Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 16, 2020      (today’s lectionary)
 A short story
Not that I’m complaining, but I welcome a Sunday reprieve from the relentless crazy scary stories of Ezekiel. This is ordinary time, and it calls for an ordinary story. But Ezekiel will not be giving us many of these. Today Isaiah gives me a rest.
Observe what is right and do what is just,
My salvation is about to come.
On the brink. God promises our imminent release from the savagery within and without. His justice will be revealed. Wait for it, wait for it. Waiting, I breathe deeply, purse my lips and let out the air, breathe again. This is the nature of our life. Take one breath, and then another.
Today I’ll spend the afternoon and evening with Mom, who is back home in the country this week for the first time since June 2. Her fall and recovery included surgery on her hip, time in two rehab centers and a couple of weeks with Mary Kay, her daughter and my sister, nurse, and a woman who loves her mother with her actions as well as her words. Mary Kay does what needs to be done. She carries on.
Our mom has a little trouble breathing. Her oxygen level dips below 85% at times. She’s 98 years old, and her lungs are wearing out. I forget that sometimes, wanting her to be her younger self. She cannot cooperate with my foolishness and loves me anyway.
There are times when her love invites me into her world, and I am happy to enter.
I will bring them to my holy mountain
And make them joyful in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar.
While she was in the rehab centers, our visits were through plexiglass and windows. Once John and I met Mary Kay and Mom in a medical clinic parking lot and later had lunch with her while she sat in the car in her driveway. Her smiles were wide and real. She was so happy to see us. She was full of the moment, radiating simple joy, still.
I think her memories sustain her behind her consciousness. She rarely shares much of this in words. My mind feels like a maze of corridors where I’m constantly moving back and forth. I think of Mom’s mind as a wide room full of sunlight, without walls. Walk around, Mom. Enjoy.
May God let his face shine upon you
And may God’s bright-lit face be known in all the earth.
I cannot spend time with Mom without inviting her into my imagination. Empathy requires it. So I ask her to visit my corridors and help me with my maze. She listens sweetly. She smiles and blinks her eyes at me, and I know she has attended my request. Knowing she can return, she leaves her wide expanse so brightly lit, and asks for help getting down the steps into my corner closet. Her face registers surprise, but her eyes are bright.
May the peoples praise you!
May ALL the peoples praise you!
May God bless us to the ends of the earth.
She is careful with her steps sometimes, but at other times she practically runs down my hallways, holding her walker tight. What are you doing, slow down, Mom! She says nothing. She moves toward the corner, turning right, left, then right again. The maze is beginning to hold her like it holds me, I think.
St. Paul joins us in the dark. His eyes brighten as they encounter ours. Do not be afraid, he seems to say. He and Jesus and our Father have been saying that for years!
I glory in my ministry to save you.
If your rejection is the reconciliation of the world
What will your acceptance be but life from the dead?
What? Say that again? No, don’t. I wouldn’t understand it the second time either. Paul, are you here to help?
Paul does try again:
The gifts and call of God are irrevocable.
You disobeyed and received mercy.
This gift to you will be multiplied like loaves and fishes
And given to all the others.
Mom seems to understand, even if she is silent. She has stopped rushing around on her walker, and closed her eyes. I begin to see what Paul is saying. We have all fallen short, we all are in desperate need of mercy, and God has more mercy, more mercy, more mercy. More than we will ever need. Eat and drink, and be glad. Just mercy.
God delivered us all to disobedience
So that he might have mercy on us all.
That sounds too good to be true. But as Ronald Rolheiser says in Holy Longing, it’s even better than that. He calls up a radical joy in all of us when he says about the incarnation:
Your touch is Christ’s touch. When you love someone, unless that someone actively rejects your love and forgiveness, she or he is sustained in salvation. – p. 89
Objection: “This can’t be true because, if it were, it would be too good to be true!” What a marvelous description of the incarnation. It IS too good to be true. In Jesus birth, something fundamental has changed. God has given us the power, literally, to keep each other out of hell. – p. 92
Most of our translations call this “reconciliation.” I call it “miracle” and jump for joy. What fools we are to think there is not enough for all. Mom looks up. “Yes,” she says. Her smile is blinding, but I don’t feel blinded. Life abounds in the three of us, in the All of Us.
Jesus proclaimed the GOOD NEWS. Look up!
Walking among them, Jesus cured every disease among the people.
There is enough for all.
There is enough for all.
There is always more than enough for all.
Paul lifts Mom into his arms. He walks through my corridors just as if they were mapped and lit, and I follow them with Mom’s walker, and we step out. We cross the driveway and step up into her house again. The wide room bursts with light. The room’s round corners sweep the three of us into a boundless dance. Paul, the nearly blind curmudgeon caught so often in self-righteousness, is free. His black hair mingles with Mom’s white, and he nuzzles her face with his Jewish nose, and they whirl around the room.
All I hear is the music of the spheres. I close my eyes and whirl with them, thinking I’ll fall. But the walker spins with me, and what should be dizzy instead is free.
Jesus at first did not speak. And then he did.
Woman your faith is great!
Let it be done for you according to your wish.
This thing we call eternity is not so far away. My life merges with yours, and St. Paul’s and Mom’s, we whirl and swirl, the sun shines through the endless window, and the hardwood floor of heaven gleams with polish applied last night. Morning has broken. Come away from the corner, jump up, reach out and grab my hand.
           (Isaiah 56, Psalm 67, Romans 11, Matthew 4, Matthew 15)
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