The Words Jesus Gave Us

Gospel: Matthew 6: 7-15

A Christian would never admit that they pray like pagans.  After all, we pray in Jesus' name and in the Spirit!  Yes, well, leaving that aside, the words of Jesus today indicate otherwise.  Jesus gives us a simple prayer, around which sacramental Christians have constructed elaborate liturgy with endless prayers, and non-sacramental Christians have adorned with the rambles of spontaneous prayer and a sermon series on the book of Judges.  How often Christians compete on length of service as if that were the criterion for worship and Christian life.

Jesus tells us to pray simply and briefly.  The essence of our prayer is to be the one thing necessary - mercy.  We are in need of God's mercy for our sins, and we ourselves need to be merciful as the sole criterion to receive mercy and for being a Christian at all.  For, if we have mercy in both senses we have all that we need.  We have the burden of our sins lifted, and we have the peace of God's kingdom within our own hearts as people of mercy directed to all.  

If mercy be not the center of our prayer life and moral striving, ours is then a false Christianity, one that is of bloodlust and power.  But mercy was the entire ministry of Jesus, who came to be the incarnation of God's mercy in the world, the one who invites and anoints others to be the mercy of God in the world.  So, today we pray to be merciful not only so that mercy might be shown to us, but because it is the first of the Beatitudes, the way to peace in the world, the essence of God's very life among us.   

Dropping the Selfie

Gospel: Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18

In our modern age we cannot even have dinner without taking a selfie and posting it to social media to show everyone what we are eating.  Why we think this is important is elusive to reason, but we persist in the practice.  The modern age is one of omnipresent media and self-promotion.  Social media gives us the opportunity to create an array of personae, all of them false, to display to the world.  We become a vast array of AI identities that are ironically self-created.  

So come we now to the core Christian activities of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  Public prayer is itself a competitive sport, with categories for length, cadence, and eloquence, not to mention the vast array of religious costume to accompany it.  Ash Wednesday did not occur if we did not post a selfie with ashes and an account of our Lenten fasts.  And who can resist a photo with a big check showing how much we gave to a cause or raised for our parish?  We are awash in self promotion in the very things we ought not.  

Here again we have convinced ourselves that Jesus is talking about other people and not us.  And herein lies a subtle Anti-Semitism for the other people we think Jesus is talking about are Jewish.  Not us Christians.  We think what we do above doesn't apply.  But it does.  Today is a day for us to do away with the selfie, with the self-promotion, and the need to be seen.  Today is a day for us to do the work of the kingdom solely because it is good and not for self-gain or our egos.  

Infinite Love

Gospel: Matthew 5: 43-48

Here is a commandment of Jesus no one tries to fulfill: love your enemies.  We make all sorts of excuses as to why we cannot love an enemy.  We would rather break up families than attempt to keep this commandment.  We would rather be apart from one another rather than share a meal around the table.  All sorts of noble reasons are offered from the political to the theological differences.  Yet they all fail to follow the command of the Lord.

Consider the table of the Lord.  We find any and every reason to exclude someone from the Lord's table.  And yet consider the Lord at table while on earth. He ate with all of his enemies.  He dined with tax collectors and prostitutes.  He ate with the Pharisees and lawyers who opposed him.  He ate with the one who betrayed him, the one who denied him thrice, and the ones who abandoned him.  Yet, we somehow find a way to not share the Lord's table, let alone our own, with so many people.

How easy we find it to start wars, to execute someone, or to deport another person.  None of these things did the Lord command us to do.  None of these things Jesus ever did while on earth.  Yet those who claim his mantle somehow find it easier to do these things rather than follow the command of the Lord and love our enemies.  Today is a day for us to repent, to find concrete ways of loving our enemies small and great, to fulfill the Lord's command and example.