13th Week OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic, NOLA
If
the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head, then neither does his
Church. We are his Church wherever we find ourselves. There's no
hurry to get “back home” just b/c it's bedtime. While the world's
other institutions – gov't's, universities, scientific
organizations, the U.N. – are all running around with their hair on
fire, trying to solve the trendiest “problems” (most of which
they themselves have caused) the Church plods along doing her thing.
Being the living sacrament of Christ's love in the world.
Occasionally, some priest or bishop or theologian will point at the
world's whirling dervish investment in Doing Something and complain
that the Church needs to Do Something Too! And all the Most Important
People in the World will clap politely and say nice-enough things
about the Church Person who's trying to climb onto the Urgently
Trendy Stuff To Do Train and then go on about their Urgent Business.
The cycle repeats, and the Church plods along doing what she does
best: being the Body of Christ in the world. Oddly, being the Body of
Christ in the world requires that all of us attend to the world with
a great deal of patience and sense of desperate urgency.
So,
Jesus is ready to depart across the sea. A clingy scribe declares
that he will follow Jesus wherever he goes. Jesus says, “. . .the
Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” Then a desperate disciple
asks Jesus to wait for him while he goes to bury his father. To him,
Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead.” These cryptic
responses from the Lord might leave us wondering if Jesus clearly
heard what these guys actually said. But if we remember that Jesus
has his eyes on Jerusalem and his sacrificial mission there, his
answers make perfect sense. The Son of Man has nowhere to rest his
head b/c all of creation is his home, all that is
belongs to him from the beginning. That's the source of our patience.
The Church doesn't have to fight for victory b/c the war is always,
already won. Our sense of urgency comes from the reality that only
the dead need worry about burying the dead. Those who have yet to die
in Christ are simply dead – even as they continue to flail around
importantly. Let them do something that is actually useful and
important – bury those who have died. We who have died in Christ
have urgent business: the salvation of world. Jesus doesn't have time
to wait for us to get things right before he heads to Jerusalem.
As
members of the Body of Christ, we follow Christ wherever he goes, and
we “let the dead bury their dead.” We diligently plod along,
spreading the truth of the Gospel despite the demands of the world,
despite the trendy “problem-solving” that our betters seem to
love. Our eyes are squarely focused on eternity, the long-game.
Christ is always with us. And because he is always with us, we are
urgently compelled to preach his Good News and, at the same time,
diligently, patiently wait for the seeds we plant at his command to
germinate, sprout, and blossom. There is no hurry in eternity. But
while we're here, we've got an urgent message for the world.
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