Jesus on Fair Pay -- Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the reasons that Jesus was so disturbing to the people of his time was his tendency to hang out with the wrong crowd. He often ate with tax collectors and was seen talking to prostitutes. He associated with lepers and with crazy people. He seemed to have a special love for those in trouble. He even associated with foreigners and treated women as equals. To make matters worse, he spent very little time with those who were wealthy and highly placed. Recall that when Jesus was arrested and tried, the high priests had to seek witnesses to tell them what Jesus had been doing and saying. The king was anxious to meet Jesus because, while Jesus was quite familiar to the poor and outcasts, the king had never actually seen him.

The parable that Jesus relates in today’s Gospel is directed at those of us who think that we are better than or deserve more than someone else – which, according to surveys is just about all of us. Maybe we think we are more moral or harder working or better looking. It doesn’t matter what it is that makes us think we are above someone else. Jesus tells us that God sees us through different eyes. In God’s eyes we are all radically equal and we are all loved equally.

Sometimes that is hard to take. I know that when I read the parable Jesus tells today, I instantly identify with those who have been working since dawn. I’ve worked harder. I deserve more. But in this life I can’t know who has worked harder. Only God knows the efforts I and others have made. I don’t get to judge; only God get’s to judge. And when I compare myself not with others but with what God deserves from me, my own efforts look tiny compared to the total commitment that I owe. In fact, upon reflection, it doesn’t seem like a very good idea to get this whole judgment business under way. The truth is that I’m one of those who came toward the end of the day and instead of arguing, I’d better be grateful that a loving and forgiving vineyard owner is handing out the pay.

I’m reminded of a story told by evangelist Dave Roever. Roever was a soldier who served in the Vietnam War. He was burned very severely when a phosphorus grenade went off in his hand. Not only was his hand destroyed, but his face was terribly disfigured. His nose and one ear were burned off. His eyelids, lips, almost his whole face was either destroyed completely or badly burned. His wife was informed of his injuries, and he was evacuated to a hospital in the U.S. There were two beds in his hospital room. In the other bed was a soldier whose legs had been blown off. He was in pretty bad shape.

That evening, the soldier’s wife arrived. When she entered the room, she stood looking at her husband with no legs. Then she took off her wedding ring and threw it at him. She said, "You disgust me," and she turned and left. Through most of the night, Dave could hear the soldier in the next bed sobbing. The soldier died before morning.

The next morning Dave’s wife walked into the room. Dave could tell that she was pretty shocked by what she saw, and even though he couldn’t talk very well, with a lot effort he managed to say: "I know that I’m so ugly now, but do you think that somehow you can still love me?"

She walked over to the bed, found a spot on his face that was more or less intact, and planted a big, wet kiss. Then she said, "Honey, you were never that good-looking to begin with."

Like Dave’s wife, God never loved us because of our good looks, or our social status, our good intentions, or even our hard work. God loves us because God loves us. Knowing that we are loved in spite of our ugliness and failings is incredibly freeing. It frees us to love others in spite of their faults because we are loved in spite of our faults.

We can reach out to prisoners, we can reach out to the poor, we can reach out to immigrants, we can reach out to the sick because we know that we have done wrong, are impoverished, are strangers, need healing, and God loves us through it all.

Let us live like the forgiven and beloved people we truly are.

Being Careful When We Talk About God

Several years ago late on a summer afternoon here at St. Paul’s, after we were already closed for the day, I was just gathering up some things in my office and getting ready to go home. I saw a young girl perhaps 15 or 16 come walking across the courtyard. I could tell she was upset so I rushed to open the door and find out what was going on. She stood there with tear streaks running down her face and asked me, "Does God kill babies?"

I invited her in and listened to her story. Her older sister had been pregnant for several months and each checkup showed that things were going well. But that day her sister had visited the doctor and the doctor couldn’t detect a fetal heartbeat. Further tests showed that the child had died. In an apparent effort to comfort this young girl, people had told her, "God must have wanted this little child in heaven, so God took it." Needless to say, she didn’t find that very comforting. Not only had her sister lost the child that the whole family already loved before even seeing it, but now people were telling her that God had killed it.

Of course, God doesn’t kill babies. Sometimes bad things happen because of our own sinfulness and bad choices. Sometimes bad things just happen, and we have no idea why. We do know that God loves us and even suffers with us through those difficult times. And we know for sure that the beloved little baby who died is wrapped in God’s loving embrace.

It is very important how we word the statements that we make about God, because if we aren’t careful, we can end up implying terrible things. This is particularly true when we confront the issue of Jesus’ death on the cross. A common thing to say is that Jesus died for our sins. That is true, of course, but without further elaboration and nuance it can be interpreted to say that God the Father, offended by our sins, insisted on a bloody human sacrifice to somehow make up for our transgressions. The vengeful, bloodthirsty God who demands a human sacrifice isn’t any more attractive than the God who kills babies, and the image of God that is presented is just an inaccurate. Yet I know several people who have left the Church and have even rejected Christianity because they think this is the Christian God.

Let’s think just a bit about who God really is and what Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross really mean. The creation stories make it abundantly clear that God created us and our world out of love. God created us as loving companions to each other and loving and beloved companions of God. But from the very beginning we have used God’s wonderful gift of free will to reject God’s love and the love of others. Like Adam and Eve, we choose to listen to the serpent.

So the history of humanity is a story of wars, exploitation, greed, and betrayal. With the birth of Jesus, God intervenes in human affairs, not to punish us for all our terrible deeds, but to offer us forgiveness and an even closer relationship. Jesus comes into our world not as a conqueror and avenger but as a helpless child completely dependent on the goodness of Mary and Joseph. And as an adult, Jesus announces the coming of the Kingdom of God as a kingdom where the care of the poor, the comfort of the sorrowing, companionship with the sick, the estranged, and the imprisoned will take precedence over the desires of the wealthy and the powerful.

Jesus told the truth about our sinfulness and it’s consequences. Jesus told the truth about God both with his words and with his actions. And he did it in a world that needs lies to keep the selfish in power and to justify lives devoted to acquiring things and excluding people. In such a world, the truth is very dangerous, far too dangerous to tolerate. So we betrayed him, and we beat him, and we nailed him to a cross, and we watched him die. And he forgave us again and again, and prayed for us until there was no more breath left with which to offer prayers.

Through it all, God the Father suffered as any father would suffer watching his son dying in agony. God the Father suffered as Mary suffered. God the Father suffered along with Jesus intending that this extraordinary act of love – the love of God for us – would convince us to change, to accept God’s loving embrace, to be the kind of people we are created to be.

Last Sunday was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. We lift up and honor the cross because it is the symbol of God’s amazing love for us. It is a symbol of how far God has gone and will go to save us from our own folly. It is a symbol of how much we are worth to God.
My prayer for all of us is that we will always see in the cross God’s gift of salvation and that we can always see whatever crosses we might bear as an opportunity to share in God’s redemptive love.

Getting Married in the Catholic Church: Part II

In my last posting about marriage, I talked about how you make the arrangements. This time I want to talk about one of the complications that sometimes arises. Sometimes it turns out that one of the people who wants to get married is, at least in the eyes of the Catholic Church, already married! The Catholic Church has always figured that Jesus meant what he said in Matthew 19:9 and Mark 10:9-12. Once a person is validly married, there is no possibility of divorce and remarriage, period. The only way that a person who is validly married can marry again is if their spouse dies.

An annulment is granted when what appeared to be a valid marriage turns out not to be a valid marriage. An annulment is not a divorce. It is a recognition that the conditions necessary for a valid marriage were not present at the time the apparent marriage took place. A marriage might be ruled invalid on procedural grounds -- as it would be if a baptized Catholic marries outside the church. Or, a marriage might be ruled invalid because the consent might be defective -- as it would be if the parties involved didn't understand the commitment they were making or didn't make the commitment freely.

When a marriage is annulled, it does NOT mean that the people have engaged in some sort of sinful union or that their children are considered illegitimate. They are two people who made a mistake and who took the actions they took in good faith. Once an annulment has been granted, a person can do anything that an unmarried person can do. That might mean marrying. That might even mean becoming a priest or a nun.

If you are thinking about marriage, and the person you wish to marry has been married before (or you have been married before), please come to see me or someone else who can help you determine whether an annulment might be granted. Please don't even contemplate the separation from the Holy Eucharist and all the other sacraments that a marriage outside the church would entail.