February 3, 2013 Cycle C Second DMF Talk
At the end of our Gospel today we hear how Jesus’ hometown crowd was so outraged by His words they wanted to throw Him off a cliff. Not a fiscal cliff you understand, but a real cliff. Imagine how things have changed. These days many young adults seek the thrill of bungee jumping, where they tie a rope around their ankles and willingly hurl themselves from any available precipice.
It seems that some young people enjoy the challenge of facing down their fears, trusting the generally good track record of those who have done it before them, and publicly showing their courage even to the brink of death. Those of us not courageous or stupid enough to attempt a bungee jump have to concede that to do it, for whatever reason, is heroic stuff.
Heroic stuff is at the heart of our Scripture readings today. Even though the crowd hated what they heard. Jesus preached boldly to His own people. The prophet Jeremiah was similarly courageous in his teaching in the face of enormous persecution from his people. And St. Paul knows the only reason one can endure hardships and rejection, and even be seen as stupid in the eyes of the world, is for the sake of love.
The word “love” has to be one of the most misused words in our language. We say we love our houses, our holidays, our car, and even ice cream. But using “love” in this way we scarcely come close to what Christian love is all about.
St. Paul wrote this beautiful letter to tell the early Christian community to grow up because there was much disagreement and dissention among them. He says being a Christian means, quite simply, to love. Not physical love, not romantic love, but something that the Greeks called “agape.” Its sacrificial giving, charity, that is the love Paul was describing. And then he offers this blueprint for how to live that love.
Twenty years after Christ’s death and resurrection, St. Paul, an itinerate tent maker from Tarsus, creates another kind of tent --- the overarching idea that lies at the heart of the Gospel. Something like a tent, to shelter us, protect us, and shade us, and it is love, for “love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things, it never fails.”
Paul knew that Christian love was an intensely practical business. There is no point in any of us saying we love anyone unless our actions follow the profession we make. St. John was accurate in his letter where he says, “If you say you love God and hate your neighbor, you are a liar.” We can spout the right words out about loving God and each other all we like, but if we do not show it how we live, then we are noisy gongs and clanging cymbals.
There is no way around it. Christian love always and everywhere involves sacrifice.
As we move into the second week of our Diocesan Development Appeal I ask you to make a sacrifice financially to pledge to the Diocesan mission of spreading the Gospel across the southern and western part of Colorado. Your contribution of $300.00, or $25.00 to $30.00 a month will make it possible for us to get closer to our Diocesan obligation of $94,000.00.
Please again, think of the response you as an individual or family can make to work together with the Body of Christ here at Christ the King to make this a reality. The pledge cards are again in your pews today. I encourage you at this time to pick one up and to fill it out and let us hear from you soon. It is so important that we continue to do our part as a parish community for the greater good of the Diocese in which we live. We can love sacrificially because other people have loved us in the same manner.
Our faith today calls us to do something more than the normal. To be something more for the unseen parishioner, or needy person in Durango, or Cortez, or Pagosa Springs, or Peonia. All which are part of the Diocese of Pueblo. Your contribution, your pledge today, is really showing in effect how we can love and love better not only those we know, but those we don’t. Not only those we like, but those we dislike. For the faith that we have always calls us and stretches us. Our support can be sacrificial. And that is what Christian love is all about.
The good news today is that we also have legions of companions who have been down this road before us. From Jeremiah to Jesus, to Paul, to the martyrs and saints, and to our own families. We know that it is possible to face down our fears, trust the track record of those who have done it before us, and publicly show our courage and our conviction and leap into the future with only three ropes tied to our ankles. On one is written “faith,” on the second is written “hope,” and on the third and strongest rope is written “love.”
We pray then today for the grace to be generous in heart and also to be heroic in the courage it takes to sacrificially love others through our charity in action.
Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom Adrians, Pastor Christ the King