WHAT YOU MUST EXPECT FROM THE PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH.

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When you walk into a church, what should you expect?

 

If you expect religious services, you will only have to look with getting your children  to have their sacraments, burials for your aged parents and Sunday worship for the very devout.

If you expect to only hear a call to faith and conversion you will only show up to listen and accept the Gospel message, and then you can go home. Your personal expectations will shape what kind of response you will give to the ministry/leadership of the Church.

 

Do not assume that everyone (beginning with your own adult children) share the same understanding of the place of the Church community within our lives.

 

The Church is first and foremost a community of disciples of Jesus Christ. These are the people who have heard the call of Jesus to be one of his own, to share in the life and mission of the Son of God. Immediately, we can see that this faith community is living in relationship with the very Son of God. These are people who are moved and energized by the Holy Spirit.

 

These are not people who do religious things. These are people who live in friendship with Jesus. We are sent to live out of our friendship with Jesus Christ.

 

These are not perfect people and they certainly are not ready-made saints. They have many faults and sinful attitudes. They are a long way from being perfect.  And this is one of the most difficult things about belonging to the Church: they are not saints and often times they are a long way off the holiness mark.

 

We must always picture in our mind that these are people on pilgrimage. They are being moved toward that goal of living  in harmony with Jesus Christ;  but they are willing to undergo change and conversion, as they are moved by the Holy Spirit.

 

We cannot be a Christian person on our own. Rugged individualism (doing it my way) is just the opposite of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. If we do not live and participate in the life of the Christiam community, we often will not do very much else. Christianity is a community of disciples, moving toward the goal of life in its fullness with and in Jesus Christ. We need each other to survive as disciples. We need each other to nourish and support the faith we have been gifted with in this time and place.

 

When we pray each Sunday that we believe in the “holy, catholic church” we are saying that we believe the Holy Spirit is living, moving and working among this group of less than perfect people. The Holy Spirit is working to change these sinners into saints (i.e., people filled with the love and compassion of God).  We are being shaped into becoming the very heart and face of the Son of God.

 

But first, always be  rooted in the Holy Spirit and what the power of the Spirit is doing among us: sinful and imperfect tough we are.

 

This is a wonderful journey and it all is the work of the life and spirit of God among us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WE ARE TRUTH TELLERS

 

We live in very confusing times. We are bombarded every day by the leader of the most powerful country in the world who lies. And continuously! And no one appears to confront him about this destructive and very evil behavior.

 

How do you teach your children to value and tell the truth when your political leaders abuse the truth every ninety seconds?

 

As human beings we cannot live and function without a basic trust in each other.

 

When you bought your house you trusted that all the building codes were followed correctly and the basement walls are secure, the roof is shingled properly and the plumbing works and will function for many years. There are rules to be followed to provide security for everyone with regard to their dwelling space.

 

You experienced truth telling from the first moment you were born. You did not have cognitive power to recognize it , but you could count on your mother/father to feed you, keep you clean and warm. This was long before the analytic part of your brain functioned but you were living in a world where you trusted your parents. They did it and you could count on their delivery. 

 

As you grew older you were directed to speak the truth and not to lie. No one sat down and gave you a formal class on truth telling. You learnt by doing it. If you lied about hitting your little brother there were consequences. 

 

The next time you cross the street on the direction of the flashing lights you are living in a world of social trust. All vehicles come to a complete stop at the red light. You walk across the street only when the walk light flashes on. What a daily act of truth telling! What an act of trust on the part of pedestrians and drivers!

 

Be in touch with your own practice of truth telling. If someone in the store tells you something that proves to be untrue, you stop shopping at that store. If one of your relatives takes advantage of you, especially financially, you are very careful in how you deal with him/her in the future.

 

Now, this is the time when you need to take stock of your own up-brining. 

 

You might say: “My father was such a quiet man but when he spoke you always listened. There was no gray area in his reflections and commands. What he said was always true and you had better get in line with his truth. He was a truth teller. Nothing subtle about him!”

 

Examine your teachers, your school bus driver, your nurse and your uncle.  You grew up with truth tellers and they formed and challenged you to be equally a truth teller.

 

Never tolerate anyone telling a lie!

 

Claim your own power to be a truth teller!

 

 

 

WE ALL WIND UP POOR, SOMEWHERE.

If you define the poor as the people who are homeless, who sleep in their cars at night, you will see only a highly visible, but oh so small part of the population. But if you frame the whole question with the ‘the poor with their many faces,” you will experience poverty in a very challenging way.

 

Now, all of us will experience poverty a long the way. We all grow old. We lose our hearing and find family gatherings are so frustrating. Our eyesight becomes limited and we lose our driving licence. We lose loved ones, close friends and co-workers who die an early death due to cancer. We lose. We lose. We lose.

 

This is why we need to live with the direction that the poor are always very close. The very poor may be our aged mother, in all her dementia, in the nursing home. All we can do is just hold her hand in human friendship.

 

This past Sunday we were gifted with the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Lk. 1025-37) When confronted by the lawyer about “who is my neighbor?,” Jesus throws him a curve. This is not about installing limits about the identity of the poor but it challenges us to a new awareness of who is to identified as a neighbor.

 

It is the despised and unwanted Samaritan (nothing good could ever come of Samaritans!!), who reaches out to this beat-up stranger in the ditch.

 

Jesus challenges all codes of human correctness. Helping the beat-up man in the ditch is giving value and respect to every  human being, especially those who are cast aside. This upsets every social norm of who is “in” and who is “out.”

 

Look around to see who is poor.

 

It is your aged father in the nursing home. He is sharp as a whistle, but we cannot walk. He is lonely and hungers for the human contact of family and friends.

 

It is your co-worker who tears up when she shares the pain in her heart over her thirty-two year old son who is into the drugs. She fears that she will lose him in an over-dose. She triess not to burden you with her fears but some days the tears just flow like an unexpected rain shower.

 

And then there is your cousin whose family is split up. No one wants to talk to the other and there are no family gatherings for the past four years. He is so confused. Was there anything that he failed to so or did he say something that caused such searing pain?

 

Being poor has many faces. If we keep our eyes open, we will discover how close the poor actually are. We will find this Sunday that the victim in the ditch could be someone we know personally.

 

The poor with their many faces are always close to us.