Acts 6:1-7 / 1 Pt 2:4-9 / Jn 14:1-12
A woman was full of miseries, so she came to tell her pastor all about it. "My children hate me. Nobody ever comes to visit me. My arthritis is getting worse. The sun hasn't been out in weeks. And this morning, the milk went sour." Then her face brightened. "But you know, Father, I've had this terrible headache all week and now it's gone!"
The pastor signed "No, my dear. Your headache isn't gone. Now I've got it!"
Do you get headaches or give them? The ideal answer, of course, would be "neither." But that would probably be a lie!
Jesus offers us an alternative to giving and getting headaches.
His whole life, everything he did, shows us a much happier way of living with one another: He fed people and healed them; he comforted and forgave them as often as they needed it. And he helped people break free of whatever was robbing them of life.
Everything Jesus did worked together to create inside his followers a space that was spiritually and psychologically safe, calm and secure, a space that was conducive to growing and changing. Remember that woman caught in the act of adultery? Jesus created a safe spot for her, where she could get about repairing her life instead of wasting it dodging rocks and repeating the same old mistakes. He gave her a second chance at life, and he did it without any grand show of force, just ten softly spoken words: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
In Sunday's gospel, Jesus says, "If you believe in me, you will do the work I do." This is the work he's talking about: Creating safe, secure, happy places for one another in which the really important work of life — transformation and big-family building — can happen. Fearful, insecure, unhappy people have neither the energy nor the heart to face themselves or to work at growing into God's likeness, much less to build communion. They expend every last drop of their energy on simply surviving.
That's not living, and it's not necessary. We can help one another get a life in the same way Jesus did — by recognizing the powerful effect we have on one another, for good or ill, and by consciously deciding to make even our smallest choices add up into safe, secure, happy spaces where every member of our big family can grow whole.
Just one example. For the few minutes we gather together for mass, we're creating some kind of space for one another. The look on our faces (Have you told your face you're happy lately?), the way we sit and stand and manage our kneelers, the way we make room for others, the way we sing or don't sing, the way we respond to the prayers (mumble, mumble): All this can lift the spirits of the persons nearby, or it can dampen those spirits. (And dampened spirits never catch fire!) Every moment of life is like that: We're either strangling life or setting it free, either helping people to take heart or causing them to lose heart. No waking moment is just neutral.
Spirits don't grow and flourish when they're under siege, or angry, or focused on self-defense and mere survival. So why not do what Jesus always did: Use what we've got, a long chain of tiny moments in which the smallest of our choices can add up, one by one, and can help create safe inner spaces, untouched by fear or anger, places where growing whole can happen. It's so simple. Why not do it for one another — now!
