Lent Day 4: Outsiders in Luke 4

Luke 4 contains a curious passage:

“No prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was covered for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” 4:24-27.

This is said in response to the doubt his fellow Nazarenes have when he claims for himself the mantle of prophet in their presence (4:17-21). In Luke, this episode comes at the beginning Christ’s ministry, just after he returned from his 40 day retreat in the dessert (4:1-13), and this is literally first experience preaching—so I suppose one takeaway is that even Christ “failed” at first.

In any case, this isn’t what makes the passage so interesting I feel the need to blockquote it at length. No, it’s interesting because it’s our first example of Christ—of God—interpreting Scripture we see in Luke. It’s the first time he interprets the meaning. The reason I find it fascinating. The story about Elijah and the widow in Zarephath is found in 1 Kings 17. The story of the Naaman the leper and Elisha is found in 2 Kings 5.

1 Kings 17 is our first introduction to Elijah in Scripture. Unlike the lyric introduction of God’s call of Jeremiah Jeremiah 1), we are introduced to Elijah with a terse and ominous prophecy he gives to the Israeli King Ahab: “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, during these years there shall be no dew or rain except at my word.” (1 Kings 17:1). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Lord’s next command to Elijah is leave Ahab rather abruptly, and he eventually finds himself led to Zarephath—a Phoenician city in modern day Lebanon—with God promising a “designated” widow to provide for him. (17:9). Apparently this was unbeknownst to said widow, because Elijah finds a widow outside the city walls, and asks her for water and some bread. She replies she has only a handful of flour and a little oil and she and her son are but waiting for death. (17:11-13). Elijah responds that she should go cook something and “the jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry” until the end of the drought. (17:14). And lo and behold, the widow does what Elijah said, and all involved were able to eat for a year. (17:15). Because one miracle is never enough, he later heals her son when her son is afflicted with sickness—and then she recognizes Elijah as “a man of God” from whose mouth “the word of the Lord comes truly.” (17:17-24).

It is interesting this is the story Jesus chooses to prove his point. Perhaps there are no better stories—I don’t know, I’m not an Old Testament scholar. However, on first glance it hardly appears Elijah was “sent to” the widow to preach or for her benefit, as Jesus’ description in Luke 4 would make it appear. No, God tells Elijah the widow is supposed to “provide for” him, yet, in the end, Elijah (and the Lord, of course) is the one who ends up allowing the widow to provide for both of them. Perhaps this is not a mistake. Jesus is at home, where he grew up. One’s home is meant to nourish you, to provide for you. “There’s no place like home.” Yet, already being the sign of contradiction Simeon prophesized in Luke 2, Jesus, instead, is met with incredulity. They call his father by name—seemingly incredulous that this carpenter’s son could have the audacity to call himself a prophet. Yet, he responds by reminding them of this story, where the one who was meant to be nourished instead does the nourishing. Perhaps this is not only furtherance of the rebuke Jesus makes on the face of his words—that they doubt in the face of truth—but a failing at their duty to provide for one of their own. But perhaps not. See, the widow was not failing in a duty to provide, in the sense that she literally had no food with which to feed Elijah. Instead, God had chosen her to provide for his prophet, despite her very lack of ability to do so. And then He provided her the resources to do it, assuming she followed the words of his prophet. Perhaps Jesus is saying the Nazarenes are similarly inadequate to provide for a prophet of the Lord, without the aid of the prophet himself. And he is rebuking them for not accepting his truth, bemoaning that a prophet must go far from his homeland to find someone who will listen to truth without second guessing its bearer.

Moving on to Jesus’ second example, in 2 Kings 5, Naaman is a great general of Aram—a neighboring kingdom of Isreal—and he is a leper. An Israeli girl the Arameans had captured in a raid told Naaman that he should go see “the prophet in Samaria,” who could heal his leprosy. (2 Kings 5:1-3). Elisha indicates Naaman should wash in the Jordan to be healed. (5:8). Naaman initially doubts the instructions, complaining “are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana, and the Pharpar, better than the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?” but his servants call him out, saying “if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not do it? All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.” (5:12-13). Naaman follows Elisha’s instruction, and so is healed. (5:14).

Naaman’s story is different than the widow of Zarephath’s in the sense that Naaaman sought out Elisha. However, perhaps the significance Jesus is pointing to in his reference of this story is twofold. Not only are the prophet’s instructions followed with respect (after a little urging) by the outsider, but the instructions themselves were not so alien as Naaman expected. Naaman’s first reaction is, “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there to invoke the Lord his God, and would move his hand over the spot, and thus cure the leprosy.” (2 Kings 5:11). Indeed, the waters of Damascus that Naaman references are known for being clean, while the Jordan—not so much. However, in following the seemingly mundane act, Naaman is cleansed. So, too, the Israelis look for the clear. Indeed, he even criticizes them for expecting the miraculous, rebuking them for impliedly saying “Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum” (Luke 4:23). Instead

Interestingly, in both stories, the initially doubts. So Jesus cannot be trying to imply prophets are immediately with respect outside of their homeland. No—both the widow and Naaman initially doubted—though ultimately they were open to God’s grace. However, in the widow of Zarephath, he reminds them that it is God who provides the strength to serve him through listening to his Word. In there reference to Naaman, he reminds them of God’s presence in the seemingly mundane. We should remember Elijah’s experience, also in 1 Kings,

“Then the Lord said, ‘Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD; the Lord will be passing by.’ A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord- but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake - but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire - but the LORD was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.” (1 Kings 19).

As we go through Lent preparing for Christ coming through death on the cross, and perhaps as we prepare for a new Pope, we should remember that we do not need an impressive outsider or the miraculous to see God. Rather, the seemingly mundane, limited, and oh-so-normal, through the grace of God, can bring God’s healing to our lives.

Lent Day 3: Children of God in Luke 3

Luke 3 gives perhaps the best Lent story in the Bible: John the Baptist preaching in the desert, eating locusts and calling for us to make straight our paths, and the baptism of Jesus. Perhaps because it is so perfect, I am going to be difficult and completely bypass it to focus on something I’ve never heard anyone ever talk about. At the very end of Luke 3, Luke includes the genealogy of Jesus, going all the way back. And by all the way back, I mean all the way. Like Matthew, he links Jesus to Abraham through David. But then he continues the genealogy to back to Noah, and even Adam. But he does stop there. He ends by stating “Adam, the son of God.”

So, certainly, Jesus is the Son of God, in a theological title we reserve for the Messiah. But he is also the son God by virtue of being related to Adam: the first human, who was, as Luke points out, the son of God.

The implications are rather breathtaking. If Adam is the son of God, and Jesus is thus the great-great-great-great[…]great-grandson of God through Adam—so is everyone else.

Pope Benedict XVI, the first modern Pope to humbly profess his weakness to give up the Petrine ministry when he felt called to, is a son of God.

The great Martin Luther King, Jr, the renowned activist who unabashedly centered his message for equality around God, is a son of God.

But it goes further than that. Despite her disinvitation to the Eucharistic table Kathleen Sebelius is a daughter of God.

And even still, Pontius Pilate is the son of God. He condemned his own brother to death.

And, less popularly, Osama Bin Laden is a son of God. He financed a regime that massacred his own family, and found his own death at hands of them, as well.

And so we can learn from this. Every one of us is a member of the human race. Every one of us a descendant of Adam. And every one of us is a son or daughter of God. So Luke calls us to remember that, and in the words I borrow from C.S. Lewis, it is children of God “whom we joke with, marry, snub, and exploit.”

Lent Day 2: Pax Christi in Luke 2

Luke 2 tells the story of Christmas: the birth and childhood of Jesus, and a theme that runs through Luke’s story is peace. The two prayers contained in this chapter both focus around this. When the angels visit the shepherds, they break out in prayer, “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (2:14). Upon seeing the Christ presented in the temple, Simeon exclaims, “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word.”

Clearly, peace is in some way connected to Christ. It’s a theme that goes beyond Luke 2 Ephesians 2:14 calls Christ “our peace,” and Colossians 3:15 discusses “the Peace of Christ.” So what do we mean by this pax Christi? Do we mean lack of war? On one level, certainly. But the Roman empire was in the middle of the Pax Augusta—a period of relatively few armed conflicts enforced by the armies of the Emperor Augustus. If pax Christi means only world peace, we have a problem. After all, not only did peace exist before Christ (and to any Roman, peace within the Empire counted as world peace), but it was brought about by someone entirely different: Caesar Augustus. And anyone who has studied the Church can hardly claim that Christ brought about peace.

Yet, even living in the lack of armed conflict during the Pax Romana, Simeon says he may “go in peace” only upon seeing the Christ. And so we Christians believe Christ is the peacebringer. How? Well, Simeon also says Christ is a “sign that will be contradicted . . . so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” (2:34-35). It is this very “sign of contradiction” that allows us to look for peace in the life of someone whose life ended in anything but a peaceful manner. Us followers of Christ believe peace means more than not hitting someone. Consider the phrase “at peace with yourself.” It doesn’t merely mean you are not physically hurting yourself—though that is a prerequisite—it means more. It means a harmony—a tranquility—without fear and without tension. St. John of the Cross prays “O blessed Jesus, give me the stillness of soul in You. Let your mighty calmness reign in me. Rule me, O King of Gentleness, King of Peace.”

Even in the world in which armed conflict and death occurs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Chad, Mali, Somalia, Uganda, Colombia, Burma, Mexico—the list goes on and on—Christ is still present in each of our hearts. Even with all the hatred we witness daily in our very own country—even in the very name of Christ—we can still find peace our relationship with Christ. That is the sign of contradiction. And at Lent, as we prepare for that ultimate sign of contradiction—salvation through the Cross—we are called to remember that as we enter the Mass, and lay down before the altar, or even open up the altar of our heart in our daily prayer, we open ourselves up to the Pax Christi that Simeon found in Christ.

Lent Day 1: Unfair Annunciations in Luke 1

As a Lenten discipline, I am reading one chapter of the Bible a day, and then writing a brief daily reflection which I will be posting here. Conveniently, the Gospel of Luke and Corinthians 1 add up to precisely 40 chapters, so I shall plan on reflecting first on the Gospel of Luke and then on 1 Corinthians. (It actually works out the same if after Luke, I go to the Gospel of Mark or to Romans. There is much to be said with any of these three paths, and while I currently plan on sticking to 1 Corinthians, I’ll simply go as the Spirit wills me after completing Luke.) I make the caveat these are just the product of single day reflections, and I am still in school, so please forgive content that might not be as well thought out or even possibly erroneous.

Luke 1 tells the story of the Annunciation. Everyone knows the story, in which the Archangel Gabriel gives us the opening lines to the Hail Mary with his greeting in 1:28. A much less talked about part of the story is Gabriel’s appearance to Zachariah in the Temple sanctuary to announce the conception of John the Baptist in his elderly wife—who so happens to be Mary’s sister. In response to Gabriel’s statement that to Zechariah “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, you prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him john. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. . . .” (1:13-14).

Imagine yourself in Zechariah’s shoes, being told that your elderly wife . Not only is it physically impossible—it’s dangerous. Pregnancy was dangerous enough at the time without being old while doing it. Much like we would if told we had just won the lottery simply by wishing for it (after all, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is), Zechariah’s first reaction was doubt. “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” (1:18). However much we might have done the same thing, Gabriel wasn’t impressed. In return for looking a gift horse in the mouth, he is struck mute until the birth of his son, because he “did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.” (1:19). Even his wife wasn’t impressed. When Mary visits her, Elizabeth greets her with the words, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled”—in case her husbands sixth month of muteness had made him forget his initial doubt. (1:45)

First off, this seems unfair. Sure, Mary famously says, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” (1:38). However, her first reaction was remarkably similar to Zechariah’s: “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?”(1:34). She expresses the same doubt, and instead of being punished with muteness, Gabriel replies not only that “the power of the Most High will overshadow you,” but gives further proof—her sister Elizabeth has conceived a son. If it’s possible for her, certainly it’s possible for Mary! Only then, after this assurance, does Mary acquiesce to be the Lord’s handmaid.

So how can we reconcile this discrepancy, where doubt in one case is punished, and in the next is understood? Same input: different outputs. On one level, we have to face the reality is that God is not fair, in our human understanding of it. God is just, and does not show “partiality” (Acts 10:34-35), but He’s not fair, in the sense of modern day American sensibilities. He does not always match up the same output for a given input.

He’s not fair, but he does consider context. Consider the result of punishing Zechariah with muteness. “When he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary.” (1:22). Alternatively, what would have happened if Mary were struck mute? Not only is it unlikely Jesus would have been born (unlike Zechariah, whose previous prayer was being granted, it does not appear that Mary had never prayed to be mother of the Messiah), but imagine a pregnant fiancée trying to convince her future husband that the reason she was pregnant was not that she cheated on him, but that she will be “overcome with the power of the Most High.” Now imagine her trying to communicate to him why she was pregnant, mute. If your fiancée came home mute and pregnant, your first reaction wouldn’t be that you were witnessing a miracle—it’d probably be that your fiancée had been raped. By the time she could correct him effectively, it would have been 9 months. What if he told other people of that suspicion? What if he couldn’t shake off something so traumatic that he had believed for 9 months. What if he was convinced he knew who had “done it,” and tried to pin rape on an innocent? This is not cloud of doubt God would want surrounding the birth of His son.

So God is not fair, but He does have a plan. It would not have been in that plan to have His son’s birth surrounded with sorrow rather than joy. Zechariah, on the other hand. So when we see something that doesn’t seem fair, think to yourself, what is the context? What is God’s plan? It just might be the case that God cares about more than just matching up output to input.

Wonder and Awe

For our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became Man.

There are a few I don’t like about the new translation of the Nicene Creed. Is it technically more accurate to say “consubstantial with the Father” rather than “one in being”? Sure! Some people might even be inspired to look up what the heck “consubstantial” means instead of merely mentally translating it into “one in being.” Unfortunately, the birth narrative contained in the new translation simply doesn’t do Christmas justice.

The new translation changes one word—just a single one. Instead of saying Jesus “was born” of the Virgin Mary, we now say Jesus “was incarnate” of the Virgin Mary. To mention that God was incarnated in Jesus is theologically more descriptive, and it paints a really nice contrast between how we picture most of us as being “ensouled” flesh, while Jesus is a soul in-fleshed (carne being the Latin word for “meat” or “flesh”).

But whatever its theological and linguistic merits, there’s one thing substituting “born” with “incarnated” doesn’t do: it doesn’t make us think of babies. See, we normally think of babies as being born, not incarnated. And that’s the point of Christmas! That Jesus was born. That God came down to Earth in the form of a child—a baby.

I know we talk about God coming to Earth as a child so often in the Catholic Church that we can forget its significance, but think about that for a moment. Jesus was a baby. A crying, smelly baby who Mary had to clean up after and patiently coax through the process of crawling, awkward toddling, and finally walking. A baby who was absolutely awestruck when he discovered his hand and his shadow. In coming to Earth as a baby, the Creator of the Universe exchanged omnipotence for dependency, and omniscience for ignorance.

This was not an accident by God, or a necessity. God didn’t need to come as a baby. He could have “incarnated” as a 30-year old, gone seen John the Baptist, run his preaching circuit around Judea for three years, and then done his whole salvific crucifixion-resurrection thing. It would have been more efficient, and probably a lot easier. I mean, if given the choice, I’m not sure I would be a baby again—somehow all the best blackmail pictures of me come from when I was a baby. I’m sure all the Angels and Saints in heaven still joke about what crazy-adorable things Jesus did as a child.

That is what today is about: that God chose to come as a baby. In case we ignored His words, “whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3), we are reminded every year with the sight of God in a manger. And the manger calls us to humble ourselves as did this Child of God—the baby Jesus. We are called to crawl through life with the wonder and awe that accompanies the child as he discovers what seem to us absolutely mundane and ordinary. For, as Joan of Arcadia reminds us, even the most common tree is a miracle through God’s eyes.

My Christmas prayer is that no matter how wearying our life may get, and as comfortable and tempting cynicism may be, that we all remember that God was born into this world as a Child. I pray that we respond to God’s call to see the world through the eyes of His baby—to be as dependent on our Father and as awestruck at His creation as this Holy Child.

Merry Christmas.

Real Life

Yesterday, while I was busy stressing over my property professor's about a take-home exam based on Coleridge's Kubla Khan and a Mongolian revolt from China, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and shot 26 people. Victimes included the principal, his mother, and 20 children between 5 and 10 years old.

Maybe it was because both my mom and my sister are teachers, and the thought of someone carrying a gun into a school of all places is personal, but it was a jolt that reminded me that no matter how "stressful" life gets in my own little bubble of the world, real life goes on, and the world doesn't stop. I can really have no words at this point aside from those I wrote regarding the Aurora shootings, but I wanted to break my hiatus and come out of my law school finals hibernation to post the following thoughts that Archbishop Chaput, the then-Archbishop of Denver (and current Archbishop of Philadelphia), wrote in 1999 in the wake of the murder of 12 students at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado. Other thoughts specifically on the Newton shootings come from Fr. James Martin, Cardinal, and the Pope.

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Ending the Violence Begins With Our Own Conversion
Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Denver

He descended into hell.

Over a lifetime of faith, each of us, as believers, recites those words from the Creed thousands of times. We may not understand them, but they're familiar. They're routine. And then something happens to show us what they really mean.

Watching a disaster unfold for your community in the glare of the international mass media is terrible and unreal at the same time. Terrible in its bloody cost; unreal in its brutal disconnection from daily life. The impact of what happened this past week in Littleton, however, didn't fully strike home in my heart until the morning after the murders, when I visited a large prayer gathering of students from Columbine High School, and spent time with the families of two of the students who died.

They taught me something.

The students who gathered to pray and comfort each other showed me again the importance of sharing not just our sorrow, but our hope. God created us to witness His love to each other, and we draw our life from the friendship, the mercy and the kindness we offer to others in pain. The young Columbine students I listened to, spoke individually -- one by one -- of the need to be strong, to keep alive hope in the future, and to turn away from violence. Despite all their confusion and all their hurt, they would not despair. I think I understand why. We're creatures of life. This is the way God made us: to assert life in the face of death.

Even more moving was my time with the families of two students who had been murdered. In the midst of their great suffering — a loss I can't imagine — the parents radiated a dignity which I will always remember, and a confidence that God would somehow care for them and the children they had lost, no matter how fierce their pain. This is where words break down. This is where you see, up close, that faith — real, living faith -- is rooted finally not in how smart, or affluent, or successful, or sensitive persons are, but in how well they love. Scripture says that "love is as strong as death." I know it is stronger. I saw it.

As time passes, we need to make sense of the Columbine killings. The media are already filled with "sound bites" of shock and disbelief; psychologists, sociologists, grief counselors and law enforcement officers -- all with their theories and plans. God bless them for it. We certainly need help. Violence is now pervasive in American society — in our homes, our schools, on our streets, in our cars as we drive home from work, in the news media, in the rhythms and lyrics of our music, in our novels, films and video games. It is so prevalent that we have become largely unconscious of it. But, as we discover in places like the hallways of Columbine High, it is bitterly, urgently real.

The causes of this violence are many and complicated: racism, fear, selfishness. But in another, deeper sense, the cause is very simple: We're losing God, and in losing Him, we're losing ourselves. The complete contempt for human life shown by the young killers at Columbine is not an accident, or an anomaly, or a freak flaw in our social fabric. It's what we create when we live a contradiction. We can't systematically kill the unborn, the infirm and the condemned prisoners among us; we can't glorify brutality in our entertainment; we can't market avarice and greed . . . and then hope that somehow our children will help build a culture of life.

We need to change. But societies only change when families change, and families only change when individuals change. Without a conversion to humility, non-violence and selflessness in our own hearts, all our talk about "ending the violence" may end as pious generalities. It is not enough to speak about reforming our society and community. We need to reform ourselves.

Two questions linger in the aftermath of the Littleton tragedy. How could a good God allow such savagery? And why did this happen to us?

In regard to the first: God gave us the gift of freedom, and if we are free, we are free to do terrible, as well as marvelous, things . . . And we must also live with the results of others' freedom. But God does not abandon us in our freedom, or in our suffering. This is the meaning of the cross, the meaning of Jesus' life and death, the meaning of He descended into hell. God spared His only Son no suffering and no sorrow -- so that He would know and understand and share everything about the human heart. This is how fiercely He loves us.

In regard to the second: Why not us? Why should evil be at home in faraway places like Kosovo and Sudan, and not find its way to Colorado? The human heart is the same everywhere — and so is the One for whom we yearn.

He descended into hell. The Son of God descended into hell . . . and so have we all, over the past few days. But that isn't the end of the story. On the third day, He rose again from the dead. Jesus Christ is Lord, "the resurrection and the life," and we — His brothers and sisters — are children of life. When we claim that inheritance, seed it in our hearts, and conform our lives to it, then and only then will the violence in our culture begin to be healed.

In this Easter season and throughout the coming months, I ask you to join me in praying in a special way for the families who have been affected by the Columbine tragedy. But I also ask you to pray that each of us — including myself — will experience a deep conversion of heart toward love and non-violence in all our relationships with others.

Blog on Hold

Please forgive the law student studying for finals. The downside of law school: 100% of one's grades are from the 4 final exams that occur over the space of 7 days. My final final is December 21st, and, assuming no ancient Mayan predictions come true, regular blogging shall resume subsequently.