Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:46 - 52

Time, cycle B In order to stay in shape I try to ride my bicycle for 30 minutes every day.  I combine that with opening the Church, so I get here when it’s still dark.  Early this week I got off my bike to see what looked like a heap of rags in front of the door.  As I got closer I recognized a relatively young woman who seemed to be surrounded by all her earthly possessions.  I said “can I help you?” and she replied that she was just leaving.  I unlocked the church and went through my usual routine and went out again; she had piled all her things on her bicycle and was riding off.  

It’s kind of unusual to see a homeless person in Longmeadow, although they aren’t hard to find in other areas of the Pioneer Valley.  Had I encountered this woman in downtown Springfield I probably would have walked past her, consoling my conscience by noting that there are plenty of resources for homeless people around, some of which we support with our money.

In our gospel today Jesus heals a blind beggar.  But I think there is a lot more going on here when we examine the story.  First of all, it's noteworthy that Mark names the beggar.  You hardly ever have proper names given to people Jesus encounters other than his disciples and the women who follow him.  So that’s worth noting. 

Second, the beggar recognizes Jesus -- he is the first person in Mark’s account to identify Jesus as the son of David, a title reserved for the Messiah.  Mark intends for us to see that of all that crowd, including Jesus’ own disciples, it takes someone who can’t actually see Jesus to recognize who he really is.  

Notice that Jesus seems to walk past the man, who is being told to shut up by the people in the crowd.  Finally, Jesus stops and orders the people to call the man over.  So maybe the first part of the miracle is that Jesus opens the eyes of the crowd;  they see that this blind beggar who everyone ignores most of the time is a real person, someone with whom they have things in common.  And at Jesus’ bidding they change their tune; “Take courage,” they say, “get up, Jesus is calling you.”  Now I don’t know what made them change their attitude -- maybe they were hoping to see another miracle -- but they did.  Instead of telling him to shut up, they now urge him to get up.  

Now the blind man does get up.  You have to picture the scene.  He throws aside his cloak.  That’s probably about the only thing he owns.  It keeps him warm at night; it serves as a place for people to drop a few pennies on.  But he throws it aside.  Sometimes I think that’s why our prayers don’t get answered.  We are afraid to throw our cloaks aside.  We are afraid of being radically dependent on God; we don’t quite trust Him.  I don’t, even though God has answered most of my prayers in some way or another.  But I admire the ability of some people to abandon their security and pleasant routines for God.  I read somewhere that you could tell if you were on the right path if you were embarrassed by being Christian in the past week.  Because Jesus promised that being his disciple would not be comfortable.  Anyway, the blind man throws away his security.

Jesus asks, like I did of the homeless woman, “What can I do for you?”  Now if she had given me an answer, I’m not sure what I would have done.  But she didn’t.  The blind man, however, says what must have been obvious to anyone in the crowd, let alone Jesus.  “Master, I want to see!”.  Why did Jesus go through this little charade?  He knew the blind man wanted to see.  But it’s part of a pattern.  If you read the miracle stories in Mark’s gospel, it’s not uncommon for Jesus to ask such questions.  In John’s gospel people don’t ask.  Jesus just shows up and works the miracle.  But it seems as though Mark wants us to notice that Jesus never takes what we want for granted.  We have to ask, sometimes over and over again, and we have to ask with faith, because Jesus tells Bartimaeus that his faith has saved him.  Isn’t that unusual?  Jesus didn’t say, “Your faith has restored your eyesight”.  His faith saved him -- but from what?  Sure, we could say, from blindness.  But perhaps it’s more than that.  The man who has been an outcast, someone sitting in the sidewalk begging for change, is now restored to society; a wasted life is now potentially productive.  Perhaps the saving might even extend to the saving of his soul, because encounters with Jesus tend to do that.  In any event, it’s an interesting statement, I think.

Finally, Jesus tells Bartimaeus to “go your way”.  But Bartimaeus follows him on the way.  Bartimaeus joins the band of disciples, and that’s probably why he is named in Mark’s gospel -- because Mark’s audience knows about Bartimaeus.  AFter Jesus’ death and resurrection, was Bartimaeus responsible in part for the conversion of Christians in Rome, the audience Mark is addressing?  I don’t know.  But the real issue is that Bartimaeus in response to the miracle and acting with faith, follows Jesus.  When I pray for something, it’s usually because I want my life to go on the way it’s going; I don’t like disruption.  But maybe my response to God’s favors should be to follow Jesus more closely, which probably means I need to get out of my comfort zone.  

So let us pray that we will notice people  who are hiding in the shadows; that when we hear His voice we will be able to step out of our comfort zone; and that we will be aware of all that he’s done for us and choose to follow him on the way. 

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:35 - 45

When we hear this gospel we are naturally drawn to the last part -- the part about if you want to be great, you have to be a servant.  But I think we may be missing something in the other words Jesus says to James and John:  “The cup that I drink, you will drink; and the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” 

I don’t think the brothers were trying to take something from the rest of the apostles, which seems to be implied when we read that the ten became indignant.  I think that James and John, remember, they are brothers and they have been with JEsus from the beginning, expect that Jesus will fulfill their hopes.  They’ve decided that he’s the Messiah, and they want to be part of what is going to happen.  After all, the Messiah is going to usher in a new era, a new world, where the Jewish people will finally rule, where all of those great prophecies will be fulfilled -- the great banquet, all nations coming to Jerusalem bringing gifts, the lion lying down with the lamb -- just check Isaiah and Ezechiel and Jeremiah -- they describe this new world.  

So what is this cup, what is this baptism?  Well, it isn’t martyrdom.  James was martyred, yes, but John supposedly lived to a ripe old age much of which was caring for the Blessed Mother and if legend is correct, being the bishop of a Christian community in Turkey, somewhere.  John’s life, at least from our perspective, wasn’t all that bad.  So what is Jesus talking about?

Well, we get a hint when we read the first two readings.  “The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity” and “through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear.”  And the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is the high priest who has been tested in every way.  We know that in some way the suffering and death of Jesus is the price of our salvation.  But we also know that we aren’t going to get through this life without suffering -- as long as we are alive, we can expect that we will suffer, even if things are going great now.  

I want to give you a quote from Saint Paul who tells us “I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of his body, which is the Church…” That’s a hard one to understand, isn't it?  What Is lacking in the sufferings of Christ?  What could be lacking?  I think Paul gives us an answer.  His sufferings are for you -- the Collossian church to whom he is writing -- because they make up the body of which Christ is the head.  Christ has suffered as much as the head can suffer, but the body must suffer  as well. Jesus promises his two apostles that they will not escape suffering, nor will we.  

So why do we have to suffer?  It’s a real mystery.  We know God doesn’t want us to suffer. Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God, goes through his public ministry relieving people who suffer.  And Jesus does the will of the Father.  The Father could prevent our suffering, but it would be at the expense of our freedom, our free will.  The Father always allows us to say no to him. But He does something even better.  He redeems suffering.  Suffering, whether mental or physical or emotional, always means that we are not in control.  If I have arthritis in my knee, I know I can’t walk or run like I would like.  If I have a job I don’t like, but I can’t quit, I feel like a slave.  If I have a life-threatening condition, I feel my future being taken away from me.  If I love someone who doesn’t love me back, I suffer because I’ll never get what I want.  The greater the suffering the less the control.  When you look at Jesus on the cross, you see the ultimate suffering -- excruciating pain, not being able to do anything about it, not being able to draw a deep breath; naked and exposed to the ridicule of strangers, knowing that all of this will end in death -- and if we believe the gospels, Jesus knew this would be his fate from the beginning.  He suffered not so that we wouldn’t have to suffer, but so that in our suffering it would be possible to share in his, and in doing so share in his resurrection.  We Christians hate suffering as much as anyone, but we know that in our suffering it’s possible in a very special way to unite ourselves to Christ’s suffering.  And here’s the thing: when we suffer, it’s possible for the Father to form Christ in us.  Insuffering we are offered the cup that Jesus drank, and the baptism with which he was baptized.  

If you are a disciple of Jesus, like James and John, you are going to suffer.  But you are going to suffer anyway.  If you are a disciple you are offered the opportunity to allow Jesus to be united to your suffering; and if you give up the desire for control, you let the Father take over and form Christ in you, which makes it possible for you to rise from the dead and share eternity with Him.  That, by the way, is what we act out when we receive Holy Communion.

And that brings us to Jesus’ words to the ten disciples who were indignant.  Whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all.  A slave is the ultimate one who suffers; his body is not his own, his life is not his own, he has no control whatsoever.  So we pray that when we are called upon to suffer, we will remember that as we give up control, it is a time to invite the Father to form Christ in us.  And in our suffering, may we hear those words Jesus spoke to the Good Thief -- “This day you will be with me in Paradise”.  

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 10:17 - 30

I have to tell you about a patient I took care of several years ago.  He was a middle aged man with a family and a well-paying job.  He developed a highly treatable form of cancer, which could be cured in some cases but in most cases could be managed very well with relatively gentle chemotherapy.  As I was explaining all this to him, he interrupted me and said, “I will not take chemotherapy”.  His disease involved most of the lymph nodes in his body, so surgery was out; and if we tried to give him radiation, we’d end up destroying most of his bone marrow, so that seemed out as well.  I finally talked him into taking an antibody that sometimes could control the disease, and had almost no side effects.  Unfortunately he didn’t respond to treatment.  He disappeared for a while, then one day came in and triumphantly told me that he had found a radiation therapist who treated his whole body with radiation, and look, the disease was disappearing. And indeed it was.  But I knew that this was temporary, and besides when the disease came back, he wouldn’t even be able to handle chemotherapy.  The disease returned in about three months, his bone marrow failed, and he died.  He really wanted to be cured of his disease, but not enough to put up with the inconvenience of chemotherapy.

I thought of this man when I read today’s gospel.  The rich young man comes to Jesus -- he’s aware something is missing in his life, otherwise, why bother?  After all, 99% of the people living in Palestine during that time didn’t really think Jesus could add anything to their lives.  That’s true today, as well.  Jesus gives him a standard answer -- if you want eternal life, keep the commandments of Moses.  And the rich young man is validated.  “That’s what I’ve been doing!” he cries out.  Jesus might have said something like “Good for you!”.  That’s kind of how we feel about our church sometimes.  We know what we are supposed to do, and when we do it, we feel good about yourselves.  Or, Jesus might have said, “Good for you, why don’t you hang out with us for a few days and see if you’d like to be an apostle?  No commitment or anything.”  I bet the rich young man might have joined the apostles if Jesus had held out that kind of offer, don’t you?  But Jesus looked at him and loved him -- like he does you and I.  And because he loved him, he did what he had done with his apostles -- he told him, “Go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and follow me!”  Do you see what Jesus does to those he loves?  He invites them into his family.  And that’s when you discover whether you really want eternal life.  The rich young man realized that he didn’t want what Jesus was offering, not that badly, anyway, not at that time, maybe another time; and he went away.  And it says that he was sad.  

I think we affluent, healthy, extremely fortunate Christians who belong to Saint Mary’s parish should have moments when we are saddened.  I certainly do.  When I look back on my day before I go to bed, I see all the places where I didn’t quite hit the mark, where I listened to some other voice than that of Jesus.  And I fail the same way every day.  I guess I’m like the rich young man -- I want what Jesus has to offer, but not enough to give up my comfortable life.  And that makes me sad.  

When the young man goes away, Jesus blames it on his wealth.  And the apostles are astonished.  Because to them, (and to us, let’s face it) wealth, good fortune, good health, a great family, a good job -- they are all signs that God loves us and wants the best for us, right?  And that’s why they ask, “Who can be saved?”  Tell us the way to identify the saved?  

Now there are some bible scholars who see a lot of autobiography in Mark’s gospel.  Mark’s is the oldest gospel, written about 50 years after Christ was born, maybe twenty years after his death.  Some of you who studied it with me last Lent know how unusual it is.  I put the course on You Tube, if you ever want to dive into it.  But one thing that you find in Mark is this rich young man who goes away saddened.  Not too long afterward, you find a young man who follows Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemene and is almost captured by the soldiers, who grab him by his clothing, and he runs away naked.  And then you find the young man at the empty tomb of Jesus.  Matthew talks about an angel; Luke mentions two men clad in white; John doesn’t mention men or angels.  So I wonder if Mark sees himself as the young man who first goes away saddened; then begins to follow Jesus, still unsure, still ready to run away; and then finally with God’s grace goes into the tomb, which symbolizes what all Christians must do to rise again with Christ.  

So getting back to me, I’m pretty old, and I still am saddened because there are a lot of good things I’m reluctant to give up.  But you know, the time will come when I have to give them up, and I think before I can enter eternal  life I will have to turn my back on all this, and that will be painful, that will be purgatory, and if I can’t do it, hell.  But I’m reassured by Jesus’ words: “For human beings it’s impossible, but not for God.”  In the end we all have to throw ourselves on the mercy of God who promises to make up for what I can’t do by myself.   

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

 Twenty seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

 Mark 10:2 - 16

     If you are like me, you’ve known people who have been divorced and remarried; sometimes people who are living in admirable and happy second marriages.  We know that Catholics, like most Americans, have an equal chance of their marriage ending in divorce and in death.  And yet, we have to listen to the words of Jesus, who is quoting the words of Genesis -- saying that this is what God wants of a marriage -- that the two become one flesh, that they stay together until one of them dies.  It’s a hard saying, and When Matthew, who wrote his gospel about 30 years later, quotes Jesus, he adds the words “except for pornea” which is usually translated as adultery, or impurity, the implication being that some sort of sexual sin is a reason for breaking up a marriage.  But I think Mark is the more accurate.  And we see some rather amazing things in this passage, if we pay attention to history.

During Jesus’ time there was an ongoing argument over what were the grounds for divorce -- and remember, this is the husband divorcing the wife.  No one ever  even thought of the woman divorcing the husband.  One school of thought said you could divorce your wife for literally any reason -- you would write a bill of divorce and hand it to her and that was it.  Islam still has a law like this; you tell your wife “I divorce you” three times and the marriage is over.  The other end of the spectrum was the idea that you could only divorce your wife for very serious matters.  Since Moses didn’t clarify the reasons, the Pharisees tried to figure them out.  But there was no consensus.  So, they said, tell us where you, Jesus, draw the line?

And Jesus pointed them back to the beginning.  He went back beyond Moses all the way to the Garden of Eden.  This, Jesus says, is the ideal.  No lines.  

We Catholics of course have complicated rules.  We talk about annulments -- the declaration that there was never a real marriage in the first place.  We look for reasons why at least one of the couple had an impediment to making an informed decision.  Of course it’s easier in some dioceses than others.  And we have some other rules about dissolving a so-called natural marriage (between two unbaptized persons) because one wants to become a Catholic and the other actively opposes this. And of course, I know of a couple, a baptized Catholic and an agnostic, who married before a Unitarian minister.  She continued to go to Mass and receive communion on Sundays, often dragging her husband with her, and raising her children Catholic.  She passed away a couple of years ago and her husband, still an agnostic, continues to support the local parish.  

Do we compromise as Catholics?  I think we do, but we have Our Lord as an example.  He after all offered “the water of everlasting life” to a woman who had been married five times and was living with a man outside of marriage.  He prevented the crowd from stoning a woman caught in adultery and told her she was forgiven.  When Jesus gave us the ideal, he was talking about theology;  but he could be pastoral also, and was.  And I think that any young couple getting married has no idea what they are getting into; and most young couples getting married have every intention of staying married.  

I think our Lord had seen the example of his own parents, Mary and Joseph.  We have no idea about Jesus’ early life except for the episode when his parents returned to Jerusalem to find him in the temple.  But we have a clue;  Mary speaks for both of them when she says “Your father and I have been out of our minds searching for you” and the last part of this little scene has Jesus going home and “being subject to them”.  To Jesus, I’m pretty sure he witnessed the constant efforts of his parents to become one flesh.  Because it doesn’t happen overnight, and I can personally tell you that the work of becoming one flesh is not over even after 54 and one half years.  

Jesus is dealing with a patriarchal society here, and we might overlook something in the text that’s very important.  When he speaks to his apostles, he says “ Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her”  That was probably the most radical saying -- that adultery could be committed against a woman.  This is one of those places in the gospels where Jesus hints at his own view -- that men and women are equal in the eyes of God.  

So where does this leave us?  Jesus clearly holds up an ideal -- marriage is supposed to be permanent.  And Jesus is aware that patriarchs and kings and probably some of his own contemporaries were living in relationships like polygamy, and had divorced their wives for burning toast, among other things.  Ahd he shows by his actions that he’s sensitive to people who haven’t met the ideal.  And that should be our attitude as well -- to encourage couples who are having difficulties to seek help, to try to heal their relationships.  But at the same time to do what we can to not cut off people from our assembly who haven’t met the standard Jesus sets.   

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

 Mark 8:27-35

When I was in Medical School, I met another student at the Newman center who invited me to come to an “evening of recollection” put on by Opus Dei. I had never heard of Opus Dei, but I went. I was impressed; the meditations were right on the money, the evening moved along nicely, and at the end we had a little sherry and some cookies. The next month the same thing; and about then I was invited to undergo some spiritual direction. My spiritual director was a professor of Dental Surgery at the University of San Francisco who also held a PhD in theology.. Over the last few years of my time at Stanford, I met with him about once a month.

I remember one of the first meetings. I had a few questions about scripture, or church teachings -- I forget now. What I do remember is that every time I would try to turn our conversation into answering my questions, he would turn it back to my relationship with Jesus. I eventually let him know that if I couldn’t get my questions answered, what good was this? I didn’t put it in quite those words, however, but he got my drift. And he told me that getting answers to questions was a good thing, but not nearly as important as becoming a disciple, and the only way to do that was to know the master.

We don’t have anything quite like the master-disciple relationship that was widespread in the days of Jesus, not just in Jewish circles, but among gentiles as well. Socrates and Plato and Aristotle had disciples. We read about disciples of the prophets, like Baruch and Jeremiah, and of course John the Baptist had disciples. There were no universities; education was practical, in trades handed down from father to son, in learning scripture passages at synagogue; and if you really wanted to learn you would attach yourself to a master, who would teach you -- and in return, you would serve the master, seeing that he was clothed and fed and protected. And it was understood that you would imitate him; you might even wear clothing that indicated you were his disciple. Being a disciple was very much like becoming part of a family, and it’s no wonder that Jesus said those who did the will of His father were his brother and sister and mother.

We should think about that when we read this famous gospel passage. The disciples have made their commitment; they have entered into that relationship with Jesus. And as we hear, Peter is inspired to answer Jesus’ question -- he gets it right, he knows Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ. And Jesus begins to teach what that means. It’s here that Peter steps out of line. He pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him. What was going through Peter’s mind? I can’t see Peter contradicting Jesus; after all, he’s seen miracles, he’s been rescued from drowning, he’s even worked a few miracles himself. I suspect Peter pulled Jesus aside privately to say, “This isn’t funny, Lord. You are going to scare them away!” And notice, Jesus makes public what Peter had been saying privately.

Now Jesus is talking to Peter like a master would talk to a rebellious disciple; “Get behind me” he says. Those words mean “Get back in line”. Jesus calls him Satan, and when Mark was written, the idea of Satan, the fallen angel, the adversary of God, was widespread in Christianity. But I wonder if Jesus had meant it that way? “Get back in line, don’t be my opponent, start thinking like God, not like a human being”. And at that point Jesus teaches the crowd with those words, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself…” Jesus continues to teach what being Messiah, and more to the point, a follower of the Messiah, is all about.

Peter received a revelation -- that Jesus was the Messiah. Peter had only a vague idea about what that meant. There were several possibilities -- a military ruler, a king, a prophet, a savior of the people” But the knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah is only the beginning. It will take Peter a long time to understand the kind of Messiah Jesus is. There will be moments, like on the mountain of transfiguration, where Peter will think, “at last he’s getting it right!” There will be other times when Jesus predicts his passion and death, and maybe Peter will decide in his heart, “He doesn't mean this literally”. There will be a moment when Peter’s faith gives out and he denies he even knows that man, that criminal dying on the cross. And even after the Resurrection, he will still not know what being the Messiah means. There is an old legend about Peter, who was fleeing Rome to avoid the persecutions that were going on. On the road he meets Jesus, carrying his cross, heading towards Rome. “Quo Vadis” Jesus asks. “Where are you going?” Now of course Jesus and Peter probably spoke in Aramaic, not latin, but Quo Vadis is how it comes down to us. And Peter, once more ashamed, turns back to Rome, knowing that he has to follow his Master even into the grave.

And that’s our charge this week as well. If we want to be a disciple, it’s not enough to study; it’s not enough to pray. In the end we have to know Him so we can imitate him, so we can understand in our own lives those words he tells the crowd: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” So like Peter, learn from HIm, imitate Him, and accept that we are on the way; we are not there, we have a lot to learn; and the more we give up our lives for His sake and for the gospel, the more we will be given the abundant life which he promises his true disciples.

Twenty third Sunday in Ordinary time, cycle B

 

Mark 7:31 - 37

When I was in grade school there was a kid in my class, Daniel, who wore very conspicuous hearing aids along with glasses that were as thick as the bottoms of coke bottles. He spoke differently as well; sometimes he was hard to understand. Dan had some kind of condition, I don’t know which one, that resulted in progressive deafness. He could expect to completely lose his hearing, which he did. I don’t know if he had a problem with his eyes or was just nearsighted. In those days I wasn’t much of a diagnostician.

Dan had a cheerful personality, and was involved in sports. He wasn’t a great student, and used his deafness to his advantage. He would look at the teacher with innocent eyes and say he had not heard the homework assignment. I used to walk home with Dan, who lived about five blocks from my house, and when we were walking together we could talk to each other perfectly well, as long as he had his hearing aids on.

I lost touch with Dan after high school, but someone sent me an obituary when he passed away. His deafness did progress to the point where he couldn’t hear anything. That didn’t phase him, though. He got married, had a couple of kids, became a professional advocate for deaf people, learned sign language -- probably contributed more to the world than many of his classmates. We all can admire someone like Dan, but deep in our hearts, we wouldn’t want to trade places. We like being able to see and hear and touch and speak so we can be understood. And we grieve a little when we begin to lose our strength, our senses, our agility, and even our minds. Something in us recognizes that it is wonderful to be whole.

Some people with a lot of time on their hands have estimated that 28 percent of the four gospels are taken up with healing miracles of Jesus. Whenever you find Jesus spitting or touching or sticking his fingers in someone’s ears, that’s probably Mark. When you get to John, the miracles are all done from a distance. But all four gospel writers want us to know that Jesus cured people, raised the dead, drove out devils. Nothing seemed to stop him -- except the lack of faith. In his hometown there was little faith and he could do few of his wonderful works. It didn’t take much faith; there was a boy possessed by a demon when Jesus came down from the mountain of transfiguration whose father said “I believe, help my unbelief”. The boy was cured.

Today we meet a man who is deaf and can’t speak well. That almost certainly means that he was not completely deaf as a child, like my friend Dan. He had learned to speak but after his deafness became complete he could not hear himself or others talk, and thus could not correct his own speech. It says “some people brought” the man to Jesus and begged him to cure him. Where was the faith here? They couldn’t possibly have conveyed to the man that Jesus was a healer, but they knew, and they wanted the healing for their friend. And as the miracle demonstrates that the faith of friends and relatives is sometimes enough.

So what do we make of all these stories? Especially when Mark is always having Jesus tell people to keep the healings a secret.

We all know challenged people; in fact, some of us are those people. We are incomplete in some way. I have arthritis in my left hand, and it’s a constant reminder that I’m not the way I was designed to be. Of course my challenges are minimal compared to some people. Every week I encounter many people my own age and younger who have Alzhiemer’s disease, or have undergone a crippling stroke or have other problems that make mine look like blessings. And during my career when I took care of cancer patients, everyone who walked into my office was not the way they were meant to be.

Besides physical, mental and emotional conditions which keep us from being what we were meant to be, there are spiritual issues. None of us are where we were meant to be spiritually -- that’s the message of original sin. Even the greatest saints were quite aware of their faults, sins, and incompleteness; Last week we celebrated Saint Gregory the Great, a pope who lived in the firth century. He had been a monk before his election to the papacy, and in one of his letters he complained bitterly about how hard it was for him to pray, and how his position meant that he had to spend time with worldly people, and eventually even began enjoying conversations about worldly matters. And this is one of our greatest saints! YOu and I may be cleansed of sin with a good confession, but it doesn’t take away our faults, our distractions, or our other spiritual defects.

And that’s one of the things about the miracles of Jesus. Defects, incompleteness, not being the way we were meant to be -- in the presence of Jesus, the man who is God, these are overcome when faith is present; and the resurrected Jesus, the Christ, no longer bound by physical limitations in time and space, holds out that promise to us all -- in his presence, when we rise from our own deaths, he will make up what is lacking in us -- our faith will make us whole. In the presence of our savior, my friend Dan is no longer deaf and like him we will all be made complete.

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 7:1 - 8, 14-15, 21 - 23

I had a couple of uncles who were farmers. Farming life really depended on routine; if you didn’t get things done when they were supposed to be done, you might lose the whole year. And that rigidity extended even to the hours of the day. My aunt would prepare the mid- day meal, which was pretty substantial, and when everything was ready, she would step out of the kitchen and ring a bell. My uncle and the farmhands would drop everything and come to the house, where they would step into the washroom and scrupulously wash their faces and their hands before sitting down at the table. I’m sure if one of them had avoided this step he would have received a serious lecture. So I have a little sympathy for the Pharisees who want to know what is going on with Jesus’ dirty apostles.

Well, it turns out Jesus and the Pharisees are not really worried about dirt. Moses had long ago passed on God’s laws. We think of the ten commandments, but there were a lot of other commandments Moses gave the people which you can find in the first five books of the bible. Some of the laws seem to make little sense; in Deuteronomy, for example there is the commandment regarding birds: “Should a bird’s nest appear before you on the way … and the mother is resting on the chicks or the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the chicks or the eggs.” It goes on to say that if you do this it will go well with you and prolong your days. I’ll have you know I’ve never broken that commandment. The point was that as the Jewish people were conquered, went into exile, met other misfortune, the laws of Moses became more and more important as the way to be a good Jew, and the Pharisees made new laws to clear up any ambiguities in laws like the one about the birds. The cleanliness laws were like this -- not there to clean you, but there to separate you from those who were not Jews.

Washing your hands involved an elaborate ritual, involving several rinsings and holding your hands in precise ways. And there were similar rules for the dishes you used. And if you broke a commandment, washing usually was part of the ritual for getting back in good graces with God and the Jewish religious leaders. There’s a chunk of this scripture that we didn’t read in which Jesus gives several examples of this kind of thinking, including the idea that if you pledged money to the temple, you could not use that money to take care of your parents.

Do we still do these kinds of things? I think we do. In our society which is tearing itself apart, by the way, you have indicators of your particular tribe, or in most cases we belong to more than one tribe. We Catholics define ourselves by how diligently we “practice” our religion. Do we get to Mass on Sundays and Holy days? Do we get to confession at least once a year? Do we support our church in some meaningful way? And when we do these things we are “good” Catholics. Rules are important for us as they were for the people in Jesus’ time.

And just like the Jews, most of us feel most comfortable with people like ourselves. We may not think we have a prejudiced bone in our body, and maybe we don’t, but a little tiny alarm goes off when we meet someone whose looks, behavior or lifestyle is sufficiently different from our own. That’s normal, that’s natural; for most of human history it was important to be able to separate us from them.

Jesus is not condemning rules, or saying that the Jewish rituals were wrong; in fact he probably practiced them himself. He is saying that rules can obscure what they were meant to highlight in the first place, and he reminds us that sin is ultimately the product of our hearts,

We ask ourselves a simple question: Is what comes out of us -- out of my heart, my mind, my mouth, my actions -- is it goodness? Or is it something not so good. Sometimes it’s hard to know which.

But we have two criteria. The cross symbolizes our Christian life. Jesus said “IF anyone wishes to come after me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.” The cross means that we respond to evil with goodness; when someone does something bad to us, we try to find a way to overwhelm that act with something good. It’s not easy. But it can be done. Jesus also said, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our dwelling within them.” We have God within us. And Jesus also said, “Whoever believes in me, as scripture says, ‘rivers of living water will flow from within them.’” The goodness of God which is in us, is meant to pour out from us on the world, and the more it does, the greater it becomes.

It’s a struggle every day to find that goodness and pour it out -- a call to check up on someone you haven’t seen in a while; a sincere compliment to someone who had done a job well; being a willing ear to someone who has a lot to get off her chest; taking a genuine interest in what a five year old is trying to tell you. But as we develop these habits of pouring out goodness, we begin to see the effect not only in the world around us, but in ourselves. Because God dwells in us, we can become rivers of living water.