Can you measure happiness? How much of happiness is nature and how much is nurture? What would make you happier? Does money buy happiness? Are rich countries happier than poorer countries? Would you become happier if our country got a lot richer? How happier do you think you'd get if you won the Mega lottery?
These questions might occur to you this Sunday as you listen to Jesus' formula for happiness, the Beatitudes. Let me offer you a response to each one from Arthur Brooks, author and President of the American Enterprise Institute, which I culled from an article by him in Commonwealth Magazine, February-March 2011.
Can you really measure happiness? Brooks says 'Yes, you can,' and cites 30 years of data out there in the social psychology literature that indicates as much.
How much of our happiness is inherited, and how much of it comes from factors that affect us throughout our lives? 'Studies of identical twins and other siblings show that between 50 and 80 percent of your baseline happiness is actually inherited. He says that 'much more of our personalities than we ever understood can be shown to be inherited.' Brooks says that '40 percent of how you vote is genetic; 40 percent of how religious you are is genetic; virtually every important part of your personality has a huge genetic component to it. So it is also with happiness.'
When most people are asked about what would make them happier, they talk about money and about things that would change their economic circumstances. Brooks suggests that the question 'Does money buy happiness?' is best answered in the responses to the next three questions.
Are rich countries happier than poorer countries? Usually not, says Arthur Brooks. Basing his conclusion on extensive studies done on the most miserable countries in the world, he says, 'Once countries get above the basic level of subsistence, it's almost impossible to make populations happier simply with money.' The French have about three times the average purchasing power than the average Mexicans, but the Mexicans are almost twice as likely to say they are very happy people. That has to do with non-economic things: family, faith, friends, community, job satisfaction - all of which the French tend to be very weak on, and the Mexican very strong on.
Would you become happier if our country got richer? The average American today has 50 percent more in purchasing power than his or her counterpart had in 1972. Forty years ago, 31 percent of Americans said they were very happy. Today, 31 percent say they are very happy.
What happens to individuals when they get richer? Studies reveal that people who go from zero to $30 million overnight do not get any happier. When people win the lottery they tend to be happier for about six months. After six months, the euphoria wears off. They don't just go down to where they were before the jackpot, they go below and stay there. 'Why? The answer is that they never enjoy the little things of life ever again....they don't enjoy spending money any more, they don't enjoy family or friends, they don't enjoy hobbies, watching TV or shopping.' The same goes for inheritance. 'Statistically we can't find any connection between inherited income and changes in happiness,' says Brooks.
Interestingly, psychologists conducted a study from the Harvard School of Public Health and found that 'you can get happy by having more money than somebody else in the same community.' People always want to have more than their neighbor. If you earn $50,000 a year and your neighbors earn $25,000, you'll be happier in that community than you would be in a community where you'd earn $100,000 a year and your neighbors earn $200,000.
Who are the happiest people in the United States today? According to this article, the happiness factor is what Brooks calls 'earned success.' And entrepreneurs, both social and commercial, have themselves created value in their lives and in the lives of others. 'If you believe you have earned your success - it doesn't matter if it's denominated in money or otherwise - you will be happier, according to the data,' says Brooks. Social entrepreneurs count their success not in dollars, but in 'souls saved or kids eating or communities cleaned up...'
'When we ask people how much success they feel they have earned, all of the differences in money go away,' says Brooks. My question to the guys and gals reading this in blogosphere is: Is this kind of 'earned success' the ultimate criterion of happiness, or is there more to it?
PASTOR EMERITUS
Friday, January 28, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
ANYBODY FOR HAPPINESS?
From the days of Adam and Eve, people have been searching for the elusive elixir of life: Happiness. Jesus offers a credible formula in today's gospel of the beatitudes. Beatitude means happiness and joy. The 'mountain' on which Jesus sat is symbolic of the Holy Mountain where Moses spoke with God, where the happiness of heaven met the unhappiness of earth. Moses gave the old law from Mt. Sinai. Jesus offers a new vision from this other mountain. The numerous allusions to the Old Testament would not have been lost on Matthew's mostly Jewish audience. Many scripture scholars translate the 'blessed' of Matthew's beatitudes as 'lucky.'
How lucky are you if you are poor! Excuse me? Aren't we supposed to be breathless with excitement for the house of our dreams - the car, the yacht, the spouse, the job... that vacation? Jesus is saying that we're lucky if we make God the center of our lives and don't get addicted to material things. The 'poor in spirit' is a telling term. 'Spirit' in the bible usually means 'breath,' God's breath or ours. To be poor in spirit, or short of breath, means to be breathless with excitement for God and the things of God. That, he says, is to experience something of the kingdom of God. Many of the world's offerings are worthy of our excitement, but we have all experienced how quickly the flush wears off.
How lucky are you if you mourn! The world tells us that we're lucky if we never have to experience sorrow or upset or disappointment. Christ tells us that we're lucky if we are not addicted to feeling good, but are free to to have good feelings or bad feelings, depending. Doing the right thing doesn't always leave us with nice feelings. If we're into having nice feelings at all costs, we may not stop at artificially modifying them through the use of drugs or alcohol. To walk the way of truth and love, not pleasure, will cost you.
How lucky are you if you are meek! We are raised to believe that the land belongs to the bold, the powerful, the gutsy and the ruthless. We admire these kinds of people. Nobody bosses them around. They're in control and rule the earth. Society sees them as the lucky ones of the world. But they're often arrogant to the core and, in the larger picture, they thwart God's plan. Christian meekness is about freedom from the need to dominate and control. St. Augustine once described sin as 'the lust to dominate.' The lust to dominate and control can be as addictive as cocaine. And even more destructive. Writers from Shakespeare in the 17th century to Tom Wolfe in our own day have described in poem, novel and drama the sorry trail of destruction left in the wake of such people.
How lucky you are if you hunger and thirst for righteousness! Jesus is saying that our most abiding and powerful desire must be for righteousness, God's will. For this we have been made and wired. Otherwise we'll experience deep division and dissatisfaction in life. Where's our heart? What do we hunger and thirst for at our deepest level? St. Thomas Aquinas said that the human heart gravitates to money, pleasure, power and honor. When any one of these takes the place of God's will, righteousness, we have a recipe for disaster. When God's will comes first, we'll know how to enjoy and use appropriately wealth, pleasure, honor and power.
How lucky are you if you are merciful and a peacemaker! Jesus calls us to break out of the narrow space of our own egos. If you want to be happy you should want to be like God. The God of the scriptures is a God who is 'tender mercy.' St. John says that 'God is love.' Our God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is a God who is a communion of persons, peace, harmony. The Risen Christ's first words from the far side of death were peace, shalom. To offer mercy, to make peace, is to offer divine life and become sons and daughters of God.
How lucky are you if you are clean of heart! The single-hearted are the clean of heart, whose hearts are focused clearly and uniquely on God and his tender mercy. To be unlucky is to have a divided heart, one that fluctuates here and there and is not stabilized anywhere. To be like that is to like a ship without a rudder, or like the proverbial chicken without a head!
How lucky to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness! Lucky to be an object of persecution??? Will you be opposed if you walk the way of Jesus Christ? You most certainly will, especially in our contemporary Western world. The more you walk it, the more you will be opposed. Far from being dismayed, Jesus says we should count ourselves lucky to be treated unjustly, maligned, even wronged. The world is organized against the ways of God and His will. The martyrs and many of the saints were murdered and persecuted. It's part of our tradition. There's nothing more reassuring than to know we're on the right road in life. The measure of opposition will indicate how close we are to Christ.
The beatitudes are strange, puzzling, unnerving, counter-intuitive, subversive - and the key to everlasting joy.
PASTOR EMERITUS
How lucky are you if you are poor! Excuse me? Aren't we supposed to be breathless with excitement for the house of our dreams - the car, the yacht, the spouse, the job... that vacation? Jesus is saying that we're lucky if we make God the center of our lives and don't get addicted to material things. The 'poor in spirit' is a telling term. 'Spirit' in the bible usually means 'breath,' God's breath or ours. To be poor in spirit, or short of breath, means to be breathless with excitement for God and the things of God. That, he says, is to experience something of the kingdom of God. Many of the world's offerings are worthy of our excitement, but we have all experienced how quickly the flush wears off.
How lucky are you if you mourn! The world tells us that we're lucky if we never have to experience sorrow or upset or disappointment. Christ tells us that we're lucky if we are not addicted to feeling good, but are free to to have good feelings or bad feelings, depending. Doing the right thing doesn't always leave us with nice feelings. If we're into having nice feelings at all costs, we may not stop at artificially modifying them through the use of drugs or alcohol. To walk the way of truth and love, not pleasure, will cost you.
How lucky are you if you are meek! We are raised to believe that the land belongs to the bold, the powerful, the gutsy and the ruthless. We admire these kinds of people. Nobody bosses them around. They're in control and rule the earth. Society sees them as the lucky ones of the world. But they're often arrogant to the core and, in the larger picture, they thwart God's plan. Christian meekness is about freedom from the need to dominate and control. St. Augustine once described sin as 'the lust to dominate.' The lust to dominate and control can be as addictive as cocaine. And even more destructive. Writers from Shakespeare in the 17th century to Tom Wolfe in our own day have described in poem, novel and drama the sorry trail of destruction left in the wake of such people.
How lucky you are if you hunger and thirst for righteousness! Jesus is saying that our most abiding and powerful desire must be for righteousness, God's will. For this we have been made and wired. Otherwise we'll experience deep division and dissatisfaction in life. Where's our heart? What do we hunger and thirst for at our deepest level? St. Thomas Aquinas said that the human heart gravitates to money, pleasure, power and honor. When any one of these takes the place of God's will, righteousness, we have a recipe for disaster. When God's will comes first, we'll know how to enjoy and use appropriately wealth, pleasure, honor and power.
How lucky are you if you are merciful and a peacemaker! Jesus calls us to break out of the narrow space of our own egos. If you want to be happy you should want to be like God. The God of the scriptures is a God who is 'tender mercy.' St. John says that 'God is love.' Our God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is a God who is a communion of persons, peace, harmony. The Risen Christ's first words from the far side of death were peace, shalom. To offer mercy, to make peace, is to offer divine life and become sons and daughters of God.
How lucky are you if you are clean of heart! The single-hearted are the clean of heart, whose hearts are focused clearly and uniquely on God and his tender mercy. To be unlucky is to have a divided heart, one that fluctuates here and there and is not stabilized anywhere. To be like that is to like a ship without a rudder, or like the proverbial chicken without a head!
How lucky to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness! Lucky to be an object of persecution??? Will you be opposed if you walk the way of Jesus Christ? You most certainly will, especially in our contemporary Western world. The more you walk it, the more you will be opposed. Far from being dismayed, Jesus says we should count ourselves lucky to be treated unjustly, maligned, even wronged. The world is organized against the ways of God and His will. The martyrs and many of the saints were murdered and persecuted. It's part of our tradition. There's nothing more reassuring than to know we're on the right road in life. The measure of opposition will indicate how close we are to Christ.
The beatitudes are strange, puzzling, unnerving, counter-intuitive, subversive - and the key to everlasting joy.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
COME AFTER ME
One of the most beautiful images in Genesis is that of God strolling about the shady Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening. For middle-eastern desert nomads, the coolness of evening was a welcome respite from the scorching fury of the noonday sun. God is all alone. Adam and Eve have gone into hiding, the result of sin. 'Where are you?' asks God, as if wanting to take a peek at his own handiwork. At this happy hour of the day, God wanted some company.
In today's gospel, we find Jesus, God, strolling along the beach, people-watching. He is alone and enjoying the sights and sounds all around. Then he spots two men casting nets in an attempt to catch fish. They were fishermen. Jesus was a fisherman, too, but he was fishing for people, for human companionship. He stops to talk. The scene is somewhat reminiscent of the scene in the Garden of Eden.
'Come after me and I will make you fishers of men,' he tells them. 'Come after me' was an old Semitic way of inviting someone to apprenticeship. Jesus invited them to 'come after' him, not to learn some new ideas but to learn to live his way of life by means of a personal relationship with him. St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the Church's finest brains, said that we were created in order to cultivate a personal relationship with God. 'Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee,' cried Augustine after his conversion to Christ some eight hundred years earlier.
Jesus made his own good catch. At once they left their nets and followed him. It took them a full three years to recognize Jesus for who he was. Their slowness and blindness came from various fears and preconceived ideas. We will see later in Matthew's Gospel how much Peter and the others misunderstood the real mission of Jesus. Unknown to themselves they, like Adam and Eve, were hiding from the Son of God. Eventually they would emerge from the bushes.
"Human kind is not able for much reality,' wrote T. S. Eliot in his 'Four Quartets.' There is something about us that makes us hide from reality, from God. The heart of Christian spirituality is to allow ourselves to be found by God. If you haven't read Francis Thompson's 'The Hound of Heaven' for a while, try the 'glossary' version on Google as preparation for this Sunday's Mass. It's a fascinating description of God's pursuit of us, and our attempts to hide. Thompson understood every twist and turn of the human heart in its desire to hide.
"I will make you fishers of men.' This invitation is offered to every baptized Christian. We don't make ourselves. Our lives are not about ourselves. God calls us into life and into the life of faith. He calls us to more than a 'self-indulgent Christianity' or a 'moralistic therapeutic Deism,' to quote from a recent study of religion in America - 'Almost Christian,' by Kenda Creasy Dean, pp. 14, 39 ff. (OUP, 2010). He calls us to be 'fishers,' - to a sense of mission, to a clear sense that our lives have a God-given purpose, to expand the net of companionship with Christ.
God, whether in the Garden or by the Seashore, wants our companionship. 'I fled him down the nights and down the days,' wrote Francis Thompson. And Francis himself, like us? 'In the midst of tears I hid from Him!' In our culture today, it's almost embarrassing to be Christian and fewer Catholics want to be known as such. The price is not a user-friendly one. As G.K. Chesterton wrote almost a century ago, 'A person who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool.' (Heretics, p.87)
'Repent,' cries Jesus in the gospel. It's time to open our eyes and recognize the reality of who we are. It's time to come out of hiding.
PASTOR EMERITUS
In today's gospel, we find Jesus, God, strolling along the beach, people-watching. He is alone and enjoying the sights and sounds all around. Then he spots two men casting nets in an attempt to catch fish. They were fishermen. Jesus was a fisherman, too, but he was fishing for people, for human companionship. He stops to talk. The scene is somewhat reminiscent of the scene in the Garden of Eden.
'Come after me and I will make you fishers of men,' he tells them. 'Come after me' was an old Semitic way of inviting someone to apprenticeship. Jesus invited them to 'come after' him, not to learn some new ideas but to learn to live his way of life by means of a personal relationship with him. St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the Church's finest brains, said that we were created in order to cultivate a personal relationship with God. 'Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee,' cried Augustine after his conversion to Christ some eight hundred years earlier.
Jesus made his own good catch. At once they left their nets and followed him. It took them a full three years to recognize Jesus for who he was. Their slowness and blindness came from various fears and preconceived ideas. We will see later in Matthew's Gospel how much Peter and the others misunderstood the real mission of Jesus. Unknown to themselves they, like Adam and Eve, were hiding from the Son of God. Eventually they would emerge from the bushes.
"Human kind is not able for much reality,' wrote T. S. Eliot in his 'Four Quartets.' There is something about us that makes us hide from reality, from God. The heart of Christian spirituality is to allow ourselves to be found by God. If you haven't read Francis Thompson's 'The Hound of Heaven' for a while, try the 'glossary' version on Google as preparation for this Sunday's Mass. It's a fascinating description of God's pursuit of us, and our attempts to hide. Thompson understood every twist and turn of the human heart in its desire to hide.
"I will make you fishers of men.' This invitation is offered to every baptized Christian. We don't make ourselves. Our lives are not about ourselves. God calls us into life and into the life of faith. He calls us to more than a 'self-indulgent Christianity' or a 'moralistic therapeutic Deism,' to quote from a recent study of religion in America - 'Almost Christian,' by Kenda Creasy Dean, pp. 14, 39 ff. (OUP, 2010). He calls us to be 'fishers,' - to a sense of mission, to a clear sense that our lives have a God-given purpose, to expand the net of companionship with Christ.
God, whether in the Garden or by the Seashore, wants our companionship. 'I fled him down the nights and down the days,' wrote Francis Thompson. And Francis himself, like us? 'In the midst of tears I hid from Him!' In our culture today, it's almost embarrassing to be Christian and fewer Catholics want to be known as such. The price is not a user-friendly one. As G.K. Chesterton wrote almost a century ago, 'A person who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool.' (Heretics, p.87)
'Repent,' cries Jesus in the gospel. It's time to open our eyes and recognize the reality of who we are. It's time to come out of hiding.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Thursday, January 13, 2011
THE LAMB OF GOD
'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world...' These are very familiar words to Catholic Mass-goers. You will hear them on John the Baptist's lips this Sunday referring to Jesus who had come to him for baptism. The image of a lamb is of a gentle, playful, cuddly little animal - a little baby sheep. And that's what they are. But for first century Jews, lambs reminded them of the temple sacrifice for which they were slaughtered by the thousand. Jesus as 'Lamb of God' would offer the greatest sacrifice - so we might have fullness of life, glory, joy, meaning, fellowship, love.... What is the sacrifice involved in following Jesus Christ today?
Sacrifice, according to Webster's dictionary, is about giving something up for something else. The ancient Jews offered to Yahweh the first- fruits of their flocks and crops. The action enhanced their sense of union with God. There is something inside us that seems to want to act like that. Many years ago, I was involved in the Marriage Encounter movement. A theme on the weekends that kept cropping up was people's difficulty in accepting that they are supremely lovable. I struggled with that idea and the reality in my own life, for a long time. My instinct, when someone would offer me a gift or some praise, was to say 'No, I don't deserve this.' It's still my instinct! Is this a sacrificial drive within the human heart? Is it an attempt to 'sacrifice' the gift before accepting it without any qualms?
The words of Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher of the 17th century, often come to mind when I think of the gift of life itself. 'You find yourself in this world only through an infinity of chances. Your birth is due to a marriage, or rather a series of marriages of those who have gone before you. But those marriages were often the result of a chance meeting, or words uttered at random, of a hundred unforeseen and unintended consequences.' In the absolute sense, nobody has a right to the GIFT of life. It's God's gift to us.
Soon after John the Baptist called Jesus the 'Lamb of God,' Jesus began to call people to 'Repent, and believe the Good News.' Our English translation does little to capture the heart of Jesus' invitation. Jesus called for a new mind, a new set of values to live by - a vision and values that would be bigger and better than those by which we normally live. We tend to live our lives along one track only. Jesus calls us to surrender to his vision and values. This calls for sacrifice, for a giving up something good so that something better might emerge from God's hand. The constant challenge we feel to surrender and sacrifice as we journey through life is our way of acknowledging the gift of life. It's the re-cycling in our lives today of the old story of our ancient ancestors offering the first-fruits back to God.
Paul Tillich, the 20th century Christian existentialist and theologian, pointed out that true religion opens us to what's beyond ourselves, to what's beyond our political and philosophical ideologies, and brings us to a place where we are ready to genuflect before God - or self-destruct. This is the way of sacrifice and surrender. This is the way of the Lamb of God. The early Christians felt that martyrdom - physical martyrdom - was the ideal way for a Christian to die. They were suspicious of the Apostle John's commitment because he died in extreme old age, in bed! That feeling eventually gave way to seeing the following of Christ as a kind of living martyrdom.
What do we sacrifice? What shape does our martyrdom take today? Paul sums it up effectively in his letter to the Galatians where he writes about the two spirits according to which we can live, the spirit of the flesh or the Spirit of God. 'The works of the flesh are immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.' Then he goes on to list the fruits of living by the Spirit of God: 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.' To follow Christ the Lamb of God, is to allow the Spirit of God direct the energy that burns like a restless fire in all our hearts. That's the sacrifice involved in being a Christian today.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Sacrifice, according to Webster's dictionary, is about giving something up for something else. The ancient Jews offered to Yahweh the first- fruits of their flocks and crops. The action enhanced their sense of union with God. There is something inside us that seems to want to act like that. Many years ago, I was involved in the Marriage Encounter movement. A theme on the weekends that kept cropping up was people's difficulty in accepting that they are supremely lovable. I struggled with that idea and the reality in my own life, for a long time. My instinct, when someone would offer me a gift or some praise, was to say 'No, I don't deserve this.' It's still my instinct! Is this a sacrificial drive within the human heart? Is it an attempt to 'sacrifice' the gift before accepting it without any qualms?
The words of Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher of the 17th century, often come to mind when I think of the gift of life itself. 'You find yourself in this world only through an infinity of chances. Your birth is due to a marriage, or rather a series of marriages of those who have gone before you. But those marriages were often the result of a chance meeting, or words uttered at random, of a hundred unforeseen and unintended consequences.' In the absolute sense, nobody has a right to the GIFT of life. It's God's gift to us.
Soon after John the Baptist called Jesus the 'Lamb of God,' Jesus began to call people to 'Repent, and believe the Good News.' Our English translation does little to capture the heart of Jesus' invitation. Jesus called for a new mind, a new set of values to live by - a vision and values that would be bigger and better than those by which we normally live. We tend to live our lives along one track only. Jesus calls us to surrender to his vision and values. This calls for sacrifice, for a giving up something good so that something better might emerge from God's hand. The constant challenge we feel to surrender and sacrifice as we journey through life is our way of acknowledging the gift of life. It's the re-cycling in our lives today of the old story of our ancient ancestors offering the first-fruits back to God.
Paul Tillich, the 20th century Christian existentialist and theologian, pointed out that true religion opens us to what's beyond ourselves, to what's beyond our political and philosophical ideologies, and brings us to a place where we are ready to genuflect before God - or self-destruct. This is the way of sacrifice and surrender. This is the way of the Lamb of God. The early Christians felt that martyrdom - physical martyrdom - was the ideal way for a Christian to die. They were suspicious of the Apostle John's commitment because he died in extreme old age, in bed! That feeling eventually gave way to seeing the following of Christ as a kind of living martyrdom.
What do we sacrifice? What shape does our martyrdom take today? Paul sums it up effectively in his letter to the Galatians where he writes about the two spirits according to which we can live, the spirit of the flesh or the Spirit of God. 'The works of the flesh are immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.' Then he goes on to list the fruits of living by the Spirit of God: 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.' To follow Christ the Lamb of God, is to allow the Spirit of God direct the energy that burns like a restless fire in all our hearts. That's the sacrifice involved in being a Christian today.
PASTOR EMERITUS
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
THE OUTRAGEOUS JESUS CHRIST
I grew up in a Catholic culture which said I had to roll up my sleeves and earn salvation. The more good works I performed, the better. The more rosaries and devotions I attended, the bigger my heavenly bank account grew. The fear of mortal sin and eternal damnation hung like an ominous cloud. God was out there watching, and waiting to impose penalties if I failed to make deposits. If I sinned, I knew he would retaliate... if not in this life, certainly in the next. I don't feel like that anymore.
A superficial reading of the Old Testament, with its strong emphasis on God as chastiser of Israel, might put the unwary reader back into that mentality. John the Baptist summed up that outlook when he said he expected Christ to come baptizing in fire, winnowing-fan at the ready to clear the chaff and burn it in unquenchable fire... He was flummoxed, puzzled when Jesus showed up with a bunch of sinners, humbly asking for baptism. This is not how the promised Messiah is supposed to behave! Here he is, making his debut in public, side by side with known sinners and up to his waste with them all in brown muddy water. Embarrassing. 'I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?' The story is in all four gospels and, had it not actually happened, it would have been too embarrassing to mention.
Jesus was no sinner. If he was, he would have needed a savior - and Christianity would have fallen apart. Baptism identifies us as belonging to God and it gives us the wherewithal to deal with the effects of sin. Jesus was God and was without sin. He came not to have his sins forgiven but to forgive sins. So what was he doing rubbing shoulders with all those shameful people and, like them, asking John for baptism?
God arrived at Christmas looking like the most vulnerable of human beings. Today he begins his public life looking like the worst of us, a sinner. The ancient Fathers of the Church used to say that fallen humanity is like a diamond buried in the muck and mud of sin. And Jesus comes down into the middle of it - like the woman in the gospel who goes searching for her lost coin, like the shepherd looking for the lost sheep. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Happy are we who are called to his table!
Christianity is startling in its outrageousness: its God came into the world looking about as bad as he could. Nobody dreamed that such a thing could happen. St. Paul spoke about the wisdom of God looking like the folly of the world. He called it 'complete absurdity.' Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he says, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and thwart the cleverness of the clever' - I Cor 1:18ff. Neither Greek, Roman nor Jew was ready for Christmas, or Christ. Do we, even two thousand years later, 'get it'?
I was at a politico-social event a few years ago in San Francisco when I got into conversation with a middle-aged lady. She confided to me that she belonged to a certain parish, adding that it was 'fashionable' and attracted the 'right kind of people.' I wondered if she appreciated the outrageous nature of her religion! This feast of the Baptism of Christ is matched in its bewilderment by Jesus stripping off to get down under the feet of his apostles to wash them, including those of bad-man Judas, and again by the shame and nakedness of the cross.
Describing the mystery of God becoming man, St. Paul wrote to the Philippians: 'Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men...he humbled himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross' - Philippians 2: 6-8.
Pastor and writer Frederick Buechner describes compassion as 'the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's like to live inside someone else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never be any peace or joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too' - Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC. Jesus has been called the human face of God's compassion, and maybe it is that he can never be fully at peace until we his people are taken care of.
There's hope for us. God understands us, especially the worst of us. He has been to the depths of human shame and back. He loves us no matter what, even in the depths of our sinning. There is no need to be ashamed or fearful around God. No need to feel we have to prove our worthiness or earn our way into God's good graces. Yes, we have to earn our respect from others. Not from God! Our Christian task is simply to show our appreciation for what God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ.
PASTOR EMERITUS
A superficial reading of the Old Testament, with its strong emphasis on God as chastiser of Israel, might put the unwary reader back into that mentality. John the Baptist summed up that outlook when he said he expected Christ to come baptizing in fire, winnowing-fan at the ready to clear the chaff and burn it in unquenchable fire... He was flummoxed, puzzled when Jesus showed up with a bunch of sinners, humbly asking for baptism. This is not how the promised Messiah is supposed to behave! Here he is, making his debut in public, side by side with known sinners and up to his waste with them all in brown muddy water. Embarrassing. 'I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?' The story is in all four gospels and, had it not actually happened, it would have been too embarrassing to mention.
Jesus was no sinner. If he was, he would have needed a savior - and Christianity would have fallen apart. Baptism identifies us as belonging to God and it gives us the wherewithal to deal with the effects of sin. Jesus was God and was without sin. He came not to have his sins forgiven but to forgive sins. So what was he doing rubbing shoulders with all those shameful people and, like them, asking John for baptism?
God arrived at Christmas looking like the most vulnerable of human beings. Today he begins his public life looking like the worst of us, a sinner. The ancient Fathers of the Church used to say that fallen humanity is like a diamond buried in the muck and mud of sin. And Jesus comes down into the middle of it - like the woman in the gospel who goes searching for her lost coin, like the shepherd looking for the lost sheep. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Happy are we who are called to his table!
Christianity is startling in its outrageousness: its God came into the world looking about as bad as he could. Nobody dreamed that such a thing could happen. St. Paul spoke about the wisdom of God looking like the folly of the world. He called it 'complete absurdity.' Quoting the prophet Isaiah, he says, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and thwart the cleverness of the clever' - I Cor 1:18ff. Neither Greek, Roman nor Jew was ready for Christmas, or Christ. Do we, even two thousand years later, 'get it'?
I was at a politico-social event a few years ago in San Francisco when I got into conversation with a middle-aged lady. She confided to me that she belonged to a certain parish, adding that it was 'fashionable' and attracted the 'right kind of people.' I wondered if she appreciated the outrageous nature of her religion! This feast of the Baptism of Christ is matched in its bewilderment by Jesus stripping off to get down under the feet of his apostles to wash them, including those of bad-man Judas, and again by the shame and nakedness of the cross.
Describing the mystery of God becoming man, St. Paul wrote to the Philippians: 'Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men...he humbled himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross' - Philippians 2: 6-8.
Pastor and writer Frederick Buechner describes compassion as 'the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's like to live inside someone else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never be any peace or joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too' - Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC. Jesus has been called the human face of God's compassion, and maybe it is that he can never be fully at peace until we his people are taken care of.
There's hope for us. God understands us, especially the worst of us. He has been to the depths of human shame and back. He loves us no matter what, even in the depths of our sinning. There is no need to be ashamed or fearful around God. No need to feel we have to prove our worthiness or earn our way into God's good graces. Yes, we have to earn our respect from others. Not from God! Our Christian task is simply to show our appreciation for what God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ.
PASTOR EMERITUS
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