What kind of king? What kind of Kingdom? Thoughts on the Solemnity of Christ the King.

What kind of king?

 

“Pilate said: So, then you are a king?”

--John 19:37

 

 

What kind of king gets scourged at a pillar and then nailed to a cross?  What kind of king gets abandoned by His friends and is dragged away and abused –helpless and alone?  Crowned with thorns and made to bear his own cross to the place of his execution…?  What kind of king do we have?  And yet we celebrate at the end of each liturgical year—the solemnity of Christ the King.

 

And yet for this solemn celebration, we read not about the resurrection, but about the trial and impending death of Jesus.  Perhaps to remind us what kind of King we have, and what we did to Him when He came among us. 

 

We were in Garland, Texas this past weekend and attended the vigil mass for Christ the King in a church we’d never been to before: The Good Shepherd.  A beautiful church. Being a stranger in a church can be a kind of blessing.  When you get too familiar with a place (or person) you may stop paying attention, stop noticing. And being someplace unfamiliar, puts us on alert. We can’t just blindly sleepwalk to the same old pew and settle into a narcoleptic stupor. The unfamiliar can open our eyes –maybe out of fear or anxiety, but also out of wonder. Suddenly, because of the new setting, or new faces and new voices, even familiar prayers can suddenly seem new and mysterious.   And in that unfamiliar setting, something new can break through; we might even finally hear the voice of God speaking to us through His words and through His people.

 

So there I sat in that unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers, and feeling out of place, insecure, a little bit lost.  And when I heard Pilate asking Jesus: Are you a king?  I found myself looking around at the people around me, strangers, families, bored children and exhausted parents, ragged loners, and stoop shouldered elderly men and women… the rich and the poor, the very old and the very young, all of them come together, gathered, looking for something, hungering for something…

 

And it occurred to me: This is it! This is the Kingdom. Right here.  All around me.  The mother comforting her baby, the big sister helping her little brother, the father and the fatherless… exhausted and overwhelmed, the pious and the pitiful, the prayerful and the impatient.  Familiar and stranger, all of us… Gathered there like something out of the gospels; like those crowds that followed Jesus hoping for a miracle, hoping for healing, hoping for a sign; hoping for hope. Looking around I could see the merciful and the pure of heart, the meek as well as the peacemakers. I was sure some there were hungering and thirsting for righteousness, but I was also certain others were just hungering for dinner (since it was a vigil mass). But there they were… the Kingdom of God, and there I was (my wife by my side) sitting among them.

 

And sitting there, in that blessed moment I remembered something that happened just a few weeks earlier at our school Mass for All Saints day (Nov 1).

 

On holy days we usually have mass in our auditorium. When we do, I tend to be one of those teachers who stands by the wall, pretending to keep an eye on the students, trying to pay attention, while my mind wanders. So there I was, in a very familiar place, and falling into some very familiar patterns, trying to listen to the priest as he told us something about the beatitudes (which is the gospel for All Saints Day), but –as usual—finding myself distracted by thoughts of coffee and doughnuts… I remember he was making a connection between All Saints Day and the beatitudes and saying something about how there might be saints all around us, saints we never notice… I remember I liked what he was saying, but just as he was getting to his point, something happened.  At first, all I saw was one of the deans leap up from her seat and hurry to help someone. As I watched, I noticed two other teachers kneeling over a student who must have fainted. The dean rushed to them, and the school nurse was there, all of them helping this girl back to her feet, getting her up with such tenderness, such love, and such compassion. No hesitance, no fear. Without a pause, they simply stepped into the need of one of our girls.

 

That seems to me the perfect picture of a saint.  And that is what the kingdom of God looks like. A kingdom of saints… These were people I work with every day, people I often take for granted, but suddenly I was seeing them with fresh eyes, seeing them anew. Seeing them not just as coworkers and familiar faces, but as saints.

 

Perhaps it took being in a strange place, being startled out of the ordinary by the suddenness of a movement, for me to recognize it; to see the truth: the kingdom of God truly is among us.  We just have to wake up; just open our eyes and see it. See, the saints all around us. The merciful, the meek, the sorrowful and the helper… The kingdom of Christ is not like any earthly kingdom we can imagine. Not a place of splendor and riches. It is not a place of fame and fortune. It is a strange kingdom where to be first is to be last, and to live is to die to yourself and to follow a king who carries a cross. It is a place of saints hidden in the ordinary, saints who may be sitting on the pew right next to us, saints who walk always toward the need of another and never away. Always toward the king and His cross.   

 

Let this coming Advent be a time of strangeness. Let us all pray to be taken out of ourselves, out of the ordinary, even if it is just for a moment—so that we can see, and hear, and recognize the mystery of our king and His kingdom. A King who was born in a stable and slept in a manger, and who –if only we let ourselves see it—comes to us constantly, in the familiar and the strange, in the need of a stranger, or the kindness of a friend; there He is –if only we have eyes to see.

 

 

Pay attention--a brief meditation on the readings for 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

“Learn a lesson from the fig tree…”

--Mark 13:24-32

 

The Lesson of the Fig Tree: thirty-third Sunday in ordinary Times

 

For the past few weeks I have noticed a theme in the readings at mass: the importance of paying attention. It seems to me that regardless of whatever else is going on, Jesus keeps reminding His disciples (and us) to open our eyes—to see!

 

In today’s readings, both the Gospel and the passage from Daniel (12:1-3) speak of fearful signs and earth-shaking events that sound a lot like the end of the world.  The reading from Hebrews (10:11-14, 18) alludes to a final judgement, and the Psalm (16) offers a kind of road map for how to traverse troubling times: Keep your eye on the Lord.

 

But notice that instead of telling His followers to run for cover or to buy generators and stock up on canned goods and self-composting toilets, Jesus offers a very different kind of advice: pay attention. Last week Jesus sat down in the temple area and watched the people, then drew the disciples attention to the action of one particular poor widow. This week’s call to attention takes more of an arboreal approach.

 

“Learn a lesson from the fig tree.

When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves,

you know that summer is near. In the same way,

when you see these things happening,

know that he is near, at the gates.”

 

The “He” Jesus speaks of is the Son of Man, a term that would have had messianic and apocalyptic associations for the people of Israel. Daniel uses it to refer to a heavenly figure, perhaps the archangel Michael, who will come and set Israel free from the Babylonian captivity, but when Jesus uses it, He seems to refer to Himself.  But, it is interesting to me that the lesson Jesus gives us here isn’t about how to recognize the actual “Son of Man” (whoever he is), but instead how to recognize that he is near. Already at the gate, even…  The lesson is about noticing things that we might not think matter—like the gift of the poor widow.  As Jesus tells the disciples, her tithe of two or three pennies is worth more than all the money and jewels (or large checks and endowments) the wealthy place in the weekly collection basket.

 

What I hear in this reading is less a warning about bad things that might be coming, and more a reminder to always Pay attention!

 

Watch, listen, learn—God is with you already, nearby, at your side, in fact! Look at the trees, look at the stars, look at the wonder of nature. See it. Feel it. Know it.

 

I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth.

The widow’s mite and the gift of sitting still—A meditation for the 32nd week of Ordinary Time

 

“[Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury and observed

how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many

rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came

and put in two small coins worth a few cents.

Calling His disciples to Himself, He said to them…”

--Mark 12:41-44

 

This Sunday at mass, I imagine many of us will hear a homily about the gift of a poor woman.  And clearly that is at the heart of the readings this Sunday. The gospel story of the widow whose almost meaningless gift is in fact the greatest—because she gave all that she had.  The Old Testament reading from 1 Kings 17 is about a poor widow dying of hunger, who gives the prophet Elijah the last of her food.  And then the psalm (146) reminds us of God’s generosity –especially to the poor:the hungry, the widow, the orphan, the captive and the stranger, and the reading from Hebrews (9:24-28) reminds us of the completeness of Christ’s gift, holding nothing back, a gift that costs everything and yet was given freely for our salvation. So, without a doubt, anyone focused on the gift of the widow and her mite will be in good company, in fact –as we can read—that is exactly what Jesus focused on.

 

But, going out on a limb here, this week my attention was caught by a different element. Earlier in the week I wrote about the image of God presented in the psalm—an image of tender care and compassion for the lowly and the oppressed. But now I’d like to focus on another image in the Gospel.  Instead of the widow and her coin,  I’ve been pondering what Jesus is doing. And wondering what lesson we might find in that.

 

And so I turn back to those words and ask: what exactly does He do?

 

Not very much. He just sits, and observes. Not exactly the plot of a Bruce Willis movie, I know; but stick with me.   Jesus takes a seat opposite the treasury, and watches as people walk past dropping their gifts (their tithes) into the box. Some rich people give great amounts of money, others not quite as much—and then He sees this one widow who gives only a couple of small coins—worth only a few cents.  And this catches His eye. 

 

And then, what does He do?  He calls the disciples to come hear what He has seen. He sits and He observes, and then He shares.  Let us think about that image, those two actions, for a moment.

 

The image of Jesus sitting down and observing the activity in the temple area may seem like a pointless detail. But, I was struck by it—in part because it reminds me of reading, of study, even daydreaming.  To sit and watch, feels like a very passive thing for Jesus to do, and passivity is not a posture our world tends to regard very highly.  We are a world that honors the doing, more than the observing. We are a world that much more readily honors Martha over Mary.

 

But, for some reason, this week I find something quite compelling in His action (or lack of action), I see an image of contemplation.  When we sit down, settle ourselves for a moment, we make room for something else, even someone else. When we sit down and observe, we begin to notice things, we may even begin to pay attention. In a sense, we allow ourselves to receive whatever gift the world, the universe, God, wants to reveal to us. To sit and observe may look like wasted time, but… in this Gospel it sure seems like Holy work.

 

Now let us look back at the story again. What does Jesus do next?  He calls his disciples and tells them what He has seen.  He sits and observes and then He shares. Observes and bears witness... 

 

He isn’t making up a story, or telling a parable, Jesus is simply telling the apostles what He actually saw, in the real world, right there in front of all their eyes. The disciples may have seen the very same thing, but Jesus draws their attention to what it means—to Him.  He tells them what He saw: the humble act of a passing stranger, and what it means to Him.  

 

What lesson am I drawing from this? To me, the posture of sitting and observing is a lesson about allowing ourselves to receive.  To receive a gift, we have to allow it to be given.  We have to open our hands, our eyes, our ears, and our hearts and accept it—whatever it is.  To sit and observe the world, the people around us, the neighbor jogging past on the street, the clouds drifting in the sky, a blue jay hopping on a branch, is to contemplate the gift of God’s creation. To receive –in some sense—a revelation. When we sit and observe, we allow God to feed us, to feed our spirit, our soul, even our imagination.  And that is a blessing.

 

But what is the natural reaction to receiving a gift?  We want to tell someone about it. We want to share. In a sense, we want to give it away.

 

This image of Christ reminds us to pay attention. Which may seem like such a small thing, but… as Jesus so often points out, sometimes the smallest gifts (even something worth only a few cents—like a mustard seed…) are worth more the most.

 

One last thought:  one of the problems we keep hearing about in our world today is loneliness, and anonymity.  So many people today feel unseen, unheard, unnoticed. They hunger for someone to notice them, for someone to just take a moment and pay attention.  The tiny gift of stopping whatever we are up to and paying attention to even just one person, is worth more than we can imagine.  To let someone know they are seen, noticed, is to let them know that they matter.  Their gift matters.

 

Sometimes the gift we give, is to simply sit and receive.

 

As Jesus reminds us, that humble gift that seems like “nothing” may be the greatest gift we have to give.