Back when I was growing up in Chicago there was an archbishop who was known to be a very autocratic and difficult personality. He didn’t take criticism from anyone, and if you were an official who questioned his authority you would quickly find yourself assigned to the outer reaches of Chicagoland where no one wanted to go. When he died, his funeral was big news, and a local priest was quoted anonymously in the newspaper about the archbishop’s career: “His only desire was to serve the Lord,” he said. And then, after a pause, “of course, in an advisory capacity.” Today’s gospel has something for all of us about what…
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Sometimes what you hear people saying that what they really need more of in life, is that they looking for balance. And it’s true that when we’re overwhelmed by all the things we feel pulling at us, that’s a very appealing concept. It’s great to think that we can get to a point of serenity, or at least sanity, by fine-tuning our commitments and interests so that no one of them takes over too much. We like to think there’s an art to dividing up our priorities and our time and the things we value, in a way that causes us as little internal conflict and discomfort as possible. I…
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Sometimes the Bible gives us a break, and there’s a story with some images that are actually familiar to us from everyday life. Today instead of sheep, and fig trees, and jars of oil, we have an image of something we have around us everywhere: taxes and money. But I hate to tell you, even with money, things were very complicated around this time in Jesus’s life, so there’s a little explanation that might be helpful in understanding the scene we’ve just heard. There were actually two kinds of money circulating in Jerusalem. First there were the Roman coins that were issued by the occupying power, which some Jews felt…