Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 17:5-10

When I was very young I dreamed about being a cowboy – not a real one, but one like Roy Rodgers, who no one under fifty remembers anymore. He was very skilled with a rope and could lasso a criminal who was riding away on a fast horse. His gun skills were even greater, since he could shoot a gun out of an outlaw's hand without actually hurting the crook. When he went after the bad guys, in the end he would bring them back, singlehandedly, unharmed but bound and harmless. As time went on I shifted my allegiances to Superman. Oh, to fly, to have super strength – and x-ray vision as well. And all the time using my powers for good.

But in my imagination there was another kind of hero as well – the saint who could work miracles. I knew in my heart that I couldn't be another Roy Rodgers or Superman, but it seemed that I could be a saint, someone who could harness the very power of God to do good – and of course the stories of the saints abound with miracles. If I could just be holy enough … if I only knew the right prayers … And even at my age, there are still times when I meet someone with cancer or someone with Alzheimer's disease and wish that I had the kind of faith that would let me lay my hands on that person and cure him.

I think that's the kind of faith the apostles were asking for today. Jesus had demonstrated his ability to effect a miraculous cure, to cast out demons, to even raise the dead. The apostles even got a taste of that when they were sent out by Jesus to all the villages and towns to announce the good news. And just before this gospel reading. Jesus has been telling them that they have to learn to forgive “seventy times seven” and that if one of them scandalized a little one it would be better for that person to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea. He told them that if they wanted to be great, they had to become servants of each other. If the apostles wanted to follow Jesus and become real disciples, it seemed an impossible task – and it seemed as though this required more faith.

In my reading of the gospel story, I think Jesus was saying, “Do you think faith is something that I can increase or decrease? Do you think that if you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could tell this tree to go plant itself in the sea and it would?” And then Jesus goes on to the story of the worthless servants or unworthy slaves or useless slaves – all different ways of translating the Greek words in which the gospel was written. In any event, we are sort of shocked by this phrase and even by the whole story – the slave who comes in from working all day is expected to continue working until all his work is done. It would be ridiculous to expect his owner to wait on him. And assuming the slave did everything how could he be worthless, or useless? One of the commentaries I read said that the Greek word used here means something like “Not owed anything”. But it's still shocking.

Our problem is that we don't see slavery the way Jesus and his disciples did. In that time, a lot of the population were “slaves”. They were “owned” by a master until they worked off a debt; or they might have been captured in a war and given to wealthy landowners who had the muscle to keep them under control; or they might be people who had sold themselves into slavery because that way they could be guaranteed food and shelter. And we meet all of these kinds of slaves in scripture. People did not have the kind of image of slavery that we have today. It was part of life, and Paul calls himself a “slave for Christ” and John says that “although Jesus was divine, he took on the form of a slave”.

One thing about slaves in that time – there was a general understanding that the master took care of his slaves – remember the story of the prodigal son? There the son remembers that his father's slaves have abundant bread to eat.

So I hear Jesus telling his disciples, and that's you and I, that first of all, what they are asking of him no one can give; real faith depends on doing what you are supposed to do, day after day, year after year. If you say, “I've done all I am supposed to do” that's a false statement; as long as you are alive there is more to do. But on the other hand, Jesus is saying that you are like a slave in the household of a master; you have a place, you belong, you are secure. You don't have to earn your place and you won't be thrown out.

We don't like to see ourselves as slaves, especially as worthless or useless slaves. We don't like the idea that if we only had enough faith, life wouldn't be such a struggle, and that God could make things a lot easier if we could work miracles, if we could easily forgive, if we could avoid making mistakes as we raise our children or try to run our businesses and our households.

But we have been made members of our Father's household; we are adopted brothers and sisters of His Son, who became a slave for us; and the faith we are talking about is not a power that makes us into perfect or powerful human beings. Real faith is not power, it's not agreeing with certain truths, it's not the same as believing in God. Real faith is trusting that God has our real interests at heart, that He wants the best for us, that regardless of the circumstances, he will look after us and do everything in his power to take the slaves we are and raise us up to be His sons and daughters in the life to come.

And that is what makes our lives not only tolerable but joyful.

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 16:19-31

When I was young I lived in a community where almost everyone was Caucasian and Christian. We had a couple of Jewish families who were merchants, but they went to the Episcopalian Church. There was an African American family in town and a couple of Chinese families, who of course, operated Chinese restaurants. And there were a few native Americans. Our little town didn't have a problem with a few people like this and my father would often point to their presence as evidence of our tolerance.

My grandmother, on the other hand, had many interesting ideas. She knew that Polish people were basically mean. She didn't think much of Native Americans, and when a cousin of my grandfather announced that he was one eighth Sioux Indian, my grandmother had a fit, because of it was true she was married to someone who was one eighth Sioux Indian, and that wouldn't do at all. My grandmother had no love for the Irish, and it wasn't until I was in my late teens that I learned, not from her, that her own mother had been an Irish immigrant.

Prejudices soak in. In our town the people we all looked down upon were the “bums” who lived in the South End where most of the bars were. We referred to them as “winos” and laughed when we saw them sleeping in an alley or staggering down the street.

When I went off to college I had classmates from all over the country, in fact, all over the world. And as I got to know them, I learned that they could not be dismissed with a label, but they all had stories; they had families, they had people they loved; they believed in their religion, they loved the place in which they grew up. As a practicing physician I had patients from all walks of life. I learned that gay people and lesbians also had stories. Regardless of their life styles, they were rounded human beings, they had loved ones, they had ups and downs and goals and ambitions just like I did.

I think today Jesus is not talking about rich and poor, or asking the those who have a lot of the world's goods help out those who don't. Those are definitely things he wanted his followers to do, but he's asking more of us in this story.

Because, you see, I don't think the rich man was a sinner. I think he was a neurosurgeon or a trial lawyer or a financial planner or a banker – and I think he probably did pro-bono work or volunteered at his church and helped raise money for his favorite cause. And he wore an Armani suit and had a Rolex and drove a Porsche. And he had lunch at the Federal Club. And when he was downtown he saw what you and I see, a woman pushing a shopping cart, a man with a cardboard sign stating that he was homeless – maybe someone muttering to himself and rolling his eyes. People you would walk around and not meet their gaze.

We know that Jesus wants to reconcile sinners with God. We know he wants brothers to forgive each other before they offer sacrifice. We know he doesn't want Jews and Gentiles to hate each other. But for people to bridge the gulfs between them, they have to know each other's stories. Because once you know someone's story, they cease to be a member of a class, and become real human beings to you.

And that's really the rich man's sin. He never saw Lazarus as a brother, a fellow human being, a child of God. Not only does the rich man ignore the poor man on his doorstep during life, but even after death he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to put some water on his tongue; and when that doesn't work, he asks that Lazarus be sent to his brothers to warn them. Lazarus to the rich man is not a fellow human being, he is a thing, a member of a class, something to be used.

Is Jesus saying that people like that will go to hell? Not really. Jesus tells this story before he has won salvation for the human race. In those days people who believed in life after death believed that people would get justice in the next world, but it was all one world – Hades, or Sheol. The rich man is suffering because he does not see Lazarus, and indeed everyone else, as persons. In fact, of all the people on the earth, he is only concerned about his brothers; he doesn't want them to end up in his situation. But even there it's not because they are people; it's because they are blood relatives; they are “my brothers”. He wants to spare them because they are all that is left of him.

The man who never took the time to know the story of the person on the street, the one who is not like myself, will always be impoverished, because he will not see reality; he will only see an illusion, a reflection of himself. The rich man is not suffering in the next life because of a particular sin he committed or even a series of sins. He is suffering because he has cut himself off from other people during his life. His punishment is self-imposed, and even after death his attitude toward Lazarus does not change.

Part of being a Christian is to help those less fortunate, that's true. But maybe a maybe an even more important part is to overcome those things that divide us, those things that make us look at each other with suspicion, that make us cross the street so that we don't have to confront someone who is so different from us. Because when you think about it, almost all the problems in our world that have to do with people start because we don't make the effort to know the other person, to learn the other person's story.

I am the rich man. I don't get a kick out of fine clothes or fast cars, but I do enjoy food and I like the fact that I have enough money so that when I want something I can have it. There are people I meet every week that I don't really want to know better. Most of the time I am like the rich man and I step over him, or around him, or ignore her. But now and then I am kind of forced to stop and listen to his story. And once I've done that, that person is no longer an it, but now a you. During the rest of my life I ask God to help me so that I will always notice Lazarus and go out of my way to see him as a person. And once I recognize my brother or sister, I can't very well ignore their needs.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 16:1-13

I always had trouble with this parable. Is Jesus praising someone who is dishonest? Is he talking about a master who laughs off his dishonest servant's further dishonesty? And then Jesus gives us some statements that don't seem to add up: Making friends with dishonest wealth? Being trustworthy with dishonest wealth? Is your wealth and mine dishonest?

I think what throws me off, and maybe you as well, is the description of the steward calling in his master's debtors and having them write off part of their debt, hoping that they will then welcome him into their homes when the servant gets fired.

In my reading, I found out that the servant had every right to do that. A steward would build his commission in to what was charged. And the commissions were strictly prescribed; fifty percent for olive oil, 20 percent for wheat, and other percentages for other commodities. It was recognition that although the master owned the land and the produce, the steward was the one who had to organize the harvest, and that meant paying workers. Whatever was left over he could keep. So our steward is simply writing off his commission. Those who owed the master money suddenly found themselves with more money in their pockets, and presumably, felt more favorable to the servant.

So we have a steward who is accused of squandering his master's property, and at the end of the story the master commends the dishonest steward. I suspect the steward was chronically dishonest, and that's what got him into trouble. When he was caught, he figured out a way to turn his situation to his advantage. That's why he is commended.

I think that's the situation Jesus and his listeners envision when Jesus interprets the parable for them. But Jesus goes on to make several statements about wealth and honesty and responsibility. When our translation says “dishonest wealth” the original Greek would be more like “the wealth this world values”. And that makes a little more sense. Jesus is telling us here that how we deal with our wealth has an impact on eternity. But at the same time, wealth is like nitroglycerin -- it can destroy us if we don't use it properly. And if you are like me, you've had trouble in your lives with that. How do we strike the right balance?

Because as Jesus says, it has to do with honesty. I know a family where the mother has a full time job and the father holds down two full-time jobs – reasonably well – paying jobs, too. And they have five children, all still young. Something seems out of balance. Maybe they are saying, “we are saving for our children's college education” or “we are saving so we don't become a burden on our children in our old age”. I'm not judging them, but if it were me, and I was honest, I hope I would recognize that whatever the reason money was getting in the way of my responsibilities to my family.

And Jesus is pointing out that more important than money are relationships – the steward, after all, uses wealth to form relationships. And that's another danger of worldly wealth – it has the power to come between people. If I have wealth, it follows that some people will try to take it away from me in some way or another. We get phone calls all day long asking for donations or offering to come to our house and see if we need something they are selling. And if some people will try to take my wealth, am I not going to be suspicious, even a little bit, of everyone? And if I don't have enough to get by on, won't that color my relationships with those who have more than they need?

And Jesus is pointing out that worldly wealth brings about responsibility. John Wesley, who founded the Methodist church, begin his career as a teacher, and had a salary of 30 british pounds a year. He lived on 28 and gave a way the other two. But as his salary went up, especially after he became a speaker in great demand, he continued to live on 28 pounds a year and gave away everything else. (They didn't have inflation in those days). He saw wealth as the opportunity to be of service to others. I think it's interesting that we Catholics contribute on the average 386 dollars per family per year to our parish church – even though that is the source of the most important things in our lives – the mass and Holy Eucharist, the source of reconciliation for our sins, the education of our children in our faith, and all the other spiritual benefits that flow from being members of a parish. In the Assembly of God, by the way, the contribution per family is about 1700 dollars per year.

And Jesus ends his discussion of wealth with the statement, “..No servant can serve two masters...You cannot serve God and mammon”. Some of us may have heard that mammon is the demon of wealth, but that understanding dates from the middle ages. In Jesus' time, mammon referred to profit, surplus, that which you have but don't need. And Jesus is simply saying – those of us who have more than we need are constantly faced with a choice; do we use that surplus for God or do we live for that wealth? Here in our wealthy town of Longmeadow, we need to be especially sensitive to what Jesus is telling us. Are we using our surplus wealth to store up in heaven what really matters?

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 15:1-32

There is a lot of humor in the bible if you know where to look. In our first story, you hear God telling Moses “Go down because your people, whom you brought out of egypt, have become corrupt.” After God gets through with his threat, Moses replies, “Why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt?” Sounds like a mom and dad arguing over who is most responsible for the kid's bad behavior.

Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the virtue closest to God was love, but mercy was the second. And perhaps there isn't really a difference; mercy is a form of love. The Gospel of Luke, which we read from today, has story after story about God's mercy. And today, we hear three stories in a row, and Jesus is making some very serious points with humor.

Put yourself in the mind of a first-century Jewish person. I know that's kind of difficult, but you almost have to do that to get what Jesus is really saying in these stories.

So if you are a religious Jew living in a community that depends on raising livestock and farming for its survival. You are under the political control of the Romans and Jewish people who have “sold out” and like powerless people everywhere, you turn to your religion and become more deeply involved. You listen to the teachers and try to live according to the law they proclaim. There are a lot of things in life that go without saying. And one of them is that you avoid people who are impure, who are at the edge of society, people like tax collectors, prostitutes, pagans, even Samaritans. When you pass one on the street, you ignore that person. A really good rabbi might even cross the street to avoid even the possibility of brushing against a sinner. So it is shocking to you to see that Jesus is very different from the other Jewish teachers in this regard. And if the pharisees are disturbed, you are as well; after all, they are people who live the law as well as humanly possible.

And that's when Jesus tells his stories. And if you were a first century Jew listening to him, it's almost as though Jesus piles one thing on top of another.

First, he says, “who among you would leave 99 sheep to find a lost one? The answer – none of us. That would really be foolish. But this shepherd does, and not only that, he does not lead the sheep back, he hoists it up on his shoulders. It is not a little lamb like in the pictures. A full-grown sheep may way 150 pounds. The shepherd does all the work, all that is necessary, to save the sheep, to re-unite it to the flock.

And the woman who lost a coin. We can sort of follow the logic as she frantically sweeps the house and checks under the bed and moves furniture around until she finds the coin. Like the shepherd, she does all the work. But then she throws a huge party, probably spending more than the coin was worth. That doesn't make sense either.

And to top it all off, Jesus throws in the last story, the story of a child who couldn't wait for his father to die, but wanted his inheritance right now; a son who upon receiving it, goes off and blows it all – we don't know on what, but we can be pretty sure it wasn't well invested. And he is reduced to taking care of pigs, and eating pig food. If you go back and read Jewish law, this young man deserves to be disowned; his father has every right to say, “he is not my son”. In fact, that's what Jewish law would tell the father to do. Why should someone like this disrespectful, rebellious first century juvenile delinquent be part of the community at all?

And the son comes to his senses and decides what he is going to say to his father; he would happily take any job if he can just eat and have a place to sleep. That's all he hopes for. But the father has been going up on a hill every day and looking off into the distance, hoping to see the son returning. And when he barely glimpses this, he runs to the son, again, doing all the work. And his welcome back is extravagant. And Jesus knows what people are thinking. And he puts those thoughts in the speech of the second son. And if we are honest, we sympathize with the second son. Lots of people have tried to create a back story for the second son to explain why he reacts this way. But Jesus gives his own back story – and it isn't satisfying at all; “we must celebrate because the one who was dead is now alive!”

Jesus tells the first story and the shepherds are shocked. He tells the second, and the women who are following him are shocked. And he tells the third, and everybody is shocked. And he leaves it at that.

When we hear these stories, we should allow ourselves to be shocked as well. Because Jesus is really talking about God's mercy. To the Jewish people the relationship with God is a covenant, and they've violated their end a lot of times and suffered the consequences. After suitable punishment, maybe over a few generations, God always brings them back; but their relationship with God is dependent on keeping God's law. That's what the Pharisees are concerned about. They want everyone who is Jewish to obey the law to the fullest, because that's when God will finally restore the Jewish people to their true position in the world – a light to the nations, a city on the hill. Unfortunately, I think a lot of us can identify with the pharisees – our relationship with God depends on what we do, how well we pray, how completely we avoid sin.

But what Jesus is saying is that God is not like that; God does all the work, if you are a dumb sheep or an inanimate coin, God will do all the work. If you are a prodigal son, God will do all the work the second you let him, because he has created you so that you can choose not to let him.

One of the insights of the mystics is that you draw closer to God by letting go of things, by “unlearning” what you know, by becoming like a little child. True religion should teach us how to empty ourselves out so that God can come in. Because that's all that stand between you and I and God.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 14:25-33

In my home town of Helena, Montana, there was a place called Gerties Drive Inn at one end of Main Street. It was a hamburger joint, and you could get root beer and root beer floats. It was one of those places where you could drive up to a parking space, give your order into a speaker, and a young lady would come out with your order on a tray which could attach to your rolled down window. It was a very popular place, and during most of my youth, even into my college years, it was a hangout for teenagers and young families. Alas, it no longer exists, and places like McDonalds have overwhelmed these home-grown enterprises.

My grandfather never owned his own home or a new car. He worked as a bartender for a while, and a salesman in Montgomery Ward which for those of you who are not as old as I am, was the Walmart's of that day. My grandmother, although she was a trained nurse, had decided that part of being a lady was not to work outside of the home, leaving the providing for the family to the husband and father.

One day when I was driving my grandfather to a doctor's appointment, we passed Gertie's drive in. He remarked that the person who opened the place had invited him to go into business with him, which would involve a commitment of money and time, and would indeed he could lose everything. My grandfather turned down the offer, and told me that he would always regret that decision. If he had taken the chance he would be rich.

Today Jesus tells us what it takes to be a disciple. He is not telling us what it takes to get into heaven. That's a different question entirely. But he is telling us that if we want to walk the road he walked and make a real difference in the world, as he did, it will take three things; we will have to hate all those we would normally love; we would have to take up our crosses and follow him; and we would have to renounce all our possessions. My grandfather was faced with a similar challenge, and shrank from it. His life could have been completely different if he had only taken a chance.

Mother Theresa is being canonized today. She is an example of what it means to be a disciple. As a teenager, she wanted to give herself to Christ. She chose to enter a teaching order, the “Sisters of Loreto” and spent some time in Ireland learning English. In India, she learned Bengali, and spent twenty years teaching middle-class Indian children, and eventually be came headmistress of the school. She became increasingly appalled by the poverty she saw, and in 1948 she began her true vocation of ministering to the poorest of the poor. She gathered some young Indian Christian women about her, and that became the seed of the Missionaries of Charity, now consisting of more than 5000 sisters. She also started an order of priests and another of brothers. She went on to become an international celebrity and won a Nobel prize. She was honored all over the world during her lifetime, and shared her message with the United Nations, with presidents and Queen Elizabeth, lectured the pope, and even returned to Albania where she was honored there, despite the fact that the country had exiled or executed everyone who was a religious leader.

So what did she hate? She had a large family, and after she joined the Sisters of Loreto, she never saw any of them again. She had many close friends in the Sisters of Loreto, but after she left them she had no more contact with them. She did not, obviously, hate them. But the hebrew word which is translated as “hate” means something more like “to turn away from, to detach oneself from”. It means that you would never let anything come between you and what God is calling you to do.

So what was her cross? We have a lot of information about her interior life; after her death her confessor wrote about it. Saint Theresa, as a sister of Loreto, began to have the experience of hearing the voice of Jesus, which lead her to her true ministry. But after she established the Missionaries of Charity, she no longer had that interior re-assurance. In fact, according to her confessor, she felt abandoned by God. She even went through phases where she wasn't sure there was a god. And yet, her public face showed no sign of doubt or disbelief. That was her cross. That was the burden she carried all her life. And how did she renounce all her possessions? Even when she became a Sister of Loreto she didn't have much, but after she answered what she called “the call within a call” she had even less. Her earthly possessions consisted of a rosary and a change of clothing; one to wear while the other was washed. She had no car or indeed no home; she slept on the floor even when she was being put up in fine hotels in New York.

And she has been canonized. When I read her life story and see how clearly she followed Christ's call to discipleship, my first reaction is that that's impossible for me and maybe for most of us. But when you think about it, Mother Teresa couldn't have accomplished what she did without the support of literally thousands of people who held down jobs, raised families, owned cars and homes – because for every Teresa, for every Francis, there have to be people who do earn money and can give some of it away. And Mother Teresa herself recognized this when she said “it is not doing great things; it is doing little things well.” To be a disciple doesn't mean to do what Mother Teresa did. That's a special calling. But it does mean that as we go about our daily affairs, we do everything well; it means that we struggle to keep our priorities straight; Jesus comes first; we gratefully accept the burdens we have, because they bring us close to the cross; and we look at our posessions with the eyes of the poor, remembering always how privileged we are compared to most people in the world. I'm not giving you or I an excuse; because becoming a real disciple, although it's within everyone's grasp, is just as hard for us as for Mother Teresa. But well worth it.

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 14:1, 7-14

My wife and I just finished taking grandchildren on trips. We took three boys to Franconia Notch, a boy and a girl to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and three smaller boys to Cape Cod. We know what it is like to be old and tired.

The grandaughter mentioned is delightful. She is full of energy and there is a spark of mischief in her eyes. One day she was telling us about her exploits in sports. She was a really good soccer player, she said, and went on to describe a few triumphs. But, she said, I am a really really good basketball player. She related how after the season her dad, who was their coach, gave each girl on the team a compliment in the form of a title. But another girl got the title of best player. Later he told her that since he was her dad he couldn't give her that title, but he told her that she was the most aggressive player. She treasured that.

It's interesting to watch kids. I mentioned that we took three older boys and three younger boys on short trips. The dynamic was the same. One boy has the charism; a second becomes that boy's best friend. But if you are the best friend, that means the third person in the group is on the outside, grudgingly accepted, but usually on the sidelines in conversation or in fun activities.

We are all like this. It's human nature. We gravitate towards the people who are like us, or more accurately, like we would like to be – popular, witty, energetic, good looking – and we sort of turn our backs on people who are not like who we would like to be – loners, those slow of speech, the chronically ill, the disabled, the ones who seem to be afterthoughts to humanity. And it is the work of a lifetime to begin to see the presence of God in every human being.

Teilard de Chardin said that what we like are bouquets, bouquets of beautiful flowers, each selected because it is perfect. But the bouquet is artificial, and the flowers in it soon wither and die. But reality is more like an old gnarled rose bush, where you can indeed find a few beautiful flowers, but also places where branches have broken, where there are scars on the bark, where buds are forming and flowers are dying. The bush is a reflection of how everything comes together to make something real, where we can see what a struggle it is to bring forth beauty. As human beings we begin by looking at the beautiful flowers in a bouquet, the beautiful people. But we need to expand our vision to see reality – to see how without this person who is angry all the time, this person who forgets to bathe or eats too much or seems incapable of avoiding stupid mistakes in his life; or this person who has alzheimer's disease or cerebral palsy or some other very visible mark that sets them apart – how they are all part of an organic whole, how the universe of humanity would be diminished without them.

And probably we need to look at ourselves and see that, yes, in the eyes of someone else, I may be the odd one, the one who people would rather not look at or speak to or associate with.

So once again Jesus defines a major human weakness, a source of sin – something that we even see in little children – the desire to be special, the desire to be seen as special – and he gives us the remedy – turn around and associate yourself with those who are on the margins, the ones society doesn't seem to know what to do with. Those are the ones, the ones who can give nothing back, who will show you the face of God because you will not be distracted by the superficial, the beauty or the good manners or intelligence or witty conversation.

When I became a deacon in 1997, I thought I had something to offer the people of God. I was blessed with a good mind and good health and a loving family. I've never had much to worry about, really. And so I thought I'd be spending time helping people with their problems, counseling young couples about to get married, teaching people about the faith – and I do a little of those things. But I never dreamed that I would be spending so much time with people in nursing homes, people who can't take care of themselves because of severe physical or mental problems, or just extreme old age. Sometimes it's difficult to sit with a person who can't even talk and whose reaction to my presence is to burst into tears or draw back from my touch. It's hard to see how I can serve them, how I can minister to their spiritual needs.

But sometimes I see that it isn't me doing the ministering, or for that matter, the other person. As I sit with someone whose personality has disappeared or who spends most of her energy trying to feed herself or get to the bathroom before she has another accident (and could care less about anything I have to say) I sometimes see that common humanity that unites us, the bond that makes us brothers and sisters, the part of us that God loves even when there is nothing to love him back.

And there is always the great mystery – why? Why are we all not beautiful flowers? Why are a few of us given so much and many of us seem to bear most of the world's pain? And what do I say to a person who has every reason to think God has cursed them, who has prayed with all his heart to be relieved of his burden, and no longer believes in a loving, caring God, because he has no evidence that God has answered his prayers?

Today Jesus is saying, stop looking up; look down and be a brother or a sister to those people you see out of the corner of your eye, those people in nursing homes and units for the cognitively impaired, those people for whom visiting them seems to be a waste of time for them and for you. Because, you see, they are on the cross and Jesus is there as well. And you can choose to be at the foot of the cross with the the Beloved Disciple and the faithful women, or off in hiding with the other disciples. And in the presence of the crucifixion, seen in those who are the least among us, you are very close to the Resurrection.

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 13:22-30

When I was reading today's gospel, I remembered a novel I read many years ago. It was called “Damn Yankees.” It was made into a movie and a broadway musical, both of which were great in their own right. But the book has a little darkness in it. Basically, the hero is a middle-aged fan of the Washington Senators who longs for them to win a pennant. He sells his soul in exchange for becoming an unbeatable baseball player. He did build in an escape clause, though, and when he tries to take advantage of it, the devil sends a beautiful woman to seduce him – but she fails. It turns out that her beauty is the result of her own bargain with the devil. To punish her, the devil removes her beauty and of course she is still damned. I don't remember what the hero had on the devil, but he apparently had one demand he can make. He offers to make the devil release the woman from her bargain. She instead asks that her beauty be restored. If you saw the movie or the musical, it didn't end like that; but I remember the book and how it ended and it deeply disturbed me.

I think Jesus is talking about something like this today. Someone asks him if only a few will be saved. That would seem to be an easy question to answer: yes or no. But Jesus gives a little sermon, beginning with “strive to enter through the narrow gate”. Many will try to enter but not be able to. And when they plead with the owner to open up, he will say he does not know them.

Hell, our church teaches, is a reality. There are a lot of people who have convinced themselves that there is no hell and they give some very good arguments. They say, how could a merciful God send any of his children into an eternity of punishment? Is God some kind of sadist? Where's the mercy? And our image of hell comes from scripture as well; Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus and we hear about fire. And he implies fire in a few other places. But actually, most of the time Jesus uses different analogies for hell. He talks about Gehenna, which everyone who heard him knew referred to a place where everyone threw their garbage. He often talks about being locked out of a party – remember the five foolish virgins, or the king who threw someone out of a banquet because he wasn't wearing a wedding garment? And of course, the gospel we've just heard makes no mention of fire, just being excluded, kicked out.

And it all starts with “strive to enter through the narrow gate”. What on earth is Jesus talking about? In Jesus' time larger cities had walls around them. Of course you could get in through the main gates if someone opened them. But many cities had passage ways about as wide as a person moving sideways. You could squeeze through but you couldn't take anything with you. If you were an enemy, you would not be able to bring weapons in with you; and if you were an army, it wouldn't matter if you had to enter the city one person at a time without weapons. So in order to get in you had to leave everything behind. If you wanted to bring in stuff you had to have someone open the main entrance.

That's kind of what hell is all about. God says, “Come on in, my child. But you have to leave all that stuff outside.” What stuff is that? It has to do with the so called seven deadly sins – pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Now those aren't the sins as such; they are the roots of the sins, or the baggage, that we will have to let go of if we are to squeeze through the narrow gate.

We read about some of those saints who wore hair shirts, or rolled in thorn bushes or fasted for weeks on end, and we are usually repulsed by this. But they had a point. They were working on detachment, trying to separate themselves from the baggage that might keep them from entering through the narrow gate. Saint Francis saw this; he gave up his inheritance, even the clothes on his back to follow Christ. And we see that in so many other saints. And that is why we say martyrs go straight to heaven; they willingly give everything up, their very lives, for the sake of Christ.

CS Lewis envisioned an afterlife in which people found themselves living in a small house in a featureless plain. They had everything they needed. Eventually some would get restless, and get on a bus that took them to the end of the line, where they could climb a steep mountain on the top of which was a cross – just a big, dark cross. They could also enter a cave where they heard music and laughter. Needless to say most went down there. Only a few began the climb to the top of the mountain, which implied leaving everything behind.

Most of us mistakenly think of God as a great king who demands justice rather than a merciful father who wants us to give us everything. But God's justice has been taken care of by Jesus. Our only problem is the baggage we can't let go of.

The story from Damn Yankees made a real impression on me because I couldn't conceive of a person who would prefer physical beauty in this world to eternal happiness in the next. But I was pretty young then. Since then I've met a lot of people who would have an extremely difficult time letting go of their baggage. I know a lady who went into a profound depression when her cat died. I've met a man who almost divorced his wife because she threw out his favorite easy chair. And these all sound ridiculous, I know. But what is your baggage?

The Church has a wonderful tool to help us identify our baggage and do something about it. It's called Confession, the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When we honestly review our lives, we can see where we don't quite hit the mark, and we can work back from there and identify the “deadly sin” at the root of our problem. Maybe it's pride; maybe it's sloth or laziness; maybe it's gluttony of some sort. By asking us to review our lives every now and then, the Church tries to help us identify those things to which we are so attached that they pose a danger to our soul. We can always be forgiven, but if we know why we commit a certain sin over and over again, we can begin to work on the root. If we are gluttons – for pleasure, food, drink – whatever – we can fast. If we are lazy, we can get up every morning and accomplish everything on our list; if we are envious of our neighbor, we can find a way to rejoice in his good fortune.

Strive to enter through the narrow gate; leave your baggage outside. It is a lot easier now than it will be in the next life.