I’m guessing I’m not the only one here
with the following habit: when I’m bored, my hand will often reach down to my
left pocket to take out my phone to distract me. Maybe it’s the right pocket or
the purse for some of you, but I know this isn’t just a generational thing; I
see people of all ages distracting themselves from boredom with their phones. Now
either I’m sufficiently absent-minded or the habit is deeply enough engrained
that a few weeks ago I was distracting myself with my phone and some website
was taking long enough to load that I got bored and, without even thinking, my
hand reached down to my left pocket, trying to grasp something that wasn’t even
there that wouldn’t even have relieved what was wrong.
What I did wasn’t particularly harmful,
but that posture – of trying to grasp something that really relieve what ails
us – is the basic posture of so much sin. The original grasping was Adam and
Eve reaching for the apple. But, that wasn’t the first sin, but the second.
Adam and Eve had been made in the image and likeness of God, and their first
sin was to doubt that. The serpent came and said to them, “Do you want to be
like God? Then, reach out, take and grasp this thing, this apple?” If Adam and
Eve had really believed that they were who God created them to be, that they
were like God, they’ve have instantly rejected this as ridiculous. But, they
didn’t. They reached out and grasped.
And we do this too. In fact, we’re
mired in it. We live in fear and anxiety and doubt, doubting we are wonderfully
and fearfully made, doubting that we are made like God, not in our power, but
in our capacity for love. So, we grasp. We think that if we just grasp the
right things, and hold on for dear life, we’ll find security. But, it’s never
enough. That’s where jealousy comes from: when we think someone else has
grasped more than us. That’s where pride comes from: when we think we’ve
grasped more than them. That’s what makes it hard to be generous: because we
fear that if we let go of what we’re grasping, we’ll be nothing. Well, we’re
not nothing: we’re made in the image and likeness of God, not called to power,
not called to security, but to risky, fragile open-handed love, the kind of
love that doesn’t grasp, the kind of love that’s open-handed and in its
open-handedness can receive gives that could never be grasped.
But God never gives up on us. God sent prophet
after prophet to tell His people to stop grasping, to open their hands, to
trust and to love. But it wasn’t enough. So, He sent His only son, to show us
what divine love looks like with a human face, to show us that human weakness,
human fragility is no contradiction to divine love. And just that, wouldn’t be
enough either. So, he claims us anew in baptism. We, who were already His, have
been claimed anew, have heard God declare, “This is my beloved daughter, this
is my beloved son.” We have been filled with the Spirit, who dwells closer to
us than we do to ourselves, prayers for us in sighs too deep for words, and
keeps on acting to remind us who we are, and bring us closer to Christ.
In our gospel, we heard that Jesus’
relatives were some of the slowest to accept who he was. In another part of
Mark’s gospel, we hear that it was precisely because he was too familiar that
they couldn’t accept him as who he was, as divine love with a human face. And
there’s a sure sign, that we’ve lost sight of being made in the image and likeness
of God, that our neighbors are made in the image and likeness of God, that when
we see someone who is too like us, we can’t see God in them.
At the end of the gospel, Jesus has
something very important to say, that we only normally hear about two thirds
of. He says that whoever does his word is his brother and sister and mother.
And we normally hear about the first two thirds of that: that Jesus is our
brother. And that’s amazing enough! That we have that closeness to Jesus, that
we’re growing in family resemblance. But, we don’t hear the last part, that if
we do Jesus’ word, we can become his mother.
That’s how bold God’s dream is for us,
that all of us would follow Mary’s vocation. We know, some of you a lot more
personally than me, that the life of a mother is nothing easy, is not always
even safe. The life of a mother is a risky life, a loving life, in which a mother
gives of her own body that another may have life. The life of the Christian is
the same. To take up your cross and follow Christ is surely nothing easy, is a
life of sacrifice. But, Jesus assures us that when we do his word, Christ takes
on flesh anew.
That’s a bold dream for God to dream of
us, but God’s dreams aren’t futile. We are made in the image and likeness of
God, and we are called to act with an open-handed love, not grasping, and
assured that when we do Christ himself takes on flesh in our actions. And we’re
not perfect at this, sometimes we fail pretty spectacularly. But, God is never
done with us. God is always acting to form us, to be more assured that we are
like God and are called to move ever deeper into that life, to love like God.
For in the end, freely choosing love forever, is precisely what heaven is. And
that’s God’s great dream for us.
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