A young man, eager to make it to the top, went to a “success in business” seminar taught by a wealthy tycoon. “What’s the reason for your phenomenal success?” he asked.
Back came the answer, in a gravelly voice: “Hard work!”
“Uh, well, what’s the second reason?”
It’s natural to find the easy way to do things. Book stores sell thousands of “easy” books. Spanish Made Easy, Five Easy Steps to a Better Vocabulary, Easy Does It, Eat What You Want and Lose Weight. Looking for the easy way may be natural, but today Our Lord warns us that about really important things, the easy way isn’t the best way. The easy way isn’t always the right way.
Perhaps the harshest words that ever came out of the mouth of Jesus were aimed at his friend for counseling him to take the easy way. The scripture says Jesus turned on Peter, turning on someone…what a phrase, and said, in new Testamentese: “Simon, get the blank out of here. Your advice of taking the easy way, avoiding the cross, eliminating pain at any cost, is a dangerous temptation that might make me fall. I don’t need people around me that only judge by the world’s standards. The easy way is not always the right way.”
Many of you here with some years experience know that what Jesus says is true! Success in life requires a willingness to resist the lure of the easy way. A sound body requires that you exercise, eat the right foods, and conquer bad habits. A sound mind requires that you read, that you observe, that you continually learn, instead of resting on a handful of pet convictions handed down from grandma and grandpa and never expanded or enlarged. A sound marriage requires that each partner goes into it with the understanding that marriage is not a 50/50 proposition, but a 70/30 one, in which both partners give 70. A sound family means that we will take the time to be sensitive to the needs of our children, that we provide not only for their physical needs, but their emotional and spiritual needs as well. Such goals require sacrifice, they require perseverance…Every one of us knows that the path to personal success is the path of self denial. And why should we do this unnatural thing, take the hard way, pick the cross, say no to our inclination to ease. Because our Lord has loved us the hard way, the godly way, the right way; no one who looks on that cross would ever complain when God asks us to sometimes take the hard way. After all, Jesus did not come to make life easy. Jesus came to make human beings great!
Archive for August, 2011
Easy Does It 8-28-2011
Sunday, August 28th, 2011“Who Do You Say That I Am?” Deacon Patrick Conway 8-21-2011
Sunday, August 21st, 2011Summer is a time when many people go on vacation. It’s good to go on vacation. It gives us a refreshing break from our usual routines, and we see and learn new things. And we can come back with new eyes for the old things in our lives – new appreciation for what we already have but often take for granted.
It seems that even Jesus and his disciples took vacation. In today’s Gospel Matthew tells us that they went up into the region of Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi was a great city about 60 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. It was something of an oasis resort, with refreshing springs and an elevation of about 1,000 feet at the foot of Mt. Hermon.
Still, it was a rather strange place for Jesus to take his disciples for a break from their very intense Galilean ministry.
Caesarea Philippi, as its name suggests, was not a Jewish city. It had been built by Philip the Tetrarch as a thoroughly Greco-Roman city. Philip, who had lived in Rome, had even named it after Caesar, probably to curry favor with him and to show the world that the more “progressive” Jews were just as sophisticated as the Romans.
As a Greco-Roman city, it was also had several pagan shrines. There was a huge cave there with a spring gushing out of it from a pool that was so deep that it could not be measured. Philip’s father, Herod the Great, built a temple at the mouth of this cave, and sacrifices would be thrown into the bottomless pool, which were believed to be the gates of the netherworld, Hades. Philip came along and enhanced the area with several other temples and statues to other gods, sort of a pagan pantheon.
This was not a place that a pious Jew would be caught dead! So imagine the thoughts and feelings of the disciples as Jesus takes them on what would have been an arduous three-day hike up to this center of all that was pagan and horrifying, to the very gates of the netherworld. But, they followed him, didn’t they?
Imagine this Jewish rabbi standing with his disciples in front these pagan temples, including the so-called gates of the netherworld, in the midst of all of these grand and imposing symbols of the dominant Greco-Roman culture, with nothing Jewish in sight, and saying, “What about me? Where do you think I fit into all of this?”
And St. Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, steps up and, in spite of all this intimidating pagan evidence that Jesus and Judaism were of no significance whatsoever, says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus immediately affirms Peter’s answer and declares that none of this pagan culture, not even the gates of the netherworld, would overcome this faith and the community of believers, the Church.
And, Jesus was right. Here we are today, two thousand years later, people with the faith of Peter and members of the Church built upon that faith. And all of that intimidating Greco-Roman pagan glory – it’s gone. If you go to Caesarea Philippi today, you’ll find nothing but dry, dusty ruins. No one lives there anymore.
But we have our own version of that today, don’t we? Like St. Peter and the disciples two thousand years ago, we are also surrounded by a dominant secular culture that tends to deny or disregard our faith in Jesus Christ.
There is scientific atheism, which contends that there is no God that created everything, and the only things that are real are those which can be detected by scientific means. It denies even the possibility of the existence of spiritual realities.
Then there is our entertainment culture, which constantly presents us with a world in which there is no God or religion, suggesting that our faith is irrelevant or even ridiculous and dangerous.
And there are all of the non-Christians religions and the two-thirds majority of the world who are not Christian. Christians are and always have been a minority. Most people don’t believe that Jesus is who we say he is.
So here we are in the 21st century, surrounded by this pantheon of beliefs contrary to our own. And Jesus asks us the same thing that he asked his first disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”
I sent out an email this past week to the 511 of you on our email list with this very question from Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” Here’s what you said:
I have pondered this scripture most of my long life. Each step in my journey I find I have different answers, usually depending on what’s going on with my life. However, my answer always is quite clear…Jesus is my friend, my compassionate listener, my laughing partner. He embraces me and holds me tight and carries me when it is too difficult to walk alone. I can feel the touch of his hand always in mine.
You are my best and most loved friend who accepts me as I am no matter what.
You are the Messiah, the Promised One sent by the Father to teach us how to live.
For me, as I put my feet on the ground to begin each day, Jesus asks me that question. I must reply to Him in the people that I see here at the clinic or the coroner cases that come across the x-ray table: You are the Son of the Living God.
You are the light that helps me out of the darkness.
I am finding that Jesus tells me who he is many times during the day…..when I have a tough situation at work and I get through it with a smile……whenever I see Dan (the chaplain,) I SEE Jesus come into the rooms and he says the most wonderful things…..he says he is hope, faith, strength and love. I try to emulate those things and say them…….that is who he is for me!
Jesus is my close friend, someone I can share all of who I am without being judged. When I don’t make the right choices, I know his true unconditional love.
Jesus is my comfort, support, security. I know he is with me all the time. I feel him in events that happen in my life and take comfort in knowing that I can say anything to him.
Jesus is the one that my life points to. He is the one who gives purpose to all of creation. Jesus is my lord and savior. Jesus is the word of God made flesh in order that we might learn by His example. Jesus is the peace of the world that brings all of humanity together as one.
Jesus is my brother, teacher, mentor and one that I trust in to bring me to life everlasting!
He is the lamb of God. He lived a life that we couldn’t, died for our sins that we couldn’t pay for, and rose again so that we may do so as well.
Jesus is my Rock.
I believe you are all there is. You are everything and everything is you. Without you, there is nothing. You are life now, before and after, but most of all you are the reason why.
To me Jesus is my guide to goodness. He helps me cherish and value the good times in life and leads me down the right path in getting me through the rough times. I am so appreciative to have Jesus in my life every day and can’t imagine existence without him.
I tell Jesus daily He is my savior and redeemer, my physician and healer, my very best friend and lover of my soul. He hangs with me every single day, and I never leave home without Him.
I love to hear these voices of faith, your voices, the faith of the Church alive and well here in Aptos in the 21st century. I’m sure St. Peter and the disciples would have been stunned to see how this faith has spread throughout the world over the past 2000 years, when it seemed that the odds were against it. Yet from St. Peter, with all his human weaknesses and failings, and that tiny little band of disciples, it has.
When we are tempted to despair by our dominant culture when it makes us that feel our faith, our Church, our Jesus is useless, wrong or irrelevant, let us be inspired by that first generation of disciples who overcame tremendous odds and stepped out in faith, hope and love to change the world. Let us offer ourselves just as they did, knowing that with our faith and our faithfulness, Jesus will work wonders through us to continue his work of transforming the world and all that is in it.
Human Beings Get Tired! 8-14-2011
Saturday, August 13th, 2011There are so many great stories about Jesus. Jesus curing the blind; Jesus feeding the multitude; Jesus embracing children; Jesus the consummate contemplative in prayer; Jesus sensitive to the point of knowing when someone in a crowd touches his garment; Jesus reading people’s hearts like a book. Jesus giving his life away like bread and wine.
And then we have today. How many preachers have profoundly wished this story wasn’t here. And maybe skipped it, or tried to explain it away by saying Jesus was really just joking with the lady. But when a child is sick, you don’t joke with a mother. Or when he used the word dogs, he meant “little puppies”. Or he was just pretending to be blunt and grumpy, but really that was just to elicit deeper faith and deeper seeking from the woman, or maybe from the apostles.
Possible….but it sounds like rationalization. And maybe the true sense of the scripture is the plain sense. But if that’s so, what in here is edifying or saving?
First, a detail. The Gospel doesn’t say Jesus went to the district of Tyre and Sidon. He withdrew. Withdraw is what people do when they’re tired, spent, drained. Withdraw mentally, withdraw emotionally, even downright physical withdraw. And Jesus had his reasons to withdraw. In the previous chapter, Herod beheaded John the Baptizer. The apostles reported that the Pharisees were getting shocked by Jesus’ teachings. Jesus is getting a clearer picture of what lies ahead. And he needed to withdraw, to some anonymous place so God could restore him.
Human beings get tired. Jesus’ divine nature was unlimited, but his human nature was limited. So he needed to withdraw. For us – a question. Do you have enough sense to withdraw when you’re spent? A little blue? A little tired? Let the world turn without you. Can you humbly admit it when there’s nothing more you can do right now? Do you notice when people around you are spent? Do you give them permission to withdraw? Do you help them if necessary, with some mad money, or an offer to baby-sit, or make a meal?
But there’s more here than just that. Jesus once told a story about two sons. The father says to the first son—go to the fields and work. “Yes I will”, comes the answer, but he doesn’t. So the father says to the second son, “You go to the field and work”. “No, I won’t”, comes the spontaneous first response, but after mulling it over, the second son goes and toils. Who is doing the will of his father, Jesus asks? The one who ended up doing right. It’s not your first response that counts; it’s your last and final response.
Even Jesus got tired, spent, blue…even Jesus had to struggle to make the most godly loving tender response and had to change his response when he could, to come from a deeper more loving part of him…then that’s a great lesson of challenge and hope for us.
Sometimes our first responses to a request, a situation, and unattractive person, like the response of Jesus, aren’t our best response. But we don’t have to leave things there. We can lighten up on others and on ourselves. We can give grace time to work. We can be humble enough and free of stubbornness enough, to say…well, that’s my first response. But, I’m capable, in God, of something better.
What would happen if parents always stuck with their first response to a nagging kid, in the middle of anger? We can change responses. And today, that’s what Jesus himself does.
So we can ask, “Is my response to people I’m upset at, sometimes over a long stretch of time, really my best response, my deepest response, from Christ in my heart? Is my reaction to the immigrants who come to fill our city streets and use our services really my best reaction – my most Christian reaction? Is my aversion to people who question me, contradict me, or stymie my desire for a simple uncomplicated life, really my best reply – my Christian reply? Am I so stubborn that I haven’t changed, deepened, and matured my response to things for a long time?
Jesus wasn’t like that. We don’t have to be either.
