Fifth Sunday in Lent Time 'B'

Saturday April 1, 2006

Disciple or Just an Admirer?

People who enter a recovery program such as AA also enter a covenant of trust with a sponsor, with other members of the AA community, with their families and even with their employer. They also acknowledge their trust in a higher power.

Concomitant to this covenant is the honest ‘confession’ that their lives have become unmanageable—the acknowledgment that life is not working for them or for their families and friends. The first step toward recovery is to own up to their dependency on alcohol or drugs.

In one way or another, the substance abuser having taken an inventory of his or her life, discovers that indeed, there are no free lunches and there are no short cuts to happiness and successful living. More than likely the addict has turned to alcohol or drugs to dull or deaden the pain of living.

Notwithstanding the promise of life in the bottle and despite the threats of family and friends, sooner or later the addict hears a voice in the heart that is louder than all the others. That moment is just the beginning of recovery and a new response to life just “one day at a time.” It is the long awaited ‘aha moment’ in which many become aware of a higher covenant into which they were invited by a higher power and life-giving force we call God.

Several years ago, ‘USA Today’ featured a story under the caption: “What Makes People Happy?” The author of the story, Marilyn Elias, asked that question in a series of interviews with psychologists, sociologists and other people dealing with human behavior.

Her conclusion was that the happiest people are not necessarily those who have everything. Rather they are people involved with family and friends. What she describes as “the toxicity of materialism” is absent from happy people. They seem to be less concerned about keeping up with their neighbors and more interested in the pursuit of personal growth, intimacy and the nurturing of relationships. Their personal goals are clear. They are self motivated and not concerned by any need to impress others with their prowess or status and they have forgiving hearts.

The readings for this fifth Sunday in Lent are an invitation to conversion, recovery and covenantal love.

They are an invitation to drop the things that prevent us from being truly happy from the inside out and an invitation to adopt a way of life that not only pleases God but which is guaranteed to bring us true happiness. In other words, they are calling us to be our ‘best selves’ with the assurance that God does indeed want the best for us — whatever it takes.

Our ‘recovery’ begins with discovery and the sincere acknowledgement that we haven’t got it right yet. It continues with an attentive heart tuned into the voice of God who speaks the loudest in the human heart.

Jeremiah’s words were spoken to a people whose world was virtually falling apart. The Israelites had lost their independence, their homeland and their very identity as God’s people. They had chosen a path that would lead to their alienation and exile under the domination of a foreign despot.

Although they had only themselves to blame, Jeremiah assures them that God would not hold it against them and in fact would renew them from the inside out. I will speak to their hearts. “I will place my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people…. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord, for I will forgive their wrongdoing and remember their sin no more!”

The author of the letter to the Hebrews places on the lips of Jesus, a heartfelt prayer for the people whose alienation and sin he took upon himself. He set for them and for us an example of what it means to be faithful in the face of hardship, even death.

He was “obedient” to the inner stirrings of his heart. In other words, he “listened” to God’s voice calling him to unselfish love whatever the cost. He did it without counting the cost and became the source of healing love for all who “listen” to his words.

In his inimitable fashion, John the evangelist connects Jesus’ death on the cross with his glorification—strange connection indeed. John, remember, is a theologian and a mystic. Through signs and wonders, his gospel is a portrait of Jesus as suffering servant of God. Jesus’ faithfulness was rewarded by being the “firstborn to rise from the dead.” In this he was glorified.

When tempted to take another road, he confessed: “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” God responds: “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”

In other words, Jesus could not back away from a total embrace of life in a supreme act of love no matter how costly.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair.
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I__
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

As we continue our Lenten journey drawing nearer to Jerusalem, our paths — ours and Jesus’ — will converge one again on Calvary in the mystery that is at the heart of our faith — the contradiction of the cross.

We all admire Jesus but there is a difference between admiration and true discipleship. In the words of Scripture scholar, Pat Sanchez, “We must choose whether we shall live our lives as mere admirers of Jesus, living a safe and sterile semblance of Christianity that is politically correct and acceptable to the world, or whether we shall follow him along the less traveled road.”

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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