Jesus would make a great pediatrician! He loved children as we see in today’s Gospel where he takes a child in his arms and uses a child as an example of how we should relate to each other. We need to serve one another, even the most fragile and vulnerable among us. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me.” A grandmother asked her granddaughter, ‘What are you doing?’ and the child replied, ‘I’m just being myself.’  No subterfuge. No hidden agenda. ‘I’m just being myself.’ We adults are heavily involved with our egos. We’re not so much interested in just being as in building our fortunes, our reputations, advancing in our jobs, being praised by others, building our circle of friends. We are impressed with ourselves; as one commentator puts it:

“We blog and Facebook and text and photo-journal our every activity into the public view as quickly as we can. We believe in the weighty significance of each thought that pops into our head, each opinion, decision, purchase, or wardrobe change.”

The disciples were no different. They love the high moments of their life with Jesus: they love to be around him when he heals the sick or drives out demons, raises people from the dead or calms the storm. This is a Messiah we can be proud of. This is the Messiah they had been taught from childhood. A kind of superhero who would kill the bad guys.  “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared.”(Emmaus, Luke) In last week’s Gospel, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?’ and Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Messiah?” When Jesus then goes on to say how he will be tortured and killed, Peter doesn’t want to hear this. That’s not his Messiah. Again in today’s Gospel, for the second time, Jesus tells his disciples that he would be tortured and killed by his enemies. They won’t accept it. “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” They didn’t really hear their own prophetic tradition which clearly spoke of a suffering Messiah as we hear in the First Reading: “Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, who makes life inconvenient to us..let us test him with insult and torture..let us condemn him to a shameful death.”  The disciples and we have a long way to go in understanding Jesus the Messiah, the chosen one of God. There is a French verb that best describes what Jesus’ teaching means in our lives: bouleverser: to turn upside down.  Jesus turns all our preconceptions about him upside down.  He is the servant of all, the one who has no place to lay his head.  Jesus has no ego, no ‘me- first’ (after all I am God’s son, the Messiah!) because he is the man for others.  Soren Kierkegarrd said, “Jesus wants followers not admirers.” To be a follower of Christ means to imitate Jesus’ motives in all we do. To do this, we need to read and meditate on the life of Jesus, as Rolheiser says, and pray to Christ for the grace of acting with his motivation.

Our whole spiritual journey is a movement outward, away from our own egoism, our own me first, to the other, the stranger in our midst. We have to learn to listen to the other and be enriched by what they say. We have to listen to the needs of the other and respond. We have to give up our little empires and become like children trusting in Jesus’ Father, as He trusted, “and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” If we live for the other, we will experience the grace which James talks about in our Second Reading: “Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will be also disorder and wickedness of every kind.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peacable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” Paul says the same in his famous passage on love in Corinthians.

Another aspect of listening to the other is listening to creation which cries out to us. Pope Francis has called us to our responsibility for the environment in his beautiful encyclical, Laudato Si’. We are stewards of God’s creation and have a responsibility for the earth and all its inhabitants. AS he says in the beginning of his encyclical, “This sister(mother earth) cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her Lord and masters entitled to plunder her at will.” We all need to reflect deeply on how our lifestyles affect the poor and marginalized.  One small example-why do we buy bottled water? Water is a basic right of all human persons and should not be commercialized-not to mention the thousands of square miles in the ocean covered with plastic bottles! Climate change will affect us all but especially those in poor countries.  How can we modify our consumerist society so as to have less impact on climate change? Obviously this is a complex subject but Francis wants us to reflect on the religious dimension of the question of our obligation as Christians towards all creation and all creatures.  Stewardship basically means thinking of the common good not just of our own individual needs. Closer to home our stewardship also applies to our community here in NDG. Marcelle Lord, one of our community, will speak after communion about stewardship here at St. Monica’s.

Our path forward is not always easy but we can embrace the journey joyfully because God will never abandon us just as he never abandoned his son Jesus. Like the response of the little girl, “I’m just being myself”, when we act selflessly with God’s grace, we are being our true selves.  I will conclude with a native elder’s poem:

 

THE INVITATION

 

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.

I want to know what you ache for, and if you

dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

 

It doesn't interest me how old you are.

I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool

for love,

for your dreams,

for the adventure of being alive.

 

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,

if you have been opened by life's betrayals

or have become shriveled and closed from fear of future pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain,

mine or your own,

without moving to hide it,

or fade it,

or fix it.

 

I want to know if you can be with joy,

mine or your own,

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us to be careful,

to be realistic,

to remember

the limitations of being human.

 

I want to know if you can live with failure,

yours or mine,

and still stand on the

edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon, "yes!"

 

It doesn't interest me who you know, or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

 

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.

I want to know what sustains you,

from the inside,

when all else falls away.

 

I want to know if you can be alone

with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep

in the empty moments.”

―

 Oriah Mountain Dreamer