25th Sunday Ordinary Time (C) 09/22/2013
I received a telephone call twenty-two years ago that my Dad needed surgery. A tumor had been discovered behind his right ear. It was in the regent of the brain that sends signals to the heart to beat and its removal would be dangerous; but it was also starving my Dad’s brain of oxygen and causing him to forget. My Dad and family decided that the benefits of the surgery offered more positive possibilities than his not having surgery.
When I arrived at the hospital on the following day, I found my Dad standing in the hallway with his cane daring anyone to come near him. Thankfully, I was with other family membersthat he quickly recognized, and we were able to encourage him into his room.
I, however, had difficulty recognizing him. He almost immediately dissolved into tears… something I had never seen him do. As we embraced him, he spoke of his fear. He couldn’t understand what was happening to him; he was afraid of the surgery that would soon happen; he was facing his death.
The view that we have ourselves, the world, and God needs to be de-stabilized before change can happen within us. Death is for many of us the occasion that is strong enough for this de-stabilization to happen. It is death to the way of life that he knows that forces change to happen to the manager in our gospel story from Luke.
Greed unconsciously occupies and fills the manager’s way of life. He is incapable of seeing that he is greedy because greedis his way of life. It is the way that he has learned to survive. It is all that he knows. Now, he faces death, and the reality is forceful enough to cause his established identity to change… somewhat.
Most of us don’t experience transformation or change very quickly in our lives. None of us feel the need to change until something forceful enough happens to us that brings about a transformation. We unconsciously follow a way of life that we feel gives us the best possible way to survive. It is all that we know.
Life, however, has a way of intervening and causing us enough suffering to de-stabilizethe way in which we unconsciously survival. When this happens, we are forced to painfully see that our way of surviving is not life, but only a very cheap copy; and – to our surprise – we also see a viable alternative. It might not result in a complete transformation – it rarely does – but it does move us closer to the life that we already have in God.
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