Lessons: Psalms 63, 98; Wisdom 1:1-15; 1 Peter 5:1-11; Matthew 7:15-29.
I am the father of one daughter. Like most parents I know the hope we hold for our children. From birth I have noticed a natural gentleness in her and a deep focus on any task she sets herself to accomplish. We have raised our daughter with values of care for herself and others and God. I have admired the nature of her care expressed. Given our human limits, we have tried also to model care and compassion as a discipline and value in each of our lives.
I have known other parents who chose to model different values -- often competition, a drive to succeed -- as primary. That is not a bad value, if learned along with compassion.
This week I have thought much about the Tsarnaev brothers. Mostly I am drawn to the younger one, now captive after the bombing in Boston. I know little really, but I keep wondering what it is like to have followed an older sibling into this sad and deliberate moment of planned deaths. Perhaps because he survives I wonder what these sad choices will add up to in his life. Was he mostly overly influenced by an elder brother's discontent? Seen by classmates as kind, bright, appropriately competitive as a school wrestler, did he hold the possibility for better choices? What now will he evolve into?
Maybe I wonder this because we all have choices and our lives add up to the compellation of the things we choose. We also face limits which can effect these choices. I wonder this because his is a tender shoot of a life with years to come. Like so many young people, he does not grasp what it will be like decades from now to live out the result of our choices. Few of us did or do.
Jesus teaches the listening crowd.
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits." Matthew 7:15-20
We all need to be aware of the effect of false teachers. I think of this often as I listen to the news commentators. I wonder about their core values as they speak. Do I hear here enough kindness, enough objectivity, enough care for those having less opportunity in our society? Do I hear malice where objectivity should reign? What fruit hangs from these trees? False teachers are not helpful to us, Jesus says.
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-and great was its fall!" Matthew 7:24-27
Few of us want to build our lives on shaky foundations. Jesus knows that and perhaps knows some in his audience have already begun their lives on such foundations. This passage today follows a whole discourse on moral self-judgement and the resultant actions. It is here we learn the Golden Rule. We learn also not to judge or we will be thus judged. He has summed up these teachings:
"Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Matthew 7:13-14
So I find myself warned to be careful what I choose for myself, to mind my life. But I also hear a call to be compassionate with my judgement, to hold myself compassionately open to God's redemptive power in my life and that of others. The narrow gate is always there for the choosing. There have been moments that I too went through the wrong gate only to recheck myself and return to a different one. I feel I must hold out this option for others who are building life.
Sometimes as we choose our gates, others see, are influenced and sort out their own choices by ours.
I hope my daughter has seen me more often entering my choices in a way that pointed her to the best gate, the one that leads to eternal life.
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