What are you most afraid of…? (a meditation for the first week of Advent, 2024)

 

What are you afraid of? What is your biggest fear? I think the somewhat frightening Gospel from the 1st Sunday of Advent was asking us to turn away from our fears and look at something else... To see not with eyes of fear and anxiety, but through the eyes of Love. Here are some thoughts on fear and the first week of Advent. Please let me know what you think, and how God helps you with your own fears.

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,
and on earth nations will be in dismay, perplexed
by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will die
of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world…”
--Luke 20:25-28

It seems to me a strange reading for this time of joyful anticipation, but here at the start of Advent as most of us look forward to Christmas, the church gives us a gospel reading about fear and anxiety and what sounds like the end of the world. That is a very interesting liturgical choice, and one worth pondering. Why? With everyone recovering from Thanksgiving and looking forward to Christmas, why not choose a hopeful reading from the Nativity story?

And yet, as I have spent time with this little conundrum, I have found myself wondering:

What am I afraid of?

And how does that fear eat away at my peace? How am I letting it take my life? Bit by bit, moment by moment, am I too dying from fear?

More than heights, or math teachers, I think my biggest fear is rejection.

Fear of feeling unwanted, unnecessary, perhaps even unlovable. For me, a lot of this is wrapped up in ego. Growing up, I desperately wanted to be attractive; wanted to be one of those boys all the girls called cute or handsome. Like Johnny Quest, or Davy Jones from the Monkees! And yet—that was not what fate or genetics had in store for me. Two formative moments from my younger days haunt me still: first, when I was just a scrawny little 8 year old, I was standing in a dressing room at the Craig’s store, trying on a pair of hip-huggers, and imagining I looked as cool as one of the Archies, I overheard the salesman say to my mother: He's got hips like a girl. And my mother say: Yes. I guess he does. I have never forgotten that little exchange. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant at the time, but every time I see my own shadow I glance at my hips. And the second is the time a college girlfriend told me I looked better with a beard, because I didn’t have much of a chin.

I may not be able to do much about my “hips,” but I’ve kept my beard ever since.

Even after 36 years of marriage the fear of being rejected or unwanted, still haunts me. It’s like I am constantly waiting for someone (my wife even) to say: Who invited you? Whatever we fear, small or large, it always feels like the end of the world. It may just destroy our peace of mind, but even that can feel like a mini-apocalypse.

In some ways this fear has continued to rule my life. Even without thinking about it, I continue to live in it… Afraid to make a mistake, afraid of my own shadow, always hoping to ingratiate myself, to demonstrate my worth… Hoping to be noticed and to be told I'm worthy, maybe even "cute." Yet always afraid, and always certain, what I am is never enough.

When I think about this reading, and my own fears, I begin to realize at the heart of all fear is a lack of trust. I don’t trust gravity, so I am afraid of mountain tops and air travel; I don’t trust numbers, so I am afraid of math teachers; I don’t trust my own worth, so I am afraid of rejection. I don’t trust the love of God… so I am afraid…

But Jesus has an answer to this, to the problem of fear. Actually, Jesus is the answer. The sacrifice of the cross is the true sign of our worth. Of God’s love. Jesus died because—in God’s eyes-- I was worth it. You were worth it. We –all of us—despite our failings, or maybe not despite—maybe because of… we are worth it. We are loved. This isn’t a test. Your suffering, your sorrow, your pain, your fear… It isn’t a test. You may be going through something terrible, hard, even frightening, but the truth is we know how this story ends: In love.

   “…when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.” (cf. 21: 28)

Our redemption is at hand; just beyond the signs, the earth-shaking, the waves and the political turmoil, the chaos and suffering, just beyond the darkness of Calvary, there is a new day dawning. Stand erect, hold your head up… Look for it. It is there. The Resurrection.

But, of course, in the moment we may still be tempted to hide. We may still doubt our own worth, or whether we are up to the challenges ahead. That is part of our brokenness. And we must bring even that, our fears and our doubts, our weaknesses and our addictions, our ugliness and our emptiness and lay them before the Cross.

It isn’t easy, but then again neither is birth (ask any mother, or look at any newborn baby). But it is the only way… No haircut or make-up or new pair of hip-huggers is going to heal my own self-image. No matter how popular I may or may not be, the doubt and the self-image still haunt me. And so, instead of letting them control my life, I need to stand erect, look up –not down at my own shadow—but at the eye of the one who never looks away, the one who Created me, the one who sees all that He created and says: It is good.

There are bigger fears, I know, but the truth is that whatever fear we have, whatever fate we anxiously await, we are not alone, and whatever happens to us—we were made for this! I was not made to be another Davy Jones, I was made to be me. To live this life, to feel these fears and dream these dreams, even cry these tears, and finally to become the kind of blessing only I can be.

Whatever that looks like in the mirror, in God’s eyes it is always something beautiful to see.

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.