How many non-negotiables do you have in your life?

I have been thinking about my Uncle Wally these days. Fr. Wally Boul was the founding pastor of St. William’s church near the airport. And as nice a man he was to me and my brothers and sister, as compassionate as he could be with his parishioners in his latter years, there was this unyielding side to him that would come out every so often. He’d set his jaw in a certain way, and you knew that if you were opposing him at that moment you were in for a fight. Yet, as I reflect on my memory of him, the only time that I consistently saw that side of him was in two situations. 1) When someone was messing with the poor. At his first assignment, he caught someone stealing from the poor box. Wally chased him down the street, tackled, and had him pinned to the ground as he awaited someone getting the cop on the beat. By the time the police got there, his temper had spilled over. “Officer, would you look the other way. WHAM! You don’t steal from the poor, ever. Do you get that?” It is said that the thief was grateful to be handed over to the police. 2) When he was dealing with people who were in denial about their alcoholism.

You see, Uncle Wally was a recovering alcoholic. Because he knew the disease from the inside out, he was stern when he confronted people about their drinking. He would warn them, finger wagging and eyes ablaze – “this will destroy you if you don’t surrender to God in this. If you don’t get help – this will ruin your life and your marriage and your children.” And then he’d tell them: “I’ll go through the hell you’ll have to go through with you, but I can’t do it for you…” Because he knew the suffering involved, because he knew the effects on his own spiritual life, because he knew what it did to people and families, Wally Boul was zealous about people needing to be in recovery. You didn’t mess with Uncle Wally about alcoholism. It was a non-negotiable.

You didn’t mess with Jesus about his Father and the temple, either. When Jesus arrived in the temple that day, something flared up within him that was raw and primeval. “Don’t you be messing with my temple! Don’t you be messing with people’s experience of God!” Though the temple trade was ‘necessary’ for the average pilgrim (you didn’t want to have to worry about feeding your sacrificial animal and keeping him watered during the long walks to Jerusalem for the sacrifice, nor would you have to worry about being able to have the proper Jewish coins for the offerings – you could get all that stuff right outside the temple.) by the time that Jesus appeared on the scene, it had somehow gotten out of control. The court of the gentiles – where ANYONE could worship, and not just the Jewish people – had been completely taken over by the this legitimate temple trade, so much so, that anyone wishing to pray or connect in that outer temple, would have found it all but impossible. Because of the ‘rules’ that said you could only use Jewish coins, because of the ‘rules’ about sacrificing ritually pure animals – people were being shut out from approaching God. People were being kept away from the intent of the temple. “My house shall be a house of PRAYER for all peoples.” A place where people can connect to God, without interference, without meddling, without intermediaries. It was a non-negotiable for Jesus. People need to come to the Father. They need to have a relationship that is real and deep and nurtured by private and public prayer. You don’t get in the way of that process. Ever.

And it got me to thinking. If Jesus came to me, and took a deep, long look into my life and what I am doing, the choices I am making, the values that I have bought into, would I be the recipient of his anger? Would he discover within me, that which would block me from his father? Would he find that which would keep me from where I need to be? And if he came to the United States, and looked at our values as a country, as a nation, as a community, would he have some difficult things to say to us? About our commitment to life in all its forms? About our willingness to put people to death to prove that killing is wrong? About the materialism that can so clutter our lives and our homes, while so many people continue to starve to death in Darfur or in Pakistan or in Central America?

Though it is not an easy prayer meditation, I invite you to image Jesus crashing into your world this week, like he came into the temple, like my uncle would come to a person in denial about the effects of their drinking. And let the zeal for his house that consumed him, let the passion that breathed in my uncle’s love for people to be free of what controls them, be the zeal in your heart to let go of whatever keeps you from God. Amen. Amen.