February 23, 2025 – African American Heritage Celebration/Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: Fr. John Edmunds, ST

SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – C
1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23
1 Corinthians 15:45-49
Luke 6:27-38

I don’t know how parents do it. They are given these precious lives to care for but no instruction manual is included. They have to learn how to change the tire while the car is still rolling. Then when another child comes they have to do it all again because this individual is not like the other one and presents a fresh set of challenges. My observation, as a non-parent, is that there are two principal tasks that are required of every parent – they must give their children roots and wings. Parents give their children roots through affirmation. They assure the child that they are accepted and loved just as they are, right today. In the book and movie, The Help, the maid, Aibileen, tells the little toddler she cares for: “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” Affirmation of that sort roots a child. The other parental task is to provide their children with wings, to help them become more. They do so by having expectations for their children. You can do better than this report card in school, Johnny. If you are going to learn to play the piano, you’d better practice. People will judge you by how you look so put on some clean clothes and comb your hair. Having expectations of their children challenges them to grow. The balancing act is to make sure that the expectations to become better do not diminish the affirmation that being who they are already makes them precious right now.

The same dynamic is at work in the spiritual life. We too need to hear the affirmation that we are children of God, made in God’s image and likeness, precious in God’s sight just in being ourselves. Nothing that we do produces or changes those foundations. However, we are also called to live up to our identity as children of God. We can’t just drift through life but must act in a way that reflects who we are. St. Augustine captured this two-sided reality in his teaching on the Eucharist. He would hold up the host. “Behold who you are.” You are the Body of Christ. You are made for holiness. You are capable of bearing divinity. But then he would add, “Become who you receive.” Your values, your decisions, your actions must reflect the worth and dignity that you possess as the Body of Christ. That does not come automatically. We have to constantly examine our lives to see if we are living as a child of God should live and when we aren’t, we must be willing to change.

All of which leads us to the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus always operates out the explicit awareness that affirms the divine importance of every single human being. However, he also has expectations of us, expectations that we will live in a way that reflects the identity as children of God. In fact, Jesus says, we are even to imitate the way that God acts. “Be merciful, just as your Heavenly Father is merciful.” That seems like a pretty tall order. How can I be as merciful as God when I am a human being with human feelings. When someone hates God, God isn’t hurt but I am when I am hated. If I gave to everyone who asked me as I was walking downtown on State Street I’d be broke in a heartbeat but God isn’t overwhelmed with all we ask. When children are harmed, when the poor are exploited, when the sick are not cared for, when others are demeaned, God isn’t harmed but it hurts my soul. Is Jesus asking something which is too much for a human being, living in this world full of problems? How can we possibly be merciful as God is merciful? In The Color Purple when Shug tells Celie that the way through her anger is to imagine oall the good things God has created Celie says that when she thinks about God creating a rock she wants to throw it.

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Give to everyone who asks of you. Judge not. Is Jesus asking something which is too much for us who live in this world full of not very nice people? Is his proposed lifestyle even possible? And then I remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was an ordinary person. He held no office, he wielded no power, he possessed no authority. And yet he did more to change our country for the good than any other individual during my lifetime. How did he do it? By adopting the words of Jesus as his plan of action. He would meet hate with love. As he observed, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” When someone would slap him on one cheek he would offer the other. He gave all that he had until they took everything from him, even his life. Yet, by following the command of Jesus, he changed the world. Or think of Fr. Augustine Tolton, the first recognized African-American priest in the United States. Born a slave in 1854 his desire to become a priest was met with resistance, scorn and obstruction. Yet his determination to serve a similarly abused people of God, even in a Church which did everything it could to make him and them feel unwelcomed, has inspired generations of African-American Catholics.

Church, our own history tells us that what Jesus asks of us is not only possible but even desirable. Our instinct to pay back those who oppose us or cause us harm only perpetuates a broken world. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and pretty soon the whole world is blind and toothless. But offering love to everyone, even haters, as Jesus has commanded and love will be given back to us: good measure, packed together, shaken down and overflowing, poured into our laps. Who could ask for anything more!