Violence and Salvation

The Source of Our Salvation

Paul tells us that Jesus is “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty”, Jesus says, “I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life."

Which brings me to a story;

There once was a family traveling across the desert. They are near death from thirst. They happen to come across an oasis but they are unable to find the water. There is a child with the family whose acute sense of smell detects moisture and with considerable energy the child explores the oasis until at last, he finds a cave that leads to water. He signals to his family to follow him into the cave and there they drink to their full, they luxuriate in the plentiful supply of water. They bathe, they wash, they fill their water skins and journey on in joy and gratitude toward their destination. On their way, they leave a stone to mark the way to the spring. In succeeding centuries other families, by the hundreds and thousands come by the same oasis until eventually a great cathedral is built on the spot marking the presence of the spring. Yet the people began to forget where the source of this water was. They were preoccupied more with the building they had erected and with the life giving spring that brought that building into existence in the first place. The spring was lost to them. The cathedral was abandoned and it began to fall into disrepair. At last, more time passed another family came to the oasis and they too were near death for thirst. The child among them ventured into the cathedral and her acute sense of smell detected moisture. She found her way to the spring where the water was. She too signaled to her family. They then drank, and washed and filled their water skins and continued on. 

What then is the source of our salvation?

What is this “living water”?

For one thing it has to do with our connectedness to God. That connection centers around our ability to respond to God’s love for us by loving God in return. But there is a brokenness in that connection. Sin and Death break the bonds of love that exist between us and God. There is an of abundance Sin. We read about it daily in our newspapers or watch it unfold before our very eyes on the television. There it is in all its amazing panoply of ugliness; a veritable smorgasbord of sin. Warfare, bombings in the public square, carnage in the public schools...you name it we do it. Then there are those little private sins we commit against God and one another on a fairly regular basis. And if that isn’t enough there are all those little bad habits we develop along the way; lots of things that are just plain not good for us.

We seek those things that destroy God’s creatures, ourselves and others and God’s creation as well. We seek our own will instead of God’s. Sin, as one of my theology professors once quipped, is the only doctrine of faith we can prove. All others teaching of the church must be taken on faith. Ultimately, I am not interested in Sin. Well, maybe that’s not quite true. I think the truth is we’re all enticed by many things that we all know are not good for us. But at the deepest level of my life I thirst desperately for my Salvation. 

Because what also separates me from my God is Death. Suffering and Death and the Specter of both all too often raise a shadow upon life all too often. And there we are. Helpless it seems against the reality of our own helplessness and weakness.

Where then is my Salvation?

Where is the Spring of Water of which Jesus speaks from which I may drink so that I too may live forever within the heart of God.

I suspect that this Salvation will come from Baptism. Because once I find out where that well within rises to my joy, I will live again. I will be forgiven of all my sins, and the inevitability of suffering and death will then be set within the context of the Victory of Jesus on that Great Easter Day!

For the truth of the matter is that what breaks the barrier between me and God is the love that God bears toward us. And that love is forever. And once I find this way to God nothing in all creation can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

And even though the bonds of sin are strong the bond of forgiveness is stronger still. And God is the final Victor. God has the final say. God says we are forgiven. God says that we may come to his spring of water where we may drink freely, bathe and luxuriate in the refreshing spring of God’s love and then live forever.

So then Jesus completes the picture; don’t just love God, "Love one another". “This is how they will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.” One member of my Bible Study group on Tuesday said as we studied these words; "That is possible only up to a point" And another worshipper at the Villa asked me "What do I do about my neighbor? I've never had a problem like this before. She is rude. She is hurtful. She is hateful. I don’t know what to do.” I told her, I suspect that the problem is within her, not you. Go on loving her the best way you know how.

Now, I confess to you before God and the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and all the other angels too, that I had a parishioner once who developed a strong dislike for me, can you imagine! She came to the 8am service and sat in the front row with her brother. The two of them looked like the two in “American Gothic” except that there was no pitchfork between them, at least none that was visible. But she was at ease in speaking unpleasantly toward me after church and I never got used to that. I finally worked up the nerve to speak back to her one day and asked her to keep a civil tongue in her head. At last she said to me on another day “I think, in view of Christian Charity, that we should agree not to speak to one another from now on”. I replied; “That my dear woman is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me”. 

And so it goes. As it turned out the poor woman was developing a terminal heart condition, one of a physical sort, one that reflected some of the emotional heart trouble that plagued her all her life.

When I visited her at the hospital, she seemed to have a turn of heart then. We both shared a tear, asked a prayer, and commended ourselves both to God’s keeping and God’s love. The ice between us melted that day.

You see, it is as Sallie McFague once said: "We come from God and we return to God. In the meantime, we live in the presence of God, even when we do not know or acknowledge God. The entire universe reflects the Glory of God, each and every particular creature and thing in its own particular, concrete and unique way. Creation is a kaleidoscope of mind boggling diversity; a myriad of outrageously extravagant species who altogether make up the heart, body and mind of God. Each creature praises God by simply being itself, and by being fully alive."

No one ever promised us that being a follower of Jesus would be easy. You will remember how it all worked out for him. Yet the cross was not the final truth of Jesus. 

The final Truth of Jesus is the love of God. Therefore we are to love one another. Just Friday evening Muslims, Jews and Christians met together at the Islamic Center of Boston to make visible God’s love for us all. Imagine that! It takes courage to love God and to love one another.

But we will discover that as we do this very thing, we will be like a family that travels across the desert, near death from thirst. God will quench that thirst with this abundant fountain that leads to life; the endless and bountiful fountain of the Love of God.

Fr Paul

The Poor Shall be Filled; The Rich Sent Away!

Palm Sunday 2013

“He Shall Fill the Hungry with Good Things”

By Fr Paul Bresnahan

This is Mary’s song. It is one of the great song’s of faith sung at the time when the Archangel Gabriel came to the young maiden with the news that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her, and she shall then bring forth a son who will be called the Prince of Peace.

My soul doth magnify the Lord, *
    and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
For he hath regarded *
    the lowliness of his handmaiden.
He hath showed strength with his arm; *
    he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, *
    and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things, *
    and the rich he hath sent empty away.
This is the promise he made to our forefathers,
    Abraham and his seed for ever.

Thus Jesus was born to bring Good News to the Poor and he said so in the synagogue in his hometown. They nearly pitched him headlong over the precipice of a nearby cliff for saying so, but that’s what he said. Then at the end of his ministry he made this pronouncement: namely, that all the nations of the earth would be judged in accordance with how well they would treat the poorest of the poor, for as Jesus said; “Insofar as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me.” ~Matthew 25: 31ff.

It is in this spirit that we gather this Palm Sunday yet again singing our songs of faith. “We are marching in the Light of Christ”, “All Glory, Laud and Honor” and of course, “The Palms” de rigueur. Then at the end of the service we sing “Ride on ride on in Majesty, in Lowly Pomp Ride on to Die.”

The day began with such hope and promise. The children and all those happy throngs who spread their garments and palm branches along his way. They were his beloved; the poor and the lame, the blind, and the leper, the sin sick souls for whom there was no room in the Temple. These were the ones who sang their Humble Hosannas to their Lowly King.

Then he entered the Temple, and just when we thought this would be the day of his exaltation, he upset the tables of the moneychangers, he made a whip and drove them out of the Temple, saying “My House shall be a House of Prayer for All People, but you have made it a den of robbers!” Never had we seen our Lord so angry, even violent. And with that, of course he sealed his fate. For now those in power, especially among the Sanhedrin and the Roman occupation forces, had no choice but to have him done away with. Not only was he a threat to custom and tradition, he could have mobilized these masses of poor and the subsequent uprising could upset more than a few tables in the Temple Precincts, they could have upset the entire theological and political world they knew.

Then, as we know from the dramatic reading of today’s Passion Narrative, he was arrested, tried, convicted and crucified in the most shameful way the Roman authorities had available to them; on a cross, with two more bandits and political insurrectionists.

Which brings us back now to Mary’s Song.

With what shall he fill the hungry now?

How shall the humble and meek be exalted?

In what way shall the proud be scattered in the imagination of their hearts?

How shall the rich be sent empty away?

When we look at history and even in current events, things are more like a line from an old song: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. Funny the title of that song is “Ain’t we got fun”, as if to acknowledge money isn’t everything, and as if to acknowledge the indomitable nature of the human spirit.

What then does Jesus promise on the cross? 

At first, no there’s no doubt about it; he promises nothing more than the suffering and death that all human nature must feed on. 

Is the cross our food?

So it seems and so terrified are the disciples that they flee away and Peter himself denies him three times before the cock crows twice.

Only the women are left, to console one another in their inconsolable grief.

Is this our fate?

Is it ever to be so?

Or will there ever be a time when Justice reigns in human society?

As we await the answer to that question, Mary still sings her song as if by solemn warning;

My soul doth magnify the Lord, *
    and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
For he hath regarded *
    the lowliness of his handmaiden.
He hath showed strength with his arm; *
    he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, *
    and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things, *
    and the rich he hath sent empty away.
This is the promise he made to our forefathers,
    Abraham and his seed for ever.

And with what shall we be fed?

Now we know.

Because for us, it is as Paul said

“He humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death--

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord”

Thus the dynamic of humility and exaltation are pointed together directly at the center of the heart of Jesus. In that Cross of Christ then we too are humbled as Jesus and Mary have been humbled before us in order that we too shall be greatly exalted.

As for the proud the rich and the powerful, particularly as they turn their backs on the poor. I’m not so sure they are so much to be envied as I sense it from the Song of Mary or the Preaching of Jesus. For in the Divine economy these tables are indeed upset, when the measures of forgiveness and eternal life are factored into God’s Justice.

As God stands as our Judge, we sing our songs of faith as millions have done before us, and Mary did the moment Gabriel brought her the Good News of the pending birth of her son.

So then no matter how poor I may be, no matter how empty I may feel, no matter with what suffering I must endure; this I know, as I embrace the Cross of Christ, I too shall be humbled for a season as Jesus was, but then I shall also be greatly exalted as Jesus himself is exalted.

So now the Song of Mary and the songs of our faith lift our spirits as they always do and we live out our faith in the knowledge and love of God in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord, in whose embrace all of us live and move and have our being.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of The Holy Spirit.

Fr. Paul