C23: Were Not Ten Made Clean?

When I reflect on a lectionary passage, I want to shake your world. I want to knock one out of the park. In a way, I’m looking for trouble – inventing, as it were, problems that may not exist. Inconsequential nuances.

Today is no exemption. I find myself painted into a corner. Genuine edification flies out the door, and you’re stuck.

Jesus tells the grateful Samaritan that his faith has saved him. What does “saved” mean here.  Is it the same as being cured, because it appears all ten were indeed cured?

• Does it mean that the Samaritan has been released from the grasp sin had over him? Is this by virtue of the gratitude he expresses?
• Does the Samaritan leper discern something about Jesus, so that his return is not so much a matter of gratitude as a matter of worship.
• Are the other nine so shackled by sin, that being cured from leprosy doesn’t really afford them the awakening that only one of the lepers seem able to manifest?  Or are they just boring?

At first glance, it seems the Samaritan failed to show himself to the priests, as Jesus commanded, that the Father might be glorified.

But there was a greater purpose at hand. A purpose about which even Jesus himself may have been unaware. Jesus’ question may not have been one to merely highlight one man’s gratitude.

Rather, it may have been that Jesus needed to gauge the action of the Holy Spirit within the Samaritan leper against the others.

In the walk of Faith, discernment is very important for each of us, too. But in order for us to be sensitive to those special moments of God, we have to practice our discernment in our every-day world; we can’t sully or abdicate our daily decision making in favor of the pundits, religious or secular.

Further, we can’t expect that, like the Samaritan leper, people in our presence rarely know why they are before us, face-to-face, so we can’t expect them to fully understand their plight or their needs.

Sometimes we have to just get comfortable with each others’ presences, to look beyond what might seem to be a moment ripe for confrontation.

Most of the time we think our pithy insights are important, (or even accurate, for that matter.) We think the world may be indeed seem straining for our wisdom. Usually, however, their greatest need is fellowship.

An assurance they’re not alone, and that they stepped away from the crowd for the right reason. And most of all, that you and I will be there for them, even if we, too, are still working things out.

Ordinary Prophets / 2nd Sunday of Epiphany, Yr. C

One of the hardest images of the scripture to come to terms with is the Mary of the Gospel.

Because she has been the subject of Near Eastern iconography as the Theotokos, (or God Bearer,) and of countless artists of the Renaissance, we tend to think about Mary in rather static terms. Or we dismiss Mary altogether, because of the errors of the super-pious, who have distorted the Mary of the Gospels to almost deific proportions.

I believe it is appropriate to understand Mary and John the Baptist as Proto-Disciples -- Followers, yet in a sense, “Formers” or “IN-Formers” of the Mission of Jesus, through their own enlightenment by the Holy Spirit.
In just about every Christian tradition, too many preachers have added to this confusion by trivializing and caricaturing Mary (particularly in this passage) as the “pushy Jewish mother.” Quite the contrary, Mary, who by the way is never specifically named in the Gospel of John, confirms and affirms the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in ordinary and subtle ways.
You and I see this miracle at Cana as a quite astonishing event through the description of John. But we are so overcome by the phenomena, that we don’t realize how inconspicuous this miracle comes across in the text.
We are told in verse 9b that the steward did not know where (the wine) came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew).  I think we can also assume from the text that his disciples believed in him, in some part, with the knowledge of such signs as this. Everyone benefitted although many were unaware of God’s hand at play.
Perhaps the same can be said of God at work in our own day.  And perhaps those most oblivious or cynical about God at work in our day are his believers. Why? We tend to be cynical or oblivious, because we believers set criteria God must meet to be purposeful in a sinful and broken world. We expect the Christ, the Lord of History, to function within the constraints of what the Greeks called “Chronos,” or in linear time. John plays to our expectations, having Jesus say,
“My hour has not yet come.” (The hour, for John the Evangelist, is not the start of Jesus’ public ministry or miracles, but the time of his Passion, Death, and Rising.)
Mary, however, does not confront Jesus. That’s neither her purpose, nor, as a mother, her style. Mary, as Jesus, the Evangelist, and hopefully we, ourselves, are well aware that as Servants of God, we are to submit ourselves confidently to God’s “time,” or Kairos, in the Greek.
Mary becomes a catalyst for the Mission of Jesus IN time. Her only comment for the servants is that they should “Do whatever HE tells you.”  

In other words, the Hour, in a sense, will never come. It is His Mission which brings Jesus to His Hour, not just prophecy or portents.   

Jesus, his disciples, and you and I must seize the day, (or the HOUR, if you will.)

Jesus brings forth new wine, late along, the logic of which confounds the steward, very much like the parable of the vineyard owner who pays the last hires the same as the first, in the Gospel of Matthew (20:1-16.)

Many of us have likely known someone who has been an example of a quiet but far from benign example of the wisdom and the chutzpah of the Mother of Jesus. One of those persons for me has been a high school classmate of mine, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Frank Almade.

I was prompted to think of his gifts, when I received an email this week from my Alumni Association Secretary, soliciting nominees for the annual reunion dinner’s award for service to the Church.

Frank has always had a way of living, witnessing, and teaching about the life and the love of Christ which is ever new, not unlike the water drawn from the stone jars and presented to the wedding steward, yet ever the same, sometimes mistaken for ordinary, as the jars and the water was for the other servants.

Frank has taken on some of the most hopeless tasks within the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, leaving those involved empowered and renewed. He sometimes comes across  as a little awkward in some social situations, but that awkwardness is usually overlooked, because people easily see what motivates Frank’s heart.

Like it or not, we too are called to no less a task, that is to believe in the possibility of what we proclaim and to recognize that as servants of the Lord, we are called to an intimacy with him no less than that of his Mother. Like his Mother, we too are called to mentor others. We can spurn that part of our call -- we can muster a dismissive spirit that says we aren’t so called (and we certainly are not as holy), but in doing so we reject the purposes of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

1st Corinthians today speaks of the manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit are for the common good. You and I may not be comfortable with our call, but it’s NOT about our comfort. Yet ironically, we often become more comfortable with our call as we accept and use those very gifts.

Do whatever He tells you. What is our alternative? Let us grow in courage to take our simple, mundane resources and offer them to be transformed and made holy for what is needed, no less than our offering of bread and wine --

Of no value whatever to God, but transformed for us miraculously for whatever is needed for ourselves as the presence of Christ himself in these elements.