What Makes Us Different - St. Mary of Magdala, an Inclusive Catholic Community

Helen Weber-McReynolds, RCWP, Pastor
Maria Thornton McClain, RCWP, Retired Pastor

God Is Sending Us

3/23/2025

God Is Sending Us

March 23, 2025
Third Sunday in Lent
Helen Weber-McReynolds, RWCP
Exodus 3:1-15; Ps. 103; Romans 2:1-11; Luke 13:1-9

I think I have mentioned before that I used to teach Religious Ed to 6th, 7th, and 8th Graders. I really loved teaching that age because they asked a lot of questions, mostly to try to distract me from covering too much class material. But I found that if I did it right, I could get them to puzzle out how to answer their questions themselves, and learn the curriculum in the process. One concept they really grasped was the idea of repentance as a turning around, a changing of your mindset and behavior to become closer to God. They started calling it “the holy U-turn.” The Greek word metanoia, used by the gospel writers when recounting Jesus’ teachings, comes from a combination of the word meta, meaning “beyond,” or “change,” and the word noia, meaning “mind.” So to repent is to change your mind, and to change your behavior.

Fortunately, the students were also able to understand that repentance was not the same as penance, or self-punishment of any kind. It was about recognizing God’s love in their lives and trying to respond in loving ways to God’s people around them. They understood that God is a God of love, and does not inflict punishment. When bad things happen to people, they knew, it was not because God was punishing them.

I think these are the same points Jesus was trying to make in today’s gospel. He and the people he was teaching were suffering from tremendous political abuse from the Roman occupiers of their territory, many of whom were in league with the religious hierarchy. So the people were oppressed by both. When Jesus spoke of the victims of Pontius Pilate’s cruelty, or of natural disaster, he affirmed that those people were not killed in punishment for their sins. But he did emphasize that everyone needed to continually repent, or turn around, to change their mind. Everyone needed to try to love more, to try to increase justice, especially for the marginalized, so that they would not die without a close relationship to God, and without working to build God’s Beloved Community. When he told the parable of the struggling fig tree, he was explaining what continual loving repentance was like. It was like working with a patient gardener, who was willing to give the tree time, and to feed it and enrich the soil around it, so that, with time, it would bear abundant fruit.

Paul echoed similar ideas in the second reading, when he said that God is the only one who can judge evil and sins, not people. He went so far as to say that meditating on the depth of God’s kindness can lead us to repentance. In other words, serious consideration of the wrongs we have done, contrasted with the love God continues to have for us, can motivate us to change our mindset and behavior to love more like God loves, and to care for others with the same honor and tenderness God has for us.

Here in the US in 2025, we are all, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, also suffering from political abuse, as Jesus’ compatriots were. Our first reading tells how God sent Moses to help those suffering under the cruel regime of the Egyptians. God communicated to Moses understanding of the Israelites’ suffering, saying, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people… I have heard their cry… I know well that they are suffering.” God then appointed Moses to talk to Pharoah, to secure release of the Israelites from their enslavement. It is interesting that Moses did not protest, did not give excuses why he was not up to this daunting task. He only asked God’s name, so he could tell the people who it was who loved them so much he had sent them a liberator. Perhaps Moses had repented himself to the point that he was eager to use the circumstances of his past not for the sake of princely privilege, but to help deliver the people of God from Pharoah’s oppression.

We can’t afford to wait around for a Moses to help us today. We need to try to band together to be liberators from those who are motivated by greed and power. We need to try to shield those who are immigrants, strangers in a strange land, as our Israelite ancestors once were. We need to try to help those who have lost their jobs arbitrarily. We need to try to defend Medicaid and the aid programs that USAID conducted, that help farmers here in Indiana in the process. Somehow we need to cultivate strength, peace, and justice for one another, to love like the patient gardener our God is. Bending our minds toward love, repenting in the holy U-turn, can take us there, if we take it seriously enough. The God of our ancestors, I AM, is sending us.

Standing Up for Victims of Injustice

3/2/2025

Standing Up for Victims of Injustice

March 2, 2025
8th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Helen Weber-McReynolds, RWCP
Daniel 13:1-62, excerpts (Susanna); Ps. 138; James 1 19-22, 26; 1 Peter 4: 8-11; Luke 6:37, 39-49

So today we have three really dynamic readings, and they all focus on judgement. Our first reading included another fantastic female role model for us, and a male hero as well. Last week it was Abigail, and today it is Susanna and Daniel. We read that Susanna was a holy and sincere woman who was cornered by two corrupt judges. When they presented her with a sexual ultimatum, she risked her life to remain faithful to her husband and follow God’s law, even though she suspected she would still be condemned to death. Only when Daniel stood up for Susanna, refusing to believe she was guilty, was she spared. In the end of this story, which we did not read today, but which you may remember, the judges were proved to be the guilty ones, when Daniel questioned them, asking under what kind of tree Susanna’s tryst had supposedly taken place. When the predators named different trees, they were foiled. They were proved unworthy to judge others.

Our second reading admonished us never to judge one another, and to treat one another always with love, giving one another the benefit of the doubt. It said our anger never serves God’s justice. In other words, only God can judge another person, no matter how upset we may be about their actions. Criticizing others, especially when we are not willing to change our own ways, certainly does not serve God’s justice. When we speak, the reading said, we must “…speak with care, in a manner consistent with the desire of God’s heart for the world.”

And in the Gospel, Jesus’ parables also told us we must not judge others. They said we are as blind as those around us, so we have no basis on which to judge them. Jesus’ parable about the plank and the particle in one’s eye helps us realize we never truly have enough information on which to base judgement of another person. We may not understand the person’s upbringing, or what traumas they have endured in their life. Has that person eaten today? Is her child sick? We don’t know what motivates other people. We are never adequately qualified to judge another person. Besides that, we all have faults and weaknesses of our own. Judgement is truly only God’s.

So we must “bridle our tongues” and avoid judging others. But, like Daniel, we can stand up for the victims of injustice. We can call out corrupt behavior when we see it. We can look at the effects of the unjust decisions of others, and judge those effects. And we can organize to educate people about unfair systems and how those systems can be changed or discontinued. As it said in today’s Gospel, we can hear Jesus’ words and act on them, and be like people who build on strong foundations. In fact, in order to carry out Jesus’ teaching to be fair and loving in our words and deeds, we must stand up for those in need. In today’s world, I think that could mean calling your legislators to help defend funds for public schools. It could mean helping at an immigrant center. It could mean protesting the unconstitutional actions of the White House any way we can. And if you have any Ukrainian friends, you could let them know you still support them.

Daniel stood up for Susanna, and proved that her judges were corrupt. For whom do we need to stand up? To whom do we need to stand up?