Exodus 22, 20-26 + Psalm 18 + 1 Thessalonians 1, 5-10 + Matthew 22, 34-40

In a world that loves far too much “black” and “white”, and likes things neatly separated into categories it is very easy to listen to these verses as though there are two commands. Love God. Love Neighbor. That kind of think is legal and comes out of some thought that Jesus is making some ethical proposal. To dismiss these verses with that thinking is shallow and avoids the theological statement that is being made here which is quite different.

We have to ask a question here. At these two commands set side by side to indicate that human responsibility involves two parallel but separate areas of accountability, or are the two interrelated?

Earlier comments of Jesus on other commandments gives us a clue. When he speaks of the Fourth Commandment honoring Father and Mother, he suggests that doing so is a great manifestation for loving God. When comments on observing the Sabbath, he insists that this observance must not take precedence over human need. When he pushes the love of neighbor to include love of enemies, he is proposing that the one loving imitates God’s generous love for all. With this understanding of how Jesus integrates and all of the commandments, what is being said here is that to love God is to love neighbor, and to love neighbor is to love God. They are not distinct or separate experiences. Conversely then, there is no love of God when the neighbor is not loved. Impossible! Furthermore, a loving response to a neighbor is directly a loving response to God.

In a world that sentimentalizes and often trivializes “love” it bears some reminder with this text that Biblical “love” is not affection, but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude might fill our minds and hearts when we consider all that God has done for us, but warm feelings is not what God expects in response. Stubborn, unwavering commitment is expected by God. It works in reverse as well. It is sentimental and pious to propose or imagine that God has warm fuzzy feelings for us. What God has and what God manifests again and again as God’s love for us is commitment. God does not leave, abandon, or give up on us. That is love.

The love of neighbor proposed in these verses by Jesus Christ is not affection, but an imitation of God’s love by taking their needs seriously. When we do this we love; and we love as God loves. Our love of God at the same time demands that we love those God loves and do everything we can to express God’s for them by caring for their needs.

October 29, 2014  11:00 a.m. Maronite Parish Norman, OK

Matthew 25: 1-13

At this point in chapter twenty-five of Matthew’s Gospel, the Passion of Christ is very near. It is the final parable. Jesus makes one last effort to awaken and urge the Leaders of the people and all who have not yet taken seriously his message and his life. The story today is found only in Matthew, and some think it is his best. For us there are three levels of development are here:

the historical level of Jesus providing a parable about the Kingdom of God for the leaders

the Matthew level of the early church providing a parable about how to survive the long wait for Christ’s return,

and finally, our use of the parable in as entirely different age.

At the Jesus level, it’s about acceptance or refusal

with a warning that some will be refused entry.

At the Matthew level, it’s about being prepared or readiness for the coming of Christ in glory.

At our level, because we can we see the other two, it is about even more.

Hidden because of all the visual imagery of this parable is a sentence that should not escape our attention: “I do not know you.” It comes with devastating consequences. Scholars tell us that it is an ancient rabbinical saying that Jews would have recognized immediately for its expression of separation. It was the ritual word for throwing someone out of synagogue. This bridegroom does not know who they are! They have missed becoming part of the celebrating community. The problem is not that they fell asleep, because both groups slept. The problem is that one group was not recognizable. This is the consequence of darkness: no oil = no light = no recognition. Those will enter who are known by the bridegroom. Those will enter who are recognizable. It is about relationship, being known. Too many people know a lot about Jesus, but they have no relationship with Christ. Studying the Bible, and knowing its verses without knowing and living with and in the one it reveals is not the way to enter the celebration.

We all know this, but we have not all done something about it. In the end, this is about procrastination which is the enabler of all our sins. We love our habits more than we love Christ. We protect ourselves with pious prayers that comfort us in a life of holy compromise instead of embracing a message of reform, conversion, and radical change. Doing the things we have to do when they ought to be done whether we like it or not is a most valuable lesson in the discipline of a holy life. It simply means that those who get into the banquet will live prepared for the door to open, not tomorrow or the next day, but today, in this moment, now. Our permissive society and a generation of children who never understand the meaning of the word: NO may not get it, but the truth and the heart of this parable is that there will be a sudden moment of meeting that arrives and then passes irretrievably.

Isaiah 45, 1, 4-6 + Psalm 96 + 1 Thessalonians 1, 1-5 + Matthew 22, 15-21

This biblical story is being retold and relived in our own life time. The context is different, and the way the dilemma emerges is different, but not the message. It is as troubling and challenging today as it was then. At the time Matthew recorded this incident I like to imagine people laughing, or at least smiling and poking each other with a wink a little over the situation and the way it works out. At the actual time if this is an historical event, there must have been some gasps of amazement and wonder, shock and perhaps some smirking. For disciples of the Pharisees to join up with Herodians would have been quite amazing. It would be like Socialists and Tea Party members getting together! The Pharisees resented the Roman occupation and resisted quietly but begrudgingly because they wanted to preserve their right to practice their religion. Herodians, on the other hand supported the right of Caesar and his Romans as a political non-religious party to occupy the Jewish territory in exchange for some limited right to rule. Here they are joined together in opposition to Jesus, and they meet their match as they attempt to put Jesus in a lose/lose situation with their silly question. The story gets better.

Jesus exposes their hypocrisy by asking them to produce a Roman coin. When they do without hesitation, the onlookers must have gasped and laughed. The mere fact that they had one to show him made them look like game playing fools. The question they propose has religious overtones while seeming to be political. The phrase: “Is it permitted”is what I call “Bible/speak”. It means, “Does the Torah allow a tax be paid to Caesar?”Since the Book of Leviticus (25, 23) insists that the land shall not be sold because the land is God’s; this is a religious question, not a political one. This incident is happening in the Temple, the most holy place, and these so-called holy people pull out a Roman coin right there in the Temple! Not good. By having that coin in their pockets, their question becomes irrelevant. They have answered it themselves.

I like to imagine that when Jesus responded, it was a little different from the way you just heard it proclaimed here. I like to think that after speaking the first sentence he stopped for a long time and just looked at them. “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”Then as they began to shuffle around and wish they had never produced the coin much less asked the question, he would have stepped a little closer, perhaps lowered his voice for dramatic effect and said: “and to God what belongs to God.”

There is no balance and nothing equal here between Caesar and God. Jesus is not saying that there is a secular realm and a religious realm that are equal both deserving of respect. Not so. The second statement annuls the first. Everything is God’s. There is nothing and there is no territory that does not belong to God. Jewish thought at the time allowed that some foreign kings might occupy and have power over Israel, but only by God’s permission; and when God chooses to liberate the foreign power will be no good at all.

In the second part of his response, Jesus is making a big demand. Having said during the Sermon on the Mount that we cannot serve both God and mammon”there is no contradiction here. There is no dividing into parts. There is the firm affirmation that everything is God’s and God’s will comes first. If you throw a few coins at Caesar, it is just a reminder that what we possess is not our own.

Given the fact that this story is told in Matthew’s Gospel, it is not likely that most of those who heard it cared one bit about Caesar and resistance to Caesar. By the time this Gospel is dispersed, Caesar has destroyed Jerusalem and most his opposition. So the story stands again to remind us that there is no way we can divide up this earth and it’s good. It all belongs to God.

Today, those who look to this story for some easy way out of contemporary controversies between church and state or God’s law and Civil Law must be careful not to draw some conclusion that is not there. Our lives these days are often troubled by conflicts between Church and State over civil laws that challenge our consciences. Only in the second half of the response Jesus makes can we find anything to guide us and encourage us when it is time to stop being passive and step and speak up in opposition to the power of the state. Civil societies, regimes, and governments rise and fall all the time. Yet, everything belongs to God, and God’s law and God’s will prevails.

Sacred Heart Church, El Reno, Oklahoma & Saint Joseph Church, Union City, Oklahoma

Isaiah 25, 6-10 + Psalm 23 + Philippians 4, 12-14 + Matthew 22, 1-14

We take up a third parable in Matthew’s Gospel today concerning judgment. Two weeks ago we heard the parable of the two sons who responded to the Father’s request in opposite ways ending with a question about which one did the father’s will, and a condemnation of those who refused the message of both John and Jesus. Last week we heard the next parable about the workers in the vineyard refusing to give the owner his rightful portion of the harvest and how they abused those the owner sent to collect. Again a question was asked: “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?”The response from Jesus is dire: “The Kingdom will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”The purpose and the proposal Matthew puts out there is that the privileged relationship with God has now been given to the Church, the followers of Christ who did not reject the message.

Now comes this parable once more addressed to the leaders of the people with a slight but important twist. Judgment is emphasized, but this time the judgment is on the Christians, no longer upon the leaders of the people. So with this parable, there is no chance of us sitting back to listen as though this does not concern us. This one does concern us, and as with all parables, something important about God is revealed. This parable reveals how God will look at and how God will judge us.

There are really two parables here. The first is an interesting match to the one before concerning the tenants of the vineyard. Both record violent abusive treatment of the messengers. In both there is a severe judgment, but with last week’s parable the judgment is predicted in the future. The second parable here begins when the king comes into the banquet to meet the guests. There is something very different now. In the two parables last month, the judgment was in the future. It something that “will” happen. In this parable, the judgment happens as part of the story. Right now the man is tied up and thrown out. It is not something that will happen later or in the future.

It is a tough story for us. It seems outrageously unfair. How could the king be so demanding and so harsh to a poor man who has been dragged off the streets to attend this banquet? The fact of the matter is, a custom in those days and in that culture would have been for the host to provide a clean tunic for a guest. How can this king even ask the question: “How did you get in here?”He ought to know he had people dragged in off the streets! With these questions in mind, we have to stop and put the story back together.

The wedding feast is the age to come. It is not the church. The garment is right behavior according to the teaching of Jesus Christ. This is happening during the feast. It is happening to someone at the feast, at the table, someone who, in a sense, is in the church. Being present is not enough it says to us who are in here. Being at the table does not promise an escape from the judgment of the King. The man had come to the banquet accepted the invitation, but he had not conformed his life to Christ. Suddenly this parable is not for the leaders of the Jewish people anymore. It is for you and for me, people already at the table.

It reveals to us a God who has greater expectations than wanting us to show up. It comes not so much as a threat, but rather as a word of encouragement that living our lives in Christ, that having “put on Christ”, as we sometimes say, is the only way to avoid being cast out into the darkness. We have all been called or we would not be in here today. Yet there is something more than just showing up. Our best hope is that our lives, when we are not in here, make it obvious that we have put on Christ and do wear the garment of salvation having conformed our lives consistently, personally, and faithfully to the gospel Jesus has proclaimed to us. It makes me very uncomfortable that the man is silent when the king asks his question. He knew what was expected. He had no excuse. He knew where he was, and who had invited him. So we tell the story again so that we may not be in his place.

Saint Ann, Fairview + Saint Anthony, Okeene + Saint Thomas, Seiling, OK

 Isaiah 5, 1-7 + Psalm 80 + Philippians 4, 6-9 + Matthew 21, 33-43

It is again this week a parable that leads us to reflect upon conversion as a response to the presence of Jesus Christ. Sadly, when left without reflection and heard in a shallow way this parable has, to our disgrace, led to anti-Semitism; and it has been used to do great harm to Jewish people. It must be understood that it is the leaders of the Jewish people who are being singled out in this parable not the entire Jewish people. The church for which Matthew wrote was primarily Jewish in heritage and origins. They are certainly not condemning themselves or suggesting that they had any role or responsibility for the death of Christ. As with all parables, something about God is being revealed here, and while it might be helpful to explore details that say something about other characters, it is impossible to stop there and not ask the question: “What does this tell us about God?”

So we listen to the story and our focus should not shift off the owner of the vineyard. At the center of this parable stands the property owner. He has carefully prepared his property to be in perfect shape; planted, hedged, walled, watered, and tower has been built. It is his, and we know that he has done everything to make the property productive. He leases it. He does not give it away. He expects those he has put in charge to produce something and provide him with that produce. These people left in charge have decided it’s theirs, or that it should be, and they set about trying to make it so. The owner stands firm until the final act of violence destroys his son.

With this story, Jesus makes one more attempt to bring those chief priests and elders of the people to conversion; to changing their response to his message and their method of leadership and distortion of religion. He even teases them into the story by asking them what they think the owner will do. Still no change even when they see where this conflict is leading.

In this parable the term “The Kingdom of God” is used in an unusual way. Here instead of referring to the age to come, it refers not to the future but to a special relationship with God as the chosen ones. Chosen by God these tenants are the elect who have both privilege and responsibility by reason of their relationship with God. Because of their refusal to change in response to the message of Christ, the leaders of the people are going to lose that special relationship. Having failed in their responsibility to produce fruit as tenants, they lose their privilege place with God.

The great challenge here comes with a realization that what this parable describes has happened. Because those leaders rejected John and Jesus, they lost the privilege of their relationship, and others have taken their place as the chosen ones. The message of this Gospel is the truth that we are the ones who have been chosen to take their place. As before, there is no privilege like this relationship with God without responsibility. Now bringing to God the produce from God’s creation, and bringing to God the fruits of our labors is up to us. W e know from this parable what happens if we fail to do so. We are now the ones charged with the responsibility of producing the fruits of the kingdom. The punishment of those others is no reason to rejoice. With the evidence of what happens to those who do not produce, we should be anxious: anxious enough to get up from our passive and lazy ways and remember that we are tenants here on this earth and what it produces is not ours.

The parable reveals a patient God who owns this property. The parable also reveals a God who will eventually replace any who fail to accept his son. Again this week we have a call to conversion. It is a wake-up call for any who have been living as though they owned this place and behave with the attitude that “It’s all mine”. It is another call to those who are doing nothing with what they have produced from this life for the sake of God’s reign.

A culture of spectators finds this parable strange. They would rather think it is simply about a shift from the people of Israel to the new Christians, or simply another story leading up to the ultimate confrontation between Jesus and his enemies. While it is certainly both of these, it is way more than that for you and for me told again with a firm reminder that God expects something of us. We have been given a great deal that God has carefully prepared. Now God waits; and while waiting God’s Son has come with his call to repentance, conversion, and acceptance of his promise. We have a serious and important responsibility because of our privilege.

Saint Ann, Fairview + Saint Anthony, Okeene + Saint Thomas, Seiling, OK

 Ezekiel 18, 25-28 + Psalm 25 + Philippians 2, 1-11 + Matthew 21, 28-32

It is the day after the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem when he had gone straight to the Temple and disrupted the business there. Matthew tells us that he spent the night in Bethany and then returned the next morning to the Temple where he was teaching. The authorities storm up to him demanding to know by what authority and power he had behaved that way. They are angry and defensive. So they go on the offense in their confrontation with Jesus trying to make him defensive. It does not work. Calmly he responds with this parable. Outside of this setting and context we do not get the point, and we are likely to think it is all about the two sons, but parables are always about God.

In cleaning out the Temple, Jesus said something that gives a clue leading us deeper into the parable. He accused those he drove out of turning the place into a den of thieves. Saying that the place had become a den of thieves does not imply that those doing business there were thieves. In fact, they were there doing what needed to be done for the Temple to operate. It was a den of thieves because thieves came there again and again to buy their offerings and rid themselves of the impurity and the spiritual consequences that came from their wrongdoing, and then they went right back to their wrongdoing. What Jesus is angry about is not the Temple workers, but rather the system that allowed thieves to come to the Temple do their ritual things and then just continue on as thieves without making any change in their lives. No conversion. They came in as thieves and they went out as thieves. No conversion.

So just after exposing this useless system he tells this parable which is about conversion. It is a parable that describes how conversion pleases the father more than just nice polite talk. Which son is more pleasing to the father? Surprisingly it is the bad boy in this family because the bad boy does what is right while the good boy who so nice and polite who probably says “please” and “thank you” twenty-five times a day does nothing but look good. As Jesus drives home his point that this parable is about conversion, he refers to the prostitutes and tax gatherers, the bad guys, insisting that God is more pleased with them than he is with the pious and slick talking authorities who have just come up to confront him, because they have not yet shown any signs of conversion refusing even to recognize the signs in others and wonder how it might apply to them.

We must take this parable seriously, because it reveals God’s expectations about conversion. Just like the thieves who ran to the Temple to make themselves look good, we must look carefully at ourselves and how we continue the same pattern. Confession is our trip to the Temple. Again and again we say the same things over and over time after time because we do the same things. We leave the sacrament and go right back to the things that brought us there to begin with. We feel better for a day or two, but the whole thing is too often about feeling better for a day or two without ever really addressing the tough work of conversion and putting an end to the behavior that made us feel badly to being with.

I also often think that people who avoid Confession altogether are in the same boat, so to speak. They say and delude themselves with all sorts of pious sounding excuses that still avoid the reality that we all need to be living in a constant state of conversion. Too much of our lives are spent putting things off that really matter. Good intentions that never become good behavior are a tragic consequence of talking nicely and doing nothing that matters. God has asked us to work in the vineyard. He expects a harvest. This is not just idealistic symbolism. It is about doing something with the gifts in our lives that will bring others into the reign of God. Instead of harvesting the grapes, we spend way too much time making bank deposits and watching the price of grain or the stock exchange and we end up looking a lot like that other son who says “Yes”, but means “No.” It ends up being a refusal of God, of God’s call, and of life in the Kingdom.

MS Westerdam at Sea

 Isaiah 55, 6-9 + Psalm 145 + Philippians 1, 20-24, 27 + Matthew 20, 1-16

Today we open chapter 20. In the chapter before Matthew moves Jesus from Galilee back to Judea where great crowds are still following. With our Gospel today the location is the same, but a new topic comes up when Peter asks how God will reward our sacrifices. The apostles are promised a glorious role in the age to come. Then Jesus expands the idea of rewarding sacrifice by saying that all who sacrifice family relationships or property for the sake of Jesus will be rewarded extravagantly which levels the playing field in a sense by reminding the twelve that they are not to think they are special since everyone will receive a great reward. “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” Jesus says. Then comes this parable that challenges our sense of fairness and justice.

There is a little 5 year old in my family, my great nephew, who frequently puts on a stern face and announces: “It’s not fair!” about anything he doesn’t like. When I am nearby I always respond to his complaint by saying: “Who told you that life was fair? If someone did, stop listening to them.” He looks at me as though I was a ninja turtle or someone who had just arrived from Mars or Pluto. He is a credible witness to a great problem in our society: the idea that we are all “created equal.” This has been distorted into the idea that we are all identical. When we discover the truth that we cannot all do, experience, and enjoy the things that others do, experience and enjoy, we get angry or all upset because we think it isn’t fair or someone has done us wrong. Of course, this thinking is made all the more complicated by our constant competitive attitude. We are forever looking at one another judging what they have, how much they have, and wondering why we cannot have the same thing or more.

Something about this behavior and thinking makes the parable Jesus speaks today challenging to us. The best sign that we have been trapped into this competitive and the “It’s not fair” thinking comes when the complaint of the ones who worked all day seems reasonable; because this complaint by those who worked all day seems completely understandable. Some scholars think that this parable preserved by Matthew is intended for the early church which is beginning to push back against all those who have recently come into the company of the faithful and are assuming roles of leadership with no interest in seniority. We can understand those tensions and how easy it is to grumble when some people receive more recognition or importance than those who have worked hard and long.

This may well be true and understandable, but it is not the point of the parable as Jesus tells it. Other than the fact that some communities today push back against “foreigners” or think that young people should wait their turn, the focus here is not about the workers. The focus of this parable is God. All parables are about God. They reveal or confirm something important about God as way of suggesting that it is God who should guide our behavior and influence our attitudes. These workers are looking at one another instead of looking at God. What Jesus says through this parable is very simple. Quit looking around at what others have. It has nothing to do with who we are. Quit counting and measuring to see if someone else has more than we have. Pay attention to God and imitate and continue God’s extravagant generosity. This is not a story about workers. It is a story about a God who is generous to the point of seeming extravagant. It is a suggestion to the workers that they ought to be like God.

Those workers hired first in the morning got exactly what they agreed to work for. They were not short-changed or cheated. They agreed to work for the usual daily wage. There is not a hint of injustice here. When the master promises to give the others who work less “what is fair” the little trick of parable telling emerges, and we should be ready for a surprise. What is “fair” for us always seems to have limits and be very exclusive. What is “fair” for God is always much more than we can imagine and pushes at the boundaries we always seem to set up to justify our behavior.

Fix your gaze upon God is the message of this parable. Stop looking around at others. It is distracting, useless, and never calls us to greatness and nobility. It’s too bad that no one in this parable seems to get the point. If they had, at least those hired last who were paid as much as those who worked all day would have invited those who were probably worn out from their long full day’s labor to join them for a round of drinks and they might have picked up the tab!

Saint Joseph Old Cathedral & Saint Anthony Hospital

 Numbers 21, 4-9 + Psalm 78 + 2 Philippians  2, 6-11 + John 3, 13-17

Nicodemus is a man in the Gospel who has fascinated me for years. His conversations with Jesus are profound and deeply personal efforts to come to life and to faith. He takes risks and is willing to challenge his secure life style by asking important questions. He is open to something new when it is unexpected and comes out of nowhere challenging his old ways of thinking and acting. In many ways he is a model of seekers everywhere and especially those we now call “candidates” and “catechumens” in RCIA. One of the things about him and the way John presents him in the Gospel is that he comes to Jesus in the night, and then suddenly he show up in the day. John’s Gospel is full of contrasts that play light and darkness against one another for way more than a dramatic effect. Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night, and then after the crucifixion, he comes in the daylight with “one hundred pounds of spices, a mixture of myrrh, and aloes” accompanying Joseph of Arimathea to anoint the body of Jesus. What happened we should wonder. What is the difference between his behavior by night and by day?

I think it is the Cross! Nicodemus, between the time he came in the night and that day when he shows up to help Joseph of Arimathea has seen the cross. He never tells us what the cross means to him, but we know what the cross does for him.

For more than four decades I have presided at the ancient Liturgy of Good Friday and watched prayerfully as countless men and women, boys and girls, have come to touch the cross with their lips or their hands. The expressions on faces and the careful way each one has looked upon the cross has left me with the feeling that an encounter with the cross is a deeply personal and unique experience. It means something different to every one of us. We all experience, understand, and look upon the cross in our own way with wonder, gratitude, confusion, doubt, fear, and faith because the cross is a mystery to us all. It is a mystery in the sense that it stirs up wonder and amazement, not in a sense that it is something we cannot understand.

At the center of everything we do as Christians there stands the cross. At the center of every church in which we worship, give thanks, and renew the covenant we have in the Eucharist there is the cross. We begin our prayers with the cross. The first gesture at Baptism is the signing of the cross. We step across the boundary of death anointed with the cross. We follow the cross in every procession because it is the center of our faith and the symbol of everything we believe and are as followers of Christ.

We may never forget that it was a horrible and cruel means of execution that caused suffering beyond our imagination. At the time of Christ the Romans used it exclusively for the worst of criminals and foreigners. With Christ however, this instrument of death and suffering becomes transformed into a symbol of life and the promise of glory, hope, and even joy. With Christ, because the cross was accepted out of love and obedience to the Father, this ugly symbol of suffering and shame becomes a symbol of hope and salvation. A dark and ugly thing becomes the source of light; as symbol of death becomes a symbol of life. Something happened to Nicodemus when he looked upon the cross. He is no longer a figure of the night troubled and puzzled, doubtful and fearful. We will never know what he thought or what he felt when he looked upon the cross; but we do know what the cross did for him.

It is with that same hope that we gather here under the cross. It has the power to take away fears and doubt. It has the power to lead us out of the darkness of sin, and away from the power of what others might think of us. It has the power to transform our own suffering, abandonment, pain, and sadness with hope and the promise of victory. When we stand or kneel before it, we understand the story of Nicodemus.The final image we have of him is that of a man who braved everything with courage to anoint with dignity and respect the body of Christ. For him the cross was no longer a sign of disgrace, but the symbol of victory. The Gospels do not tell us that he was there at Calvary; but then there is no reason to doubt that he was there in the darkness of that hour. Because of his experience before the cross, he is then drawn into the light of the resurrection.

The extravagant gift he brought to the grave reflects his respect and love for Christ revealing what happens when sacrifice and suffering humbly accepted leads one to life and the victory the cross proclaims. There is strength in the cross. Nicodemus found it. There is promise in the cross, and there is joy for those will embrace the cross with courage and faith.

Ezekiel 33, 7-9 + Psalm 95 + Romans 13, 8-10 + Matthew 18, 15-20

In a world that believes itself to be without sin, these are verses of the Bible to be passed over quickly or studied as a curious method that the early church used for keeping the peace and restoring harmony. In our times, sin is usually something others are guilty of. We see it with horror in the violence of the Middle East. At home we are quick to reduce sin to crimes that deserve justice through the court system which of course does not often mean justice nearly as much as it means punishment. If we take a personal look at our lives, relationships and attitudes, we brush them aside with the excuse that we have issues but stop short of calling them sins. So for many confession and the Sacrament of Reconciliation is just a hoop we jumped through to get communion.

Into this thinking slips Matthew 18, 15-20 today with a suggestion has several disturbing ideas. The first of which comes with the word: brother. In other words, this is not about enemies, this is about someone close, a brother. The fact of the matter is, the shallow lives lived by many have no time nor depth to really make an enemy. We may think of terrorists as enemies, but the truth is, we do not even know their names. In the end, that enemy is an ideology and a behavior. Enemies we keep at a distance these days. It is too easy to walk off and dismiss someone who annoys or offends us. Even lovers say to each other: Let’s just be friends. It’s easier that way, no bad feelings.”

The focus of this Gospel is someone close, and as we all know too well, It is those closest to us who hurt us the most and are most difficult to forgive. Forgiving an enemy we do not see day after day is easy stuff. I used to think it was really great of Jesus to forgive those who nailed him to a cross, crowned him with thorns and beat him on the way to Calvary. Late in life I have come to realize how extraordinary it was to forgive Peter, James, and John who betrayed, denied, and abandoned him when he had nothing else to offer them.

When Jesus directs our attention toward sin it is always for the sake of forgiveness and reconciliation; never for the sake of revenge or punishment. So this little piece of his instruction to us reminds us that sin is real and it is everyone’s responsibility because everyone is involved and shares responsibility for others. The suggestion is made here that doing nothing in the face of evil is just as wrong as the evil itself. The method is secondary to the insistence that we speak up. Silence in the face of wrong doing is even greater than the wrong itself and it makes the silent one complicit in the wrong-doing. This is the heart of this passage.

At the same time, what is proposed here is a way of staying honest and strong in witness to Christ. Time and tradition has evolved these verses into our Church’s sacramental experience of Confession in which the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and hidden places of the human heart. It brings sin into the light and the silliness of denial is exposed. When expressed and acknowledged, sin loses its power when it is owned as sin. It’s like the addict who re-gains control over their life first by admitting that they are powerless and addicted. In sin we are always alone and helpless. In Confession, we cast off the sin and hand it over to God with the presence and the prayer of another sinner.

Pope John Paul 1 told a story about author Jonathan Swift’s servant. After spending the night in an inn, Swift asked for his boots, which the servant brought to him covered win dust. When asked why they had not been cleaned, the servant replied, “After a few miles on the road, they’ll be dirty again, so why bother.” “Quite right,” said Swift. “Now get the horses and let us be on our way.” “Without breakfast?” cried the servant. “There’s no point,” said Swift. “After some miles on the road, you’ll be hungry again.”

So it is with us and our Confession sacrament. The only way to keep moving deeper and closer to God, the only way to develop an authentic and healthy spirituality is by seeking forgiveness in our spiritual journey. It cannot be a generic or private sort of arrangement that we imagine with God any more than professing one’s love for another is something we never say or express openly to and with others. As good Pope John Paul 1 said, not only does confession result in the forgiveness of sin, it give us the grace, the hope, and the courage to avoid sin in the future which of course is the goal that firms up our relationship with God.

Jeremiah 20, 7-9 + Psalm 63 + Romans 12, 1-2 + Matthew 16, 2127

Peter talks, but his words and ideas reflect the thinking of everyone of those disciples. Nothing in their history, in their religious tradition, or in their wildest dreams could have prepared them for what they were hearing from this one they have just acknowledged as the “Christ”, the “Messiah.” That anointed and long awaited one was going to wreck havoc, suffering, and death upon all enemies and all the evil-doers within Israel. Jesus has it all wrong thinks Peter who speaks up in protest to what he is hearing but not understanding. So it will take Matthew two more predictions of what is to come before the understanding sinks in. 

All Peter and his companion hear is the negative side, the suffering, the rejection, the death part of what Jesus is revealing to them. Too many of us are still in the same place. This whole idea of self-denial and taking up a cross is all we can hear, and it seems tough, dangerous, and very unpleasant. But this proclamation of Jesus is the very heart of the Good News. It does not come as Bad News; and this contradiction is the challenge before us today. 

Think of this way: suppose while we are here this morning, a semi goes out of control over there on the street and rolls over on your car. To make matters worse, the fact is, you forgot to renew your insurance last month. The grace period has passed, and tomorrow morning you were going to deal with this matter first thing! The truck company has gone into chapter eleven, so there is nothing get from them. Your car is gone, and you are left with nothing. Sounds like bad news. But, the driver of the truck is holding the winning Power Ball Ticket. He is a good, generous, responsible human being who looks at you once you have calmed down and says: “I will see to it that you have the car of your dream, and one to replace it every year hear-after.” Now in light of the whole picture with deeper understanding, is it bad news to hear that your car has been totaled? 

Now stay with that thought in the back of your mind, and think about this which is something you may not have known before. Jesus uses a very significant and precise word in this announcement that is easily missed in terms of what it really means. He says: “The Son of Man MUST be handed over and suffer. Jesus does not say “WILL”. That choice of words is very important to understand because it expresses that this is God’s will, God’s choice of plan. There is divine necessity here. We are not told why at this point. That will come after the third announcement of his death in chapter 20 when it is revealed that the Messiah’s death will have saving power. So, there is a Good News side to this that must figure into our thinking: salvation.

All through Matthew’s Gospel there is the constant theme and invitation to follow Jesus. When Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan” he wants Peter and all of us for that matter to stop getting in the way. Stop telling God how to do things. “Get back where you belong” he is saying. “You follow from behind.” When we get in the right spot and begin to follow Jesus rather than telling him what to do and where to go, things take on a different character. 

Denying ones self is not a call to some kind of asceticism or some kind of penitential life that is miserable, painful, and sad. That kind of thinking and behavior ends up leaving one more self-centered than before because it’s all about me. What is asked of us here is a re-ordering of our relationship with God. It simply means subordinating our will to God’s will, which is exactly what we pray for every time we use the prayer Jesus taught his disciples. This understanding leads us into the heart of it all, and embracing this kind of self denial is not hard, demanding, or unpleasant, because it is about love and about the one loved. Self denial does not make for misery. It is a response of love, and it leads to joy and expresses love in an undeniable way. Parents deny themselves all the time. They deny themselves of all sorts of things and pleasures for their children because they love them. Spouses do the same thing. They deny all kinds of things for themselves in order to care for and fulfill the wishes needs, and desires of the one they love. 

So the call of Jesus is not an invitation to be miserable and unhappy. It is a call to the joy found in love and loving service that puts the needs of another ahead of our own. At the same time, thinking that taking up one’s cross means putting up with the day to day inconveniences and family problems and that can so test our patience is to trivialize the strength and power of what Jesus asks of us. The “cross” means more than death. It means going all the way. It means accepting the ridicule and dismissal of those whose thinking reflects this world and not God’s. The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Tau which is written like a “T”. This letter/symbol was often used to indicate totality and completion much the way we sometimes talk about doing something from A to Z. The invitation to take up the Tau, the Cross, is a call to go all the way, to set aside half way efforts and feeble attempts and make ourselves obedient and subject to God’s will.

One who follows Christ is one who is obedient in a disobedient world. They seek God’s will in all things at all times rather than their own will, wishes, and desires. They are a person of love who embraces joyfully every opportunity to deny themselves not because it hurts but because when you are a person of love it does not hurt to make sacrifice for another. One who follows Christ has discovered that obedience to the plan of God is redemptive and ultimately lifts us out of sin and sadness, into a world of hope and joy. So a call to self denial and the command to take up the cross is really good news with the best promise of all.