The Challenge of Faith

The liturgy which we celebrate today reminds us already that three weeks from today we begin the season of Advent. In Advent we will prepare for the coming of Christ in our hearts, in the feast of the Nativity, and at the time when Jesus comes to take us into eternal life.

In the Collect we prayed to God “whose blessed Son came into the world that he might...make us children of God and heirs of eternal life...” And we asked God: “Grant that, having this hope...when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom.”

The prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, lived and preached in the 6th century BCE. The people of Israel returned from exile in Babylon to their homeland in 538 BCE. It was necessary for the two prophets, especially Haggai, first, to encourage and to motivate the people and their governor to rebuild their Temple, and, secondly, to urge the priests to purify their practices of worship. In the first reading today from Haggai (1:15b-2:9), this is God’s message: “Yet now take courage...take courage, all you people of the land...work, for I am with you...My spirit abides among you; do not fear...in a little while...I will fill this house with splendor...and in this place I will give prosperity...” 

In the Epistle (2 Thessalonians 2:1-5; 13-17), St. Paul reminds us that we are sisters and brothers “beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth...” It is important, says Paul, to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions” which we have been taught.” We can do this because God our Father and the Lord Jesus have given us “eternal comfort and good hope”, and strength “in every good work and word.”

Faith and life belong together. But genuine faith is much more than simply believing in a teaching, a creed. Faith is a way of life, a complete attitude towards life. Someone might be very religious, but that person may not have much faith. Such a person is like a man who always claims to be confident and in control, but, whenever he travels by airplane, he always sits near the emergency exit, while also wearing a belt and a pair of suspenders! Sometimes, people who appear to be very religious have very little true faith.

The passage from St. Luke’s Gospel (20:27-38) gives us a practical example from the life of Jesus. The Sadducees, a very religious group, approach Jesus with a phony theological question. Sadducees were descendants and followers of Sadok, a president of the Jewish Sanhedrin in the 3rd century B.C., whose name means “righteous”. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They asked Jesus their ridiculous and insidious question, not because they expected or wanted an answer, but because they wanted Jesus to display his ignorance regarding a problem for which they had no answer. Jesus confounded them with his divine wisdom.

Even now, some people who do not believe pose questions to faithful Christians, not because they want to learn from them, or know what they believe. They ask questions to see if they can confuse or ridicule people who believe.

The gospel, rather than speaking about the resurrection of the dead, speaks of the survival of the living. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob continue to live in and with God. In this world we live in God and with God, in the midst of the distractions of life. After death God will be our only point of reference. We shall live with Him forever, without any kind of distraction.
The "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" is the God of the Exodus that spoke to Moses, the God of life, who heard the cry of oppressed people and freed them from the slavery of Egypt. It is God who gives us life and who calls us to give life to others, starting with the poor and oppressed. In dying we join a divine community, final and eternal, to which we are all called and of which we are already part in the Communion of Saints. As we are reminded in the burial liturgy, in dying we change our dwelling place. We pass over to live in the presence of the Risen Christ. When we die, we leave our body here, our "boat", as the song “The Fisherman” says. With it we have navigated through life, sometimes in the middle of depressions and storms, and in dying we go to another sea, the sea of eternity with Jesus.

Death is only a temporary separation. After death, when we are "embedded" or united with God, things are going to be very different from how they are in this life. It is difficult to imagine how things will be, as Sacred Scripture says: "No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor does anyone imagine what God has prepared for his own." There will be complete love toward all people, without any natural limitations. Relations between people will be similar to those of the angels, free and perfect love. Our body, will be like the glorious body of Jesus after his resurrection.

One of my favorite parts of the Mass is the acclamation of the celebrant said just before the Communion: "The gifts of God for the People of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith and with thanksgiving". All life, including spiritual life, the life of faith, requires taking a risk. Faith means letting go of the known and reaching out to the unknown.

That is why the early Church celebrated Baptism by submerging the candidate in water, so that the person was “out of his or her depth”. In Baptism you and I are reborn through the risk of faith. Faith enables us to have a wider vision. Faith helps you to see that, while 1/3 of the world’s people overeats, 2/3 of the world’s people go to sleep aching from hunger. While religious people offer one another the Peace of Christ, each day brings us news of conflict, war, brutality, and oppression in the Third World, in Afghanistan, in the airport of Los Angeles, and in the streets of Santa Rosa. Faith helps us to notice that, despite the happy, smiling faces of friends in the coffee hour after the service, other people may stand, bearing a silent burden or worry or an illness, or feeling unwelcome. 

The Sadducees of today’s Gospel came to Jesus with an idle debate about religion, but they went away, challenged to choose between life and death. We have come to the church this morning, perhaps for just a quiet, peaceful hour of prayer and singing. Perhaps we will leave, challenged by Jesus, going out from here to minister to others by our words and actions of faith, hope and love. And, by the way, we should leave our spiritual security belts and suspenders behind!   

The Little Man Who Got Found

Zacchaeus, in Greek = Zakchaios, from the Hebrew meaning pure, was, Luke tells us (19:1-10), a superintendent of customs, a chief tax-gatherer = publicanus, at Jericho. Tax collectors were hated by many of their fellow Jews, both because of dishonesty in their profession and because they were seen as collaborators with the Roman Empire. Since Jericho was the center for a lucrative production and export of balsam, Zacchaeus' position would have made him both important and rich, which Luke also mentions.

A popular children's song captures the main gist of Luke's story:

“Zacchaeus was a wee little man,

And a wee little man was he.

He climbed up in a sycamore tree,
For the Lord he wanted to see.

                   And as the Savior passed that way

                      He looked up in that tree

                  And He said, “Zacchaeus, you come down!

                     For I’m going to your house today,

                    For I’m going to your house to stay.”

Notice that Luke's account begins by purposefully telling us the "Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it..." Jesus' ultimate destination, as Luke emphasizes all through the Gospel, is Jerusalem where, as we know, he’ll die at the hands of the Roman occupiers, egged on by Jewish religious leaders. 

Luke describes Zacchaeus as "short in stature", short enough, apparently, that, along with his well-known professional position and wealth, it was a problem. In addition to that, for Zacchaeus to try to mingle in the crowd, even if it was up front where he could see, was fraught with danger. Predictably, you can guess that he would have had some enemies...on several counts. It wasn't unusual in his time for assassinations to be furtively carried out by sticking a knife into someone in the midst of a crowd. There were, in fact, people known as Sicarii, from the Latin word sicarius = dagger-man, or assassin, Jews whose intent was to use a concealed dagger or sica to eliminate Romans from Judea in this way. Luke says that Zacchaeus "ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree", which, by the way, bears no resemblance to the American sycamore. It was, instead, a variety of fig tree. "Trying to see Jesus", Zacchaeus hovers there, camouflaged by the leaves.

When Jesus reaches the spot, he stops and looks up into the branches, addressing Zacchaeus by name. Imagine what that must've felt like to a man accustomed to the usual scorn and derision, or worse, by his fellow-citizens. "Hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today." Before Zacchaeus can think of anything to say, the onlooking crowd is utterly shocked! "What?!... he's going to be the guest of a sinner!!", they grumble. Luke uses the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word used in Exodus when the people obstinately complain; grumble; murmur against God and Moses.

In contrast to the crowd, Zacchaeus "hurried down and was happy to welcome [Jesus]".  Zacchaeus then announces: “Look, Lord! half of my possessions I’ll give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I’ll pay back four times as much.” This resonates with Exodus 22:1-15, which spells out the restitution required when one is responsible for the loss of another's property. Restitution ranges from straight replacement for negligence, increasing up to two, four or five times replacement for various thefts. Exodus 22:1 says, "When someone steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters or sells it, the thief shall pay...four sheep for a sheep...The thief shall make restitution..." King David also applied this rule in 2 Samuel 12:6 when he said, "And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity."  

Zacchaeus chooses a generous recompense. He places himself on the guilty side of the spectrum outlined in Exodus, and intends to begin anew in complete obedience to God.

Seen by Jesus, personally named by Jesus, accepted unconditionally for who he is by Jesus, Zacchaeus himself is touched by divine grace. "Today salvation has come to this house", says Jesus, "because he too is a son of Abraham..." The one who was lost. The one whom Jesus came to seek out. This one has been recognized, acknowledged, found.

According to Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata, Zacchaeus was surnamed Matthias by the apostles, and took the place of Judas Iscariot after Jesus's ascension. The later Apostolic Constitutions identify "Zacchaeus the Publican" as the first bishop of Caesarea.

In the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches, the Gospel account of Zacchaeus is read on the last Sunday preceding the liturgical preparation for Great Lent, and thus is known as "Zacchaeus Sunday." It was chosen to open the Lenten season in order to highlight two things: God's calling us to humility, represented in Jesus' call to Zacchaeus to come down from the tree; and God's calling us to repentance, exemplified by Zacchaeus' actions.

Many see the story of Zacchaeus as illustrating Jesus' words: "Blessed are the pure of heart, For they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). Zacchaeus whose name means pure, climbed up a tree, similar to the cross, and was symbolically crucified with Christ, enabling him to see God in Jesus. 

 The verses of an old hymn gives you and me something to reflect on and to pray about this week: 

 I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew / 

he moved my soul to seek him, seeking me. / 

It was not I that found, O Savior true; / 

no, I was found of thee.

The Pharisee & The Publican: A Lesson For Our Times

Idiomela from the Triodion 

Mode 1 

 Brethren, let us not offer prayer as did the Pharisee, 

for he who exalts himself will be brought to humility. 

Let us humble ourselves in the presence of God, 

as did the Publican, and through fasting cry to Him 

“God, be merciful to us sinners.” 

 A Pharisee, by self-esteem dominated, and a Publican, 

in repentance prostrated, both approached You the only Master. 

But the one, after boasting, was deprived of the blessings, 

while the other, not speaking, was counted worthy of Your gifts. 

Confirm me in such sighs as these, Christ God, since You love humanity. 

(Translated by Fr. Seraphim Dedes)

Feast of St. Gaspar del Bufalo, Founder of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood

Almighty and merciful God, who gave us an ardent witness

of love for your divinity and for our neighbor in 

Saint Gaspar del Bufalo, priest and dedicated missionary

of the Precious Blood of Christ; through his intercession

listen to the voice of the blood of your Son which daily rises

to you from the earth in the painful cry of suffering humanity.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and

reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for every and ever.

Perseverance In Prayer

The parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) suggests some qualities that can enliven our prayer: things such as perseverance, loyalty, love, and hope. The widow pleads for justice against an adversary. Although we don't know the details about what was done to her, a quick look at the world today really doesn’t even reveal how many people are crying out for justice. You have to admire the persistent widow’s moxie as she deals with an unprincipled judge.

What we can bring to prayer which often feels like an exercise in boredom? It’s love which is the key to our problem. Prayer shouldn’t involve a lot of words, but rather a large dose of love, hope, faith and patience. God doesn’t at all operate like the unjust judge, as one who responds to our cry by trying to get rid of us. God doesn’t even need us to ask for help. Rather, you and I need to really hear our own prayerful desire for justice in our situation.

Perseverance in following Christ is impossible without perseverance in prayer. It’s said that prayer works miracles, and perhaps the first miracle one experiences in prayer, often without even realizing it, is one’s own perseverance.

One of the Gospel’s clear messages today is to persevere in prayer. Matthew, in his account, says that everyone who asks receives, because the persistence in prayer, born of deep faith, cannot but produce fruit. St. Luke, mindful of the poor and the oppressed who cry out to God for justice, reminds them that their effort isn’t wasted, because God is never deaf to the cries of God’s own. The Hebrew Scriptures remember that, as Israel was forming itself as a people, God heard their painful laments over the oppression which they were suffering in Egypt. The first Christians were in a similar situation. Christians who had suffered the first onslaughts of the Roman Empire longed for the Lord’s Second Coming which promised to bring them the fullness of freedom. Luke’s message was geared to give his readers the hope and strength to endure, to persist and persevere, in the midst of their situation. At times God seems to be late in addressing to our needs, but, in the end, God never fails to come to deliver.

In a way all this is similar to our experience as children. A child learns quickly that persistently seeking something from her/his parents often produces positive results, although sometimes it can also result in being punished. The judge in the parable could have punished the woman for what he considered her untimely insistence. He could’ve even forbidden her from approaching the court, given his unfair disposition. God judges with far greater sensitivity and compassion because God is righteous and acts not against, but in behalf of, the oppressed. If we humans can put up with persistently obnoxious and annoying people at times, how much more will God listen to persevering prayer.

The parable’s two figures, the judge and the widow, are traditional biblical types: one, powerful and controlling, with almost divine authority to judge; the other, a disadvantaged victim of circumstances. God has always proved to be on the side of the poor, as Luke hints in his recording of Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. Knowing this, Christians should be persistent, even aggressive, in asking God to hear their prayers, as well as to support any effort to make God’s justice a reality in the world. Always remember: sometimes "God arrives late, but God never lets us down."

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

"It seems very easy to say that we will surrender our will to someone, until we try it and realize that it is the hardest thing we can do if we carry it out as we should. The Lord knows what each of us can bear, and, when he sees that one of us is strong, he does not hesitate to fulfill his will in that one.

Do not fear that the Lord will give you riches or pleasures or honors or any such earthly things; his love for you is not so poor as that. And he sets a very high value on what you can give him and desires to recompense you for it since he gives you his kingdom while you are still alive. Would you like to see how he treats those who make the prayer 'Your will be done' from their hearts? Ask his glorious Son, who made it thus in the Garden. Think with what resolution and fullness of desire he prayed; and consider if the will of God was not perfectly fulfilled in him through the trials, sufferings, insults and persecutions which he gave him until at last his life ended with death on a cross.

So you see what God gave to his best beloved, and from this you can understand what his will is. These, then, are his gifts in this world. He gives them in proportion to the love which he bears us...For my own part, I believe that love is the measure of our ability to bear crosses, whether great or small. So if you have this love, try not to let the prayers you make to so great a Lord be words of mere politeness, but brace yourselves to suffer what His Majesty desires. For if you give him your will in any other way, you are just showing him a jewel, making as if to give it to him and begging him to take it, and then, when he puts out his hand to do so, taking it back and holding on to it tightly.

Such mockery is no fit treatment for One who endured so much for us. If for no other reason than this, it would not be right to mock him so often -- and it is by no means seldom that we say these words to him in the 'Our Father'. Let us give him once and for all the jewel which we have so often undertaken to give him. For the truth is that he gives it to us first so that we may give it back to him..."

(From The Way of Perfection) 

Faith: Response To the Impossible

Put yourself into the situation described in the first reading from Jeremiah (29:1; 4-7). You’re among a people who’ve been thrown out of their sacred city and homes, and sent off to Babylon in 597 BCE about 500 miles away, as the crow flies, approximately the distance from here to San Diego. After your arrival, the elders/leaders, priests and prophets have received a letter from Jeremiah, the prophet back in Jerusalem, whom some of those same distinguished men loved to hate, as seen in previous chapters. Among the people’s many instances of criticizing, harassing and rejecting this bothersome prophet for calling them to account for their continual unfaithfulness to God, one of the priests, Pashur, assaults Jeremiah and locks him up in the stocks. (Chapter 20) That’s just a prelude to further persecution and King Zedekiah’s throwing Jeremiah into prison, then turning him over to Shephatiah, son of Pashur, and his gang of thugs to be thrown into a cistern, where, according to the writer of Jeremiah “...Jeremiah sank in the mud.” 

Jeremiah, of all people, knew about spiritual depression and what it means to feel God’s absence. After being put into the stocks, he cries to God: “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock...everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I must cry out...‘Violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, “I won’t mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot...”

So this Jeremiah now sends a letter asking your leaders to pass this message on to your people. As if rubbing it in, he says: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I’ve sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon...stay where you are, in exile, until you’re told otherwise. Build houses, plant gardens, find yourselves spouses and marry, beget children and arrange for spouses for your children...multiply.” Obviously, you think, this is going to be for the long haul! And the kicker is, God’s honest truth, that you’re to “seek the welfare” of Babylon, not just resign yourself to exile there; you’re to pray to God on its behalf, not curse the Babylonians or hate them...because, God says, if their land prospers, so will you; if its business is good, so will yours be; if Babylon and its people live, so will you.

What, do you think, would be your reponse to Jeremiah’s letter? Do you see in your current life-situation anything similar, whether in terms of your self, family, Church, or world? How do you and I, in times of crisis, avoid false hope, especially when perpetuated by false prophets and diviners around us? What does it mean for you and me to, symbolically, keep faith in a message like the one which God conveys through the prophet, Jeremiah, four verses after today’s passage: “For surely I know the plans I have for you,...plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope...”

In the 2nd Letter to Timothy (2:8-15) an unknown mentor who knew St. Paul writes to Timothy, probably not long after Paul’s death around the summer of 64 CE. Like Paul who’d faced many hopeless and thankless situations, some life-threatening, so this writer encourages his younger colleague, Timothy, to imitate his endurance while pastorally ministering, to “do your best” as a  “worker” approved by God, unashamedly “explaining the word of truth”, even if it’s what folks don’t want to hear. The foundation for that, he says, is “Jesus Christ, raised from the dead... -- that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained...”

What’s the quality of our faith? Is it a passive gift from God which you and I stow away to gather dust until we put it on display for special occasions? Or is it a gift which makes us perceptive in all situations and actively engages us, much like the soldier, the athlete, the farmer of whom the writer of 2nd Timothy speaks in the verses just before this passage?

Luke, in the Gospel (17:11-19), portrays 10 men, lepers, people afflicted with skin disease who were required by Leviticus to keep their distance, wear torn clothes, dishevel their hair, cover their upper lip and cry out, “Unclean, unclean!” They encounter Jesus at a village on the border of Samara and Galilee, “on the way to Jerusalem.” This place was a no-man’s land, neither fully Jewish territory nor fully outside of it. Here where rival religious groups had butted heads for centuries, this company of the miserable had likely, because of their disease, finally accepted separation from their kinsfolk and adjusted to living side-by-side with the “enemy”. 

Frequently after Chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel, Luke depicts Jesus as making his way to the City of Peace, where he’ll eventually be arrested and executed by crucifixion. It could be that this wasn’t the group’s first contact with Jesus, since they simply cry out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”, Master being a common term used by Jesus’ disciples. Note that in responding to them, Jesus speaks no healing formula nor uses any healing gesture. He simply directs them to go and have the priests examine them, as provided for in Leviticus 13-14, probably but not necessarily in Jerusalem. 

On the way, showing trust in Jesus’ instructions, but still with no assurances, the lepers suddenly realize that they’ve been cleansed, a remarkably surprising discovery in their situation. After the initial shock, nine of the lepers continue their journey, but the other one “saw that he was healed”, “turned back”, “[praised] God with a  loud voice”, then “prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” Luke immediately notes, “And he was a Samaritan”, a person doubly despised in that area for both his leprosy and his religious loyalty. Imagine also his feelings if, indeed, it was to the priests in Jerusalem that Jesus directed him and his companions, a place where he’d be totally an outcast!

Jesus promptly wonders aloud why only one from the group returned. Where were the others? “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” In Jesus’ mind only one thing really mattered: that this man’s faith, in contrast to the other nine who probably ran off excitedly to try and reunite with their family and friends, brought him, in the midst of a truly impossible situation, to humbly acknowledge and to glorify God. This outsider’s faith, recognizing God’s power in Jesus, just as in the time of the prophet Elisha, Naaman the Aramean, his counterpart in the Hebrew Scriptures (2 Kings 5:1-19) had done, makes the cleansed leper well, establishes his true identity, saves him.

Can we accept that God’s healing through Christ is an unconditional gift, no strings attached, to the grateful and ungrateful alike even among us today? This story seems to hint that the familiar hymn lyric is really true: “There is a wideness in God’s mercy.” Can we appreciate that God’s healing isn’t a gimmick, a sort of dramatic flourish which we can somehow pressure God into doing in order to make ourselves or others feel good? In the end, do we realize that the story isn’t about “miracles”, but rather about the “seeing” that makes one well by drawing us, whether insiders or outsiders, no matter how challenging the situation, into a surprising and saving relationship with a loving God?

“If we are faithless, God remains faithful...” “For surely I know” says the Lord God, “the plans I have for you,...plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope...”