33rd Sunday Ordinary Time (C) 11/17/2013
There is an old story about a warrior who is struck one day by a poisonous arrow. The warrior, upon seeing the arrow, gets distracted and begins tospeculate to himself:‘I wonder what wood was used in making this arrow? What kind of bird feathers was used? Was the man who shot this arrow tall or short, dark or light?’
His comrades, who clearly see his plight, can bear it no longer, and cry out in frustration: ‘For God's sake, man! Stop speculating and pull out the arrow!’
We – and often rightly so – like things that appear (and sometimes are) stable. We tend to be fascinated by ‘how well built a building is.’ We marvel when a structure survives a horrific storm. We honor an athlete who can continue to compete as the competition grows in intensity.
The disciples are doing something similar in our gospel story from Luke. They, and so many,who frequent the Temple in Jerusalem, are enamored with ‘how the temple [is] adorned with costly stones and votive offerings.’ They are distracted from what is truly important by the temptation to speculate.
It is easy and even fun to speculate. While I was in college, for example, a local radio station was broadcasting that in the musical introduction to the Beatlesong, Strawberry Fields Forever, if the music is slowed, one could hear: ‘Paul is dead.’ Naturally, the radio announcement generated excitement, and those, who had the necessary equipment to slow the music, gathered with others to listen repeatedly to the introduction, and to speculate what it all meant. The next day the excitement was forgotten, but it served as a harmless distraction – for some of us – from the grind of studying.
Distractive speculation, however, can also be destructive. When we become so enamored with the means, we tend to mistake it for the end: be it the Temple in Jerusalem, our local parish church, or the language used at Mass. This, Jesus in today’s gospel story says, can cause us to look everywhere, try everything, and grab ontoanything, when all that is needed is for us to remain quiet with ourselves.
We certainly have plenty of potential distractions… and religion can offer us the most enticing distractions of all! The encouragement given to us is to persevere, not only by sheer force of will and discipline, but also by practicing. It is by practicing that we can train ourselves to see the arrow, recognize that it is poisoning us, and remove the arrow, rather than being drawn into speculation about the arrow. We can come to know and learn to surrender to God’s love rather than speculating (talking) about God.
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