Ordinary 24B

In the September issue of The Atlantic, Jennifer Senior offers a beautiful meditation on a family she knows well. For two decades its members have grieved the death of Bobby McIlvaine, whom Ms. Senior describes as “incandescent.” “When he smiled it looked for all the world like he’d swallowed the moon.” The McIlvaine family’s hometown, Somerdale, N.J., still treasures a video in which a teenage Bobby McIlvaine throws an immaculate pass that sets up an immaculate shot that flies right over the head of…Kobe Bryant. Bobby scored 16 points off Kobe and his team that day in addition to setting up that floater. Bobby graduated from Princeton wanting to be a writer, but he was willing to begin with marketing. That is what put the 26-year-old in a restaurant called Windows on the World, located on the top floors of the North Tower, on the morning the Twin Towers came down...

Our scriptures are often a record of frustrated desire, of non-fulfillment, and of human impatience. It’s more the exception when God intervenes directly and decisively to resolve a particular human tension. We are always longing for a messiah to take away our pain and to avenge oppression, but mostly those prayers seem to fall on deaf ears. And so we see in scripture the constant, painful cry: Come, Lord, come! Save us! How much longer must we wait? When, Lord, when? Why not now? We are forever impatient, but God refuses to be hurried. Why? Why is God, seemingly, so slow to act? Is God callous to our suffering? Why is God so patient, so plodding in his plan, when we’re suffering so deeply? Why is God so excruciatingly slow to act in the face of human impatience?...

When Jesus asks, “Who do you say I am?”, the response one speaks defines the speaker at the same time. As the writer, “James,” so unforgettably observed, the power of the human tongue is far out of proportion to its small size; it can say silly, hurtful things or it can “attest” to the power of God. Whatever we chose to say defines us.

Once Charles Blondin gathered a crowd at Niagara Falls. He stretches a tightrope over the falls and asks them if they believe he can walk across. The crowd cheers their assent. The he asks if they believe he can do it blindfolded. Once again a booming cheer. Finally he asks if they believe he can do it pushing a wheelbarrow. They crowd goes wild. Blondin then approaches a man cheering loudest. "Do you really believe I can do it?" "Of course," the man says. "Then," says Blondin, "Will you get in the wheelbarrow?" That man is like you or me, at least me. I do believe Jesus is God. He can do all. Still, I'm a little reluctant to get in the wheelbarrow. It's one thing to believe; it's something else to put your body on line...

I would like to lean on some insights offered by James Martin in his book, Jesus, A Pilgrimage. He suggests that taking up our cross daily and giving up life in order to find deeper life means six interpenetrating things: First, it means accepting that suffering is a part of our lives. Accepting our cross and giving up our lives means that, at some point, we have to make peace with the unalterable fact that frustration, disappointment, pain, misfortune, illness, unfairness, sadness, and death are a part of our lives and they must ultimately be accepted without bitterness. As long as we nurse the notion that pain in our lives is something we need not accept, we will habitually find ourselves bitter—bitter for not having accepted the cross...

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Faith and works are inextricably connected to each other because suffering and salvation are both so real. To believe or act otherwise is to fall into the trap of inviting and feeding clothes to wedding celebrations, and not people. We know all too well how difficult it is to really see, especially when truth is right in front of us. Sometimes things aren’t as they seem, often they are: A monk rode an ox into town and came to a group of people. The people asked him, “What are you looking for, monk?” He said, “I am looking for an ox.” They all laughed. He rode his ox to the next group of people. They asked him, “What are you looking for, monk?” He said, “I am looking for an ox.” They all laughed. He rode his ox to a third group of people. They asked him, “What are you looking for, monk?” He said, “I am looking for an ox.” They said, “This is ridiculous. You are a man riding and ox looking for an ox.” The monk said, “So it is with you looking for God.”