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22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

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Fr. Tom Wilson September 2, 2018

Show Transcript

If you have been around All Saints for awhile and have any sense of me as both a priest and a person you probably have an idea that one of the things that I like in my life is order. I like order. And you probably also know that when I comment on this human frailty and condition that we live in and talk about how we become the people that we are that there are things that come together. There are the natural things that we are blessed with by God and our genetics and DNA. There’s the reality of the environment that we come from and the decisions that we make. All these things come together to make us the people we are. 
And that whole thing about order probably has been a gift to me, it certainly helped me in my career prior to being a priest. It was a nice fit in the world of accounting.  I think its probably a natural disposition of mine, given to me by God. But it also has formed by the reality of my own personal experience. It happened, it was very, very crystal clear, I can’t remember exactly the year it happened, but it was my pre-teen years, maybe fifth or sixth grade or so, in which something happened within my family that created a lot of disorder and chaos. And I remember as clear as day as I am in the midst of this pain and this chaos and disorder in my own families’ life that was imposed on us by one of the family members, I just remember as clearly in a sixth grade understanding that this is not the way it is supposed to be. This is simply not the way it’s supposed to be. Ans as we endured another one of these circumstances the person who was responsible for the chaos and the crisis within our family was sent away to another trip to chemical dependency treatment, hopefully to restore order in life and within our family.
And I remember, I remember very clearly in my own sixth grade prayer life and God speaking to me through people around me that cared about me and loved me. Some things that were incredibly important as I realized it was not supposed to be like this. And what I heard and what God communicated to me I think is absolutely appropriate for us to hear now in the midst of chaos and crisis within our church that has come from places that we would not have expected and certainly did not do ourselves. But the truth is God speaks to us in the midst of that and the thing that I was told by these people that cared about me and by God very directly in my own prayer life were a few things that were absolutely critical for us to hang onto in the situations that we face right now.
The first thing is that this is not the will of God. Chaos and crisis in peoples’ lives are not the will of God. Absolutely and unequivocally. It was not the will of God in the mid 1970’s for our family. It was not the will of God that we experience this now. 
The second thing after it is not the will of God is that it is temporary. This will not last forever. This will not last forever and it is very important for everybody who goes through things like that individually and especially for us as a church family to remember it will not go on forever. And finally, and probably most importantly is the fact that Jesus is with us. Jesus is with us in it all. And that brought very much a spirit of peace and consolation, at least for a little bit of time as I was a pre-teen in my life. And hopefully it brings us a sense of consolation and peace now as we endure the reality of chaos and crisis not of our doing. 
And as we continue to live through these things in which we recognize the infidelity of people who should not have been unfaithful. We recognize and see the reality of the harsh wounds that have been imposed on people like me who have made promises to God and promises to preach the gospel. It is a horrific and horrible thing. It is a horrific and horrible thing. Any violation, any violation of a sacred promise is a serious sin and when a violation of that sacred promise includes the wounding and harming of other people in what can be in many ways a permanent way it is absolutely an abomination. It is absolutely an abomination and certainly not the will of God. It is not the will of God who calls us to serve, who calls us to give ourselves to Him, not to use the places and positions we have been given for our own benefit, our own glory or our own pleasure. That’s not what He called us to do and the truth is we are living in the midst of that crisis and chaos. And we have to remember the communication and the presence of God with us within it all. And I think our readings today, our readings today give us a really good way to reflect and to look on it. 
As God reveals Himself, God reveals the law that He brings to us. As Moses is presenting the statutes and decrees to the people of Israel in the desert in Deuteronomy. What does he say? Receive these statutes and decrees that you may live. That you may live. And of course, the thing and it will say it eventually again in Deuteronomy, that we present these, and we live by them or we die. We choose life or death. We choose the law that God has revealed to us, we choose the law that He has given to us, we choose the law that he has put onto our hearts or we die. And that is doubly true, that is doubly true for those of us who are priests and representing the church. Absolutely, unequivocally. And there is absolutely no doubt, there is absolutely no doubt that part of the problem that we endure, part of the crisis that we endure not of our own making is that people simply did not listen to, hear and act on the law of God. They did not act on the law of God.
And in fact, there is probably an outright rejection of the law of God communicated to us and that is an abomination. It is an absolute abomination and we know there is a distinction of course. There is a distinction of course between the garden variety human weakness that we experience, and we fall and the outright rejection of the law of God. And with that outright rejection of the law of God, then bleeds into encouraging others to do the same and the sin multiplies. We live in a culture in the world and probably the justification in people’s minds is that my individual sin doesn’t have any impact on anybody else. That is nonsense. The sins of clergy have huge effect, all our sins do. There is no escaping it. There is absolutely no escaping it. 
And as we stew and as we live in the reality of confusion, hurt, woundedness and anger, directly and indirectly we ask an important question. We all do, I do, and you do. We ask the question, where in the world did this come from? Where did this come from? And Jesus gives us very directly the answer, He gives us very very directly the answer in our gospel today. In this back and forth between the scribes and the pharisees talking about the external law and the ritual washings and all those sorts of things He does not critique the law, but He critiques the place they have put the law and the fact that they have ignored the law of the heart. They have ignored the law of the heart and then what does He say? None of this stuff is external, it all begins in the human heart; lust, greed, envy, adultery, licentiousness. It all comes from the human heart. And when I read those words, when I pray with those words, when I hear those words, I have to tell you, I get scared. 
I get scared because all of those things in my fallen human condition, in my fallen heart are there. They are there. So, what is it that we do? We have this reality of this sludge of all of this beginning in the human heart. But we also have a place to bring it, we also have to have a place to bring it in Jesus Christ. I think too often we will look at it and I suspect people involved in scandal and all that will say, no it doesn’t really matter. Well it does. We need to expose the heart, we need to expose the heart and the sludge that is within it to the mercy and the grace of God. He desires us to have it. The truth is we all know the possibility exists everywhere and we see it in spades. We see it painfully in spades, that people who have been given authority, people who have been called by God have misused and abused that authority and that relationship and damaged people’s faith and harmed them in ways that are unimaginable. 
And as we look at that it begins in the sludge of the human heart. There needed to be some humility along the way, some humility to say you know what?  Lord there is some sludge in my heart, help me to clean it out. Get it cleaned out so I don’t do damage to other people with my own sin and unfortunately that’s not done. And I have to speak to you as somebody who had my toes in the world of helping to form priests for service in the church that the idea, the whole idea that someone would take the gift of ordination, someone would take the gift of authority within the church and use it for their own thing and be mapping out ecclesiastical careers instead of focusing on serving the people that they are called to is an abomination. There is no room, there is no room in the priesthood, there is no room in the clergy, there is no room in the leadership in the church for ambition and career planning and ecclesiastical climbing. It is absolutely absurd.  
We know that at least part of what we are suffering with in this crisis and chaos has to do with that and it has to be gone. It simply has to be gone in humility.  We are called to proclaim the gospel and serve people, that is it. Wherever it happens to take it belongs to the Holy Spirit, not our own career planning, it has to go away. And as we sit here, and we struggle in our own anger, in our own frustration and the fact of the matter is that people like me, people like me who have created this and are going to be having to answer questions on this basically for the rest of our lives. The truth is there is an answer. There is an answer. The answer is Jesus Christ. That answer is understanding truth and the fullness of the truth of God. That when we are in this crisis and in this chaos, it is certainly not the will of God that we be here. It is not a permanent reality, it is a temporary reality, and especially most importantly Jesus Christ is with us. It is not coincidental I don’t think that God revealed that to me in my own pre-teenage years it was also around the same exact time that it was pointed out to me that whatever happened in my life Jesus was never leaving the blessed sacrament. He was always there, and He is always present, and we can never forget that. We can never forget that. The church decided a long, long, long time ago that the presence of Christ in the sacraments had nothing to do with the personal virtue of the priest who was confecting it. Absolutely, unequivocally and that is God’s way of protecting all of you and assuring you of the presence of Jesus Christ.
The truth is our response to all of this will be listening. Listening to the statutes and decrees that God gives us and living by them and being purified when we don’t. And our own fidelity will be what restores the credibility of the church. Our own fidelity will be what gives us the ability to proclaim fully and with integrity the gospel of Jesus Christ. That same Jesus Christ who calls us to healing. Who calls us to be instruments of healing to people who have been wounded. Who calls us to be instruments of proclaiming His message in the world. And even in this time of crisis and chaos that we live in the church we can never forget Jesus presence and His promise even in the midst of our anger. and I wish I could tell you that after having that insight and that gift as a kid that I always lived perfectly in trust to the promise of God. I didn’t, and I haven’t. I have wallowed at times in anger in my life, I have wallowed at times in disappointment and complaining and all that sort of thing internally and exteriorly. But the truth is that what He told me then hasn’t changed one bit, it hasn’t changed, and it is still the same now, in the midst of chaos and crisis and pain, not by any of our doing. It is not the will of God, it is temporary. It is absolutely temporary, one of the first temptations of the devil is to try to convince us that something that is temporary is permanent. And finally, and especially in the midst of that chaos and that crisis Jesus is with us.

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