In today's gospel Jesus says to be rich in the things of God. In each of the readings I couldn't help but think of the analogy of making an investment. However, investment, understood in a financial or business sense doesn't necessarily speak to everyone, but even us non-business types understand investing our time and energy. If we think about it we have to admit that we all make investments of some kind. We invest in our lives each and every day, and to what ends? Really, that's the big question that today's scriptural lessons ask us to consider. Let’s explore it a little.
When it comes to faith, religion, or spirituality—however you want to think of it—we might be tempted to think that there’s a sharp division between the spiritual and material worlds. It is true that in the New Testament, and in St. Paul in particular, there appears to be a tendency to separate the earthly from the spiritual. We see it in today’s second reading. However, is it really asking us to withdraw from the world and the life we live in it or does the truest lesson lie somewhere in life as we live it?
We’re reminded in the first reading from Ecclesiastes that all of our wealth and possessions, all the things we love and cling to most closely, must ultimately be relinquished and that in our demise we hold on to not one bit of it. No money, no houses or cars, no fine clothing makes it to the other side. The truly wise action is to throw ourselves with absolute abandon into the most important of things. But does that really mean that our world and present lives have no value? Should we refuse to consider the world of our lives as a source of lasting value?
Because I believe our present lives do have value I like to look to future. It’s the investment analogy again. I think of the generations to come. Though I admit that I frequently wonder what kind of world they will have. Will they be able to live on an inhabitable planet Earth? Will they have fresh water to drink and food to eat? Will they live in a world with social order and peace? Will they live in a world where all life is seen as sacred? Sometimes it's difficult for us to have hope in the future but we shouldn't be negative or pessimistic. We should rather believe in future possibility. If we want there to be a future for our children, for their children, and even the generations we will never know, we must invest in that future for them.
To know of the riches of God and store them up, as Jesus says to do, we should look for God in others; that is, we should invest in building community. Our religion is one that is oriented toward others. The thing that has value in community--the key essential ingredient that causes it to let us know God--is relationship. It's easy to extrapolate from this that we strengthen each another when we intentionally form relationships and thus we increase the value of our spiritual investment.
It may be overly obvious or a truism, but the way to form relationships by spending time with one another and getting to know one another. I don't think it any accident that what we do here at Mass centers on sharing a meal. Eating with one another is one the foremost way of building relationships and of being community. However, to form a relationship we need more than an hour a week. The idea of the meal is symbolic on one level because it asks us with whom we are willing to have a relationship: it asks us with whom are we willing to eat. On a practical level we might consider inviting someone to eat with us. It could be as simple as a morning coffee or lunch. We might invite someone to our home for dinner or take him or her out with us.
Communities can take various forms. Foremost, our families are often our primary community. Surely our place of worship is a community, but for it really to be a spiritually valuable community entails us spending time with each other learning to be a parish family, getting to know one another by talking with each other, praying beside each other, learning with one another, and sharing a meal with each other. Our neighborhoods, our cities, even our nation, all are communities where we have an opportunity to invest in what matters, in what lasts. It shouldn’t seem strange at all that we can discover God in the community where we live daily. The community is where the symbolic—as well as the real—meal takes place.
What makes relationship spiritual is listening and sharing. Community involves encounter and reciprocity. In last week’s readings we learned a great lesson about prayer. There is a connection with what we are talking about today. In prayer we believe that God listens to our cries. We too must learn to listen to the cries of others. Turning a deaf ear to the cries of others—being unable to hear and see their need—negates spiritual value. It throws us back into clinging to things that don’t last. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors it must include listening to them. It must include hearing the ones whose cries are go all the way to heaven.
In our times the voices of those who call out are all around us. If we are unaware we might ask what has deafened or blinded us. Do we hear those who long to join us, and not just here at church but in an even a larger sense of belonging? Can we reach out beyond the boundary of comfort? Can we see beyond our suburban values? Do we hear the cries of the poor and the ones who struggle just to make ends meet? Do we truly hear and see those who are racially, linguistically, culturally or religiously different from us? Can we step into their shoes and see life from their vantage point? Do we know what it feels like to be looked upon with fear or prejudice? Do we even realize that racism still exists? Are we willing to be courageous enough to remove the people “phobias” (the mix of fear and prejudice) and judgment of others from our lives? We want God to hear us and answer our prayers, but how is our own hearing?
Have we truly invested in what really matters? All that God asks of us, at least to start, is to listen and consider where we have invested.
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