...and so technology
has gone on developing, but not our wisdom.
Since this book is late being returned, and since I'm racking up fines, I might as
well share Rohr's words. He's still speaking to me.
At Pentecost the Spirit came down on
“all,” (Acts 2:1) giving them the power to recognize and affirm
life within themselves and in one another. That is the richest
meaning of authority. It is the power to author life in others.
The love of power does not have the
capacity to nurture anything that it cannot explain or control.
For far too long we've preached the
Gospel only in individualistic fashion. We thought we could have a
personal relationship with Jesus without calling into question the
systems and institutions we participate in and to which we belong.
Bartimaeus is the blind man who isn't
blind – in contrast with the rich man, who's really poor. Between
these two stories Mark presents a great warning from Jesus against
the real enemies of the Reign of God. These are the three great
obsessions: power, prestige, and possessions. In the Sermon on
the Mount it's quite clear that these are the three great barriers we
have to overcome to understand Jesus and understand the Reign of God.
But in Christianity we have always been concerned with
ecclesiological questions, with sacramental questions, sacerdotal
questions, and, needless to say, sexual questions – questions that
Jesus practically never bothered with.
Let's all be honest and admit that our
various denominations (and yes, other religions too) have picked out only certain Bible verses that
backed up our theological biases.
This time (with Bartimaeus) Jesus
takes the initiative: he knows that he can really give this man
something – the rich young man wasn't open to that. With this man
there's an openness, a readiness, an emptiness. He is not stuffed
full of prefabricated answers and theology; he's full of desire, full
of longing. We have no proof that this blind man ever did anything “
right” in his life, but Jesus says: “Go your way; your faith
has made you well.”
It could be that
Jesus will lead us to a place where we ourselves don't even know any
more whether we're holy, where all we know is that we have to do
what we have to do, where we have to obey the word we have heard
in our heart. Often we don't even get the satisfaction of being in
the right; and there's no security that everyone will agree with
us.
I think a large
part of Jesus' teaching is a critique of “mammon” sickness. Jesus
describes that disease as follows: Those
afflicted by it are continually driven by unrest, cares, and anxiety,
(ouch) because the present isn't enough for them. But
for those grounded in Christ the present contains great abundance,
even though we don't yet live in the full Reign of God. This is
precisely the peace that the world can't give, and the peace the
world can't take away from us. It's the only real gift we can bring
into the existing system: the health (salus) of a central life.
As
for the Reign of God, why should God give us something that we
don't even want? Why should God give us something that we're not
ready to work and do our utmost for? Why should God give us something
that we at most pray for, but don't strive for? God doesn't believe
just in our prayers.
And
yet prayer moves mountains. I believe this. Prayer is the foundation
upon which we get up and act as people, have the courage to live
intentionally, and one of the primary ways we hear the voice of God. Further, prayer shows us the way to head because He says in Psalm 25:12,
that He will show those who love Him the path to take. Of course, we have to listen for that path.
It seems to me
that a Christian is a person who has the freedom to feel the pain
that's part of being human. This means a person who has the freedom
to enter into solidarity with the suffering of the world, precisely
because this person is sure of the Father's love.
The final effect
of mammon disease is that we've lived with a split consciousness,
that we're incapable of really integrating faith with the tragic
mystery of things.
And
the reality: there is a lot of tragic. If my twenties was idealism,
my thirties was a perpetual wayside stopping of reality checks, and learning my limits. And now my forties, seems to be about the fortitude required, in ever more
abundance, needed to get up each day and face a world that seems to
be melting away.
Why have we made
faith into a kind of security blanket? We've taken what for Jesus was
a journey into the unknown and turned it into a life insurance
policy. I'd be glad to find a clear economic plan in the Gospel; but
the only thing Jesus gave us unequivocal enlightenment about was the
great danger of wealth. He said quite clearly that we're not supposed
to get rich. We live differently in the poverty and ignorance of
faith- which consists in our having no plan. Faith has a much
higher price than I ever would have expected; the willingness to
walk in darkness makes other people see you as naive.
The
no plan thing? It goes against the grain, big time. It rubs hard
against the get up and live intentionally. Intentionality is the only
way to ever get where we're going, but what of the compass? Rohr
constantly challenges my compass. If advertising bombards us each
day, and if the world becomes my compass, I find that so familiar
emptiness seeping in and sapping my joy. When I'm using the wrong compass, the world's emptiness begins to gnaw at me. Dissatisfaction takes over.
I believe circumstances change us, not
sermons. We're changed when we move on to a new place and when we
expose our selves to the truth of a different standpoint, one that's
not our own....Religion is a very dangerous business. I always
say, it's the surest way to avoid God.
Where I go on
Sunday, is surely not as important as what I live on Monday.
Certainly being fed on Sunday, living in community, and what I intake is
important, but who I am Monday through Saturday is more important to God.
A Christian is someone who's animated
by the spirit of Christ, a person in whom the spirit of Christ can
work. That doesn't mean that you consciously know what you are doing.
As it says in Mathew 25: “When have we seen you hungry? When
have we seen you thirsty?” These people had no idea that they
did what they did for Christ.... But Christ said: “Because you
did it, you did it for me.” This is the final consequence of
the Incarnation of God. The Word is no longer word; it has really
become flesh. That means it never depends upon whether we say the
right words, but whether we live the right reality.
We are slowly,
through Safe Families, being invited to get a taste of the
Word made flesh. To see if we will stick it out. Live it. Know Him in
the flesh. To throw open the door of our home in ways we have never
done. We are intellectually aware of what the journey will entail,
but emotionally and spiritually naive as to what the journey will require. We have lived an incredibly sheltered life, but we want more.
We don't have a clue what we are doing, but we trust He does.
...In our time something wonderful is
happening:. For the first time in its history the Church is becoming
truly universal. This means the Gospel is being reread and
rediscovered by altogether different eyes. In the process altogether
different questions are being raised.
For a few years we dance around on the
stage of life and have the chance to reflect a little bit of God's
glory. We are earth that has come to consciousness. If we
discover this power in ourselves and know that we are God's
creatures, that we come from God and return to God, that's enough.
Less is really more. Only those
who have nothing to prove and nothing to protect, those who have in
them a broad space big enough to embrace every part of their own
soul, can receive the Christ. And Christ himself will lead us on
this path.
