Third Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 11:2-11

A long time ago my family and I were in Palm Springs. When we came out of our room to get our car we were held up because Ronald Reagan was coming to that same hotel to address a convention of businessmen of some sort. As we strained to get a look through the secret servicemen and other dignitaries, we finally got a glimpse of him. And my first impression was, he is certainly short. I had expected him to be tall. In the movies he was tall. Whenever he made a public appearance or appeared on television, he seemed tall. But it's all optics. His handlers always saw to it that he was either photographed alone, or at a podium, or with his wife, who was quite short. Anyway, in that moment my whole image of him changed.

In today's gospel John, who last week was talking about the one who is to come, who would baptize with fire, whose winnowing fan was already separating the wheat from the chaff, who would be the one to lay the ax to the tree, is beginning to wonder whether his cousin is really the Messiah. He doesn't seem to fit the image John had, the great warrior of God who would finally set things right, who would rescue Israel and punish the wicked and bring about the great reign of God in the New Jerusalem. As far as John could tell, he was wandering around the countryside with a bunch of Galilean peasants. And so he asks, “Are you the expected one, or shall we look for another?” Did I waste my life getting things ready for you? Where are the fireworks?

Isn't that our question sometimes? Weeks and months and years go by and things don't seem to change much. It isn't obvious that we live in a time that has been redeemed by Christ, a time when Jesus is making all things new, gathering everything into himself so that he can return all of Creation to his Father. Two thousand years have gone by; saints and sinners have come and gone; and in our own time it sometimes seems that Christianity is not making progress; and our own Catholic church is fading away in the very countries in which it grew and flourished.

And our prayers. I think it's interesting that almost all the intentions people have masses offered for are for dead people. We offer masses for the repose of someone's soul. That's great, but there isn't a way to check whether they are effective or not. If we offered masses for specific verifiable interventions of God – a better job, a cure from cancer – would our faith be shaken if and when what we prayed for did not come about? And it's not just true of masses; we all know that our private prayers aren't answered – at least in the way we would hope.

Jesus replies to John's question not with a simple yes or no, but he points out that a lot of things are happening that have been predicted by the prophets; miracles of healing indeed, but Jesus emphasizes that the poor have the gospel preached to them – Isaiah mentioned all those other things but never mentioned this last fact. John, Jesus says, draw your own conclusions.

And then Jesus turns to the crowds and tells them that first of all John is indeed a prophet, in fact the greatest who has come along up to that time. But even the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than him.

And I think there is a clue in that. Jesus is not just giving us a compliment; he's inviting us to contrast John and perhaps the other prophets with a person who is in the kingdom of heaven – and that doesn't mean to be in heaven, it means to be someone who has given his life over to Jesus' leadership; someone who has become a disciple, someone who understands what Jesus is all about.

John and indeed the other prophets all hoped for an end time, a time when all the contradictions would be resolved, a time when good would win and evil would lose. They dreamed about the time, and imagined how it would be then. Just read Ezekiel or Isaiah, or even the Book of Revelation.

But the kingdom of heaven is not like that. It is exactly what Jesus says it is – a time when the blind see, the lame walk, and we might add, the hungry are fed, the ignorant are educated, the lonely are befriended, the foreigner is welcomed – and most of all, the poor have the gospel preached to them. If you and I are attending to these things, to that extent we are in the kingdom of heaven; and we will be like Christ, and just as he has been raised up, so will all of those who are in the kingdom of heaven be raised up at the end of time.

The amazing thing about the kingdom of heaven is that it is already here. To the extent that we do what Jesus did, we are already in the kingdom of heaven. And there is a connection between being in the kingdom and living forever, being resurrected at the end of time.

There are forces of evil in this world. We don't have to look past the daily newspaper to notice that. But God has given his Son the power to conquer evil, to set things right, to bring into union all that was separated. And the Son has done that. We are trapped in time, so we think in terms of past and present and future. But the will of God cannot be denied, and the victory is already won. And we who are brothers and sisters of Jesus contribute to this victory by doing what Jesus did – when a child scrapes his knee and you put on a bandage and say soothing words; when you take the time to visit your aged aunt who is in a nursing home with Alzheimers disease; when you go to work in a job you aren't too fond of because you want good things for your family – everything you do can be part of the coming about of the kingdom.

So today let us rejoice because we know what the kingdom is all about; we know that the victory is won; we know that bringing about the kingdom is something that Jesus has granted to us. Let us go forth and bring about the kingdom.

Second Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 3:1-12

Speaking of John the Baptist, It seemed a priest and a minister were putting up a sign alongside a road. It read, “The End is Near! Turn Yourself Around Now! Before It's too Late!” A man drove past them and turned to his companion and said “Those crazy religious fanatics!” and he pushed down on the gas pedal and barreled around the corner. There was a loud splash, then silence. The priest turned to the minister and said, “Maybe the sign should have just said 'Bridge Out'.”

Today we meet John the Baptist baptizing, of course. And when the Pharisees and Saduccees come to be baptized, he gets angry. “You brood of vipers, he says, who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come. Clearly no way to make friends. Now we have to ask, why were they there to be baptized? And why did John get mad at them? We are very early into the Gospel of Matthew and Jesus hasn't even appeared on the scene.

The reason for the baptism is not hard to understand. It was not a sacramental baptism; it did not free anyone from original sin. John and other baptizers of that time would go down to the Jordan river where Joshua and the Israelites had crossed to enter the promised land. When that happened, the tribes that had wandered in the desert finally became a nation. The nation which had once been prosperous and powerful was now reduced to a small fragment of what it had been, under the control of the Romans. The prophets blamed this on the fact that the people had lost their way, that they had abandoned God and begun following idols. To be baptized was to dedicate yourself to what Israel stood for – it was an outward sign of your intention to take your faith seriously, to become one with those ancestors who had kept the faith. John says to the Pharisees and Saduccees, “If you are serious about your repentance, show it by bearing good fruit.” The word repentance, though is better translated as “change of heart” or “change the way you have been thinking”. John sees through them; even though they are on opposite sides of many issues, the Pharisees and Saduccees both insisted that they were the true Jews; they were the ones who carried on the faith most completely. The Pharisees by keeping every last point in the law of Moses, and the Saduccees by their adherence to the temple rituals of blood sacrifice. And John knows that they might be completely sincere in wishing to show their solidarity with their ancestors. But he also knows that they will go into the water and come out unchanged – because they have no motive to change.

That's a problem with religious people in general, and I include myself. We don't like to change; we don't even think we should change. After all, I have an active prayer life, I study my faith, I think I'm generous with my time and my money, and I try to follow the Golden Rule. What more could God want? If God grades on a curve, I'm okay.

But John is basically saying that the Pharisees and the Saduccees and Me and maybe you are missing the whole point. Jesus is coming into the world to create a new people, and if we want to be part of this new creation, we have to become intentional disciples. That's the change he's talking about. That's putting on a new mind, that's repentance.

So what is an intentional disciple? I remember in college when I signed up to learn German. My class was 8:00 in the morning, and since I was away from home and living in a dormitory, I did not get to bed at a decent hour; we spent a lot of time discussing profound things. So German class almost always saw me dozing off, telling myself that I would have no problems with the exams because many of the words were kind of like English and I could probably guess the rest; and besides, I had a lot of harder subjects to master. Our mid-term came along and I did very poorly in German. At that point I decided to take it seriously and spent time studying every day. I became an intentional student of German.

An intentional disciple is someone who decides that the most important thing in life is to learn what God wants of me and to carry out God's will for me. Unfortunately, that means we have to work at it every day, all the rest of our lives. We have to learn to distinguish between God's will and our own will. We have to allow God to rule over more and more of our lives, instead of the part we allow him to rule over. And it's like learning German; you have to learn what God wants, do it, then learn some more. You have to recognize when your actions are flowing from your own will – and they might be good actions – but if they aren't what God wants, we are missing the mark. And that process never ends, which is why John can tell each of us every day to repent, to convert, to change our minds. Being an intentional disciple is not to become a member of a club, like the Pharisees or the Saducees or the Saint Mary's parish. Don't get me wrong, that's important. But being an intentional disciple is a process, the process of surrendering everything to God. Saint Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. We are designed to be filled up by God, and we go through life trying to fill up that space with other things. And as long as there is anything else in this space, there is no room for God.

Advent is the beginning of a new year; we are reminded that Jesus is coming to make all things new. John invites us to not be left behind. How do we respond? What steps will we take to become intentional disciples?

First Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 24:37 – 44

My mother was a chronically busy person. It was hard for her to sit still. She had a bunch of things she had to accomplish every day, and heaven help you if you interrupted her efforts. My father's parents had the habit of dropping in unannounced. They would open the front door and say, “Is anybody home?” and walk right in. My sisters and I were always happy to see them, but even at that age we could tell my mother did not share our joy. She would keep puttering around, answer their questions with single words, and after they had left, she would usually tell us that even though she liked them, she wished they would let her know when they were coming.

My mother's brother, my favorite uncle, was just the opposite. He ran a farm and always had something to do. But if you dropped in on him unannounced, he would usually put everything aside, invite you into his kitchen and depending on the time of day, offer you coffee or something with a little more punch. And he would converse with you as though he didn't have anything else on his mind. He was always ready for company.

Today Jesus makes it very clear that we would be better off imitating my uncle than my mother. When Jesus comes again, I am sure some of us will say, “wait a minute, Lord, I just want to finish this project!” and we will be left behind.

Advent is a reminder, not just that Jesus will come again and nobody knows when, but that most life-changing events will come when we least expect them. I recently met a young man paralyzed from the waste down, who woke up that way one morning. He has a tumor on the spine, and it is likely that it can be cured – but the damage is done and his life and livelihood will be forever changed. So Jesus' discourse today, and indeed all of Advent, reminds us that we need to be prepared.

So advent is about being prepared – being prepared for God's intervention in our lives, which is really what the whole mystery of the Incarnation is all about. That's what Christmas is about – God inserting himself into humanity, God pitching his tent among as as John the Gospel writer says. And God is always intervening in our lives, sometimes for the good and sometimes it seems not so good.

So how do we enter this state of preparedness? I think Jesus may have given us a hint when he told us that we had to become like little children if we wanted to enter the kingdom of heaven. Having nineteen grandchildren and remembering my six children, I know a thing or two about little children. They are noisy, they interrupt you, they are messy – and the list could go on and on. If they weren't so darn cute, we wouldn't have them. But there are some things little children know that we adults forget.

First, they know how to forgive. Most of us remember times when someone hurt us, and sometimes we have a hard time letting go; but more importantly, there are times in the past where we wish we could have a do-over; times when we did something we aren't proud of, times when we harmed someone else with our carelessness or maybe just plain maliciousness. And late at night when our guard is down, we relive those moments; the moments we wish hadn't happened. And that's what forgiveness is all about; it's letting go; it's recognizing deep in our hearts that there is nothing we can do to change the past. I know we all know that, but as long as things in our past cause us to feel guilty or resentful or angry, we haven't let go, we haven't learned to forgive.

Second, little children know how to live in the present. They have no trouble dropping what they are doing because something new or more exciting comes along. And we adults have often lost that wonderful ability to be truly in the present. We spend a lot of time making plans and lining up what we are going to do tomorrow or next week. We fail to notice the wonders God puts in our present. We just went through a spectacular fall. Did you remember to go for a long walk and just soak in the beauty that God put out there for you. Did you pass up an opportunity to spend some time with a parent, a friend, a loved one because you had something important to do? We don't want to spend all our time just hanging out, but if you are like me you miss the opportunity to be present to someone else, which is part of living in the present.

Third, little children trust. Jesus said that if God cares about sparrows and the lilies in the field, we can be pretty sure he cares about us, and since he loves us and since he is love, we can trust that he is there with us, bring good out of bad, bringing joy out of sadness – doing everything he can short of taking away our free will to bring us home to him. And yet so many of us, me especially, don't really trust God; we don't really want to turn our lives over to him, to let him be in control.

So God is always in the present, never in the past or the future. When we grow up, we spend a great deal of time in the past and the future, and much less in the present. Advent is a time to begin to reverse that way of being; it's a time to learn to be like little children again and wait expectantly for God. What will our Father do next? What gift will he give us? What in fact is he giving us right now? Because he wants us to have joy and it is there for the taking.

Christ the King, cycle C

Luke 23:35-43

The feast of Christ the King was created in 1925 by Pope Pius XI – not that long ago in terms of Church history. And it's interesting to read the words of Pius when the feast was promulgated: he made the Feast because the people of the day had “thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives” and “these had no place in public affairs or in politics.” The pope went on to claim “that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.” I guess he could have written those words today and they would still apply.

But I'd like to focus on today's gospel, in which the so called Good Thief acknowledges that Jesus is a king.

The story of the good thief has captured the imagination of artists and poets down through the ages. In the fourth century, in the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus, he was given the name “Dismas” which comes from a Greek word meaning dark or night – the same root as the word “dismal”. He was also declared a saint by popular acclamation and is honored as such today in the Western church on March 25^th.

But it's interesting that we only hear of Dismas in the Gospel of Luke. In Mark and Matthew, we are told that Jesus was crucified between two other persons – in Mark they are called “insurgents” or “rebels” and in Matthew, “robbers”. In John, it says that Jesus was crucified between two others, but doesn't say anything about them. But it is only in Luke that we have this story, and it fits with the overriding concern of Luke – to show that God is merciful and has a special concern for those who are at the margins, those who are outcasts, those who have lost all hope.

Dismas was probably in no sense “good”. He is being crucified; the Romans didn't just crucify anyone; you had to be guilty of sedition, you had to be a traitor – that was why Jesus was crucified. Or you had to commit some horrendous crime or be a habitual criminal. Dismas himself admits this; he tells the other thief that they deserve what is happening. If Dismas was a rebel against the Romans, he would certainly not express that he deserved death for this. Dismas isn't one of these people that blames society or his parents or his circumstances for his crimes; he knew what he was doing and he accepted the consequences once he was caught. Some of the early Fathers of the Church said that in addition to being a thief he was a murderer. He knows he's going to die and knows that he deserves to die.

Sometimes we focus on the mercy of Jesus in this story. But think about how it looked to Dismas. He knew enough about Christ to proclaim that he was a good man who did not deserve crucifixion. He probably knew that many people had recognized Jesus as the Messiah, the one who would save Israel and be the just ruler who had been expected. He knew about the following that Jesus had attracted, and the expectations of all those people. And yet, was this Jesus, dying on a cross, all those hopes and expectations for nothing. What possible reason did Dismas have to think that Jesus could do anything for him?

But somehow Dismas calls out, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom”. To me this is the most remarkable thing about this story. Dismas did not know that Jesus was God, that Jesus would rise from the dead – facts that bolster our own faith. Dismas may have had a vague belief in the afterlife; if he was on the side of the pharisees he believed in resurrection of the body; if he was on the side of the Sadducees, he did not. Most people believed that after you died you lived on in Sheol, the hebrew name for what the Greeks called Hades. This was a place underground where you lived in sort of a limited way, ghostly, without pleasure or pain. And that was not something religion taught; it was just part of what people in those ages believed, Jewish or not. Against all evidence, against all reason, Dismas threw his lot in with Jesus; his one bit of hope in the midst of hopelessness was that Jesus really was the Messiah, he really was the one who would be King of Kings and Lord of Lords, as the prophets had foreseen.

So Dismas seems to be a hero of faith. And maybe this criminal from 2000 years ago can teach us something. Because we live in an increasingly secular age, where the supernatural recedes from us, where science tells us that we can't say anything about God or life after death because science can't prove it; our age tells us that it is foolish to believe, and that if you have to believe, keep it to yourself. And compared to older times when most people in our country shared certain common beliefs, it's harder to have real faith, the kind that moves you to go against the grain, the kind that lives in the knowledge that we are only on the front porch of the real life awaiting us.

I think Luke tells us the story of Dismas because he wants us to see the essentials every Christian must go through; to admit one is a sinner in need of saving; to acknowledge publicly that Jesus is Lord; and to ask for mercy. And Luke wants us to see that as long as we can draw a breath, we can access that Mercy. And once we do this, we too can hear those words, “Today you will be with me in paradise”.

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 21:5-19

If you have a Facebook account, like I do, over time you get more and more “friends”. I have a number of them – people I've known in the past or people who are friends of my friends and somehow got on my feed. I glance through their posts now and then, but almost never reply or “like” or comment. Facebook can be a time waster in many ways.

One of my facebook friends is an extremely liberal woman. She frequently posts about the terrible things people are doing that make life hard for minorities, people of color, immigrants, the LGBT community. She is very active in many organizations that champion their rights.

The day after Trump was elected, she posted a very long piece about how we could expect people to be rounded up and put in prison camps for being gay; trains full of illegal immigrants would be shipped to Mexico and could never return because of a giant wall on the border; women would be afraid to venture out on the street because our new president is a sexist pig and probably a rapist as well; and worst of all, her little children would never know when that knock on the door would come – just like Nazi Germany. I suspect many citizens of Massachusetts and members of this parish feel the same way, probably not so extreme; but being from Montana, I've also seen long posts about how the world would end if Hilary Clinton was elected. These posts usually predicted that Catholics would have to go underground; our institutions would be taxed out of existence; our hospitals would be forced to perform partial birth abortions and our priests would have to officiate at same-sex marriages – trains full of illegal immigrants would be imported from Mexico and delivered to a neighborhood near you – and the list goes on and on.

Today our Gospel reading begins with the apostles staring at the Temple. They had grown up around Galilee, which was the sticks, so Jerusalem must have been like New York City. The Temple in Jerusalem might have been one of the largest buildings in the world at that time, and a temple had been in that exact spot for about a thousand years. To Jewish people, this was the very center of their universe, and it was hard to think about a world in which the Temple did not exist. Jesus predicts that it will be leveled, not a stone will be left on a stone. But he goes on to say, not only will the temple fall, but catastrophes of every kind will happen; nations will rise against nations – that's still happening; earthquakes – check. Famines – we still have them. Pestilences – ebola, the zika virus. And other fearful events – like presidential elections.

And Jesus goes on to promise that in addition to all these things, our own friends and family will turn on us, maybe even to the point of death. If the terrible things that people think are going to happen under Trump actually occur, – or if Mrs. Clinton had been elected a different set of terrible things – well, Jesus said we shouldn't be surprised.

But Jesus tells us two things. First – and this just happened on a national level – in times of great turmoil we are always tempted to look for someone to lead us, and we endow our chosen leader with almost magical powers. Many Trump supporters actually believe he will make things right, he will correct all the things which seem to threaten our security. And Clinton supporters felt the same way – hers would be an era of great progress and somehow her approach would lead to peace and the end of turmoil. Jesus says, don't listen to people who come and say, “I am he”. Don't listen to people who tell you that they are the only ones who can keep the world from falling apart. In our presidential elections unless you are completely non-political, it's hard to follow Jesus' counsel, so we do listen, and to some extent, believe what we hear.

Jesus also tells us that we can count on him no matter what happens. If we are steadfast, if we are living in his friendship, then even if those closest to us turn on us and betray us – and they do – it isn't the end of the world, because Jesus is with us and that's what really matters.

So today's gospel is a gospel of hope, because Jesus is promising us that no matter what happens, we, his followers, will have the opportunity to bear witness to Him, and he will give us the words to speak, the actions to carry out. In a way, he is telling us that if we are steadfast, he will be there with us. And we know that the early Christians certainly believed that, even to the point of death.

Jesus is saying, whatever you think is permanent, it isn't. Whatever you think is central, maybe it isn't. The Temple which had stood for a thousand years certainly wasn't. What is permanent and central, though, even through prison and persecution and death, is the relationship we have with our savior. And if I keep my eyes focused on Him, nothing that happens can make a dent. Not a hair on my head will be harmed, even if I am put to death. Kind of an odd thought, but I think Jesus is reminding us that whether I am beheaded by a member of Isis or killed in a drive-by shooting on the streets of Springfield or Holyoke, or die in my bed of old age, my real home is not here, my true life is in Christ in the heart of the Trinity, and I am in that life even now.

I am not a fan of our new President; but who knows? Maybe I will be in a year or so. But I'm pretty sure we won't be a very different country four years from now; nothing will change very much. And in four years we will again bemaking apocalyptic predictions about the terrible things that will happen if the person we don't like gets elected. Because we always seem to do that. Jesus' words today comfort us and remind us that God has everything under control, and we are God's beloved, and life eternal is His promise to us.

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 20:27-38

Whenever I hear this gospel, I remember a particular day during my first year of marriage when my new wife and I were at Sunday Mass. This was the gospel that was proclaimed that day, and as I stood there I felt a twinge of sadness. I wanted to be married to her forever! I didn't want it to end with death. And after fifty years part of me still feels that way.

But I guess this gospel is not really about marriage. It does say something about the next life though. The first thing is that those who are deemed worthy will no longer die, for they are like angels. We've all seen cartoons showing dead people sitting on clouds with little wings and halos, usually holding a harp. They don't look a lot different from cartoons of angels. But we know something about angels from scripture. They are supernatural beings; they have no bodies. People who study these kinds of things have identified nine levels of supernatural beings and even figured out what they do. The highest three ranks do nothing but sing praises to God for all eternity. The next three are in charge of communicating God's will to the lower angels; they are the architects and designers of the universe. The lowest three are the ones who actually do the work. At the very bottom are the ones who are our guardian angels, who God puts in charge of protecting us from the fallen angels. Archangels, of course, are met in scripture and are thought to be direct messengers of God to individual humans. What they all have in common though is that they behold the face of God, even when they are carrying out his will. And that's how we will be like angels.

But Jesus goes on to say that these ones who can no longer die, who are like angels, are the children of God, the ones who will rise. Jesus means physical resurrection; our bodies will live again; and that's part of the Creed that most Christians recite, even though during this age I suspect few believe it, or think about the implications. One of the implications is that our bodies are precious – or perhaps we should say our whole being is precious to God, material and spiritual alike. If that's true, it should color how we treat each other and how we treat ourselves. When we meet another person, we remember that God wants that person to live eternally because he is madly in love with him or her. A second implication is that we humans aren't meant to be forever without bodies; we may be like angels for a while, but we are completely human when we rise from the dead. We can imagine how that might be – Jesus gave us a glimpse of a resurrected body, who could appear in locked rooms and move about without concern for distance or time; but a body nevertheless that carried the scars of his life, the nail wounds in the hands and feet, the sword wound in the side. A body nevertheless who could eat and drink. A body which will for all eternity be male or female.

The third point Jesus makes is that we will all be alive because to God all are alive. We will derive our eternal lives because we are alive to God right now, and God transcends space and time; therefore right now we are part of that mass of humanity that lives forever in God.

But I think the best news is that we will not marry or be given in marriage. Marriage is a wonderful thing, and I will never regret being married. But there are some things about human marriage – we start out as a man and woman who unfortunately are fallen. We are capable of causing a lot of pain to each other, and I don't think any marriage is without a little pain here and there, because we are human. Marriage is also meant to be exclusive; that means that the kind of love you have for your spouse or at least should have, cannot be shared with anyone else. This love is supposed to be freely given with no coercion. It actually takes a great deal of work to get to that point, since we are all subjected to mood changes, hurt feelings, misunderstandings – and sometimes addictions, all of which can make us hold back from the free giving. The kind of love spouses have should be total; nothing, not even the love of children, should come between the spouses. The love should be faithful, in that friendships with members of the same or opposite sex cannot get in the way, nor can the love of a parent of a sibling; faithful means always choosing the spouse over others. Finally, the love must be fruitful. God, who is love, is infinitely fruitful; the universe and all it contains is the product of that love. A married couple should work to help each other follow Christ's command to bear fruit.

As you can imagine, even a lifetime is probably not long enough for a couple to achieve the kind of love they are called to live, and that's assuming they are working at it. Unfortunately, many couples stop working on their marital relationship and lapse into a sort of companionship.

But once you start to think about what marriage is really for, you begin to see that it is a wonderful tool for two people to lose their self-centeredness, to learn to live for others, to actually practice love and other virtues; in short, marriage is meant to get us into heaven, and once we are there, there is no longer a need for it; and if we don't get there, then it doesn't matter. It seems as though God calls most people to marriage. God leaves a few people around to remind us that marriage is temporary; great as it is it is only for this life; and the fact that we encounter holy souls who are unmarried reminds us that in the end only God is the spouse of every soul.

Marriage is the model of how God loves his people, how Christ loves His Church; we see that explicitly stated in the Old and New Testaments. And as we learn to love one other person in this way, we are preparing ourselves for heaven, where in the presence of Love itself, we will enter into the Great Marriage which will include all the saved, and God himself.

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 19:1-10

When I was about eighteen I worked for the Forest Service during the summer. I was technically a fire control aide, but there weren't that many fires, so the forest ranger would give us assignments having to do with cleaning up campgrounds and clearing brush. At our ranger station there were three college students, one teacher who was there for summer employment, and a retired Marine sergeant who had never married. He was the boss. And whenever he talked every other word was unprintable. And when he got upset, after listening to him you wanted to take a shower.

Naturally, after about a month all of us were talking like the boss. One day my dad came to see how I was doing and we went out to supper. During our conversation I suddenly became aware that I was talking like my boss, and it was apparent that he didn't appreciate it. I apologized, but pointed out that everyone in our group talked that way. He looked at me and said, “But you are better than that.” From that moment on, I stopped sprinkling my language with words that shouldn't even be heard in locker rooms.

I think that's what is happening in the gospel story today. When you read this story you sometimes get the impression that Zaccheus isn't really a bad guy; he's misunderstood. But that probably isn't the case. He is after all the chief tax collector. That meant that he oversaw the other tax collectors in his district. When the Romans came to collect taxes, Zaccheus had to pay them out of his pocket, and then with the help of Roman soldiers and the other tax collectors, the citizens would be told how much they owed. Zaccheus and the other tax collectors had the right to ask for more than what was strictly owed; it was a commission of sorts. And the system was easy to abuse and tax collectors didn't feel particularly kind-hearted to the people they taxed, who shunned them and considered them sinners. Was Zaccheus a bad guy? Probably. He was wealthy, and he didn't get that way by being fair.

But Jesus comes along and invites Zaccheus into his inner circle. He doesn't condemn him or tell him to stop being a tax collector. He merely invites himself to supper. Instead of shunning him like a good Jew would do, Jesus reminds Zaccheus that he is better than that, better than he himself thought he was. And Zaccheus immediately reacts; he promises to give half his wealth to the poor, and repay four-fold anyone whom he has cheated. If Zaccheus was defending himself and claiming to be an honest man, as some people read this gospel, there was no need for Jesus to declare that “Today salvation has come to this house” and “the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” Zaccheus was a sinner and one of the lost; Jesus said, “you are better than that” and conversion happened.

So we always need to say “so what does that story have to do with me?” I don't cheat people, I don't extort, I haven't gained my wealth by dishonest means. In fact I'm not even short and I don't climb trees. It's nice that Jesus forgave Zaccheus, but he's always forgiving people, that's his job.

But Jesus doesn't just forgive. He calls Zaccheus to something higher. In those days to eat with somebody was a sign of intimacy; we still remember this in our weekly Eucharist. When Jesus invites Zaccheus to enter into that more intimate relationship with him, a friendship, Zaccheus' reaction is first, joy, and second, to reach for something higher. In the presence of Jesus, he realizes that he is better than that.

It's no different for you and I. Jesus looks at me and loves me with all my flaws and forgives my sins. But he wants more for me; he wants me to be better; he says, “you are better than that” “you are better than you think you are. And when we hear him say that, we want to be better; it is a moment of grace which allows us to be better; to strive to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. I look back at that moment when I stopped using foul language; it was a sudden thing. And I think that's what happens to some people who are burdened by alcohol or drug addiction who suddenly turn their lives around. For many it is a religious experience, a sudden realization that they are better than that. When we go to Jesus with those habits that lead us into the same old sins over and over again, he will break their hold on us if we let him; because one of the messages we hear in the sacrament of reconciliation is to go and sin no more – those aren't meant to be just words.

But there's another lesson here. Jesus could have been like those people in the crowd who say, “he has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” There is something in us – maybe it's an instinct – that wants to have nothing to do with people who seem to be unlovable. Someone who cheats us; someone who hurts us; someone who acts out of selfishness. The girlfriend who seemed to have a happy marriage and was a faithful churchgoer who suddenly runs off with another man; the friend who is arrested and sentenced to prison for embezzling from his employer; the priest who is suspended from his duties because someone has accused him of a sexual indiscretion. Our reaction is to back off, to have nothing to do with them; because he or she, it turns out, is not the person I thought he or she was.

But Jesus shows us that if we are true Christians; if we are truly trying to imitate our master, then our reaction should always be to say “You are still my friend, and you are better than that.” My brothers and sisters, let this week listen to Jesus as he tells us “you are better than that” and let us have those words on our lips as we go about our daily lives, because many people need to hear them, and who else will speak them if not you and I?