A House Divided –Community in Christ

(some thoughts on the Mass readings from last Sunday 10 June 2018)

“If a kingdom is divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house is divided against itself,
that house will not be able to stand.” –Mark 3:20-35

 In today’s first reading, from Genesis 3, we get the story of what happens after Adam and Eve have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  We have that terribly true vision of how sin divides a kingdom, a house, a family.  The first division we see is of God searching for His beloved creation. God calls out to them, “Where are you?” (cf. Genesis 3:9-15) That plaintive cry is the first sign of division.  Before this, they walked together in the garden, but now Adam and Eve hide from their creator. Next, we see the crumbling of the House of Adam as he blames Eve (and God) for his actions: “The woman whom you put here with me –she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.” (3:12) And last we see the entire animal kingdom begin to break down into “enmity” as Eve blames the serpent. And we are left with a vision of the cost of sin: division, enmity, seemingly endless struggle: “He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” (3:15)

Division truly is the cost of sin. It divides us externally: socially, inter-personally, through corruption, crime, broken societies, war and greed, etc and it divides us internally; driving us into hypocrisies and double standards. We begin to not only hide the truth, but hide from the truth, until we may not even know who or what we really are. As Paul says in Romans: “I do not understand what I do. What I want to do, I do not do; but what I hate, I do.” (cf. 7: 15-20)

Think of the priest with a sterling reputation, who secretly engages in corrupt or abusive behavior or the honored Bishop who covers it up.  The award winning movie mogul who seduces young women, promising them career opportunities, then threatens them if they speak up. The socially conscious politician who takes advantage of a young intern and tries to cover it up.  We don’t do what we want to do, and we do what we hate… Though in the moment it may not seem that way.

In my own life I can see this quite plainly when I sit down to write (hoping to finish that unfinished novel) but find myself 40 minutes later eating chips and queso and watching a Youtube video of W.C. Fieldsplaying pool.  (Sloth?  gluttony?)  And when I realize, my first instinct is to hide what I’ve been doing. Not to accept it and be happy that I had some fun, but to hide it. To close the browser and open my document and spend 15 minutes beating myself up over wasting my writing time.  Or pretend I was doing research for a character who loves old movies!

Sin divides us. Satan knows that. And we should, too. Because sin is like a fault line that division runs straight through the heart of each one of us. 

The answer to this division is stated in very simple terms at the end of this gospel passage.  There is that wonderful and perplexing image of Jesus being told that His mother and brothers are at the door asking for Him, to which He says:

“Who are my mother and my brothers?... Whoever does the will of my

Father in Heaven is my mother and my brother and my sister.” (Mk 12: 48-50)

The answer to the division of sin, is very simple. It’s unity. Inclusion. It is love. We must remember that we are all part of the body of Christ –every single one of us. 

The readings from last week’s mass began with God asking, Where are you? Not because God doesn't know or can't find them, but because Adam and Eve don't know.  They are lost (and very divided). And the readings ended with that beautiful reconciling (and inclusive) answer from Mark's gospel. Jesus opens a door to all of us and assures us:  

We aren't lost. We don't have to be divided.
In fact, we are invited to be part of the family. 

Don’t hide from that.

How is rebellion a sin of sorcery?

Meditation for 4^th Sunday of Easter

23 April 2018

“…How much longer do you mean to go on mourning over Saul,

now that I myself have rejected him?” –1 Samuel 16:1

“What we shall be has not yet been revealed…

when it is revealed we shall be like Him…”

--1 John 3:1-2

Recently my daughter brought me some old college literary magazines she’d come across.  She thought I might like to see them because they included some of my old poems and stories.  She was of the opinion that I might like to see them again.  I was grateful to her for thinking of me, but fearful of what I would find. Afraid of what I would see not only in the words, but behind them –in the young man who wrote them.

So, I let them sit for several days untouched.  Then, a sense of curiosity mingled with obligation and I figured I should at least take a look, so I could give them back to her. At first, I was struck by names of people I had not remembered, but suddenly recalled. It was a pleasantly bittersweet sensation; a nostalgia mingled with regret. I recalled those names; faces came to mind, but also the regret that I had not been kinder or braver. I know I was just a young kid –barely out of my teens—but I wish I had been less self-conscious, more generous toward them.

When I began to read my own works, it only got worse.  I suspect some truths should remain only memory.  By that I mean, being faced with a poem I had long remembered as being pretty good and finding some 37 years later that it just wasn’t… aah, ‘tis a stinging feeling. Like the old adage says of ignorance --it was bliss.  Being suddenly face to face with my own failure was very uncomfortable.  And I would say what was most uncomfortable about it was not that my writing was so mediocre, but that I had remembered it and imagined it so much better.  That feeling of shame at having –it seemed-- lied to myself was very disheartening and humbling.

And this brings me to two things I have read in scripture recently.  My slow walk through the Old Testament has just crossed into the books of Samuel, and I am reading of Saul and his failure at being Israel’s king.  He loses his way by seeking to please the people, instead of God. He is trying to be the kind of king the people want, instead of being the king God has planned for him to be.  And yet after Samuel delivers God’s message of failure, Saul is still concerned with how the people will perceive him.  That is a fascinating little bit of psychological insight on the part of the author, but what is even more interesting to me is the beginning of chapter 16 when God calls out Samuel with that beautifully odd chastisement:

“How much longer do you mean to go on mourning over Saul…”

God is calling Samuel to account. Why is he mourning over something that God has rejected?  What does he hope to gain? What is the point? In a sense, Samuel is rebelling against God’s judgment.  Instead of accepting God’s will, he is mourning over what might have been.  He is refusing to trust that God’s will is always good—even when we don’t understand it.

In the next sentence we learn there is another reason for God’s chastisement.  Samuel has a job to do. God tells him, “fill your horn with oil and go,” because there is another king (David)  to be anointed.  In other words: Why are you sitting here moaning about something you can’t change? Get up and fill your horn and go. I have work for you (cf. 16:1b). 

In a way that’s what I was doing as I looked through those old Laurels magazines. I was mourning over Saul. I was regretting choices I had made, but also promise that had not been fulfilled, dreams that had not been realized and all that might have been.

Of course, there are times when we should look over our lives with remorse and regret and that’s why some of us go to “Confession” and why other might go see a therapist.  We see that things haven’t always been right or good and maybe even that there are patterns of behavior that we want to change.  That’s healthy and good. 

But sitting and bemoaning what cannot be changed is a form of rebellion.  It is not just a refusal to accept the truth, but a kind of challenge to God.  Lurking beneath that moaning is the unhealthy suspicion that if God had left things up to us, we would have done a better job.

“Rebellion is a sin of sorcery,

presumption a crime of idolatry.”

–1 Samuel 15:23

Sitting there, ruminating over old hurts or even old failings, we become like a sorcerer stirring our pot, adding a pinch of spite to a dollop of indignities and then stirring in dash of unfairness and suddenly… voila! A bubbling cauldron of heart hardening stewed egotism ready for a bowl full of Saltines.  

And we can sit there stirring it all up and ladling it over and over until it is boils over, or we can hear that distant voice calling us from somewhere so close it seems to be whispering in our ear:

Why are you still moaning over that? Get up. Fill your horn with oil. There is work to be done.

And that is what I heard at mass this past Sunday. In the second reading from the first letter of John, I heard God calling:

Why are you dwelling in the past? Why are you moaning about what might have been?  That is not who you were made to be.  Who you were made to be has not yet been revealed.  But when it is…

The message of Easter is a message of new life. Yes, we all have made mistakes and yes we all have regrets, but to live in those regrets and to cling to the hurt of those mistakes or hard feelings is to live in a tomb. It is to rebel against the glorified Christ who destroyed death, who opened the tomb that it might be empty.  Why on earth would we want to go back in? To pull the stone back over us and hide in the cold and the dark?

It's not about who you were, or what you did or even who you wanted to be.  You are not the sum of all your mistakes, all your hurts, not even of all your successes; thanks to Christ, we are something new. Something more.  Something made in His image.  We can’t really know what it is, but we know it is something glorious –because it is like Him. So, Mr. Sutter… it is time to put away childish things. Fill your horn (get out your pen), there is anointing to be done.

Praying for hunger: Corpus Christi & the food of God

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.”
--John 6:53

 “Brothers and sisters: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not
a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break, is it
not a participation in the body of Christ?  Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”
--1 Corinthians 10:16-17

What does it mean to eat the flesh of the Son of Man? What does it mean to participate in the blood of Christ?  What does it mean to hunger after the body of Christ?

Here in the 21st century, as we struggle with all the issues of our day, how do we live out this calling? How do we truly participate in the blessing of His blood? His body? Those are questions that are key to the solemnity of Corpus Christi. We are called on this day to give special attention and adoration to the sacramental presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.  And the church has selected these two readings from Corinthians and John's Gospel to help us remember that we are called to participate in the blessing that is the body and blood of Christ.  And so, some churches will have processions and set aside time for adoration of the exposed Eucharist: the body of Christ. It is a call we must not ignore, because it is a call for us to grow not only in our faith but in our hunger for God.

The first reading for today's mass is the one that spoke to me today.  The Old Testament reading  from Deuteronomy. And especially this passage:

“…He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you
with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers…” (8:3)

In my New Jerusalem Bible, this verse reads:

"He humbled you, He made you feel hunger..."

I think that reading it I was reminded of poor Abram (in Genesis) being called out of his homeland and away from his kinsfolk and lead to a foreign land. Humbled and probably feeling a bit afflicted by God asking so much of him. And, of course we see the same kind of reaction from the Jews wandering in the desert for 40 years, complaining to Moses that He led them out of Egypt (where at least they had food and shelter) only to let them die of hunger in the desert.

  When God leads us away from the familiar and the safe, He leads us into a kind of hungering --and certainly it is  (as far as I can tell) always a humbling experience. God leads us out of our safe space and allows us to be afflicted with hunger, if not for actual food, then for safety and security, for friends and family, for comfort and reassurance.  And God lets us be afflicted by this hunger, not to test us or prove to us He's the boss, but in order that He might feed us with a bread unknown to us and to our parents. 

What is this bread that we do not know? This manna? That is my question?  And how do we get it? I think there is a clue in a famous scene in John’s Gospel.  When the apostles return to find Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well, they offer Him something to eat, but Jesus tells them He has food to eat that they don’t know about.  And when they are puzzled by that, He explains:

“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete His work…”
–John 4:34

I wonder if that doesn’t tell us something about Heavenly food, about manna, and also about the importance and the work of prayer. We tend to think about prayer as a way of filling our tank. We go to God in prayer so He can fill our spiritual tank up for the work we have to do, or the world we have to face, etc. etc.  We go to God because we need grace and we have a spiritual longing for the divine.  I certainly don’t deny any of that.  But, I also wonder if the paradox of prayer is that instead of filling us up, the real work of prayer is to empty us out. And that by emptying us it prepares us to be filled by the real food of God’s blessing; the real manna; that food that Jesus is talking about.  We go to prayer not to be filled, but to be emptied, so we can be made hungry for  the will of God, the work of God.  To be made ready for this meal, we have to be humbled, and perhaps a sign of this humility, of the process of being humbled is a growing hunger, a longing for something we cannot achieve on our own; something we cannot even imagine for ourselves: a food unknown to us and to our parents.

Like Abram, lead to a strange land, when we kneel in prayer we are emptied of all our earthly resources, all our powers and glories and achievements; humbled; we are emptied so that God can fill us with grace and make of us a blessing to the world –That is how we participate in the work of God. We pray not to be filled up, but to be emptied, so we can be fed by the work of God.
Want to know what work God has for you? Empty yourself in prayer. Let God afflict you with hunger through prayer. And then let God feed you with the food that Christ spoke of: the Work of God. 

Are you listening, Mr. Sutter?  Put down those chips and that bowl of dip, something better awaits you.