Category: Ordinary Time Year C

I am conscious in my own life of how this season and experience of Advent and Christmas can feel like a ‘historical repeat’. I have celebrated many Advents and Christmases, and much has been/is a repeat of previous years.

Like the season of Easter, much time is taken with the preparation of liturgies.

These liturgies take place both in our Churches and at our homes.

In this rush pausing to stop, look, and listen can be overlooked.

At the centre of our Christmas celebration is the recalling that “Christmas declares the glory of the flesh”. This the wonderful opening line from the poem ‘Christmas and the Common Birth’ by the British poet Anne Ridler (1912 – 2001).

When I take time to stop, look, and listen, I realize that the reality of this truth, that ‘Christmas declares the glory of the flesh’, is strongly affirmed in the lexicon of Christian art.

The frequency with which the newborn Jesus is painted naked declares loudly that what we celebrate is indeed the ‘glory of the flesh’.

As we have declared for many, many years, “ Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto, ex Maria virgine; et homo factus est.”

“And [he] was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary; and was made man.”

This is evidenced most dramatically in the altarpiece by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes.

The painting, part of a triptych depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds forms part of the Portinari Altarpiece, c. 1476, has every person richly garmented except for? – you guessed right, “The Word made Flesh”. The artwork now hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence

 

Our Gospel for this Sunday begins with a question, “Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question (Lk. 26: 27 -28).

When the Sadducees posed their question about the status (in the next life) of the woman who was married in this life to seven brothers, they were only making fun of the belief in a next life.

No Rabbi had ever brought a ‘proof’ of it from the first five books of the Scriptures (the only ones that the Sadducees accepted).

But in Jesus they met, for the first time, a Rabbi who did!

Reading again from v. 37: “Moses himself showed it to be true…” (Moses was considered the author of the first five books).

If there are no questions, there are no real doors opening.

The German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), was walking along a street in Dresden one day, seeking answers to questions that bothered him.

Passing by a garden, he decided to sit down and look at the flowers.

The owner was suspicious and called the police.

A policeman arrived and asked him, ‘Who are you?’

Schopenhauer paused and said, ‘If you can help me find the answer to that question, I will be eternally grateful to you!’

The Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke ( 1875 – 1926) was being pestered by a young man who kept sending him copies of his (the young man’s) poems and asking Rilke whether he was good enough to pursue his poetry ideal.

In a letter to him, Rilke writes, “I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.

“And the point is to live everything.

“Live the questions now.

“Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”  ( from  Letter to a Young Poet )

Many of us seek the surety of the answer – an answer brings resolution, security, some interior calm, and of course, the ability to move on!

If there are no real questions, there are no real doors opening; try to ‘live the questions now, to love the questions’

 

 

It happens with a frequency that can be annoying!

As friends we are kicking the football around in the backyard, and, with a kick a little higher than usual the ball ends up in the tree!

Each of us can see it clearly and attempts are made to free it from the clutches of the branch; other balls are thrown to dislodge the ball.

No luck!

Shoes are taken off and hurled at the ball.

No luck!

The tree is shaken; however, its wide and strong trunk moves little.

The decision is made – one of us will just have to climb the tree, move gingerly out onto the branch, and prise the ball free!

But who?

They need be strong enough to climb the trunk, yet slight enough to ease out onto the branch! And of course, dumb enough to accept the possibility of the branch snapping and being hurled to the ground as a very likely consequence!

In our English language we have a saying, “going out on a limb”.

The Collins English Dictionary describes going out on a limb: “If someone goes out on a limb, they do something they strongly believe in even though it is risky or extreme and is likely to fail or be criticized by other people.”

While acknowledging that my search was by no means exhaustive, I did find an early print reference with a figurative meaning from the Steubenville (Ohio) Daily Herald newspaper, 1895:

“We can carry the legislature like hanging out a washing. The heft of the fight will be in Hamilton country. If we get the 14 votes of Hamilton we’ve got ’em out on a limb. All we’ve got to do then is shake it or saw it off.”

Since the expression dates back to at least 1895, that means it is 120 years old at minimum.

However, this Sunday’s Gospel hints for us that the saying may predate the Steubenville Daily Herald by many, many, many years.

In Luke 19: 1 – 10, we are introduced to a tree climber, Zacchaeus, who, if we take the Collins Dictionary at value, we may well have discovered someone “going out on limb”!

They do something they strongly believe in

It is risky or extreme

If it fails, it is likely to be criticized by other people

And all because “he wanted to see Jesus!”

[Oh, and Zaccahaeeus while you are up the tree, would you mind fetching our ball . . . please!]