14th Sunday Faith in God

We learn as we open ourselves to learning. When we close ourselves off to new ways, different ways, different approaches…we will not learn. Learning brings growth and maturity; not learning causes stagnation.

Part of the challenge of teachers is to open the children to learning. It is fun to watch those teachers in the younger classes excite the kids, and those little kids are sponges. They take so much in and grow. It is amazing.  Something can happen though as we age.  We can get jaded, lazy, and/or arrogant; we know it all and there is nothing more. Or the dreaded adolescent phrase, but I still hear in adults, “This is stupid.” When we enter into this mode, it takes something significant to jar us open, to let in a little different wisdom. It requires humility.

Nothing humbles us like failure. When all our plans, ideas, machinations just do not succeed. It all falls apart. Sometimes in big ways and sometimes in small fashions. We want to succeed and we don’t.  

Jesus does not care about success.

That may be a shock to us in this American culture where we idolize those who succeed; usually meaning they have tons of money, high profile jobs or are elected. Or having the highest collections, best CSA. None of that matters to Jesus.  What matters for Jesus: trust, have faith in God.

Faith in God brings true liberation, true freedom, true salvation. Faith in God means that we truly live; we truly live as the persons God created us to be.  Faith in God means that we not only survive the hard times, but we can thrive. Faith in God brings joy of life and joy to life, knowing that we are loved.

And to understand this is the easiest thing to do, if we are open to it.

Jesus points out in the Gospel those who accept him and how he reveals God and the wisdom of God. This section of the Gospel seems to have Jesus a little frustrated. John the Baptist has been arrested; people think he was too strict and they think Jesus too liberal. Jesus chides two local towns because they have not shown faith, despite Jesus doing amazing things there.

What Jesus knows and experiences is that the ones who have grown in faith are those who have been those humbled in life; those considered lowly in the world; the sick, the sinner, the stranger..those society has rejected so they have no where, nobody else to turn to. Those who would not be considered successful.

When have we sincerely turned to God?

I bet when we have truly needed God; when everything else just collapsed. When our hearts were broken. When we faced death and sickness. When we felt so alone and abandoned. When all that we thought was important was shown to be in fact not. When we failed and life failed us. We were humbled and we became open to God. These can be turning moments in our lives.

Yet, we don’t have to be that way; we don’t have to wait for life to beat us up or to fail. We can be child-like now; open to God and God’s faith; truly open, not just superficially. We can be open in mind, heart and soul to the grace given to us in Christ, through the Scripture, through the Sacrament, in the Spirit all the time. Asking God to give us our daily bread, truly. Truly surrendering ourselves each day to trusting more in God’s ways and less so on what we think must be right, usually the way of the world.

It means reflecting on our lives; looking at when and where God has been at work. It means prayer and reading so as to be open to more and more ways to experience God. Clearly it means to come to the Eucharist, to give thanks to God who has faith in us, and to allow ourselves to grow a little more.

And what we will experience is that presence of God always and everywhere. We will experience a new level of life that maybe we did not consider or even think possible.  We will be alive.

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