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goodness" and "justice." There is no sense of fear here--only a feeling of ecstatic
gratitude.
The Gospel can have a different tone depending on how it is read. In a traditional read-
ing, perhaps using a slow, deliberate, James Earl Jones bass voice, it can be seen as a
serious, ominous, almost scolding, admonition by Jesus to his friends and to us. It can
have the feeling that the house is about to cave in, and that we live on the edge of
doom. It seems to indicate that the situation is so dicey that it requires some kind of su-
perhero to stay on top of things. If you read it with the voice of my old friend's New York
Jewish mother, it can have a much more cutting and acerbic, "you-make-your-own-bed
-and-then-you-sleep-in-it" sense to it. Personally, I find the second version more en-
ergizing because it implies there is plenty you can do to make your life head one direc-
tion or another. I think Jesus had this sense when he indicates that on his return, the
returning master's response to the wicked servant will be "to assign him a place with the
hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth." This is the land populated
by the fraudulent who live in painful regret for poor choices. This land exists on the op-
posite side of the universe from the land of joyful justice that is portrayed in the first two
readings.
I often associate this reading with the legend of the outlaw-hero Robin Hood. In King
Richard's absence, Robin Hood preserves the King's moral authority against his usurper
brother and his lackeys, principally the Sheriff, by adapting an outlaw posture while actu-
ally behaving as a highly moral community leader. When the King returns, he views the
corrupt officials with censure and disdain while he embraces Robin Hood for preserving
the moral order even though he needed to violate the laws of the "officials" who ran the
land in the King's absence. The key was that Robin Hood stood firmly for the presumed
values of the absent benevolent leader, while the Sheriff assumed his temporal position
of high authority gave him free license to
abandon the moral foundation which brought
him to power in the first place. He ignored
the warning that when you make your own
bed, sooner or later you have to sleep in it.
P
RAYER
Lord, make me a channel of your peace.
_______
D
ON
M
ILICI
Parishioner