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Jesus might have told this parable:
“A terrible sickness struck a village. The people were terrified of
getting sick and wanted to know what to do”.
The doctor asked the people to wear face masks to protect one
another. We will! They all said. Some did for a while, but they found
the masks uncomfortable, and made it difficult to breathe, so they soon
stopped wearing them.
The Rabbi asked the people to share their food with the poor and
sick. We will! They all promised. But many became more and more
concerned for their own needs and that of their families, so they kept
their barns and larders full – and locked.
The mayor asked the merchants to close their shops and innkeepers
to close their taverns so people would not gather and spread the sickness.
We will! They all agreed. They did so for a few days, but their profits
dropped, and they could not pay their help, so slowly, one by one, they
quietly re-opened. Soon, the sickness took the lives of many in the poor village.
But then there were the good folk who understood that wearing
face masks protected others from the sickness, who kept their distance
from one another so the sickness would not spread, (even though they
missed one another terribly), who readily shared what they had with
those who had little. Oh, it was very hard, and there were many days
when they wanted to give up. But they persevered.
Because of them, many people did not get sick and survived.
Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because
they hear”, Jesus would have said.
The parable of the sower challenges us to check the “thinness” of
the soil in our hearts that results in our faith withering in the noonday
heat; the “rockiness” of self-centeredness and avarice that prevents
God’s “seed” of generosity and peace from taking root in us; the
“thorns” of bigotry and self-righteousness that “choke” the possibility of
providing for the poor, healing the broken, lifting up the fallen. Our own response to the coronavirus is a good measure of the “richness” of our faith and its potential for the “seed” of God’s Word to take root and
realize in our lives the harvest of justice and compassion that is the
Kingdom of God.

A few springs ago, Western Oregon State played Central
Washington University in women’s softball for the conference
championship. An NCAA playoff spot was on the line. With two on,
Western Oregon’s Sara Tucholsky connected to hit a home run clearing
the center field fence. It was Sara’s first home run ever. A part-time
starter in the outfield, Sara, a senior, had only 3 hits in 34 at-bats all
season.
But as she circled the bases, Sara fell and hurt her knee. The five-
foot-two-inch senior lay crumpled in the dirt a few feet from first base—
and a long way from home plate.
Her teammates ran to help her—but their coaches stopped them:
According to the rules, if any teammate ran on to the field, Sara would
be called out. The umpires said that if Sara could make it back to first
base, a pinch runner could be substituted—but Sara’s home run would be scored a single. Any assistance from coaches or trainers while Sara
was an active runner would result in an out.
While Western Oregon was deciding its next move, the first
baseman for Central Washington asked the umpire chief if she and her
teammates could help her. The umpire knew of no rule against the
opposing team helping the player—so two Central Washing players put
their arms under Sara’s legs and Sara put her arms around their
shoulders and the three headed around the base paths, stopping to let
Sara touch each base.
Central Washington’s compassion cost them. They lost the game
—and the playoff berth—4.2.
But that didn’t seem to faze Central Washington. “In the end, it’s
not about winning and losing so much”, Washington’s first baseman
Mallory Holtman said. “It was about this girl. She’s a senior; it’s her
last year. She hit it over the fence and was in pain, and she deserved a
home run. It was the right thing to do”.
This ultimate act of sportsmanship mirrors the generosity of spirit and humility of heart that Jesus asks of us in today’s Gospel. When Jesus calls his disciples to embrace the simple faith of “little ones”, he is not
saying that our approach to faith should be “watered down” to the level
of children. He is calling us, instead, to embrace a faith that is centered
in the love and compassion of God: love that is not compromised by
self-interest and rationalization, compassion that is not measured but
given completely and unreservedly. Christ is asking us to embrace a
faith that is simple, pure and honest—not complicated and compromised
by “adult stuff” like winning and losing. May the “wise and learned”
among us embrace the spirit of generosity and selflessness exhibited by
the Central Washing University women’s softball team—the class of the
NCAA.

A professor of religion at a small college was growing more and
more concerned about her students. Some were taking five courses
while working full-time jobs and caring for small children. Others were
trying to keep their scholarships along with their commitments to their
sports teams, the school newspaper, the choral and theater groups on
campus. A few still lived at home, where their families depended on
their help. Despite their constant state of exhaustion, they refused to
slow down or give an inch. They were immersed in a culture in which a
B+ was a sign of failure.
So, when the course came to the section on meditation, the
professor struck on an idea. Rather than assign a research paper on the
topic of meditation, the professor assigned her students to actually do it,
to meditate—not once, but at least three times for at least 20 minutes.
Their assignment was to stop and give themselves fully to the practice,
to resist the urge to give up and get busy with something “useful”. They were then to write about what they discovered about meditation—and
about themselves.
Most students admitted in their papers that meditation was the
hardest thing they had ever done. “This is just plain stupid”, one student
wrote. “It’s basically vegging out and I’d rather do it my way, watching
television with a beer”.
Another reported what happened when she felt the wind in the
trees blowing across the hairs of her skin: “When I stopped to notice
this, it gave me chills. Then I began to cry. I cannot explain it, but I did.
I believe I was in shock that I do not notice and appreciate the little
things in life that are absolutely wonderful”.
One student, a hunter, did his meditation in a deer stand and
confessed that he went temporarily insane. “For one crazy moment, I
thought I was the deer. I thought I was the forest, the sky, the sun
coming through the leaves. Man, was that weird.”
The professor assured her students that what they experienced was
not unusual, that it was, in fact, very Biblical. She writes of the assignment: “I don’t know if I convinced them, but they did look more rested.
Now if I could only convince them to repeat this act of resistance on a
regular basis—to stop running for a few moments each day, to stop
answering all the sirens long enough to hit the bottom they never hit,
feel the wind they never feel, sense the union they never sense….Their
only hope is to remember how alive they felt, for 20 minutes at least,
and to want that as much as they want the customary rewards of their
busy lives”.
Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, which strike us at first reading as
cold and heartless, are an invitation not to walk away from life but to
embrace life’s essence to the full. We can become so absorbed with
building a career that we fail to develop our full potential and talents as a
human being; we can become so obsessed with creating and maintaining
a lifestyle that we do not live a life worth living. Christ calls all who
would be his disciples to “lose” life’s obsessive, meaningless and petty
pursuits in order to “find” a life fully human and alive in hope and joy.