Author: Daniel Scofield, MTS

No one, be that an individual or an institution controls access to God. Jesus makes this abundantly clear. We see this, for example, in the story of Jesus cleansing the temple by overturning the money tables. The cleansing of the temple needs to be understood in this context: Jesus is replacing a former religious practice with the Christian way of doing things, and he is revealing something very important about God as he does this. To state it metaphorically: Jesus is replacing a former religious coinage with a new religious coinage. It’s important to recognize that those moneychangers performed a needed function. People came to Jerusalem from many different countries to worship at the temple. But they carried the coins of their own countries and, upon arriving at the temple, had to exchange their own currency for Jewish currency so as to be able to buy the animals (doves, sheep, cattle) they needed to offer sacrifice. The moneychangers fulfilled that function, like banking kiosks do today when you step off an airplane in a foreign country and you need to exchange some of your coinage for the coinage of that country. When Jesus says, “take all of this out of here and stop using my Father’s house as a market”, he is teaching something beyond the need to be honest and beyond the need to not be buying and selling on church property.  More deeply, not turning the Father’s house into a market might be translated as: “You don’t need to exchange your own currency for any other currency when it comes to worshipping God. You can worship God in your own currency, with your own coinage. Nobody, no individual, no temple, no church, no institution, ultimately sits between you and God and can say: ‘You need to go through us’!” All religious coinage had to be transferred into their particular coinage, since in their belief, they controlled access to God.  Jesus tries to cleanse us of any attitude or practice that would enshrine that belief. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Religious Coinage.”]

We had received our transfer orders and knew from the housing waiting list at our new duty station that it would be at least six months before something would open up. When we showed up to move into our temporary quarters, we discovered that the prior tenants had kept dogs in the downstairs bathroom, which left a permanent smell and stain on floors all the way through the concrete. Amazingly, the smell and stain were gone after a good dose of bleach. We often see our sins like that smelly stain, believing it could never be made clean. But when we humbly acknowledge our brokenness and turn to God, that’s when his power of forgiveness goes to work, making us as clean as the day we were baptized. This is the true joy of this parable. Luke shows us God’s love and mercy for sinful human beings. Trust that every time you turn to him in repentance, you will come away feeling washed clean from front to back, from top to bottom, and from head to toe.

Our reflection verse today is another statement by Jesus that shocks many at first blush. But our first reaction should not be to react. We should first try and understand a few things related to this verse. First, how was the term “hate” used in other areas of the New Testament? The force of the word is typically Semitic and was used in Matthew’s gospel, where the term means “loves father or mother more,” which would tell us that the meaning of hate in this context means to love less. The second item to note is the context and setting of the saying. At the time of Jesus, social and economic conditions led families to become self-contained. This prevented them from fulfilling the law of ransom or liberation (goel), which called one to help one’s brothers and sisters in the community (clan) who were in danger of losing their land or becoming slaves. When the family of Jesus wanted to take him back to Nazareth, he ignored or hated their petition and chose to expand the definition of his family by saying, “Behold, my mother and my brothers! Anyone who does the will of God is my brother, sister, and mother.” The life of Jesus is about choosing a different way to live. It’s a choice to favor him above all things in life or favor the ways of the world. Only one choice will bring true joy, peace, happiness, and eternal life.

Today’s reflection verse from Luke’s Gospel presents a story about the invitation from God to know him in faith and that we should sacrifice any human interest that gets in the way of replying to God’s call, no matter how lawful and noble it may be. The objections we tend to put forward, the duties we appeal to, are just excuses. Bishop Robert Barron writes that the father (God the Father) is giving a banquet for his son (God the Son), whose bride is the Church. Jesus is the marriage of divinity and humanity, and we, his followers, are invited to join in the joy of this union. The joyful intimacy of the Father and the Son is now offered to us to be shared. Listen to Isaiah to learn the details of this banquet: “On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.” Now, there is an edge to all of this. The king is doing the inviting, and it is a wedding banquet for his son. We can see how terribly important it is to respond to the invitation of the King of kings in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, “God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” We have heard the invitation of God to enter into intimacy with him, to make him the center of our lives, to be married to him in Christ, and often, we find the most pathetic excuses not to respond.

The resurrection of Jesus promises that things can always be new again. It’s never too late to start over. Nothing is irrevocable. No betrayal is final. No sin is unforgivable. Every form of death can be overcome. There isn’t any loss that can’t be redeemed. Every day is virgin. There is no such thing as old age. In the resurrection we are assured that there are no doors that are eternally closed, every time we close a door or one is closed on us, God opens another for us. The resurrection assures us that God never gives up on us, even if we give up on ourselves, that God writes straight with the crooked lines of our lives, that we can forever re-virginize, regain lost innocence, become post-sophisticated, and move beyond bitterness. In a scheme of things where Jesus breathes out forgiveness on those who betray him, and God raises dead bodies from the dead, we can begin to believe that in the end, all will be well and every manner of being will be well and everything, including our own lives, will eventually end sunny side up. However, the challenge of living this out is not just that of believing that Jesus rose physically from the grave, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, to believe that – no matter our age, mistakes, betrayals, wounds, and deaths – we can begin each day afresh, virgin, innocent again, a child, a moral infant, stunned at the newness of it all. No matter what we’ve done, our future is forever pregnant with wonderful new possibility. Resurrection is not just a question of one day, after death, rising from the dead, but it is also about daily rising from the many mini-graves within which we so often find ourselves. G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Learn to look at things familiar until they look unfamiliar again. Familiarity is the greatest of all illusions.” In essence, that captures one of the real challenges of believing in the resurrection. If the resurrection is to have power in our lives, we must give up the illusion of familiarity. We think we know, we think we understand, we think we have things figured-out, and we end up psyching-out life and each other, leaving them no room for newness, for surprise, for the unfamiliar, for the resurrection. Familiarity breeds contempt. Nothing robs us of joy more than that and nothing destroys our marriages, families, communities, and friendships more than a contemptuousness that is born of familiarity. The resurrection invites us to look at things familiar until they look unfamiliar again because, in the end, a startling, delightful surprise is hidden in all that is familiar. [Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s article, “Daily Resurrection”]

We have previously spoken of how difficult it is to be the love of God to ourselves and to others. But Fr. Ron Rolheiser notes that the first part of the commandment, our reflection verse today,  is the most difficult to keep. He goes on to write that we are forever worshipping strange gods. Idolatry, more so even than atheism, is what is natural to us. The idolatry that afflicts us has little to do with worshipping icons, misguided devotions, and other such things. It is subtler. It has to do with the false images of God to which we give obeisance. Allow me to name ten such false gods whom we habitually substitute for the real God, Yahweh, the Father of Jesus Christ.
– The arbitrary god of fear.
– The insecure, defensive, threatened god.
– The dumb, non-understanding god.
– The exotic god of special places.
– The ascetic god whose Christ does not proclaim feast.
– The emasculated god of unbalanced piety.
– The orthodox god of strict theological formulation.
– The unholy god our own image and likeness.
– The overly intense, wired, god of our own neuroses.
– The anti-erotic god, anti-enjoyment, god of our guilt.
Space does not allow for a commentary on each of these but allows me a few more general reflections. By and large, we still believe that God is petty, defensive, and threatened by us. We feel God likes us better when we are uncreative and docile and don’t steal his fire. It is no accident that many creative persons leave the church and that the church has so often been defensive about progress, evolution, and human creativity. The God we believe in is too threatened and defensive. We also habitually worship a god whom, unconsciously, we consider rather dumb and lacking in understanding the complexity of the human being. I once officiated at a funeral for a young man from a very religious family who, while away from the church and living rather dissolutely, was killed accidentally while drunk. One woman remarked: “He was a good soul underneath it all. I knew him. If I were opening the gates of heaven, I would certainly let him in despite his irresponsibility.” She was an understanding woman, but she was not giving God credit for the same thing. All of us tend to mirror that attitude. We do not give God credit for being as bright as we are.  We commit idolatry, too, when we make God more monastic than domestic and when we limit God’s presence to churches and holy places and do not notice God in our kitchens. When I cannot see the wounds of Christ in the pained face of the person across the table from myself, then my crucifix is more gold calf than icon. Finally, we break the first commandment when we make the worship of God more a question of proper orthodoxy and correct doctrine than letting the life of the Trinity and its love flow through us. God, I suspect, prefers a loving, gracious heretic to a person who is theologically correct but bitter and unloving. Whenever we conceive of God as somehow being defensive, anti-enjoyment, less compassionate and intelligent than ourselves, and preferring orthodoxy to compassion, we are breaking the first commandment. Such is idolatry.

It has been written by many great theologians and mystics that we come into the world already knowing, however dimly, perfect oneness, perfect truth, perfect goodness, and perfect beauty because they already lie inside us like an unerasable brand. Some gave this a mythical expression. They taught that the human soul comes from God and that the last thing that God does before putting a soul into the body is to kiss the soul. The soul then goes through life, always dimly remembering that kiss, a kiss of perfect love, and the soul measures all of life’s loves and kisses against that primordial perfect kiss. The ancient Greek Stoics taught something similar. They taught that souls preexisted inside God and that God, before putting a soul into a body, would blot out the memory of its preexistence. But the soul would then always be unconsciously drawn towards God because, having come from God, it would always dimly remember its real home, God, and ache to return there. On this All Souls Day, when we take time to remember those who have departed, as I do for my aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, friends, and most importantly, my sister, mother, and father, I pray that they are experiencing this very day the fulfillment of the longing that St. Augustine spoke about over 1700 years ago: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

My parents and the significant elders in my youth, while not perfect, walked their talk, at least essentially so. They raised my siblings and me to believe in God and in the church, and then, by the way they lived their lives and treated us, gave us reason enough to believe that the trust they asked of us, towards God and church, was well placed. They made God and the church credible. How did they do this? By never essentially betraying us, their children. Their love was neither perfect nor unconditional nor even adequate – nobody, save God, can do that, but neither did they betray us, or themselves, in so deep a way that it cast doubt upon the essential trust they asked of us. Today, I have faith in God and the church largely because of that. My elders didn’t betray me. But what if my life has been one of feeling betrayed? If I have been deeply betrayed as a child, why trust now? If the words of my parents or a significant elder were essentially dishonest, why should I not suspect this is the case with all authority, church or civil? If the religious talk and actions of my elders were more appearance than reality, why shouldn’t I think that all religious talk and action is simple appearance? Why should I not be suspicious of a dark confessional box when I will spend my life trying to get over what happened to me in some other dark place? And why shouldn’t I suspect that all authority, in the end, is self-serving, lying, and exploitative if that has been my primal experience? Why shouldn’t I believe that all human authority is dishonest and untrustworthy? It is essential to know that we come to the church with very different experiences, and we must be sensitive to each other. For some of us, it didn’t hurt to be a child, and the blind trust we gave our parents and the church was a good investment. For others, though, too much of what church and church authority stand for can only seem like a big lie. If our parents or elders were immature, neglectful, self-interested, or, worse yet, positively abusive, that is the way the church and its leaders will also appear to us. Understanding this can help gestate compassion on all sides. [Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s article, “Children Of Our God – And Of Our Elders”]

We are rarely at our best. Too often, what shows forth in our lives is not what’s best in us: love, generosity, and a big heart. More often than not, our lives radiate irritation, pettiness, and a small heart. Too frequently, we find ourselves consumed by petty irritations, conflicts, frustrations, and anger. Each of these might be small in itself, but cumulatively, they take the sunshine and delight out of our lives, like mosquitoes spoiling a picnic. Then, instead of feeling grateful, gracious, and magnanimous, we feel paranoid, fearful, and irritable, and we end up acting out of a cold, irritated, paranoid part of ourselves rather than out of our real selves. As Christians, we believe that what ultimately defines us and gives us our dignity is the image and likeness of God inside us. This is our deepest identity, our real self. Inside each of us, there is a piece of divinity, a god or goddess, a person who carries an inviolable dignity with a heart as big as God’s. Our great dignity, the Imago Dei inside each of us, is meant to be a center from which we can draw vision, grace, and strength to act in a way that, ironically, precisely helps us to swallow our pride. St. John tells us that at the last supper, Jesus got up from the table and began to wash the feet of his disciples, against their protests. That gesture, washing someone else’s feet, has classically been preached on as an act of humility. When Jesus washes his disciples’ feet in John’s Gospel and tells us he is setting an example for us to imitate, he is inviting us to have the strength to bend down in understanding and wash the feet of those whom, for all kinds of reasons, we would rather not have anything to do with. It is akin to having Pro-Life and Pro-Choice, strident conservatives and strident liberals, fundamentalists and atheists wash each others’ feet. Normally we don’t have the strength to do that, there is too much pride and desire for righteousness at stake. When we are in touch with the fact that we have “come from God and are going back to God,” then, and only then, can we swallow enough pride to be genuinely loving. [Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s article, “Finding the Strength to Reach Across Differences”]

Having lived in Japan for almost six years, we learned how a different culture views friendship. In Western culture, we tend to freely and easily imply that we have a relationship with someone when we have just met. You have probably experienced this at work or school. A person is introduced to you. You chat, depart, and go about your life. Before you know it, this acquaintance refers to you as “best of friends.” Our Japanese hosts found this behavior both humorous and challenging. Friendship, in their eyes, required a lengthier time together so that you truly got to know who this person was and that their words and actions were meaningful, consistent, and dependable because they matched how they lived their life. Friendship was viewed as a steadfast commitment to each other and was not something given away lightly. Friendship demanded a trust that only came from spending intimate time together. This is what Jesus is telling us today. We cannot simply view our relationship with him like some adoring fan of a popular public figure. If that is how we base our relationship with people, knowing only the public picture and nothing of who they are personally, how can we ever get to see the person in such a way that they, or we, would lay our lives down for each other? Christ wants us to know and trust him with our entire life. This takes a real commitment on our part to give ourselves totally to him, investing time in prayer, reading of scripture, and living our lives in every way possible to honor his commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” Only in this way can we establish the intimate relationship he genuinely desires for each of us.