2008

Overcoming the Desert in Our Souls

Our Gospel (tonight) (today) focuses on Jesus’ visit to the desert at the beginning of his public life. This Bible passage, found near the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, traditionally signals the opening of the main part of Lent.

At the level of the literal, we are talking of course about the physical desert. For many periods throughout its history, the Jewish nation had been conquered by foreign powers. Leaders and other citizens of those occupying powers typically lived in Jerusalem and other large cities of Israel. Jews were often forced to live elsewhere. Some left IsraelMiddle East. completely to dwell throughout the

Some Jews wanted to stay in their country, even while it was being occupied. The only other inhabitable part of Israel was in the southern part of the country near the Dead Sea. To get there they had to travel through a desert that was thirty-five by fifteen miles. It was known as the Devastation, an area of yellow sand, and crumbling limestone. Ridges ran in all directions. The hills were like dust heaps; the ground shimmered with heat like a vast furnace. Travel back then on foot or even by animal transportation took many days, weeks, or months before one reached the Dead Sea.

The desert had very little rain, very little food, extremes of temperature, and little or no civil authority that meant that danger to one’s person and goods was constant from bandits and wild animals.  So the idea of exile to the desert was a terrifying thought to Jews. Old Testament prophets had told the Jewish people that beginning with the story of Adam and Eve that we read about in our first reading, the refusal of many Jews because of fear, indifference, greed, jealousy, or apathy to follow God’s commandments was a key reason why they now often found themselves in the desert.

These prophets emphasized that only a return to God through prayer, personal responsibility, purity, and growth in holiness would lead Israel to be a nation able to return to God’s favor.  God did not destroy Israel. But God also made clear that Jews as individuals and as a people must accept the love God offers them and have a conversion of heart. 

The physicality of the desert was also to play a role in the life of Jesus. But the key difference here is the ability of Jesus, as the Redeemer and Savior of His people and indeed all of us, to use the bleakness of the desert to show his triumph over sin and death.  Where many Jews for centuries sinned and died in the desert, Jesus goes in the desert and renounces and resists sin even though he is tempted mightily by the devil.  As St. Paul tells us in our second reading, just as through one transgression (the sin of Adam and Eve) condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act (the Death and Resurrection of Jesus which begins with his trip to the desert), acquittal and life came to all.

Jesus’ ability to withstand the rigors of the physical desert, and his miraculous ability to turn it into a place of faith is also a logical complement to the concept of desert as metaphor.  For neither Jesus nor the Old Testament prophets were concerned only about the physical desert when they spoke or visited there. The bleak and weakening effects of the physical desert on humans in some ways pales by comparison to the bleak and weakening effects of the spiritual desert in our souls.  Sin in its innumerable forms (greed, lust, jealously, envy, hatred, violence) is every bit as deadly to human souls as the conditions of the physical desert might be to human bodies.

The Lord’s visit to the desert was one of the most intense experiences of his life on earth.  Jesus was alone in the desert. So He would have had to have relayed this intense experience to His apostles for the desert visit to be found in the Gospels. So there is no doubt that Jesus did in fact visit the physical desert.

But the Holy Spirit, Our Gospel says, sent Jesus into the desert. The Spirit would not have done that to punish Jesus. So we should be careful about focusing the meaning of this story only within the geographic or physical level of desert. For the visit to the desert was about a process of deep contemplation for Jesus. The human Jesus went to the desert to think about and establish what would be the best means, the best strategies, for bringing about the redemption of man from sin. After all, that was the principal reason His Father sent to Him to earth in the first place.

Not all aspects of the desert descriptions in the Gospels should be taken literally. The term “forty days” was an expression of Jesus’ time. It meant a long period of time, often not literally forty days, much like we might say “it took forever to get here.”  As well, the devil, in tempting Jesus, takes him to what is described as a very high mountain where all the kingdoms of the world can be seen.  Of course, we know there is no such place in the desert to which Jesus traveled.  The same can be said of the temple parapet, where the devil tells Jesus to cast himself off.  The temple of Jerusalem was obviously not located in the desert.

So Jesus undoubtedly went to the desert to seek the Father’s help in His mission to redeem the world. But at least part of the concept of desert is metaphorical, focusing on the devil’s struggle for Jesus’ soul, and indeed all of our souls. It might be useful to think of those parts of these parts of the Gospel account as visions Jesus had in the desert, visions for the benefit of all of us. Here on Whidbey Island, we never have a shortage of water, particularly this time of year. But notwithstanding this literal fact, we face in our own faith lives the same kind of temptations Our Lord did as we struggle with how to live and how to treat others.

The devil offers three temptations to Jesus.  The first, to turn limestone rocks into bread can be seen metaphorically as a temptation by the devil to bring people to faith or to your point of view by essentially bribing them. While we are called to meet the needs of others and utilize the gifts we have been given to build up the Body of Christ in various professional settings, almsgiving to impress others or using the gifts of the Holy Spirit for professional gain or credit should never be undertaken.

A faith, which depends on signs and wonders, is no faith at all, and whatever following one gets, if it is a personal following, offends God’s call to the Gospel life. Such followings also easily dissipate as we often see with people in every profession who rise to great power and wealth and then fall just as easily and quickly.

Jesus is also tempted by the devil to perform great signs and wonders like throwing himself off the main temple in Jerusalem and landing softly.  But to posit oneself in life as an awesome success in teaching, evangelizing, politics, business, or many other professions is no substitute for the generation of the quiet trust we get from others because they see the way trustful people live, and by the principles through which one choose to live. To do otherwise only creates a vicious game of one upsmanship in which the gift giver must continually give more and more, and achieve more and more.

In professional settings, if we measure success by how much business we bring in, how much money we are able to raise, how much greater and greater our budgets grow, we are proverbial apes on a treadmill. We run as fast as we can just to stay in place.

Human beings have an amazing and rather sinful ability to routinize what they see and do. To long for ever greater sensations is to distrust rather than trust others and us. It is a central part of addictions, of extreme competitiveness, of a loss of ethics, and cycles of violence at the individual, group, national and international level. Such an attitude does not serve oneself or others; it harms and destroys souls, ours as well as others.

Rather, Jesus sought, and calls us to seek, to live by the example of His teachings: the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the two Great Commandments.

Finally, the devil offers Jesus absolute power on earth if only he agrees to worship the devil.  Here of course, we are once again not talking about the literal. Jesus is clearly more powerful than the devil at the literal level.  But to the human Jesus, who must seek to bring others humans to the Father, what the devil seeks from Jesus is a willingness to compromise on principles.

For us, cooperation with evil, compromising the central elements of our faith means that we become just as evil as those who ignore or are indifferent to what the Christian faith teaches.  It is a slippery slope to an anything goes attitude in which we buy in slowly but surely to the idea that if it feels good, it cannot be wrong, or that any compromise is preferable to confrontation, or that achieving power justifies any compromise.

While there are many ways to approach our calling to live the Gospel life, while tactics to achieve Christian goals at home, in society, in the workplace can often vary, and we can disagree about them, some things are wrong and violate God’s laws. They are always wrong.  And some things, regardless of situations, are always right and are to be defended.

Jesus did not compromise on the core of God’s truth. He sends the devil away with the warning not to tempt God with human weakness and compromise. He was not sent to be a political revolutionary. And if we are to be Christians on the road to greater holiness and salvation, then on matters of principle we cannot stoop to the level of the world. As Christians, our living the truth in love must raise the world to Christianity’s level. Our task is to forgive others and bring them along to a new way of doing things, not simply giving and accepting because it is just easier or more popular. We are called to be new men and women, and build up other new men and women, and a new earth.

Like Jesus, we are called to a loving service to God and others. Like Jesus, we are called to pray to God the Father to give us what we need in a literal physical sense, but also in a spiritual need sense that puts others first. And with Jesus, through prayer, service, sacrament and Scripture, we receive the graces to achieve this calling. If we cooperate with Him, we can traverse successfully the physical deserts of our lives, and the spiritual deserts in our souls. 

There is a little detail in this gospel passage that I never paid attention to before. Matthew tells us that Jesus went up the mountain to teach the disciples. What a lesson he taught them! For us, 2000 years later, the beatitudes still present a challenge, but that is because some of us still have no clue where Jesus is coming from. He certainly was not speaking to a crowd of American pilgrims visiting the Holy Land.

Unquestionably, the beatitudes are among the most famous and beloved lines in the Bible. They list the kinds of persons whom Jesus declares to be blessed, happy and fortunate, and they tell us what such persons can hope for. They place before us what our goal as Christians should be and can be. They also show us how we can reach our goal. Jesus assures us that our hopes can be fulfilled. From a teacher’s point of view, one could say that the beatitudes are the entrance requirements for entering the kingdom of heaven along with a description of the blessings that will be enjoyed by those who are there.

One drawback for many of us who are listening to Jesus share those lessons today is that we are apt to take this passage literally and miss what is truly beneath the surface. Keep in mind that each beatitude has two parts. The first part declares blessed or happy those who display certain attitudes or perform certain actions. These are the qualifications for entering the kingdom of heaven. We tend to focus on the first part and neglect the second, which lists our hopes and dreams, thus turning the beatitudes into ethical rules instead of blueprints for living.

The first part of each beatitude lists the qualities, characteristics and behaviors of those who aspire to fully participate in God’s kingdom. Such persons try to be poor in spirit, compassionate, meek, merciful, clean of heart, and peacemakers, and in the process, they are willing to be insulted and persecuted. Alas, their values stand in stark contrast to what is often celebrated and glorified in the media today.

As I said, we need to do a bit of digging to better understand where Jesus is coming from. The value that prompted all behavior back then was honor, not money. Honor was your claim to acceptance by others and their acknowledgement of that claim. What Jesus proposes here is honorable behavior on the part of his disciples. Among the basic honorable behaviors being suggested by Jesus was being poor in spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, before you think heaven can’t be yours unless you are poor, keep in mind that Jesus isn’t speaking economics or money here. For him, being poor describes someone who has lost honorable status and must at all cost seek to regain that status.

So blessed are the poor in spirit! Jesus is not commending those who are literally poor or putting down those who are well off; he is lauding those who realize that they have lost their honor in the sight of God. Now, they see their need to repent, to change their ways, to regain the status they once possessed, and when they do, he says the kingdom of heaven will be theirs.

In our consumer-driven society, we tend to view things as the source of happiness, but Jesus is telling us not so, not so. As William Barclay, a well known scripture scholar notes, “The one who is poor in spirit is the one who has realized that things mean nothing and God means everything.” The readings today show us once again that God does not conform to the standards of the world, but rather, God turns them upside down. Those who truly love will recognize the beatitudes as examples of love in action, love that they are already showing in what they do. Lent, which begins in a few days, will provide us an opportunity to judge just how poor in spirit we really are and to see for ourselves how blessed we truly are.
 

A little boy and his father spent the morning making a kite, they spent hours carefully gluing together the pinewood slats, fitting the paper onto the frame, and fashioning the tail. On the following windy day, they set off to launch their paper and wood space ship. Dad instructed his son on how to hold the string tight and run as fast as he could as he let go. After a few false starts, the kite was finally airborne. The boy was in total control as his father showed him how to let out the string little by little. The kite flew higher and higher. The boy was mesmerized. Then to his father’s surprise, he let go of the string. With sheer joy, the boy watched the kite soar until it was only a speck in the distance.

Walking home together, the father realized that he’ll have to soon loosen the tie that binds him to his son, to let the boy go to make his place in the world and one day fly kites with his own child. And he wonders, “Will I release the string as unselfishly as that?”

Today’s gospel is about letting go…letting go of our anxieties and fears, letting go of our self-centeredness and our need to control, letting go the strings in our lives that tie us down and tie us up from living a life of joyful compassion and selfless generosity. Jesus calls the fishermen on the shore of Galilee, and he calls us, as well to abandon our “nets,” nets that will never “catch” what we truly seek and follow him to discover the life giving and healing love of God in our midst.

Most of us yearn for a life of peace, love, kindness and compassion. We yearn for the kingdom of heaven that Jesus promises in the gospel, yet in fact we are often drawn to do the opposite. We sin. We are reluctant to follow the advice we hear in this gospel, “Repent,” unaware that the kingdom of heaven is not a distant place, but an experience that will emerge when we recognize God’s just and rightful rule over all creation. When we repent, we are seeing the need for God’s rule in our lives. Now, we might not think of our priorities and choices in life as being sinful yet whenever they create confrontation, indifference, cruelty, or hatred, we are not bringing about the kingdom of heaven. Doing whatever we can to get whatever we want at the expense of someone else is a pathway toward sin.

We sin because, like the delicious tantalizing desert loaded with empty calories, wrongdoing offers us fleeting pleasure. As any dietician will tell us, our craving for sugar, if left unchecked, can threaten our physical health. Likewise, if left unchecked, our compulsion to sin will threaten our spiritual health, potentially harming our relationships with others and with God.  Instead of building the kingdom of heaven, sin tears apart the world God has in mind for us.

At the very start of his public ministry, Jesus proclaims the secret for bringing about the kingdom of heaven, “Repent!” Now, you might be thinking, “But, Father, this isn’t Lent.” So true, but when you stop to think about it, repentance is not a seasonal activity; it characterizes the life of every faithful follower of Jesus Christ. We hear the message often so that we will make this our way of life. If we want to experience the kingdom of heaven in this lifetime, and that is something Jesus says we can do, we must consciously strive to include practices of repentance in our daily lives.

For starters, consider, if you are not already doing so, examining your conscience every night before going to bed. This need not be a formal, big deal. All we need to do is spend a couple of quiet moments thinking over the day. We might ask ourselves a few simple questions, “How was I faithful to Jesus’ call to repentance? How did I reach out to others, bringing the goodness of Christ to them? How did another person make me aware of Jesus’ presence today?” When we get into the habit of recognizing Jesus’ saving ministry in our daily lives, we are opening ourselves to his ministry of repentance. The kingdom of heaven is unfolding before us.

Secondly, the Church prescribes that every Friday is a day of penance that calls for repentance and conversion. Many of us grew up with the tradition of abstaining from meat every Friday; a practice that became voluntary except during Lent after Vatican II. The Church still expects us to observe all Fridays as days of penance as a sign uniting us to Jesus in his passion and death. A practical way to do this would be to keep Fridays as a day of fasting, prayer, and doing charitable works. These time-honored practices are sure ways to repentance and conversion, that is, bringing about a change of heart. If we can get ourselves into the habit of keeping Fridays as a day of penance, we will see a difference in our lives and our relationship with Christ.

There was a man who had a reputation for being the best fisherman around. While others would catch one or two fish, he always came in with the limit. The game warden, curious to know how he did this, went fishing with him early one morning. He noticed no fishing tackle. When they arrived at a secluded cove, the man opened a box, pulled out a stick of dynamite, lit it, then threw it in the water. When it exploded, a bunch of fish floated to the surface. The warden identified himself and told the man that he was in a lot of trouble. The man reached into his box, pulled another stick of dynamite. He lit it and handed it to the warden, saying, “Are you going to just sit there or are you going to fish?”

Jesus is urging us to repent, acquire a new heart, and make a decision. One of the hardest things for us today is making a firm decision. We have so many options and we like to keep them open. That is fine if you are shopping for a new car, but disastrous in our relationships with God. In that most vital area we have to make a decision. Like the boy, are we going to let go and let God? Like the guy in the boat, are you going to sit there or are you going to fish? The kingdom of God is not something up in the skies, but down here on earth; ours to be discovered when we heed Jesus’ advice and dare to repent. 

We are inclined to define ordinary as being something routine or unexceptional. For this reason, you may think that ordinary time is called that because there is nothing special about this season. Actually, this time is called ordinary for a different reason; this is when the Church “orders” us to do our mission in life, to organize our thoughts and commitments toward the mission that Christ has given us.

And what might that be? Recall that last line from Isaiah, “I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.” You might think this line is describing Jesus, but in fact God is speaking to you personally, “You are my servant, through whom I show my glory.”  Isaiah’s message, intended for all believers, conveys the very purpose of our baptism. Paul puts the same expectation differently when he tells the people at Corinth, “you have been called to be holy.”

By virtue of our baptism, we are called on to, shall I say, join the club along with Isaiah, Paul, John the Baptist and those whom they first preached to. We are called, not only to see ourselves as being numbered amongst God’s holy people, but entrusted with the mission of calling others to holiness as well.

Now, you might be thinking, “That mission belongs to Father or Deacon Bob,” but imagine where you would be if those who influenced you the most had not done their bit to evangelize you and the world around them. Imagine what shape our society would still be in today if others had shied away from calling us to holiness.

The world is a very different place because they weren’t afraid to proclaim their convictions, recognizing Jesus as the Lamb of God, the one who has come to take away the sins of the world; they also knew that Jesus was counting on them to do their part to rid the world of sin as well.

This weekend, our nation recalls the legacy of Martin Luther King. Eloquently and peacefully, he confronted the sin of racism; doing what he did to uphold the dignity of all peoples. I will never forget how he shared his dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that one day his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Admittedly, we have miles to go before the sin of bigotry is completely wiped out, but thanks to Dr. King and others who cared, we have come a long ways toward erasing the shame of segregation in our midst.

We must not ignore the tragedy of abortion, a sin made legal by the Supreme Court 35 years ago, a sin that continues to challenge the fabric of our society in numerous ways, including our politics, just as slavery once did. While the rate of abortions has dropped significantly in recent years, the numbers still remain high with more than 1.2 million done in 2005. Mother Teresa once offered this insight, worth reflecting upon, “We are here to be witnesses of love and to celebrate life because life has been created in the image of God. Life is to love and be loved. That is why we all have to take a strong stand so that no child, boy or girl, will be rejected or unloved. Every child is a sign of God’s love that has been extended over all the earth.”

At the other end of the spectrum of life, the voters of this state may find themselves once again wrestling with the issue of euthanasia. A similar initiative was rejected in 1991; hopefully we will do our part once again to be a light for the terminally ill as well as the conscience of our state, helping others to know that suicide is not a step toward holiness.

Few of us knew about our mission in life when we were baptized. Our parents and godparents spoke on our behalf, testifying that they would raise us in the Catholic faith. If they have done their homework, the one lesson they instilled in us is that being a follower of Jesus Christ also means being a doer. God is counting on us to give voice to our Christian convictions and bring them to life. I hope today’s response speaks for you, “Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will.”

Have you ever heard of Steve Whitimore? As a youngster growing up in Atlanta, he became fascinated with puppets. At age 19, he began working on the Muppet Show, doing the background voices and characters. When the show’s founder, Jim Henson, unexpectedly died in 1990, his widow and son asked Steve to take over as Kermit. “I remember feeling very scared,” he said in an interview, “but I looked Kermit in the eyes, and it was almost as though he was saying, ‘Come on, I need a voice.’”

Likewise, Jesus needs a voice. Like John the Baptist, we are being called to give voice to the presence of the Lamb of God in our midst. The work of the gospel, namely, justice, compassion, and reconciliation, does not belong only to the Mother Teresas or Martin Luther Kings of the world who have followed Christ. In every act of humble compassion and generosity, the Lamb of God is given the chance to walk in our midst.

All of us, parents and teachers, doctors and gardeners, builders and plumbers, accountants and cooks, and yes, priests and politicians, have been called to declare to our contemporaries that Christ is in our midst. John the Baptist declared his witness to Christ in preaching. Our witness as Christians can be done quietly yet just as effectively in our unfailing compassion for others, in our uncompromising moral and ethical convictions, in our efforts to celebrate the art of forgiveness with others, and in our daily sense of joy and purpose. That to me is what holiness is all about. And one could also say that serving the Lord is ordinary thing a Christian is expected to do.
 

Last weekend, we celebrated the Feast of Epiphany, that moment in time when God revealed his son, Jesus, to wise men from the east. Today’s gospel goes one step further. This time Jesus finds out who he is. “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.”

History tells us little of what Jesus did as a young adult. We can presume that he lived in Nazareth and worked as a carpenter, following in the footsteps of Joseph. After his baptism, he had a religious experience that forever changed the world. He was gripped by a deep unforgettable awareness of being fully loved by God. Such an experience, which one would call mystical, is never forgotten. From then on, no matter what happened, no matter how others reacted to what he said, Jesus carried on with his mission, fully aware that he was indeed God’s beloved son.

In those days, such a notion was radical. Until then, the relationship between God and humanity had been anything but intimate. Although they viewed themselves as God’s chosen people, even the Jews considered God as a distant deity; so sacred that his name could not even be said. Jesus narrowed the gap considerably. When asked how one should pray, he said, “When you pray, pray, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’

For most of us, that prayer is a daily experience. To his peers, the thought of addressing God so intimately was unthinkable. God was seen as one who was to be appeased or they would be punished.  Yet as Jesus taught repeatedly, God does not want to punish. To the contrary, God has always wanted to save humanity from the consequences of sin. Now the moment has arrived to send forth his Son to accomplish this mission.  Like any Sunday readings, however, the message here is not merely historical or biographical.

There is more to this story than simply the baptism of Jesus. This story is our story as well.

As Christians, we share the common experience of baptism, for it is only through baptism that one becomes a Christian. This sacrament is our initiation into the Christian community. Together, we profess our common belief in God as Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God isn’t to be seen as a distant deity out to punish us, but as a Father who has invited us to be one with his Son in a relationship anointed by the Holy Spirit.

Through baptism, we became sons and daughters of God. Our humanity was gifted with a share in Jesus’ divinity.  One thought comes to mind, could God, looking at the way we treat one another, say of each of us, “Here is my beloved daughter, my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”?

Only Matthew recounts John’s resistance to baptizing Jesus, but Jesus tells him that the point of his baptism is “to fulfill all righteousness.” Fr. John Donohue, a scripture scholar, surmises that a better way to translate that line would be, “bring to fullness all justice.” That makes sense to me for this envisions Jesus continuing the mission of the servant that we heard about in the first reading from Isaiah.

In the first of his four servant songs, Isaiah describes Jesus very well. At his baptism, Jesus recognized himself taking on the role of the suffering servant. “I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”

But God is not speaking only to Jesus. God is calling on us to listen to this servant song as well. Out of the sea of humanity, we have been chosen to manifest the same message of hope that Isaiah spoke of so long ago. In his commentary on Isaiah, Fr. Daniel Barrigan writes, “If I am chosen, if you are chosen, if, as a community, we are chosen, it is in order to be sent as a sign of God’s loving compassion to the world.”

I long thought this was an odd feast for closing out the Christmas season; after all, Jesus is now an adult, but now I see the logic. If the message we heard at Christmas, summed by the angels as peace on earth and good will toward all, is to be manifested in the coming year, it can only happen through us. And that won’t be done unless we freely choose to do what we can individually and collectively as a faith community to heed God’s call to justice.

As followers of Christ, we must open our eyes to the blind: instructing, explaining, evangelizing. That is one reason why we must learn our faith well, studying and reading any chance we have. We must liberate prisoners from the confinement of their inferiority complexes, their fears and their physical limitations by lending a helping hand, saying an encouraging word, uttering a prayer.  As the Hindu greeting expresses it, namaste…the God in me greets the God in you.

While the season closes with this Mass, we are by no means finished with Christmas. It is now time for us to make use of its treasures. The good news spoken by angels continues to unfold as we endeavor to seek out the lost, to heal the sick and the hurting, to feed the hungry, to liberate the imprisoned, to rebuild families and nations, to bring peace to peoples everywhere, especially in our own families.

Baptism is the most precious gift we have received. Clothed in the Spirit; let us resolve to live new lives that will prompt God to say to us one day, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”