More than many sparrows: a lesson in humor and humility

“…do not be afraid.  You are worth more than many sparrows.”
--Matthew 10:31

How reassuring it is to know that we are worth more than many sparrows. Sparrows, two of which could be purchased for a small coin (a penny); and yet Jesus assures us that we are worth more than many of these and so we don’t need to be afraid.  Is that an example of divine humor? Heavenly irony?  Or was that meant to be seriously reassuring to the apostles.  One has to wonder.

                What I hear in these words is, first: a comic reassurance, and second: a lesson in humility.  Hearing this, can’t you imagine Jesus nodding His head reassuringly, the turn of a sly grin curling the edges of His lips?  “You are worth more than many sparrows…” Yes, we are important to God, and yes God knows every hair on your head; and so, by golly, when things get rough, whether my world seems to be falling apart, or all my magnificent plans and efforts are crashing down around me, I just need to remember: Don’t be afraid. You’re worth more than many sparrows!!  

Of course, that begs the question: Oh, yeah!  How many? At 2 for a penny, we’d have to get up to fifty-one sparrows just to be worth more than a quarter! A hundred-and-one, to be worth more than a half dollar.  You can’t even ride Metro for a half dollar any more.  How is that for a lesson in humility?

Of course, I’m being silly here.  I think it would take at least 250 sparrows just to get from my house to I-10.  And if I needed a transfer –say to get downtown-- that would be another 200 sparrows.  Minimum. And that doesn’t cover return fare.  Plus, at this point, (450 sparrows; questions of aerodynamics arise…) with a harness and some twine you might be able to… never mind. 

Thinking about this passage, and the idea that Jesus might be employing a little humor, I began to realize another lesson we learn from Dante’s Divine Comedy.  The utter absence of humor among the damned.  It isn’t that the souls in Dante’s Hell have no time for humor, but that they make no place for it. The souls in The Inferno take their sin very seriously.  Dante never talks about this; he simply shows it.  As we read the poem and meet the different souls in Hell, what we meet are souls who have lost the ability to laugh at anything.  This is a situation I find myself in on occasion. I am dead set on some plan, some activity or some respite that I am claiming for my own. It is something I deserve. Or it is –for instance, becoming a deacon—my right. My vocation. God’s will for me! I want it and I deserve it.  When I am in that mindset, there is little chance of me laughing at anything that goes even slightly amiss. You might not hear me yell or see me punch the wall, but if my plans go awry, inside I will begin to stew and seethe. And I will be unable to laugh –not just at the situation, but at anything. I will refuse to.  And you know, having been in that situation before, I can tell you –it is Hell.  I grow hard and bitter inside and lose my way.  Because –and I think this is key—I am not important enough!  I want to be not just more important than… anything… at times like that, I want to be MOST important.  And that is exactly what we see lived out in Dante’s Hell.  The souls are all stuck wanting to be MOST important. And none of them can let go of their sin (their ego) long enough to laugh at themselves and their situation.  Sadly I have found myself living that Hell, too many times.  In fact, just now.  I am trying to write this. I want to write this. But, I am the only one awake and our two new kittens are begging for food. So, I stop and give them food. As I am setting it out for them our older cat comes looking for food, too. So, I put food out for him. Thinking, I will get right back to my writing.  But then I notice the kittens have knocked a tote bag on the flood and so I stoop to pick it up. Still thinking I am going right back to writing. But… as I pick it up I discover something is on the bag. One of these critters has peed on the bag and now cat pee is spilling everywhere.  And when I try to pour it into the trash the trash is overflowing and the pee spills down the side of the kitchen trash bin and now it is spread across the floor and over the side of the bin and maybe on the refrigerator and the tile floor to the washing machine and… and instead of getting bck to writing I am mopping the floor with paper towels and Windex.  And when my wonderful kind and always sweet daughter asks me what happened, instead of laughing at it all, I snap and murmur something bitter about cats and pee and tote bags and trash cans and laundry and...  So, yes! For me, this isn’t always easy.  Even when I am meditating on the Heavenly qualities of humility and humor, I can so quickly stumble and slip in the cat pee of my pridefulness, my need to feel MOST IMPORTANT.  And I think that is a very real kind of Hell.   

Clearly, this is a lesson Jesus is still trying to teach me: learn to laugh at yourself. A little humor and humility will go a long way in bringing about the Kingdom of God.  P.S. And –when you do the laundry, make sure to balance your load. Uh, oh. Time to check on that loud knocking coming from the washroom.      

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.

Condemned already: Making our own Hell

“Whoever believes in Him is not condemned,

but whoever does not believe is condemned already …”

--John 3: 16-18

I’ve been think about Dante again.  The Divine Comedy is always on my mind, it seems. The wisdom and the beauty of that great poem do feel truly “divine” sometimes, and the lessons I have learned by reading and rereading it have scarred my life. I say that only half-jokingly, because my experience of Dante now colors almost everything I read or do or learn. His poem seems to be (for me) a kind of guide or spiritual master that teaches me not only about the beauty of language and poetry and reason, but also how to read and finally how to live.

In the poem, Dante travels through the three zones or stages of the afterlife: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.  Guided for most of his journey by the poet Virgil, Dante is given the chance to see the eternal state of souls (damned and blessed) as a way of saving his own. While he is travelling through Hell, one of the many souls Dante meets is Bertran de Born, a man who carries his own head before him as if it were a lantern.  Like many of the souls Dante meets, Bertran de Born is based on an actual person; in life he was a warrior and poet who advised the son of a king to go to war against his father. For that reason (dividing things that should be united) the poet depicts him walking through Hell with his head divided from his body.  This sounds like “poetic justice,” and in Dante it receives the name “contrapasso.”  But the key to Dante isn’t found in the words of a damned soul.  It isn’t even found coming from the mouth of Virgil, the poem’s seemingly timeless voice of reason who guides Dante down through the levels of Hell and then up the mountain of Purgatory. Virgil is the voice of God's justice. He explains to Dante the legalese of eternal damnation. And for so many readers of Dante there is a willingness to trust Virgil's explanation of everything. Because Virgil makes Hell seem so reasonable.  However, the problem with Virgil as Dante's guide to God's eternal judgment is that Virgil doesn't understand God's love, God's grace.  Because God's grace is beyond reason.  So, we look again at this passage from John's Gospel and we pay careful attention to not just what it seems to say, but what it actually says:

“…whoever does not believe is condemned already …”

Whoever does not believe is already condemned already.  Harsh words, it seems.  We don’t like to hear of condemnation –it sounds judgmental and merciless to our modern ear.  But, consider for a moment what it might mean that the non believer might be condemned already.  What could that mean? Does that mean they are beyond God's mercy? But what if that person started believing next month or next week or tomorrow morning? Would they still be condemned?  That doesn't make sense? And it doesn't fit with what we see of Jesus in the gospels. Jesus calls people to conversion and change and redemption.  And no one seems beyond His mercy and love. Think about the tax collectors and sinners Jesus has dinner with, or the centurion with the sick slave, or the woman caught in adultery... Jesus tells us Himself that He didn't come to call the righteous, but the sinners (Mark 2: 17).  So what does He mean when He says those who don't believe are condemned already?

I think we can see a powerful depiction of this condemnation in Dante's vision of Hell.  The souls in Dante’s Hell (his Inferno) are not depicted as simply suffering some horrible --yet poetically apt-- punishment for their sins, but as still (and eternally) pursuing them.  The lustful are seen eternally caught in the wild winds of desire, the gluttons are eternally wallowing in the excess of their appetite, the wrathful eternally enraged, the thieves continue to steal, gossips to gossip, traitors to betray, etc etc.  I think what Dante is depicting for us is the fact that sin is Hell; sin doesn’t just bring condemnation, it is its own condemnation. Looking at Dante in this light, I begin to understand that quite possibly Hell isn’t a place; it is a state of being.  It is a choice we make.  It is found in who we become. When we choose selfishness over generosity, when we choose cruelty over kindness, when we choose coldness and isolation over vulnerability and a willingness to reach out to others we choose sin; and when we choose sin we choose unbelief; and when we do that we condemn ourselves to a Hell of our own making. Because despite what Mr. Sartre said, Hell isn’t found in "other people," it’s found in how we respond to them. Every time we turn away from someone who needs us, our hearts grow a little bit harder, a little bit colder.  And if you happen to read Dante, you will understand that a cold cold hard heart corresponds exactly with what the poet finds at the very core of Hell.  Despite what reason might tell us, our condemnation isn’t a punishment imposed upon us to satisfy some eternal justice; our condemnation (or not) is a choice we make every day. We can open our hearts, go forth, share the gifts God has given us and become a blessing, or we can... cling to our safety and security and treasures and make our own private Hell.  That’s what I find depicted in that beautiful strange poem written by that oddly prescient Italian poet from the 13^th century.  And that’s what I hear Christ telling us today. 

The blessing of vulnerability --further reflections

“Go from your country, your kinsmen

and your father's house to the land
that I will show you... You are to be a blessing.”

–Genesis 12:1-2

What are the Beatitudes but a call for us to leave our place of security and comfort and go to a foreign land –a place of vulnerability, of risk and of blessing.  In Genesis, God calls Abram to leave his homeland, his kinfolk and his father’s house to go forth to a land that God will show him.  In that place and by becoming vulnerable to the curses and blessings of these foreign people, by leaving behind his security and earthly support system and putting his trust wholly in God Abram becomes a blessing. 

“Blessed are you who are poor…”

“Blessed are you who hunger…”

“Blessed are you who mourn…” –cf. Luke 6:20-21 & Mt. 5:3-11

Is this not a call to us to leave behind our homeland of culture and identity, our kinfolk of support and insurance, our father’s house of security and comfort and go to a foreign land that Jesus is showing us: a land of hunger, poverty, mourning, meekness and abuse?  Go not where we are safe and feel secure and accepted, but where we feel some risk of rejection and martyrdom even.  What greater love is there than to give up your life for another? 

But how do we live this out?  What does it mean in our daily life?  For me, there was a wonderful incident the other night that assured me that I had stumbled in the right direction.  I was volunteering at the hospital with the chaplain’s office. The chaplain tapes a list of names to his door for me. It is usually a longish list, but he will highlight the ones that he wants me to visit. Usually I just visit those highlighted names; I tend to be a rule follower. But as I was heading to the elevator I noticed a name --someone I had visited before–not highlighted. And something inside me made me feel that I should visit that patient.

I imagined that I would go up, say hello to him, perhaps offer a prayer and be on my way.  But when I got to his room on the 4^th floor, he was asleep.  So I was about to go back to my assigned list when I noticed a man who looked a little troubled in the room next door. So, I poked my head in and asked if there was anything I could do for him.  He was very hard of hearing, but he was also quite clearly agitated and needed someone (or something).  So I struggled to talk with this elderly man, but I listened as he told me that he was anxious about his daughters and confused about why he was being left at the hospital. After a while I offered to pray.  He didn’t understand at first, but as I began to pray the Our Father, he fell right in with me –as if suddenly something clicked.  A nurse arrived while we were praying and when we finished, she began her business with charts and scans, but she also began to ease his worries by reminding him why he was in the hospital. 

I left and tried the other man again. He was still asleep.  As I turned to leave and go back to my assigned names, another nurse approached me.  He wanted to know if I was the chaplain, because a patient had just died and his family needed someone.  My first reaction was a start of fear. I’m not a chaplain and I wasn’t sure what to do.  But, instead of hiding behind my lack of qualifications. I explained that I was a volunteer, and asked him to show me where the family was.  Standing at the door to the room, I asked God for a blessing and went inside to be with a family in deep and unconsolable mourning.

That was a place and a moment where I felt weak and slightly afraid. I hungered for the security and safety of the “right words,” but I had only my presence and a selection of psalm to offer them. I felt fearfully vulnerable. But, it was the place God lead me. And so I trusted. I trusted that whatever happened –this wasn’t about me. It was about their sorrow and their need to have someone come and pray with them in their time of mourning.  And so I went. And praying with them, sharing psalm 42, listening to their memories and their pain, hearing what a loving father the deceased was, all of it –I believe it was a blessing for them, but I am certain it was a blessing for me.

And it all started with me reading a name on my list that wasn’t selected for me by the chaplain, but (I guess) was by the Holy Spirit.  The first step was leaving the safety and security of the highlighted names, to go somewhere God was leading me.  Then, visiting the man who was almost deaf was a second step. He wasn’t the one I felt an attachment to, and I only stepped into his room because I could see him through the window and saw what looked like fear and confusion on his face –in his eyes. It was uncomfortable and awkward trying to talk with him –but because I tried, because I didn’t just give up and walk away, I was still on the floor when the other man died and because I left his room when the nurse started her work I happened to be walking out the door just as the other nurse came looking for a chaplain. 

And by being vulnerable what did I find?  An opportunity to become a blessing.  And an opportunity to be blessed.  And you know, I think in that moment of blessedness I had a brief glimpse of another foreign land: Heaven. Perhaps what Jesus is telling us in the beatitudes isn’t just that being poor, or meek, or hungry or thirsty or suffering for Christ is good for us; perhaps what He means when He says “blessed are…” is that to offer ourselves in this way is truly blessed; it is a taste of Heaven. 

Think about your own life. When did you feel most blessed? Was it in a moment of earthly success (a 100 on a test, a new job, successfully completing a project or getting an award for some achievement) or was it when you offered yourself completely (in all your brokenness and insufficiency) and found that you were received and you were a blessing to someone who needed you?

To become a blessing is to be doubly blessed.