DO YOU REALLY KNOW US?
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
January 13, 2020
As you may
know every two years the priests of our archdiocese gather for a 3-day assembly
that is partly a retreat and partly recreation and partly education. Some of
those gatherings go better than others, and I vividly recall the one that was
the worst in my time. It was about 25 years ago up at St. John’s University.
It’s the only one that I can recall the archbishop getting up in front of us at
the end and basically admitting that it had been kind of disaster. It was
focused on faith formation and religious education, and the featured speakers
were a pair of “experts” from another part of the country, who were touted as
cutting-edge innovators and the writers of books on the topic.
So in
multiple meeting sessions all the pastors were presented with what were touted
as the latest things in the field of formation and education. The problem was
that it became immediately apparent to the large audience that we were already
doing most of the grand practices and implementing these novel ideas. The
temperature in the meeting room kept rising during the sessions as it became
clear that there wasn’t much that the experts had to tell us that we didn’t
already know.
Finally,
during one of the open microphone feedback sessions one of the priests exploded
in frustration as he addressed the presenters from the floor. If you’ve been
around Pax Christi for a long time then it won’t surprise you to hear that that
priest was the late Dominican Fr. Jerry McMullin, who spent some time here amid
our parish community back in the 1990’s. I’ll never forget his angry words to
the experts. He said, “Do you know anything about us? Do you even know who we
are, before you presume to lecture to us?” It was a most awkward moment because
his words rang so true to so many. I remember being at the coffee stand shortly
thereafter with our then—auxiliary bishop Larry Welch who said, “I think those
two may have been the only ones in the room who were wondering if that was a
rhetorical question from Jerry.”
What Fr.
Jerry was so upset about was the idea that the “wisdom people” from out of town
had come to lay out a pre-packaged program without being curious as to how our
local church worked and what it was like to be here, and they had badly
misunderstood the gathering to whom they were speaking.
But that’s a
common enough instinct among people in various labors of life—the instinct to
think that we are just one expert away from learning the secret to success.
Just one book or one program away from fixing our problems. And there’s never
any shortage of “experts” who are willing to fly in to the rescue. It’s as true
in religion and ministry as it is any place else.
Sometimes
it’s actually true that there is new insight to be gained, and that a trained
professional from someplace else can be of great help in making us better and
wiser at what we’re doing. A pair of fresh eyes can be of great benefit. But
that is unlikely to happen if the teachers don’t bother to know us first, to
live with us for a while before presuming to prescribe a diagnosis to fix us.
In today’s
gospel of Matthew, both John the Baptist and his crowd of followers were on
high alert for the arrival of God’s Messiah. They were submitting John’s
baptism as a way of readying themselves and opening their hearts to recognize
the Savior. But in a similar way, they were looking for the expert, the fixer,
the Christ to erupt suddenly on the scene from some alien place. And that’s
when Jesus turned the tables on them.
He didn’t
show up at the Jordan River in a chariot from the sky. No he slipped in among
the crowd of everybody else. He came not directly from a foreign place, but
from Nazareth—the town where he’d been living and working among the people all
along.
Today’s
gospel is the first recorded event of Jesus’ adult life—since his birth and
childhood. Once he came among us at Christmas, he didn’t head back to heaven to
wait around for 30 years. He truly immersed himself in to the rhythms of daily
Jewish life in Galilee—for decades. He experienced all the joys and sorrows and
laughter and hardship and wonder and worry that all of his family and neighbors
did too. So that by the time it was the moment to begin his saving work of
teaching and healing and preaching, he was not the expert from elsewhere. He
was the consummate expert insider. He knew these people, and loved them and
understood them. That’s when you can
help them.
When John
the Baptist encountered Jesus at the river for baptism he was disoriented.
John’s first response was to say, “You don’t belong here. You’re not a sinner.
You have nothing of which to repent.” To which Jesus responded, “I do belong
here, even though what you say is true. Because I am not someone who shows up
with a master plan from outer space. I am not here merely to tell you what to
do. I am here to be one of you.” And that is still the pattern and challenge of
our own baptism today—all of us. Like Jesus himself, our baptism is not merely
a summons to acquire and share a lot of correct religious information—a
program. Nor is it a call to live as purely and chastely as we can, and to urge
others to do so as well.
That’s all
helpful too, but baptism is something even more radical for us, as it was for
him. It’s an initiation not merely to care about the rest of humanity or to
correct the rest of humanity. It is to immerse ourselves completely into the
life of humanity, just as he did. That’s why Jesus insisted on being baptized
with everyone else.
Our Savior
did not come from afar—unless we imagine God to be distant. Our Savior came
from right here on Earth and from among the God-chosen community. Salvation
still comes from there—from here—if we would be open to seeing it.
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