Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Matthew 4:18-22

I'm torn between two thoughts here: 1) must be nice when God Himself just says outright what He wants you to do, a simple statement really, and 2) did they actually know that it was Jesus, not just some crackpot Messiah like they had every other week during that time?

Both are fairly irreverent, so I'm going to go with the third thought the gospel provoked: James and John's father was in the boat - was he called too? Was he also meant to come? Did Jesus go along the whole beach that day or just to the four who came with him?

You get to thinking a lot, during an election year, about the kind of person you'd want to follow. And the kind of person you would follow, and if they're different. Who is it that you would drop everything for? Risk everything for? What would you have to know about them? What experience would you have had to have of them?

Perhaps one of the reasons elections are always so frustrating and unsatisfying is that we haven't figured out how to answer those questions.

But I wonder: if Jesus did walk up, would I trust that leap in my soul that says that it really is Him? I'd like to think that I would drop my nets in an instant if I knew it was Him, but what does it take to trust that you know a thing like that?

Because I have an overactive imagination and I've cultivated a hefty self-editing system (if nothing else so I can stop obsessing over uneven numbered sets of stairs), so I wonder how much of God I'm convincing myself I made up. And how much I am.

Sometimes I worry that God is always speaking to me through things like the television shows I like or beautiful coincidences or a perfectly-timed-for-irony song coming on the background music of a public place. Is it because I'm drowning out the straightforward message that He's speaking to me through what I am paying attention to?

Don't get me wrong, it's only showing His love for me. I've always felt doubly blessed when I feel like I had a truth pointed out to me from an unlikely source of grace - when a science fiction shows me what a Biblical story means - that God cared so much for me to know it, that He is talking to me through everything in the world...but I worry that I'm drowning Him out so He has to sneak in.

I worry I'd be too in the zone of fishing, I worry I wouldn't even hear His shouts from the beach, like James and John's father. I worry that I'm asking so loud I don't hear the answer. I worry I'm so determined not to trust all the answers I get that I leave God no choice but to slip His words into other mediums.

I worry I would know that it was Jesus calling on the shore, but I wouldn't trust myself to know it. I would refuse to let myself act on what I knew, convinced I couldn't know. Perhaps that's like James and John's father.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Luke 10:21-24

I forget how hard this can be to get going again - inspiration isn't flowing for any of my projects these days, and I tend to forget between Lents and Advents how hard it is to write an entry that's only one day or so in the making.

"No one knows who the Son is except the Father,
and who the Father is except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."

First we're told that God has hidden the truth from the wise and learned (two different things) in favor of revealing it to the childlike, then we have it spelled out in no uncertain terms: we can't reach an understanding of God or God's plan (even just the part for us) by any feats of our own little minds. We accept it as a gift.

I feel like we hear about that a lot, God's gifts, especially this time of year. But perhaps we're more (and always have been) trapped in a Black Friday mindset more than we realize. Because I, at least, always think of that in terms of things of this world. I am grateful for the food I eat and the comfort I've been raised in certainly - I'm also grateful for the gorgeous world around me, and I'm thankful for the amazing human relationships that I've had the pleasure to enjoy and hopefully nurture. I'm grateful that Jesus saved me, that I have the promise of heaven and reunification with dead loved ones. I'm grateful for the talents I have.

And I do think of it occasionally, but not nearly as much: I'm grateful to know God in my life. I'm grateful to have been raised as I was, so firmly and thoroughly in the Catholic Church - that it was the true face of God to Whom I was first introduced. I'm grateful for what I've called in the past my Gift of Certainty. My great gift of faith.

Even that's not a quality of our own. Even that is a gift from God. Even that is something not owing to us but to Him.

Really, how can we thank Him?

I feel like that would be a tidy, succinct ending for this entry, but I want to mention one more thing. I had a thought I wrote down not too long ago. It was an idea for a potential kind of litmus test for your feelings on religion, and maybe it bears thought: if every other part of your religion were still true, but there was no afterlife, would you still be glad of the time you spent?

Would you still be glad of God's presence in your life?

Would you still feel what a gift it was?

I sometimes feel vaguely heretical in this posts (and like most proposed litmus tests I thought of it because I put myself on the "right" side of it), but perhaps that's also the reason why it upsets me so much that a person of faith would store up brownie points to get into heaven or out of fear of hell.

Eternal salvation, don't get me wrong, is probably the biggest and greatest gift of God.

I'm just suggesting: for the lucky ones, maybe it's the greatest gift save one. The gift of faith in the first place. The gift of faith to believe in Him.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Mark 8:5-11

Here is the place, if anywhere, to talk about my other favorite change, since it's the verse from which it was derived. So I'll say briefly how much more intimate and real it is to talk about God coming "under our roof" and thus into our lives as opposed to a more passive "receiving." There's the duty owed to a guest when it's the roof, and it's a more permanent bond.

But what really struck me about the reading today (and perhaps it's only because I watched an episode of Robin Hood that featured a wisewoman) was the way that the soldier shut down any pretense, any need for a ritual or herbal cover. In fact, this encounter and the healing of the servant (points to the soldier for that, by the way) is the inverse of what a lot of rituals of the time and since were: an elaborate ceremony to shroud in mystery that you're giving someone an aspirin. The Aztecs built elaborate architecture to catch the sun at certain moments to give themselves proper religious credibility. Most religious have been guilty of some form of this.

Jesus took pity on him - and more than that, He didn't make demands of the soldier. He didn't demand his belief, He offered to come and make a bit of a show, extend His hand to touch the servant. And the soldier said no. The soldier believed that Jesus was God - in utter command of the world. That distance and homeopathic magic was meaningless - that all the ritual was unnecessary to the power of God.

And since all of the ritual is for us, not God, because we go to Church because it helps us to come to a place that helps us grow in our faith and not because it gratifies God in some way in itself, Jesus agreed that the ritual would not be needed. The soldier had faith without it.

The soldier saw the world simply. The soldier simply believed, and his description of Jesus' power was straightforward and implicitly subservient and absolute. No magic required.

I remember writing something down once about how so often the final ritual of a supernatural show is often disappointing - plugging the hole of the Lost island, dumping the Stone of Tears on a little ledge in Legend of the Seeker (don't watch that show), the whole mess at the end of [editted]. The best you can hope for in that situation, when you find the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West, is that the problem being solved will be accompanied by a flashing light or rumbling noise. Otherwise it would feel too much like the actions you take every day.

But maybe they should, in a way. Our religion should feel like routine, because we practice it all the time - such that disrupting that routine causes problems with the new translation. And perhaps better if we don't need it - if we know the truth of God without seeing the Spirit.

Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe.

Blessed are those who don't have to dress their faith up in rituals to know the truth at the heart of it. Blessed are those who know. Who know that we are not worthy to have Him enter under our roof, but that He would anyway. That He has, always, been there.

And Peace to All Men of Good Will

Mark 13:33-37

The Master's Sudden Return

Happy New Year and happy new missal!

As the churches I attend have started phasing in the new mass, I have been at first a bit upset and then thoroughly won over by two of the changes - the Gloria and "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you/that you should enter into my house." I have been thinking about how I want to do this season's reflections, and I was thinking on Sunday I would write about the new mass parts - but I'm not sure that's really enough. So I think I will continue to reflect on the gospels. And then for the weekday reflections, well, I should do the daily mass gospels.

But, as a special treat, I think I can make this one work for both the Gloria change and the gospel. I've been thinking about this since I went to mass yesterday evening, so here goes.

I remember always being really worried about this gospel when I was little - and often a lot of guilt when I went to bed that night because there it was, right in the gospel, Don't Sleep Ever!

I think this is one of the gospels that we try to dampen, soften. Of course, Katy, you're supposed to sleep. You're human. It's okay. We sleep sometimes. But Jesus goes on at length - it's not just 'keep watch at night,' it's "whether in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or in the morning." Technically, I suppose you could catch a catnap early afternoon, but the story exhaustively tells you that you must never ever sleep, you must never ever stop doing what God has set you to do. You don't get to take a break because you're exhausted and haven't slept since He left.

You don't get to take a vacation because you've been doing charity work for years without ceasing - you have to power through cockcrow after that all nighter.

We don't get to use the world's logic - that sin is inevitable, that everyone needs a break sometimes, that we're just human. We are called to the extraordinary measures. We are called to work without ceasing. We are called to serve always, without rest. We are called to constant toil and readiness. We are called to never sleep.

Which brings me to the change in the Gloria. It hit my ear in an almost frightening way the first time - the change from "peace to all people's on earth" to "peace to men of good will." I blinked several times, stopped short - and then I thought. Yes, peace to all men of good will and courage to fight all the rest of them.

Not for vengeance, of course, but to stop them. And then we can all have peace.

And here too we are held to a different standard than you hear out in the rest of the world - peace at any cost. Peace and mutual understanding and tolerance of all - often regardless of human suffering. Making deals with dictators to preserve peace. That's probably the best a president can do - but it's not what Christians are called to do. We are called to fight, constantly, any oppression, any atrocity, any inhumanity. Always. Without ceasing. To fight off all weariness, all apathy, all misguided attempts at a dirty peace.

Peace to all men of good will and a hell of a fight to those who oppress.

We aren't allowed to sleep.

It's a hard week, but it's how we start the year: with a challenge. Until Jesus returns all the injustice in the world is on us. Collectively. We are all responsible for it because we should all be fighting it. Without ceasing. Without rest. Past the long dark of midnight and through the cockcrow and in the early morning when the dust has settled, we are to be awake and vigilant and about our task making sure that something worse is not put in the place of what we have torn down.

We don't get to rest.

And my little excuse - that I have no idea what to do - doesn't work either. After all, the servants were told their jobs. So, Lord, I'm listening really hard. You know, when I haven't dozed off. I'm working on it.

Experiences of the Master

Matthew 25:14-30

Parable of the Talents

I'll be back for Advent, but I heard such a wonderful homily this past Sunday at the James Madison University Catholic Student Center (I think it's actually the Catholic Campus Ministry, but I can't help thinking it of the CSC), that I wanted to talk about what he said - and some of the thoughts and struggles I've been wrestling with in my faith recently.

It's an odd parable that I am always eager to hear explained in one way or another - and while Father Jim Curran didn't explain some of the bits I don't feel I understand, he illuminated an angle of the parable that I had never considered. And one which I feel might be the key to all of my worries about it.

The story is of three servants who did vastly different things with the 10, 5 or 1 talent(s) given to them by their master while he was away. The first two risked and had return of more, the third buried his talents in the sand. We're used to hearing this as a "Don't hide your light under a bushel" or "We were given gifts to beget returns" story, but Father Curran asked a different question: WHY did the third servant behave so differently than the first two?

I started thinking as it was read how common a story it is - the person with fewer blessing unable to see that they have been given any. But that's not what I want to talk about this time, sad as that story always is. I have always felt my blessings acutely, so it didn't really strike a challenging chord.

Father Curran said that the three servants must have had much the same experience with their master, must have all known that he could be generous and merciful and that he was a "demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter." But they responded very differently. Two banked on the love and mercy of God and went out into the world to do good with what they had been given. One recoiled from fear of his judgment and hid his talents away so that the world could not spoil them.

Father Curran went on to talk about how we choose which experiences we let change us - which events of our lives we let become part of who we are. We choose if we will let anger rule us or love drive us, if we will let bitterness twist us or pain blind us. If we will let forgiveness and faith compel us. And I believe that whole-heartedly, I embrace it, and I struggle with how to live it. I've written this thought a lot in these posts - although rarely with so firm a Biblical base (thanks for the confirmation that I'm not totally off-base, Lord!).

But what I've been wandering about a lot lately is: why is my experience of God so different than so many Christians that I see around me? Why is my experience of God's love so different from the Mainstream view of Christianity so often twisted into hate in the name of politics or just convenience? Why is my experience of God so much more expansive and liberal than the Church's current doctrine? Why is my experience of God so much more accepting than the Church's?

I'm speaking mostly of homosexuality, but the list is far longer than that.

I am reading a book recommended to me by a good friend, and in it the author pointed out that basing our ethics on our own experiences is a flawed model. Because of original sin, our ability to determine right and wrong based on our own experience is doomed to fail because our perspective is distorted.

I've been thinking about the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And I've been thinking about how, whether or not God meant us to eat from the fruit, we have now. We wanted the responsibility of determining Good and Evil for ourselves - and so many times, I feel like people want to resign that duty. Throw it off and give it to someone else who seems better qualified. Spit the apple back out.

And I think about how the first thing that Adam and Eve realized was "wrong" was something that had never bothered God.

Which brings me to that same author's answer to the problem of our perspective being distorted: the Church is not. But then, the Church is. If nothing else, my knowledge of the history of textual transmission makes me worry about a strict, thoughtless, literal relationship with the individual words that make up the Word of God. And even a cursory glance at Church History makes me frightened to think that THIS is the closest to God's Ideal for our world that we have come.

If, because of the many things I have come to believe that the Church and its writers past and present have fundamentally wrong, I feel that I have a dramatically different experience of God than those who have written on subjects that I am questioning, to whom can I turn? If every experience of God were as valid, all three servants would have been commended. But one is condemned. And I am, of course, inclined to believe that mine is in the correct line - but then, of course, aren't we all.

But that brings me to this: who can I ask for advice, whose experience of God is like mine? How can I learn from the learned men and women of God when sometimes all I can think when I look at their words is how they would, just as eloquently, be condemning my sexual orientation? For the same reasons they spout in support of other moral issues? How can I figure out what comes from the same place - that place of hate and judgment, that demanding and frightening experience of God that makes you want to hide away from the world so that you remain untouched and pure of its taint?

So, my two readers, where do I find writings on Christian doctrine that come from an understanding of God as loving and inclusive and merciful?

And, perhaps more than anything else: what does it mean that there weren't 3 different stories told in this parable? A servant who went out into the world and succeeded, a servant who went out into the world and failed, and a servant who hid himself away?

I'd like to think but am afraid to believe: is it because if you believe in God's love and act on it, it's impossible to fail? Impossible, if you work hard because God does expect you to move mountains, if you trust in His Love and let it drive you, for you to come back to Him with less than you started with? If your goal is to bring Him greater glory and love in the world, can you fail? Even if you have it wrong?

Can you be wrong coming from a good place - and what does that do to your returns?