¶ Understanding Law, Freedom, and Authority
Welcome to Slaking Thirst, a podcast that's all about bringing the thirst deep within our hearts for love and communion to the heart of Christ, a divine heart, who is seeking our love and communion in return. The hope is that the two thirsts would meet, and both thirsts would be slaked. In our gospel today, there's some really important dynamics of the history and the theology behind law, freedom, and Jesus.
And so there's some really, that's why you kind of see this debate at times between the role of the law and then Jesus. In the 2,000-year tradition, you can imagine of Christianity, this has been interpreted and applied in many different ways. Today, what I'd like to do is just kind of shift to a little bit more of maybe a human dynamic that's embodied in the gospel today.
And I wonder what it felt like for the disciples to be fought for by Jesus. So the disciples would have grown up having very much a sense of the Pharisees. There was a certain power and authority they had in the community and in their towns, especially in such Jewish areas. So they had a certain interiorization of the authority that the Pharisees would have had in their life.
That's just a basic human dynamic. We have different people in our lives when we grow up that have certain sways and powers, and you kind of defer to them. If the authority in your life was scary, you would kind of shrink away from these authorities or be very on eggshells around them. You'd feel hypervigilant. And if they were a loving, wonderful authority, you may feel authority as a gift.
Someone having authority may have felt like really safe and good. But your experience of authority would have mattered on how you experience authority now.
¶ Jesus Defends Disciples on Sabbath
They're walking with Jesus in the freedom of the life and love that Jesus is trying to teach them. And as they're walking through the field, they would have known the law of the Sabbath. But you can see that just so simply they were hungry. So they grab and they start eating. And Jesus is apparently very good with this. But then all of a sudden someone criticizes this just spontaneous movement in them. They're hungry, they eat. All of a sudden an authority comes in and criticizes them.
I think we've all felt like all of a sudden where someone responds to something we're doing, that we didn't think anything of it, but the intensity to which they respond, we can be flooded with shame. No matter how old you are, you can feel like you're five again and getting in trouble or something, and your body tenses up. So I wonder what it felt like for the disciples to feel this moment of clenching, of vigilance, of...
And wanting to defend themselves, but they're in the face of someone they don't know how or what. And then seeing Jesus step in and defend them. To take all the intensity of that critical spirit against them. And take it on to himself. And engage in the debate on their behalf. Protecting them and guiding them. Letting them know that like. I got you. I'm here for you. And kind of.
¶ Allowing Jesus to Fight for Us
warding off some of the criticisms that were coming their way. And then I wonder in our own lives what it's like. What it's like where we feel the need to defend ourselves, and those are sometimes awfully very lonely places. Where we feel misunderstood and criticized, condemned, rejected. And we feel like we need to defend ourselves, but we don't always have the words or whatever. What that feels like and how often in those moments we have a real felt sense that Jesus can fight for us.
Where Jesus can provide for us what we need in those moments. Or are we so quick to take the reins on our own and be in charge of those moments and reduce Jesus to like, well, he's at church. I'll go talk to him about that later in my prayer time. But this is real life and I have to do it on my own. As if he doesn't fill all things, as St. Paul says. And so maybe today there's an invitation for us to sit with the idea of like,
Allowing ourselves to feel what it would feel like to have Jesus step in front of us and defend us. Provide for us. Protect us. Because he really cares. He cares about you so much just to remind you of one other gospel passage. Like, every hair on your head, that's how attentive he is to you. As always, I look out, that means more to some than others, but you get the analogy.
And so like, this is the Lord. This is the one who we worship. This is the one we receive in the Eucharist. But it's this kind of like protecting, safe, providing love. That often gets distorted by different things in our lives and other people. But this is what he does. He has no problem correcting the disciples at other times. It's not like he's being like a passive guy. Oh, live your life any way you want. It's fine.
But when someone comes at us with the critical spirit and not with one of mercy and love to help us grow, he provides, he protects, and he defends. To listen to more homilies, talks, and reflections from Fr. Ryan and Fr. Patrick, please check out slakingthirst.com and consider becoming a subscriber to the Slaking Thirst YouTube channel.