Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: seeing

  • The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C Readings

    The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C Readings

    Today’s readings

    Today we have in our Gospel reading one of my very favorite parables; maybe it’s your favorite too. It’s one that we have heard so often, and I think it’s one that we can see with the eyes of our imaginations. Three main characters: a forgiving father, a prodigal son, and a loyal, but perhaps cranky, son. It’s the kind of family situation I think we can all wrap our minds around; maybe it sits a little uncomfortably close to home.

    So it says right at the beginning that “a man had two sons.” And I think we need to keep that in mind, and I’ll say more about that in a bit. But the one son is dissatisfied with his life so much so that he feels the need to change it: he asks for his share of the inheritance right now, before his father is even dead. And that is a request is so presumptuous that it feels hurtful. Kind of like saying, “Hey dad, I wish you were dead, give me my inheritance now, please – I just can’t wait.” But the Father gives him the inheritance immediately and without ill-will. And you better believe that would have ruffled the feathers of Jesus’ hearers: there were strict rules of propriety in families and this absolutely flies in the face of that.

    But the other son is almost as guilty of that as the younger son. When the story runs its course, and the younger son returns to the father with his little memorized speech, the father, who has been waiting for his return, is moved with compassion and runs out to meet him. They throw a big party, but apparently they didn’t send someone out to invite the older son. On his return from the fields, he is indignant, partially, I think because he was overlooked, but also and importantly because He feels the injustice of the younger son being rewarded after tearing apart the family. His refusal to come in to join the feast and his making the father come out to him could also be seen as sinful.

    What amazes me is that the Father comes out of the house to meet both sons. That’s significant because a good Jewish father in those days wouldn’t come out to meet anyone – they would come to him. Probably on their hands and knees, begging for forgiveness. But the Father meets them where they are and desperately, lovingly, pleads with them to join the feast. It’s an image of our loving, forgiving Father God who won’t let anything – not past hurts, not resentments, not social propriety, not even our darkest sins – get in the way of his mercy, and love, and forgiveness, and grace. That’s the God we worship; that’s the Father we have.

    I love to call this the parable of the Forgiving Father, because I don’t think the point of this is to look at the son. I think the point of this is to look at the father, whose mercy and forgiveness are prodigious and even a little outlandish! The point of this is that, if we prodigal ones would just return, God will meet us more than half way. That’s a great message for Lent, and it gives us the action item of admitting our sins and returning to the Father.

    But there’s another way to look at this parable too. Again, the emphasis is going to be on the father, but this time the father is us. Bear with me on this. Amy Jill Levine, a Jewish scripture scholar, reads the parables with the eyes of one who has grown up with the Old Testament, much as Jesus and his hearers did. And so she sheds a little light on this parable that made me look at this anew this week and say, “Hmm…”

    So the father is us. A man had two sons, but he forgot to count. Let’s face it, the older son does get the rotten end of the stick here – I’ve always felt that when I read the parable growing up. But it was selfish of me because I saw myself as the loyal, hard working son, which, seen at age sixty, I can see is far from true. But that son does get the rotten end of the stick. Look at what happens: the younger son is rewarded for his initial disrespect in asking for the inheritance, and then when he comes back poorer and broken, he is rewarded with a feast. And not only that, apparently they had time to call the caterer, and time to shop for a ring and sandals, but they didn’t have time to tell the older son, who is out working hard for his father in the fields? What kind of craziness is that? Any one of us would be indignant.

    A man had two sons, but he forgot to count. That father, who is us, is all about taking care of the child who is most needy, to the detriment of the other son. Professor Levine says that it reminds her of her students: it’s easy to cater to the A-students and reward their accomplishments; it’s even easy to journey with the students who are having difficulty, offering them tutoring or answering questions. But the ones who are the B+ students, who can’t seem to cross the line to the A, do they count too? Think about that in our lives. The people who are good to us and doing good things are easy to walk with, they even support us. And we have the ones who are challenging, and we do everything we can to help them, out of love. But are there people in our lives that we forget to count? Who do we need to notice more, to think of more, to love more, this week? Perhaps that’s our action item this week.

    So whether our action item is admitting our sins and returning to the Father, or remembering to count and love the ones in our lives who we tend to forget, we have work to do. We have to return to God for forgiveness and mercy, and we have to love everyone in our lives as if they were the only ones there. The stakes of letting this parable fly past us and not engaging it are too high: we would be missing out on the banquet of eternal life to which Jesus Christ came to bring us. Taste and see that the Lord is good!

  • The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    An often told, and completely correct, preaching of today’s Gospel reading about the healing of Bartimeus’s blindness would say that this story isn’t about his blindness at all. Yes, it tells of his physical blindness and healing by Jesus, but the reason we have this story today isn’t just to make us feel happy for the blind man; instead it is to point out some kind of pervasive blindness that the man had, and truly, we all have, and the real miracle is that he was healed of that, and that we should reflect on what blindness we have and pray to be healed of that. That would be a perfectly acceptable reading of this Gospel story,

    But that there’s this really interesting detail that caught my attention right at the end of the story. It’s a throw-away detail, almost, but it changed what the message was for me. It’s a bit of a play on words that comes when Jesus tells the man, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” And then it says that it the man received his sight and followed him on the way. So notice the difference: “Go your way” versus “followed him on the way.”

    If Bartimaeus had gone his way, as Jesus suggested, he would probably have returned to sitting on his cloak begging for alms. After all, that was all he knew, having done it his whole life. But he had cast that aside in the pursuit of Jesus, and having received sight, he clearly saw that that was the wrong way, and instead follows Jesus on “the way.” Now, it’s important to note here that “The Way” (capital “W”) was an early way that Christians, before they were called Christians, referred to themselves. They would be known as members of “The Way.” So here we see that the real miracle is that Bartimaeus clearly saw that his life lacked the meaning he needed and that the only cure was following Jesus.

    That coordinates well with the first reading today. The Israelites were in a bad situation: they had ignored God enough that he allowed their whole nation to fall and be taken into exile. Jeremiah’s message was that they had no one to blame but themselves; that God had punished them for turning aside from the faith, following false gods, ignoring the poor and the needy and the stranger in their midst, and allowing every kind of depravity in their lives. It’s not a very encouraging message, and one can see why Jeremiah was treated so poorly. In this reading, though, Jeremiah relates God’s promise that he would bring them back: back to Israel, back to the Temple, back to himself. Then, even though they departed in tears – as indeed they did – they would return shouting for joy.

    So the real miracle here is not one of blindness and seeing, at least not in the physical sense, but instead one of metanoia, which is the Greek word meaning a change in ones life – really a complete reversal – based on a spiritual interior conversion. The Israelites had been going the wrong way, so God gave them over to their persecutors, but because that penance produced conversion, he would bring them back. Bartimaeus had been going the wrong way living a perhaps-pointless life, but through giving himself over to Jesus and trusting in him, he found purpose in following him on The Way.

    So we need to come to see also. We have to see what’s going on in our own lives. Have we been going the wrong way? Have we paid little attention to our spiritual life? Have we chosen to live as though our spiritual lives didn’t matter? For me, it can be frighteningly easy to get distracted. It can be very easy to be so busy about the stuff of running a parish that I don’t see what God is doing in my life and in the life of this community. It was good for me to be on retreat this the week before last; in that precious time, I found much grace and rest and heard God’s call to make things new in me and in my ministry here. What is he doing in you right now? Have you been coasting in your spiritual life? Have you paid it little attention? If so, maybe God is calling you to forsake your own way, and give yourself over to following him on The Way.

  • Tuesday of the First Week of Advent

    Tuesday of the First Week of Advent

    Today’s readings

    “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.
    For I say to you,
    many prophets and kings desired to see what you see,
    but did not see it,
    and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

    How willing are we to see everything and every situation as a gift from God?  Granted, sometimes that kind of attitude can be quite a challenge.  When everything is hectic at work, or when your work goes unappreciated, it’s hard to see that work as a gift.  When your kids are making you nuts or your spouse seems distant, it can be hard to see your family as a gift.  When aging parents are suffering from illness or children suffer from disease, it can be hard to see life as a gift.  There are many obstacles to seeing the beauty of every person and situation.

    Yet that’s just what Jesus tells us we should do.  We are blessed to see what we see.  When I was in seminary, working as a hospital chaplain, I saw what seemed to be more than my share of death and disease.  My fellow student-chaplains were going through the same thing.  Then, one day, one of them brought in this very Gospel reading for discussion in the morning.  When we reflected on the truth of the reading, we found that we were able to see grace in the middle of all the suffering, pain and sadness.

    Sometimes even when things are hard, God can accomplish great things by helping us to carry those crosses.  Even more important, God can help us to see great grace happening that would not otherwise happen.  It’s difficult to get there, but today we can pray that we would consider ourselves blessed to see the things we see, and to hear the things we hear.  Let us pray that God can help us to see the grace in every person and situation.