Prepare to be misunderstood

Once upon a time I was walking through a mall dressed in my “official” clerical garb. While I was at the kiosk for the cell phone people, another customer as well as the clerk treated me with a noticeable deference and even with good humor. As I was walking out of the mall, I saw a group of young people. One of them made eye contact with me and held it as I approached, but it was not a friendly connection.

He was wearing black t-shirt that featured a red circle and slash over a cross under the caption “no bad religion.” I wanted to stop and ask about the shirt. After all, if I am going to wear the symbol of the churches ordained ministry out in public, I had better be able to take the brickbats as well as the bouquets.

My hunch is that if the two of us could compare our lists of what constituted “bad religion”, they’d be more alike than different.  My list would start with violence and persecution perpetrated in God’s name.  I would also add the many examples of hatred that some justify on religious grounds. I also think that religion that is uncritical or reactive or which puts institutional life ahead of people’s well-being is “bad religion.” If our faith doesn’t drive us to leave a world better than how we found it’s probably “bad religion.” But we did not have that conversation. As a public representative of an old religious tradition, I have to say that I probably did not do a good job asking the question because he all would say to me is “no bad religion, man!” Whatever.

I’ll bet that the reason the young man refused to engage me was for the same reason that the guy at the kiosk was so nice. They both made certain assumptions about me, what I believed, and what I represent based on the total package they saw: a sixty-something, white guy, wearing a black clerical collar. As a wise mentor once told me when I was new to this: “It’s not a uniform, it’s a projection screen.”

But it’s not just religious professionals in funny clothes who get misunderstood.  Jesus himself and many of his followers get misunderstood all the time. I think that the very idea of having religious faith can lead to misunderstanding.

Today’s Gospel is at once one of the most disturbing and misunderstood of all of Jesus’ sayings. What Jesus says is jarring. On the one hand he says, "Look around! The signs of God's reign is there!  So, just as you know that a red sky at night is a sailor's delight, you can discern how God is at work. 

At the same time, he says that is being a follower of Jesus is to be misunderstood. And that this will cause conflict and division. So here is the Prince of Peace telling us that “From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father… mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

Jesus may have been speaking from his own experience. In the Gospel of Mark (3:31-35), we hear how his own family misunderstood and was apparently divided by his ministry. While Jesus’ mother Mary would be with him at the cross, his family, his own brothers and sisters thought Jesus had gone crazy and wanted to bring him home. And he is well aware that this is just the beginning of the ways that the path he offers will divide many, even as a new community comes into being.

Later on, in Luke’s Gospel (18:28-30), Peter will say to Jesus, “Look, we have left our homes and followed you.” And Jesus will respond, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.” Jesus wants those who follow him to understand not just the rewards of this new life, but that the cost they will pay is the price of true peace.

The word for peace in Hebrew is “shalom.” Not just the absence of war, shalom means wholeness, well-being, and health, as well as what we think of as peace. All of those meanings are present in shalom. This is God’s peace which passes our understanding. Shalom is a truer, deeper peace. That promise of God’s peace was part of Jesus’ life and message all along.

Take Mary Magdalene for example. Many churches recently celebrated her feast day a few weeks ago. Mary of Magdala is perhaps the patron saint of projection and misunderstanding!

Depending on what books and novels you read or films you see, Mary Magdalene was a person healed by Jesus, a prostitute who may or may not have repented, who may or may not have washed Jesus’ feet with her hair, and who has been described as Jesus’ friend, companion, disciple, successor, lover, wife or even mother of his children.  Next to Jesus himself, it is hard to imagine a person on whom we have directed so many of our dreams, fears, hopes and hurts.

The only thing we know for sure is that she was a follower of Jesus, she was healed of some infirmity by him, and that she was one of the women who witnesses his crucifixion, knew where he was buried, went to empty tomb, encountered the Risen Jesus, and then took the news of his resurrection to the eleven remaining apostles. Still history and the Church has consistently misunderstood her.

Mary teaches us is the important thing is not that we understand God so much as discover how deeply God understands us. We may all be as misunderstood as she was, but at the moment of moments, at the border of life and death, Christ knew and understood Mary. If Mary knew nothing else except that God knew her to deepest core and was loved, then nothing else matters. She also teaches us that living a life of faith is to be misunderstood.  

To practice peace in a world that values power is to be misunderstood. To seek to serve the poor in a world that values wealth will be misunderstood. Advocating for people who have no voice, no vote, and no position in society is not comprehensible to many in our world. Bringing care for the sick even when is not profitable and to demand that society remembers the forgotten often invites labeling and name-calling. When a person of faith places love as the highest value and lifts up the dignity of even the lowliest among us, other people will misunderstand. Here is the hard and sad part: all too often the people who will misunderstand the most are people who claim the name of Jesus.

Well, that ought not surprise us. Frankly, there are days when I don’t understand completely the life of faith that I have chosen to live. We human beings are such imperfect practitioners of the spiritual life, and yet we are drawn to know more. We are drawn to create. We seek love and we crave to be known. We are called to change and grow with the world around us. Today’s Gospel reminds us of the truth of the old Franciscan prayer where we seek “not to be understood as to understand” that God knows us and loves us right down to our very core and gives us the grace and power to overcome the misunderstandings we experience.