Dear Friends 

Sunday of the Word of the Lord 

(January 26, 2020)

I don’t know about you, but I love caller ID. In the old days when the phone rang, you ran to pick it up, eager to see who might be calling. Today, I’m so darn suspicious of the dreaded telemarketer or the faceless robocall that if I don’t recognize the phone number, I don’t answer and wait to see if they leave a voicemail message. Only then do I decide when and if I feel like returning their call. In short, I want to be in control. I paid for the phone and by golly I want to use it for everything except answering it when and if it rings! After all, I’m the consumer and everyone knows the consumer is in the drivers’ seat in a market economy.

When you think about it, we consume almost everything in life. We have to pay for not only goods and services, but things like education (if you want a really “good” one) and health care (don’t get me started on the cost of being healthy in America). And of course, we “consume” religion as well! (Oh yes we do!). Many Americans “shop around” for a particular faith community (that’s why there are so many different Christian churches) until they can get something out of it. I placed that last line in italics because (a) it’s what I hear so often and (b) it’s just so quintessentially American, but it’s equally un-Christian.

Let me explain using today’s readings as an example. Jesus had just been baptized by John the Baptist when he starts preaching that God’s Kingdom is right around the corner so we’d better begin to change our thinking (which is what the word repent means) and believe that this is really good news (the heart of the meaning of “gospel”). He didn’t hire an ad agency to brand his message to make it relevant to the people of his day. He told it like it was and let the chips fall where they may.

The next thing he did was call a bunch of people (and here is where ancient caller ID might have helped). All he tells these fishermen is that they will be catching people, instead of fish, from now on. I can imagine that this sounded as odd in the ancient world as it does to us today. What in the world did he mean by saying that they would be catching people? Well, they simply followed him--and Matthew says they did it immediately. James and John even left poor Mr. Zebedee, their dad, all alone in the boat when they left to follow Jesus. There was no way they had any idea what they were getting themselves into! If they had some inside scoop on the message and the person of Jesus, none of the Gospel writers tell us this! Matthew simply relates two simple facts (a) Jesus called, and (b) they answered immediately.
Now yes, I realize that the framework of a market economy (producers and consumers) had not yet been realized in the ancient world, but I think there is a clear and present danger when we allow our Christian faith in the Catholic Church to be a consumer commodity where, as long as it’s meaningful to me personally I might be involved, but as soon as “it” (and here you can substitute Church, parish, pope, priest, or Mass for the word “it”) isn’t meaningful to me anymore, I’m out of here! Yes, in a market system the consumer is in the driver’s seat – but when it comes to Christian faith, it is Jesus who calls and we simply cannot have the luxury of a spiritual caller ID allowing us to “control the message” so that we can find it satisfying.

We are Catholic Christians because that’s what Jesus called us to be! John and Peter and James didn’t get a chance to read Jesus’ resume or check out his Yelp or Google reviews before they left everything and simply responded to his call. Now, yes there are many varieties of Christians and Christian churches today (primarily as a result of the consumer approach to religion that has predominated Western culture since the advent of social media – I’m referring to the printing press some 500 years ago), but I would love to see us lose the consumer approach to our religious faith, knowing full well that we are who we are because we have been called to be who we are. And then perhaps we can believe (even in the midst of challenge and strife) that the Catholic faith to which we’ve been called is really Good News for me and for you!