One of the most resonant spiritual themes of our Judeo-Christian tradition is the theme of the journey. When you place the Spirit in time what you get is movement and growth—indeed, transformation. This process of moving from point A to point B and beyond is the through-line of our sacred story…and when you widen the lens a bit you begin to see that it is the through-line of every story, sacred or not…and when you widen the lens as wide as possible you behold with wonder that it is also the story of creation itself.
On the macro level, the universe is in the process of becoming. From the big bang to the formation of the galaxies to the formation of this magnificent planet which brought forth life to the advent of human consciousness, we find ourselves immersed in a sacred canopy of vitality and possibility. What is may not be determined to be exactly what it is, but there is no denying the agency embedded in creation to become, to reveal, and to disclose itself in the amalgamation of life. On the micro level, each individual instance of life tells its own story…becomes, reveals, and discloses its own truth. And what I find to be at the very root of the disease of our time is that too many of us have lost sight of the macro level in the obsession with our own individual stories. We are failing to see the big picture…that we are a part of a much larger sacred story…we’re failing to see that life is invitation and participation before it can ever become the making of my own creation.
A few weeks ago I gave a talk on “St. Benedict’s Way of Peace” after which someone posed the following question: “Would you say that the individual or the collective is more important for St. Benedict?” He was asking this question in light of the current societal struggle in our current fraught political situation which pits individual rights against communal solidarity. Which, for Benedict, is more important? The answer is…both. The problem is that we have the unfortunate tendency to separate the personal from the communal and try to justify one over the other. But, in my mind, this is a fundamental misreading of reality—the personal and the communal are two dimensions of one reality, equally important to the whole and to the unfolding of the sacred story. If we see our own personal story as a story unfolding apart from either my neighbor’s story or from the world’s story, we will lose our soul and our story will come to a tragic end. But if we see our personal story as an integral part of my neighbor’s story and the story of the world as a whole, we will not just regain our soul but it will be transformed in its becoming all that it was intended to become. To be is to be in relationship to the whole.
Today’s readings present us with insightful lessons about this fundamental spiritual theme of life as a journey, at once personal and communal. Our three protagonists are Moses, Paul, and Jesus…each in their own way on their personal journey, yet, each acutely attuned to the larger story of which they are a part. Moses is on a journey leading a community out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the land of promise, Paul is on a journey spreading the good news about Jesus to foreign lands, Jesus is on a journey back to the Father. Yet, each in their own way, with their own lives, is telling the story of Life itself and within the micro narrative of each something of the life of God (the macro) is glimpsed.
In relation to the theme of journey, there are a number of ancillary themes which present themselves. For instance, there are always obstacles along the way; there is always the struggle of faith to believe that you’ll actually make it to your journey’s end; there are always the lessons learned and disappointments to be accepted. This is true of us all, no less than for Moses, Paul, and Jesus.
Moses faced the obstacles of faithless Pharaoh and a faithless, complaining nation. Paul faced the obstacle of a faithless community…as well as shipwreck, stoning, and lashes. Jesus as well faced the obstacles of faithlessness and unbelief, as well as abandonment by his disciples and an ominous cross looming up ahead. At first, Moses wanted to opt out of the journey because of his stuttering, Paul could only consider himself unworthy to be called to the journey at all because of his past sins, and Jesus had to first prove his faith by being tested by the devil in the desert. Yet, along the way, Moses is transformed from a stammering coward to the deliverer of a nation. Paul is transformed from an zealous persecutor of Christians to a humble slave of Christ. Jesus is transformed from a carpenter’s son crucified on a cross to the triumphant Son of God raised from the dead, which, of course, gets us as close to the heart of the macro level as possible. The story of Life is the story of Christ. In Christ the macro and micro come together in one perfect unfolding, and the secret to life is revealed. If you want to know the meaning of your life, there it is. If you want to know the goal of your life, there it is. If you want to know the way to live your life well, there it is.
May I suggest that the necessary remedy to the heightened stress and anxiety of our age is the wedding once again of the micro and macro levels of life…of the rejoining of the personal and the communal and both of these with the cosmic. Jesus makes just this point in today’s Gospel passage. When tested by a Pharisee and expert in the law about which commandment is the greatest, Jesus responds with the expected answer, the Shema: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” But then quite unexpectedly to the legalistic Pharisee adds a companion commandment that, for Jesus, is the proof that one is truly obeying the first, “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Or as one young politician from Texas has been preaching on the campaign trail, “You can’t love God without loving your neighbor.”
Love of God and neighbor, then, is the fuel for the journey as well as its destination. God, as Trinity where the personal is communal and the communal is personal, is the paradigm of our journey. The Kingdom of God which was the heart of Jesus’ message is the vision of a life where this reciprocating love of God to us and us to God and one another becomes the defining force of all of life…that place where there are no longer any roadblocks to love. No more prejudice, no more violence, no more scapegoating, no more sin. Where there is only freedom: the freedom of Love. Is this nothing more than a dream…and an unrealistic hope? If we only look at the small picture and get fixated on the micro level, we will soon fall into despair. But if we have just the faith of a mustard seed, we get a glimpse of the big picture and see how far we’ve come in the great unfolding of Life and also see the Spirit of God at work in it all. No one of us is meant to carry the whole story to its end. Jesus has already done that! Yet, each of our stories is crucial to bringing our common, sacred story one further step forward to its full realization. That’s it, just one step closer to the fullness that already is.
If we truly accept this, our own limited place within the vast expanse of the whole, we will not so readily succumb to the disappointments that now seek to hold us back from moving forward. Moses did not enter the Promised Land…but Joshua did. Paul did not see the good news preached to the ends of the earth…but a future generation did. The Holy Spirit is not bound by any one person. The mantle of one is always in search of and knows just how to accommodate itself to another.
What, then, should be our response in the here and now as we keep our eyes open wide in faith to this sacred canopy of Life in which we find ourselves? I take a queue from St. Benedict. The answer is conversatio: fidelity to the life to which we have been called. While Jesus teaches us that it is love that authenticates life, it is fidelity which authenticates love. And love and fidelity become more themselves when they are challenged by the obstacles and disappointments which are inevitable along life’s journey…and when we steadfastly love our way through them. He hear this in Paul’s admonition to Timothy, “stay true to your call no matter what the circumstances.” And when the opposition comes, and it certainly will, love and fidelity coming from the Spirit, will guide us through and rewrite the script of hatred, prejudice, and violence with strokes of faith, hope, and love.
So, sisters and brothers, we each have a story to tell…and we are each presently writing Life’s story with each passing day. May our stories, both personal and communal, never be defined or determined by the dark and chaotic forces of Death but only by the sacred narrative of Love; the Love that is God and is Christ: God’s sign of fidelity and promise that it is Love alone which will stand at our story’s end.
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