What Does God Want?

Tags

Hebrew Scriptures, humility, integrity, justice, Micah, offerings, released, slavery, social justice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

This morning’s first reading from the prophet Micah is one of the more familiar texts from the Hebrew Scriptures used in prayer services at events, especially if the audience is considering a social justice agenda. Chapter 6, verse 8 even appears on posters and is a great summary in answer to the question: “What does God ask of us?” It’s succinct, broad-based and even lyrical in its construction in most translations.

This is what the Lord asks of you, only this: to act rightly, to love justice and to walk humbly with your God.

If you’re looking for a “nutshell” answer to how to live life on earth, it’s probably one of the best. This morning, however, I started paying attention to all of Micah’s message which included verses 1-4 and 6-8. Micah is representing God, “entering into trial with Israel” to question the nation’s disregard of all the things God has done on their behalf. “I brought you up from the land of Egypt…released you from slavery…” God sounds really disappointed. (“What have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me!”)

But then the tone shifts and it’s Micah asking the questions about what offering would be enough to satisfy God; burnt offerings? a first-born child?…What is enough to make recompense? Surprisingly maybe, it’s nothing like that. We need offer nothing but our best selves: persons of integrity, humility and justice, to the God who has loved us into life. Does that God not deserve the best effort of our hearts?

 

 

 

 

 

St. Joseph the Worker

Tags

dignity of labor, grateful, honest labor, necessary services, social justice, St. Joseph the Worker, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, workers

Yesterday when I wrote about attitudes toward work I wasn’t thinking that it would be a segue to a reflection on St. Joseph the Worker. We celebrate the feast of St. Joseph as husband of Mary and human father of Jesus on March 19th but in 1955 another feast honoring Joseph, tekton (woodworker or carpenter), was proclaimed on this date by Pope Pius XII to inspire devotion among Catholics and as response to the Communist “May Day” celebration for workers.

In our day, the social justice teaching of the Church emphasizes the dignity of labor in any environment and calls for recognition of workers who provide necessary services to the community by assuring just wages and working conditions for all. Today, then, let us pray in thanksgiving for all workers: those who stand on assembly lines in factories and those in shops who repair all manner of tools and clocks and cars. Let us be grateful for bakers and bank tellers and those who bring food to our tables. (Add your own list here.) Let us always be grateful and rejoice in those who teach us the blessings of honest labor.

 

 

 

 

 

All Saints

Tags

All Saints Day, canonized, Dalai Lama, grace, holiness, hope, Jesus, miracles, piety, Pope Leo XIII, religious practice, Roman Catholic, saint, social justice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today is one of the few days in the Roman Catholic Church that the liturgy of a Sunday is superseded by the celebration of a special feast on the liturgical calendar. Today’s feast of All Saints gives us pause, not only to think about those people throughout history who have been named by the Church as deserving of the title “saint” (those whom the Church has “canonized”) but also to reflect on what it means to be a saint. We often hear people speak of someone who has suffered many trials (e.g. those with many unruly children) as a saint. “That woman is a saint,” they say! In that case it seems that sainthood resides in the person’s ability to show grace under pressure or to endure what might make others lash out and turn to violence. We might hear also, “He’s a saint – in church every morning without fail, never without his rosary…” which tells us that religious practice and personal piety are the means to sainthood. And then there are those who speak out on issues of social justice, demanding that governments care for the less fortunate and those whose dignity is ignored. We have been slow to recognize this category of sainthood (although charity has always been part of the Christian path). Justice workers are sometimes unruly, even going so far as breaking the law in service to what they see as “a higher law” in imitation of Jesus. It was Pope Leo XIII in 1891 who began to articulate what has become the social teaching of the Catholic Church in his encyclical Rerum novarum which spoke of unfair labor practices. Do we see crusaders for justice as saints?

The dictionary has many definitions of sainthood – most of them somehow articulating the quality of holiness. Catholics look for miracles, especially healings and visions – and sometimes have clear evidence of how that has manifested in the lives of the canonized saints. A relatively new development is the growing consciousness of the “sainthood” of people who do not share our own religious beliefs and traditions. Who would argue against the sainthood of the Dalai Lama, for instance, especially if we have been privileged to be in his presence? Saint Paul is responsible for the fact that the title of saint appears in the Scriptures; he addresses everyone to whom he writes as saints! So what does that mean?

We may not all look like saints or fit any standard definition of what sainthood means, but maybe – with the virtue of hope in our pocket – we can continue on the way to God, doing our best to love as Jesus did, and as those people whose example we choose to follow have done, trusting that it is God’s measure we can achieve, becoming one in the great Communion of Saints that knows no human reckoning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Righteousness

Tags

Abraham, complacent, God, holier-than-thou, hypocritical, Paul, pious, preachy, priggish, righteous, righteousness, Romans, sanctimonious, self righteous, smug, social justice, superior, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today in Paul’s Letter to the Romans we read about Abraham being justified not because of his good works (although that measure could have been used) but rather Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, a more important measure. (ROM 4:1-8) The words righteous and righteousness have always made me squirm a little so this morning I looked them up and found that they were the adjective and noun describing the condition of acting in accord with divine or moral law, free from guilt or sin OR morally right or justifiable arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality, e.g. righteous indignation. That helped me because I sometimes think of people others call righteous as angry in their pursuit of social justice. With this definition in my pocket I can be more tolerant as I, too, sometimes feel my blood begin to boil at things happening in the world.

I went one step further in my search this morning, however, and found the root of my discomfort. When I put “self” in front of righteous, I found the following: characterized by a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior. Synonyms abounded: sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, smug, priggish, complacent, pious, preachy, superior, hypocritical. My first thought was that we probably all can name someone like that and then I decided I might want to look in a mirror on occasion to be sure that my faith and my sense of righteousness lies in God and not in myself! Look deep, I said to me, because it may be an occasional arising that eludes your consciousness. Upon reflection, I think that recognition might just be the reason for the “squirminess” that calls for some attention today. Once again – not where I thought this practice of writing would take me but somewhere I need to go!