Be Grateful, Believe & Turn from Your Sins

The First Sunday of Lent
Today’s Readings: Dt 26: 4-10; Ps 91; Rom 10: 8-13; Lk 4: 1-13

The great prophet and lawgiver, Moses, lived 4,000 years ago. That’s why our first passage from Deuteronomy today is so amazing. Look how little has changed in the way people worship and relate to God.

Then, like now, the priest received the collection basket and set it before the altar of the Lord.

Then, like now, the people were reminded how they were rescued and blessed by God.

Moses said that his father was a wandering Aramean. All of our ancestors, without exception, were immigrants to this country—even those who came over on the Mayflower. Our forebears, often on blind faith alone, came from their respective “old countries” to escape poverty, famine, pogroms, oppression, injustice… to seek opportunity and a better way of life.

And America received us and became a conduit for God’s blessings. That’s why the old songs remind us: God bless America… My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty… O beautiful for spacious skies.

And we, too—like the Hebrews—became a great nation.

Just as Moses says, it is important that we remember our roots of poverty and pain and despair… because this leads us to remember that it was our good and loving God who brought us out of our own Egypts with his strong hand and outstretched arm—to remember he gave us our own land of milk and honey.

And if that weren’t enough, he promises an even more spectacular realm in the future: the heavenly home that has been prepared for us from all eternity. A place of absolute joy and love and fulfillment.

When we put it so simply, how can our hearts not be stirred with gratitude?

The trouble is, lots of times, people forget to give thanks. How many people get upset because their grandchildren don’t send them thank-you notes for birthday or Christmas gifts? Brides and grooms take years to say thanks for a wedding present. Forget courtesy or civility; people who should be grateful often act as though they are entitled to whatever kindnesses come their way!

There was an elderly man lying in a hospital bed. His wife of 55 years was at his bedside. He opened his eyes groggily and in a hoarse voice he whispered, “Is that you, Evelyn, at my side again?”

“Yes, dear,” she answered with a smile.

He said to her softly, “Remember years ago when I was in the Veterans’ Hospital? You were with me then. You were with me when we lost everything in that fire. And Evelyn, when we were so poor—you stuck with me then, too.”

The man sighed and said, “I tell you, Evelyn, you’re bad luck.”

Ah yes. Gratitude.

In fact, we all should be grateful to God, because his blessings extend to each and every one of us. Paul writes to the Romans: There is no distinction between Jew and Greek. God doesn’t care who you are, where you come from, who your Daddy is. We are simply a single soul who meets our one God.

St. Paul continues: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

This week, we begin the holy and privileged season of Lent. Our first Lenten task is to “re-center” ourselves… to stir back up the embers of our gratitude… to remember: Yes, God did this for me and I should be grateful… I am grateful.

And our second Lenten task is to refocus our belief: Yes, I believe that Jesus is Lord. I’ll say it out loud: “JESUS IS LORD!” I mean it! O Lord, help my unbelief. I do believe he rose from the dead.

Lastly, our final Lenten task is to try to turn away in our lives from all the things that interfere with and impede our gratitude and belief. This is all the stuff we call sin.

As Christ tells us again and again and again, humanity’s biggest immorality is injustice… hatred… condemnation of our brothers and sisters… judgment and rejection of others. And the worst hypocrisy is when it’s done in the name of religion. We’ve got to train ourselves, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to forgive… to bless everyone, including our enemies… to be patient and loving and generous and kind.

Instead of giving up beer or chocolate or TV this Lent, why not give up your prejudice or your sarcastic mouth or your ingratitude?

And having set these before the Lord, your God, you shall bow down in his presence.

Vulnerability

The 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: 1 Sam 26: 2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23; Ps 103; 1 Cor 15: 45-49; Lk 6: 27-38

It’s been some years since I’ve played regularly, but I’ve always enjoyed a good game of bridge. The version of the game you usually play at home is called “rubber bridge.” In bridge, the side that wins the first of three games towards making their contract is said to be “vulnerable.” That means that they can rack up more points and bonuses—but it also means that they can be hit with greater penalties. In other words, to be vulnerable means that you were successful in your game, and the price of that success is that you are now more at risk than normally!

That sounds like a pretty good description of the position that King Saul found himself in in the first mass reading today. This accomplished warrior was on another winning campaign. He was surrounded by three thousand hand-picked, elite and well-trusted soldiers. And yet, here he was, the king of Israel, completely vulnerable as he lay sleeping. David could easily have finished Saul off. If it weren’t for David’s deep compassion and fear of the Lord, Saul would have been a goner.

I very much like this story on two different levels. First, it encourages us to be like David and not take advantage of people’s vulnerability. And second, it’s a great metaphor for the way that God is compassionate towards us in our own vulnerability.

Did David have an unbelievable opportunity, or what?! He could have picked up Saul’s own spear—or just given the order to his loyal Abishai—and Saul would have been dead. No more running for his life, no more living in fear.

But no. David chose to do the honorable thing.

How many opportunities each of us has, too! When the moment is right, I can cheat on my partner or my spouse… backstab a friend or tear him down in front of other friends… I can keep the extra change when the cashier isn’t paying close attention… I can swipe a few bucks out of Mom’s purse when she’s in the kitchen cooking dinner… I can tell a lie and get away with it at home or work or school because people believe they can trust me... or I can be disloyal or manipulative in any one of a thousand other ways, large and small.

You see, anyone who loves or trusts people makes himself vulnerable. It happened to Our Lord so many times—from the people snickering at him behind his back right down to the betrayal by Judas Iscariot—and even the betrayal by Peter when three times he denied knowing Jesus. And obviously, it can and does happen to us, as well.

How much courage and strength—and love!—it takes not to take advantage of that priceless opportunity to exploit someone’s vulnerability. And that, dear friends, is one excellent definition of what it means to be merciful and compassionate as Christ encourages us in today’s gospel.

Jesus, of course, is the master when it comes to mercy and compassion. I think it’s sobering in the extreme to pause now and then and think about your own life… your own weaknesses and sinfulness. Each of our faults actually makes us quite vulnerable. How? What if God were to decide that he can’t stand it anymore? That he’s tired of people making a fool of him… tired of our willful disobedience… tired of our disloyalty and disrespect… tired of us being his enemy? Why, he could strike us down in an instant!

Yet we know—we trust—that the Lord doesn’t operate that way… thank God! “As a father has compassion on his children,” says the psalm, “so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”

So God gives us another chance… more time to wise up and turn ourselves around. He is patient with us. He gives us the benefit of the doubt so we can do better—just like any loving parent would do.

Not only does God want us to love him more, he also wants us to love each other more. That’s why he tells us to stop judging… stop condemning… start forgiving… start turning the other cheek.

If that sounds like a daunting turnabout, let me share with you some barnyard trivia.

A hundred years ago, a cow was considered outstanding if she produced 600 pounds of milk in one year. That works out to an average of about a pound-and-a-half a day. Today, even a so-so dairy cow easily gives 30 pounds of milk a day. That’s a 20-times jump! And it’s not unheard of to see a 70-times jump in production.

Another example is the farmer’s plain ol’ hen. Wild birds only lay 6 eggs a year, but cultivated hens can lay as many 365 eggs a year—that’s one a day.

The point is, just the way that animals have a natural capacity to expand, so do human beings. Just when we feel we have no strength or ability to give any more, the strength we need emerges.

So you think you can’t stop judging or condemning? You think you can’t forgive or turn the other cheek? Yes… you can.

This coming week, we will once again find ourselves beginning the holy season of Lent. Wouldn’t it be the best Lenten program in the world if we would promise to live out today’s beautiful lesson! If you start to think you can’t do it, just think of the cows and chickens.

May our good and merciful Lord fill your heart with his love and his grace and draw you ever closer to himself. Amen!

The Way to the Kingdom of God

The 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: Jer 17: 5-8; Ps 1; 1 Cor 15: 12, 16-20; Lk 6: 17, 20-26

Most days, when I go up to the post office to pick up the mail, I find the letterbox stuffed. On the average day, most of the mail goes straight into the trash. There are catalogues—sometimes multiple copies of the same one; sales letters offering new credit cards or life insurance; appeals from religious orders to help support their good works around the world; even envelopes that look like personal letters until you open them up and find that they’re just computer imitations. Sometimes, I even find mail addressed to former pastors or secretaries or church volunteers.

My point is, lots of times, you can’t help but feel that you’re pretty unimportant in today’s computer-driven world. It’s like you’re just another consumer listed on somebody’s computer printout.

But happily, that’s not how God sees things. In spite of all the messages to the contrary that the world sends us, we are important. We are made in God’s image and likeness, and we are destined to live with God forever. And in the gospel today—the famous “Sermon on the Plain”—Jesus tells us this in a way totally different from what the world says.

The world tells us that people are like a box of tissues—disposable. Abort babies who get in the way; you can always have another kid when the timing is better. Put poor, sick Grandma out of her misery. It’s OK to hate people who are different; they’re only darkies, or queers, or cracker trash; we don’t need them; we can associate with a better kind.

A couple of weeks ago, we read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where he explained that we’re all vital parts in the Body of Christ. But the world tells us that we’re more like a spare part—expendable. I don’t need you; I can get another friend…or another employee… or another wife.

And after a while, we begin to believe all this.

There’s an old legend about a little Indian boy. You may have heard this—but it really illustrates the Lord’s point today in the Sermon on the Plain.

One day, an Indian boy found an eagle’s egg. He carefully placed it in a nest of chicken eggs. Before long, an eaglet hatched along with the brood of chicks.

The eaglet grew up with the chickens. It scratched in the dirt for seeds the way that the chickens did. It cackled the way the chickens did. And it thrashed its wings and flew a few feet off the ground the way the chickens did.

Then one day, the eaglet looked up into the clear blue sky and saw a most marvelous sight. It saw a magnificent bird soaring majestically through the sky on two big golden wings.

The little eagle’s breath was taken away. It was all excited and asked an older chicken, “What kind of bird is that?”

“That’s an eagle,” said the older chicken. “But forget about it! You could never soar like that in a million years!”

That’s the same depressing message that the world sends us today. It tells us: “Forget about Jesus Christ and his teachings. He’s the Son of God. His world was completely different from our world. You could never be like him. You could never soar the way he did—not in a million years… and do you really believe that UFO’s landed in Roswell, New Mexico?”

So most of us cast our eyes down rather sheepishly and figure, “Yeah, you’re right. What was I thinking? How could I be like Jesus? That’s crazy.”

But our Lord said, in the gospel of John, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.” (Jn 14: 12).

St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world… to reduce to nothing those who are something.” (1 Cor 1: 27–28).

All of this leads us back to the Sermon on the Plain in the gospel today.

Jesus stood among a huge crowd of poor people in a field—people that the world considered disgusting, worthless, disposable—and he said, “Blessed are you who are poor; for the kingdom of God is yours!”

He stood among the hungry—and Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied!”

He addressed the hundreds of sorrowing people sitting on that plain—folks that the world considered expendable—and he said, “Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh!”

To us, too, the world says: “You’re poor? Bummer! What a rotten break—but I’m going off to Disney World and really don’t have time to talk right now. See you around. You’re hungry? Oh, that’s a shame—maybe you should get a better job so you can support your family. You’re weeping? Gee, cheer up; I really can’t stand being around miserable people; it’s such a downer.”

But Christ, the Compassionate One, says, “Rejoice… the kingdom of God is yours.”

He reminds us in this startling message that he came among us as a poor soul… hungry… sorrowing… rejected and misunderstood… yet he conquered this world and has shown us the way to paradise… if we are willing to believe him and accept his teaching.

Open your heart and head, and ask God to fill you with his amazing blessings and wisdom. Yes—truly—the kingdom of God is yours…

Holy Persistence

The 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: Isa 6: 1-8; Ps 138; 1 Cor 15: 1-11; Lk 5: 1-11

We all have those days when nothing seems to go right. I think Simon-Peter was having one of those days in today’s gospel episode. He spent the whole day and night fishing without any luck. He was tired and discouraged to the extreme when he steered his boat back to shore… and then had to go through all the work of cleaning up his vessel and nets.

I wonder what was going through his mind as a professional fisherman when his friend, Jesus, came to him and said, “Simon, take your boat back out into the deep waters and lower your nets for a catch.” Jesus wasn’t even a fisherman—yet here he was telling Simon how to run his business.

You’ve got to feel for poor Simon. Come on, we’ve all been there. You do your best. You work hard. But the results are zero—in a relationship, with a project at work, in the kitchen at home. And if frustration sets in, that seems to jinx things even more: the harder you try, the less you produce. You finally get to the place where all your wisdom tells you: just give up.

When you reach that point—and I speak from personal experience!—about the last thing you want to hear are the words, “Try harder!”

Automatically you want to snap back, “It won’t do any good. We’ve worked all night and we haven’t caught anything. What’s the point?”

Let’s talk for a little bit about this sense of frustration… disappointment… this failure.

In the overall scheme of things, having a bad day at work or school is no big deal. There’s always tomorrow…

But for lots of us, even minor setbacks can throw us into an emotional tailspin. We may become very disheartened and depressed. It’s as though there is a bitter emptiness in our soul. And then a deeper fear sets in. We try so hard to avoid failure that we wind up avoiding all risk. Life becomes dull and miserable—a first-class rut.

Fortunately for Simon-Peter, Jesus came along and challenged him.

Sometimes, we all need to listen to another point of view.

Sometimes, we need to risk one more failure—to go and do what our common sense tells us cannot be done, and to try what we know will not work.

Sometimes, we just need to head out into the deep waters and let down our nets for no better reason than Jesus asks us to.

Our Lord—and I don’t know how he managed to keep from chuckling to himself, since of course he knew what was going to happen—had to have been greatly amused to see Simon’s reaction at his whopping catch of fish.

And Simon—well, he recognized immediately that God’s power was at work here. He also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever Jesus asked of him, he would be able to do it. That’s precisely why we hear that as soon as Simon got his boat back to shore, he and his partners James and John left everything and followed him.

Funny, isn’t it? In the midst of an ordinary day—in fact, about the most rotten day imaginable—three regular guys… normal working stiffs… found God, overcame their fear of failure, and discovered their life’s work. Pretty amazing!

I bet you never knew that failure and disappointment could be so exciting!

But that’s just the point: with Jesus Christ at your side, you can conquer your fears and turn your losses into gains. Remember how Ann Landers used to say it? When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

I know some of you are probably watching American Idol on TV. In the matter of just a few short months, some total unknown is going to wind up a musical superstar. But that meteoric rise to success is so unheard of that it’s just as miraculous as winning a lottery jackpot.

I was reading the other day about country music star, Randy Travis, who’s up for a Grammy Award next week. When Randy burst onto the music scene several years ago, some people called him an “overnight success.” Actually, his wife, who’s also Randy’s business manager, laughs at this. She said it took ten full years for him to be discovered. During that decade, she sold her jewelry and pooled all her cash to keep her nightclub open long enough for someone to discover what she had discovered: the voice of Randy Travis. For ten long and lonely years, she promoted Travis while he fried catfish, washed dishes and sang in the nightclub. Then it finally clicked. He had a hit song, followed by an album contract, an offer for a tour and even a movie deal. Such was his “overnight” success! Actually, Randy Travis made it faster than most musicians. According to a University of Chicago research team, the average time it takes for a professional musician to “make it big” is 17 years and 2 months. Jesus says: Hang in there.

Another little story: during the California gold rush, there were two brothers who sold everything they had and went prospecting. They discovered a gold vein, staked a claim, and proceeded to get down to the serious business of getting the gold ore out of the mine. At first, everything went really well, but then a strange thing happened. The vein of gold simply disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there. The brothers continued to pick away, but without any success. Finally, they gave up in disgust.

They sold their equipment and claim rights for a few hundred dollars and took the train back home. Now, the man who bought the claim hired an engineer to examine the rock strata of the mine. The engineer advised him to continue digging in the same spot where the former owners had left off. And three feet deeper, the new owner struck gold.

A little more persistence and the two brothers would have been millionaires!

Again, Jesus is telling us the exact same thing he told Simon-Peter:

There’s gold in you, too! Can’t you dig three feet more?