Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The gospel, I think, illustrates the dilemmas we all face from time to time in dealing with those anxious moments, those panic times when we’re forced to ask ourselves, “What’s really important in my life?”  These are the moments which the poet Robert Frost knew about when he found that “two roads diverged in a wood” and he felt sad that he could not travel both.

Jesus also knew those anxious moments, when two roads diverged for him: one to superficial glory and the other a “road less traveled.”  Because he was “one like us,” he knew those terrible moments of choice.  Jesus knew what it meant to feel the pangs of a divided heart.  But he also knew that you simply cannot serve two masters: you simply cannot worship more than one God.

Because he knew what was in their hearts, their sincere desire to follow God’s will and seek God’s reign, Jesus didn’t condemn his disciples for being overly anxious.  Instead, he gently chided them.  He looked at them tenderly and said, “O weak in faith.”  Jesus knew that they were not wicked unbelievers, but disciples who were tempted to panic in a moment of crisis and forget what comes above everything else: trust in a God who loves us as a mother loves the children of her womb.

Jesus never denied the fact that a good chunk of life is spent worrying about what to make for dinner tonight.  He recognized the fact that food, drink, clothing, and all the other “essentials” of life must be grappled with.  His challenge was not to deny our physical and psychological needs, but to stop us from being gobbled up by all these things.  His challenge was to remind us that we are called to worship only one God who loves us not only with a Father’s love but with a Mother’s love as well.  We hear the Mother in Jesus today when he gently asks us: “Is not life more than food?  Is not the body more valuable than clothes?”

We live in a very demanding world.  The anxieties mount and cause many to travel tragic roads.  Just the other day I read a story about a girl named Amy.  She was fifteen, and had always gotten straight “A’s” in school.  Her parents were extremely upset when she got a B on her report card.  “If I fail in what I do,” Amy told her parents, “I fail in what I am.”  The message was part of Amy’s suicide note.  Amy was a victim of two themes of The American Fairy Tale: more possessions mean more happiness, and a person who does or produces more is more important.

On Wednesday we will have our faces smudged with ashes and begin once more the season of Lent.  In a way, Lent is all about asking who and what are most important in our lives.  We follow a Jesus who went out into the wilderness for forty days to ask the same questions.  One of my favorite authors is the minister, poet, novelist, Frederick Buechner.  In his book, Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized, there are a few lines under the heading “Lent” that echo the tender chiding of Jesus in today’s gospel.  He asks his readers to consider their priorities in life.

Buechner asks:

“If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?  Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo?  Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?  Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?  If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become.  It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor