1 August 2010
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ecclesiastes
2:21-23; Colossians 3:1-5,9-11; Luke 12:13-21
I have more stuff than my
barn can hold. I better build a bigger
barn! We could make fun of that fellow
for being greedy and not sharing. Or we
could see in him the manifestation of our own fears that we will not have
enough and of our tendency to accumulate more than we need. In the last year I bought a new bookcase
because I ran out of room for my books, and I bought “the wonder hanger” off of
television because I needed more room to hang my shirts and pants. And Qoheleth echoes: “Vanity of vanities.”
When this Gospel comes around
every thing years I wonder how a third world person or anyone in poverty hears
it. Would they resent my lifestyle
contrasted with theirs? Would they act
any differently if wealth and abundance suddenly came
them, or is it basically human nature to accumulate, either for the sake of
enjoyment as in the parable or as a hedge against on uncertain future?
It seems to me that accumulating stuff or wealth can be bad on
two conditions. 1. If it deprives others of what they need to
live, or 2., (and more to Jesus’ point, I think), if it’s part of an overall
confusion in our lives about what really is life giving. We have a thirst for the Infinite, for God,
but sometimes we settle for so much less because it seems attainable and in our
control, and so we go for earthly things and grab them. But being “rich in God” just isn’t about
accumulating anything. It’s about
gratitude for our physical lives, zest for living, finding meaning in what we
do, knowing that we are doing right by our neighbor, and having the quiet
satisfaction of inner peace. None of these
things can be grabbed. Jesus presents us
with a choice between fear and accumulation that will leave us wanting in the
end, and trust and generosity that prepares us for eternal life and indeed
gives us a taste of it even now.
Here’s a Jewish folk tale
that counters the drift toward greed:
Yitzhak and Benjamin were farmers, and brothers. Yitzhak had seven sons while Benjamin had no
children. Each had a silo half full of grain.
One day Yitzhak thought to himself.
“I am so blessed. My farm is
doing well and in my old age I will have all my children to provide for
me. I am sorry for my brother Benjamin
who has no children to provide for him.
I think I will take a sack of grain from my silo each night and place it
in Benjamin’s silo.” And this he did,
for months.
Benjamin, at about the same
time got to thinking. “I am so
blessed. My farm is doing well. I worry about my poor brother Yitzhak who has
so many children to feed. I think I will
take a sack of grain from my silo to his each night for a while to help him
out.” And this he did, for months.
After these months passed,
each of the brothers separately wondered why the grain level in his own silo did not seem to decrease. But they didn’t think about it much. Then one night, under the darkness of a new
moon, Benjamin and Yitzhak set out from their silos again to gift the other
with a sack of grain. In the darkness,
they bumped into each other! Immediately
they realized what had been happening all along. They embraced, and on the site of that
embrace was built the first Temple of Israel.
Rather than holding on they held loosely. Rather than growing rich in grain they grew rich in God. The richness of life in God begins with a sense of being blessed with abundance and filters through the insight that I cannot possess it like a thing. I can only let it flow through me and change my attitude from fear and the compulsion to accumulate to trust and the desire to be generous. John Shea suggests poetically that growing rich in God is like lying on abundant land and letting the grain grown right through your body without ever thinking of the barn.
25 July 2010
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 11:1-13
What do you want from God? What do you
want from God? Our readings occasionally
bring this question to mind and it is a vital question to ask, because its
answer truly lies at the foundation of our spirituality. The Gospel, upon a quick reading, seems to
suggest that whatever we ask for God will give us if we keep asking. The thing is, we
know that this is not true. We don’t
always get what we want from God.
Rather, what we get is what God wants to give us.
I remember having great joy when I discovered
something about this Gospel reading. I
read the part about knock and the door will be open, ask and it will be given
to you, and I grew anxious because of all the evidence to the contrary in my
own life and in people a lot more faithful than I, who have prayed for cures,
for marriages to get better, for people not to die of starvation. And then I read the last line: “If you then,
who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more
will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
Why did reading that bring me
joy? Because I found out what God gives
away. It’s not the “A” on the report
card, a winning season, or even more important things like cures and prevention
of accidents. What God gives away is the
Holy Spirit. God gives away
himself.
This made me happy not because I liked the idea right
away. More often than not, when I’m
in sort of automatic piloting my life, what I want from God is to feel good,
and to have things go my way. When I’m
hurting, I’d like to be able to say prayers to God and have the hurt go
away. But that image of “God the Favor
Granter” is not what Jesus seems to be moving us toward and exemplifying
himself. Rather, our crucified and risen
savior show us God who gives himself away to us so that we can experience the
loving presence of the One who brings life from death, and who urges us to move
away from sinful self-absorption to a life centered on love of neighbor. The joy I get from this is from suddenly
wanting something different from God. When
I’m rooted in Christ, I don’t want simply to feel good but to experience the
fullness of life in God, knowing that it might even include suffering.
So what will this look like in my life? I imagine myself having terminal cancer. I will appreciate the prayers of others that
it will be gone. But even more I will
appreciate the presence of friends who know that dying
isn’t the end of the world, and that even worse than painful suffering is the
experience of being alone and unloved.
And in their care will be the Holy Spirit sent by God. I’m sure I will
pray for that tumor to somehow melt away and be gone. But even more, my prayers will be that I can
trust in the friendship of my dying and rising God. I’d pray not to get too self-absorbed but be
able to continue to be a loving presence attentive to the sacredness of every
person I meet. And what today’s
Gospel tells me is that when I pray for those things of God, consistently and
often, they will come to me.
For all of us today, the Gospel can nudge us away from holding an image of God who grants special favors to a God who gives himself away to us, so that we might be more like him, and more with him, no matter what life brings our way.
18 July 2010
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 18:1-10; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42
Two years ago my friend Bob who is a retired priest in Chicago came up to visit and I wanted to be a great host. It was a perfect day, clear and low 80’s, to crack out the grill and have a picnic table dinner. I don’t do that often, so it doesn’t always go smoothly. Like that day, for instance. I had it all in my imagination: sitting at the table in the shade of the walnut tree, a little classical music (which Bob likes) playing softly in the background, a couple bottles of beer wet on the outside from condensation, the coals getting red hot and ready while I took care of drizzling some olive oil and garlic on long-sliced zucchini…a perfect summer late afternoon meal.
Well, Bob didn’t really want to go outside. He wanted to watch baseball in the lazy boy. A good host, I forced him to go outside. He saw one mosquito less than a minute after he sat down and it was as though he feared the plague coming from them and got up to sit back inside. Fine. So there I was alone on the patio, still committed to making the perfect meal while being attentive to my guest by shuttling in and out of the house asking what the score was. But in all honesty I was angry at my guest for not going along with my vision of a nice patio experience. All this was aggravated by the fact that the coals had trouble lighting, and the long-sliced zucchini kept slipping through the grill and onto the coals. By the time we had something ready to eat the dream I began the preparation with had shattered and I chewed the meal more firmly than was necessary with clenched jaw.
Bob came again this year, and we faced the same
situation. But I had learned from two
years ago. I asked him what he felt like
eating. “Something
light, maybe soup and a sandwich.”
I did not ask if he wanted to eat outside. I asked if he liked BLT’s and he said
yes. While he watched a baseball game I
went to the store and got some tomatoes.
Back at the house, we talked loudly, he from the lazy-boy and I from the
kitchen while I warmed the soup, microwaved the
bacon, toasted the bread, etc. I asked
if he wanted to eat at the table or from the lazy-boy. He surprised me by choosing to come to the
table. I cut the sandwiches in two, and we shared a little red wine. The food maybe wasn’t as good as it could
have been, but the meal couldn’t have been better.
It’s easy to fall into the trap that Martha apparently
fell into. We want be liked, we want to impress, we think that it’s by doing something great that we
can make a good impression on someone.
When things don’t go smoothly the self-centeredness of this apparently
other-centered work is exposed.
Resentment forms. We forget the one thing that is necessary—to be
attentive to the one who is right in front of us.
The essence of hospitality is not to fill the other with all the good things we have to offer, but to leave room in our hearts and minds for what the other offers us—his or her stories, his or her desires. It’s easy to see this Gospel story as a condemnation of being too busy, but it’s not busyness that’s the problem. With hearts open to what is holy in our midst, busyness can be a good thing. We need people to be out there doing good things. Last week Jesus heard the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor from the scribe and responded to him DO this and you will live. Doing is important.
To Mary I would say, “Mary, it’s great that you acknowledge the goodness of sitting close to Jesus and soaking up his presence. I hope that his presence leads you to do great things and little things like helping your sister more often.” To Martha I would say, “Martha, you heard what Jesus said. Don’t take it as a condemnation of being active and serving others. Take it as warning given with much love that you need to root your service in love. You don’t have to prove to anyone that you are good. You don’t have to earn anyone’s love and respect. You are good. You are loved. Remembering that, keep on with your important hard work and service that the world, your sister, and even Jesus needs.
11 July 2010
15th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 10:25-37
(The Good Samaritan)
I wanted to imitate the pro
bicyclers who were in town a few weeks ago, and so I tried biking up this
super-steep hill that was part of their route.
I feared doing it for the two weeks that I had the idea to do it, and
that fear never left me until my bike and I made it to the top. The pros probably took that hill in thirty
seconds. For me, it was more like five
minutes, and when I was done I needed a rest.
I got off my bike and laid it to the side of the road and lied down next
to it. It felt good to lie down, but I
couldn’t stay in the ditch because soon the bugs came for me in force. It was a country road and a windy day, so I
lied down in the road instead and there were no bugs and it felt really good
lying there with my helmet still on and acting like a pillow. Then I heard a car coming way in the
distance. It felt really good to lie
there, but I imagined seeing what the driver was seeing–bike on the side of the
side and bike rider spread out on the road–and I thought I better pop up right
away to ease his concern. Quickly on my feet, I turned toward the approaching
pick up truck and waved. The driver
stopped and I beat him to the punch, saying “I’m fine–I was just taking a
breather.” We both gave a laugh, I think both grateful that the person lying on the
road was ok. I thanked him for stopping
and we both moved along in different directions. So that was my real life Good Samaritan for
the week.
The message of the Gospel is not hard to decipher,
really. We’re supposed to help people
out when they are in need. It follows right on the Great Commandment to
Love God and Love Neighbor, and so it’s clear that Jesus thinks this is a very
important story to tell. You’ve probably
heard the important historical detail in the story that the two people–the
priest and the Levite–who pass by the man in need are just doing what they must
according to the religious laws of the day in order to maintain ritual purity
to be part of the Temple sacrifices. So, a major point, and one that Jesus tries
to drive home in many other places as well, is that simple compassion, the
reflex to help someone in need, should take greater priority than keeping a
religious rule. By that logic, if
you’re driving to mass and see someone in distress, the best thing to do is
help the person, even at the risk of missing mass. In a strange twist, you might actually need
to confess the sin of going to mass, if you ignored someone in peril along the
way.
Another detail of the story
that I find interesting is that the scholar of the Jewish law asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” presumably because
he wants to know whom he has to love, but the story ends with Jesus saying,
“Who was neighbor to the robbers’
victim?” Jesus isn’t telling him the
types of people he has to love–he suggesting that he has to be the type of
person who loves everybody–who is willing to be neighbor to all. I think, as he so often does, Jesus wants us
to love like God loves.
Why do we reach out to help others? I thought of
three reasons. 1. It makes us feel good. It usually does make us feel good to help
others. The problem is that if this is
our only motivation it will never enter our character to be good Christ-like
people for we will remain self-centered, only doing what feels good to us. 2.
Because we know it is right or for the Love of God. That’s a motivation that is often applauded
by us. I remember how Mother Teresa
responded to a man who said he wouldn’t do the work she does for a million
bucks. She said, “I wouldn’t either; I
do it for Jesus.” But you know, I think
the Good Samaritan is pointing to an even deeper motivation to help another: 3. Because we want
to. We know we have caught the
spirit of Jesus when we want to help, and when we are naturally “neighbor” to
others. A lot of the time we will probably have to just
ask for strength to be good, but in those golden moments of living as children
of God, we find ourselves helping others simply because we want to, and God’s
life flows through us.
Meister Eckhart said
something along these lines 700 years ago:
“If our will becomes God’s will,
that is good. If God’s will becomes our will, that is even better.”
4 July 2010
14th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 10:1-12,
17-20
Numbers usually mean
something in the Bible. Jesus sent
seventy-two disciples out to proclaim the Kingdom of God. Why
72? Like so many things about Jesus,
it has to do with his Jewish background, particularly the story of Noah and the
flood and the repopulation of the world after the flood. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth,
and if you count all the names of the sons of these three men, you come up with
seventy-two. So, as Jesus sends these
out and ponders their mission, he has in mind a re-seeding of the world with a
message of peace to all. And since this
seventy-two represents the whole human race from whom we are all descended, we
also should identify with these seventy-two, for we are of the original
seventy-two, Noah’s grandchildren who repopulated the earth.
What stands out to me about the mission of the seventy-two is that
it’s all about establishing good
relationships with others. The
emphasis is on quality not quantity.
It’s not a race to see how many people they can preach to. Rather, Jesus tells them not to flit about
from one house to the next but to stay in the same house that welcomes them and
to eat and drink what is offered to them.
That little detail of mission tells me a lot. It
tells me of the tremendous good that can come from simple visiting with
another.
I was amid great frenzy
yesterday when I decided it was time I needed to buy some fireworks for when I visit with my nieces later this
week. I drove over to exit 19 near
Baldwin. First, I went to a convenience
store to buy some bananas and it was a very active place as so many were
filling up en route to their July 4th destinations. I was in the happy position of not being in a
hurry while in the midst of so many who were.
The fireworks place, as you can imagine, was even more frantic, a late
Friday afternoon two days before July 4th. I imagine they do over 50% of their annual
business this weekend. I took in the
scene of the dozen or so check out clerks–all busy–and the mountains of spark
throwers, noise makers and smoke bombs beyond them all with people grabbing for
them. It had the feel of panic-buying. I
grabbed a big $19 that looked good to me and put it under my arm. Later I saw that it was labeled “Atomic Rain”
and had a picture of a mushroom cloud on it.
Not wanting to give the impression to my nieces that I thought nuclear
bombs were cool, I put it down, exchanging it for a similarly priced item
called “Spring Garden.” I’m such a
softie.
Soon my arms and hands were
full and I was stepping around people with their shopping carts and heading to
the cash registers. I overheard a fellow
talking to his wife, saying that he used to really like fireworks but that the
thrill had worn off. You could tell he
was similarly amused by the frenzy. He
saw me and said, “Hey, you know they have carts so you don’t have to carry them
all.” I told him that I considered it a
personal challenge to get all of this to the register without a cart. He shrugged and said, “Suit yourself.” As he
turned I got his attention again and said, “But I appreciate your concern and
the good advice.” And I really did. In the midst of a world with everyone grabbing for themselves, a little
compassion for another goes a long way.
Maybe you saw in the newspaper Saturday morning the story about the release of Thomas Jeffereson’s original working draft of the Declaration of Independence, the signing of which we celebrate this weekend. The big news was that when referring to this new people who would come to be known as “Americans,” he wrote “subjects.” He was still thinking in terms of the new Americans as subjects to the royal crown of England. But you will not see the word “subjects” in the Declaration because he thought better of it, erased it and wrote “citizens.” It matters how we see ourselves. Like in that fireworks store, are we just one of the throng grabbing for ourselves and fighting over which one is best with others, or are we like the fellow who noticed another and tried to help. Are we like the seventy-two, seeking to be the voice and touch of Jesus. Are we citizens of his kingdom?
27 June 2010
13th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Kings
19:19-21; Galatians 5:13-18; Luke 9:51-62
The disciples James and John
are so like us. The Gospel makes them
sound foolish, but it’s very common to act like they act. Some people were rude to them and so they
come back with critical, judgmental words about them and they ask Jesus “Do you
want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” It seems that they are coming to be aware of
their power. But a little power is a
dangerous thing if not channeled properly, and so Jesus rebukes them. We don’t know if James and John received this
rebuke cheerfully or if they were muttering under their breaths along the way,
but the message from Jesus is clear. Followers
of Jesus must learn to return curses with blessings. We do not play the game of getting back
people who have been rude to us or hurt us.
Living in the Kingdom Jesus proclaims, under the love of God that come
to us even in our imperfections, can we come to understand that all people are
flawed, and as St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “if you go on biting and
devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.” Our natural inclination to get back at
someone who hurts us, understandable as it is, only hurts us more. The Path to Life is what we act out in this
Eucharist: Receiving the gift of God’s life, being made into one Body, so that
we might share in God’s mission of peace and reconciliation.
Our energy for this mission is what is mainly addressed in the first
reading and Gospel. Typically, we have a desire to follow the way of
Jesus, but not quite yet or not quite with all of our hearts. Something is holding us back. There is a story about St. Augustine whose
walk to holiness included a tremendous struggle with his own body to be chaste. In the midst of his struggle he famously
prayed “Lord, make me chaste...but not yet!”
He knew how he wanted to be, but he was afraid to let go of his need for
certain pleasures. He was not ready to
do what Elisha did. After initially
resisting Elijah’s call for him to follow and be a prophet, and upon hearing
Elijah’s rebuke, he took the symbols of his old life and destroyed them. He built a fire with his wood plow and
roasted his oxen and gave the meat away–a dramatic cut with the past. We hear similar resistance in the Gospel as
people want first to do this or that before following Jesus.
I had a strong experience of
clinging to the past this week when some good people were trying to help me
clean up my office. One issue among many
is the stockpile of old magazine that I have.
Some I’ve read and I want to keep the good information in them. Most I have not read but feel that I might
get to read them some day and that in their pages might be something that I
really need to hear, that will change my life and my ministry for the good, and
that might be the key to unlock some knowledge wonderful beyond my dreams!
It’s not the keeping of old
magazines that’s the problem. The problem is my fear that if I throw them
away I will be somehow diminished.
Maybe you can relate to that with other things: If I don’t have this
car, this computer, this piece of jewelry, this house,
this hobby, this medal or trophy...I will somehow be less. It’s those kinds of fears that keep us from
being free.
If we’re ever caught in these
sorts of fears I think it will help to remind ourselves of who we are in Christ
Jesus. As a Christian I have died to an old self that is tied to things,
the esteem of others, the need to be important, and such. And I
have Risen to a new self that is rooted only in the
life and love of God and thirsts only to pass on God’s compassion and service.
Do I live like this? Do you live like this? Probably the best any of us can say is “sometimes.” And in those times we have known his glory as our own, and shined as the people we are meant to be.
13 June 2010
11th
Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Samuel
12:7-13; Galatians 2:19-21; Luke 7:36-44
The most chilling part of the story is what Jesus
tells the Pharisee: Those who have not
been forgiven much cannot love much. We don’t want to be like that. I think that something deep in us really
wants instead to be like that woman. We
want to be able to love lavishly and freely.
We want to be able to love much because we have been forgiven much. The only difficulty for us, though, is that
in order to experience this freedom and forgiveness, we have to look at and
notice our sin. It is the seriousness of
sin that forms the background of this important gospel story.
Because of our sacrament of
confession and the popular use of the notion of sin in our world, we tend to
associate it with isolated incidents of doing wrong. It helps me to take a wider view of it,
though. Dorothee
Soelle gave a great definition of sin, comparing it
to ice: “Sin is like the ice age, the slow advance of cold, a freezing process
which we experience and try to forget...It is the absence of warmth, love
caring, trust.
It is the destruction of our capacity for relatedness... It means being
separated from the ground of life, having a disturbed relationship to
ourselves, our neighbor, the creation and the human family.”
I took a bike ride on the
trail with friends several years ago. I
thought I was in better shape then they were, but very soon after starting out I
thought “Boy, this is a rough pace to maintain.” A few miles into it I was sweating profusely
and my two companions were cool as cucumbers.
They were calming chatting as they pedaled while I just got out a few
words between gasping breaths. Heck, I
thought maybe I was having a heart attack.
Finally I said “I gotta stop!” So we stopped. I checked my tires to see if they were
inflated, and they were. But what I did
notice was the smell of burning rubber.
I followed my nose to find out that my tire, instead of whirring freely
while rotating round and round was pressed up against the frame of my
bike. Basically my ride thus far was
like I was biking with my brakes on. I
adjusted the wheel, and we continued our merry way with no more gasping.
I think sin is a little like
that. We have three characters in our
story: Simon the Pharisee, Jesus and the woman who was a sinner. Simon notices right away that the woman is a
sinner but seems not to think anything is wrong with himself. He goes on acting
as though the “bicycle” is just fine. As
a result, he will never know the freedom of extravagant love. The woman knows something is wrong and seeks
conversion.
It seems there are two paths to knowing forgiveness. The most
common, reflected most directly in the first reading is when we, like King
David, simply see the truth of our lives and say “I have sinned.” We might
think that there is no way to forgiveness without that admission. And yet, we hear Jesus tell the Pharisee, “It is because this woman has loved much that
she has been forgiven.” What comes
first the forgiveness or the acts of love?
I think the divine life to which we are all called is a flow of
receiving and passing on love and blessing.
Maybe it doesn’t matter whether it starts with us giving it or receiving
it as long as we jump into the flow like a jump roping hopping into the rope
being turned by two friends on the playground.
6 June 2010
Feast of the
Body and Blood of Christ
I Corinthians
11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17
I was surfing the news on the web this
week and I saw a story about an article coming out in Vanity Fair magazine that would include love letters that Richard
Burton sent to Elizabeth Taylor over the years of their roller coaster
relationship. A few of the letters were
quoted, including this one: "I
find it very difficult to allow my whole life to rest on the existence of
another creature. I find it equally difficult, because of my innate arrogance,
to believe in the idea of love. There is no such thing, I say to myself. There
is lust, of course, and usage, and jealousy, and desire and spent powers, but
no such thing as the idiocy of love. Who invented that concept? I have wracked
my shabby brains and can find no answer."
As people of faith, we know that there are many kinds of doubt
that can plague a human brain. We can
doubt the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, or even on this feast
the Real Presence of Jesus in our Eucharist.
More chilling to me than any of these, however, is
doubting the existence of Love.
In fact, while we might be able to affirm a philosophical notion of God
without affirming the existence of Love, but I do not think we can claim belief
in the God Jesus reveals to us if we do not first believe in Love.
What is it to believe in Love?
I think it is to believe that while we are creatures, hard-wired to be
self-centered and so very prone to using others, lust, jealousy—all those
things Richard Burton was sure existed—we are drawn to a higher purpose. Believing in love means that you believe in
more than being well fed, well sheltered, and well cared for. You believe you are capable of more. You believe that relationships are what we
are made for—not just to ease our loneliness but to live out what is best in
ourselves. From others you treasure more
than anything their focused concern, time and affection. And you never feel so deeply yourself, the
self God made you to be, as when you turn toward another with that same kind of
love.
Our Eucharist is first and foremost an act of love from God to
us. If we don’t get that basic point,
then it will be hard to appreciate it for what it is. It is Jesus feeding us. It is Jesus, our compassionate friend who
sees our hunger for the touch of divinity and offers us himself. It is the love that grounds our lives so that
even when we have times in our life when we are not receiving the love we crave
from others we are assured that the one who knows us better than anyone else
blesses us, feeds us, becomes part of us.
Near the end of the passage is the simple line “They all ate and
were satisfied.” I’ve had moments like
that, but I know my humanity too well and think I might have been asking
“What’s for dessert?” Whether it’s a
sweet tooth or other things that make us constantly want more than we are
given, so many of us are plagued by an inability to be satisfied. And yet, here Jesus is offering us something
that will satisfy us. (Remember that song
“You satisfy the hungry heart…”?) Maybe
a good challenge for us on this Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is to
appreciate its simple goodness and let it be enough. …to let the simple goodness of being together
under God and being fed by him be our cause for satisfaction. Our bodies will always cry out for more of
this or that, but what could our souls thirst for more than being loved by
God? Maybe just one
thing—growing in our own ability to love as generously.
Trinity Sunday
There’s
a story about these three hermits who lived on a desert island. It’s in a collection of stories by Leo
Tolstoy. These three hermits were often
together, which is strange for hermits since hermits are supposed to live
alone. They cared for each other deeply and each would give his last bit of
food for the other who was hungry. They
would gather together for prayer every day, six times per day. They would hold hands in a circle, face the
sky, and proclaim “We are three and so are Thee. Amen.”
And with that prayer as a foundation, they lived holy lives.
One
day a large ship passing through and carrying the great Bishop of Carthage run
into a storm and had to dock on this island.
The three hermits, full of charity, came to see if they could help, and
they did indeed assist the ship engineer in making repairs. When they saw the great Bishop of Carthage
approach them, they fell to their knees and kissed his hand. Recognizing pious and faithful men, he asked
them about their prayer lives. They said
“When we pray we say ‘We are three and so are Thee. Amen.’”
The Bishop smiled at their simplicity and asked if they would like to
learn a better prayer that Jesus himself taught his followers. And so he taught them the Lord’s Prayer.
The
three hermits were not “quick studies.” They
got through “who art in heaven” all right, but after that things fell apart,
and they could never remember what it was they were supposed to be forgiven
from. They had not heard of the word
“trespasses” before. But with coaching,
they made it through the prayer just before the ship was again sea worthy and
took the bishop away mid morning.
Near
sunset that night the bishop was looking into the setting sun back in the
direction of the island, and he saw a little splashing in the water. He thought maybe it was dolphins, but as they
got closer he could tell, miracle of miracles, that it was three people walking
on the water. They walked on the water
right alongside the boat and the Bishop said, “What do you want?” And one hermit said “We forgot the prayer!” Another hermit said “What comes after “give
us this day our daily bread?” And the
third hermit said, “Could you teach us to pray one more time?” The bishop
smiled and said, I think when you pray you should say “We are three and so are
Thee. Amen.” This made the three hermits happy and they
walked home on the water.
What’s
the message there? I think one point of
the story is that simple is good. You
don’t have to understand everything about God and the Bible in order to be
holy—the person God made you to be.
Whatever enlivens love in your heart is a good prayer.
On
this Trinity Sunday we can ponder the irrational mystery of how something can
be both one and three. We can think of
shamrocks. From the Gospel this week, I
am more drawn to how they relate to each other as Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. Biblical scholar Barbara Reid
writes, “Jesus explains that the Spirit ‘will take from what is mine and
declare it to you.’ But what is Jesus’ is also what is the
Father’s, as Jesus asserts, ‘Everything that the Father has is mine.’
There is no ‘yours and mine,’ in the Godhead—only ‘ours,’ as the three
interweave in a communion of love in which there is no possessiveness.”
We
know that we were made in God’s image.
It is the theological reason that we see all human life as
precious. But more than that, being made
in God’s image means that we can act like God.
I hear it in a grieving father whose son has died and who speaks through
tears that “everything I did and have, I did and had for him.” I see it in a joyful greeting at the door
when I arrive and the person living there says “Mi casa es
su casa.” (My house is your house.) I see it when a husband or wife truly adopts
the other’s family, the in-laws, as their own and gives energy and time to
them.
“We
are three and so are Thee.” It’s a good
prayer for those hermits. It reminds
them that just as God holds together in a unity of love, so should they. We might rephrase it to include different
numbers since all of us are not “three.”
Maybe “We are together and so are Thee.
Amen.” Might that prayer help us
live the communion that we celebrate every time we gather in this space?