Transfiguration Moments

 

Gospel: Matthew 17: 1-9

The work of the kingdom can be tiring.  The needs of the vast multitude are many and never seem to end.  Wherever we go there are people in need of healing, people struggling to overcome their demons, people hungry for food and for attention.  The mission of mercy is a constant one like the tending of a garden, and very often it can be overwhelming.  We need rest and we need perspective.  The crowd and the people fill us with all sorts of thoughts - from delusions of grandeur to feelings of inadequacy.  

From time to time we are invited up to the mountain by the Lord.  If he had not invited us we likely would not stop to take the rest.  At this invitation we go with him to the mountain, and we hear again the words of baptism.  We are reminded that we are beloved children of God, reminded of our identity, of our rich tradition, of the promise of a future resurrection one day.  These are moments of transfiguration, of renewal God provides us in the midst of the work.  

Today's feast comes in the midst of the heat of summer.  It is hot and the work seems all the harder in this time of year.  Yet, we are given this moment of renewal, this moment that reminds us of our identity as children of God, of our great tradition of faith stretching back millennia that inspires us once again to continue the work of the kingdom, the work of mercy to a world that needs healing, reconciliation, liberation from its demons, and nourishment at table.

Send Her Away!

Gospel: Matthew 15: 21-28

The disciples are annoyed by this foreign woman who asks Jesus for help. She is a Canaanite and woman - doubly unclean!  The male disciples don't like women too much.  They didn't like Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman either.  To be sure this conversation Jesus has with the woman is not particularly warm, but it is a conversation.  Jesus rejects the suggestion of the male disciples who suggest that Jesus send her away.  He does not do that.  He engages with the woman in conversation.

In the encounter Jesus discovers a great faith in the woman doubly unclean, a faith he has not seen among his fellow Israelites or in his disciples.  The woman goes away with healing for her daughter and transformation for her own spirit, and hopefully so do we.  How often have we engaged in this behavior of the male disciples.  How often have we sent people away or written off entire groups of people because of our biases and pre-conceived ideas of them.  How often did we reject the path of encounter in favor of our own versions of the path of the fortress.  

Imagine what would have happened had Jesus taken the advice of his male disciples.  The woman's daughter would still be in the grips of her demons.  The woman herself would not have been transformed, and neither would we.  We would remain in our biases and fortress mentalities.  We would use Jesus to defend these biases and fortresses.  Now, we cannot do so.  Jesus takes the path of encounter, the path of transformation every single time, regardless of the person's gender, race, socioeconomic background, or status in society.   

Empty Rituals

Gospel: Matthew 15: 1-2, 10-14

This Gospel passage seems strange to us as we are accustomed to washing hands before meals for hygiene purposes.  Yet, the ritual washings in Judaism have nothing to do with physical cleanliness.  The rituals had to do with interior purity of intention and judgment before God.  The practice, however, became a mere formalism and few knew and internalized the meaning of the ritual.  In fact, the objection of the Pharisees here is that the disciples don't follow the tradition, nothing more.  The meaning is utterly lost.

We ourselves have many such rubrics that most have forgotten and have become empty gestures devoid of meaning.  Take, for example, the practice of dipping one's hand in holy water and signing oneself upon entering a church or even one's home.  Few know that this practice is designed to be a reminder of one's baptism and a recommitment to our baptismal promises.  Yet, how many people just perform the action of of mindless habit, or have invented all sorts of nonsense about its meaning.  

The warning Jesus gives of rituals and their defenders of his day apply in our own.  If one is to partake of the ritual, know and enter into its meaning.  Jesus invites us not to abandon ritual as much as being conscious of its meaning and appropriating that meaning into the lives we live.  How often the hardest of hearts are those so fastidious and rigid about ritual and external practice but neglect the inner meaning that is designed to transform the heart of a person, to illuminate and divinize our negligible love into an ever expansive heart open to all.