Painful Pruning - Matthew 5:38-48

There is a tendency in our approach to scripture to stay on the surface. Jesus tells us in this Gospel what to do (love) and what not to do (hate).   But our faith lives remain shallow and unfulfilling if we don’t seek a deeper understanding of the “why” we’re to do, and not do these things that Jesus cites, beyond the obvious, “Well, because he said so.”
 
My homily will follow three points, hopefully taking this gospel from a command for our blind obedience to a message of hope and enrichment.
 

1. God’s will for our lives is that each of us will bear abundant fruit.
2. God helps us to bear abundant fruit by allowing us, through our interactions with others, to be pruned. Sometimes that pruning is painful.
3. When the hurtful actions of others causes painful pruning, we can take our suffering to the foot of the cross, and through God’s gifts of love and forgiveness, the experience will actually enrich our lives.

   
So, hopefully by way of this reflection we might be able to see the “why” beyond the “because he said so” reason to a reason that demonstrates God’s unwavering love for us and his desire ultimately to enrich our lives.
    
From John 15: Jesus is the vine. You and I are the branches and we are meant to bear good fruit, fruit that is plentiful. God the Father is the ever vigilant vinedresser. He enriches our lives by periodically pruning us. He prunes us not to hurt us or destroy us, but to allow us to be more fruitful.  Sometimes pruning comes in the form of small course corrections. Sometimes pruning can also be traumatic, and maybe even catastrophic.
 
Sharing with you a pruning story: Steven McDonald was a NYPD police officer. His life changed in 1986 at the age of 29. He had been married for 8 months. He and his wife Patty Ann were looking forward to the birth of their first child. He was just beginning his career. From the time he was a boy, Steven looked forward to following his father and grandfather who were both NYPD officers. Steven was excited about his career. It was a career that showed great promise.
 
On a particular evening in 1986, he and his partner were assigned to Central Park. They were walking through their section of the park when they noticed a group of 6 teenagers who were kind of huddled together. Their instincts told them that these kids were up to no good. So they decided to gradually walk toward them. Three of the teenagers began to move away, and Steven’s partner decided to move in their direction. Steven approached the three who were still in their original place.
 
As he approached them, he engaged them in conversation, trying to discern why they were in the park at that hour. And as he continued this conversation he noticed a bulge in the pant leg of the youngest boy. It looked like he might have had a gun tucked into one of his socks. As Steven put it, “I bent down to examine it, and as I did, I felt someone move over me. As I looked up, the tallest of the three was pointing a gun at my head. Before I knew what was happening, there was a deafening explosion.”  I’ll leave out the details, but Steven came close to death that evening.  All he could think about was his wife and their unborn child.
 
Steven was in great pain and spent a number of weeks in various hospitals. And there was a point in time when the chief surgeon called for his family to come. They thought he was going to die. But there was a flicker of life inside of Steven that said, “I can’t die. I mustn’t die.”
 
Eventually, gradually, over a long period of time, he started the journey of physical healing, though the doctor in charge eventually informed him and his wife that there was only so much that could be done. Steven McDonald would spend the rest of his life as a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down.
 
In the prime of his life, 29 years old, beautiful wife, a child on the way, a new home and a promising career – it was all mapped out. But within a swift second, the whole dream was shattered.
 
Steven and Patty Ann struggled. They struggled on many levels. It led Patty Ann to say to him at one point, “Steven, you’re going to have to face some issues here, otherwise this marriage will never work. We won’t be able to make it.” And the major issue that he was fighting with was forgiveness. He had been scarred far beyond his physical wounds. He had been held captive by his feelings. He had to break through.
 
After 6 months of all this internal struggle that he and Patty Ann were going through, the blessed event occurred, their son (Conor) was born. Through a third party, Steven wrote, “To me, Conor’s birth was like a message from God that I should live, and live differently. I prayed that I would be changed. I prayed that the person that I was would be replaced by someone new.”  What was that going to mean for Steven?
 
The world that he and his wife envisioned would never be. That world was shattered. He would have to live differently. His belief in God was still there, but it was a shaky belief. Nonetheless, he believed that God was calling him differently, and he had to make an effort and respond. At the center of his unfolding new life was the issue of forgiveness.
 
Steven wrote, “I forgave the young man who shot me because I believe the only thing worse than receiving a bullet in my spine would be to nurture revenge in my heart. Such an attitude would have extended my injury to my soul, hurting my wife, my son and others. It’s bad enough that the physical effects are permanent, but at least I can choose to prevent spiritual injury.”  He realized that unless he was able to forgive, he would be a prisoner of unforgiveness for the rest of his life.
 
We ourselves are incapable of genuine forgiveness – it is beyond us. It is against our nature to forgive. Forgiveness is a gift from God that only he can give us through grace. It is never a one and done proposition. It is a process. We need to pray for the gift of forgiveness. And then we need to pray for the other person. As the Gospel suggests, “Pray for those who persecute you.” Of course, to the rest of the world that attitude is almost blasphemous. Pray for those who persecute you?
 
We are a society that is bent on revenge – getting even, getting back. I think of the commercial that I saw for the employment app “Indeed”. A woman looks on at a business meeting when the announcement is about to be made to announce the new Senior Vice President. And though from her look, she clearly thought it was going to be her, it wasn’t. As everyone in the crowd is applauding for the recipient of the promotion, she looks on in stunned disappointment, until she hears her phone buzzing with an Indeed notice of an interview for her with another firm. Her frown turns into a smirk as she appears to be thinking, “I’ll fix you guys for passing me over.”
 
If we were in her shoes, we may look at this as seeking justice, and in fact we have a right to seek justice where appropriate, but justice is very different from revenge. Justice and revenge oftentimes are conflated in our society, aren’t they?  When we seek revenge, hold grudges, live in unforgiveness, we steal our own joy.  The first reading tells us “take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The antidote for the emotions of revenge and unforgiveness is love, which is a choice.
 
While on retreat recently, I heard one of the best definitions of love. It says, “Love is the conscious choice that I make for the other. I go beyond my feelings. I pray for the other. I will not hurt the other, and in fact, I will make choices that benefits the other.” Even if we have strong negative feelings about another person we can choose to go beyond our feelings to do good for them. That’s what Jesus teaches.
Steven McDonald reached out to the young man who had shot him. The young man had been arrested, and was sentenced to a number of years in prison. For a long time, he wouldn’t respond to Steven at all. But ever so gradually, he did. And eventually they actually ended up talking.  Steven was able to go beyond his feelings of anger, being devastated, being hurt unjustly, and he was able to say to this young man, I forgive you.
 
Steven McDonald found a new vision, a new life. It was not the life he expected. But God has very mysterious ways - ways that we do not understand, ways that are many times incomprehensible.   
 
After a period of time, the NYPD began sending some of their officers to Steven, men and woman who had traumatic experiences themselves, and were having personal difficulties. He suddenly found himself as a counselor, getting requests to share his story all over the country. He became a great advocate for forgiveness. He had a new found zeal for life. He found meaning and purpose in his work. It was life-giving. By being pruned in a way that he never would have hoped for, his life was enriched.
 
Jesus said, “If you would be my follower, you must take up your cross and follow me.” The cross is different for each one of us. Sometimes it’s a minor cross, it’s a nuisance, it hurts – we can deal with that. There are times though when it is a heavy cross.
 
No matter the burden, no matter the obstacle, no matter the trial, God can use those things to enrich our lives!
 
Pruning takes place in many ways – traumatic for Steven McDonald, but each of us has had our own experience of it. We are pruned, not to be destroyed or to be hurt, but that we might bear fruit, good fruit, abundant fruit. And so often our lives turn out different than we expected.
 
And so we pray, Dear God, you have told us many times, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in me.” Strengthen our faith so that we can see your hand at work even through the course corrections, the painful pruning that you allow us to experience. Free us from the negative emotions that suck the life out of us and help us choose the loving actions that give life and that seek the good for the other, even when it is painful to do so. We know that if we unite our sufferings to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross, our sufferings are never wasted. We are a people who seek to do your will. We pray this prayer in Jesus’ name.
 
Amen!