Epiphany 2025

During the Christmas season, we meet the shepherds and the magi.  The shepherds haven’t really captured our imagination; after all, they were just out there tending their sheep whe all of a sudden a very talkative angel appears and tells them everything -- “Don’t be afraid, I’ve got great news.  A savior is born this day, in the city of David, who is the Messiah, and as I sign to you, you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger over the hill in Bethlehem”  All the shepherds had to do was go where the angel told them.

In contrast, those magi had to come from afar.  We think they came from Persia, which is about as far from Bethlehem as Chicago is from Springfield.  The gospel refers to them as “magi”.  We don’t quite know what magi were -- some say advisors, some say rich people, but the consensus is that they were priests of the Zoroastrian religion.  The Zoroastrians believe that every person is given a star, and the bigger and brighter the star, the more important the person.  That bright star must have been extremely significant to the Persians.  Was it real?  Several astronomers and historians have great explanations including Father Mcgonagle of our diocese, who was an astronomer before becoming a priest.  Maybe it was a comet, or a supernova, or two or three planets whose orbits overlapped during that time.  The magi had to figure out what was going on; no angel to tell them.

How did we decide there were three?  Because of the three gifts, one for each magi.  How did we come to call them kings?  Because in psalm 72 it says that the kings from many different nations will come bearing gifts. But early Christians fleshed out the story even more. At least by the sixth century everyone knew their names were Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar.  Another legend says that the three were made bishops by Thomas the Apostle and went on to serve the Christians in India.  You see in our manger scene another legend about the magi -- one was young, one was old, and the third was Ethiopian.  This indicated that Christ’s reign was to include everyone, and Ethiopia was in those days a symbol for the ends of the earth.

It was said that Gaspar was young, Balthazar was middle aged, and Melchior elderly.  In one story the baby JEsus was asleep in a small room and the Blessed Mother invited them to see him, but they would have to go in one at a time.  Melchior went in first and met an elderly man; they talked about the good old days, and Melchior expressed his thankfulness for his life and experiences.  When Balthazar entered he met a middle aged man and the two of them talked about leadership and responsibility.  When Gaspar entered he met a young man and they talked about the promise of the future and how to prepare for it.  Later when the infant woke up, Mary brought him out of the little room and all three observed the baby.  In other words, the baby can identify with the main concerns of any person. 

But whatever else, the gospel story tells us about the magi who left home and traveled a long way because they believed the star must mean something.  They were searchers.  They were befriended by Herod, and had to make the decision to sneak out of town without returning to him, as he had requested.  They had to make the long trip home again, maybe wondering if the whole thing had been a dream; after all, they had met a child of a poor peasant couple, and they had only their prophecies and that star to tell them something great had happened.  They had faith.

And we are more like the Magi than the shepherds. We are searchers; we don’t see the big picture.  We are surrounded by people who tell us to spend more money, to put ourselves first, to abort our children or at least make sure that if he wants to play with dolls or she picks up a baseball, they will know they can become the opposite sex.  We wonder about crime, illness, cancer, death, and war.  We would love to have heavenly messengers to assure us, like they did the shepherds, to have no fear, that the Messiah has already won the victory.  But we are more like the magi, who struggled across the desert, with only a vision and a hope.  Our church isn’t a resting place, it’s a caravan.  By ourselves we can become confused, misguided.  But together we have the wisdom of a community.  That’s why we come to church, because we listen together, encourage and comfort each other; we come to church because it is an alternative to the ways of the world.  It’s a fellowship, with the light of Christ to guide us.  And the best part of the Magi story is that they found what they were looking for.  And so will we.  

Third Sunday of Advent, cycle C

Luke 3:10-18

If we had listened to the gospel passage before this, we would have heard John the Baptist being fairly intemperate.  He tells his hearers that things are going to get pretty bad and that they can’t expect to escape just because they are descendants of Abraham.  In fact, John insults them by telling them that God can make sons of Abraham out of rocks.  You would think that the crowd would leave, but they don't. They ask, “what then shall we do?”  And that is when John gives surprising answers.  

A very long time ago while I was just starting medical school I was suffering an existential crisis.  I loved medicine; it was intellectually exciting, and I could help people, and being a physician looked like a good life.  On the other hand, I had read about saints who had given up everything; missionaries who had left their homes and native lands to die in foreign countries; monks who had turned their backs on the world to grow closer to God.  In addition, I was receiving spiritual direction from a wonderful guy who belonged to Opus Dei, and naturally he thought I would be a great fit as a numerary -- someone who takes vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience but continues working in a secular profession to support the organization.  So I went on a retreat by myself.  “What do you want, Lord?” I prayed.  And I heard an answer, deep in my spirit -- “Whatever you choose,” the voice said, ‘I’ll still love you.”  The next day I made my choice and here I am today.  

What then shall we do?  John’s answer is simple.  If you have food, share it with someone who doesn’t.  If you have clothing, same thing.  If you are a tax collector, you know how much you are supposed to tax-- do that.  If you are a soldier, be content with your pay and don't extort people.  

Notice that John doesn’t tell the people to go off and live with the Essenes, who were a monastic community that tried to have nothing to do with the world.  He didn’t tell them to join the Pharisees and practice their strict rules and spend all their time studying the law.  He just said, look around you.  If someone needs something you have, share it with him.  That's The goal, but that means you need to be alert to the needs of others.  Repentance means to change the way you think.  Instead of looking out for myself all the time, get in the habit of looking for people you can help, people who lack something you can give them.  Change the way you see the world.

And to the tax collectors, despised by their fellow Jews.  Tax collectors worked for the Romans.  They were supposed to collect taxes from a defined group of people -- maybe everyone in a small town, or in a big city, there was a chief tax collector who farmed out the work.  The whole idea was that you were entitled to part of what you collected as your salary -- a defined part.  And this was where with a little cheating, you could make a lot of money.  John doesn’t tell the tax collectors to quit their jobs.  He simply says, “Change the way you think.  Collect what you are supposed to, no more.  After all, when you take more than you should, someone ends up with less.”

And to the soldiers, who in John’s time were probably gentiles because the Romans made it a matter of practice to station soldiers in territories where they were unlikely to feel a sense of kinship with the people they helped control.  And to these John gives a similar message, “be content with your pay.”  Change your way of thinking.  Because the soldiers took bribes, extorted the people, had the power to make life miserable if they didn’t get their way -- and it was easy because they saw the people as other, as less than human. The Romans set things up this way so that intimidation would be easier.  And John is saying “these people over whom you are given power; they are your brothers and sisters.  Be content with what the Romans pay you.

John’s message is the same for us today.  Repent.  Change your mind.  Ask yourself if you are being the best you can be, because for most of us the answer is usually no.  Where could I be better?  I don’t need a hair shirt; I don’t need to retreat from the world; I don’t need to spend all my time in church.  I do need to change the way I think.  Am I giving my best to my employer?  Am I being sensitive to the needs of my family, emotional and spiritual, as well as physical. Where can I do better?  Am I being the best version of myself?  That’s what John is asking the crowd.  And we hear him challenge us today as well.  Let us go forward knowing that God gives us what we need to change our minds, to work toward sainthood in the very place he’s put us.  

First Sunday of Advent, cycle C

Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

The world was very different when I was learning to drive.  For one thing, we gave very little thought to insurance, to the possibility of being arrested for traffic violations -- after all, we knew the police officers by their first names.  I had been going out with one or the other parent learning to drive.  One day I was bugging my mother to take me on another training run, when she said, you go by yourself.  So I called up my best friend and told him that I was coming to get him and we were going to go on a drive.  I picked him up and off we went, cruising the drag, we called it.  You would start at Gertie’s drive-in at one end of town and proceed to the other end of main street, then turn around and go back, and do this till you got tired of it or ran out of gas.  We teenagers were pretty cool as you might imagine.  Anyway, somewhere around the third pass we decided to park and get something to eat.  I had not been sufficiently instructed in parallel parking, and managed to quite seriously damage the right front fender.  To add insult to injury this happened in front of Officer Sam’s patrol car, as he had been following me.  He called my dad, who got someone to drive him to the car.  After pulling on the fender enough to get the metal away from the tire, he drove me home.  It was a while before they resumed my driving lessons.  

I’m sure most of us have had similar experiences -- experiences where we got in trouble because we didn’t wait long enough.  I wasn’t ready to drive on my own, but I couldn’t wait to make this all-important step into independence.  I think advent is a time to practice waiting.  In advent we symbolically join all those spiritual ancestors -- Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses -- and the list goes on.  Why did God make the human race wait so long for the Messiah he promised?  Today we heard Jesus tell his disciples, “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.”  Waiting means paying attention to what is important right now, listening to what God is telling us through our experiences; it means reflecting on what is really important and what is not.  It’s very easy, especially as we approach Christmas, to get so busy that we lose sight of what the season is all about.  

Father Ron Rolhauser relates waiting to chastity.  Chastity, he says, is not something to do with sex.  It really has to do with how we experience reality in general, all experience.  To be chaste is to have the proper reverence, towards God, towards each other, towards nature, towards ourselves, and of course, towards sex.  We can see why chastity is about proper waiting if we look at the opposite; to lack chastity, to be irreverent, is to be impatient, selfish, callous, immature, undisciplined in any way so that our actions deprive someone else of his or her uniqueness and dignity.  Since matters having to do with sex touch us in our deepest souls, you can see why chastity has come to be associated with our attitudes towards sex, and unchastity dehumanizes people through the misuse of sex. 

The gospel today is from a section of Luke’s gospel called “the little apocalypse”.  It does resemble parts of the Book of Revelation, and you can find such passages throughout the New Testament as well as some of the later books of the Old Testament.  Apocalypse comes from Greek, and means “to unveil”, or to draw aside a curtain.  It isn’t really about the future; it’s a reminder that there is a bigger picture, our lives really aren’t under our control, and everything that happens, no matter how good or bad, is temporary, and if we wait with reverence, if we accept all our experiences in a sense of anticipation of what will happen at the end of time, then we are living the virtue of chastity.

As to why we had to wait so long for the Messiah -- as to why we seem to be waiting so long for his second coming, before the messiah can be conceived, carried in Mary’s womb and given birth to, there must always be a time of waiting, a necessary advent, a certain quota of suffering.  As one poet said, “God is never in a hurry!  Every tear brings the messiah closer.  It is with much groaning of the flesh that the life of the spirit is brought forth.”  A feast can only happen after some fasting.  Advent is a time when we learn to wait for God’s coming, for Christmas.   

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 13:24-32

The Gospel of Mark was written about the year 70 A.D., probably in Rome.  The war between the Romans and the Jews, which occurred around this time, resulted in the destruction of the Jewish temple.  The people who first heard this gospel were probably Roman Christians of Jewish ancestry, along with a few gentiles.  During the period from about 200 years before Christ to 200 years after, there was a popular kind of literature called apocalypse, which means “uncovering”.  Most of the time apocalypses talked about the future, but were really referring to the present.  The last book of the Bible talks about the end of time, but much of it is a criticism of the Roman Empire.  The Book of Daniel seems to predict five kingdoms, each succeeding the other -- but was written during the time of the last kingdom, the broken up kingdom of Alexander the Great.  Today we hear Mark’s “little apocalypse” and if you are like me, you are left scratching your head.  Stars can’t fall from the sky.  Did Jesus really say that this generation would not pass away before all these terrible predictions happened? If he really meant what he said, then clearly he was wrong.  There aren’t any people left from that generation.  So what is going on here? 

If you were one of those people for whom Mark is writing, you would be really worried.  Back in Palestine the Jews were being defeated by the Romans, and the temple was destroyed.  If you were a member of what then was a form of Judaism in which people followed Christ but kept many of the same traditions, you would fear for your life.  You would be getting dirty looks from your fellow Romans. You would try to fade into the background when the soldiers marched by.  And you would wonder if you’d made the biggest mistake in your life when you joined up with the Christians.  We forget that we Christians were subject to antisemitism a long time ago -- just like those Jews who came to Holland to watch the soccer play-offs.  

And Mark’s gospel addresses these fears, especially here in this part of Jesus’ discourse.

First, the gospel reminds us that everything comes to an end, eventually, even the world itself.  You and I will come to an end.  My marriage will end -- one of us will die before the other in all likelihood.  When we think about this fact, that everything we know about in our world will end, the first reaction is a feeling of hopelessness, purposelessness, maybe even despair.  But the little apocalypse we just read promises that God, who created the world and declared it to be good, will in some way deal graciously with all these seeming endings.  After all, we believe he loves his creation so much that he chose to become part of it as Jesus of Nazareth.  He isn’t a God that waits for us to fail, then punishes us.  He is there to forgive us time and time again when we acknowledge our failings.  He gives us grace to try again.

A second message is that we need to be lightly attached to the institutions and structures of this world.  God wants us to be good citizens and work for the common good.  We just went through another presidential election and you would think from the rhetoric that during the next four years we would have either a Nazi or a communist (depending on which side you were on) not only ruling us, but destroying all that we hold dear about our country.  Both sides claimed that if their opponent got into office, this would be the last free election.  Someday that will happen.  We would not be the first country to go from freedom to a form of political slavery.  Every now and then we have to step back and ask, to what are we really attached?  Because only God is permanent, only God lasts forever.  

A third message is that we have to be awake, alert, ready at all times.  We need to see the hand of God working in the world.  Jesus told us, “Be alert, I have told you everything”.  And yet most of us go through life half asleep, not aware of all the amazing things God is doing to us, for us, around us all the time.  Jesus urges us, his disciples, to see that whenever everything is falling apart, that God is there, the Son of Man is coming, nothing will be lost.  He will gather and preserve all that God has given him -- that’s you and I. And Jesus assures us that we will pass through whatever terrible things happen to us, because his word and his promises will never pass away.  

Christ the King

 Christ the King

John 18:33-37

This is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, and next week we start over again, with Year C, where most of the gospel readings will be taken from Luke.  Pius XI made this feast a universal one in 1925, after world war I.  It seemed like a good enough idea that when Catholics and Protestants got together to develop the revised common lectionary, some Protestant denominations decided to  celebrate the feast as well.  It’s the only feast common to both groups to have been set up after the Protestant reformation.

But what is it all about?  We don’t have kings and even people who do don’t understand what a king is.  During the middle ages in Catholic Europe there was a remarkable movement from kings who held unlimited power and were often corrupt, to kings and queens who went out of their way to live their lives as they imagined Christ would.  So you have Stephen of Hungary, Louis of France, Henry of Bavaria.  You have Margaret of Scotland, Elizabeth of Portugal, Hedwig of Poland -- and these are just a few of the remarkable rulers who achieved the title of saint.  And since that golden age the Church has tried in vain to influence subsequent kings and queens to imitate these saints, who in turn tried to imitate Christ the King.  But as the church's influence died out rulers relapsed into the old mold, where they were mostly dictators who considered themselves above the law -- the law of God as well as that of man.

So what made these individuals saints?  They listened to the gospel.  They heard Jesus say that if you wished to be great, you must become a servant.  They heard his parable of the sheep and the goats -- the idea that the Master will recognize his sheep by what they do for the least of their brothers.  And they knew that all men and women were called to follow Christ, so they encouraged missionaries, they set up dioceses, they built monasteries and on and on, all the while recognizing the Pope as the ultimate vicar of Christ on earth.

Many years ago when I was young I was invited to give a presentation in England.  Afterwards my wife and I boarded the flying Scotsman to Edinburgh. There we took a tour of the city.  The tour guide spent quite a bit of time talking about Saint Margaret.  Despite the fact that Scotland had become largely protestant since her time, she is still revered and remembered fondly.  Margaret was born into the English royal family -- her father was an heir to the throne.  Margaret wanted to be a nun, but through circumstances that almost seem miraculous, found herself encouraged by her confessor to marry Malcomb, who was then king of Scotland.  Scotland had been Christianized by Irish missionaries, but there was still a lot of the old pagan religion, and Malcomb’s kingship involved a loose rule over nearly independent dukes.

In addition to bearing eight children, three of whom would become saints in their own right, Margaret Christianized Malcomb into the kind of ruler she had seen in her time in Hungary under Saint Stephen.  The two of them would open the castle doors to the poor, and they would wait on them before they ate themselves.  Although he was illiterate, Malcolm and Margaret contemplated the scriptures that she read to him and put them into practice.  They built monasteries and  churches, and worked tirelessly to bring their subjects to Christ and unite the scattered christian communities under the pope.  It was said that Margaret, who was about four feet and ten inches tall, had a way about her that won over the men who ruled under Malcom, and gradually the kingdom became more homogenous and united.  The kingdom became an example to the rest of Europe, and acquired the nickname “Athens of the North”.  Margaret died six days after the news came to her that Malcomb and her oldest son had been killed in a battle with England over a border dispute.  She died with her eyes fixed on the crucifix.  We know a lot about her life because her confessor, who had been with her since she left England, wrote a little book about her.  It’s out of print, but I read an eighteenth century copy in the Catholic University’s rare book library.

You could read about the other royal saints who had heard the call of Jesus, that if you wanted to be great, you must become the servant of all.  

We still have rulers in democratic countries, who try to live lives compatible with the Gospel.  Former president Moon Jae in of South Korea comes to mind.  Hopefully there will be more.  But one thing we can learn from studying the lives of the royal saints is that becoming a saint is not limited to professional religious people, and that any legitimate vocation can be the means to holiness. On this feast of Christ the King, let us increase our efforts to submit to his rule.     

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

 Mark 12:38-44

My mother was the sixth child out of ten born to parents who were themselves children of German immigrants.  Poverty was hereditary.  My grandfather was a farmer and as far as I know was illiterate.  His oldest son dropped out of school at an early age to help with the farm, and he also was illiterate.  The scars of poverty were apparent on each of the ten children in different ways.  My mother was no exception.  When I was a teenager I remember accompanying her to the bank to argue over a bill she had received which she believed overcharged her by ten cents.  Finally the man she was arguing with pulled a dime out of his pocket and gave it to her.  Another time she bought a watermelon which on inspection at home had a bad spot.  She carefully carved this out of the fruit, served the rest of it the family, and brought the rotten piece back to the grocer and demanded another watermelon.  She wore him down also.  My parents quarreled a lot, always about money.  Dad liked to spend, Mom liked to save.  

So thanks to Mom, God rest her soul,I have a very dysfunctional attitude toward money.  If you asked the average Christian what Jesus talked about, he or she would probably say love, peace, being kind to others, avoiding sin.  But of the 38 parables in the gospels that Jesus left us, sixteen have to do with money or possessions.  That’s 43 percent.  God cares about money, about possessions.  And he does so because we do.

The scene Jesus is observing went something like this:  people were coming into the temple and dropping money into the collection baskets.  It was customary to say something like “I am giving 20 dollars so that my business will pick up.  I am giving 50 dollars so that my son finds a good bride.  I am giving 100 dollars so that my mother-in-law will recover from her illness.  You get the idea.  Giving money was like a prayer.  It’s not a bad thing.  We still say that almsgiving is one of three legs on which the Christian life rests, along with prayer and sacrifice. As is always the case, there are people who pervert the system.  That’s what was happening with the scribes.  According to the law of Moses, you were supposed to honor scribes, because they studied the law.  It’s interesting that in Israel today and in some orthodox Jewish communities, studying the law exempts you from military service and even from working for a living, because there is nothing more important than studying the law.  The scribes wore distinctive clothing to signal their position in society, and some indeed misused their status.  Nothing new about that.  What Jesus objects to is the practice of praying in exchange for money.  And who is most likely to pray for money? A widow, who faces poverty and even starvation when whatever she has is gone.  In the first reading we met such a widow.

God cares about money because we do.  And the reason he cares is because money can become a god to us.  It certainly was to my Mom and her siblings.  And it probably is to me as well.  I can’t imagine giving away all my money.  I deeply sympathize with the young man who chose not to take Jesus up on his invitation to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow him.  Thanks to my wife, though, I’m pretty generous contributing from my surplus -- she sees to it that I give it away.  

God cares about money because we do.  Money can do bad things to one’s soul.  It can lead to a sense of entitlement; it can fuel addiction; it can cause isolation and strained relationships, especially among family members.  Being wealthy can lead to anxiety, stress, depression as one tries to protect one’s money or make even more money.  And being wealthy gives a false sense that you are somehow immune from things that most people fear.  Jesus told a parable about that -- the man who built bigger barns for his crops so that he could take it easy -- but God told him that his soul would be demanded of him that very day.  

Jesus praises the widow.  The words we read aren’t as stark as the original Greek text.  I don’t read Greek, but my sources tell me that what the Greek words basically say is that the widow put in her life.  Does Jesus complement the widow because she gave everything away?  Maybe not, two little coins almost worthless, aren’t going to make a big difference in the rest of her life.  But in that gesture of throwing away her last pennies, Jesus sees someone who escapes from the burden of having money, someone who decides to completely depend on God for what will be the rest of her life.  I think that’s what he wants you and I to see -- to recognize that money is in danger of becoming a god for each of us, and our task is to remember that we are completely dependent on God.   

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 12:28-34

This is a familiar gospel, isn't it?  It's because Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell almost the same story.  In Luke’s version he has Jesus answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with the story of the Good Samaritan.  And maybe today we should look at this familiar gospel in a different way.  In the first part, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy -- the prayer that a Jewish man is supposed to say when he wakes up in the morning.  It’s called the Shmah, because it starts out “smah yashrael” which means “Hear, Israel…” And to the people of Moses’ time who were surrounded by pagans, the commandment meant that only God, only Yaweh, was worthy of my love.  By the time Jesus came along the commandment had taken on some additional meaning -- what is there in your life that takes away from your love of God?  It's said that Jesus appeared to Saint Thomas Aquinas and said, “You have written well of me, Thomas.  What reward can I give you?” and Thomas replied, “Only you, Lord.”  How would you and I answer that question?  I know there are a lot of things I would be reluctant to leave behind when I die.  Certainly, my wife and my family, but my computer, my television set, my Netflix subscription.  And more seriously, my ability to walk, to see, to hear, to think. But like it or not, I will leave all these behind.  So loving God the way Jesus, and before him, Moses told us to, is more of a goal than a present reality for most of us, me included.  I have to work on getting to Saint Thomas' place – only you, Lord!

Love of neighbor also needs to be carefully thought about.  Do you remember when Jesus was approached by a gentile woman who wanted him to heal her daughter?  Jesus replied that he had been sent to the lost sheep of Israel.  But he healed the woman’s daughter.  Jesus was approached by a centurion who asked for healing for his servant -- and Jesus did so. Over and over again, we read about Jesus encountering someone and healing him or her.  

Love of neighbor has to do with action.  This is the time of year when my dear wife sits down and writes checks for the forty or so charities for which she feels sorry.  We pay income taxes, a very small part of which actually helps people in trouble.  We contribute to the bishop’s fund and our favorite college.  Is that what Jesus is talking about?  I don’t think so. In Jesus' time Jewish people recognized that you had an obligation to tithe – and besides the upkeep of the temple tithes were used to help the poor.  You and I still have that obligation -- that’s good, but it's not love of neighbor, it's an obligation.  As Jesus demonstrated in his life and his story about the good Samaritan, a neighbor is someone who crosses your path who needs what you can give.  The word Jesus and the scribe use for love is the word “agape”.  It isn’t just a feeling; it’s the willingness to be inconvenienced, to be put out, to give something up for the person who crosses your path and needs something from you.  It’s really an attitude, a change in how you look at the world.  It has to do with the encounters you have with other people every day.  If you meet someone in pain, what can you do about it?  If you meet someone hungry, what can you do right now for her.  If you meet someone who is anxious or depressed or angry or sad, what can you do? And if you can't see their need, what would you like someone to do for you in that circumstance?  A complement? A thank you? Because you would like those things for yourself if you didn't have them.  Don't love your neighbor in your mind.  Agape your neighbor.

Patrick Wisely, a Presbyterian theologian, says that love of neighbor comes from a broken heart.  When Jesus stood before a large crowd in Galilee, it says he had compassion for them for they were like sheep without a shepherd.  In the Greek words, he felt it in his gut, like a stomach ache.  And of course he was moved to sit them down and feed them. In those days that feeling was what we call a broken heart today.  When you see the young man holding a cardboard sign saying homeless, what do you feel?  When you encounter a displaced person from Ukraine, or Afghanistan or Haiti, does your heart break for him or her?  Walk around a nursing home someday and meet the people who have no families, who are lost in their failing minds, who are never going to walk again, who depend on machines to take the place of their kidneys -- do they break your heart?  If not, is something wrong with you?  Because allowing our hearts to be broken is the first step in loving our neighbor as ourselves.  It’s the power that moves us to agape love.

So in the straightforward commands of Jesus there is a lot to think about.  What could we really leave behind to possess God?  We can say “everything” but do we really mean it?  And when I encounter a person who is suffering, does my heart break?  Because a broken heart is the beginning of love of neighbor, of self-giving love.  It’s not easy to follow Jesus.  I can give away all my money to “the poor” but if I can walk by someone in pain and not feel my heart break, maybe I’m missing the point of his commandment.  Maybe if I walk past you without a smile or a greeting I'm missing the point.  But I probably will, because I have a lot of work to do still.