Sunday, Feb 21, 2016

Lk 18: 9-14; Phil 3:5-9; Dt 6:4-18 Publican & Pharisee

Recently in our house we have been spending some time doing dream work. I have never really researched this topic but I know it is commonly said that every character in your dream is you. So if your mother is in your dream, it is really you. If your brother is there, it’s you; your boss, it’s you; your neighbor, it’s you; that person you do not know, it’s you; your dog, it’s… well I don’t know about the dog, but who knows? Dogs certainly appear in my dreams! So all these characters are really aspects of our personality or our psychological make up or our shadow, sending us messages. I don’t know about you but for me some of these messages I would just as soon not receive. In a way, the beauty of it all is that we can’t control it, but that can also be the unnerving thing about dreams.

As I was thinking about this morning’s gospel passage, the dream work analysis kept coming to me. The publican and the Pharisee were well known characters to Jesus’ audience. For us they are just features of an historical past we can read about but never experience. For Jews of Jesus’ time, the publican is what today we would call the tax collector. But even though we have images of IRS personnel we seldom see them or recognize them. The publican, however, actually collected the taxes and added his own cut on top! That was the system. And he was collecting taxes for a foreign occupier. He was known and despised.

The term Pharisee is known to us today, but not the reality. It might be a stretch to say that they were something like the morals police in some Muslim countries. But outside of that, they exist only in our imagination. Because of St. Paul’s self-revelation, we know something about the character of a Pharisee, and then we have this parable to fill in the picture a little more. Scrupulous in
observance of religious law, self-satisfied and self-important within the boundaries of their social and cultural milieu. So we can get the idea even if we don’t have the personal experience of knowing these people.

On hearing this story, it is easy to be drawn into the scene and identify with the characters. Since the publican is viewed as the humble one and called “justified” by Jesus, we can easily lean towards the desire to be like him. But I would submit that, similar to our dreams, we can really be both of these characters. For the publican, I would suggest that there is not a person in this temple who has not at some time or other in church, in a private place in your home or elsewhere, gotten down on your knees to ask for God’s mercy. The publican knew himself and what he was and was moved to compunction in a grace-filled moment in the Temple. We experience those moments too. We don’t have to know the publican intimately to know how we identify with him. And we should not forget that when he asked for mercy he knew how great his need was for that mercy.

The Pharisee’s situation is a different matter. He has followed the law and in effect is not asking God for much of anything. He is simply reporting on his exemplary life. But he does say one thing that is very revealing and it is what links us all to him as well. In the course of his prayer he glances toward the publican and with great condescension sneers: “I’m glad I’m not like him!” Oooh the delight in his voice! And yet we might also say the same thing about the Pharisee: “I’m glad I’m not like him.” Indeed, that’s the issue. I would submit that, just as with the Pharisee, we all have let those same words slip from our lips, or cross through our minds, or linger in our hearts, or lie in our subconscious. Madoff: “I’m glad I’m not like him;” a terrorist who cuts off a victim’s head: “I’m glad I’m not like him;” a rapist: “I’m glad I’m not like him;” and we can all extend this list. Here’s the problem: If we say these words or think this thought, we are cutting ourselves off from the core teaching of our faith: to love God and our neighbor. What the Pharisee is saying is not just a matter of comparison, he is placing a barrier between himself and the publican. The option of becoming like the other person is not the issue, rather it is the need to love that person, regardless of the deed. “God sends the rain on the just and the unjust alike.”

God is the creator of all, and declared it: “good.” God created all of us and loves all of us, that does not mean God condones all our behavior. But we are also called by God and by Christ to love one another. Indeed, what is the Kingdom of God if not the place where love reigns? And what is Christ’s teaching if not a constant call for us to strive to purify our hearts so that we can experience the Kingdom that is “within us.” The one thing common in all human beings is that God placed love that only God can give into each of us. However, our fragile and weak human nature intervenes to cover up that hidden treasure. Our insecurities, shame, fears, angers, hurts, grievances, ambitions, pride, and pettiness all conspire to obscure the core love that Christ is calling us to bring forth. To love does not necessarily mean to like. We can’t like everyone, we can’t be pals with everyone, but we can love everyone because love God gives is about treating people correctly and with respect.

Why is coming here to church to pray and participate in the common feast of Eucharist is so necessary? We forget. We forget to love, we forget we are connected to everyone else: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, straight, gay, Christian of any denomination, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, we are all God’s creation and loved by God. Our challenge is to strive to emulate that love. The Eucharist is the participation in the bonding of love that Christ established for all humanity. All who participate are linked together by that mystery. This happens nowhere else. This is what we proclaim to all and invite all to join. It is the sign of the Kingdom, the visible reality of the Kingdom to come. It is the nourishment for the building up of that Kingdom that is within us all. It is why the words of the Pharisee strike us as harsh and remind us to look within ourselves to find and purify those same sentiments lurking in our hearts. We can’t do it alone. We need God’s help. It is always there, we just need to grasp that open hand of God and not let go.

Christ is in our midst.

Homily February 14, 2016

 Luke 18: 35-43

by Sr. Rebecca

1.    Prior to our Gospel today, Jesus and his disciples have just left Jericho, which is near Jerusalem.  In the previous section the disciples seem to assume that they are Jesus’ chosen ones, and yet two of the disciples ask Jesus for the privilege of sitting at his right and left in his glorious Kingdom.  The disciples just don’t see, don’t get it. They are forever stuck in their small minds: they think that Jesus is talking about a kingdom that is “of this world.” They have not yet realized that the kingdom of God is first and foremost of an interior realm, which requires a conversion of heart and mind: an enlightenment.  In today’s Gospel, what follows, then, is the event of Jesus’ healing the blind beggar, sitting not in glory, but in abject humiliation and powerlessness. 

2.    We can identity five distinct moments in the encounter between Jesus and the blind man:

a.    In contrast to all those crowding and pushing around Jesus, the blind man is alone, apart, sunken in his misery.  No one knows better than he how needy, how powerless he is, left to his own means.  This alone shows us the first condition for being a disciple:  not to deceive ourselves, rather to acknowledge our interior state, i.e., not conscious or aware of ‘who’ I really am, and so often relying on our own steam, even in the realm of our spiritual lives.

b.   When the blind beggar heard that Jesus was passing by, he began to cry out:  “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”  How did this man know about Jesus? We have no clue except that perhaps he must have heard about Jesus and the goal of his mission, since he associated Jesus with being son of David, meaning that he trusts that Jesus is the Messiah.  And his profession of faith in Jesus’ messianic identity is not merely intellectual, a “knowing about,” since he cried out from the very depths of his being.  He sees with his inner eyes what others are blind to.  The huge crowd, pressing around Jesus, rebuke him, trying to shut him up.   But Jesus, having no interest in faceless crowds, only in needy individuals, suddenly takes notice, stops, and commands the blind man to be brought to him. 

c.     Mark’s Gospel adds an interesting piece:  Throwing off his mantle he sprang up and came to Jesus.  This gesture, throwing off the mantle, is very telling.  The mantle has served him against the elements: weather as well as a pad to sleep on, cover himself, and maybe too, at times, providing a space to hide himself against the stares, the humiliating gaze of passersby.  Hearing Jesus calling him, he  somehow knows he no longer needs this wrap.  He springs up like a rocket coming before Jesus, just as he is, ragged, and dirty.  Perhaps there is something in the tone of Jesus’ voice that goes right to the core of who he really is, and so it no longer matters to him what he looks like on the outside. 

d.    Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” The man replies, “Lord, let me receive my sight.” Jesus wants the man to say what he wants.  Jesus is interested in our desires.  By getting in touch with our desires, we are, by that very awareness, in touch with our emptiness, our inability to fill our deepest needs. Jesus says to him, “Receive your sight,” and then he adds, “Your faith has made you well” or “made you whole”.  Relationship here is crucial in the healing.  Intimacy:  to becoming truly whole and alive, we need to be consciously connected with the Source of our being but also to the very human person of Jesus.  This event is one of many witnesses to what Jesus' ministry is about:  “The kingdom (or realm) of God is within you.”  For this awareness to take root, we need to experience our own powerlessness and be receptive to the consciousness of God within us.  Every healing in Jesus’ ministry is a revelation, a manifestation of God’s desire for us to be made whole from within ourselves.  

e.     The story ends with the man receiving his sight and following Jesus.  “Following Jesus” means becoming a disciple.  

3.     As we prepare to enter Pre-Lent next week, may we take time for silent reflection on this encounter of the blind man with Jesus, putting ourselves in a similar space of openness to God’s inner call.    Recalling the exhortation at the end of Br. Stavros’ homily last week:  Let us sit in solitude and silence and allow the experience our own difficulties, blindness, all the apparent dead ends of our lives, to be exposed patiently to God’s compassion.  May these become as stepping stones to loving surrender to God.  Let us remember, too, that this requires a practice of prayer with concentration and focused energy.  Since we have only a limited supply of attention, we will be too scattered if we squander our spiritual energy in needless directions.

Someone asked Helen Keller, “Isn’t it terrible to be blind?”  She replied, “it’s more terrible to have eyes and not see.”  In a poem she elaborated: “It’s a great pity / that in the world of light  / the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience / rather than as a means of adding fullness to life.”

May the former blind man and Helen Keller beckon us to look beyond appearances into the depths of the way things really are.  This means to open our inner eyes and perceive God before us, God beside us, God within us, God who calls us to a journey of wholeness and inner freedom to step out into the unknown with trust and follow God wherever and however God leads.