Mother Knows Best

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child (1896 version)

Have you ever noticed that mothers have a sixth sense when it comes to sickness? I’m sure we all can remember a time when as a child, we walked into the house, and Mom immediately noticed that we didn’t look right, even if we felt fine. Maybe she said, “Honey, you look a little pale. Are you feeling okay? Oh goodness, you feel a little warm.” And sure enough – a few hours later, we were sick in bed. Often, those who care for us can tell before we can when things aren’t right.

You might say that the season of Lent is when the Church as our spiritual mother tells us her children that we are unwell. We are sick not with the flu or the mumps or the coronavirus, but something even deeper and more dire – the sickness of sin. That is why we mark ourselves with ashes at the start of this season – to remember our own mortality, but even more to signify our humble sorrow for our sins and our willingness to turn back to God.

Fortunately, we don’t do so alone. The Church as our mother can tell when we are sick, and the Church as our mother knows just what we need to get well. The cure for spiritual sickness is grace, and the Church recommends three powerful tools each Lent that help us to receive God’s grace: prayer, fasting, and giving alms. It’s not a coincidence that Jesus recommends just these three things in today’s Gospel. They are what he calls “righteous deeds”, that is, good works – things that are good in themselves, that accomplish good, but also which make us good as well.

As we begin this holy season, we each should consider at least some small way to take up these practices anew. Some new practice of prayer, more or different than we’ve done before, will help to bring us closer to God each day. Some form of fasting will help us not be so attached to our earthly desires; at a minimum, we should do what the Church requires on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and the Fridays of Lent, but perhaps we could also consider some other way of giving up something we enjoy in order to focus more on our desire for God. And finally, we should give alms – we should share of our money and material goods with those who are in need, so that our good works don’t just benefit us but also those closest to God’s heart. If we want a fruitful Lent, we should take up these practices some way, as individuals, as families, and as a Church as a whole.

Friends, the Church, our mother, knows what is best for us. So let’s use well these holy days of Lent that she has provided so that by the spiritual medicines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we may healed anew of our spiritual ailments and be made strong and ready for the celebrations of Easter.

Team Rules

In sports, rules are fundamental. Of course, there are the rules for the sport itself, whether football, basketball, soccer, etc. Without rules about how the game is to be played, there would be no game at all. But just as important are the particular rules for every team. At the start of the season, a coach lays down the fundamental rules for his team that he expects his players to live up to – rules that shape its identity and define its character especially in the difficult moments.

Gustave Doré, Jesus Preaching on the Mount 

For the past few weeks, our Gospel reading has been from Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount. In that long discourse, early in his ministry, Jesus lays out the vision of the Christian life. We might even say that he’s like a coach establishing the fundamental rules for his team of disciples before they go out to begin the long season. Living a moral life is a lot more important than sports, of course, and so I don’t mean to minimize what Jesus is saying by using this analogy. But just like a coach wants his team to strive for excellence, so too does Jesus want his disciples to be morally exceptional – to stand out as markedly different from the world around them by the way that they live. He isn’t satisfied, for example, with the Old Testament commandment You shall not kill; he says it’s wrong even to be angry toward someone else. You shall not commit adultery is too low of a bar for him; he says, don’t even look at someone else with lust in your heart.

However, true excellence sometimes demands not just higher standards but also transformed expectations. Just like a coach knows that he must help his team break certain bad habits, and help them do away with certain bad attitudes, so too does Jesus know that for us to truly live according to his vision of life, there are things within us that must be completely radically transformed. In the Gospel today, Jesus calls his disciples to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. It’s one thing to live more calmly than the rest of the world, or more chastely, or more truthfully – but it’s something altogether different to strive not just for excellence but for perfection.

Notice the context in which Jesus demands perfection: he’s not talking about any interior moral quality, or about how we relate to God, but rather about how we relate to others – and specifically, those who have harmed us, who hate us, who are our enemies. If this feels like a step too far, that’s precisely the point. Jesus is changing the rules of the game – he’s forcing his disciples to play according to an entirely different set of expectations. We might say that for Jesus the most painful and damaging sins are those of discord and division – vengeance, hatred, hardheartedness, refusal to forgive. Unlike other sins, these sins begin a cycle of violence; they harm both sides. The true test then of the Christian disciple is how we respond to the one who has hurt us – whether we will continue the cycle of division or instead will seek peace and reconciliation.

There’s a reason why this particular rule of Jesus is so fundamental. Peace, good will, reconciliation – those things get to the very identity of who Jesus is and what he has come to do. A lot of people can quote by heart John 3:16, maybe the most famous Bible verse of them all: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.” Maybe just as important though is the verse that comes right after, John 3:17. Do you know that one? “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” In other words, when Jesus came, the world was worthy of condemnation. The human race had rejected God – we had spurned his offer of relationship and hardened our hearts against him. But God did not seek vengeance toward us – instead he sent his Son as an offering of reconciliation, indeed as the one Mediator who by his Death and Resurrection would reestablish our friendship with God. When Jesus commands his disciples to be perfect, he’s commanding them to be perfect in their mercy – he’s commanding them to be like he himself. If God’s Son has come not for vengeance, but for peace and reconciliation, then those who are playing on his side must do the same.

Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci (attr.) (c. 1500)

The question, of course, is how? It can be easy to embrace the idea of peace and reconciliation in theory, but when someone actually does hurt us – and sometimes hurts us very badly – how can we forgive? There are a few things to keep in mind. First, there’s no hurt so grave that it has to rob us of what should be our greatest consolation: God’s love. That’s why St. Paul says in the Letter to the Romans: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom 8:35, 37). In other words, when hurts and trials come our way, especially at the hands of someone else, we have to focus on the love of God present in that moment. God is ready to help you to be an instrument of peace and reconciliation in that moment, if you lean on him. Sometimes such hurts can even be helpful, if they make us realize that perhaps we had been relying upon something else – someone else’s esteem, our own reputation, maybe even a false narrative that now is revealed to be untrue. The pain of hurt can sometimes be a purifying one.

A second important thing to remember is our own experiences of being forgiven. I’m sure we have all had at least a moment or two in life when we realized that we had seriously hurt someone else, intentionally or unintentionally, and we honestly asked for their forgiveness. Maybe we received it, and we can use that memory to offer forgiveness as we were forgiven. Maybe we didn’t receive it, and in that case, we can choose to act differently when the chance to offer reconciliation is afforded to us. If nothing else, we can focus on the mercy that God shows to us, for sins past and present. God doesn’t want us to forgive through gritted teeth – he wants us to be so radically transformed by the mercy of his Son that we cannot help but show that mercy to others, almost in spite of ourselves.

Friends, as in sports, rules are fundamental to the Christian life – not because we always live them out perfectly, but because if we keep striving to live them out, they will make us more and more perfect. There is no higher expectation of being a member of Jesus’s team than to put into practice the rule of mercy. Letting go of offenses, not seeking revenge, going above and beyond to help those whom we dislike, or even despise – these things are not easy. But the more we seek to do them, the more they shape our character, and define our identity, and indeed transform us into the image and likeness of God’s Son – the One who has come into the world not for vengeance but for salvation. Through the grace of this Eucharist, may we consider to whom we can be instruments of the Lord’s mercy and so help others to learn to play for his winning side.

Salt and Light

Many years ago, when I took my first class on preaching at the seminary, our instructor gave us two basic guidelines to follow. The first was always to have a point – just one point, one general idea you wanted to convey. The second guideline was to make your point as briefly as possible.

While there is wisdom in those two guidelines, there are plenty of good preachers who don’t follow them. Take Jesus, for example. Today’s Gospel is taken from the greatest sermon ever preached, the famous Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus uses a variety of images and examples to describe his vision for how to live a good life. The Sermon on the Mount wasn’t brief, either; estimates for how long it lasted range from a few hours to several days. Clearly, Jesus had more confidence in the abilities of his listeners than did my seminary instructor.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Jesus had high expectations of his audience because, as today’s Gospel tells us, Jesus is speaking “to his disciples.” In the Gospels, Jesus speaks to a variety of different groups. Sometimes, it is to the Pharisees and scribes – those who claimed to be expert Jews, more faithful than the rest. Sometimes, he speaks to the crowds – to the hordes of people who followed him, interested but not fully buying in, mostly just wanting to see the next miracle. But sometimes he speaks, as in today’s passage, to those who are on the journey of discipleship – those who believe they have found something unique in following Jesus, and who have dedicated themselves to listening to him with open ears. 

 Károly Ferenczy, The Sermon on the Mount (1896)

Obviously, you and I should also be just that kind of audience. I hope we are not here merely like the haphazard crowds, interested to a degree but reserving judgment about whether to fully buy in. The path of Christian discipleship is not one that can be walked with one foot on it and one foot off. Nor should we be like the scribes and Pharisees, those who think they have it all figured out and are God’s blessing to the world. No, we are seekers, students – which is what the word “disciple” means. We listen attentively to what the Master teaches so that we may grow ever more like him.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to his disciples about what he expects from them – he’s laying out his vision of what discipleship will require. As we heard, he uses two images to speak to this. The first is salt: “you are the salt of the earth,” he tells them. Salt is a seasoning; it enhances flavor. But in the ancient world salt was also a preservative – meat was salted to make sure it lasted, and didn’t spoil. By calling them to be salt, Jesus is commanding the disciples to be distinct from the bland world around them – to season it, you might say, with God’s flavoring and to help preserve it from going bad.

The second image Jesus uses is light: he tells the disciples “you are the light of the world.” Light has been a common theme in our readings over the last few months, specifically as a way of describing the presence of Christ. The prophet Isaiah – from whom we have heard often in our first reading going all the way back to Advent – often uses the image of light shining in darkness as a metaphor for God’s salvation appearing in a world desperately in need of it. Just last week, when we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, we heard the holy man Simeon give praise to God for being able to see with his own eyes “a light of revelation for the Gentiles,” that is, the child Jesus born to be the Savior of all. But in today’s reading, Jesus – he who is the Light of the World – now commands his disciples to be that light for others. Just as light allows us to see what is around us, what is hidden by darkness, the Christian person shines with the brightness of Christ, so that the world might be attracted and guided by his light.

With both of these images, salt and light, the important thing to grasp is that Jesus wants us to stand out. If we salt our food but we don’t notice a difference in taste, then the salt is worthless; if we hide a lamp so that others can’t see it, then the light of the lamp means nothing. In just the same way, our Christian discipleship doesn’t mean much if it isn’t visible – if others can’t perceive it in some concrete way. We are called to be conspicuous in the world – to stand out from everyone else, not for ourselves, but so that we can point the way to Christ. As St. Paul says, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Paul, in fact, is a great example of this kind of Christian conspicuousness – he traveled, he preached, he worked miracles. But he did all of them not in praise of himself, but rather to proclaim the mystery of God, as he says in today’s reading: “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” By his life and death, Paul helped season the world with the flavoring of God and brought the light of Christ to countless others.

Perhaps it would be good for you and I to consider today the state of our own discipleship. Jesus has given us our marching orders; how are we measuring up? At times, we probably are tempted to limit our discipleship to the hour on Sunday that we are in church, but Jesus wants more than that – much more. He wants us to completely buy in – to be wholly committed to being his disciple at every moment, so that no part of our life is not in some way connected to our Christian identity. That doesn’t always mean we have to change the course of our life, as if only those who run off to a monastery can follow Jesus. Sometimes, it means living our life now with greater intentionality and awareness, making small but important changes: daily dialogue with the Lord in prayer; an examination of where he is calling me to grow in trusting in him and following him more faithfully; being more conscious of how my words and actions and even thoughts should always be such that I would not be ashamed if Jesus were standing next to me. Perhaps most importantly, every day I should consider, “To whom can I give witness to Jesus this day? To whom can I be salt and light?” Maybe it’s to give a kind greeting to someone lonely, or a listening ear to someone in crisis, or a faithful encouragement to someone losing hope, or a private admonishment to someone not living as they should. In this way or in others, I can invite them – with love, with kindness – to follow Jesus with me, to be my companion on the path of discipleship.

The young boy with the stable-lantern (1824) by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

Friends, whatever my seminary instructor might say, I think a sermon should be judged not by how many points it has or how long it lasts, but how it forms and informs the way we live. Sometimes the best sermon comes not from the word of a preacher, but from the example of a disciple – a sermon that’s taught by how it’s lived. The Lord invites each of us to give that kind of sermon each day – to choose to be his disciple, and to stand out in the way we live so that others may know it. As we prepare to receive the Body and Blood of the Lord – who taught the disciples on the mountaintop, and who teaches us too in our daily discipleship – may we be strengthened with his grace to follow him faithfully, so that all "may see [our] good deeds and glorify [our] heavenly Father."