July 3, 2011 Cycle A
Zachariah 9:9-10 Romans 8:9,11-13 Matthew 11:25-30
There is a saying in Haiti that sums up many conversations there: “Life is hard, but God is good!” This statement comes from a community that is among the poorest on the planet. It is a statement of faith that inspires wonder. We all tend to scramble our theology with our personal experiences. When things go well we say we’re blessed. When things go wrong we are tempted to curse God, to feel cheated, or to at least ask “Why is God doing this to me?”
To distinguish our circumstances from our theology is rare. To testify that God remains good no matter what happens here on earth is a higher order of fidelity. The Hebrew prophets operated on this level. When in the midst of war, economic upheaval, national depravity, or crushing humility, they forecast peace, prosperity, renewal and restoration. In the moral testing that each generation faces, the prophets continue to proclaim that God would be good no matter what the nations stoop to, or are beset with.
The question we must ask ourselves this weekend is: Do we in our times trust in the goodness of God? Do we refuse to despair when the economy falls apart? Or when violence lingers in the news? Or, when our international and national leaders display all the moral formation of six year olds? Because that is what our faith requires of us. The fact is religion isn’t something we do only in church. It’s how we live in the midst of our families, communities, and generation with all that nastiness, broken dreams, and dreary prognosis we encounter therein.
Religion has to do with the choices we make, whether employed or unemployed, well or sick, alone or caught up in interdependent relationships. None of us has the luxury to talk about God apart from our life experiences. We are home in the middle of everything.
This past week I had the occasion to visit the Pacific Coast and was at the edge of the ocean shore. As we know watching the surfers or swimming in the ocean, you need to swim with the current or ride the wave, for the ocean then will carry you. When you try to swim against the current we all know the ocean works against you. There is a lesson here from the readings today for they speak about the dynamic of humility. Humility is to realize that we are all surrounded and held up by the ocean of God’s compassion and grace, that we are not the source of the good in our lives; the good that we have, even the good that we do is from God, and God’s grace at work within our lives.
The opposite of humility is not pride, but ungratefulness. Jesus calls us not to deny our humanity, but to put aside our attempts to be always right, always in control, always self-sufficient. We have been blessed by God through no merit of our own. For our only adequate response to such goodness is a sense of gratitude. Understanding that every breath we take is a gift from a Creator whose love knows no limits, nor conditions.
Thus we might say that the only Creed worth professing is that we do believe, no matter how much we feel knocked down by the strength of the ocean waves. For we look again to the invitation of Jesus who invites us to approach Him with our burdens, which means that we are welcome to bring to God our total and true selves. Jesus is with us in the realities of every hour, not only in the sacramental moment at the reception of the Eucharist. For again, be reminded that a healthy approach to our spiritual development is always with a sense of gratitude. We are not asked to set down our pack of troubles outside the church door, rest an hour and then reassume the burdens of life alone once more. For when life is hard in the middle of everything Jesus accompanies us to demonstrate that God is, now and always, relentlessly on the side of good. Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom Adrians, Pastor Christ the King