Lunatic, Liar, or Lord

Passion Sunday
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  
 

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse….You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronising [sic] nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to."

These words come from the great Anglican writer, C.S. Lewis in his work Mere Christianity.  And though Lewis never swam the Tiber, he certainly was a man faith in Christ.  

C.S. Lewis

                    Our Gospel and Epistle today lay out how our Lord is different, not just in His style of preaching or even His content, but categorically different than everyone who came before, or anyone who would come after Him.  As Lewis writes, we cannot simply refer to Him as one of a great line of human teachers.  To do so is to ignore the witness of the Gospels and the other New Testament revealed texts.
    The author of the “Letter to the Hebrews” starts by contrasting the sacrificial system of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the sacrifice of Christ in the Heavenly Jerusalem, the temple built without hands.  The Aaronic priests would offer sacrifices throughout the year of many types: atonement, peace offerings, grain offerings, thanksgiving sacrifices, votive sacrifices (those connected to vows made), etc.  Goats, sheep, bulls, lambs, grain, wine, oil: all these things would be offered according to what God revealed through Moses and the sacrificial system expressed in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  And these did bring about ritual purity: the cleansing of the flesh.
    But our Lord offered Himself not with a dumb animal’s blood, but with His own Precious Blood, the blood of a truly unblemished lamb.  And His sacrifice, made once for all, did not only cleanse the flesh, but cleansed the conscience, the soul.  All sacrifices were meant to bring a person into right relationship with God.  They were vicarious ways of saying that the person offering was giving up his life to offer it to God.  Christ’s sacrifice was not vicarious, though, in the sense that He offered something else.  He offered Himself, and in Him all who would be united to Him.  And it wasn’t only to temporarily bring us into right relationship with God, but to change us to be like Christ, adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, which opened for us eternal union with God in heaven, the ultimate goal of right relationship with God.  
    In the Gospel, too, our Lord distinguishes Himself from all others who came before Him in Judaism.  And the Jews notice it.  They ask if Christ is greater than Abraham and the prophets.  And through the back and forth, the Lord affirms that He is greater, leading up to the climactic phrase of this passage, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  This hearkens us back to the great Theophany to Moses on Mt. Sinai, when God reveals His Name to Moses, “I AM WHO AM.”  And the Jews recognize this, because they immediately pick up stones to stone the Lord to death, the penalty for blasphemy.  Christ claims not simply to be a great rabbi who authentically interprets the Law and the Prophets, but the one about whom the Law and the Prophets referred, the source of their power and authority.  
    What does this have to do with us?  Well, while we’re all here, so we must acknowledge in some sense that Christ is different than any other religious leader, it is very easy in our mind and practices to treat Him simply like another guru.  It is easy to think simply of laws that we need to follow and prayers we need to say, without recognizing the adoration that we owe to the Lord and that we are not simply listening to another faith teacher, but dealing with the Lord who made all the universe.  
    It is also very easy to pick and choose the religious leaders and minds to whom we want to listen.  We like this cardinal versus that one; this author more than another; give one blogger more credence than a different blogger.  And faith always come through someone else, so others participate in fostering our faith.  But we can so often get caught up in lower-level rules and practices, without having any real reference to Christ and what He specifically teaches.  Especially as Americans, we have recently tended to read religious leaders and what they promote through a political lens.  Do we go back to what Christ reveals, He who is God, and evaluate religious leaders and authors by those standards, rather than the ones with which we are more familiar and likely more comfortable, that is, how does this match up with my view of life and my political outlook?  In other words, to what do I give more weight: the Gospels or my favorite blog?
    Jesus is not just another religious leader.  He’s not only qualitatively different, but categorically different because He is the one who shares Divine Revelation as well as the source and content of Divine Revelation Himself.  May we be most concerned with the One who simply reveals Himself as “I AM”: God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Son of God, Madman, or Something Worse

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Sometimes we can come across Scriptural passages that are difficult to understand.  I think today is one of those passages.  This account of Jesus doesn’t seem to jive with the mental picture most of us have of Jesus.  This is why, when we read the Scriptures, we should always have some sort of guide with us, whether it’s a book, a website, or a person.

            Because it looks today like Jesus is being mean at best, and at worst, racist!  Why won’t Jesus heal the woman’s daughter who is tormented by a demon?  Is it just because she is Canaanite?  Didn’t Jesus come to free captives, especially those who were entrapped by the Devil?  Our first reading from the Book of Isaiah seems to say that anyone who tries to follow God will be welcomed, and the sacrifices they make will be acceptable to him. 

One way to approach this passage is to take the Thomas Jefferson approach.  He was a Deist, that is, he believed in God, but not a personal God.  He believed God just set the world in motion and is now letting it run its course, without any personal involvement.  So, when he came to any miracles (a very personal involvement by God to suspend the laws of nature), he just eliminated them from the Bible.  It made his life much easier.  But, such a view, of course, treats the Scriptures as just another old piece of literature, and not as Divinely Inspired.  Treating the Scriptures as if we can pick and choose which parts we like makes us the masters of God’s revelation, rather than the recipients.

So, if we’re going to be recipients of what God is telling us, how do we deal with this passage?  How do we deal with, “‘It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs’”?  Well, let’s start by actually looking at the whole passage.  Yes, the woman is a Canaanite.  This means she is a pagan.  She does not believe in the true God, but worships many false gods.  She is not part of the Chosen People, Israel.  She also truly has a daughter who is possessed by a demon.  This is not very surprising, because when we deal with false gods, we’re often times dealing with demons.  That’s still true today.  When we mess around with astrology, tarot cards, Ouija boards, and false gods, we’re opening ourselves up to demonic activity.

But look at what Jesus says.  He doesn’t actually say no.  When the disciples want Jesus to send her away, He replies that he was sent “‘only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’”  She continues to plead for help.  The Lord has what sounds like a very cutting line, “‘It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.’”  Things sound pretty bad.  But then the woman pleads still more, “‘Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.’”  And then Jesus seems to do a 180: “‘O woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.’”  Jesus wasn’t trying to put her down, or deny her daughter freedom from the Evil One.  Instead, He was searching out her faith.  He was trying to see if she was just coming to Him because he had done some pretty amazing things, like any other wonder worker, or if she truly had faith that He was Lord.

Of course, we should ask ourselves: who do I believe Jesus is?  Spoiler alert: Jesus will ask his disciples the same question next Sunday.  But we should start soul searching now.  Do we have faith in Jesus?  Or is Jesus just another wonder worker in our life?  Is He one of many gurus?  Who do we go to more for guidance in our life decisions: Jesus, our horoscope, our yoga instructor, or any other false gods we set up in our life? 

It’s probably not news when I tell you that, in the United States, only 25-30% of baptized Catholics attend Mass on a regular basis.  I know you’ve experienced that in our own parish.  I’m personally happy so many of you are here today.  I’m not happy because it means that we’ll make our budget for our weekly collection (though I hope that happens and it does make my life easier).  I’m not happy because our numbers may be getting better than the national average.  I’m happy that you’re here today because it means you have an opportunity to encounter Jesus in the Word of God and in His Body and Blood, and that encounter will help strengthen your faith.  Why do Catholics feel attending Mass each Sunday is optional?  There are a lot of reasons: an unpopular priest; music not to their taste; boring homilies.  But at the heart of them stands the reason that Jesus is just one among many.  The conviction that Jesus is Lord is absent from their lives.  Jesus is more like Santa Claus: if we’ve been good, He gives us what we want.  If not, we go to Hell.  We want good things, so we come to Mass, to extort the blessings of God in a religious quid pro quo.  But if Jesus is not Lord, then it is a waste of time to come to Mass.  Only if Jesus is God–the way we figure out how to live–does coming back each Sunday make sense.

C.S. Lewis puts it this way in his book, Mere Christianity:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic–on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher.

Maybe, right now, you’re thinking that Jesus is just one great moral teacher, like Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, or Gandhi.  Right now, Jesus is searching out your faith.  And the good news is that Jesus wants to help you have faith that He is Lord.  By coming here, you at least have the chance to affirm that Jesus is Lord, and you want to form your life around Him.  By coming here today you can make your own the prayer of the father who came to Jesus: “‘I do believe; help my unbelief!’”  And if you have faith, not just because you’ve been a good boy or girl, Jesus wants to heal you, to strengthen you, to bless you, and to stand with you, even in life’s difficulties.  Let us proclaim, with our hearts and our lips and our lives, that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.