Shoppers defied bad weather to spend money on two successive bad weather weekends. Another high schooler shoots a classmate in a school and then kills himself. Butler beats Purdue in basketball. Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine are two well known celebrities who died this past week. Nelson Mandela was laid to rest. Congress is finally getting a little work done. Those are some of the headlines. So just what is Jesus talking about anyway?
He does not seem to understand that gas prices are high and I have less to spend on necessities. He does not seem to grasp that a friend's family life is falling apart. He doesn't emphasize the pain of same sex couples who want to marry or of heterosexual couples who are divorced and want to remarry and receive the Eucharist. Or do none of these represent broken lives?
What did you go out in the desert to see, Jesus asks? John was unlike anything they had known. Jesus is even more so. Perhaps I am too caught up in my own self to notice the blind, the lame, the poor all around me. Perhaps I do not any longer recognize what good news is unless it is the value of the hamburger at the local fast food restaurant on which I can gorge myself. Why should I even care about the deaf and the poor anyway?
It is only of value if the person of Jesus has made a difference in my life. Otherwise I am traveling a road that leads nowhere fast. Still there are some who prefer that road to one that is well lit and safe, one that has an end to it, an end that makes absolute sense and that offers satisfaction.
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