Pastoral Reflections 6-28-26 - The 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time Msgr. Don Fischer Download

Original Airdate: June 28, 2020
2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16A | Romans 6:3-4, 8-11 | Matthew 10:37-42

Oh God, who through the grace of adoption chose us to be children of light, grant, we pray, that we may not be wrapped in darkness of error but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

In ordinary time, we’re going to relive the experience of one of the evangelists, one of the writers of the gospel, their experience of this moment that they had with God in history, these three years and then beginning their work as moving from disciples to apostles. A disciple is a learner, someone who’s listening and learning and spending time with someone. An apostle is the one who’s sent forth to do it, and so you’ll notice in this particular gospel of Matthew, it’s the first chapter that we’re — this tenth chapter, rather, is when Jesus is calling his disciples to do their work, and he calls them apostles. “I’m sending you forth.” So what I’m asking you to imagine with me is here is Jesus sending his disciples into the world to do their work. He is no longer with them physically, will not be with them physically when they begin. He is, in this particular passage, with them, but what he wants them to understand is the essence of what it is they’re going to be doing. And if you go back to that earlier part in the gospel, you see what God is asking the disciples to do seems like an impossible thing. “Gentlemen, I want you to go into the world, and I want you to heal the sick, raise the dead and bring life to people and somehow heal leprosy.” Now, leprosy is a beautiful, not a beautiful, but an effective way of describing sin, leprosy, something that distorts us. It deforms us. So when Jesus is giving that responsibility to the disciples, I don't know what it would be like, but if you would hear somebody say that to you — but in a way, Jesus does say it to all. “I want you to go into the world, and I want you to heal people and lift them out of darkness, lift them out of a place that we might call death.” So the main thrust, it seems, the ministry that Jesus has given to his disciples and he’s giving to us, sending us out into the world, has everything to do with this set of readings. So let me see if I can describe it for you, give you a sense of what it is you’re empowered to do.

The first story is about a prophet who comes to a woman’s house. He comes often. This woman was obviously very impressed with this prophet Elisha, not Elijah. It’s close. I tend to mispronounce Elisha a little more just to separate him from Elijah, but anyway, she loves this man’s truth. She loves spending time with him, and so she says to her husband, “Let’s create a space for him in our house.” Well, just think of the image that is. Here’s a woman touched by the truth. She wants to create a space in her home, in her very soul, in her essence for this truth to take root, and so she creates a room for him. And when that room is there, she has been longing for something in her life, and it’s to create new life. And so she is like the symbol of all of us, longing to make a difference, longing to create life in the world, and so she has no son. So he said, “I will give you a son.” So here’s the prophet, who represents the truth, coming into a person who opens their heart to him, and when he dwells with them, he has a reward for their hospitality. You will welcome a prophet. You receive a prophet’s reward, and the reward is truth. And the truth is something in her that produces life. So the symbol is she has a son.

Now, if you follow this passage from Kings, it’s interesting, because one of the next things that happens is that, as he returns again and again, he comes back, and the son is born. But then she sends word to him one day, and she said, “My son is dead. He’s died. Come and heal him. Bring him back to life,” another aspect of what the truth is able to do. And so he sends his servant. “This is my rod, my authority. I’ll send it through somebody else.” That didn’t work. So he goes, and he does this miraculous — bringing this man back to life, and what he does is he lies on top of him, his lips to his lips, his eyes to his eyes, his hands to his hands, his feet to his feet. It’s a powerful image of someone containing some energy, some life force, and he’s giving it to another person. He just doesn’t put his hand toward him, or he just doesn’t say the words, “Be healed,” really fascinating image. So let’s take this image of this figure, a prophet, as the image of the truth — the truth. What does it do? Opens eyes to see what is real, what is true. Produces life, because it overcomes darkness, and what is darkness? Sin — sin.

So the second reading then focuses on the opposite of this great gift of light and truth, and that is sin and darkness. And it’s interesting. St. Paul is talking about this. What he’s saying is that Christ went through something that we have to go through, and it’s a death. And the death we have is the death that is — we all it change, being reborn, being remade. What is it that this change involves? Well, it’s a moving away from darkness. So what is darkness? Well, darkness is the absence of truth. What is the absence of truth? A lie. How did sin enter into the world? It was a lie. A serpent is there, and he’s seducing Adam and Eve into believing something that’s not true. “If you rely upon yourself and you rely upon your own decision-making qualities, if you want to know what’s right and what’s wrong and be the center of your life, well, eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” It’s so interesting in that story, the minute you buy into a lie, something in you feels odd, feels strange. You feel estranged from some source somewhere, and that’s exactly the effect of sin entering into the human race, was a sense of distance from God. And the distance was, “I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough.” The minute you say, in your relationship with God, “I am going to earn his affection. I’m going to earn his reward of eternal life. I’m going to work for it, and I’m going to get it. It’s going to be my task, and I can feel really good about having accomplished it,” that is the greatest of lies. It’s not something we are called to do by a command from God to become holy and to do all these good things. That’s probably the most insidious lie that’s out there, and it’s more about our human nature than it is about religion. But religion buys into it.

So what is it? What is it that God wants us to understand about this truth that you and I are called to engage ourselves with? And when we see it for what it is, it reveals something that has been hidden, and then we have this new life. So how do we imagine that happening? Well, it took redemption for it to happen. All through the Old Testament people have been listening to prophets trying to tell the truth, and they try to live it, and they never do succeed. And they’re punished, and then they straighten up. And then they forget about the punishment, and they fall back into sin. So the Old Testament is filled with people who are seemingly unable to deal with this thing called sin, darkness, another word, again, illusion, half-truths, lies. So what was needed? A Savior, a Messiah, someone who comes that makes a big difference. What is the difference? Well, without going into exactly how redemption takes place, I want to talk about how it impacts us and how and how we’re to participate in it. And it’s the most important thing to understand. By the second paragraph of this gospel, it’s so beautiful. When Jesus sends his disciples into the world to do work that seems way beyond human nature’s possibility, that’s the first piece of truth I want you to ponder. When God is asking you to love, to forgive, to give life to people around you, to be a source of wisdom for them, he is not asking you to produce that wisdom or to produce that capacity to be a healer. It’s not something you do.&nb...