earthly goods and earthly desires – this is, the world – cannot possess us.  And if the world does not possess us, we do not belong to the world.  We are not of this world.  Yet, Jesus asks the Father to keep us in the world.  Jesus sends us out into the world to continue his mission.

And Jesus' mission is a one of service, as he demonstrated earlier in the Last Supper with the washing of the feet.  Jesus' mission is one of unity, as he prays that we be one as he is one with the Father.  Jesus' mission is one of universal love and charity, reaching all nations, Jew and Greek, slave and free, woman and man.    

Jesus' mission is hard!  In fact, if we decide to remain of this world, it is impossible for us to follow Jesus.  We must have absolute faith in God's love, and thus abide in God and God in us, if we are to have any hope of living our Christian mission.

Jesus knows that we do not share his divine nature.  He knows that we often have difficulty with this gift of love.  For example, when I receive an unexpected gift, I sometimes wonder if there are any strings attached.  I’m thinking, what does this person want from me?  Or, I may look at what I’ve received and wonder if it is as good as what somebody else received.  Why did I receive less?  What do I have to do to get more?

This finite world in which I live, a world of reciprocity, a world of haves and have-nots, becomes part of me ultimately taking possession of me completely.  I reject the gracious and infinite love of God who transcends all worlds, who gave his only Son that we may be one with Him who is all love. 

Thus Jesus finishes his prayer this morning – as we join with him in prayer – for the Father to protect us with his name, to guard us from the evil one, to consecrate us with truth, with his word and with his Spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit, enkindle in us the fire of your love.

The Dignity of Work

A teacher at a noted prep school had a troublesome student.  This student handed in slap-dash assignments when he bothered to do them at all.  He paid no attention in class, often distracting the other students with side-talk or irrelevant questions.  One day, the teacher’s patience simply wears out.  He calls out the student in class and said, “Mr. Smith, there are four words that describe your future in this world.”  Responding to the student’s inquisitive look, the teacher says, “Want fries with that?”  Everyone in class chuckles, for certainly this was not what they had in mind for themselves.  They would do so much better.

As someone who enjoys clever repartee, I was amused when a fellow teacher related this story to me.  However, on reflection, I realized that it denigrated an entire class of honest work; work which our Church teaches us has great dignity.  It is by our work that we participate in the creative nature of God. It is though our work, at least in part, that we live out our nature as God’s children.  Our catechism states, “Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another.” (CCC 2427)

Our celebration today, lauding St. Joseph the Worker, is a relatively recent addition to the liturgical calendar, for it was only in 1955 that Pope Pius XII instituted this celebration.  Yet, the concept of celebrating work has roots deep in our faith’s past.  St. Joseph was a carpenter, a creative job for sure, but also a job that required long hours and its share of drudgery.  Yet this is the work that St. Joseph taught our Lord to perform.  This is the work that Jesus did to help support his family and to serve the village of Nazareth.

As the teacher denigrates the work of serving fast food burgers, the townspeople of Nazareth denigrate the lowly carpenter’s trade.  Jesus can’t be the prophet he claims to be, he is the son of a carpenter! (Mt 13:54-58)

And yet God has lifted up the lowly carpenter from Nazareth to be the savior of the world.  Our faith insists that each human being shares a great dignity – created in the image and likeness of God, loved and cherished by our infinite and eternal God, and entrusted by God to steward and care for all of God’s creation through the dint of honest work.

But I often fall into the same trap as the teacher in our story and the people in Nazareth.  I impute greater dignity to certain types of work, implying less dignity in other work.  I may deem intellectual work more dignified than manual labor.  Alternatively, I often equate the dignity of the work with the money that it earns.  Worse, it then becomes easy for me to assume that the people doing this less-dignified work must be, ipso facto, less-dignified human beings.  I cannot be following Jesus at that point, as Jesus never goes there.

Jesus calls each one of us, the CEO and the McDonald’s clerk, the lawyer and the garbage collector, the scientist and the homemaker, to follow him.  He calls us to be loving, kind, generous, joy-filled, and merciful harbingers of the kingdom of God, recognizing the dignity of every person, each created in God’s image and likeness.  Whatever what we do for a living, Jesus calls us to work for life.

Jesus knows that this will not be easy.  He tells us that it will entail suffering and drudgery, for it is being a slave to all.  It will seem fruitless at times, as it may inspire hatred from the very ones whom we love, who are the objects of our service.  Yet it is part of our nature, a nature that Jesus took on and a nature that Jesus redeems by his work, by his suffering, and by his death on the cross.

St. Joseph the Worker, pray for us.

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"