“Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” –1 Cor. 3:16 Jesus established us as church not specifically to construct a building but to form a community of believers who care about each other as Jesus cares about us. Today we are not celebrating the church as a building. We are celebrating us, the Church. The material structure of a church is symbolic of every one of us: how we respond to the Divine in each of us. When the participants of Vatican II wrote the document on The Church in the Modern World, they were not focusing on the physical materials of our churches. The Constitution on the Church answers the question, “How am I church to others?” “Coming together in unity from every nation under the sun, we carry in our hearts the hardships, the bodily and mental distress, the sorrows, the longings, and hopes of all people entrusted to us.” The Constitution on the Church is our guide. Just as a GPS needs the driver to plug in the destination and additional stops, so we also need to use what help we have been given to become sensitive to not only our needs but also to the needs of others. In today’s reading Ezekiel uses vibrant figures of speech to illustrate how church should give us life: “Whenever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live…” So, we celebrate church today not as a physical construct but as a life- giving body in which we all live and participate. However, just as the physical building needs continual upkeep, so we need care and effort in nurturing our relationship with our God and with each other. Actually, this last sentence is a recurring refrain in our song of life. We believe that the Holy Spirit lives within each one of us and gives us the grace we need to live the Divine in our everyday lives. In addition, we pay attention to how we respect and interact with all those people in our lives—all those people who are also temples of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel certainly fleshes out for us how to live the works of mercy and the beatitudes. In addition, we can glean the Gospel message of caring for one another through the words of contemporary authors. Connecting the Church with our everyday living is what Jesus has taught us in his three years on earth. In Charles Mackesy’s book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, the boy ponders, “I’ve realized why we are here: to love.” “And to be loved,” said the horse. Is this not Church? The minister, Fred Rogers, penned similar thoughts. “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us is, that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.” --The World According to Mr. Rogers Is this not Church?

Lord, I Am Not Worthy Today’s parable from Luke 17 is yet another example of a passage unique to Luke. Our translation fairly waters down what Luke actually said in the phrase, “We are only unprofitable servants.” A more literal translation would render it as, we are but worthless slaves. Slavery in Jesus’ time was a well entrenched, long standing practice in the ancient Roman empire that was largely accepted by everyone. Jesus is using the accepted slavery of his time to make a point that really has nothing to do to with slavery itself, it is certainly not an approval of the practice (many of the Lord’s parables used established practices of his day to make a point but that hardly implied that Jesus approved of them). No one in the ancient world would for a second disagree with the understanding that slaves always came last. Therefore, when Jesus tells his disciples (and us) to have the attitude that they are just slaves, he is presenting a rather profound spiritual teaching that boils down to, we are not worthy, we deserve no reward. It reminds me of a saying that is attributed to St. Thérèse of Lisieux. “Strive to be at the end of the line,” she is said to have taught. “Because no one will ever try to take that away from you!” It’s a wonderful saying whoever said it. So many of us are often envious and jealous of others. We resent that they have more than we do, are more good looking, accomplished, admired and talented than we are. We fear that we will be left behind or ignored because we have no great gifts or achievements. This is to neglect to be fully aware that everything, literally absolutely everything we have, no matter what it is or how we may have acquired it, has been given to us from above. But even more importantly, those gifts have utterly nothing to do with us. They were not given to any of us as a reward (indeed, we’ve had most from birth, so how could they be in any way a reward?). We did nothing to deserve any of them and there is nothing we could ever do to deserve any of them for even the desire, the striving, the work we have done and the efforts we have made, the sheer ability to do anything, have all been given to us. It is an excellent spiritual practice to pray over the fact that we could just as easily have been born destitute, handicapped, severely limited by the resources available or unavailable where we were born. What we absolutely do not know or understand is why there is so very much disparity among people. For it makes no sense that some have and most do not. Much of it is due to shear human greed and selfishness and the uncaring and unloving attitudes they sow. But ultimately, we do not know why and cannot in this life. But it certainly has nothing to do with us, that we in any way deserve anything we have, no matter how hard we worked or how much we sacrificed. For even those abilities themselves were also given to us before we accomplished anything. And if we begin to blame those who have less, to look down our noses at them or think that we are in any way somehow better than them, then God help us for we are totally lost. People who believe that the poor and desperate are that way because they are lazy and do not work or strive enough are both blind and blind fools. Underneath it all we are all exactly the same- sinners, poor, alone, easily wounded and so utterly fragile, lost and afraid, bewildered, powerless and completely dependent on God. And God have mercy on us if we fail to realize that. We are then like the Pharisee Jesus saw praying in the temple, “Thank God I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” It is all from overweening pride and arrogance and as Jesus told us, if that’s how you think, then you have put yourself in a terrible prison and “You will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” The only true response to the injustice, disparity and suffering of the poor in this world is, how can I help? How can I give rather than take? It is to realize that we are all poor and that I am responsible for my brother’s and sister’s welfare. It is to realize that everything I have been given was not meant for me, but to be used and given away for the sake of others and that true love never asks, is that enough? Jesus told the haughty Pharisees (who laid heavy burdens on people and would not lift a finger to help them), “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’” The Lord hears the cry of the poor and woe to us if we do not also. The question Cain arrogantly asked God in the beginning, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” has an obvious but unstated answer from almighty God. “Yes, you most certainly are!”

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns to you seven times a day and says, ” I repent”, you must forgive.’ The apostle said to the Lord, ’Increase our faith!’ The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would obey you.’ • The fact that we have failed ourselves and failed others does not excuse us from a continual effort to forgive and love. We must never forget that the process starts with ourselves. • Lord grant that at the end of my days I will be able to say with Paul I have fought the good fight I have finished the race I have kept the faith.