Not long ago I was in a conversation with several long-time Catholic friends. The topic, as is not unusual these days, was authority: what is it, who has it, who doesn’t and how it should be used. The mood was intense.

Someone put a coda on the discussion saying, “I’m sick and tired of people living in big houses wearing little red hats telling me how I should relate to God. They know nothing about our lives and they aren’t interested in learning about them. They don’t ask for our experience and they don’t listen when we try to tell them our experience. Yet they have the nerve to tell us how we stand with God. I relate to God in the way that makes sense to me and I’ve lost all interest in what they or anyone else has to say about it.” There were nods of agreement all around.

I’ve listened to similar sentiments over the years and know that large numbers of Catholics are sympathetic to the views they express. The feeble dialogue between authority and the larger community has created a crisis of credibility and relevance. The I’m no longer concerned with what leadership says approach to authority in our Church has grown common among folks who otherwise care deeply about The Faith.

Authority has historically played such a central role in the Catholic Church that its waning has resulted not merely in a turning away from the powers-that-be but, for many, from the community itself. If I’m at odds with the power structure, I’m at odds with the Church is the assumption of many if not most Catholics. It’s a painful and unnecessary assumption.

The gospel for Pentecost, the day we celebrate the Church’s birth, quotes Jesus promising to send the Holy Spirit to the disciples: not just to The Twelve, not just to the apostles but to the disciples, all the followers of Jesus. The Spirit that guided Jesus came not just to the teachers or the symbolic “pillars” of the Church but to all Jesus’ followers.

To jump ship from the “Bark of Peter,” as barnacled and weed encumbered as it may be, over differences with leadership is to cede a power over one’s conscience to authority that even the bishops, on their best days at least, wouldn’t claim.

Christians always search for God’s within the community. But that’s a far cry from accepting the idea that without a bishop’s imprimatur we’ve nothing to say about God in our lives. As frustrating as She must find it, The Holy Spirit is at work within us all. Hang in there; don’t panic.

Jesus once said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” For us who are trying to follow Jesus’ way, that statement holds a crucial piece of information. Jesus had a specific goal. He wasn’t interested in garnering public accolades. He was trying to change his world and he oriented everything towards that end. He did all he could to instill the same intense focus in his disciples.

In reaction to present and past religious and political systems that have attempted to deny us freedom of conscience and intellectual adulthood it’s common to hear folks adamantly assert that everyone has a right to his or her opinion. Everyone’s opinion is valid for that person, they say, and it merits acceptance by others.

I don’t know anyone who accepts that logic when it’s applied to their brake mechanic’s opinions. The only validity in that case is the one that results in the owner’s car stopping when she pushes the pedal. If such stopping doesn’t occur, there’s going to be a rather pointed confrontation about the offending opinion’s stupidity not to mention the stupidity of the mechanic holding it.

That folks can hold all religious opinions valid seems rooted in the radically privatized understanding of religion that’s popular among us. It’s a common opinion that as long as one is comfortable with one’s own opinion about Jesus, that’s all that matters. Jesus did not share that view.

Jesus believed that his teaching and lifestyle affected everyone. In his mind what folks believed had real consequences. Some beliefs moved the world closer to God’s promise; others hindered such progress. Hence his statement; If you think that simply praising me makes you part of the solution, you are mistaken. It doesn’t.

Our respect for one another must be absolute and reverence for each other’s religious beliefs is crucial to that respect. Such respect, however, doesn’t imply apathy to the search for truth as best we can discover it. We can’t allow an understandable fear of religious intolerance to result in privatized faith. That decision empties Jesus’ life of all meaning.

In this week’s gospel Jesus says that those who have come to love him will keep his word. His comment may sound backwards, but it isn’t. As a rule, we pay closer attention to folks we find attractive.

Christians have been telling one another, and anyone else who would listen, to love Jesus for over two millennia. It begs the question, what does it mean to love someone we’ve never met? There are several ways to answer the question.

Loving Jesus can mean that knowing how deeply he valued and cared for everyone and what a forgiving person he was, we find him very attractive. We can imagine him so intensely that we begin to have an emotional response to the character of Jesus. In Christian circles this knowing and responding to the story, or gospel, of Jesus is seen as a gift of God’s Spirit. Given that understanding, we’ve actually come to love the person of Jesus in the presence of his Spirit.

There is another way of thinking about our relationship with Jesus. His Spirit, the presence of God that guided him throughout his life guides everyone today who continues to live his way. When someone touches us with forgiveness, caring, acceptance, generosity and true respect, we are touched by God’s Spirit, Jesus’ Spirit. When we find ourselves responding with love to a community or person who treats us as Jesus treated people and is therefore guided by the Spirit of Jesus, we can well say that we love Jesus.

Everyday life is filled with the Spirit of Jesus. When we are touched by it and encouraged by it, respond to it and then carry it to others we not only love Jesus, we become Jesus. We extend Jesus’ life through time and space. Paul taught that and the gospels taught that. No need to look for trumpets and angels; simply loving Jesus we become Jesus and we move the world a bit closer to its real future.

It strains the imagination to think that anyone acquainted with the process would ever think of crucifixion as glorifying. It was an execution designed to terrorize a population into submission. It was prolonged, public, excruciating, suffocation. When Rome crucified someone, they wanted everyone to get and remember a stark message: don’t defy the Empire. When the gospel narrator portrayed Jesus speaking of his coming death in heroic terms, he was speaking not of the execution itself but of the astounding commitment to his people that he was about to demonstrate by not running from his immanent death. And beneath that demonstration was the deeper point summed up in Jesus’ statement, “When you see me, you see the Father.”

That a Creator would have such love for a creature makes no sense. It’s inexplicable. It stretches the imagination to the breaking point. But that’s the revelation. That’s what Jesus’ life was all about. That’s Christianity’s core message.

We get the idea at times that we’re to convince folks that God is a trinity of three persons or that the Mass really makes Jesus present in communion or that the Bible is God’s word. As important as those ideas are, they’re wrapping paper for the faith.

What people need to know is that the source of the universe knows and loves them and will never abandon them. We have been told that. It is our job to tell the world; not with bluster or cajoling, not with velvet words or clever ads but by being there for them. Being there in the good times and when things are tough, when folks aren’t appreciative and, especially, when everyone else grabs their stuff and lights out for the hills. That’s when folks will know that we have something true to say, when they see that we ourselves are true – to them.

“Nearing his final revelation of God’s love Jesus told his followers, To be part of God’s future world, you must be there for people in the world as it is. You can’t run away. You have to stand with them. Then they’ll understand.”

It makes no sense for us, as members of a faith community, to ask others to do what we don’t model ourselves. As the tough army sergeant in movies used to say, “I never ask my men to do what I don’t do.” It’s a matter of credibility: God’s and ours.

When our Church (that’s us) asks folks to behave this or that way, we’re claiming to speak God’s mind not just a useful philosophical insight that we’ve discovered.

God wouldn’t suggest that we do something that’s impossible. But that’s exactly the impression we give folks when we ask them to do what we don’t do ourselves.

It’s the core assertion of our faith is that God accepts everyone, forgives everyone and is faithful to everyone. We offer that message to everyone who will listen. We say that realizing this truth about our Creator gives humans a security beyond anything else that life offers.

If we say that God is accepting and faithful to all people no matter what their weaknesses and failures while we accept and are faithful to only those we find personally compatible, we don’t merely make ourselves less believable, we make God less believable.

When we become Christian we embrace the responsibility to welcome everyone. We take on that responsibility because we claim that God welcomes all people.

Be what you believe. That’s the challenge to everyone who would live the Christian life.

No one will steal God’s beloved creatures from God’s hands. That was Jesus’ claim about his Father’s dependability. That has to be our promise as well. Whether I find you enjoyable or obnoxious, sympathetic or offensive, nothing will make me turn my back on you.

What we claim of God we model for our world. It’s what we do; it’s who we are.

The gospel this week tells of Jesus feeding people. It’s not a new story. Jesus often fed people. It was a way of demonstrating God’s nourishing love. The message was that God isn’t somewhere outside of things watching. God’s with folks giving them life. It would have been difficult for anyone hearing John’s gospel to this point to miss the idea. Why make it again?

John has Jesus feeding people once again because this time it’s not just anyone that he’s making breakfast for; it’s the apostles: the ones who had run away when he was arrested, except for Peter, of course, who, when things got dicey, had told everyone he hadn’t the slightest idea who Jesus was. That’s who Jesus was baking fish for.

It’s worth noting that the apostles didn’t go looking for Jesus figuring that he said that God would raise him from death so they ought to be there to welcome his return. Given the option, they had chosen to go back to work fishing. Jesus had to search them out.

When the apostles noticed him with the fish on the fire, they must have expected a tongue lashing. They didn’t get it. They just got breakfast – and a question: Are you still in this with me? Peter, having done so well speaking for the group before, said, Sure; you bet. I wonder if Jesus grinned; we’ll never know. Anyway, handing them a plate of fish, Jesus said, Okay, let’s get to it; there’s a lot to be done. If we could soak in that idea!

With God it’s not about punishment or threats or lectures. It’s about love and the commitment God’s made to us. It’s about a world to be made whole. It’s about the gift and the work.

With good reason John’s Gospel joins Jesus’ giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples with his blunt reminder of their responsibility to forgive sins. Forgiving is an essential and demanding activity of every Christian.

We forgive with no guarantee that the forgiven won’t offend again. We forgive and let go of the anger that we hold toward the offender. Yet anger is often our defense against the humiliation we experience at the disregard shown us. Revenge, even the passive type that denies another our care and respect, is an attempt to prove to ourselves that we can’t be trifled with, ignored or mistreated without consequence. Forgiving is an act of self-confidence, often great self-confidence.

The Spirit assures us that God knows, loves and is faithful to us. That knowledge forges an unshakable sense of our value in us. Deeper than any self-worth rooted in accomplishments or others’ recognition, this gift of knowing God’s commitment to us is undiminished by failure or rejection. The certainty of God’s faithfulness frees us to forgive. And forgiveness of human failure makes God’s future possible.

We mess up. Sometimes we mess up with full knowledge and responsibility, sometimes out of ignorance. Sometimes we mess up out of sheer stupidity; it’s not that we intend to or that we don’t know better, it’s just – well, we mess up. Forgiving isn’t only for technical sins: intentional bad actions. Forgiving is for all our mess ups.

If we’re to keep moving towards the future God has in mind, if we’re to advance in the face of our messes and everyone else’s; we have to know that we are forgiven – by our Creator and by one another. Without that the future we hope for is a fantasy.

Forgiving is our Church’s primary responsibility – not the clergy’s, the whole Church’s: yours and mine. We can’t live lives of forgiving without the sense of being unconditionally loved ourselves; it’s too hard.

The first step in opening our hearts to our messy world is opening our hearts to our accepting God.

The term Son of Man appears frequently in Hebrew Scriptures. It refers to a human being with all his or her imperfections and troubles. When God address a character as son of man in an ancient Hebrew setting, it’s to make the point that God is very aware of how weak, confused and generally overwhelmed by life that person often is.

When Christian Scriptures refer to Jesus as Son of Man they are in effect calling him everyman. They’re also making the point that, in Jesus, God has entered into the concrete reality of human life with all its weakness and trouble.

It’s in this context that John pictures the two people who announce Jesus’ resurrection referring to him as the Son of Man. John’s point is that Jesus has dealt with the same weaknesses and faced the same evils that we all face. Just as, despite our best efforts, we’re often overcome by injustice and rejection, Jesus was overcome. In the face of all that, the messengers tell us, God has rescued Jesus from death and failure.

Just as Jesus’ life demonstrated what a fully human life looked like, his resurrection revealed God’s faithfulness to humans who live with trust in God’s oneness with us. The messenger is Jesus; the message is about us.

Easter is concerned with much more than life after death. Jesus’ resurrection is God’s promise to preserve, utilize and bring every human effort for good to fruition. On Easter Christians celebrate the faith that none of our work for God’s justice is ever lost. No matter how dire things look, God underwrites our investment in life and assures its ultimate success.

We know all too well what it means to be Sons (and daughters) of Man. It’s God’s promise that we will also know the triumph of the Risen Jesus.

In high school a religion teacher assigned us a book that described scourging, crowning with thorns, carrying a cross and crucifixion in minute detail. The idea was to help us realize what Jesus endured for people. Without a doubt, the pain Jesus endured in his execution was great.

I was much older when it dawned on me that millions of people endure as much and, in many cases, vastly more suffering than Jesus endured. Holy Week isn’t really about whips and thorns and nails. If Jesus had lived a life of faithfulness to us but died of old age surrounded by loved ones, the astounding reality of who he was and what his life meant would have been no less.

The heart of God’s act in becoming human was to demonstrate God’s union with us and God’s commitment to our future. That the Creator of the universe knows and is concerned with us is itself astounding. That, beyond knowing us, the Creator loves us without qualification and is absolutely committed to our future is beyond our ability to fathom. That the Creator chose to demonstrate that love by sharing our humanity and caring for us despite the painful rejection that such care would bring is life-changing for all who grasp it.

We must be cautious about focusing too exclusively on Jesus’ tragic death. It’s beyond imagining that our Creator would suffer death at our hands. Attempting to make sense of it has led many to explain Jesus’ execution as restitution God demanded from us for our failures. That distorts God’s relationship with us and turns the loving gift of creation into a dodgy business deal humanity could never afford.

Sacrifice is an act of uniting. Jesus’ entire life was a sacrifice because it revealed God’s union with human history and the human dream. Jesus’ suffering was absurdly tragic. All suffering is, especially that which we impose on one another. That God couldn’t join in our existence without being caught up in such pain shines a harsh light the distance we have to travel before we arrive at the future God offers.

Holy Week is about God’s faithfulness.

When I was a child I wanted to pitch in Little League. I would stand in the backyard and throw at a target for hours on end. When my dad came home from work, he would catch for me. The problem was that I thought that an eight year old should be able to pitch like Bob Feller and I couldn’t. When the ball sailed over my dad’s head or out of reach to his right or left, I grew angry with myself. The maturity I needed (more mental than physical) to be a good eight year old pitcher just wasn’t there. Try as he might, my father couldn’t convince me that it was neither a blot against my character nor my value as a human being that my fastball ended up in the shrubs.

It took many years before it sunk in that life wasn’t a test to prove oneself worthy of existence. God’s reasons for creating us are radically mysterious. The best that we can say is that God acts out of love. Having said that, we have to acknowledge that it’s a love that we couldn’t muster on our best day.

Adultery is no laughing matter. It can destroy marriages, families, lives and harm communities. That’s why ancient law, especially law rooted in nomadic culture, was quick and decisive about the issue. It was a big deal. Yet Jesus looked at the woman about to be executed for this behavior, loved what he saw and rescued her. The issue wasn’t that adultery was a minor crime nor was it that the woman, not the man, was to be executed. That reads our issues back into the situation. The point of the story is that God’s relationship with us isn’t about obedience, reward or punishment. It’s about the gift and promise of human joy. God never gives up on that promise to us – never places the human future second to some other consideration.

Human value doesn’t come from throwing a 103 mph fastball, obeying all the Ten Commandments, having the highest MCAT score, the best behaved kids or the biggest dossier of public service in town. Human value comes from the simple fact that the Creator has decided that each of us is worth creating and sticking by. That’s an astounding and unfathomable compliment.

We strive to view ourselves and everyone else from the perspective of that divine judgment. Only when we can do this this will we share the most basic aspect of how Jesus viewed life.