Whoever Listens to You, Listens to Me

 

From an historical perspective (Luke10:1-12,17-20 “commissioning” the 70 in groups of two’s and three’s was a brilliant organizational strategy. We know all too well that John the Baptists’ movement was halted and his followers dispersed abruptly after he was executed by Herod. According to New Testament scholar, John Dominic Crossan, Jesus’ disciples were “decentralized” and were virtually unstoppable. They scattered to hundreds of places too remote for Jesus to visit during his ministry, especially now… as his face was set on Jerusalem.  Crossan estimates that there were hundreds of commissioned ministers already in place by the time Jesus was crucified and unlikely to learn of his death for weeks and months. (The Historical Jesus) 

The seventy overjoyed with the thrill of their first encounters were reluctant to hear or heed Jesus’ warnings, and were eager to share their joy. Jesus knew that they would be going as lambs in the midst of wolves as he too experienced rejection and death threats during his ministry, and most notably in his own home town. He knew all too well that rejection was the least of what they were going to encounter. 

Yet, can’t we relate to the elation that the first wave of disciples felt as they shared their experiences with one another when they returned home? Can’t we relate to the how good they felt after healing and ministering to their communities as Jesus taught. Like most of us they would be filled with hope that it all may be joyful and “fulfilling.” Yet Jesus tells us not to rejoice in citing what we’ve done but quietly rejoice because we are living the Word to glorify God. To restate Jesus admonition:  “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever accepts you accepts me, and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me."

 

You are not wanted here

 

The music stopped; my chair was gone, and I was faced with having to leave a job and career to which I was totally committed and loved for over 30 years. A corporate reorganization resulted in my position and group being eliminated and “absorbed.” No, they said “I wasn’t being fired; your performance was exemplary; it’s just that your position would no longer exist.” “Well,” I asked, “if that’s the case how come I couldn’t do this or that and be reassigned?”

… Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.

To which the response was: “No, sorry, those options are not in the plans.” So, now I had to leave a place where I was no longer wanted (Luke 9:51-62.) How was that possible? I had to uproot my family and an established lifestyle; leave my friends behind and go to a place where I was wanted…but not here anymore. Hurt, anger and a futile urge to “strike back” were emotions that ruled my life for a long time.

Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

Little did I know at the time that this pain and anguish would lead to new opportunities, personal growth and a transformation of sorts that would not have been possible had I remained anchored in that comfortable place. Little did I know that what seemed like an interminably difficult period of loss and “exile” protected me from the peril and upheaval awaiting those in that place I left behind. Little did I know then that in the long run, it was all for the best… and all part of His plan; not mine.

Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God

 

You are what you eat

 

 Jesus tells us Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…John 6:51-58 (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

 Imagine hearing this for the first time. Imagine hearing this without any previous experience of the Eucharist's significance.  We know that some of Jesus followers were so offended and repulsed that they stopped following him.  Jesus makes no attempt to temper his words and make them palatable for the feint of heart. There’s not even a hint that he might be speaking poetically or metaphorically. He’s not quick to change the subject either. For us, these words may no longer make us uneasy. But, Jesus didn’t drop these rhetorical bombshells so that they’d be easily forgotten. It’s clear that He was stirring the pot on purpose. He wanted to say things that challenged the people. 

Imagine you are attending church for the first time as this passage is read! How would you react??? 

Once again John relies on mystical words to speak to each of us in that place in which the personal images of reality and life itself reside. John invites us to close our eyes and picture what being in a relationship with God really means. Note, I use the word “picture,” not “understand,” in an effort to prompt our imagination and senses to feel the words as a palpable, sensory experience, and know what being in a relationship with God actually feels like, tastes like, and smells like. This is at the essence of our being and what we mean when we say “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God fully shared our humanity through Jesus as we through Jesus, fully share in God’s divinity. Anything less than that relationship with God would be reduced to mere acquaintance. 

St. Augustine used the phrase “visible words” to help explain the connection between the sacraments and our daily lives. Baptism and Communion are visible, physical manifestations of our faith. In other words, the sacraments are the embodiment of the gospel in the material form of water, bread, and wine. They serve as the physical presence of what we have heard and believe because we are physical creatures. And so the gospel is proclaimed so that we may hear it, and this very same gospel comes alive to us in the Eucharist as we taste, touch and feel it with our hands, our mouths and our bodies.

My Prayer to the Holy Trinity

 Dear God, I don’t want to pass the buck but your being within me hasn’t been discussed too often or too clearly. I hate to sound critical but this doctrine on the Indwelling has been passed over rather superficially in my early religious training. I never heard this from the nuns in grade school or the brothers in high school.

Yet Lord, all the while, deep down I wanted your love and the reassurance of your love as I always tried to earn it. So you can see why your Indwelling presence strikes me as strange and foreign.  Now I’m  told that although they are beautiful and comforting, reciting the prayers I was taught and had memorized is not the only way I can speak to you and that I should converse naturally, in a familiar and relaxed way as if you’re “one of the family” because You Eternal Three, have made your home within me.

And yet I hesitate. My religious training emphasized that you were the one who would punish me if I even talked in Church... and as a youngster I remember confessing it because it was a sin. I was trained to be meticulously respectful when I came into your presence, as if you were present to me only in Church. (I remember feeling guilty for a long time when Sister Janice discovered Ralph and me playing the theme from “Dragnet” on the organ in the choir loft, one Saturday afternoon. Who knew she was in the sacristy preparing the altar for Sunday Mass? I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to face her wrath on Monday or roast in hell forever?) Now, I’m being told that your presence is within me! And I’m supposed to be comfortable with you. Yet, I feel as though I should hold my breath.

Dear God, now I’m learning not to think of grace as the absence of sin but as a gift of your presence, Father, Son and Spirit within me.  And that you are closer to me than I am to myself and that you want to be...for no other reason except that you love me. This idea is so beautiful that I really want to hold on to this feeling forever.  I’m trying to understand that the more aware, conscious, alert, and attentive I am to your triune presence within me, the more I will find you in all things. Dear God, I really do want this. What a love you must have for me! A genuine, boundless, omnipotent, all-present, eternal, home  within me! I certainly need a mature faith for this. I no longer can go just gliding along the surface of my old religious practices anymore, can I?

Thank you Lord.

In the Name of the Father, from whom we came and to whom we are going, and to the Son, in whom we find our true self, and to the Holy Spirit, the divine aliveness in our innermost life. Amen               (John 16:12-15)

(adapted from  Ronald T. Haney SJ, God Within You, Mysticism for the 21^st Century, pp. 150-151)