19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) - Clover Sites



19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Several years ago, I went to Washington DC to spend some time at the National Gallery of Art. While there I learned the story of artist Wolfgang Beltracchi, who for decades created forgeries from other painters in history, and he made millions of dollars doing it. He was so talented in creating them that many of his creations were hanging in museums and art galleries around the globe. Experts could not even tell the difference, and this led to an inability to verify and appraise pieces of art all over the world.

Beltracchi finally made a mistake-- using a paint (a titanium white) that was not available at the time the original artist was painting-- that led to his arrest and conviction. And so, in 2011 he was sentenced to six years in prison. There is no questions about the immorality of lying and cheating in this manner. (Although Beltracchi seemed to have no remorse. When asked if he would have pursued the same path again, he said "Yes-- but I would never have used that titanium white!") I was fascinated, however, by the ability to create an imitation of something so close to the original that no one can tell the difference.

I mention this because Saint Paul wrote to the Ephesians (in the second reading today) and encouraged them to be "imitators of God" by living in love and sacrificing their very selves. Paul also says "to be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving..." Can you imagine imitating Jesus so closely that people only see him when they look at you—because you are that great at imitating? This would be an imitation that would be a good thing, and would not land you in jail.

The playwright Oscar Wilde once said, "The worst advice you can give someone is: be yourself!” This is, in fact, advice that is often given to young people today. But Oscar Wilde knew that people have so much more potential, and Saint Paul was explaining that we can join ourselves to Christ and be so much more than just our human selves. When we join ourselves to Christ, we take upon ourselves-- as Christ did on the cross-- the pain and death of life in all its ugliness... and return, in its place, forgiveness and love. When we live in the embrace of sacrificial love, we show a world heel-bent on getting even and setting the record straight... that only love can change the human heart and re-direct the human journey.

The second reading made the point that “bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling” grieve the Holy Spirit of God. If you pay attention to the news, the Holy Spirit must be grieved a lot. Just in the past week:

• Two forty-year-old men in Florida were arguing politically on Facebook, becoming very passionate, and finally threatening one another, one making threats upon the other’s wife and son. In response to that threat, the other man sent his address said to “come on over” if he wanted to fight-- and said to beep his horn when he showed up. And so, the guy parked outside the house and beeped his horn—and when the other guy came out of the house, the guy in the car shot him with a gun… thankfully he didn’t kill him.

• Also this week, a couple in New York was having troubles, and the father took their seven-month-old and apparently tossed him into the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge. A tourist spotted the body floating in the river, and waded into the water to retrieve it.

• On Wednesday two men were stabbed at a bar not far from here in New Market. One patron said, “This is a community bar. We’re like a big family. I’m shocked.”

• Last weekend the City of Chicago made the news because there were 74 people shot in one weekend, and twelve of them died.

• And the City of Charlottesville has declared a state of emergency for this weekend, in preparation for the one-year anniversary of a violent white nationalist rally that left one person dead and many others injured.

• I could just keep going on, but just a final example about a new Facebook page entitled “Offside” which carries videos of parents at youth sporting events yelling profanities, charging the playing area, and hurling punches at coaches. This page is intended to shame parents into behaving, because there is now a national shortage of coaches. Coaches just don’t want to put up with it anymore.

• Maybe one more: tweeting is a very public thing, and we have elected officials now whose tweet messages embody the very things that St. Paul says grieve the Holy Spirit: “bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling.” You can hear all this in the tweets.

This is the culture and atmosphere that we are living in and with every day. And it is the culture and atmosphere which young people grow up assuming is normal. I will not accept that this is normal. St. Paul did not accept that it was normal. And I invite you, as fellow members of the Body of Christ to not believe that this kind of behavior is normal for human beings.

To use images from the gospel reading today, all church communities are called to be the bread of Christ's love for others, the "manna" of God's grace to our surrounding community. As Jesus, the "bread of life" gave life to the world through his selfless compassion and humble servanthood, we, too, can give life to the world when we embrace that same giving spirit of Jesus: looking beyond our own needs and pain to the good of others, and nourishing one another in the love, compassion, and selflessness of the gospel. We are to be Jesus Christ to the world, leaving Mass where we have consumed him in the Eucharist, so we can be more like him… "imitators" of him.

Remember what Saint Paul said: “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God…” Wouldn't it be great if we, like the scam artist Beltracchi, could create an imitation so close to the original that no one could tell the difference? To be realistic, no one can imitate Christ perfectly... but God does expect us to give it a pretty good try. That's the pledge each one of us makes in Baptism. It is no crime to imitate Jesus... in fact, for us as baptized Christians, it is sinful when we don’t seriously try.

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