Saturday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
There are certain moments in the gospels that Jesus lays down the law. They might not be frequent or at the forefront of our minds but they are there. For some you can imagine people telling their friends that Jesus let those Pharisees have it. Maybe something like, “Get this, he told the Pharisees, ‘You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.’ Can you believe he said that to them! It’s about time somebody called it like it is.” These passages are like BB guns. You know, they are all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Well these passages are great until they convict me of my own sins and shortcomings.
Today’s gospel is truly one of these ‘BB Gun Passages’ because as long as I restrict it to wealth I can keep it at arm’s length. I can make it someone else’s sin. However, when I remember that every passage of Scripture can speak into my life, then the Spirit has room to convict me.
I realized I was restricting the Spirit after I read these readings a few times and wrestled with what you, dear reader, needed to hear. I tried to figure out how I could use the Word of God to convey my message. The Lord doesn’t want me to convey my message, but help myself be open to His and in turn, hopefully, help others be open to it as well. It was all fun and games until the BB ricocheted and I realized I was a Pharisee too.
This shift happened when I allowed Jesus’ words to speak about more than money. As I read, “The Pharisees, who loved money” I recalled a line I used all the time when presenting about healthy relationships. It went like this, “We tend to love things and use people when really we are supposed to be using things and loving people.” The ‘we’ in that phrase is true. Loving things over people is not a problem out there that we only find in the lives of unbelievers. It is in my heart and in yours. We use people in pursuit of a thing. For some it is greed, power, prominence, lust, etc. One that is a struggle in my own heart is using others in my love for time.
So as we go from these readings, let us reflect on what makes this a BB Gun Passage for us? What word fills in for money when you read Christ’s warning against loving things and using people?
- Spencer Hargadon