January 30, 2005: Bending the Laws of Nature

+The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time


Last week, we celebrated the feast days of three martyrs; this coming week, there are two more on the calendar. During my meditation time, I have thought a lot about the difficult path these men, women and even children have freely embraced out of love for God and His people.

Of course, Jesus knew well what the personal cost would be to His followers. He knew that the faith that He lived and preached would be far too demanding for most people to accept. Yet Jesus also knew that His little group of disciples would imitate Him so intensely that they would eventually change the world.

About forty years ago, Karl Rahner, the well-known author and theologian, wrote a series of essays in a book called The Christian Commitment. He raised some eyebrows when he claimed that one of Christianity’s major problems is that we have too many Christians! What he meant was that many folks join the church because it’s socially acceptable, not because they’re determined to carry on Jesus’ ministry.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. People want to fit in and go along with their peers. Years back, high school and college kids tried to see how many could squeeze into a telephone booth, because everybody was doing it. Then millions of us contorted our hips trying to work a hula hoop. We tried cigarettes… pot… even LSD… because we saw movie stars and rock stars doing it and we wanted to be hip or groovy or cool. Today, every girl wants to dress like Britney Spears or get a tattoo. And like every other craze—short-lived or long-lived, according to Rahner, we sell ourselves on the idea of joining the church so we can belong… so we can fit in.

You may not like to hear that. Nobody wants to think that they’re sheep blindly following the flock. Maybe you are a strong, faithful Catholic really striving hard to carry out Christ’s mission of evangelization. If you are, God bless you!

Then again, maybe you are one of the herd of lukewarm Christians out there that cause the non-Christian world to shake their heads and laugh at us. But take heart. It isn’t a new phenomenon.

The prophet Zephaniah, the first writer we heard today, came to realize, like all the Old Testament prophets, that only a relatively small number of Israelites were ever going to observe the Lord’s law, seek justice and humility, and perhaps, as he puts it, “be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger.” That’s why he’s comforted by God’s promise to “leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord: the remnant of Israel.” Sad to say, even though this prophet of the 7th century B.C. preached to everyone, very few listened to him and changed their lifestyle.

Then we hear St. Paul addressing the Corinthians. The Christians at Corinth made up a pretty small percentage of the population of that large, bustling Greek city. And they certainly were not elite or influential. Paul reminds them of their tough reality: “Consider your own calling” he writes. “Not many of you were wise by human standards… or powerful… or were of noble birth.” Then he leads them to see the strength of their situation: “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise… the weak to shame the strong, the lowly and the despised… Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.” It’s interesting; what most of the world sees as terrible liabilities, Paul sees as the Christian community’s most valuable asset. No one can underestimate the power a person wields who chooses to imitate Jesus Christ.

St. Matthew echoes the same idea in the Beatitudes. When we hear this famous list, many of us think about some future time when we will get to experience these blessings. But the original people who heard this Gospel believed the opposite! Jesus’ words made them think about what had already happened. The Beatitudes aren’t pie-in-the-sky promises to lure them into doing the things Jesus taught in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. Instead, they are blessings that the community had already experienced. In their determination to follow the risen Lord, they had become poor and they mourned. They were meek, and they hungered and thirsted for righteousness. They had become merciful, clean of heart, peacemakers and persecuted for the sake of righteousness. And to their amazement, not only had they survived, but they were experiencing the very blessings that Jesus experienced when He did these same things!

I remember that when I was a kid, I was fascinated that water wouldn’t splash out of a bucket when I twirled it in an arc over my head. It stayed in the upside-down bucket no matter what the law of gravity said. At that point, other laws of nature kicked in which I knew nothing about.

Something analogous happens when you respond to God’s call. The outcome that you might naturally expect should happen, doesn’t happen! Instead, something that you never could have anticipated, takes place. Ronald Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall”… and he did it! Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” And He did! And so on.

God, you see, often operates within the framework of a lot of the laws we’ve grown familiar with—but He also works within other laws we haven’t yet learned about. There are precisely the laws of faith which make the poor blessed and the weak powerful.

Wouldn’t it be great if we, as Christians, could suspend our disbeliefs… shed our lukewarm hearts… and truly step into God’s mysterious and life-giving realm?



Today’s Readings:
Zephaniah 2, 3 and 3, 12–13
Psalm 146
1 Corinthians 1, 26–31
Matthew 5, 1–12