26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Amos 6:1a, 4-7; 1 Timothy 6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31

VIDEO

Luke’s Gospel contains many 
of Jesus’ most memorable parables:
the unjust steward and the rich man,
the prodigal son and his sullen older brother,

the man fallen among thieves 
and the Samaritan who helps him.
But today’s Gospel reading is the only parable
in which a character is given a name: Lazarus.
Why might this be the case?

The name “Lazarus” is Aramaic, 
which was the language spoken by Jesus,
and is a form of the Hebrew name Eleazar,
which means “God saves.”
So it is certainly a fitting name for the poor man
who receives from God a heavenly reward.
But Jesus could also have given symbolic names
to other characters in his parables.
The shepherd who goes seeking the lost sheep
could have been named Adriel,
which means “flock of God,”
or the prodigal son’s older brother
could have been named Mara,
which means “bitter.”
But Jesus chooses not to give them names,
perhaps so that we would be more inclined to see them 
as representative kinds or types of people
with whom we might more easily identify.

Yet Lazarus is named.
Perhaps more significant 
than the meaning of his name 
is the simple fact that he has a name at all.
For to have a name is to have an identity
that is more than simply being
a kind or type of person.
To have a particular name is to be unique
and not reducible to an identity category 
like “shepherd” or “older brother.”
To be an individual person and not simply a type
is to be recognized as capable of acting in ways
that are not “typical” or “predicable”
but are surprising and free and often delightful.
To have a name is to become irreplaceable.

This is important in the parable
because the rich man’s sin 
is that he fails to see Lazarus as anything more
than one more poor person he steps over
on his way to another sumptuous meal 
in his purple garments and fine linen.
Though he seems to know Lazarus’s name,
this does not lead him to see Lazarus 
as an irreplaceable individual,
but simply as one more poor person
who is no concern of his,
unless it is to be his servant.

The funny thing is,

by his actions the rich man shows himself

to be nothing more than one more rich person,

behaving in typical rich-person ways:
stepping over the poor as he proceeds
to indulge his appetites and satisfy his desires.
It is the rich man who is locked into actions 
that are typical and predictable,
who has reduced himself to a mere category type
and, in a sense, made himself replaceable,
since there are many of the same type
who are ready to step into his shoes 
and act in the same way.
And when both he and Lazarus die,
and Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham
and the rich man is in the fires of hell,
the rich man seems unable
to break out of that category type.
Even as he begs for mercy he still presumes
that the poor man should act as his servant,
bringing him water to slake his thirst 
and taking messages to his brothers.
His punishment is unrelenting
because he cannot cease acting in the way
that led him to his sad destiny.

In the Christian tradition, 
the rich man comes to be referred to as Dives,
which might seem like a name,
but is simply the Latin word for “rich.”
His individual identity has been completely lost
and he is nothing more 
than a parody of a human being.
Perhaps this is what hell is:
to cease being an irreplaceable individual 
with a name known by God,
to lose one’s capacity to act in ways 
that are surprising and free and delightful,
to be condemned to following the script
that we once chose for ourselves
but now determines our every action.

Of course, Jesus does not tell this parable
simply to inform us about the afterlife.
He tells it to get us to examine our own lives now.
As Abraham says to the rich man,
we don’t need a miraculous visitation 
from the realm of the dead
to tell us what God thinks of our self-indulgence
and our neglect of the poor.
We, like the rich man and his kind,
have Moses and the prophets,
and the prophet Amos says to us this day,
“Woe to the complacent in Zion!”
Woe to those reclining 
on fancy beds and couches.
Woe to those drinking fine wine 
and getting spa treatments.
Woe to those who see 
the poor one at their gate
as simply a category of human being
that can be dismissed and ignored
as a “panhandler” 
or “welfare queen” 
or “illegal immigrant,”
and not as someone with a name and a story
and an irreplaceable God-given identity,
an identity that we ignore at our peril.

Even more, Jesus is asking us
to look at ourselves and to see
if we have chosen to live our lives in such a way
that we have reduced ourselves to a mere category-type
and lost our capacity to act in ways 
that are surprising and free and delightful.
Do I simply conform to the expectations 
of my social class
or my political ideology
or my generational cohort
or my racial or ethnic identity,
rather than letting God call me by my unique name,
calling me out of any class or ideology or cohort or identity
other than that of “child of God,”
the irreplaceable brother or sister of Jesus
and of all those for whom he died?

Christ is calling us this day
to let ourselves be named by God,
and to learn the names by which he calls
the irreplaceable ones whom we would ignore.
Let this call give us hope that God, 
“the King of kings and Lord of lords,
who alone has immortality, 
who dwells in unapproachable light,”
will, in his boundless mercy.
have mercy on us all.

 

A Reflection on the Occasion of the Celebration of Thomas and Courtney's Marriage

Reading: "Inversnaid," by Gerard Manley Hopkins 

Thomas and Courtney, 
as this celebration of your marriage 
has been approaching,
I have been thinking a lot, 

as one does,
about 17th-century philosophers.
Two in particular: 

Baruch Spinoza and Blaise Pascal.

Spinoza and Pascal
lived in a much larger universe than people
who lived just a few generations before them.
The inventions of the telescope and the microscope
revealed a world both much larger and much smaller
than the tidy, earth-centered cosmos
that humanity had lived with 
since time immemorial.
It was dizzying, and kind of threatening,
to be displaced from the center of the universe
into some undetermined place 
between the infinitely large
and the infinitely small.

For Spinoza,
this dizziness could be cured by thinking,
because he believed that 

as far as the universe extended,
thought extended just as far.
At least in principle, 
we could calculate all causes 
and understand the how and why of everything.
He seemingly found peace in this.

Pascal, on the other hand,
believed that thinking could only do so much:
we can think just enough to recognize
how fragile and uncertain our lives are,
how we might be taken out 
by something immensely big, like a class-five rapid,
or by something immensely small, like a virus.
But at the end of the day, this thought
seems only to increase our dizziness
or, as Pascal put it, our wretchedness.

But the limits of thought 
were not the end of the story for Pascal,
because he believed that in addition
to the thinking capacity of reason
we have a capacity that he called “the heart,”
and, as he famously put it,
“the heart has its reasons 
about which reason knows nothing.”

It is the heart that can acknowledge 
reason’s inability to master the universe,
and yet embrace that universe, 
in all of its danger and promise,
with a kind of humility. 
It is the heart that speaks 
in Hopkins’ poem “Inversnaid,”
in which words slip the bounds the reason,
abandon their mission of meaning,
so that our hearts can feel and know and love
the wet and the wildness of the streams
cascading their way down to a highland lake. 
It is the heart that seeks the still point
amid the rushing immensities
of the infinitely large
and the infinitely small,
the still point where we can stand
as we take the infinite into ourselves.

For Christians like Pascal and Hopkins, 
as for me,
that still point is found above all in Jesus,
whom Pascal described as “a God 
whom we approach without pride,
and before whom we humble ourselves
without despair” (Pensées 245).
But, as Hopkins says in another poem,
“Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”

Thomas and Courtney,
I believe that amid the glorious chaos 
of this infinite world 
your hearts have found the still point
in one another’s faces.
You have found in each other 
that point of equipoise 
that turns the wildness of the world 
from threat into promise,
that point where you can stand 
to take in infinity,
to rejoice in the wet and the wildness,
the weeds and the wilderness.

May the one who plays in ten thousand places 
bless the love you have pledged to each other,
opening your eyes to the miracle of one another,
speaking to your hearts in times of hardship,
and giving you and those you love years of joy.

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32

VIDEO

We human beings 
have a rather remarkable capacity
for self-deception,
a capacity to willfully overlook truths 
about ourselves and our situation,
truths that by all rights should be quite clear to us.
I think of myself as a kind and generous person,
always willing to help out and volunteer,
while somehow not noticing the way in which
I neglect my spouse and children.
I believe that others have succeeded more than I
because of favoritism and backroom dealings,
when in fact they are just better at their jobs.
I tell myself that I am a social media edgelord
unmasking hypocrisy and subverting paradigms,
when actually I’m just a jerk and a bully
spouting off on Twitter.
Truths about ourselves 
and our place in the world,
are denied and deflected,
often through strenuous effort.
The truth lies before us, 
and we choose not to see it.
We are not the people 
we think ourselves to be.

Self-deception not only pervades our world;
it pervades our Gospel reading today as well.
We see it at work 
in the younger brother,
who desires independence so much
that he drastically misjudges 
his capacity for “adulting,”
as they call it these days,
and seems also to believe 
that his inheritance is limitless,
though a little basic math 
might suggest that it is not.
We see it in the older brother as well,
who is convinced that he is a dutiful son,
showing true love and respect for his father,
when in fact he is seething with resentment, 
not simply toward his brother,
but toward his father as well,
whom he seems to have served out of hope for gain
rather than true devotion and affection.
The truth lies before them, 
and they choose not to see it.
They are not the people 
they think themselves to be.

Self-deception is a funny thing.
It is different from being ignorant or misled.
It is not a lack of information about ourselves,
since the truth about ourselves is readily available
and often perceived, and commented upon, by others.
It is also different from being lied to,
because in self-deception,
we are both the one deceived 
and the deceiver.
We willfully mislead ourselves,
which is quite the trick 
when you think about it,
since it seems to involve
both knowing and not knowing
what it is we are doing,
both seeing and not seeing
the truth we are avoiding.

We deceive ourselves by focusing 
on one truth about ourselves,
and letting the other truths 
that make up the total picture
fade into a kind of blurry background.
I focus on my immediate desires 
and my grandiose dreams
in order to overlook 
my limited skills and resources.
I keep in the front of my mind
years of dutiful service and obedience,
to divert myself 
from the anger and resentment 
that seethe within me.

Self-deception requires us to simplify the world,
to avoid seeing reality in all its complexity,
in order to avoid hard and painful truths.
It might seem like an effective coping strategy,
but it requires an immense outlay 
of psychological effort:
it exhausts us, 
and diminishes us,
and deadens our lives.
Plus, reality has a way of catching up with us.
Like the way that famine in the land 
left the younger brother hungry and penniless,
looking longingly at the food of pigs.
Our Gospel translation says that “he came to his senses”—
the original Greek says literally “he came to himself.”
His eyes were opened to the truth of himself,
the truth of his situation.
He encountered reality,
and reality was merciless in its truth telling
and humbling in its mercilessness.

We deceive ourselves 
because we fear the truth about ourselves.
We fear that if we let reality come into focus
we will not be able to carry on 
in the face of that merciless reality,
that we will see ourselves revealed
as unlovely and unlovable.
But the parable of the prodigal son,
is not simply a story 
of being humbled by merciless reality.
It is the story of the merciful God,
who rejoices that 
we who lay dead in self-deception
have come to life again,
we who were lost in lies
have been found by the truth.

For, in the end, to be found by truth
is not to be subjected to merciless reality;
it is to be found by the God
who came to dwell among us in Christ,
who is the way, the truth, and the life.
The face of reality is the face of Jesus Christ,
and the deepest truth about ourselves 
is that we are children of a loving father,
a father who runs out to embrace us
when our illusions collapse
and we see ourselves as we really are.
The reality of our situation 
is that even as we seethe with anger and resentment
God seeks us out and invites us to join the banquet.
God calls us out of self-deception 
not simply to humble us—
though learning humility is a part of it—
but so that we might come to see,
as the two brothers in the parable 
must come to see,
that we are beloved,
that we are embraced,
that we are invited to the banquet of life
prepared for us from all eternity.
God calls us out of deception and into reality
so that God who is merciful
might have mercy on us all.