Does it Matter?
As a young, unpolished teacher, I spent hours laboring over the setup of my classroom, color-coding my lesson plan book, and researching my subjects. I avoided the necessary step of identifying objectives and a plan of action. Last-minute attempts to pull together an engaging lesson did not prove fruitful, effective or interesting. As I fumbled through a class, students picked up on my lack of clarity. Tedium led to unwanted behaviors from high school students who expected more. Superfluous visuals and vague ideas did not hold sway as the students jumped on the chance to expose what I could not hide.
When I think about Jesus’ life lessons as a master teacher, I recognize his keen ability to teach the important things. His words and actions distilled undeniable and sagacious truth. What the Pharisees and scribes thought was his arrant dismissal of the Torah was Jesus’ uncanny ability to point to what mattered.
Invited to dine at a Pharisee’s home, Jesus noted the host’s neglect of hospitality (Luke 7:36-50). A reader of hearts, Jesus ascertained that the Pharisee did not accept him for who he was, the Prophet sent by God. Luke’s Gospel explains that a woman, a known sinner, approaches Jesus from behind while he was dining with this elite crowd. She drops to her knees and weeps as she dries his feet with her hair. She anoints his feet tenderly, lovingly and gratefully. What was her sin? In this story, the sin itself matters little.
What counts, and what Jesus expresses to the Pharisee, is that the woman showered him with the hospitality that the host neglected. She recognized his identity as God’s Chosen One. Giving due respect and love, the woman acts with the appropriate response of someone who was freed from the shackles of sin, the shame of her mistakes, the assumptions of the men in the room. It matters that her behavior, unacceptable by cultural standards, communicated her acknowledgement of Jesus’ true identity as well as her deep and abiding gratitude for his mercy.
Consider the deeply held and misinformed assumptions toward women in the first-century Mediterranean world. We discover these misguided presumptions and rules in Moses’ Law. Leviticus 15 lays out strict adherence to purity laws. They address the defilement of bodily fluids, but particularly the messiness, the filth, and the shame of women’s bodies. Did the purity laws matter to Jesus? Discernibly not, as he allows the sinful woman to touch him. He was both open to and untroubled by the woman’s raw display of affection. Shocked at Jesus’ ease and tolerance, the Pharisees could not believe their eyes. Strict adherence to purity codes mattered to them.
As Jesus often does, he tells a story to the Pharisees to convey an important lesson: A creditor excuses the debt of two men who owe him different sums of money but cannot pay him back. Who will love the creditor more? The Pharisee admits it is the one who owed the bigger debt. We’re getting closer to the crux of the matter.
Jesus explains that, even as the woman was forgiven her sin in an earlier encounter, she now responds from the depths of her soul, prostrating herself in a manner of fierce gratitude, profound worship, and great love. Looking at the Pharisee, Jesus continues, “But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little” (7:47).
There it is.
Seeking forgiveness first requires a realization that I need it. The woman acknowledged she needed God’s mercy, whereas the Pharisee’s lack of charity toward her prevented him from seeing his own sin. Freed from sin, great love flowed from the woman toward Jesus. The Pharisee could only condemn her.
Is the Pharisee so lost in his interpretation of the letter of the law that he cannot see and grapple with what is happening before his eyes? Had he been able to process the scene, he might have realized that Jesus pointed to what mattered: how he was missing the mark due to his lack of love and the open invitation to encounter God’s mercy. While Jesus asks for a transformation of heart, the Pharisee judges Jesus based on the black-and-white certainty of the Torah.
What Matters to Jesus
Jesus disregarded Moses’ Law in other essential ways. He embraced the authority to forgive sins. On the Sabbath, he healed, allowed his disciples to eat grain from the fields, consorted with women and sinners. He touched and healed those considered impure: lepers, the crippled, the blind, demoniacs. Jesus challenged the social system of his time, recruiting those without honor: tax collectors and poor fishermen. He traveled beyond the boundaries of Nazareth without a permanent home. He spoke to and healed foreigners considered to be enemies. Jesus did not hesitate to put the elite in their place, inviting them to see beyond their status and the Law.
In his inclusion of the marginalized, in his engagement with anyone seeking truth and healing, and in reframing God’s kingdom, Jesus invited all people to see as God sees. He placed the Law of Moses in proper perspective. The Torah was made for humanity, not humanity for the Torah (see Mark 2:27).
Jesus emphasized that we must love one another so that all can know and experience God’s love. St. Therese of Lisieux encouraged us to become “little” for the sake of building God’s Kingdom. She wrote that we must “die of love,” surrendering status and power for the sake of love.
St. Therese of Lisieux: The Matter at Hand
How readily I look for opportunities to expose weakness, to assert my own understanding of God’s mysteries, to maintain obstinacy when clear sight is required. At times I don’t see clearly what matters, avoid what matters, or reject what matters.
St. Therese of Lisieux and her “Little Way” points me forward. A 19th-century nun and Doctor of the Church, St. Therese lived for twenty-four years and left a profound teaching that highlights God’s presence in all parts of life. There is no separation of the sacred and the secular for St. Therese. God’s presence, the Kingdom, can be found wherever God chooses to reveal it. The key for St. Therese is to live in but not to over-identify with the secular parts of life so that we can make space for God’s omnipresence.
Sometimes I don’t see clearly what matters. What is the lens through which I look at the world? My focus might be on what the world deems worthy: status, power and wealth. When the disciples argued about who was the greatest, Jesus said to be like a child without cultural status or worth. St. Therese emphasized approaching God as a child, utterly dependent on God’s mercy. In the cultural backdrop of fierce independence and rugged individualism, a stance of dependence changes my lens.
To be clearsighted, she explains, means that I recognize that God is everywhere, even in the boring moments: the waiting in traffic, the cleaning of a floor, the dicing of an onion. St. Therese also instills a recognition of God even in the dark places, the places of doubt, uncertainty and fear. As I grapple with the realities of suffering, when it feels like God is absent, even then God’s sustaining grace patiently and tenderly awaits an opening within me. Responding to the invitation to see God in the mundane, sorrowful and joyful experiences transforms.
Sometimes I avoid what matters. Much like everybody else, I don’t like to face my shortcomings, my imperfections, my weaknesses – my ‘littleness’. St. Therese teaches me to embrace it, to reach out with all vulnerability and trust, to accept God’s audacious love. The penitent woman who fell at Jesus’ feet, knew that in her imperfect life she could descend, entering and falling into God’s loving embrace. With humility and complete surrender, the woman chose to “die of love” so that Jesus would restore her as God’s beloved daughter. If I believe in God’s audacious love for me in my imperfections and sin, then I can freely and securely rely on God’s sustaining grace. It is an act of great spiritual daring to trust God to the extent that St. Therese teaches. It requires that I accept the humiliation of not being perfect. It is, for me, a hard pill to swallow.
Sometimes I reject what matters. When the atrocities of war, the cruelty of unjust laws, the neglect and denigration of the marginalized, and loss of hope overwhelm me, I easily turn inward and despair. I cry out: Where is God? I don’t wish to “die of love”, to lose my status, to be the child in Jesus’ arms. Jesus said, “Unless you become like a child…” I fear the loss of who I am and what I do. I abhor feeling helpless. How does the “Little Way” challenge me to reframe how I walk in the world? Without humbling myself, without allowing myself to feel vulnerable, without stooping to take the hand of my neighbor, I prevent God from changing me. In essence, I am rejecting what matters: to love others as I am loved by God.
My biggest life lesson from my years of teaching was the humility required. The more that I could face the reality of my littleness, the easier it was to connect with my students. And on those days when my objectives were clear, they may have learned a thing or two.
I can only try to imagine this spiritual descent that St. Therese edifies in her “Little Way.” How can I “die of love” without rejecting its terms? With God’s grace maybe I can begin to approach my life with abject humility and profound gratitude.
“O Jesu! O my love! Each eve I come to fling
Before Thy sacred Cross sweet flowers of all the year…
To scatter flowers! – that means each sacrifice,
My lightest sighs and pains, my heaviest, saddest hours,
My hopes, my joys, my prayers, – I will not count the price.
Behold my flowers!
St. Therese of Lisieux
Excerpt from her poem, “To Scatter Flowers”
June 28, 1896
