Posts filed under 'Berkeley'
God would not win the upcoming election—and not just for the fuzzy math. If my one-person focus group is anything to go by God comes over altogether too tough, too hard, in the first words out of his mouth today: “Adonai was pleased to crush him in infirmity.” Yikes! Pleased to crush? God needs better advisers! Showing an aggressive mastery of world events is one thing but cruelty is another. We want the kinder, gentler deity we saw in the earlier debates.
I thought maybe the press were taking God out of context but no amount of burrowing in other translations helped. “Was pleased.” Desired. Willed. Wanted. “God desired to crush him.” Ouch! Who is this God? If I didn’t know her better I vote for another party.
Then, in the shower, the thought came to me, “Why am I trying to protect God from his own PR machine? Isn’t God big enough to look after herself?”
And there’s the heart of it. Can God take care of God?
Two little articles deep in the paper yesterday have been worrying at me. Right page: Nebraska is about to vote on another, so-called, “defence of marriage” act. Not only does it rule out recognition of possible future, out-of-state, same-sex marriages but also “the uniting of two persons of the same sex in civil unions, domestic partnerships, or any other similar same-sex relationships.” Whatever you think of same-sex relationships will such an act really protect marriage? Will it bring down the divorce rate? Reduce domestic violence? Care for un-cared-for kids? Who exactly does marriage need protecting from? Those who are married and making a mess of it or those who haven’t yet had their chance? But that’s a quibble—my real question is this: Does marriage need protecting? Isn’t marriage big enough to look after itself?
Left page. The murder of Ita Ford, Maura Clark, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan is, 20 years on, thank God, in the news again. Two of the Salvadoran Generals at the top of the chain of command that murdered those four women are on trial right now in an American court. The generals, who long ago received amnesty in their own country, had retired to their reward in Florida where the relatives of the dead missionaries have brought civil suit against them. A Maryknoll sister is quoted: “You live with the question and hope the answers will come out. I guess the hope is that the truth will be revealed and there will be an end to impunity.” An end to impunity.
Some people do seem big enough to take care of themselves. The men who pull the trigger. The guys who give the orders. The US advisers who stand by. The American voter who pays for it all in defence of an invulnerable way of life. These are the structures of impunity. Will they come to an end?
The four women had no impunity. They were unable to take care of themselves. And that makes them very like God. Standing in full view. Vulnerable and awkward and unprotected.
“We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one, Jesus, who has similarly been tempted in every way yet without sin.” The Letter to the Hebrews makes that the mark of the one we follow. Jesus who is tempted in every way we are but doesn’t give in. And, I’m afraid, that’s a problem for me. It is so hard for me to imagine not giving in to temptation! I speak for myself only—but once a desire gets to be strong enough to be called temptation I find it irresistible. They say the only way to deal with temptation is to give in. That—or to not be tempted in the first place. I am a very holy person in all the areas of life I don’t experience temptation. If I try to imagine myself getting holier I find I am imaging myself invulnerable to temptation. I dimly glimpse someone unmoved by disordered desires. Not tempted by tempting toys. Immune to fascination. Spontaneously stoic. I imagine myself getting duller and duller.
Thank God, God has a better imagination than I do! Jesus heads in the opposite direction. Not tempted less but tempted more. Tempted more—because he does not build the structures of impunity you and I build to keep desire at bay. He plunges downward into life and desire and temptation. Vulnerable and awkward and unprotected.
Poor James and John, in their desperate upward climb to glory, pass Jesus going the other way. They want to climb out of the mud to a safe place where they can dry their feet. But Jesus plunges unprotected into the fast-flowing river. “Can you be baptized, drenched, soaked, with the baptism I am baptized?” “We can!” they shout because they think they can take care of themselves. But they can’t. They are better than they think they are—baptism does that to you. It makes you more vulnerable, awkward and unprotected.
And isn’t there something attractive about that? Not safe but attractive. To be like the God who can’t take care of himself. To be like her.
October 31st, 2000
Once upon a time Jesus was praying and the guys who followed him around were watching him. They saw the look upon his face. They saw the something in his aching body. And they looked at each other and they wanted what he had.
Peter spoke up, “I’ve read the best books but I still don’t know how to pray.” John said, “Never mind books, I’ve listened to the best guru’s but I still don’t know how to pray.” “Well,” Matthew added, “books and guru’s are OK but I’ve been to the best workshops and I still don’t know how to pray.”
Jesus was distracted by their wrangling and got up from his prayer to face them. “What’s up now?” he asked. Peter spoke up immediately, “Teach us to pray!” The other all echoed his words. “Teach us how to pray!”
“Is that all? Just say this … ‘Look God … these are the things we need … food, forgiveness, and a father.’”
Silence. Waiting. The sound of breathing. Finally Peter spoke up, “Well I’ve read about prayer of petition … but what about real prayer?” “Yes,” John said, “what comes after the kiddy stuff? Teach us that!” And Matthew, trying to be helpful, prompted Jesus, “You know … meditation, contemplation, centering, focussing … How do we really pray?”
“Oh,” said Jesus, “you want the advanced prayer methods. Well that’s quite a lot harder to explain.” Their eyes lit up. Lips were licked. “Are you sure you are ready? OK! Well in 30-odd years of careful prayer and study I’ve developed the perfect technique. It can be learned with enough discipline and effort—though, I have to warn you, not everyone has the requisite mental clarity and emotional purity to completely master the methodology. Ready? Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. And say, ‘Look God … these are the things we need … food, forgiveness, and a father.’”
October 30th, 2000
Gehenna! … Gehenna! Like ourselves the citizens of Jerusalem were careful to dump their rubbish out of sight and out of mind. Do you know where your daily refuse goes? All those embarrassing reminders of consumption and packaging and waste? Rotting and un-rot-able alike. As far away as possible we hope. Out of nose range.
Jerusalem’s trash went to Gehenna. At least it did once upon a time. To Gehenna, just down the hill from the Holy City’s heights. Gehenna where the fires smoldered constantly. No wonder God-forsaken, un-kosher, Gehenna became the image for hell.
So here’s Jesus getting all riled up over justice again. “Better to live missing an eye than go open-eyed into Gehenna. Better be crippled in the kingdom than go leaping and dancing into hell.” And the sin he’s giving out over: giving scandal to the little ones. And by that he doesn’t mean making children blush. He means all we do that makes it harder for the little ones—the poor, the hungry, the hidden, the hurting—harder for them to believe that God is good, that God cares.
It is so hard to listen to James condemn the rich because by his standards we all are condemned. Just living here in California condemns us. We might be poor here and still out-eat the world’s starving. We might be scorned here but still outrank the world’s despised. Without trying we make it harder for the little ones to believe God cares. Do they even get a mention in the race for president? War does, security and prosperity do. But the ones we waste?
And all the time there’s Gehenna, the world’s dump, the world’s hell. The waste we have to discard to keep on growing. The expendable poor our great nation is built upon. The bargains we have made for our livelihood.
But we don’t remember making those bargains. We didn’t mean to harm anyone. And—God help us!—we don’t know how to undo the damage. That’s the scandal. “Scandal” used to mean the thing you fell over that sprung the trap, the trigger, the trip-wire. We are trapped by our own desire for life. And we are snared because we do not know how to be free. The price of freedom seems too steep: “better to cut your foot off and than be trapped in Gehenna.”
Enough of the melodrama, already! The Jews may be obsessed with cleanliness and kosher laws but isn’t it going a bit far to make the town dump into hell?! I mean why get guilty over a natural process, over ordinary waste, over the inevitable cost of human living?
There is a reason. Gehenna haunts the imagination for more than being a garbage pile. Gehenna holds a guilty secret. Before it was a dump for a city’s refuse it was a place of sacrifice. Once upon a time it was where the children were taken and offered to the flames to satisfy a hungry god. Not that long ago. Among the ashes of rot and refuse the bones of little ones. Not that long ago.
And there’s the echo for us, the accusation. Are our dreams are built on a graveyard? All the sacrificial victims of our security and prosperity. All the little ones.
At the centre of Rosh Hashanah is Abraham’s scandalous sacrifice of Isaac. Who is more trapped in that story? Isaac bound to the altar with rope… or Abraham bound to murder by his fear of a hungry god?
All Abraham wanted was the prosperity promised him—the descendants as many as the stars, the lands, the flocks, the renown. All we want is what think we need.
Once upon a time the citizens of Jerusalem sacrificed their little ones because they thought it would win prosperity from a hungry God. We still don’t know a way out of that trap, that scandal.
Or maybe we do. In Jewish tradition you can only seek forgiveness from the person you have wronged. But how can the little ones forgive us when they are out of sight and out of mind, when they are buried? We believe there is one little one who will not refuse us. Jesus himself. Somehow Jesus frees us from the economy of wasted lives. But only by becoming the ultimate child-sacrifice. The little one to end all little ones. We wasted him. His bones are in Gehenna. And because he is there we never need to be there ourselves. On behalf of all the wasted little ones he sets us free once and for all.
But it does take some action on our parts. A Jewish custom for these days of Rosh Hashanah is to go and find a pool of water, a river, an ocean. Somewhere the fish swim freely. And there to empty your pockets into the water. It’s a double symbol. You throw away all the year’s sin, all its wasted hopes, all its unnecessary sacrifices. The fish carry them away. But you also leave with empty pockets. Poor with the poor. Little with the little ones. And you say thank you to God for all you have been given in giving it all away.
October 29th, 2000
I saw a film the other night. The main character, a photographer, is out of work, out of cash, and out of love and everyone keeps telling him to cheer up because obviously this puts him at his creative peak.
And I guess it’s true—the creative peak is often a trough and the way to creativity goes down, down, down … and then down again. Like they say about Switzerland—all those years of peace, security, and wealth—and all it produced was the cuckoo clock.
Not even God gets away without downward mobility. Where does God have to go to get creative? Right down into nothing. If all this glorious world was created ex nihilo you’ve got to feel sorry for the God who risked becoming nothing to make nothing into something. And it must have been a risk. In the beginning was the word … but what if there’d been a cosmic case of writer’s block?
As it is, God’s choice of medium has been questionable and from the beginning the work has been wayward. Eating from the wrong tree. Inventing death. Exploring hate. Contriving ugliness.
But God seems not to learn. How does the Divine Potter control the wobble in clay? I’d opt for scraping it off the wheel and starting again. But God does the unimaginable and becomes part of the pot. God enters the weave. Joins the pigment on the brush.
Down, down, down. How far do you have to go? Only too far seems to be enough. God in Jesus, goes down, down, down, … and then down. Carries creation back down into nihil, into nothing, into death. Strung out on a dead tree a dead man. How do you get out of that one? You don’t. You just pray that God doesn’t have writer’s block. That God can still bring something out of nothing. That God will still take the risk. Of annihilation. Of failure.
In the film I saw, our hero tries to head uphill not down but only makes a fool of himself by chasing after the wrong guy, and has to lose him and let him go before he can do the impossible and make something beautiful out of nothing.
So, even our failures can be used for our salvation. Even our wounds can be used to heal us. But who wants to go there. Down, down, down. Even if God seems to be waiting for us there, in the failure, and in the wounds and on the cross. Ready to make the ugly beautiful, the empty rich, and the dead alive.
But how far do we have to go? Only too far seems to be enough.
September 14th, 2000
That reading from Jeremiah is so stirring: “I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar, a bronze wall, against the whole land—kings, princes, priests, people—they will fight against you but they shall not prevail, for I am with you, says God, I will deliver you.”
Stirring… but a lie. Jeremiah gets to prophecy disaster and to experience it. To denounce and be denounced. He speaks the coming doom and has it fall upon his head. The presence of God doesn’t spare him agony and humiliation and defeat. He is no more delivered by Adonai than John is delivered by Jesus. No wonder Jeremiah rants against the God who has seduced him and made his every word a sentence of death. No wonder John languishes in his cell wondering whether his awaited Messiah has come or not.
Who would be a prophet?! Who would want to speak hard words to implacable powers? Not Jeremiah and not me!
“Whew!,” we can say at the start of another Semester, “Thank God we are called to be theologians and not prophets, students and not prophets, administrators and not prophets. Thank God our words are our own!” But they are not! They burn our tongues as they leave our lips. What else is theology but words spoken about God, words written for God, words heard from God? And what can this place be but a place of prophecy? Haven’t we been called to here to hear God speak, to interpret the ache of our hearts and the world’s longing, to hear so that we may speak? So we might give God back the voice God has given us?
But God we do not know how to speak, we are like children, our words halting, unsure and the powers are vast and uncaring. Maybe theology was a mistake after all…
“Do not be afraid. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them. No, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. For I am with you to deliver you.”
August 29th, 2000
There’s something about calamity that brings out the best in us. When disaster falls from the heavens we all rally round, pitch in, and do what we can with a focus and an energy that we look back on with amazement. Amazed at our own resources we didn’t know we had, or amazed at the hidden strength we muster from nowhere in one last ditch effort to move the immovable object. Yep: we are great in an emergency. Where we are lousy is in the long haul. When the crisis loses it’s glamour and becomes another circumstance and the once-in-a-lifetime Herculean effort becomes a daily grind.
Have you been watching “Survivor”? Have you seen how the exciting challenge of surviving the first nights has shifted into the struggle to endure another day of rice and rat and each other?
This is Elijah’s problem and it is ours. Standing up to Ahab and Jezebel, and the prophets of Ba’al, in an acute confrontation brought out all his nerve and all his showmanship and all his fervour but when the price is on his head and all he can do is run for his life then his feet in the desert sand slow from run to walk to lie down and die. Just one day’s trudging to nowhere and the thought of forty more are enough to ruin him.
Don’t we all have out moments when with Elijah our only prayer is “This is enough, God! This is enough! Just let it be over. Let it end. Let me die.” Whether it’s a thankless job, a chronic sickness, an abusive relationship, the desert of depression, or just one damned thing after another—we’ve known it, we know it. “Enough God! Let it be over!”
I don’t think God gets the response right. Remember Elijah’s God can pour down flame on a soaking pile of wood when it suits him, can humiliate the prophets of Ba’al, has been known to part the water of the sea into a wall on left and right. What about a bit of that now?
Nothing doing. All Elijah gets is a kick in the ribs from an angel. That and a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread, a jug of water, and an unwelcome word—”get up and eat and get on with it.” Not even a night’s fine dining on a cruise ship—bread and water.
Fast forward! There’s an heroic quality to the last supper as the other three gospels tell it. It’s Passover, the crisis is upon Jesus and his followers. There are enemies all around, a price on each head and choices to be made. In the middle of that Jesus takes bread and breaks it and shares it, makes the bread his body, makes himself the Passover offering and in one terrifying effort faces the hours of agony to come. It’s all done in a hurry. But it’s only done once.
When John tells the last supper story, though, he doesn’t mention bread broken at all. But here today and for Sundays to come he can’t shut up about bread; bread of life, living bread, bread from heaven. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Jesus says, “and the bread that I give is my flesh for the life of the world.” But is it a good deal? Who wants bread except those Survivors? Who wouldn’t rather have miracles? Why can’t Elijah have be magically protected from his evil enemies? Why does he just get bread to keep him trudging through desert? Why don’t we find the end we pray for? Why is it all we get is eucharist?
“Enough God!” we pray, we plead, “End it!” but what we get is bread enough to go on. And that’s an awful test of faith. There’s a question posed every time we walk up to the table for bread and wine. And it’s not an easy one to answer. It’s this: in all your need and hope, in all your suffering and joy, in all of your hunger and thirst, is this enough? Enough. Is it? Is he?
And if that isn’t question and challenge enough for us there’s another one. The bread comes into our hands with words. “The body of Christ.” And those words name the bread but they also name us. Not as individuals but as the community who says Amen and eats. “This is my flesh for the life of the world.” We are his flesh for the life of the world. Are we enough? Enough for each other. Enough for the hungry, the hurt, the empty. Enough for another day. We don’t have to work miracles we just have to keep the world fed for another day. We just have to be enough.
August 10th, 2000
Every time I travel I swear I will only take what I absolutely need. This time I will travel light. I will not need that shirt and tie. But what if there’s a fancy occasion? Better take some good shoes then. What about a jacket? And what happens if … Better safe than sorry.
What are you unwilling to do without? And what would happen if you lost it?
Between Amaziah and Amos is an easy choice. Amaziah is the trustworthy one here. He’s a priest and no ordinary priest but the pastor of the National Shrine. And this is a nation where religion matters. Where God is worshipped with heart and soul and voice. And this is a nation prosperous at last. All the heartbreak of the past has been put right by God. There is peace. Military strength and national courage have paid off. All the enemies have faded away. Gross national product is on the rise. Trade is flourishing. People are happy. Church attendance may not be what it once was—but at least it’s sincere.
So no wonder Amaziah is angry at Amos. He’s a foreigner, a southerner for God’s sake. How’s he to know the real complexity of our country. And a peasant at that. A stinking shepherd with no education. How does he have the nerve to stand here in this holy place and preach at us? Not even preach. He’s not talking religion but politics. We didn’t get where we are today by letting two-bit hacks mouth off in holy places about things they don’t understand. So Amos show some respect. Go home and prophesy there. See if your own folk like it any better. But stay out of our affairs. Got it?
…
Amos on the other hand has nothing… and nothing to lose. He is free. He never had much to start with and God’s word has stripped him of even that. Now, a poor stranger in a rich country, he has only his voice. Amaziah doesn’t own him. The King doesn’t own him. He has no employer to please for his daily bread. He has no family at hand to make the risk unacceptable. So he does not keep quiet. He cannot keep quiet.
Because he sees things. He has visions. He stands there at their liturgy, in awe, watching. He loves it. Feels the motion sway his heart. But, even though he tries, his eyes won’t be blind to the ones who worship. He can’t blame them for enjoying their comfort. He can’t fault them for fretting over unpaid bills. He doesn’t doubt their sincere faith. He’s just appalled by their blindness. He hopes it’s blindness. The rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And they don’t notice. They don’t see. Or if they see they don’t care. Or if they care they don’t know how to do anything about it. You cannot bite the hand that feeds you. You have to look after your own. And, by God, your hand digs deep when the collection comes around.
Maybe they do see. But not the image Amos sees superimposed on the singing assembly. He has a vision of twenty five years down the road. Only twenty five years. The sanctuary in ruins, overgrown, desolate. The nation’s heart empty, deserted. The people—the well-to-do ones anyway—dragged off in chains to be foreigners in a foreign land. Eating the bread of hardship from an alien hand. Sing now Israelites! Sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.
Only the poorest are left. People like Amos. The one’s too poor to be worth deporting. The prosperity passed over them—so will the pain.
So Amos weeps through his double vision as he sees this happy assembly stripped of everything they had gathered to protect themselves. And God weeps in Amos’ tears. Because it didn’t have to be this way.
God has been there all along in the Sanctuary. But the sanctuary hasn’t been where they thought. Though they sang their hearts out no one but Amos knew where real safety lay or would risk the journey.
In Jesus time when you made your journey to Jerusalem to enter the temple sanctuary you had to leave things behind. Leave behind the cloak, the staff, the shoes, the money belt—all the stuff of journeys, all the sensible, safe provisions—and enter empty handed and unprotected and insecure to face the living God. The God who has been waiting for you. Why? Isn’t God in food and safety and comfort just as much as desert wind and aching sky?
And why does Jesus send out his followers in the same way—unprotected, unsafe, insecure? Maybe because all the world is sanctuary if you journey aright. And God is waiting there. And the price of admission? Nothing. Nothing. Not to be insecure but secure in God alone. Not to be unprotected but protected by God alone. Not to be hungry but fed by God alone.
God waiting for us, two by two, with power to drive out a world’s demons and mend every broken dream. That’s the authority Jesus gives his friends: the authority to have nothing and do everything.
July 30th, 2000
I used to have a piece of furniture, when I was an undergraduate living in college dorms, that made me shine with reflected greatness. In truth it was a tatty, worm-ridden, ugly thing—kind of a small cabinet on long shaky legs—but so grungy that I can’t remember now what I used to dare to put in it. It even had a name—so strange and impractical was it to look at that a friend of mine christened it a mongo-pod. But its name wasn’t the essential thing—its heritage was. My mongo pod had once been the property of Benazir Bhutto when she was a student at the same school. Now this was in the days when she was only a child of greatness, before she made her own pass at Pakistani politics, her own ambiguous turn on the world stage.
But every now and again, bleary-eyed in a morning, or over-caffeinated at night, my mongo pod would catch my eye and a wider world than my own would offer itself, however briefly or vicariously, and … and what?
Now that’s the question. What? To be honest I haven’t thought about that mangy piece of woodwork for years and, even then, I never saw myself turning up at some palace in Pakistan like a long lost furniture-friend. But to this day my mongo pod remains the closest I’ve been to having friends in high places—my nearest approach to power.
Apart from today. Apart from Ascension!
It’s not so much the going of Jesus that matters to our story-tellers today but where he is going. This Jesus, this guy from Nazareth, yes, we knew that he was like a son to God and, yes, we knew that God didn’t let him rot but gave him new life, but this? Who’d have thought that this … this man … who we’ve rubbed shoulders with, who we’ve laughed around the fire with, who we’ve wept over, who was so bleary-eyed in the mornings, so over-excited at night … him. He turns out to be … what? Ruler of all things? Lord of the cosmic laws? Wisdom of creation? “Far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion and every name that is named.” Right hand man to God.
We knew he was powerful. But we knew him broken too. We saw him heal the sick. We saw him rage against indifference. We saw him exhausted. We saw him dead and we saw him alive again and eating fish. But this? No wonder we are standing here looking up at the sky! We have an un-looked-for friend in high places.
We, that’s you and I, we have a friend in high places. We have an approach to real power. And we have more than a mongo pod to prove it—we have God’s own breath, God’s own spirit, as pledge of the power that holds the cosmos in being.
Listen again to the readings. “In a few days you will be drenched with Holy Spirit.” “You will receive power when Holy Spirit comes upon you.” “The same power which worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion.” And whatever you think about those signs and wonders it is certain that the friends of Jesus will not shrink from power—”you will drive out demons, you will speak new languages, you will handle serpents with your bare hands, you will be proof against poison, you will lay hands on the sick and they will recover.” Our society sure has its demons. The corridors of power slither with serpentine subtlety. Our consumer culture poisons itself and every created thing. And the victims of our success lie sick all around the world. Our mission should we choose to accept it—drive out the demon, handle the serpent, purify the poison, and heal with our own hands what seems to be dying. And, while we are at it, shape an unknown language to speak with authority to those who would not hear.
…
My mongo pod usually caught my eye when I was wrestling with yet another midnight paper—”essay crises” we used to call them. And the promise was always of a wider world than transition-metal chemistry. A world just out there. Just through those windows. Where people lived and died and made a difference.
As Mark tells it Jesus never says goodbye to his friends and followers. He just gives them a little job to do. “Go into the whole cosmos and proclaim good news to every created thing.” Luke is the one who supplies the wherewithal. “You will receive power when Holy Spirit comes upon you.”
Well, you and I have friends in high places. We have the power. What are we going to do with it?
June 4th, 2000
I love the poetry but it disturbs me deeply. It’s something about seeing … and seeing where you belong.
Elizabeth sees only honour and blessing and joy in her kinswoman’s womb. But Mary is more canny. Of all her people’s heroes she might have identified with, Mary claims kinship with Hannah and echoes the song the once barren mother sings not when she is to give birth but when she has to leave behind the child she has borne. There’s nothing given that doesn’t have it’s price.
There is joy, yes! Mary, full of her burden of life, chooses to name herself with Hannah. One barren who has been made fruitful. One low who has been raised high. One hungry who has been filled. One who has waited till she found her longing.
But there’s a hard edge. A true child of her race, every bone of her is political. Her child to come is destined for the falling and the rising of many. She knows the way of it. No one finds pride but that another is humiliated. No one rises without another’s fall. No one is fed but another goes hungry. No one finds their heart’s desire but that another is thwarted.
There is no level playing field. Wealth never trickles down. And, no, we can’t all be on the same side.
I love the poetry but it disturbs me deeply.
May 31st, 2000
Everything we’ve just heard should cut off, once and for all, any avenue of escape for us. Because I think we all want to escape from being loved by God. Sounds stupid, I know, but everyone I know does it. I catch myself doing it all the time. It usually starts when I’ve disappointed myself—done something I’m not proud of—or not done something I really felt it in my heart to do. I feel a little guilty, a little sad, and I want to hide away from myself. And then I remember all the other times I’ve felt this way and the feeling just grows until maybe I can’t even remember what started it—I just know, on the inside, that the world is divided up into two halves—the ones God loves and the ones God is ashamed of.
But the world isn’t divided up like that. In God’s eyes there are no second class citizens. Like Peter says in the first reading—”I see now that God has no favourites.” Or like the second reading tells us—what’s important is not that we love God but that God loves us. Or like the Gospel says—we are not to think of ourselves as slaves but as friends—God’s friends.
The world isn’t divided up into the people God loves and the people God hates. There are no second class citizens.
And I get uneasy about that. It sounds stupid, I know, but it can be uncomfortable being loved like that. Not always—sometimes it makes me really happy—but sometimes I’m sitting in my harsh judgement enjoying feeling bad and I don’t want to be disturbed. There I am enjoying feeling lousy. It doesn’t feel like enjoyment but it must be or else I’d get out of that mood as quick as I could. But I always stay longer than I need to. God has to really kick me out of that mood. God has to really rub my nose in how much he loves me before I’ll budge. Stupid!
So what’s the pay-off? Why is it so hard to believe that God loves me even when I don’t love myself? Well here’s one thing for a start. Staying put in shame and sadness means I don’t have to bear much fruit, to use the words Jesus uses. It’s a lot safer not believing that God loves you because you can keep you head down. Not do much wrong but not do much good either. If we really believed that God loves us no matter what we do—if we believed nothing at all could ever separate us from the love of God—if we believed that God has no favourites—then who knows what dangerous things we might get up to.
Look at Peter in that first reading. He’s been forgiven so much. He’s learned the hard way that God loves him even if he runs away, even when he turns traitor. So he’s ready to believe that even unthinkable people can be loved by God. Even people who aren’t Jews, even a high-ranking Roman officer. Peter makes a decision then and there that affects us here and now. He sticks his neck out and accepts the first non-Jewish convert. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t! But what happened for Peter afterwards was enormous too—his path took him to Rome to eventually die alongside his new converts. That’s the love that lays down its life for another.
Or look at Jesus. Look where his love led him. He would never be the victim some wanted him to be and he would never be the man of violence the way others wanted him to be. Out of love he did all sorts of inconvenient things. He broke his religion’s commandments. He spoke uncomfortable truth to the rich and powerful. And chose to eat and drink with people who were considered dirty, bad, and dangerous. He stuck out his neck so many times that he ended up giving his life for us all.
That’s why it’s easier not believing in God’s love. If we did who knows where it would take us? It took Peter to Rome. It took Jesus to Jerusalem. Where would it take you or me? It’s so much easier to think that we don’t matter much. That God can’t love us much. That we are better off keeping our heads down.
But the words of scripture don’t leave us any avenue of escape. We matter. Each one of us. God loves us. Each one of us. Enough to give his life for us. (And, who knows, maybe with practice we might even get to enjoy being loved that much.)
God loves us. Enough to give his life for us. Enough to give his life for anyone. Even for the people you or I wouldn’t give the time of day to. But for God the world isn’t divided up like that. In God’s eyes there are no second class citizens. God has no favourites. What’s important isn’t that we love God but that God loves us. There are no slaves any more—only God’s friends.
So let’s be proud of that. Let’s lift our heads up high. And who knows where that might take us. Who knows what we might do. But wouldn’t it be good to see!
May 28th, 2000
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