An argument arose among the disciples about which of them was the greatest. Jesus realized the intention of their hearts and took a child and placed it by his side and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. For the one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest.” Luke 9:46-48
In the Gospel both today and yesterday, the disciples are struggling with their pride and expectations. Jesus calls them to live with a mature and humble innocence.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: Our commitment to a Gospel life suffers when we become concerned with our status or importance. We ask for the humble courage to embrace a sacred innocence sustained by the Gifts of the Holy Spirit – Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord
Thought:
“Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”
At that time, John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward. Mark 9:38-41
The earliest disciples were learners just like we are. As they have listened and watched the power of Jesus, they have placed complete trust in him. They begin to realize that Jesus is sharing that power with them. Jesus instructs them that this realization must be handled humbly. It must not allow alienation from other believers who also carry the power of faith in Christ. If one is for Christ, they cannot be against him.
Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It’s unlikely that it’s really religion at all.
Joan Chittister, OSB
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We seek that openness that Jesus inspires in his disciples – to recognize, encourage, hear, and consecrate all the gifts which the body of believers brings to the Church. Institutionalization can breed classism and elitism anywhere, even in our beloved Church.
Poetry: Sermons We See – Edgar Guest
I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I’d rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way. The eye’s a better pupil and more willing than the ear, Fine counsel is confusing, but example’s always clear; And the best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds, For to see good put in action is what everybody needs.
I soon can learn to do it if you’ll let me see it done; I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run. And the lecture you deliver may be very wise and true, But I’d rather get my lessons by observing what you do; For I might misunderstand you and the high advice you give, But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.
When I see a deed of kindness, I am eager to be kind. When a weaker brother stumbles and a strong one stays behind Just to see if they can help him, then the wish grows strong in me To become as big and thoughtful as I know that friend to be. And all travelers can witness that the best of guides today Is not the one who tells them, but the one who shows the way.
A good person teaches many, who believe what they behold; One deed of kindness noticed is worth forty that are told. Who stands with those of honor learns to hold their honor dear, For right living speaks a language which to everyone is clear. Though an able speaker charms me with their eloquence, I say, I’d rather see a sermon than to hear one, any day.
Alleluia, alleluia. Our Savior Christ Jesus destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel.
Today’s readings may strike us as grim. The Book of Ecclesiastes acknowledges our discomfort with the darkness inherent in faith. We believe because we do not know. If we knew, there would be no need for faith. But at times our believing is challenged by our life circumstances. Thus is the story of Ecclesiastes – all in life that confronts our faith.
In our Gospel, Jesus introduces the hard reality of his impending death. He challenges the faith and commitment of the disciples as the time of testing approaches.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: Acknowledging the truth of today’s readings, we choose to pray with them in the light of the Resurrection as it is so beautifully and simply stated in our Responsorial Psalm.
Poetry: from John Donne’s Holy Sonnets – Death Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
The heavens laugh! The earth shouts with joy and what she bears in her bosom. The creator lives! God most high triumphs and is free from the bonds of death. He who has chosen the grave for rest, the Holiest, cannot decay.
Jesus journeyed to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his widowed mother. A large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Luke 7:11-15
In today’s Gospel, we read the deeply moving phrase, “… the only son of his widowed mother“. Reading it, we can feel that same pity Jesus felt as the small group of mourners passed him in the road.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We assess our own hearts to measure our Christ-like tenderness for those who are suffering – often, right before our distracted eyes. As Irene Zimmermann suggests in the poem below, in attending to these suffering people we also attend Christ.
Poetry: First Born Sons and the Widow of Nain – Irene Zimmerman, OSF
Jesus halted on the road outside Nain where a woman’s wailing drenched the air. Out of the gates poured a somber procession of dark-shawled women, hushed children, young men bearing a litter that held a body swathed in burial clothes, and the woman, walking alone.
A widow then—another bundle of begging rags at the city gates. A bruised reed!
Her loud grief labored and churned in him till “Halt!” he shouted.
The crowd, the woman, the dead man stopped. Dust, raised by sandaled feet, settled down again on the sandy road. Insects waited in shocked silence.
He walked to the litter, grasped a dead hand. “Young man,” he called in a voice that shook the walls of Sheol, “I command you, rise!”
The linens stirred. Two firstborn sons from Nazareth and Nain met, eye to eye.
He placed the pulsing hand into hers. “Woman, behold your son,” he smiled.
Music: Tender-Hearted – Jeanne Cotter
Be tender-hearted as you love one another as I have loved you And forgive one another with endless compassion as I forgave you.
Clothe yourself with kindness, patience, and humility. Let the peace of Christ live in your hearts and above all else, put on love. And be tender hearted.
Be tender hearted as you live a life worthy of your calling. You are God’s work of art, holy temple. The Spirit is at home in you.
Walk always as children of Light Keep the flame of faith alive. God’s love has been poured into your heart. You are reborn by that love.
So be tender hearted for you’ve put on a new self hidden with Christ in God. You are no longer stranger. You’re one of the chosen holy and beloved
And Jesus went with them, but when he was only a short distance from the house, the centurion sent friends to tell him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Therefore, I did not consider myself worthy to come to you; but say the word and let my servant be healed. Luke 7:6-7
Jesus is amazed at the faith of this centurion who has such confidence in Christ’s power and mercy that he needs nothing but a word to confirm his trust.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We listen with open hearts to God’s Word in our own experiences. We ask for ever-deepening trust that God is willingly working miracles of mercy through our faithful lives.
Poetry: The Say-but-the-Word Centurion Attempts a Summary – Les Murray
How might the faith-filled centurion have felt at the death of Jesus?
That numinous healer who preached Saturnalia and paradox has died a slave’s death. We were maneuvered into it by priests and by the man himself. To complete his poem.
He was certainly dead. The pilum guaranteed it. His message, unwritten except on his body, like anyone’s, was wrapped like a scroll and dispatched to our liberated selves, the gods.
If he has now risen, as our infiltrators gibber, he has outdone Orpheus, who went alive to the Shades. Solitude may be stronger than embraces. Inventor of the mustard tree,
he mourned one death, perhaps all, before he reversed it. He forgave the sick to health, disregarded the sex of the Furies when expelling them from minds. And he never speculated.
If he is risen, all are children of a most high real God or something even stranger called by that name who knew to come and be punished for the world.
To have knowledge of right, after that, is to be in the wrong. Death came through the sight of law. His people’s oldest wisdom. If death is now the birth-gate into things unsayable
in language of death’s era, there will be wars about religion as there never were about the death-ignoring Olympians. Love, too, his new universal, so far ahead of you it has died
for you before you meet it, may seem colder than the favors of gods who are our poems, good and bad. But there never was a bad baby. Half of his worship will be grinding his face in the dirt
then lilting it up to beg, in private. The low will rule, and curse by him. Divine bastard, soul-usurer, eros-frightener, he is out to monopolize hatred. Whole philosophies will be devised for their brief snubbings of him.
But regained excels kept, he taught. Thus he has done the impossible to show us it is there. To ask it of us. It seems we are to be the poem and live the impossible. As each time we have, with mixed cries.
Music: Amazing Grace – John Newton (sung by Rosemary Siemens)
Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful. Luke 6:31-36
“Even” can be a parsimonious word – as in “get even”, “even-steven”. In such phrases, “even” means we settle things without forgiveness or generosity. It means we get our due without considering the other’s need.
But Jesus says the Gospel heart is not about “evenness”. Rather it is weighted on the side of extravagant mercy, generosity, and forgiveness.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We pray for the courage to model our relationships with others on God’s incredible kindness to us.
But to take the Gospels seriously, to assume that they say what they mean and mean what they say, is the beginning of troubles. Those would-be literalists who yet argue that the Bible is unerring and unquestionable have not dealt with its contradictions, which of course it does contain, and the Gospels are not exempt. Some of Jesus’ instructions are burdensome not because they involve contradiction, but merely because they are so demanding.
The proposition that love, forgiveness and peaceableness are the only neighborly relationships that are acceptable to God is difficult for us weak and violent humans, but it is plain enough for any literalist. We must either accept it as an absolute or absolutely reject it. The same for the proposition that we are not permitted to choose our neighbors ahead of time or to limit neighborhood, as is plain from the parable of the Samaritan.
The same for the requirement that we must be perfect, like God, which seems as outrageous as the Buddhist vow to “save all sentient beings,” and perhaps is meant to measure and instruct us in the same way. It is, to say the least, unambiguous.
“Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of me.
Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven. Luke 6:20-22
Maybe some of you also watch the TV game show “Wheel of Fortune”. Notice what happens when the contestant wins the final round. They leap for joy! Then their family and friends join them and they ALL leap for joy! And they keep leaping !!! They “leap” so much that Pat Sajak makes sure he gets out of the way!
Jesus wants his followers to know that, despite any sufferings in life, they too will leap for joy at the final round of life. Can you imagine the exultation!
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: May we trust in Jesus’s promise, and anticipate that infinite joy by our steadfast faith, hope, and love!
Poetry: This and That – Mary Oliver
(Imagine God leaning over you with the kiss of a new morning and you leaping up to that Love.)
In this early dancing of a new day— dogs leaping on the beach, dolphins leaping not far from shore— someone is bending over me, is kissing me slowly.
Music: Don Quixote Variation – Júlio Santos (American Ballet Theater)
But Jesus realized the Pharisee’s intentions and said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up and stand before us.” And he rose and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” Looking around at them all, he then said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so and his hand was restored. Luke 6:8-10
In this reading, Jesus invites the crippled man to stretch out his hand – to reach beyond himself for the healing grace God offers. Jesus is inviting the Pharisees, who suffer from a crippled faith, to reach out as well. Is Jesus inviting you to stretch?
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: I have included a picture of my beloved statue of giraffes. When I pray with this carving, no words are necessary. The youngster is stretching up to receive grace, nourishment, and love. For me, it is an image of our stretching up to God and God’s tender leaning toward us.
Poetry: Movement by Denise Levertov
Towards not being anyone else’s center of gravity
A wanting to love: not an other, and fall, but feel within one a flexible steel upright, parallel to the spine but longer, from which to stretch; one’s own grave springboard; the outlying spirit’s vertical trampoline.
Thus says the LORD: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water. Isaiah 35:4-7
Isaiah’s prophecy foretells the time when God will turn the world upside down. It will be time of vindication for all those who have suffered. In God’s realm, even nature will be blessed by the recompense of salvation – by what they earned by their faithfulness.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: We look to the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus – to guide us so that we may foster this recompense for all people and in our own time. Those tied only to material values do not understand the infinite hope of a world turned upside-down by Jesus.
Poetry: Ain’t I A Woman – Sojourner Truth
A formerly enslaved person, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century. In this poem she gives us an insight into her view of the world turned “upside-down”.
That man over there say a woman needs to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helped me into carriages or over mud puddles or gives me a best place… And ain’t I a woman? Look at me Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns and no man could head me…
And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man — when I could get to it — and bear the lash as well and ain’t I a woman?
I have born 13 children and seen most all sold into slavery and when I cried out a mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me…
And ain’t I a woman? that little man in black there say a woman can’t have as much rights as a man cause Christ wasn’t a woman Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him! If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, all alone together women ought to be able to turn it rightside up again.
While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.” Luke 6:1-5
A religion, like any other social construct, makes rules to define its character. The process can be as simple the “club” rules we made in elementary school (with the accompanying “All Others Keep Out” sign.) Or it can be as complex as who qualifies, by their behavior, as a certified Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc.
But humanly constructed rules can be easily degraded when the purpose of their design is forgotten or ignored. This is what Jesus wanted his listeners to understand. He did not come to redefine the Old Law. He is Lord of the New Law whose definition is mercy and love not regulation.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: A sainted Mother Superior, in my young religious life, once offered me this insight: “The rules are for those who need them.” Did she mean that religious rules should be ignored? Certainly not. The maxim suggests that those who live the true spirit of the Gospel have no need of a list of rules to guide them.
Thought: from Joan Chittister, OSB
The spiritual life… is not achieved by denying one part of life for the sake of another. The spiritual life is achieved only by listening to all of life and learning to respond to each of its dimensions wholly and with integrity.
Lavish Mercy 