January 30, 2011
Fourth Sunday (A)
Zephaniah 2:3-3:13
1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Matthew 5:1-12
When I was here 35 years ago, there were 3 priests. Since there approximately the same number of parishioners (with a LOT less funerals!) we had to find something for the young associate to do. One of my responsibilities was to interview half of the kids who were getting ready to make their First Communion. Being compassionate, trying to make these young kids feel comfortable having to answer questions for the priest, I would begin with some really simple questions: what 2 things do we use in Mass that some family brings to the altar, Is Jesus really present in the bread & wine; and, “I may be dumb, but how do we get that bread so flat? Does someone drive over it with a big truck?”
To which this one 7 year girl responded: “Boy you are dumb!”
In a book entitled Father Fiction, Donald Miller shares the thoughts of a young under-achiever:
I grew up believing I was stupid. Nobody told me, but I knew.
I say nobody told me, but my report cards said it,
the red ink at the top of every page of homework said it,
the frustration on my teachers’ faces, all of this.
A person who believes he is stupid is worse than a person who is stupid.
When you believe you’re stupid, you act stupid. It’s all about belief.
Remember what St. Paul wrote today.
Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters.
Not many of you were wise by human standards,
not many were powerful…
God’s vision differs from ours. God sees through outer appearances and into the heart.
So what does God see in a man who is frustrated in his dead end job, whose marriage is precarious and whose children are into trouble.
What does God see in a young woman who throws aside her college education and potentially a great profession to work at a fast food place and marry the love of her life
As Miller says, it’s all about belief.
If you believe you’re a loser, you’re going to act like one.
If you believe you’re a sinner, you’re going to act like one.
If you believe your life doesn’t matter…it won’t matter…to anyone, not ever God.
Or so it will seem.
And how does God react to us when we duck our heads instead of holding them high?
Today’s gospel provides the answer:
Jesus, the Son of God, climbs a mountain and below him, in the crowd,
where the world sees weakness, he sees strength.
Where the world sees poverty, he sees wealth.
Where the world sees deprivation, he sees power.
Blessed are the poor in spirit…
Blessed are the meek…
Blessed are the persecuted…
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives nine positive spiritual reminders which include positive results. We will continue hearing portions of this sermon until the beginning of Lent.
It’s all about belief.
It has been said that God so loved the world that God didn’t send a politician to make new laws for us. Rather he sent his Son that we might have a relationship with him. And Jesus does not give us new laws, but rather the beatitudes. The beatitudes are invitations to be alive and present in the world.
St. Augustine once stated that God “worships” you.[2] meaning that God believes in you.
Augustine explained this by saying that God cultivates the good in you the way a farmer cultivates his field.
And when we believe in God we believe not only in God but also in the inner goodness of that person that God created each of us to be.
I am a flight instructor. Best way of teaching someone to fly, especially to land an airplane, is to talk them through it. Some of my students have commented, that when they solo for the first time, they actually hear me, shouting directions to them: “keep your airspeed up, lower the nose a little, don’t bank so steeply on short final.” You see, landing an airplane is not ALL that difficult if you know the basic rules, of “how” to do it and someone talks you through it.
I got spoiled teaching aviation students in Ames. Many of them were aerospace engineering students. They understood the “why” and did not fly the plane simply by following my commands.
Our Catholic way of living faith can seem both simple and complicated. Rules and instructions help, but at the center of it all is our personal relationship with Jesus. If we concentrate on the “how” rather than the “why” of our faith, we belong to a business rather than a faith community.
Thus we pray the “why” of faith in our lives and the “why” of the Eucharist in helping us live as good disciples of Jesus.
Reflection
We hear from the Prophet Zephaniah for a few instructions and a promise. Forgetting who formed them, was a disintegrating sin for Israel. They were reminded often by God that God was their origin and their destiny. This is the setting for our First Reading.
The promise is that instead of a constant prophetic instruction, telling them “how”, God would form a people who know “why” they are important. Instead of telling everybody not to tell lies or how to act toward each other, this remnant will live justly, because they will know who they are and “why” they are God’s people.
but invitations for being alive and present in and to this world.
Pope Benedict XVI gives much thought to each of these invitations in his wonderful book about Jesus. Each of them sponsors all kinds of reflections on their meanings. Poverty of spirit, how is that an invitation and to what?
It is a wonderful study we can make upon what Jesus meant. Some of them are comforting and some more challenging. Being “meek” seems misunderstood by many and maybe I am one of them.
Poverty of Spirit might be related to the spirit of meekness. There is the image of the irresistible force meeting the immoveable object. Our minds have an entitled force which is irresistibly forced toward grasping, possessing, consuming.
The third word children learn to speak with equal intensity to the first two, is “Why?” They feel entitled to know the reasons they have to go to bed, take a shower, eat peas and stop teasing siblings. That force never goes away and is a wonderful gift to guard and reverence.
Where does being meek fit in to all this? The immoveable object is God as mystery. God is entitled to be God and the blessedness of being meek is that we are entitled to be human, that is having the power to know what to ask. We are not entitled to a richness of God’s ways. Our “whys” crash like huge waves into God’s “ways” or wall of loving silence.
Little children learn that their parents don’t have to tell or cannot tell just yet, all that will satisfy the child. We keep learning to love the questions and experience life as the meek-time of waiting.
The last verse of the Gospel creates a good question/answer form. We are invited to accept insults, persecutions, and people’s speaking falsely about us. We are entitled to being spoken well of and having our truth respected. In each of these nine invitations, there is the question and then the Jesus-given answer.
Here at the end we have an answer which involves meekly surrendering to the demanding “now please” of our irresistible minds. Our “hows” and “whys” are healthy and wise and our faith cushions the crash.