GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 11 Tuesday in Ordinary Time  is, “Going Against the Grain.”

Today’s readings - especially today’s gospel -  triggered for me the thought: going against the grain.

I’m not a carpenter - but I assume this cliché has to do with cutting wood. It must be easier, if one works with how the actual piece of wood is.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel has Jesus the Carpenter telling us how to deal with our enemies. Love them. Greet them. [Cf. Matthew 5:43-48]

Yesterday Jesus told us to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile. Tough stuff. Jesus wants to change the prevailing customs and culture. Difficult stuff.  His secret: change oneself and you’ll change half of a difficult relationship. Start with self. Go against the grain. Die to self. Die to the way you want to actually react.

There are opportunities every day to do just that. 

Yesterday on the way into church someone told me about what happened to her the day before just as she was leaving Sunday Mass.  She was stepping off the curb - heading for the church parking lot at St. John Neumann. She paused, hesitated, not knowing whether a car moving along slowly heading for the road out to the exit was going to stop or what? The man in the car signaled that she should walk across in front of him. She did, but then as he went by, he said to her, “Jerk!”

She said it ruined the rest of her day. The natural way to react to that is not to turn the other cheek - but to yell back at the person or point a  finger at such a person. She said she had turned toward him to say, “Thank you” and give him a smile.  

Afterwards I thought to myself, that would have been the perfect response when called a “Jerk!” The best come-back at times is a “Thank you!”

TODAY’S FIRST READING

Today’s first reading from First Kings continues the story of Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab changes - just a bit - when the prophet Elijah challenges him.  But notice, his motive is not love. It’s fear. Warnings can be like a slap on one cheek - slap in the face. Elijah tells him that he’s going to die in the fields with wild dogs licking his blood and birds will  be pecking on his flesh. Tough stuff. [Cf. 1 Kings 21:17-29.]

As we know fear gets us on the right path more often than goodness or love or the high, high ideals of Jesus.

We might want to scream back at the person who cuts us off or calls us names - but we fear the kids will see us or someone will think less of us. 

Fear works. Fear works more than love.  However,  hopefully, in the long run, we know that love lasts longer than fear.

GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN

Going against the grain can be a pain. In fact it is. It’s a dying. It’s the cross once again. Yet, we know that Jesus taught while on the wood of the cross forgiveness comes before resurrection. Saying inwardly or outwardly, “Father forgive him or her, she doesn’t know what she is doing,” can bring an end to that violence. That’s vintage Jesus.

That’s what Gandhi got out of Jesus big time.

CONCLUSION

As I’m listening to the words of this homily, they sound somewhat to be against the grain. They are a bit jarring and somewhat edgy. So too love. It’s going against the grain to put into play Jesus’ kind of love.

Change can be jarring - because change is a reversal - it's a going in a new and different direction. I think that’s the key message with this cliché about going against the grain.

Virtue is going against the grain.

Anger [the bad kind] - or  violence - or retaliation - don't go against the grain. They are just a sliding along - a reacting the normal way.

We've seen on Discovery Channel or somewhere that salmon have to swim upstream to spawn - to deposit their eggs. They swim against the flow - against the stream. And if they don’t struggle to swim upstream - they will end up floating themselves out of existence.

I suppose - whatever works - has taken hard work.

You see that nice clean waxed - shiny car - it didn’t just happen.

You see those beautiful varnished glistening wooden floors in my house, they too just didn’t happen.

The farmer needs to remember last year’s harvest - as he works the fields for this coming harvest. To get eucharist, you need bread and wine; to get bread and wine, you need wheat and grapes; to get wheat and grapes, you need to do some hard work.

To be a Saint, to be a Christian, means traveling the tiny, narrow, difficult road.

To love one’s enemies is a dying to self. It’s difficult to put a zipper on our mouth so as to stop the flow of angry words. It’s Jesus way to break the cycles of anger and easy hate and bring peace to our peace of land - our brain. That’s the perfect garden - the perfect plot of land - we all want: a cultivated peaceful brain.