28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

           “As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’”  In our Gospel we have an eager and zealous man.  He didn’t just come up and say, “Hey, Jesus” and shake His hand.  He ran to the Lord.  He knelt before Him.  Note this man’s earnestness as he asks a great question—though this question isn’t the end of the story as I’ll explain in a minute.

            When I first read through this narrative, I was reminded of how much I like lists.  I’m the kind of guy that likes tracking my progress using stickie notes (and they even have these on computer), check lists and ordered tasks.  What I thought of is this man asking Jesus of the list of things to do in order to receive salvation.

            I get this quality from my Dad who takes seriously the maxim—the failure to prepare is preparing to fail.  Sometimes he might do this excessively.  For example, my family and I love to go camping in the Boundary Waters.  For each trip he has an exhaustive list.  At the risk of disobeying the commandment “honor your father and mother” I’d like to share this with you.  (To capture the full effect, see his list here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3RNRg82qb4YSnhtUHBkYS1CM0U https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3RNRg82qb4YNUNnQ0UxQVRvaW8).  I’ve often wanted to do a study on this list about the number of hats, footwear and fishing tackle needed to survive in the woods.  And this is totally off topic, but I actually edited this list (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3RNRg82qb4YVm5OeGpzQlppUTg).  If you're going into the woods, my list is all you need.

            I said that this question isn’t the end of the story.  In a sense, this question is the wrong question to ask because there is nothing we can do to earn salvation.  Why we are called to do good works on the path of salvation we must not forget that salvation is a pure gift from God.  It is a gift from Jesus, who became man, and died on a cross for each of us.

            As Catholic Christians we shouldn’t think of our faith as a checklist but as a conversion and transformation.  One of my spiritual directors at seminary used to tell me, “Ben, we are human beings, not human doings”.  It isn’t so much about what we do, but who we are, and who we become with God’s grace.

            The Word of God this morning—which is living and active—gives us to means to such transformation.  The first is wisdom.  We learn about this in our first reading from the book of Wisdom.  We hear the sacred author describe wisdom as more costly than gold, more precious than silver and worth more than jewels.  Wisdom isn’t about gaining factual knowledge, but growing in the real important stuff of life—the true, the good, the beautiful and the one.  We must strive to learn the good and then do it, not because we want to check things off a list but because we want to act as Jesus did.  This requires conversion of heart to know His heart.

            The second is love.  As Catholics we are all about love.  After hearing the man’s question, Jesus ironically “looking at him, loved him…”  He then told this man to sell all he had and give to the poor.  In so doing, Jesus wasn’t adding another item to check off but to show him there is a deeper reality we must follow—to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. 

            And all of this goes to show something about how we think of God.  I suspect my earlier picture of God was similar to this man—someone who examines our life and points out every flaw and sin.  In my mind I thought of God as a crabby teacher with a big and fat red marker ready to tear apart the test of my life, someone who was eager to make check marks and edits galore.

            The fact is, God is not a crabby teacher but a Father—our Father—Who loves us more than we can ask or imagine.  He wants us now—not after we have crossed everything off a list, conquered every sin or after we have figured everything out.  Sometimes we may think we are only good Catholics when we do such things.  God wants us in our brokenness, sinfulness and weakness.

            We pray this morning that we may allow God’s grace to transform us through wisdom and love.  We then go forth this week to our families, coworkers and friends to live in this wisdom and love and pass it on.