This week’s readings ask us to face reality.
We can’t save our life.
We
can only spend it.
Use it up.
We can’t hoard it in a pile somewhere or put
it in a bank,
then pull it out to use it later.
It’s gone.
Today’s
gospel has Jesus presenting us with that very paradox,
first in a metaphor
about a grain of wheat
and then more straightforwardly:
if we try to save
our life, we lose it.
If we give our life away, we save
it.
__________________________________________
The scholars of the Jesus
Seminar tell us
that the grain of wheat imagery
has deep roots in our
Christian tradition;
they observe that the idea of losing your life if you
love it
and saving it if you hate it
was most probably part of the oral
tradition about Jesus
and that the evangelist later added the context
to
Christianize it for his community.
The scholars paraphrase what Jesus meant
like this:
I’m a human being, just like all humans,
a child of Adam and
Eve.
If I love my life, I lose it because it is only for me.
But if I give
up my life, I will save it
because I will have used it to serve God and
others.
That fits exactly with what we know Jesus said
about the greatest
commandment when he recited the Shema:
Hear, O Israel, God is One.
And you
shall love God
with your whole heart, and your whole soul.
And, he said,
the second commandment is like it:
Love your neighbor as
yourself.
__________________________________________
We know that Jesus
prayed.
Over and over the evangelists weave their stories around that
fact.
He goes off to pray alone.
Praying on the mountain.
Telling his
disciples not to “multiply words like the pagans do”
and teaching them how to
pray.
And after Jesus prayed, he acted.
He didn’t sit around and try to
save his life;
he spent it living out the inspiration of his prayer.
He
gave his life away doing
that.
__________________________________________
I was down at Claver
House Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day,
and Mark was commenting
that almost
three months of 2015 are gone
and he hadn’t done a thing.
I just shook my
head and said, “Yeah.”
Commiserated with him.
He felt that way, for
sure.
But I know that he tends his grandkids
after his daughter leaves for
work
and makes sure they have breakfast and get to school.
And I know he
has shoveled the walk
for an even more elderly neighbor all winter
and
that he’ll be mowing her lawn all summer.
And he’ll be there when the
grandkids get home,
greeting them at the door and asking about their
day.
He keeps an eye out on the neighborhood.
He’s my age, retired on a
fixed and limited income,
but he’s the go-to guy who fixes people’s cars for
them,
and fiddles with their toasters and table lamps
to get them going
again.
He doesn’t take money for it—
tells them to pass along a good deed
when they can.
Mark is spending his life for his family and his
neighbors,
using it up for them.
He gives his life away, and as a result
he saves it.
__________________________________________
Kelly was there
Tuesday, too.
Her home situation isn’t particularly happy.
She gets a
small disability check once a month
and manages to live on it.
As usual,
she stopped through Claver House for breakfast
on her way to volunteer at her
church’s daycare center.
She had baked a green cake
and bought some green
candy at the Dollar Store
so she could treat the kids after she read to
them.
She could save her time and energy and money,
but she
doesn’t.
She gives it away, and as a result she saves
it.
__________________________________________
That first reading from
Jeremiah tells us
why Mark and Kelly do that,
and why each of you do
that.
It’s the new covenant,
written on their hearts…
written on the
hearts of all of God’s people…
written on your hearts
through the
experiences and reflection and prayer
of your
lifetime.
__________________________________________
Dorothy Day once
said,
“Don’t make me a saint;
don’t put me on a shelf.”
If we pray and
then go about trying to get ahead,
trying to save our time and energy for
ourselves,
we put ourselves on a shelf.
It’s like the eggs my hens
lay.
If I try to save them, I lose them.
They get old and
rotten.
Nothing stinks like a rotten egg.
But if I don’t save them,
if
I use them up or give them away,
they produce good
things.
__________________________________________
So each of us has to
make choice—
give up our lives by doing good for others
and loving and
serving our neighbors…
or sit like chickens on a bunch of rotten
eggs.
--
Holy Spirit Catholic Community
Saturdays at 4:30
p.m.
Sundays at 5:30 p.m.
at 3925 West Central Avenue (Washington
Church)
www.holyspirittoledo.org
Rev. Dr. Bev Bingle,
Pastor
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