When I
was a child, I collected coins. Growing
up in England in the pre-Euro zone days, it was pretty easy to travel around
Europe collecting different coins from different countries and, when my dad
would travel for business, he’d bring back coins from more far-flung
places. I was fascinated at first by the
different sizes, shapes and colors, by the different ways value was shown, and
finally by the different values projected by the coins in a deeper sense: how
did each nation make a statement about who they were by how they decorated
their coins? Now, I soon came to realize
that coin-designers did not tend to be especially imbued with the virtue of
national humility, but none that I can remember made as bold a claim as that
coin the Pharisees probably produced from their own purse at Jesus’ request.
The coin
that paid the census tax was a denarius, and tax collectors didn’t exactly give
change. Most denarii at that time were printed with the following words: Tiberius Caesar filius Divi Augusti Augustus
Pontifex. Tiberius Caesar Augustus,
son of the Divine Augustus, High priest.
The coin the Pharisees were carrying through Jerusalem, the Holy City,
was a minted blasphemy. The coin claimed
that Caesar was not just priest, but the son of a god. And this coin, they carry in the presence of our
Great High Priest, the true Son of God.
Now, of
course, the Pharisees would have told anyone listening that the coin’s phrasing
proclaimed a falsehood, that Augustus was not really divine. But, there’s danger in casually handling the
false, the blasphemous, and that’s that they couldn’t recognize Truth Himself
when he stood before them. They would
have admitted that divinity didn’t reside in Roman Imperial Power, in military
might, oppression and worldwide conquering and plundering. But, they couldn’t see it in front of them
either, couldn’t see that divinity did reside in this poor, homeless, wandering
preacher, of uncertain parentage, who had been a refugee in Egypt, who didn’t
even have a wife, who dined with tax collectors and sinners. They couldn’t see that this, this was the Son
of God.
But, we
can. That’s what we’re gathered for here
today. To proclaim that the Son of God
is here in our midst, present in the body of Christ, the gathered assembly,
present in the priest ordained, present in the Word proclaimed, and present
most preciously in bread, broken and shared, and wine, poured out as
blood. Here, the liturgy forms us not to
look for the godhead in the mighty, but in the broken. There’s something
beautiful about the dedication of this parish being Holy Infant. The
statue by the entrance shows us Christ not doing something grandiose, but being
small, being held, being vulnerable, being dependent, frail and fragile. The
crucifix shows that he didn’t leave vulnerability behind as he grew.
And we
keep coming back to this, because it’s so easy to be forgetful, to place our
trust in something mighty, and not in God who chose weakness. And maybe that
sounds like it might be enough, if we could truly learn to recognize God’s
presence in the world, to encounter God in the vulnerable, the marginalized, the
little ones… how amazing would that be, to be so aware of God’s presence among
us… how much training we need to be able to do that. But, God dares ask even
more.
Give to
God the things of God. It’s not enough just to recognize God in others, which the
liturgy forms us to do, but God asks us to recognize the things of God in
ourselves, and to offer them. In our offertory prayer today, the last prayer
before we begin the preface dialogue (the one with Lift up your hearts,
etc.), we ask God to “grant us… a sincere respect for your gifts.” The gifts He’s
given to others; of course! But also the gifts he’s given to us. And to have a
sincere respect for them is to use them, to glorify God, to serve neighbor, to
grow in holiness ourselves.
The
Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives, because here we are fed, but
here also we offer. When in the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest asks God to “look
upon the oblation of your Church,” (oblation means offering), we’re not just
talking about the bread and wine, transformed by that point into the most
precious of gift, the body and blood of Christ. We’re talking about all we’ve
brought to Mass to offer. All of our prayers and praises, our sorrows, our
laments, our thanksgivings, our earnest pleas; our ‘thank you,’ our please, our
sorry and our wow. The next paragraph of the Eucharistic Prayer, “May he
(Christ) make of us an eternal offering to you (God, the Father).” Christ
offers us as gift to God, because we are the things of God, chosen, precious,
made gift, and made to be given, made to spend ourselves in love of God and
love of neighbor.
No comments:
Post a Comment