What is your spiritual risk tolerance?

What is your risk tolerance?  Do you know this expression  “risk tolerance?’  Your financial advisor before charting your investment strategy will ask your “risk tolerance.”  Conventional wisdom has it that the older we get, we should get more conservative with our finances and protect our assets.  Certainly with the finances of the Church, we have a low risk tolerance.  Financially we are conservative.

Does the same logic apply to our spiritual life?  What is your spiritual risk tolerance?  There is a side of us that wishes to be very conservative.  We wish to preserve the great tradition that has been given to us as Roman Catholics.  We are a Church that is apostolic -- that is say, we are a Church built upon the apostles’ faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

We also need to look at our spiritual risk tolerance in the light of today’s Scripture readings – the parables of Jesus.    “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.  When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.”  That does not sound like a conservative strategy when one finds the pearl of great price.    It is more like a riverboat gambler willing to risk everything in the process of acquiring this pearl of great price. 

In the spiritual life, my hunch is that you don’t see yourself as that much of a risk taker.  What is Jesus’ message to us in this parable?  It sounds like the message Jesus gave the first apostles.  “Leave everything behind;  come follow me.”  Jesus is looking for more than part-time discipleship.  We are very, very generous when we tithe 10% of our time, talent, and treasure.  But the thing of it is, Jesus is looking for the other 90% as well.

In your faith life, what is your pearl of great price, and what are you willing  to sacrifice in order to acquire this pearl of great price?  I know that I need to pause a bit in reflecting on the meaning of this parable in my life?  Is my pearl of great price when I was appointed the pastor of this beautiful faith community?  Was it the day I was ordained a priest 46 years ago by Bishop Sheen at Sacred Heart Cathedral?  Was it the day I was baptized at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church and received for the first time the life of Christ Jesus within my spirit and became God’s beloved son.

I suggest for all of us the day of our baptism was the day we received this pearl of great price.  We became God’s beloved sons and God’s beloved daughters.  The sacrifice we are to make is a daily sacrifice in which Jesus calls us each day to aware of who we are – God’s beloved – and each and every day we are called to witness to His love in the way we live our lives.

How today are we willing to sell everything we have to deepen the life of Christ Jesus that is within us?  St Paul in the second Scripture reading in his letter to the Romans says something rather dramatic:  “Brothers and sisters:  we know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  Nothing happens by accident.  When we see with the eyes of faith, all that happened in your life, both the peaks and valleys, work together in fashioning your salvation story, fashions the working of God in your life.  Both the crosses and the joys of life are part of God’s plan in calling you to Himself.  As we sell everything to acquire the pearl of great price, we pray for the grace to recognize the presence of God in all of life.  There is no part of your life that God is not present.  For example, in coming to terms with illness, the death of one you have loved deeply, in coming to terms with a relationship in your life that is a challenge, we seek the grace of knowing God is present to you and you always and everywhere are God’s beloved.

We are sinners in the hands of a loving and forgiving God.

At our liturgies this weekend, I had the great privilege of baptizing the four newest members of our faith community:  Ada Mary Peffer, Maximilliam Mitacc, Logan Aaron Mott, and Amelia Rae Reinholtz.  The youthfulness and vitality of our parish life is  beautifully illustrated in the number of baptisms that are celebrated in our Sunday liturgies.

As I reflect on today’s Gospel of the parable of the wheat and the weeds, my conviction is we live in a very weedy world.  Isn’t it true, there is much too much violence, hatred, power-grabbing, self-centeredness in the world today?   In the land we call Holy, their leaders are hurling missiles back and forth at each other killing innocent people.  We have to look no further than ourselves to recognize too much self-centeredness and not enough God-centeredness and other-centeredness in our lives.

Where have the weeds come from?   In the Gospel, the servants said to the master:  Do you want us to go and pull them up?  He replied:  “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.  Let them grow together until the harvest.”

I have that same question when I look out at my garden:  Where have the weeds come from?  Their ongoing presence in my garden is more the result of my laziness of myself as a gardener than some spiritual wisdom.

Not so with Jesus.  Jesus tells that this parable to illustrate the patience of God in dealing with weeds.  Wait until the harvest.   The Church of Jesus is not to grow impatient with the weeds.

What weeds are we talking about?  This is an important awareness in the spiritual life of anyone of us and in the spiritual life of the Church as a whole.

Yes, the weeds of life are about us.  We are all sinners.   We all have demons.  In term of this parable we all have weeds – the weeds of pride, the weeds of materialism, the weeds of anger, the weeds of lust, the weeds of self-centeredness, and the weeds of holding grudges.  Often enough, we are more aware of these weeds in the lives of others than ourselves.

There are significant weeds in the life of the Church – the weeds of sexual abuse, the weeds of power, and the weeds of not living out the Gospel that is preached?

What are we to do in the face of the weeds that are about us?  The parable suggests that God is patient – much more patient than ourselves.   Matthew’s Gospel could be renamed the Gospel of Punishment Postponed.  May we pray for the grace of the patience of God.  This does not mean passivity or helplessness or an attitude of giving up.  Does this mean that we are to sit back and pick daisies while the innocent suffer?  It means we are to love ourselves and others who are sinners and who have weeds that disappoint us.    The truth of our lives is that we are all sinners whom the Lord has turned his gaze upon.

The Gospel tells us that God can tolerate weeds far better than we can.  This God sounds a bit like that crazy landowner who left the weeds with room to grow.  A mentor for me is Pope Francis who said:  “Who am I to judge?”  Following the example of Pope Francis, may we refrain from judgment.  May we experience the joy of the Gospel and witness to the kindness and patience of God in the way we are with one and all.

What are to make of the weediness of our very Church that doesn’t always reflect the love of Jesus in the lives of people?  Do we look for a Church without weeds so that we can focus more fully on God.   As illustrated in the parable, as disillusioning as this may, the weeds are going to be present till the harvest at the end of the world.  The Church will always be a Church of sinners.  Again, this doesn’t that we are to the passive recipients of evil as in sexual abuse.  We are to stand for the Gospel and hold ourselves and others up to a Gospel way of living.  But at the same time, as long as people are people, there is going to be some weediness in our own hearts and in our world.

What are we to do?   In fact, aren’t we in the field ourselves, still growing?   And just what are we, weeds or wheat, or both at different times?  Would we want someone, other than God,  misjudging us before we have had time to grow to full maturity?

The apostle Paul said something very remarkable in his second Letter to the Corinthians:  Paul boasted of his weakness.  He boasted of his weediness so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Like Paul, we do not have to deny the weeds of our lives or the weeds of the Church.  We can let them grow till the harvest to make us more aware of our need for God’s grace.  At the end of the day, we are all sinners in the hands of a loving and forgiving God.

The disciples asked Jesus: "Why do you speak in parables?"

This past week, some 300 of our younger parishioners are involved in a two week summer intensive in Faith Formation.  With considerable joy, I have the opportunity of visiting each of the classrooms and share and teach our youth about Jesus, Jesus’ love for them, and how Jesus wants us to live as his disciples.

Our students are filled with questions.  One of our second graders asked me how many stories are in the Bible.  I must admit I was stumped. What I do know is that stories were very important to Jesus.   His stories called parables are the way Jesus used to teach us about the deepest mysteries of our faith.  Jesus was a story teller through and through.   I figured that Jesus knew that people remember stories better than memorized definitions.

One of the major audiences for Jesus’ parables were Galilean farmers.  They knew all about sowing seeds and waiting for the harvest -- and so, today’s parable about the sower and the seed.

As we listen to the stories that Jesus tells, we need to reflect on the spiritual message that is contained in the story.  As in many parables of Jesus, there is a little strangeness to it.  The sower scatters the seed in a reckless fashion – throwing some seed on the path and other seed on rocky ground and still other seed among thorns.  This parable is not exactly a tract on productive farming.  Otherwise, the sower would have been more careful about just placing the seed on good soil.  But on the other hand, the seed that did land on the good soil yielded a prodigious harvest, much more than a normal harvest, yielding a hundred or sixty or thirty fold.

Jesus, the sower of the seed, scatters the seed of God’s grace extravagantly and indiscriminately.  This is a sign of the abundance, the generosity, and graciousness of the kingdom of God.  We are all the extravagant recipients of the love of God – whether we are deserving or undeserving.  No matter how you would grade yourself as living out a Gospel way of life, the point of the parable we all gracious recipients of the extravagant love of God.

The disciples ask:  “Why do you speak to them in parables?”  Jesus speaks in parables because the outer symbolic language of the story gives God a chance to work in the hearts of those who hear it in order to bring them to understand “the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.”

   

In the Gospel parable, there are four kinds of soil that received the seeds from the sower.  The different kinds of soil represent the different conditions of the human heart.  Instead of interpreting the parable in terms of four different groups of people who receive the Word of God, I invite you to consider the soil as your own self.  Sometimes we are open to receiving the Word of God; other times we are not.  Sometimes, we are open to receiving the Word of God; other times we are distracted, preoccupied, wrestling with our inner demons and we do not have an inner receptivity to receive the workings of the Holy Spirit within us.

The choice that is ours is to place God first in our life.  The choice that is ours is to live for self or to live in love and service of those around us and those who are in need.  When the focus of our lives is on the Lord, we naturally live other-centered lives, rather than self-centered lives. When we allow the grace of God to grow within us, we discover the deepest meaning of our lives in making a difference in other people’s lives.

I was in Hill Haven nursing home this past week visiting an elderly lady who had requested to see a priest.  She then told me she was a devout presbyterian but her minister did not make house calls; and so, I would did do in a pinch.  She was a beautiful woman who has been blind form birth.  And as she told me, she has been in the nursing home for the last 19 years.  Even if she had the numbers of years incorrect, the point is she had been confined to a nursing home for a long time with very few visitors.  It was a privilege to spend time with her and to share in prayer with her the mystery of God’s love in her life.

Another telling experience for me this week is to watch our teen catechists teach and share the Gospel with our elementary youth in our summer faith formation.  I marvel and stand in complete admiration of our teens sharing the beauty of the Gospel message with our younger parishioners.

In thinking about my nursing home visit and our teen catechists, I’m reminded of a spiritual wisdom that has been one of my mantras:

One hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in my bank account, nor what my clothes looked like.  But the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child.

(and I would also add:  the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a senior citizen.)

Indeed, the seed that is the Word of God falls on the good soil of our own hearts when we are important in the life of an another.

In God's eyes, there are no illegal immigrants in the Kingdom of God.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

You recognize these words that are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.  It describes a foundational value that we have as a nation.  They are words for us to reflect upon on this Fourth of July weekend as we celebrate our freedom and independence as a nation.  We give thanks for the values of freedom and democracy that characterize our way of life.  Going back to the humble beginnings of this great nation, we are a nation of immigrants; we are a nation of welcome; we are a nation of hospitality.  Can you imagine how many people wept with gratitude in reading these words as they were welcomed on the American shores?  My grandfather for one wept with gratitude as he came from Germany.

 My message today is not about how secure our borders should be against illegal immigrants.  We will leave this question to be debated in the halls of Congress.

Rather, my message is on today’s Gospel:

Jesus said:  “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

In God’s eyes, there are no illegal immigrants in the Kingdom of God.  In God’s eyes, there are no second class citizens.  All are welcome.  All are very much loved.  The beautiful words that are inscribed on the Statue of Liberty could be inscribed on the doors of our Church.   They express the Gospel message of “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened.”

Like our first immigrants who wept with gratitude, we too will live with an attitude of gratitude as we experience the depth of God’s love for each and every one of us.  Jesus gathers those burdened by sin and illness, those who are weak in faith or troubled in spirit, to come to him, and find refreshment, rest, and peace.