Words for Believers

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060216.cfm

2 Timothy 2:8-15
Mark 12:28-34

If we have died with him
we shall also live with him;
if we persevere
we shall also reign with him.

But if we deny him
he will deny us.
If we are unfaithful
he remains faithful,
for he cannot deny himself.

Did your eyes and ears grab the same things mine did? “If we are faithful, he remains faithful.” I want to hang my hat on that. Faithfulness belongs to Jesus, and is asked of us. Don't fret, don't fret, but be faithful. Preach it to me, Timothy!

My initial fret in the text — Homeless Catholics are excellent fretters — was, “if we deny him he will deny us.” Yuck. But, I don’t deny Jesus. I would never do that. Whew. Good for me. Not exactly the highest bar to get over, but it’s good to know that I don’t "plan" on denying Jesus.

Now, about being unfaithful? That’s a different story. The barriers I put up for Jesus, and the wandering off pop up daily. Unfortunately, denial is a severe form of unfaithfulness. Unfaithful wanderings are dead ends. When we practice being unfaithful we scootch up perilously close to denial. Unchecked unfaithfulness dead ends at full blown denial. It’s heading down the cul-de-sac of crazy, can’t-help-ourselves denial. 

At first we glance at the cul-de-sacs. Then we slow down. Eventually we find ourselves cruising around, wondering why anyone would plant themselves on one of these things. Our disgust turns into curiosity. The cold, isolationism of the place develops into bold independence. Soon, we consider the cul-de-sac a quieter, less tense place. People leave you alone. We imagine that we've headed off into a friendlier, maybe more fun path than the busier, constantly up-beat relationship highway we've left. The cul-de-sac appears lined with shacks, but upon a closer look they are pretty low maintenance. 

And then, the road just stops. We either turn around and leave, sensing the termination of our investigation, our Google search, or we call a realtor and move in.

(Sorry for those of you who live on cul-de-sacs, with nice houses. It’s just an analogy at your expense. Nothing personal.)

Most major cities have very short cul-de-sacs. Before you even turn into the road that heads down Nowhere Court you can tell. This isn’t a real road. It’s a squatty, dinky little road. More like a driveway. You are not going to have an extended trip driving down this offshoot from the main highway of life. Heck, it could be argued that your back bumper never left the highway at all! Which means everyone in the city who drives by on the highway knows that you have gone down a cul-de-sac. All sidetrack visits into the denizens away from Jesus in high population areas are unashamed, unabashed retail options.

To surreptitiously sin in cities, you have to go down alleys, where it’s dark, or hide underground, or take an elevator to the top of a large building to get off the highway, unseen. Those are city-dweller's analogous cul-de-sacs of unfaithfulness.

In Idaho, where I grew up, folks took cul-de-sacs very seriously. Colorado has a similar idea about these dead ends. Some go on for miles. Most of them aren’t even marked as dead ends, until you get to the end. “Dead End.” John Sorensen reminded me that those signs have been changed to "No Outlet." Now, that's ominous! 

I remember a few mile-long cul-de-sacs back in Coeur d’Alene that just died off into the trees, eerily suggesting that you should walk into them and never come back. 

Somehow, when we’re off wandering down hidden cul-de-sacs, though, Jesus remains faithful. How can he do that if we’ve wandered off, intent on leaving him behind? What does it mean that Jesus remains faithful?

We know what it means. 

It means Jesus remains with us. His faithfulness is him, making his presence known. He doesn’t stand there in the road of our cul-de-sac, waiting, when we go into one of the houses a mile or two off the highway. He goes into our hide-a-ways with us. When we sit down and have coffee with an enemy of Jesus, who’s recruiting us to forgo the highway, leave our family, make some money conning people into buying something they don’t need, or have a chaser with that coffee, or come out in the back yard and shoot the heads off of some varmints, Jesus is right there. Most telling about Jesus' presence, is that he’s giving us all kinds of warning signs, even physical ones. That uncomfortable feeling we have, our bladder urging us to find a bathroom, the hair standing up on the back of our neck, or the nervous shake of our legs are all physical urgencies from Jesus.

When we leave that place to continue down the cul-de-sac, thinking Jesus will not go farther with us, we may wander all the way to the actual dead end. But, he’s there too. We know it. Believers know it. Why? Only believers can be unfaithful. Everyone else is just lost, or confused. We pray that they'll get awakened in Purgatory, if not sooner. (Sooner is best.) But believers who go to the dead end of a cul-de-sac have Jesus standing right there with us, changing even the air that we breathe in order to get our attention. He might send a dog to bark at us, insisting that we should turn back to the highway.

Mostly, though, Jesus is whispering to us. For believers, Jesus' voice is either welcomed or worrisome. For the worrisome, we have to start yelling or making noise to hide his loving words, for his whisper is well known. We put cotton swabs in our ears to make him go away. He doesn’t go away. Pretty soon our unfaithfulness gets to that tree's edge. Even there we can’t come to the conclusion that Jesus has abandoned us, though. We might make up some good reasons for him to go away, but he won’t go away. Jesus is faithful. He’ll stay there with us for years. Decades even. 

Believers know the signs of Jesus' warnings. Diving owls, hoarse coyotes, pesky mosquitos, loose rocks in the creek, unkempt and scrawny chickens, and thorny bushes all impede our path. "Go back," they urge. Still, we head on, and Jesus walks with us.

I am almost positive that Jesus has been whispering to folks at the end of cul-de-sacs in Purgatory for hundreds and thousands of years. He went to Hell after his crucifixion for goodness sake, and rescued the lost and confused, literally ripped them out of Satan’s hands. That’s faithfulness. 

So, when we finally find ourselves back on the highway … because we will … how can we not? … that’s when we understand what faithfulness is. 

If we are unfaithful
he remains faithful,
for he cannot deny himself.

We are joined to Jesus at more than the hip. Jesus lives in us. “For he cannot deny himself.” We are his family, his kin, his beloved.

Cul-de-sacs are quaint, intriguing, and inviting in every way that our desires can conjure up. The highway, though, is the thing. It’s where the believers persevere and live with Jesus. On the highway, we experience joy with Jesus. We go at any speed with him that we want. We can stop there at anytime, too, and rest with him at a park or a restaurant. 

The highway is the "way," the path of the Spirit, upon our journey to the kingdom where the kingdom is in our hearts and below our feet.

The cul-de-sac is a distraction that sounds like quiet, but shrieks at us. It looks like heaven, but is a fraud, a violent and abusive numbing agent to mask a long, slow journey to hell. The dead end, signed boldly as "No Outlet," feels like a vacation, but we are only vacating our majestic place in the Kingdom.

Trust in the whisper. Jesus will lead us back to the highway. Each return is a practice in faithfulness, and a steady rejection of denial. We are loved, and one of his beloved. 

Pretty soon, we are told, we will live without cause for wandering. In fact, "if we persevere, we shall also reign with him."

Keep whispering to me, Jesus. Help to turn me around. Show me your Kingdom.