Scripture:
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 23:23-26
Reflection:
“You have searched me and you know me, Lord.” This is today’s psalm response.
I want to edit it. “You have searched me and you know me, Lord, and yet you still love me.” For good reason, many of us are terrified of allowing others to see the full truth of who we are. We have scars. We have disordered affections. We have petty desires. We have disappointments and insecurities. We believe that if others really knew us, they could not possibly love us. Yet that is exactly what Jesus Christ does. We are sinners, we are broken and flawed…yet we are loved.
We don’t often hear in the gospels about Jesus getting in the faces of others, but he let’s loose in today’s gospel: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.” The expression of faith begins within our hearts not in liturgical rubrics or pious devotions. Those cannot replace what is in our hearts, they should express what in our hearts.
All around us there are plenty of self-proclaiming Christians who are, in the words of my father, simply “crude.” He loved that word to describe behavior that was cruel and rude. It is jarring to hear some, wearing a gold cross around their necks, proceed to demean others with crude nicknames or calling them losers. Where is the connection between the inside and the outside? How does God’s love revealed in the Passion of Christ and proclaimed in the cross around my neck lead me to love others, even the sinner?
We are not spared from Jesus getting in our faces. Woe to you, politicians… Woe to you, church leaders… Woe to you… Woe to me, hypocrite. Cleanse first the inside so that our care for others may be clean. We are sinners yet loved. Broken yet redeemed. In that experience of being loved and redeemed, let us love and raise others up.
Robert Hotz is a consultant with American City Bureau, Inc. and was the Director of The Passion of Christ: The Love That Compels Campaign for Holy Cross Province.