20th Sunday Unity and change

Being around people in recovery can really bring a new awareness about life. Those in recovery from substance addiction, drugs, alcohol etc often need to leave behind people so as to find the healing. They need to leave behind those who enable or trigger their addictions. It can be painful in the short term, but the long term benefits of being sober and healthy make up for it.  People recovering from bad relationships or learning how to change their own behavior will also often need to break ties with people that hold them back as well. Toxic people do not lend to healing.

It is a dying to self to find new life. And these distancing of relationships do not always go well; others may not understand and there can be some acrimony, anger, resentment and of course, grief.

Creation has not been completed yet. Creation still needs its spiritual fulfillment, its transformation into the Kingdom of Heaven. God remains at work. The Father sent the Son, the Son came for the Father to initiate that transformation and to invite us to participate in this great work.  It begins with us becoming new Creations as well, or rather becoming fulfilled ourselves as humans. It is about becoming fully Human in the image and likeness of God. Jesus calls us to turn away from the old self, the incomplete self and what keeps us limited, and to put on the new self. Jesus showed us this; and how living in this way brings true life. When we live truly we live for the Kingdom.

It may sound counter-intuitive but Jesus’ concern and emphasis was not about us getting into heaven; but opening up heaven here on earth. This means disciples would live differently than those who do not believe. They, we, need to change and embrace this life, and live it to the full.  

And people do not like change.

Change scares people; Change changes power structures, and people who like to think they have power, do not want to give up their imagined power.

Yet Jesus changes how we think about life, how we interact with others, and how we are family and how we are as humans.

In Jesus’ time, family and tribe meant everything. People outside the family group, the tribe, were suspect; hospitality was given, but it only went so far. Safety was found in the DNA family.

Jesus redefined family. I don’t think we can fully appreciate this in our modern sense, but when he extended food and healing to strangers, to non-Jews, this was radical. He even said, family is not based solely on DNA but on service to God. This would cause divisions among society and within families.

St. Paul grasped this, and lived it. The early Church did this as well, collecting their goods for the benefit of others; working against the distinctions imposed by the times. They created new families based on Jesus and on God. This did not always go well. There were conflicts with society and within DNA families. This is what Luke speaks of.

We still struggle with this too. Our divisions as Church, as Country, as World comes from our failure to be transformed by Grace, by God. It comes from our failure to imagine we can be different, even better.  We form tribes and we exclude others who think differently We demean other human persons, because they have different political viewpoints, because they live life differently from us, because they have different skin color, because they are of a different gender, because they are gay, because they are straight, because they speak a different language. We seek to make the world conform to us; and we forget Jesus’ revelation.

This past week, in the church calendar two martyrs were remembered. St. Lawrence, an early martyr killed by the Romans for being Christian, for living differently, for worshiping One God and for caring for people. A threat to the Roman Way of life.  St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, or aka Edith Stein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, murdered by a “Christian” country in WWII simply because she did not meet their standards of community.

Christ calls us to look within ourselves, at our own divisions, our conflicts…look at the roots. Look at ourselves and truly ask if we are being transformed in Grace to be as we are meant to be; not unlike Bread and Wine transformed in Grace to the Son.

Christ calls us to be transformed, to think as Christ, to live as Christ, to be as Christ. It means to truly embrace our humanity, and once embraced we can work with God and transform our world.