Friday after the Third Sunday in Lent: No big deal

Morning Prayer Lessons: Psalm 88; Jeremiah 11:1-8,14-20; Romans 6:1-11; John 8:33-47

Initially uninspired by the particular content of today’s readings, I found myself thinking of base communities which form our view of the world and reality.  My mind wandered off and I realized mine may be the last generation to have knowingly been effect by the Great Depression. On the surface I was impacted by the stories told by my grandparent and parents, but if I look a little deeper, the Depression shaped me as well.

Simply put, my maternal grandparents lost almost all they had on the day after they paid down their mortgage with all their liquid assets.  The next day the bank foreclosed on them.  Thankfully my grandfather was a resourceful lawyer and somehow a friend of Roosevelt, perhaps connected by the ravages of polio in each of their lives.  This part of the story is unclear. In the midst of the second most devastating experience of their lives, my mother’s family hobbled together a new beginning in economic deprivation when the whole country was going through the same experience.

The funny story comes years later when I was talking to Mom.  You see there was a family photo album I grew up looking at on rainy days.  In it is a picture of my Mom, a little girl, standing in front of a small ill kept building.  I guess I never asked about the building. I assumed it was the house they had to occupy when their brick center hall colonial was taken.  I was always so sad for them when I saw how they had to live.  At about 50 years of age I mentioned it to Mom who began to laugh fully.  It turns out this was their chicken house. I realized the stories of my childhood were so impactful; I had shaped this view of their world.

Yet what I also know is we always lived carefully when it came to money.  There was never any waste and things that might be used again were either stored or given to someone in need of them. There was no shame in a ‘hand me down.’ We kept a garden and canned. All of my siblings and I found summer work when we were of age and assumed some responsibility for providing our needs or wants. So careful were my grandparents that they all left behind a reasonable estate.  I have always understood the habits shaped by the depression when I see them in others.

Perhaps this is often my disconnect with the core values of our culture today.  To carry a watchful and caring eye for others with less, is to me to be American and Christian.  My early world was indelibly marked by this outlook even in a racially divided South. If you had no use for something in your possession, you looked for someone who might use it and gave it and here race did not seem to matter.  Today’s world seems to me so casual about self excess and too often forgets to look out for the other.  It is no longer a given that people of faith long to be their brother and sister’s keepers with a broad view of who is brother or sister.  I need to reel back here before I get political as well. 

All this brings me back to the lessons of this day. In John 8:33 we read about a world view:

They answered him, 'We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, "You will be made free"?'

Jesus has just spoken of himself as the Truth, his teachings as the truth and speaks of this truth setting us free to find and know self and God. His audience’s base community has shaped their view of reality.  As Jewish leaders, that view is one of being chosen, a child of the one true God made known to Abraham. It is to know how to live in relationship to God’s law.  It is also to experience that failure to fully keep this law is the rule more than the exception.  It is perhaps to long for the Messiah, but not expect him to come ‘now’ and thus not to trust his coming in Jesus to be real. And somewhere in there it is never to call yourself enslaved to a super power because you are still chosen of God.  It may also be to hope Yom Kippur observed is enough to be free.

Jesus' whole conversation in this passage is to convince the religious of the cost of our failure to follow God as perfectly as we perceive we do.

Jesus answered them, 'Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Then Jesus goes on to talk of how sin enslaves us.  I would add little by little we taste enslavement whether we name it or not.  Just as seeking to practice the teachings of Jesus saves me from being simply preoccupied with self and my own will. It is no big deal when I share what I have, even when it stretches my means or interferes with my leisure. It is no big deal when I face myself and know I need to apologize for some unkindness on my part. It cost me little to offer an action in response to a perceived need.  It is no big deal when I see myself in light of Jesus teachings and have to say “Whoops, I need a ‘do over!’” It is no big deal when I vote for the well being of the underclass.  It is no big deal when I stop and pray or help or apologize.  

I think the big deal is I have a solid base community, not perfect, just solid in how we look for God’s claim on our lives, take the sacraments to our nourishment and alertness.  It is important to me to share my care in this world, just as I knew growing up often with some good hand-me-downs.  I guess faith is the best of them all.  Little by little this ‘truth’ works on us to makes us free.