NOT ONE OF THE 100

Time magazines latest issue, a double one at that, featured, at least according to the staff at Time, the 100 most influential people in the world. It had five covers: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, journalist Jorge Ramos, musician Kanye West, ballerina Misty Copeland, and actor Bradley Cooper. I, of course, was not one of those 100, nor do I have the chutzpah to even think I could or should be.

Furthermore, no one I know personally would be considered to be mentioned even be listed as a footnote, myself included. What I found interesting and troubling is that almost half of the 100 were in the entertainment business. Placing Kim Kardashian alongside Pope Francis or Tim McGraw alongside President Obama, or at least in the same list of 100, leaves me scratching my head, trying to understand, asking “Are you serious?”

I guess they are. The double-issue is a testament to their seriousness. There’s something wrong here. If Kim Kardashian is one of the 100, what does that say about our values or about whom we hold in high regard? Is it any wonder we have lost so much respect for the President and the presidency or for anyone in authority for that matter? That’s the bad news.

The good news is that most of us, Time’s editors notwithstanding, could care less about this list. In our own lives we have our own 100 most influential people. Actually, our list is less than half that number, if that. We all have people we hold up and admire, people who would never make Time’s or anyone else’s list of influential people. Nor would they care. Nor would we.

What they and we do care about is our relationships one with the other, with the support we give one to the other, with the love we share one with the other. Not one person among those 100 nor all of them together could come close to anyone on our personal list of influential people. What we may fail to do, too often, is give thanks for them and give them personal thanks.

What we also fail to remember is that we are on the list of those many others who are in our lives, that we are one of those who are most influential in their lives. What we also forget is that in and through our baptism we are called to be such, to influence others how to live out their faith simply by the way we live out our faith. Neither the world nor Time will take note of that, but those who matter to us will, and that is all that matters.

I suspect some of those on Time’s will downplay that honor. Those are the ones who understand the responsibility that has been given to them because of the gifts they possess, God-given gifts. They understand, whether admitted or not, that they are to use those gifts to the best of their ability so that others may benefit from them. They have. That is why they are on the list.

So with us. Others honor and respect us and we honor and respect others because we and they have come to understand that the gifts we have been given are to be used not for our honor and glory but to serve others and in doing so give honor and glory to God.

GOOD NEWS, NOT JUST GOOD ADVICE

Our oldest grandson, Zachary, will be graduating from high school this coming June. For quite a while now he has been given tons of advice about what he should be doing with the rest of his life, or at least the next part of his life. His grandmother and I have put in our two-cent’s worth for him to ponder. What Zach does with this advice is up to him. He can take none, some or all of it as he so chooses.

Good advice, however, is not the same as good news. The good news for Zachary is that he is about to complete a very important cycle in his life and is about to enter the next cycle. As with all of us as we pass through the various cycles of our lives, we can use all the good advice others who have been there will pass on to us. Again, good advice is simple that: good advice. What remains and what is often overlooked is the good news.

Bishop N. T. Wright, in his latest book, Simply Good News: Why the Gospel Is News and What Makes It Good, addresses this issue head on. He asserts that for most of us, when we read the Gospels, we come away with the belief that they are full of good advice on how to live this life so that we can get to heaven when we die. That was not and is not Jesus’ message. Yes, if we follow Jesus’ “advice”, we will lead a good life. But leading a good and even blessed life in order to get to heaven when we die was not, is not, Jesus’ message.

Jesus’ message, the good news, is that the life we are looking forward to begins right here in this life in this world. The Kingdom of Heaven Jesus spoke about is in the here and now. The fact that when we look around and see what is happening the world over, even in our own lives, looks nothing like heaven on earth, all that is beside the point but is also the point. This world looks nothing like anyone’s vision of heaven.

Yet, the truth remains that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection brought in the Kingdom in this life in this world. The “old order”, as St. Paul would have it, has passed away. The “new order” is now here to stay. Jesus has taken away the need to do good in order to get to heaven and replaced it with the need to do good to bring in the Kingdom into its fullest here and now. The fact that we Christians have failed to do what needs to be done to make this happen does not negate the good news that the Kingdom is already here.

When we focus our attention on the future rather than on the here-and-now, we can easily lose sight of what the present is all about. If Zachary focuses his sights on some distant dream but neglects to do what needs to be done now to make those dreams come true, they will never come true. His future is already in the present whether he realizes it or not. But if he does so, both the present and the future will be alive in the present.

The good advice we find in the Gospels, which means “good news”, is only good if we follow that advice in the present to make this life what it is supposed to be, what we pray for each time we say the prayer Jesus taught us: the beginning of the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

I SHOULD’VE BEEN A BISHOP

Now that I am past the age when a bishop, according to the laws of the Church, has to retire, I can reflect back and assert that I should have been a bishop. You rightly ask, challenging my chutzpah in such an assertion, “Why do you say that?” My answer is quite simple: people have always said that I look good in purple.

Using that same logic I can also assert that I also should have played first base for the Pittsburgh Pirates because I love both baseball and the Pirates. Or, I should have been a published and famous novelist because I love to read. I could go on with all the “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve” assertions, as each one of us could and, perhaps in our reveries, actually do. In doing so the honest truth is that we almost always, if not always, think we would have been the best at whatever it is we believed we should have been.

The real truth is that the past is past and what is important is that I am what I have become. And I have become what I am not because I should have been what I never became but because of the choices I made all along the way. The same is true for each one of us. Thus, when we look back on our lives, no matter how old or even how young we are, we need to ask ourselves if we are happy and satisfied with who we are at this moment in time.

If we are not, then we need to do something about it and not simply wish it were otherwise or lament that somehow we have gotten the short end of the stick because of circumstances beyond our control. Even if that were true, the question that still remains to be asked is “What am I going to do about it now?” Wallowing in our misery and self-pity only makes matters worse and does nothing to make the future better.

On the other hand, if we are perfectly happy with what we have now become, we cannot be satisfied and rest on our laurels. I may look good in purple and I may – may – have made a good bishop; but, looking back, I would not trade any of my experiences for a purple shirt. As for those other dreams, honesty makes me admit that I was a terrible baseball player and would never want to do the work a professional writer has to do.

The truth, I suspect, is that none of us is “perfectly” happy because our admitted, if only to ourselves, shortcomings remind us that we still have a life to live, that we can be better, and that life will go on until God calls us home. In the meantime we can dream about what might have been or what could have been or even what should have been. There is no harm in that. There may even be much good in such reflecting.

For it is in thinking back on our lives, reflecting on the choices we made, the events, controlled and uncontrolled, that helped steer the course of our lives as they are in the present, that we can learn about how the past will help us make the future what we might want it to become.