PROMISES, PROMISES
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
September 26, 2020
The words “I promise” might be the two most treacherous
words that people ever say… because anyone can say them – whether they mean
them or not. A politician openly promises when he or she is sworn in to office.
Some of those words are honest, and some are just empty syllables necessary to
get a hold of power. A priest or deacon or religious person makes public
promises when they begin their ministries in the church. Some of them are
sincere, and others are not. Spouses make promises on their wedding day. Usually
they intend to keep them – but not always. When I was a loan officer in a bank
some 40 years ago, people borrowing money from me signed a promise to pay it
back. Most of them did, but not all. A whole lot of advertising on TV throws
out promises, but you never know if they are to be trusted. Even friends make
promises to one another about being loyal and reliable, but then it turns out
that they aren’t… either because they promised things that they weren’t able to
carry out, or because they never really meant it in the first place.
And every baptized Christian makes promises at the font – i.e.
to reject sin, to turn away from evil, and to believe in God and the church and
the beliefs of our religion. They all responded “I do” when asked about the
promises. Most of them are honest about it – but for some it’s just what they
were instructed to say in the moment.
And in this case – in baptism – to say “I believe” does not
mean merely to embrace the truth of an idea; it means to conform my life to the
promises that are coming out of my mouth. It means to change the way that I am
in the world and among other people, to be more like Jesus Christ. Some
baptismal candidates truly mean to do that, but not everybody.
So how do we recognize one form the other – the person whose
promises are to be trusted, as distinct from the person whose promises are just
noise? Well first of all, it is not our role to be the judges of other people’s
hearts – that’s up to God. But on the other hand, we all live our lives on the basis
of promises made to us: “I will be there for you,” “I will help you when you
fall,” “I will try to do the right thing,” “I will stand with you when you are
treated unjustly.”
Without judging, we have to become wise about whose promises
are reliable. And that wisdom comes from observing what people actually do, how
they behave, especially in situations of distress and suffering and danger. A true
promise shows itself when it is most severely tested, when it’s hard to keep. And
that’s really what Jesus’s Gospel words to us today are all about. In the
parable of Matthew, Jesus is contrasting the promises made by two sons to their
father when they were both asked to go to work in the vineyard. Son #1 said, “I
will not,” while son #2 said, “Yes I will, sir!” But it turns out that son #1
recognized a more important promise – one more sacred than what he preferred to
do in the moment. It was the promise to honor his father, and so he changed his
mind and went to work after all.
But for son #2, a “promise” was just a lot of hot air,
meaning nothing, some convenient words to get him through the moment. It was,
in effect, a lie. The value of a promise is made plain by what happens after it
is made.
- What does the politician actually do after they take office?
- How does the priest, deacon, or religious sister or brother actually live?
- How does the husband or wife exactly behave?
- How does the debtor to the bank respond when the loan comes due?
- How do the claims of the TV ads actually hold on?
- Where is the so-called trusted friend when you need them?
And where is the baptized Christian when it’s time to
condemn sin, to name injustice, to work for peace, and to embrace the fullness
of what the Gospel demands?
We can’t know in advance how others will respond to their
promises, but we can be determined to be faithful to our own – as best we can. Just
as we have to rely on the promises of others throughout our lives (some of
which will be broken), so others rely on the promises that we have made – and that’s
something over which we have some control, with the strength of God’s grace.
Again today we welcome a group of our young people to the
table of the Lord for the first time. It’s First Communion day!
Congratulations! It’s a chance for all of us, young and older, to remember the
most reliable and true and amazing promise that anyone ever made to us. It was
Jesus himself, whose last words in this same gospel, before he went into
heaven, were these words: “I will be with you always, until the end of the
world.”
“I will be with you always, until the end of the world.”
Even if it seems that every other promise ends up in
disappointment, this one will not. But that means in turn, that we must strive
to be faithful to our own baptismal promises – even if we will never be perfect
at it. And St. Paul tells us what that looks like in practice in today’s second
reading. It looks like compassion and mercy, unity and selflessness, humility
and the looking after the needs of others – even more than ourselves.
Our First Communicants today are not only receiving a
precious gift in the Eucharist. They are renewing a weighty promise, one that
their parents and godparents and guardians will have the responsibility of
reminding them about as these young people continue to grow. Eucharist is not a
prize, either for them or for us. It is a promise, from Jesus to us, and from
us to the world.
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