Reflection for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2019
For those of us who are nearsighted, have you ever had to drive without the aid of your glasses or contact lenses? Our good vision is limited to only what we can see directly in front of us on the dashboard. When we lift our eyes to peer through the windshield, all we see are fuzzy images. To drive this way without our vision corrected by glasses or contact lenses is very dangerous for us and for all who share the road with us. The likelihood of us being involved in a collision or causing harm to others is very great.
Living a faith life that is nearsighted is equally hazardous. If this is the way we live, the readings today should shake up our lives greatly. Our faith lives must be as farsighted as they are nearsighted. The author of the Book of Hebrews states this very clearly. “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, NAB)
The Book of Wisdom reminds the Jewish people that their ancestors enslaved in Egypt were given the vision of the Passover, so that they would have the courage to free themselves from their enslavement in the present and to fulfill the promise that God made to Abraham many years before. The reading from the Book of Hebrews, picking up from the first reading, explains how Abraham and Sarah’s faith allowed them to see into the future and believe what would come long after they had passed into history. “All these died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar.” (Hebrews 11:13a-b, NAB)
Jesus calls his disciples to emulate the farsighted faith of Abraham and Sarah. “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” (Luke 12:31-34)
We live in a society that is nearsighted. Our happiness is based on only what satisfies us in the present without any consideration for our happiness in the future. This pursuit of short-lived convenience, this lack of vision, this unconcern for a future, fills our landfills, our oceans, our environment with toxic waste, destroying life on our planet. If our faith life emulates that of our society, our eternal life is equally doomed.
The scriptures call us to be people whose eyes and lives are set on the future to come, and to plan and build in the here and now, that future. This is applicable not only for our society, but most importantly to our faith life as disciples of Jesus. As Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, “we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Cor 4:18, NAB).
