4 Oct 2015
27th Sunday in Ordinary
Time, Year B
“You can be anything you want to be; you have a lot of
potential.” And that’s something we can
hear a lot when we’re younger—especially when we’re in high school and looking
beyond toward college or perhaps entering the workforce. But it’s also something God says to us every
day of our lives, whether we’re younger or middle-aged or older: “You can be
anything you want to be; you have a lot of potential.” And the idea of “potential” is a major idea
that runs through Scripture today.
God sees humanity. He
says, “I love you; I embrace you ‘without shame’ as my ‘brothers and sisters.”
But he also says, “Let me raise you up to be even more.” And that’s basically what it means to be
relationship with Jesus: He happily and warmly accepts us as we are, and at the
same time, is pushing us to be more. God
is always trying to elevate us, to
heighten our awareness of who we are, and what we’re made to be as his beloved
sons and daughters.
And so, God really is the most perfect Friend we could have:
He loves us unconditionally and whispers into our heart: “You have a lot of
potential. Don’t settle for less.”
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When the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, he replied
simply: “In the beginning,” it was not so.
In the beginning (the way God created us) there was no divorce; there
was only unity and love. And, of course,
that’s the ideal; that’s the potential every married couple has in
mind on their wedding day. They don’t
get married with the intention of
getting divorced; they get married so that can live out what was “in the
beginning:” an image of love and lifelong companionship.
But, as we know, sometimes divorce happens—for good reasons,
and not-so-good reasons. You know, spousal
abuse and infidelity are good reasons.
But getting divorced because somebody just “falls out of love” is not a
good reason. And it’s not good because
Jesus is saying: “You have the potential to be more than you are . . . if only
you’d live up to your vows.” He’s
saying: “Don’t give in to your own boredom with this relationship; don’t
concede to the struggles your marriage presents.” In the beginning, there was no divorce, only
unity and love. Again, that’s the ideal—the
potential—we shoot for.
Of course, sometimes a marriage is so harmful, it’s so toxic
and dehumanizing than a husband or wife can’t possibly live up to their
potential as a child of God. And we see
in those cases there wasn’t any marriage to begin with. And the Lord says, “Get on a better track in
life—you weren’t made to be abused; you were made to love and to be loved.”
-----
Or we look at abortion.
This is an area where human society has really slipped into the nether
regions. What could be a more perfect
image of our human potential than a child developing and growing in the
womb? It’s a perfect image of the fact
that God makes us to be something: to
grow, to become, to live and love. But
abortion stops that potential dead in its tracks—not only for the child in the
womb, but also for those who think that abortion is okay.
If there’s one way for human society to kill its own
God-given potential, it’s through abortion.
How are we possibly living up
to our human potential if we think that destroying
human life is okay? Jesus sees the
bloody holocaust of innocent children, and he looks up and says—with bloodshot
eyes from weeping: “You are better than this.
I love you, my brothers and sisters, but I know you are better than . .
. this.”
-----
God is trying to elevate
us. He’s trying to help us “live up to
our potential”—not only in a moral way, but even more fundamentally in a spiritual, emotional, and relational
sort of way, too. You know, every
morning we wake up and we have the whole day ahead of us—a beautiful gift from
God. And the day is charged with potential.
And, as we know, children (especially) take that potential
and they run with it. When I was growing
up, it’s like every day was a day of exploration, or new ideas, or playing
around. I remember, once, sitting on the
curb and trying to get a magnifying glass to harness the sun’s rays and melt
the tar on the road. And that was neat—I
was growing in my potential as a thinker.
Or I remember spending years and years practicing the piano
or the trumpet or the organ because God gave me that potential to be a
musician. And I remember being in high
school and college and thinking, “What am I supposed
to be? What can I be? What do I want to be?” And I enjoyed studying Anthropology and
practicing my hand at being a creative writer.
When I studied music in college, it was great to be around other
musicians; and when I was in seminary studying for priesthood, it was great to
be around other people who were serious about their faith, and serious about
their relationship with the Lord.
Day after day, year after year, decade after decade, Jesus is
calling us to “live up to our potential.”
He put the little child in front of his disciples and said, “Here, be
like this one. Be like this child who has not conceded to the notion that life is
dull and limited. Be like this child who
has not given in to the idea that
faith and God are irrelevant and pointless.
Be like this child who’s going through life with eyes wide-open, and is
having the time of their life becoming
who and what God has made them to be.
And it doesn’t matter how young or old we are, God is always pushing us to live up to our
potential. Even on our death-bed,
there’s still potential within us—the potential to pass into the arms of God
definitely and eternally.
Jesus is always trying to elevate
us, to open up the gift of life and love for us. He says: “You can be anything you want to be;
you have a lot of potential.” All that’s
left is to trust that he’s right: that we have
a lot of potential . . . and to see where that God-given potential takes us.
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