28th Sunday- What reality do we live in?

There is a local legend around Reno of a certain man, a non Christian, who took the classes for Catechists. Upon completion of the classes, this non-Christian man applied to teach children in parishes. He was denied. He did not understand that Faith is not something that is taught from books; nor is a degree, but is a lived experience.

It is a lived experience that begins with an experience of God’s love.

Let’s face a reality; we here at this Parish and generally in this US culture, we are wealthy.
We have money. We have good educations. We have a good degree of security. We have cars, jobs, clean sheets to sleep on.

These are not bad things.

What are they for?

A lot of us also have wealth in other “Stuff”.

We are wealthy in thoughts that are self-critical or judgmental of others, wealthy in anger, wealthy in fear, wealthy in sadness;  We are wealthy in ourselves.

These are not so good.

What are they for?

Recently I was chatting with a friend who grew up in an evangelical Christian family and community. He told me when members of the community met someone who was not part an Evangelical, they were concerned that the person was going to hell. So their focus was preventing that person from going to hell.

Salvation is not about avoiding hell.
Salvation, as Jesus revealed, is about life.
It is about being free to accept Love, from God and others, and to give Love, to God and other others.

Love, being that choice, that decision to see Goodness in the other and respond to it.
Love is of God. Love is Eternal. Love is the Ends, the goal of salvation, of our lives.
Love, that capacity to receive and give, is our humanity, the core of who we are.
Love, because we are created in the image and likeness of God.

The world around us, the created things of this world, will end.
The created things of this world serve only as a means to an end, to help us love.

Our problem is when those means, the things, become our ends, our goals.
As soon as we focus on the things of this world, our capacity to love diminishes.
This includes the material things, and the immaterial things, like our ideas, our laws and theories, our egos.

This also includes those attitudes and thoughts that we can obsess over.

Notice the Gospel, the Man was obedient to the Law. Nothing wrong in that.
Jesus, it says, looked at him, saw him, saw that man’s capacity to grow and be someone more! He loved him.
And Jesus gave him the next step to freedom; to go beyond obedience to the law, created by men, and to find the deeper meaning put there by God, Love.
He was to Sell everything, use that wealth to help those in need, follow me.
He was to not define himself but what he had, but by love.

The new reality.

Jesus sees within each of us that same goodness, the same capacity to be so much more. This is love.
Jesus calls to us personally, all of us, everyone, and gives us a path, a new reality for that goodness to come forth.
It is often a turning away from a wealth that we have.

Wealth, in stuff, but also a wealth in attitudes;
Turn away from the self-centeredness and see others as persons too.
Turn away from the wealth of anger we may harbor, and forgive.
Turn away from the wealth of sadness, and trust.
Turn away from the fear and love.
Turn away from the voices in our minds that tell us that we are never good enough, never perfect enough and hear the one voice that is of God and says, “I love you.”
Turn away from the loneliness and see the community around us.

Turn towards self-giving.
Turn towards compassion.
Turn towards hospitality and generosity.
Turns towards being a Eucharistic people.
Turn towards love.