On
this Independence Day weekend, I thought I’d turn things around and
offer a message about dependence: dependence on God and dependence
on one another as the only path to true freedom, to true
independence.
Dependence. There
were hints of it in the reading from Isaiah – words addressed by the
prophet to God’s people who had finally returned home to Jerusalem
after long years of exile in Babylon. Of course, it had been their
fierce and selfish assertion of independence – independence from God
and from God’s Law – that had brought about their downfall, their
shame, their being dragged into exile. Now, they were home again and
the prophet spoke to them passionately of their dependence on God,
comparing it to an infant’s dependence on its mother, nestled in her
arms, fondled in her lap, nursing at her breast. The picture he
painted for them was one of profound comfort, of deep and abiding
joy and, yes, of utter dependence.
There is more of
that same theme in the gospel reading from Luke where Jesus sends
forth the seventy-two disciples. (A little aside, in case you
wondered: seventy-two is not an arbitrary number. In the ancient
biblical world, it was commonly believed that seventy-two was the
sum total of all the nations of the world - a calculation based on
the number of descendants of the three sons of Noah – Shem, Ham, and
Japheth - who had survived the Great Flood and who became the
ancestors of the human race.)
So, when Luke says
that Jesus sent seventy-two disciples out ahead of him, it’s a way
of saying that he sent his disciples to the whole world – to all the
nations – and not just to the people of Israel. It’s a very
universal message.
And it’s important
to note the way Jesus sent out those seventy-two: not solo, but
two-by-two--as if to say that they were not only to depend on God,
they were also to depend on each other. Disciples are partners in
the gospel – collaborators, not Lone Rangers! This is something many
of you experienced firsthand as you took part in our parish’s recent
synodal sessions, gathering together in small groups, listening to
one another, and gaining strength from one another’s stories.
And there is even
more about dependence in that gospel story. The seventy-two
disciples were to travel light. Very light. They were to carry no
money bag, no sack or sandals, no food or drink – which is a way of
saying that they were to depend entirely on God’s care for them and
on the generosity of others. Now, there’s a challenge if ever there
was one! I have to tell you that it’s one that hits me squarely
between the eyes - I who don’t travel very light, whether on a trip
or in my day-to-day living, for that matter. I tend to weigh myself
down with more than I need, depending more on my careful planning
and provisioning than on Jesus’ assurance of God’s providential
care. That’s a far cry from Gospel dependence.
Now, let me share a
little story with you. It’s about a bishop in France a century or
more ago who loved to tell about a young man who day after day stood
outside the great Cathedral of Notre-Dame, shouting insulting and
derogatory words at people as they entered to worship. He called
them “fools,” “naïve,” and “stupid.”
One day, as the
bishop told the story, a priest decided to confront the young man.
He dared him to enter the Cathedral with him. To the priest’s
surprise he agreed, and he walked the young man over to a crucifix,
challenged him to look at it, and to shout out as loud as he could,
“Christ died on the cross for me and I couldn’t care less.” Well,
the young man took up the challenge and said those words, but in a
somewhat muted voice, and the priest told him, “louder!” So, a
second time he said it with his voice raised, but the priest said,
“I dare you to shout it at the top of your lungs.” At that, the
young man raised his fist defiantly and fixed his eyes on the
crucifix, but now the words would not come. He simply could not look
at the face of the crucified Christ and say those words again.
But the story didn’t
end there. The ending came when the bishop said, “That young man was
me!” Then he would go on to say, “I had become firmly convinced that
I did not need God in my life, but I found, as I stood before that
image of the crucified Christ, that I was wrong. And that changed
everything!”
My friends, from
complete independence to total dependence. It’s the story not just
of that bishop, it’s the story of people who have struggled to
believe down through the ages and, if truth be told, in one way or
another, it’s our story, too. We depend on God, we depend on one
another. We may try, but we simply can’t go it alone.
In this spirit, and
with this conviction, we will stand together in a moment to profess
our faith. Think of that as a ‘declaration of dependence.’ And then,
not long after, we will come forward to receive the Eucharist. And
that is a ‘declaration of dependence’ if ever there was one!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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