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Dear St. Christopher’s Family,
This stretch toward the end of the liturgical year, we're being presented with some of my favorite parables from Luke's Gospel. There's a particular elegance in the way Jesus tells these stories that contradicts our notions about how the world works, or should work. If we approach the Gospels seeking Good News, we have to really squint to see it in some of these stories.
I often get frustrated when people try to reduce the Christian faith to something simple. This is true within the church and throughout the across the spectrum of belief. On the one hand, there are those who want to reduce the faith to a feeling and an unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of iron-clad authority, whether it be in the scriptures or in the charisma of a leader. We've seen the consequences of this in fundamentalism, and more tragically in fanatic dedication to a supreme leader.
Equally dangerous is the quest for the "Key" to understanding all of it. I enjoy a good theological debate probably more than most, and I really enjoy winning one. But studying and uncovering secret knowledge is certainly not good news for most and presents a salvation that is no nearer to them than no God at all. Most often, if we delve too deep into seeking God in obscure knowledge, we most often find instead an idol, a god fashioned in our own image, and poorly fashioned at that.
These parables, of the shepherd who leaves the Ninety-nine to find the One, the Unjust Steward, even Dives and Poor Lazarus, teach us that what Jesus presumes is the way the world works is not how we experience it every day. It calls for a faith that is neither fundamentalist nor gnostic: we must admit that we don't know it all, and we need to be ready to find out we know less than we thought we did.
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