Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 21:28 - 32

Most of the time when we look at this gospel passage we nod wisely and conclude that it’s better to carry out God’s will rather than say we will but then not do it.  And we can go for that, it’s reasonable.  But there are some deeper things going on here.  First, some context.  Jesus, who has been up north in Galilee for most of his ministry, has come to Jerusalem during Passover week.  At some point Pilate would have marched through town on a horse, accompanied by his soldiers, as a show of force, since with all those Jews coming to town, there was the potential for trouble.  But Jesus begins his visit by mocking Pilate; he rides in on a donkey, accompanied by crowds of people, probably most of whom are visitors to the city.  Jesus has cursed a fig tree as a prophetic gesture, and storms into the temple with a whip and messes everything up.  That’s when the religious authorities approach -- they recognize he is being prophetic -- and ask on whose authority he is doing these things?  And that’s when Jesus asks them whether John’s baptism was something from God or something merely human.  And they refuse to answer, saying “We do not know.”

That’s when Jesus talks about the two sons.  And this time they know the answer -- it’s the son who says he won’t but eventually does what the father wanted, he’s the one who did the father’s will.  What Jesus has done, in a way, is disguise his previous question to which they answered that they did not know, and their answer to this question says that they do know.  And he goes on to point out that tax collectors and prostitutes were reforming their lives in response to John’s preaching -- certainly a sign that he was carrying out God’s will -- whereas the Jewish priesthood who were supposed to be carrying out God’s will were actually creating barriers between God and the people.  Not only did they put a lot of burdens on the common folk, but if you wanted to offer a sacrifice, it could only be done by a certified priest in the temple, and you had to buy the sacrificial animal with temple money.  So you went to a money changer who took a bit off the top and gave you coins that did not have a picture of the emperor on them.  Most people under this situation could only offer a sacrifice on rare occasions.  And of course the passover season saw a tremendous increase in the sacrifice business, so the cost of those things only went up.  

And the chief priests and elders are squirming and go to scheming how to get rid of this trouble-maker, which will happen in a few more days.  

And the story should make you and I squirm a little as well.  Because one of the easiest things for a practicing Catholic to do is to substitute words for actions.  One protestant writer talks about learning to speak Christianese.  We know what words to say, what ideas to agree with, and as for action, well, because we aren’t living in a state of sin and are contributing to the Church and going to Mass on Sunday, we are doing way better than 90% of our fellow human beings, and God grades on a curve, so we are all right.

But Jesus deliberately names the tax collectors and prostitutes, and says that they are entering the kingdom of God before the chief priests and elders.  That is truly insulting, because the chief priests and elders had exactly the same attitude -- they were avoiding sin, praying a lot, tithing, fasting -- they spoke something like fluent Crhistianese, only Jewish.  And they knew God graded on a curve as well.

But Jesus’ point is that those sinners, those people who in the eyes of the Jews were the worst of sinners, had actually repented, and they recognized that repentance is not something you do one day, it’s something you work at all your life.  And repentance does not mean being sorry for our sins.  It starts with recognizing that we are lost, we are helpless, we are around for a few years and then we are gone.  I had an old professor who had accomplished a lot in the field of cancer research.  As we became friends he confided in me one day that he wished he had not wasted so much time on things that didn’t matter.  He wasn’t talking about recreation, family life, or all the many wonderful things that God surrounds us with; he was talking about watching too much TV, spending too much time on the internet, gossipping for hours over the phone with a friend -- even spending all day being so busy you can’t even stop to pray or meditate or ask where you are going with all this?  If you are like me, there is plenty of lostness in your life, and the wonderful thing about Jesus and his church is that there is an answer to this in the sacraments and the graces which are there for us to accept.

Because Jesus is not against people who speak Christianese; he’s against any pretend religion that allows its practitioners to be stagnant, that allows them to substitute words for actions.  Our faith is meant to be embodied; that’s what incarnation is all about.  And Jesus really invites us to be like both sons -- to say yes to God’s invitation and to carry out what he asks of us.  And if we did so, as that old song would say, “What a wonderful world this would be.”  Because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, waiting to break out through you and I.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 20:1 - 16

If you are a parent of a couple of kids close in age, or if you were a child from a family like that, you probably know how hard it is to insure fairness. A parent has to give his children things they need, and sometimes someone older needs something inappropriate to a younger one, or a girl needs something her brother doesn’t. And in that case, the brother still thinks if his sister gets something, he should as well. That’s why the story Jesus told in the gospel today almost always causes the same reaction in the people who hear it -- you and I are no exception. It isn’t fair, we say. Well, it turns out that this is an instinct, even present in animals. My grandchildren live with a nasty little dog and a quiet, shy cat. If there is food to be had, the dog is right there, hoping for a scrap. Now if you hand a little scrap to the cat, the dog goes into a more aggressive begging mode. If you keep feeding the cat, the dog begins to bark and snarl, at you and the cat. It isn’t fair, he says.

And if we are honest, we look at that landowner and say, it isn’t fair! Equal pay for equal work is fair. Equal pay for unequal work is not. Rewarding hard work is fair; excusing laziness is not fair.

And there is a reason that most people react to this story by saying, “It’s not fair!” It’s because we see ourselves in those laborers who have been out in the sun all day, working their tails off, for a good wage, it’s true, a wage that can feed their families for a while, a wage that can maybe buy them a little leisure, a wage that was worth a day’s labor. But what if we are the workers hired at noon, or late in the afternoon? We would be ecstatic if we received that wage! We had expected little or nothing from our day seeking work, and the landowner has given us a good wage by any standards, a wage we clearly did not earn. It may be the people who only worked an hour or so went out and threw a party, while the workers who spent the whole day sat snarling like my grandchildren’s dog, empty of the joy they should have had, because after all, they had worked productively, they had received their just wage.

And I think most of us see that the landowner represents God in this story by Jesus. I do as well. But what are the implications? The landowner is not considering what is fair and waht is not. He wants those who took him up on the invitation to work in his vineyard to have a living wage, to be able to take care of their families. And I think Jesus tells us this story, and tells many of his stories, to make us realize that there are instincts in our very nature that as Christians, we are called (and given the grace) to overcome. Because if we are children of the Father, we want to look like the Father. And the Father is not concerned about fairness.

Being concerned about fairness has a purpose, but not the one you might think. Fairness is involved when we consider immigration, for example. We want people to wait their turn and not jump the line. That’s only fair. Fairness is involved when we think about taxes -- we all want to pay what we owe, and not one penny more. Fairness is involved when I’ve worked very hard and very effectively in my job, but the boss’s lazy son gets promoted over me. And I’m sure you can think of example after example where the fairness instinct kicks in, several times a day for some of us.

Let’s face it, we can all recognize when something is fair, if we have all the details. It’s an instinct. But what is our Christian response? I think we need to try to be more like the landowner in Jesus’ story. We need to base our actions not on what is fair, but what fulfills the needs of the greatest number of people. Perhaps some of you may have read the report from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce recently which maintained that, based upon the current system for distributing educational funds, wealthier school districts were receiving an excess compared to poorer districts. It turns out that one of the major reasons for this has to do with a sliding scale that requires every district to fund some of its educational costs, with the state picking up the rest -- and the formula says that the funding level can’t be less than the year before, and that the maximum a district has to pick up is 82.5% of their costs. What is fair? We could argue all day. But we overlook the important question -- are the kids being given a quality education?

Fairness is related to justice; justice by itself is heartless. The landowner, and God, are not nearly as concerned with justice as with mercy. And that’s what we Christians should be thinking about when we think something is not fair. God does not care about fairness.

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:21 - 35

When we hear this very familiar parable, our first impulse is to see the ruler as a stand-in for God. He forgives the servant a huge debt, but the servant then goes out and refuses to forgive a fellow servant who owes him spare change. And of course the ruler takes back his forgiveness and sends the unforgiving servant off to be tortured until his unpayable debt is finally payed -- basically, never.

But I don’t think the ruler is a stand-in for God. After all, Jesus just told Peter that his followers were to forgive “seventy times seven times” in other words, they were to live a life of forgiveness. But if God only forgives once and then takes back his forgiveness, how is that an example for us? One authority thinks that what Jesus is describing isn’t forgiveness at all, but rather, has to do with false forgiveness -- something that comes from power, from selfish motives, something that comes from anything but the heart. The ruler is in a position where he can forgive or condemn; he has all the cards. Whatever he does, his servant is at his mercy. To be sold into slavery along with your family is humiliating, but so is being forgiven a debt you could never pay, and in a society where saving face was more important than it is in ours, the humiliated servant lashed out the first chance he got -- to a servant over whom he had power. And when he chose not to forgive his fellow servant, the only reaction of the ruler to save face was to take back his false forgiveness, to prove to everyone that his servant could not make him look like a fool. It’s kind of like when a parent gets angry at a child for something the child deserved, and then the child goes out and kicks the dog. And Jesus is describing a false forgiveness, one that can be taken back. The only problem with my interpretation is that Jesus says, “So my heavenly father will do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.” But maybe my interpretation is still valid -- maybe I can’t receive God’s forgiveness unless I make room for it by letting go of the resentment and ill feelings I have toward someone who has done me harm.

But we need to understand what forgiveness is. It is not denial, it is not saying that some serious harm done by someone to me is nothing; it isn’t Christian to say, “That awful thing you did, it’s OK.” Jesus didn’t tell the money changers that what they were doing was OK, he fashioned a whip and drove them out of the temple. He didn’t tell the Pharisees who laid heavy burdens on people by their rules and regulations that that was OK. He compared them to a whitewashed tomb. Forgiveness is not tolerating an evil in our midst, unless there is no recourse.

Forgiveness is not a shortcut. True forgiveness still requires repentance and spiritual transformation, often on the part of the one doing the forgiving as well. Grace is not cheap, and even though God’s forgiveness is freely offered, it comes only because Jesus has paid the price for it on the cross. We may be able to let something go, and that may be a good thing psychologically for us; but the true healing of the relationship requires a response from the brother we want to forgive.

Forgiveness is not the same as healing and reconciliation. There are situations where I may forgive, but things will never be the same in my relationship with the one I forgave. Healing may take longer than forgiving; reconciliation may never happen in some situations, even though it’s always the job of the follower of Jesus to be open to the possibility. Forgiveness is the beginning of building up God’s kingdom, not the end; because if we have not forgiven, we are stuck, we can’t move forward, we are letting ourselves be controlled by the one who offended us.

Finally, real forgiveness is not easy. One writer said “Forgiveness is the way to unburden yourself of the constant pressure to rewrite the past.” Henry Nowen said “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced by those who love poorly. And we all love poorly. … Forgiveness is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”

Holding on to anger about the harm done to me does nothing to combat evil; in fact it probably feeds evil. Forgiveness is saying, “What you did is not OK, but I refuse to be connected to it anymore.” It’s about freedom, really, freedom to escape the past, to live in the present, to look forward to the future without carrying all that festering resentment along with me.

There are some of us who can forgive more easily than others. It has to do with our temperaments. Saint Jerome wrote hundreds of letters many of which survive. It’s pretty obvious that he had a hard time forgiving people -- and he knew it, but he kept trying all his life. He even used to hit himself with a rock when his anger was getting the best of him. At his canonization, Pope Clement recounted all the great things Jerome had done, but said that the stone was the reason for his becoming a saint.

And we should never forget that Jesus tells us that God’s forgiveness of me is conditional; we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It isn't that God doesn't want to forgive me; it's that when I don't forgive I'm causing myself pain; I'm imagining how I can get back at my enemy; I realize that while I don't forgive my prayers are just words – being an unforgiving person is probably something like being in hell. God doesn't put us there, but doesn't stand in our way if that's what we want.

Twenty- third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:15 - 20

I really like to avoid conflict. And yet I’ve met people who seem to enjoy it. Fortunately there aren’t too many of them. But there are two natural responses to conflict -- fight and flight. I usually choose flight. In my career as a physician, though, there were times when I had to correct a person who reported to me in the chain of command. I would bring the person into my office, close the door, and in a calm voice, express my concern about a particular behavior. Naturally the individual would deny that there was a problem, and point out that other people did worse. I would point out other instances of the behavior in an attempt to show that this was a habit. And back and forth it would go, until we grudgingly agreed that the person would try to modify his behavior, even though he didn’t think it was a problem. And things didn’t change very much at all.

Many years later, though, I was not adapting to some new procedures in our department, which had been imposed by the health care system I worked for. I was resisting not on principle, but largely because I did not like being told what to do by people who weren’t physicians. Then one day I got called in by my superior, who was accompanied by a member of the administration, and I was told in a calm voice to adapt. I began to make my excuses. My boss said we weren’t going there; we had invested a lot in the new system and my choices were to adapt or to think about finding some other place to work. I adapted, and after a while became a “super user” who taught others how to negotiate the procedures involved.

Today Jesus invites us to go into those situations which I would rather avoid, situations which we can expect will cause adrenaline to flow. In the original Greek, the gospel says “If you fellow disciple sins (and we aren’t sure whether the words “against you” were in the original)” go and point out their fault, just between the two of you, and if he listens, you have won him over.” The really important point is that your goal is to win your brother or sister over -- to get them to stop the sin. What you are supposed to do is done out of love, because you want that brother or sister in heaven and you know that if they persist in the sin, this makes heaven less likely. That’s why you escalate; if your little talk doesn’t work, get someone to go with you, The importance of this step is two-fold; you want to show the sinner that this is serious, but at the same time, you want to make sure they see the sin the same way you do. And if this doesn’t work, go to the whole assembly. Because we are our brother’s keeper; we all have an interest in his salvation; it really matters enough to put us into this uncomfortable conflict.

Now Jesus isn’t saying that we should go around looking for trouble, going up to people on the street and telling them to put on their masks, for God’s sake! Jesus is clear about what he is talking about is fellow disciples; people who have already committed to following the way of Jesus. Our obligation to people of other religions or no religion at all is different. That is why logic and appeal to moral principles almost never works; ultimately conversion requires a good example on our part and the grace of God on his. The point Jesus is making is that we in this church, St. Mary’s in Longmeadow, are responsible for each other.

Now what happens when someone doesn’t listen to the Church? Jesus tells us to treat them like tax collectors or gentiles. What does that mean? Do we shun them, have nothing to do with them? That has been one interpretation. In Amish communities being shunned is a terrible experience. You are treated as though you don’t exist, even by members of your family. That sometimes makes the shunned person come back into the community. Shunning works, sometimes. But think about how Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors. He healed the servant of the centurion; he healed the Syrophoenician woman. He commended Naaman the Syrian, who had been healed by Elishsa, and the Widow of Naim, who had been saved from starvation by Elijah. And tax collectors. He was notorious for eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. And the man who wrote the gospel we have just been listening to was a tax collector. If we are going to treat those who are sinners and refuse to change their ways as Jesus did, that means that after we’ve done everything we can to get them to put the sin behind them and return to the community, we still hold out hope, we still never forget that they are brothers and sisters, that they are always welcome in the beloved community to which they once belonged.

Jesus says some other things in this gospel passage that make more sense when you realize he is talking to his disciples, not the world at large. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven...” In Judaism of that time, binding and loosing were things that only the authorities could do. Jesus is telling us that the authority is given to our community. And the same is true of his promise that where two or three are gathered together in his name he is there. He promises that he will accompany his disciples as they work together to bring about His kingdom. And the promise that if two of us agree about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father? That's a hard one, and we could spend a few hours on the subject of unanswered prayers. But I like the story of the little boy who told his parents he wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up. Years later, when he graduated from high school, he said he wanted to be a lawyer. His father bcame very upset. “We've scrimped and saved all these years to buy you a ranch so you could be a cowboy!” his father yelled. “But dad,” why did you listen to me? I was only five years old” replied the son.

So we have heard Jesus giving us clear directions about some of our responsibilities to each other. On this Sunday we should ask ourselves whether we are following what he has commanded us to do.

 

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 16:21 - 27

Alice was a good Catholic girl who was in love with Robert, a good Baptist guy, who loved her too.  Since Robert could not in his heart marry a Catholic, and Alice had no intention of leaving the faith she loved, they had a real cross in their lives.  Alice was pouring out her heart to her mother, who said, “I have an idea!  Sell Robert on your faith.  Tell him about the great saints, the mysteries we celebrate, the history we can trace back to the apostles.  So Alice did, and for a while it looked promising;  Robert was reading books by Scott Hahn and listening to CD’s by Curtis Martin and had even started coming to church with Alice.  Then one day Alice burst in on her mother in tears.  “What’s the matter,” said the mother.  “I thought things were going well with Robert!”  “They went too well,” said Alice.  He told me he wants to be a priest.”  I guess we can’t escape crosses in our lives.  

But seriously, when I hear the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel today, I always feel uneasy.  Take up my cross?  Whoever wants to save his life will lose it?  Whoever loses his life for Jesus will find it?  And here I am, comfortable, well fed, not in any significant pain, certainly interested in keeping things that way as long as I can -- Where is my cross?  And do I really want to take it up?  But as Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”  

On the other hand, Jesus isn’t a sadist, and during his lifetime on earth, he was always making things better for people -- taking away their pains and disabilities, healing them of their demons, even seeing to it that they were fed when they became hungry.  I don’t remember him telling anyone that he healed that it would be better for them if they just took up their cross.  From my reading of the gospels, I have to conclude that Jesus would like it if more people were like I am, and fewer like those desperate people who live in places ruled by ruthless dictators, or those people who have no idea where their next meal is coming from.  

Perhaps the key to this mystery is in the words Jesus speaks to Peter:  The Son of Man must… suffer, must be killed, and rise again on the third day.  Jesus as a human being knew that if he kept doing what he was doing, he would end up the way others who opposed the Roman authorities ended up - crucified.  Jesus and his apostles had seen crucifixions; they were very public, and even if you didn’t want to watch, you were sometimes dragged out of your house and made to watch.  It was an effective way to intimidate would -be revolutionaries.  People who did the crucifying knew how to inflict maximum pain, and yet they made it a point not to kill you outright.  And that’s what horrified Peter and led to his remark to Jesus.  

But Jesus had no intention of stopping what he was doing; he saw his mission as carrying out God’s will, and accepting the consequences, but he also had total trust in the One who proclaimed that Jesus was the “beloved” son.  He trusted -- did not know, as a human being, but trusted -- that even if he lost his life, the Father would somehow turn even this tragedy around.  And with that total trust, Jesus would keep on doing what he was doing.

I suspect that is what Jesus is talking about.  We all face choices, not every day or even every week, perhaps, but all of us come to those points in life where we realize that we have to make a choice -- where our faith calls us to say or do something that will result in some kind of pain.  It’s in those moments when the choice we make can be the one that keeps us comfortable, out of trouble, and unlikely to cost us anything -- we can choose to save our lives -- but we’ve been diminished, we have really lost something.  Or we may make the choice that we know we should make, the choice that might be unpopular, might get us into trouble, the choice that is actually in keeping with our faith -- in which case we accept the consequences, because like Jesus we trust that our heavenly father will in the end bring good out of what seems to be bad.  And Christians all over the world are making that choice, even today -- the choice that makes them second class citizens, the choice that might get them fired from their job, the choice that puts them on the wrong side of the prevailing political winds.  But at the same time, the choice being made is for Jesus’ sake, so they trust in Jesus’ promise.  And, of course, Christians all over the world are choosing not to choose; they remain silent about the great evil of abortion; they use their wealth for their own pleasure rather than to tend to the very real needs of their fellow human beings; they spend the moments of their lives -- never to be regained -- on video games, soap operas and other ways of wasting time.  

And I’m not sure if Jesus is warning us about going to hell when he talks about losing one’s soul.  I think he’s pointing out that if you go through life keeping your head down and not rocking the boat, believing but not being committed enough to those beliefs to actually sacrifice something for them, the constant effort to save your life will wear away at your very nature as a human being, so that very little will be left at the end.  You will have lost your soul.  

Following Christ costs the follower.  Karl Marx once described religion as the opiate of the masses, suggesting that people who practiced their faith did so because it made them feel safe and secure; but the witness of the saints and martyrs is that this is entirely wrong; a person who truly practices his faith is a real risk-taker, someone who models himself on the life of Jesus Christ, someone who has a clear idea of what he believes and why, and is willing to act on those beliefs, because he trusts the same Father whom Jesus trusted.  

Someone once said, “Do you know how to get to heaven?  It’s simple.  Do the things you know you should do, and stop doing the things you know you shouldn’t do.”

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 16:13 - 20

Do you believe in hell?  Do you believe that God sent his only Son precisely to make it possible for us to avoid hell and gain eternal life?  Do you believe the Church has what you need to gain eternal life, or to put it another way, the Church is the ordinary means by which human beings can access the gift God gives us through Jesus?  (Notice, I said “ordinary” means because the Church also teaches that God in his mercy makes the gift of Jesus available to people who are sincerely trying to live decent lives but have not been given the gift of faith.)  The reason I bring these questions up is because probably most American Catholics don’t believe one or more of those statements.  I mean, would a good God send me to hell?  And really, is Jesus the only way to get to heaven?  And the Church?  Don’t get me started!  And besides, I know protestants and Jews and even atheists who are holier than the average Catholic.  But the questions I asked are doctrine; we can find their answers in scripture and in the teachings of the Church and we assent to them every time we say the Creed.  It’s important to us Catholics to now and then ask, are we properly using what God has given us to save our souls?  Because he doesn’t send us to hell, but he loves us so much that if we choose not to return that love by how we live, we can send ourselves there. 

The real question is what Jesus asked:  Who do people say that I am?  Because Moslems revere Jesus as a prophet.  Jews who think about it agree that he is a holy man.  Most people who know something about Jesus, other than those who have decided there was no such person, would have some opinion, usually favorable.  And before Jesus puts the apostles on the spot, he asks them what the word on the street is, and with relief, they tell him.  And then he springs the question:  Who do you say that I am?  And they look around nervously trying not to make eye contact with Jesus.  Finally Peter blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”  Notice that Jesus does not say, “Nice going, Pete, you figured it out!”  He says, “Blessed are you because God told you who I am!”  Faith is a gift; people who are baptized, even as infants, have been given this gift.  Of course it’s obvious that we can throw away that gift.  Some of our children do; sometimes a spouse does.  We all have friends and relatives who used to be Catholic.  But every now and then we see evidence that the spirit is still at work and we see someone come into the Church as an adult, or we see a young person go from indifferent to committed.  The gift is like a garden which needs to be weeded and watered with prayer and study.

Peter is proclaimed blessed by Jesus, and given that wonderful promise that he will be the rock on which the Church will be built, and that what is bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven.  Peter must have felt very important at that point, enough so that he felt bold enough to try to correct Jesus when.he  talks about having to suffer and die.  Jesus rebukes him, calls him “satan”.  And that is the lesson for you and I.  

If we think Jesus is just another prophet or holy man, and that there is no hell, and that the Catholic Church is just another way to get to heaven, we’ve missed the point.  But if we agree that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, we may have still missed the point, as Peter did.  Because we still have to answer the question, what kind of Messiah is Jesus to me?  And Peter might answer -- the one who healed my mother-in-law; the one who told me to walk on water, and I did, for a minute; the one who left me nearly speechless on the mountaintop when he appeared with Moses and Elijah; the one who predicted that I would betray him; the one who spoke to me with mercy and forgiveness on the shores of the lake after he rose from the dead; the one that I in the end would give up my life for.  Because Peter never did figure out who Jesus was to him; what kind of Messiah Jesus was; Peter was still figuring it out when he was martyred.  And that’s our situation as well; we have to realize that while we can intellectually agree that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, we are always learning more about what kind of Messiah he is to you, to me.  We in fact can never give a final answer, and if we think we can, we are no longer moving forward.  

And if we are Catholic Christians, our Church is always revealing Christ to us -- because Jesus built his church on Peter’s recognition of who Jesus was to Peter -- a realization that only began with this famous confession.

Our job, as was true for Peter, is to learn God’s ways rather than the ways of man.  God reveals to us his way in the Church Jesus founded and our task is to continue all through our lives learning God’s ways and rejecting those of man. In our lifetimes we will always be asking who Jesus is to me, we will always be seeking the answer as Peter did.  And if we aren’t doing that, we aren’t moving forward in our spiritual growth.  

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 14:22 - 33

I still remember when I was about five years old my parents vacationed on Seely Lake in Montana.  One day my parents and my sister and I were out in a rowboat on the lake.  A wind came up and the water got very choppy, and it started to rain.  My dad threw everything he had into getting to boat back to shore.  I remember the waves washing over the side.  It was a very frightening moment.  I’ve had other experiences.  I like to go out early in the morning and ride my bicycle.  I was stopped behind a van right out there on the corner of Bliss and Longmeadow street, waiting for the light to change.  A big truck came down bliss and the van in front of me politely began backing up to give him more room.  You can’t go backward on a bike.  I thought for sure I would be run over, but fortunately I cried out in fear like the apostles and he stopped.

It seems as though the world is changing very rapidly.  Most Americans have adopted masks and social distancing and hand washing that a racoon would envy without too much fuss.  And just when things start to look up, we have riots going on in many of our big cities.  We’ve got people calling for defunding the police departments.  We have a massive rise in murders and gunshot wounds in some of our cities.  And we hear that the number of Amercans owning guns is about double what it was a year ago.  Education is rapidly becoming a long-distance proposition, and our kids are spending more and more time interfacing with computers rather than teachers and classmates.  Will things ever get back to normal?  Whenever I think about these things, I feel fear.  

Today’s gospel is not telling us that if you have enough faith you shouldn’t have any fear.  Fear is natural, it’s part of our animal nature.  Peter and  the other disciples feel fear -- properly so, because they are in danger of drowning. 

I’m sure you can think of times when you experienced fear.  It’s normal.  But how do you react to fear?  I think that’s the lesson this gospel is teaching us.  When the apostles see Jesus, they think he’s a ghost.  The Greek word is “phantasm” which had a wider meaning -- there was always a hint of evil in a phantasm.  But Jesus tells them very clearly, “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!”  And Peter reacts not with trust, but with suspicion:  “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  There are times when fear rises up in me and it’s momentary -- I forget to pray.  But there are other times when fear is more prolonged and I find myself bargaining with God.  “Lord, if you are really there…”  So the Lord invites Peter to draw closer, to come to him.  And Peter does, and for a minute everything looks great.  But Peter again becomes aware of the wind and the waves and begins to sink.  And of course when he cries out Jesus reaches out and pulls him to safety.  And we hear those words, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Is Jesus referring to Peter’s loss of faith when he realized he was walking on water?  Or to when Peter tried to put Jesus to a test to make sure the phantasm was really Jesus?  And maybe that’s the lesson for us.  One way to react to fear is suspicion -- that Jesus is not really there, that Jesus is not keeping his promises to us.  Fear makes me call upon all my defenses, and they are never enough to overcome fear.  But when I try to do this by myself, I always fail.  Another way to react to fear is trust.  When Peter steps out of the boat, he is trusting.  He walks on the water.  His trust doesn’t last very long, but while it is there, what power is in that trust! Jesus keeps his promises.  He says “Come” and invites us to step into the fear and let him be present to us.

As I was thinking about his gospel I remembered that picture a few years ago about the Christians who were executed by Isis in Libya.  They knelt on the ground and seemed to have no fear.  Jesus was present to them and even death could not frighten them, because they knew that Jesus kept his promises.    

Another thing to notice about this gospel; when you look at Peter, he goes from suspicion to trust to suspicion again.  But when you look at Jesus,  he is always moving toward those he loves.  He comes down from the mountain; he walks across the water; he comes toward them when they think he’s a ghost;  he keeps coming, always moving toward them.  And when he reaches them, the storm-tossed waters and the raging wind die down.  And he promises the same to you and I.  He will come to us if we let him, if we trust him.  

“Take courage,” he tells us, “It is I.  Do not be afraid.”  Let your fear lead to trust, not suspicion.