Twenty-First
Sunday of Ordinary Time
August 24, 2003
What do you do when you
run up against a hard teaching in the church?
I
have a confession to make. I am a recovering shopping cart Catholic. You know
how it goes. You walk down the first aisle of Catholicism – I’ll take
a can of Holy Days of Obligation, no problem. The real presence of Jesus in the
Eucharist and the other sacraments – better stock up on those. And here,
the preferential option for the poor – love that stuff. It is easy to put
those into my ‘cart’ – to live as a Catholic Christian with
those teachings. Because they make sense of my world, because they fit my understanding
of how Jesus visions the way we should be and could be. All the things that are
in aisle one of Christianity.
But, when you turn down aisle two and three, it has not always been that easy.
What about the church’s teaching on sexuality, whether that is in the orientation
question, pre-marital sex or the birth control side? And then there’s that
women ordination question. . Better to not even touch that one. There is that
whole aisle of ethical teachings – from capital punishment to human cloning
to abortion to dignity of life and euthanasia issues. Can I ever read enough even
to have a sense of what the church is teaching there? Better leave it on the shelf.
Shopping Cart Christianity – following Jesus down the convenience aisles
of life – without ever dealing with the more difficult issues. And I’ll
admit – I am a recovering shopping cart Catholic. Just like the folks in
the time of Jesus.
After this long bread of life discourse – you finally hear the reaction
of the people of Jesus’ time. Murmuring. Doubting. Hardened of heart –
‘who can accept it?’ And then the conclusion: “As a result of
this, many disciples returned to their former way of life.” Shopping cart
disciples. People who were in it for the bread or for the healings he did or for
the fame of being around him or for anything but the Spirit and life Jesus promised.
But once it became clear what Jesus was about and what it might cost them, it
was so hard for them to continue. I was so hard for them to trust. Because eventually
that is what it is all about – trusting in Jesus as being the Spirit and
life, of having the words of everlasting life. …What do you do when you
reach a hard saying of Jesus/the church?
I do not propose in one short homily to answer that question with any of the nuances
and understandings that it deserves. Nor is it as simple a response as people
on both ends of the debate sometime tell us. In that tension between: “Believe
everything that the pope/church tells you and Follow your own conscience come
what may” is there a path that is true to the gospels, to Jesus and to this
thing we call the Catholic church? I believe the answer to that is yes (which
is why I am a recovering shopping cart Christian. The way is what I call the Simon
Peter test.
When Jesus turns to the twelve and asks them what they will do in the face of
his difficult teaching, it is Simon who gives us the answer. And at first breath,
it is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Jesus. “To whom else shall we
go?” It’s kind of like saying to your spouse on your anniversary –
“I’ll stay with you cause I couldn’t find anyone else who would
put up with me…”. To his credit, Peter begins in the right place –
with Jesus. But then Simon Peter continues: “You have the words of eternal
life.” There is an experience of life, of love, of an expanding ability
to be in and of the world when I am true to who you are and what you teach me
about life. This following of you, step by step, brings me to a place of holiness
and self giving that I might never have known any other way. That’s the
Simon Peter test about the difficult teachings of Jesus and the church. Does being
faithful to this teaching bring me closer to Jesus and does it awaken in me an
experience of eternal life?
In many ways, the shopping cart stage of life is an apt description of the experience
of college as well. It is a time for the trying out of so many different and new
things. How do you find your way through? Of all the choices before you, how will
you choose that which will help you be your truest and best self? What I propose
in the Simon Peter test is simple. To integrate anything in your life, you have
to ‘put it in your cart’ first. You have to live and walk the teaching
from the inside so you can test it. You can’t learn by reading the label
and leaving it on the shelf. You have to live the teaching/truth/value - which
is a work of humility and hope and trust. The challenge is to live the teaching
until you come to know the deepest truth about it…
I am a recovering shopping cart Catholic. And when I struggle with a teaching
of the church, I pray and pray, and then live the teaching until the moment, when
I, like Simon Peter, can say to Jesus with all my heart: “I have come to
believe and am convinced – you are the source of eternal life.