EMPTY YOUR POCKETS!

The gospel for today, Saturday, tells of the confrontation between Jesus and some Pharisees who were condemning his disciples for breaking the Sabbath by picking heads of grain and rubbing them in their hands. 

Over the past weeks we have been running into these Pharisees and their scrupulous observance of externals. And we have seen how Jesus condemns their way of observing tiny externals while not practicing love of neighbor, kindness, generosity, forgiveness, and other virtues that are called for in the Law. 

These Pharisees are intent on working the system, on knowing how to manage God, and keep God at bay.

I once heard someone describe a religious fellow by saying, “He thinks he has God in his pocket!” That description seems to fit the Pharisees who keep coming after Jesus for not observing all the external practices of Judaism (including the man-made ones).

These days, when you go through the security check at the airport, the TSA agents make you take everything out of your pockets. 

“Empty your pockets, please! Nothing in your pockets!“ 

It may be helpful to check my spiritual pockets now and then to make sure that I haven’t put God in there anywhere. If I have obeyed all the Commandments and avoided serious sin and gotten to the sacraments, I may start relaxing and becoming self-satisfied. In other words, I may find that I have inadvertently slipped God into my pocket.

Jesus is always inviting his followers into a personal relationship with his Heavenly Father, not just a transactional agreement with some heavenly accountant who is up there somewhere keeping score.

In the first reading of mass this morning (1 Cor. 4:7), Paul asks his readers, “What do you possess that you have not received?” 

In Greek, this last word “received” is defined as “to receive or accept an object or benefit for which the initiative rests with the giver.” This sounds like a much better basis for religion than the idea of keeping score and racking up points with a Score-keeper God in heaven.

“What do you possess that you have not received as a pure gift, a grace from your loving Father?” The image of having something “in my pocket“ conveys the idea that I am in control of whatever that object may be. How silly, then, is the idea of trying to put God in my pocket, when it is God who has given me everything — including my pocket!

Just yesterday I came across this quotation in Richard Rohr’s book, The Divine Dance: “To accept that you are accepted, is ironically, experienced in the first moment as a loss of power.” P. 109 

When I finally accept the truth that God accepts and loves me just as I am, I am letting go of power and becoming vulnerable to God’s love. 

Let’s pray today that each of us will be able to allow God to take over our lives. No more God-in-my-pocket!

Everyone empty your pockets, please!