Grace is something you receive not earn. We so often disbelieve this truth, because we want to earn it.  We love to think of ourselves, and have others think of us, as strong and virtuous.

When we approach “grace” with our ego engaged we lose the ability to take in unconditional love.  We like to be worthy. The problem is that God works from a different playbook. He doesn’t work in a world of scarcity, in a world of winners and losers.  God is humility and generosity and love.  He can’t help it because it is his very nature.  He can only operate in a world of unconditional grace.

Our economy of merit does not comprehend free love. Jesus said to the apostles, “I call you friends.” Friendship, not servant-hood, is the relationship God seeks. Most of us prefer being servants. Divine friendship is simply beyond our imagination.

Our culture worships winners; we prize the ones who compete and win.  Our culture is built on competing, producing, and achieving – winning and losing; which makes us blind to the unconditional gift.  We don’t understand it. We can’t imagine it.  We haven’t earned it.  Or, if we are honest, we can't imagine the one we are judging is worthy of it!  We only understand winners and losers.  Being worthy is everything.

Christianity that is based on a win/lose worldview will always be judgmental and small. It will never make real the generosity of God.  Faith and religion will remain just another thing we attain in a life lived for acquiring. The spiritual path – and life itself – will be mere duty instead of delight.  Delight for all basking in God’s unconditional love.

God loves us all - unconditionally - delight in it!

The Emmaus Road

From the Gospel of Luke chapter 24 verses 13-35 - 
"... two of Jesus' disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, 
and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred."

This Gospel story is one of the most compelling narratives in all of Scripture. Two disciples are walking down the dusty road to the village of Emmaus. Their talk concerns the crucified Jesus.  I imagine them walking slowly, trudging along, depressed by the events they witnessed this week in Jerusalem. Their words come slowly like their pace, "I can hardly believe it. He's gone." ... "What do we do now?" ... "Peter should have done something."  As they amble along a stranger comes up from behind and says, "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help overhearing you. Who are you discussing?" They stop and turn. Other travelers make their way around them as the three stand in silence. Finally one of them asks, "Where have you been the last few days?  Haven't you heard about Jesus of Nazareth?"  And he continues to tell Jesus all that has happened.

What a fascinating scene two sad, confused and sincere disciples telling the story of how all is lost. And God in disguise listens patiently, his wounded hands buried deeply in his robe. They say, "We were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”

"We were hoping" … now there is a phrase we all can understand.

 How often have you heard a phrase like that?

• We were hoping ...  that the doctor would have better news.
• I was hoping ... that she would marry me.
• We were hoping ... our jobs wouldn’t be eliminated.

Those are words painted gray with disappointment.  What those two disciples wanted didn’t happen. We know that feeling.  What we wanted didn’t come; what came we didn’t want.  The result is always the same: shattered hope. We’ve all been there. We know what they felt like that day as they trudged up the road to Emmaus dragging their sandals in the dust, wondering:

"What kind of God would let me down like this?" 

When we are in a state of confusion and despair like them. God could be the fellow walking next to us, and we wouldn't know it. You see the problem with our two heavy-hearted friends was not a lack of faith, but a lack of vision. Their petitions were limited to what they could imagine – an earthly kingdom.  They never dreamed God had something bigger in mind – the salvation of all mankind.

You have to wonder if sometimes God's most merciful act is his refusal to answer some of our prayers the way we expect.

Our two friends walking on the road to Emmaus that day hoped for Israel to have a great earthly kingdom. But that goal was not God’s goal. We should not be too hard on the two men on the road that day. We are like them so often, unaware of what God is trying to accomplish. We often try to limit God by our preconceived ideas and misunderstandings.

Our problem is not so much that God doesn't give us what we hope for as it is that we don't know the right thing for which to hope. 

We are so often like the those disciples that day who missed what Jesus was doing. Did you notice how Jesus reacted to these two bewildered disciples who missed what Jesus was doing by dying on the Cross?  He chastised them. "Oh, how foolish you are!  You are slow of heart to believe.”

"You are slow of heart." What does Jesus mean – slow of heart to believe?

When Jesus expresses his disappointment, he does not talk about their minds or their intelligence.  He does not call them ignorant or stupid. Instead, he talks about the state of their hearts. For Jesus, it’s all about the state of your heart. He was telling them to stop trying to figure it all out intellectually and to start seeing it with their hearts. He wants them to see the love! The love God poured out on humanity through his death on the Cross.
                                                                                                      
He is telling them you missed the point!  It’s all about LOVE, not defeat. And then the scripture passage says, Jesus showed them how the scriptures (how the Bible) reveals that God would express his love for us – this way – from the very beginning.

That day it says that after these disciples encountered the risen Christ their hearts went from slow to believe to burning – to being on fire with faith. When he vanished from their sight that day, they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?"

Maybe there is a hint for us in this line about what this reading means for us.

If we want to have a heart burning with excitement for God, maybe we need to break open the scriptures. When was the last time you sat with the scriptures and allowed them to open your heart?

Jesus calls us to see life with the eyes of the heart:
• A heart burning with the fire of faith.                                                                            
• A heart burning within for justice.
• A heart that is red-hot to share the Good News of the scriptures, to share the Good News we know and others are desperate to hear.

If you are feeling the desire to have an encounter with Jesus as those two disciples on the Emmaus Road did, then maybe you should set aside some time each day to meet Jesus in the scriptures.

If you are a young adult, we have a Bible study group here on Wednesday nights, come encounter Jesus in the scriptures. Our “Connection to Christ” small groups also use the Scriptures as a foundation for their discussions, and you are all invited to join a C2C group. There are great daily meditation books that help us know the scriptures; like Magnificat, or Living with Christ, or The Word Among Us. (www.magnificat.com) (www.livingwithchrist.us) (www.wau.org)

The message of the story of the Road to Emmaus is this.
• If you are longing to meet Jesus ...                                                                                              
• If want to have a personal encounter with Christ                                                                          
• If your faith feels a bit slow of heart right now and you need some fire.              
• If you want to get your heart burning within.

Then it’s time to open the scriptures.

Good Friday

Jesus is it any wonder they killed you that Friday.
You called the better people a breed of vipers,
You told them that their hearts were black sepulchers with fine exteriors,
You chose the decaying lepers,
You spoke fearlessly with unacceptable strangers,
You ate with notorious sinners,
and you said that streetwalkers would be the first in Paradise.
You got on well with the poor, the bums, the crippled.
You belittled the religious regulations.
Your interpretation of the Law reduced it to one little commandment: to love.
No wonder they avenged themselves.
No wonder they took steps against you;
No wonder they approached the authorities, and beg them to get rid of you.

Lord, I know that if I try to live a little like you,
I too shall be condemned.
I am afraid.
They are already singling me out.
Several of my friends are about to drop me.
Lord, I am afraid to let go of the world,
And yet, Jesus, I know that you are right.
Help me to fight,
Help me to speak,
Help me to live your Gospel
To the end,
To the following of the Cross.

Fifth Sunday of Lent - The Raising of Lazarus

It’s so easy to build TOMBS for ourselves, easy to become bound up by the cares of the world. It’s so easy to be distracted by life’s problems. The Easter challenge is to hear Jesus’ call to us – come out of our self-made tombs.

The Story of Lazarus is just a great story full of powerful human emotions; emotions that you and I also experience – like ... sorrow ... fear ... love ... bravery ...  and joy.

When Jesus said to his apostles "Let us go back to Judea" the disciples remind him that the Jews were just trying to kill him.  And we hear the disciples say “let’s go die with him.” You can’t help but be impressed with their courage and understand their nervousness about facing possible death. When we see Mary collapse in tears at the feet of Jesus, we know her pain, her sense of loss.  When Jesus weeps, we know what it feels like to stand with a friend in their sorrow, to see someone we love who is hurting and weep with them.

Thinking about that scene of Jesus weeping; we need to appreciate that our God knows what we go through in life. We have a God who stood by his friends in times of trouble.  We have a God that when we suffer in our daily lives is right there next to us, weeping with us; a God who shared our humanity and knows our human experience.

But this story is not just about human emotions.
It’s about faith.
It’s about the hope Jesus brought to the world.

When Jesus says to Martha: "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"  He is speaking to us too.  We too have been told what Jesus came to accomplish and many of us, like Martha, believe; which makes us EASTER people.

We are people do believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. The story of Lazarus is a call to each of us to embrace our own resurrection, our own victory over death. The distinguishing mark of Christians is the fact that we have a future. When Jesus brought Lazarus out of the tomb after four days that was the final proof for us to believe in his resurrection. The raising of Lazarus was a foreshadowing of Easter morning.  It was a pivotal event that helped Christians to have confidence in Easter.

Lent is almost over.  Easter is just a few weeks away. How blessed we are to be people who have hope. Hope is such a gift, especially when we are suffering in this life.

Forgive me for telling a personal story, but I had a Lazarus moment in my life that I’d like to share with you. 1998 I was diagnosed with cancer, and it wasn’t cancer that the doctors can always get into remission. There was a high probability that I would die. But thanks to the right doctors, and the many prayers of my friends and family I survived.  My friends and family, like the disciples, said to Jesus for me - ”The one you love is ill.” God heard those prayers and restored my life as he did Lazarus.

Facing death and then recovering changes you. Things you thought were so important just don’t seem as important after looking death in the eye.  The human problems we face seem trivial in comparison with the Spiritual journey you find yourself on.

Before cancer, I was a Catholic but didn’t give my faith much of my time. I was too busy. We tend to build tombs for ourselves in this life, to surround ourselves with things that block out the light of our spirits. Like Lazarus, I was in a tomb, a tomb of my own making. I had allowed materialism to bury me alive. I was wrapped up in my humanity and not living like someone who was aware that the Spirit of God was dwelling in me. Paul said it well – when we focus on living in the flesh, it’s hard to please God.
      
Cancer reoriented my life so much for the better that I can honestly say if I could go back and choose not to have cancer or to have cancer I would choose cancer because of the changes it made in my life.

What changed?
        
I learned that God gives us a spirit of love.  I learned that we are only satisfied in life – really satisfied – when we are in touch with LOVING others.  Cancer broke me out of the selfish tomb I had created for myself, and I began to look for ways to serve others, to love others. I certainly would have never become a deacon if not for cancer.

Come out … from the tomb of worry, and enter the new life of trusting God to find a way.

Come out ...  from the tomb of materialism, and become a person that lives for others.

Come out … from the tomb of busyness and enter the new life of finding time to live in touch with your Spirit.

Come out … from the tomb of self-centeredness,  and enter the new life of self-sacrifice, a life of loving and helping others.

Whatever our particular tomb might be, Jesus in his love for us, is calling us out.  Jesus stands at the door and calls to us, "Come out!" and live like people who will never die – live in your spirit.

                    “I am the resurrection and the life,
                     Whoever believes in me, even if he dies will live,
                     And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
                     Do you believe this?”

When we answer –“YES Lord, I believe,”
He says to us “then roll back the stone, come out of your tomb and really begin to live.

Gospel - John 4:5-42 - The Woman at the Well.

Can you hear how radically changed that whole community of Sychar was through this encounter between Jesus and a rather imperfect woman? Most Jewish men would have looked down on this lowly Samaritan woman, but Jesus treated this woman with dignity, and it changed a whole community.

This story reminded me of an event that is seared in the minds of many in my generation;an event that not only changed a whole community but our whole country. In 1957 the federal government ordered Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas to become racially integrated.  The image of armed shoulders escorting nine very dignified, stoic black girls and boys into school is something none of us who saw it will forget.

Melba Patillo was one of the nine Black students escorted to class by U.S. marshals. Whites lined the sidewalk and jeered as she went into school. In the course of that year Melba was spit upon, tripped and called names. What pained her most, however, was being ignored by the other students. She wrote a book about her experiences entitled: Warriors Don’t Cry.  In it she writes: “All I wanted them to say was, ‘Hello, how are you? What a nice blouse.’ ” Melba recalls lying in bed at night filled with fear. But she rarely cried because her grandma kept telling her, “God’s warriors don’t cry.” One day she wrote in a diary:  I am growing up too fast.  I’m not ready to go back to Central and be a warrior. I just want to stay right here listening to the songs of Nat King Cole. The story of Melba Patillo highlights the whole problem of prejudice. And she represents the kind of change one person can make in a community.

Unfortunately prejudice is as old as the world.  And it was part of the world in which Jesus lived as well. Jews harbored a deep prejudice against the Samaritans. Jesus spoke out against it forcefully, in a variety of ways. He shocked his Jewish listeners by making a Samaritan the hero of one of his best-known parables: the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Many Jews were no doubt irritated when Jesus pointed out that ten lepers were healed one day, but the only one to return to give thanks was a Samaritan. And many Jews were no doubt shocked to learn that Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink from a common cup Samaritans used. It was like a white man in the south in pre-civil-rights days asking a black woman for a drink from a common cup that blacks used.  Even the Samaritan woman was shocked, saying to Jesus:  “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” But Jesus did something even more dramatic to make a statement about the prejudice against the Samaritans of his time. He revealed to this lowly woman who he was, Jesus tells the woman that she has been married to five men and she was living with a man who wasn't her husband. He knows us through and through.  Shocked that he knew this, she responds: “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.” “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he.”

The woman left her water jar, went into the town, and exclaimed to the people there “Come meet Jesus!”  And they came, and they believed.  And – what did she tell them?  The most simple thing imaginable. He knew me.  He knew my whole messed up history, and he didn't judge me. He loved me, and offered me new life. That’s the “living water.”  It’s the unconditional love of Christ.  A love we all experience through our baptism.  New life, and a call to mission!

The Samaritan woman was the least likely person imaginable to become a missionary, to become an evangelist.  A woman, a Samaritan woman at that!  One who started out as an outcast – like Melba Patello – she became Jesus’ very first missionary to the non-Jewish world … amazing!

That Samaritan woman is all of us.

That’s the message in today’s Gospel for each one of us.  We can change our world, our community.  We are qualified.  We are good enough.  We are all sinners like that woman.  And we too can respond to our encounter with the mercy of Christ -his unconditional love of us- the way the Samaritan woman did.  We can share with others the Good News.  That our God knows us, and loves us – as we are – and offers us new life!  The living water of Divine life. Being an evangelist isn't hard.  It’s just telling others what we've found; sharing our story.  

There are 67 million Catholics in the United States.  Only 24% come to Mass once a week regularly.  That means there are 50 million Catholics that are inactive in their faith.  Statistics show that the best missionaries to inactive Catholics are … friends … neighbors … or family members. Statistics also show that nearly two-thirds of all Catholics who became active again do so because a friend or relative invited them to return.

That is our challenge.  There lies an area of missionary work that every Catholic in the church can … and should … become involved.  We all know inactive Catholics!  If you truly want to make this Lent something special, make a loving invitation to someone you know to come to Mass with you one week.  You never know, your simple invitation might be the cause for them finding their way back to the Church.  

If Jesus can change a whole community through the witness of one humble woman,  and nine courageous black kids with a sense of mission can change an entire country, we can change our world too – our community – our family.

If you think you don’t have what it takes to be an evangelist, just read this Gospel again,  no one was less likely in the time of Christ for this call then a Samaritan woman who had been married five times and was living with a sixth man.

You are worthy! You are capable! And, you are called!  

Something to contemplate today from Anne Lamott:

“The opposite of faith is not doubt. 

The opposite of faith is certainty.”