I am
going to be honest. Starting with last
week, and for four weeks in a row, we have a series of parables from the middle
of the Gospel of Matthew for the readings for our Sunday masses. And these are difficult readings. Very
difficult. They are not comforting. Their messages are not clear and direct. Their meanings are not easy to figure out. But
that is the way it is with God’s word sometimes. We are meant to wrestle with it, to struggle
with it, and try to figure out how it is speaking to us today.
Before we tackle today’s Gospel, let us start with the prophet Ezekiel: Most
people say that life’s not fair, that God’s not fair. We
hear that from the mouth of almost every child at one time or another, don’t
we? We
can probably remember saying that as children.
And we probably think that a lot of times as adults as well. We
probably see situations around us that we don’t think are fair. Even
Pope Francis has said that inequality and a lack of fairness are at the root of a lot
that is unjust and wrong in our world today. We
have been hearing a lot about the ebola outbreak that has killed a lot of
people in several poor countries in West Africa – Guinea, Sierra Leone, and
Liberia. In
fact, it was the country of Guinea where I served as a Peace Corps
volunteer. I
remember when I arrived in Conakry – the capital of Guinea – with the other new
Peace Corps volunteers. There was utter
silence in the van that drove us into the city from the airport. We were so stunned at the utter poverty we
saw around us. I
remember returning to southern California to my family’s home after leaving the
Peace Corps. It was a shock to see so
much wealth and so many material things compared to how the people lived in
Africa. When
we see the poverty and despair and inequalities in the world, we might cry out:
Isn’t justice your task, O Lord? Why
do many who commit evil thrive in the world?
Why do so many of the good people suffer?
Jesus
answers these questions we have by looking at it from a practical aspect. How
are we living the Gospel in our lives? How
are we committing ourselves to God’s kingdom if we are truly disciples of
Christ? We
can never be complacent in our relationship with God, can we? The
chief priests, the elders, the scribes and the Pharisees: they all felt snug
and secure in their lives of faith, didn’t they? They
pointed their finger at the sins that others made. Yet,
perhaps they did not look at the ways they needed to grow in their own lives of
faith. We
can easily go astray and fall away from the commitment we make to Christ. Christ always offers us his love and his grace, he always offers us
opportunities to renew and recommit our faith, but perhaps we are not even
aware of the ways that we can reject and spurn what have with him. Whenever we lapse into sin, there are always ways we can repent and turn back
to the Lord.
We
are called to practice our faith, but to do so in the spirit of the Gospel, not
in a sterile, rigid, merciless manner. The
spirit of Jesus that we are called to embody is a spirit of love and
compassion, of caring and forgiveness, of reaching out to the oppressed, the
outcast, and the lonely. I think the reason Pope Francis is loved by
so many is that they see the spirit of Jesus alive in him. In a
recent Tweet, Pope Francis said: True power is service. (I as) the Pope must serve all people,
especially the poor, the weak, (and) the vulnerable.
The
spirit of today’s readings struck me in a story someone recently told me. A man
told me that he was driving back home from the coast when he realized that he
was getting low on gas. He
prayed as hard as he could that he would encounter a gas station somewhere, but
as the sun was just setting, he realized that he had barely any gas left, and
he pulled over at stop next to a wooded area. He was
out in an area that he did not know very well.
In the course of a half hour, it started to get dark, and none of the
cars he motioned to for help would pull over. One
old station wagon, passed by him, and then he saw it again about ten minutes
later coming from the opposite direction.
A young mother and her young son were in the car. She asked him what he needed, and then told
him she would come back with some gas for him.
She said it would take over a half hour, since there were no gas
stations close by. When
she returned with the gas, she would not hear of him paying her for it, even
though it did not look like she had much money herself. She
told him that he needed to hear why she stopped. She said that she and her son were in a hurry
to get somewhere, that they were late for an engagement, which is why they sped
by him the first time. The
mother explained that after they got about a minute down the road after passing
the man, the little boy asked the mother why she did not stop to help him. She told her son that they were late and did
not have time. The boy responded: But
Mama, that man looked like he needed help.
Jesus would have stopped to help him. So
that is what the mom and her son did.
She turned around immediately and helped him. And didn't ask for anything in return. Perhaps we don’t need to ask why life doesn’t seem fair or why bad things
happen. Perhaps we need to concentrate on being the spirit of Christ in the world.
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