In today’s Gospel Story (Luke 3:15-16, 21-22) Jesus hears his Dad, his Abba, say “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” This points to the time when Jesus began to realize he was indeed the full human presence of Abba. From this point he grew continually in his awareness of being Abba’s (Dad’s) Son, and this determined how he lived and conducted himself. Jesus shows us everything of Abba that we can know as humans. Jesus is God in human flesh. He tried to show us how to live as Abba creates us, and to help every one of us us see that as we are we come from Abba. He came to proclaim the Kingdom of Abba, with its unconditional love for everyone and all of creation. This experience transformed his life and changed how he ministered to people. He did not talk about a God who was looking to judge, punish, condemn, but a God-Abba, a God-Dad, who was complete goodness, kind, merciful, loving, forgiving, healing. This is hard for a lot of us to get. For some reason we seem to need a judge, someone we have to fear, and to please. But this is not the Abba Jesus knew and taught us about. We don’t have to do anything to earn Abba’s love, make him stop loving us, or make ourselves pleasing to him. Each of us, as we are, is Abba’s beloved daughter, beloved son. This will bother some folks, as it did in Jesus’ time.
Abba’s unconditional love is more than we can handle of ourselves, and so we learn that grace is real. Grace is not some thing that we get more of from time to time. It is our awareness of Abba being with us and very much involved in our everyday living. Abba is in our life, but we are conditioned not to be aware of this. Grace, when I am willing to accept and receive it, is my increasing awareness that Abba is indeed involved in my life in so many ways, and has been since my beginning. I’m noticing when I simply said no, I don’t want to hear this, and when I said yes. It’s like that for all of us, if we are willing to be open and free. It’s not all holy things and pious thoughts. Quite an adventure.
From Jesus’ time to our own day the tragedy is his teaching of boundless and unconditional love for all has not been taken up by many of us who would be his followers. While Jesus placed no conditions on who he welcomed, many of us place our own conditions, giving us a feeling of power and control. I certainly have. But it can’t be about me. It has to be about Jesus’ teachings and my saying yes to them instead of changing them for my comfort and convenience. Varied traditions sent up their own mutually contradictory standards for who can draw near to Jesus Christ. For many this has become an emotional and polarizing issue. We have replaced unconditional live with fear, judgement, and punishment.
Pope Francis is trying to move the church towards being a church that listens to the Holy Spirit speaking through all the people and lets herself be guided by her. There is something to this. I have to ask, “where am I in all this?”. When I see this judging and condemning happening, what am I to do? Saying that I’ll pray for someone just doesn’t seem like enough. I’m used to being actively involved, getting my hands dirty, and sometimes making messes, other times cleaning messes up. As I learned in Viet Nam, “Anything that affects your people in any way concerns you, Chaplain, and don’t you forget it!”. I believe in a loving Abba, but I don’t know what to do. I keep feeling there must be more. Because of my current status, retired diocesan priest and retired Army Chaplain, I have a freedom many other priests do not. Does this mean I’m being asked to do some difficult things? I don’t know. I have it on good door-knocker face to face “authority” that I have to ask permission before I publish a dissenting opinion. I’m thankful for my experience as a soldier Chaplain, a different world.
As the Celtic Poet John O”Donohue puts it, I am in the autumn of my life, both from the perspective of my age, and my cardiac situation. This is a privilege and a gift, an exciting and peace-filled time for me. I’m coming to know myself, who I am, more deeply, which is exciting. I am fully aware this can go on for a long time, or end soon. I have no real interest either way. I just want to be open, Abba is being Abba, and I am most grateful. I don’t know why I’m writing this now, but it is intense in my mind. I have been reviewing my past days and years from the perspective of, I hope, a bit more wisdom, seeing how things in my past led to me being where I am now, and it is good. I would love to hear the words spoken to Jesus at his baptism, “you are my beloved son, in you I am pleased”, and at times I have heard them. They are spoken to each of us but we are conditioned not to hear them. I am alive because Abba (being itself) is sharing his Self/being with me as I am. And so it is with each of us as we are, even though many of us do not accept it in others we don’t know or understand and therefore fear. We feel better if we have to earn Abba’s love, and control access to Abba, because dealing with unconditional acceptance and love makes us feel powerless. And so we create our own judgmental and punishing god to meet our needs, as I have done numerous times.
In the Story Jesus came to know who he was and it changed how he conducted himself. When I spend time with and listening to people I come to know who they are, and who I am in relation to them. I don’t have all the answers, just maybe different questions. Every person in my life has the right and the need to be in my life, as I do in theirs, whether I like it or not. This is because Abba in his providential loving care for all of us brings us together to work out our salvation, our growing into the fullness for which we are being created. Salvation begins in this life, and while it is a personal affair, it is never a private affair. We grow into our salvation together. We need each other. I need the people in my life, and they need me. It really is a mystery. Just sayin . . .