Richard Bollman, S.J.

September 17, 2006: SCRIPTURE COMMENTS.

Isaiah 50:5-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35

With today’s Gospel passage,

the Gospel of Mark moves toward its second half,

where Jesus pays special attention to the inner circle of disciples

to help them understand the hardships of a life faithful to God.

Jesus’ revelation of himself as the suffering Christ

and his encouragement of these very human individuals

is meant always for us who listen today.

As we live in connection with Christ, it’s easy to back off

from the moral and spiritual dimensions of the dilemmas life throws at us.

From Isaiah, we listen to the voice of the ideal Israelite, faithful to God,

the voice of the suffering innocent one.

This is a passage familiar from Holy Week,

and familiar to Jesus surely as he searched for guidance

in his own life.

The faithfulness of the servant, arising from deep trust of God,

would have helped Jesus as his life unfolded.

And we continue selections from the Letter of James

about the practical and active living

of the Christian life.

HOMILY 24^th Sunday, B, 2009 "How We Say Who He Is"

I’ve been getting my thoughts together for a funeral homily tomorrow.

An older cousin of mine has died. She was 91,

an elegant lady, Jean was her name.

She was a Bollman, but the family tree is hard to describe.

She descended from my great uncle Theodore,

but she’s a generation older, my third cousin I think.

and I met her first at a funeral,

she and her husband Bill, and we hit it off.

Sometimes I’d stop by their apartment at the Edgecliff,

or we’d have dinner at the Kenwood County Club.

They enjoyed people, friends and shirt-tail relatives,

and Jean was herself quite special.

She just had this way of spreading affection and uplift.

Through these last ten years, after Bill’s death,

we’d still enjoy an occasional dinner together. I loved it:

political arguments, church gossip, spiritual advice, at Kenwood.

Then the pains of her years began to add up, but never so as to interfere

with her greeting, her smile, a wonderful smile, her optimism.

For awhile there, I’d need to take her in a wheelchair.

Then her live-in house nurse would come along to do the care-giving.

Then it was lunch at Max and Erma’s where everybody knew her.

The last time we had a meal together, with her nurse Shevanna,

was at a converted Frisch’s restaurant on Macmillan in Walnut Hills,

The Parkside Cafe, soup and sandwiches mostly,

but wheel chair access was easy, the menu was easy.

Toward the end, at St. Margaret Hall, she stopped eating.

Whatever she suffered she didn’t talk about much.

And there was her smile. She led with that.

You never had any doubt that you were worth her attention.

That she knew you even when maybe she didn’t.

So shortly before she died, I found myself saying on the way home

"Dear Jesus, I hope you will smile at her like that when she comes to you.

I hope that’s what she will see, a great expansive radiant smile

on the face of Christ.

Let it light up for her in that spontaneous way we all have seen."

And as I prayed that thought, I began to realize

that I have already seen that glimpse of Jesus myself

when I’ve looked upon Jean’s face, that intelligent and warm presence,

there it was.

Who do people say I am? Well, Jean, you’ve been the love of Christ for me.

There’s that to say.

The Gospel encourages us to"take up the cross" every day,

which places Jesus’ life and death is at the center of the human,

and it is a kind of standard of commitment.

He did not turn away from his living and dying.

This is the crucial suffering: living as we really are,

human beings, living our humanity in hope.

Our faces turned toward one another.

Then driving through Walnut Hills east on Macmillan just Saturday,

approaching a traffic light right at Euclid, between UC and Christ Hospital,

I saw a young woman getting the attention of drivers,

a cardboard sign that said Hungry and Homeless.

Right there at the intersection. Why is she there? I hardly wanted to know.

She was alone. She seemed strong and capable, I guess out of work;

maybe in her mid-thirties, wearing denim pants and a summer top,

a backpack at the curb. Hungry and Homeless.

I hoped the light would stay green, but it didn’t.

It’s hard to say why, but when I stopped at her curb

to wait for the light to change, I couldn’t look at her.

I turned away. I could have found money to offer,

but I felt like something else should be happening for her,

but I didn’t know what.

What stays with me, what I regret, is that I couldn’t look at her face.

Because that would be an engagement.

Then I’d have to commit, or look away again.

Finally, I drove on.

Her presence has not left me.

There too was a glimpse of the human, the limited, the suffering.

Right at the center of things. Just a glimpse.

I think of her carrying a different kind of sign,

one that would read not Hungery and Homeless, but:

"Who do you say that I am?"

I didn’t want to touch that question.

And then I read an essay this week from a Jewish rabbi from Chicago,

in which he tries to sort out his relationship with Jesus,

the different ways Jewish theology avoids or limits his presence

in their reflection on faith and history.

Jesus, a mysterious other brother, an outside figure;

there are many approaches. The writer sorted them out

from a need to get close, but not too close, in a way.

And then here is what he tells at the end.

It’s what I want to leave with you.

"Jewish children to not spend much time thinking about Jesus, but as a child, I did. Growing up in the years after the holocaust and knowing the fate of the Polish Jews, it is perhaps not surprising that I thought of Jesus as a Polish Jew. As a young child, I knew that Jesus died a terrible death, and I knew that millions of polish Jews died horrible deaths. As a child, I even heard Hitler called the ‘anti-Christ’ and he was compared to Pontius Pilate. Therefore, since I was a child I have pictured Jesus dressed like and living like a Polish Jew. . . .

"I picture Jesus as a tortured, wandering, wounded Polish Jew crawling in pain into the doorway of a Polish Catholic home during the Nazi occupation and asking for refuge. A small child finds him and calls his parents. ‘Mommy, Daddy,’ says the child, ‘there is a wounded Jew at the door asking for help and he says his name is Jesus.’ The parents come to the door and ask: "Are you a Jew? Are you Jesus?" And the man replies, ‘Who do you think that I am?"

______________________________

quoted material from Byron L. Sherwin, "Who Do You Say that I Am?"

In Jesus through Jewish Eyes, ed.by Beatrice Bruteau, Orbis Books, 2001,

pages 43-44.