3rd Sunday of Lent (2024)

Today, I’m preaching the third in a series of homilies entitled “No Offense.” I told you a couple of weeks ago that Deacon Art and I will examine this topic throughout Lent. Your response has been encouraging. After Masses, several people said to me they found the series beneficial. We’ll continue to address the topic for the next several weeks. If you find them helpful, be sure to be here to listen each week, and if you think a family member or friend would benefit, invite them to come and join us.  

In previous talks, I shared three facts about offense with you. One is that giving and receiving offense is inevitable. Every day presents countless circumstances where we can receive or give offense. We can all be thoughtless and careless in our speech at times and insensitive to others. Without much reflection, we end up being hurtful to them. We make insensitive remarks about others’ education level, age, weight, where they live, and how they dress. Being a jerk is an equal opportunity hazard.

There are two kinds of offenses: perceived and real. Perceived offenses are the most common and, as I just said, aren’t meant to harm or injure us. We are offended because unbeknownst to the people commenting, we interpret their remark as an attack on our self-worth and pride. They make a remark that may touch a nerve, shake our self-confidence, or open a wound from our past.   

Some people seem to go through life looking to be offended. Everything said to them and every action other people take seems to set them off on a rant. We can be offended by change or a challenge to our worldview. Offense is often used as a defense mechanism to resist change.

There are real offenses, though. People sometimes intentionally try to hurt us with gossip, innuendo and lies about us. Unfortunately, family, friends, and people we felt we trusted can offend us purposely. We don’t get through life without offending others and being offended.

The second truth about offenses is they are a trap. They create a handicap that hinders us from living the fullness of life. When we take offense, we can become self-absorbed and self-centered. We begin to believe it’s all about me and my feelings. Offense can lead us to develop the belief that the world owes us an apology, and we get stuck waiting for it to be offered to us.

Taking offense causes us to play the victim, waiting for others to fix our lives. In the process, we miss out on what life offers us. We begin to hold our hurts in our hearts, and they cause us to feel anger, outrage, resentment, and bitterness. Our sense of offense becomes a trap that prevents us from moving on with our lives.

A third fact about offense is that we can determine how we choose to handle offense. We have the power to challenge offense and resist the temptation to wallow in it. Two weeks ago, our gospel reading told us how Jesus began His public ministry by leaving His time of fasting and prayer in the desert and preaching:

“Repent and believe in the gospel.”

Repent is a word with negative connotations in our usage today. It can raise images of doom and gloom, but it means to turn in a new direction. To repent is to make a turn to reorientate ourselves towards God. It means deciding to pattern our lives according to Jesus’ example. To repent is to decide for joy and not pain in life.

Today, I’d like to consider something we are often offended by but resist admitting it. It is recognizing the truth when offered to us as feedback. We all want to claim we appreciate honest feedback, but what we really mean is that we enjoy “glowing praise.” If we’re going to enjoy the fullness of life, we need to hear the truth about ourselves without taking offense. We will never experience personal development and growth without receiving honest feedback.

All of us know people who don’t react well to hearing the truth about themselves. Being around them is like walking on eggshells. They don’t respond positively to any advice or insight about their actions. They resist the truth about themselves. They refuse to believe they might have any blindspots in how they live. They are offended if we point out something about their actions or personality.  

Our most sensitive spots where we take offense are often the areas of life we believe are most important to us. If we want to be a good parent, that is our soft spot for offense. For others, it is their finances or how they approach their relationships. Sometimes, those desperately seeking romance can have blindspots regarding the person they are pursuing. All we can do is end up looking the other way. Blindspots are easy to see in others but hard in ourselves.

Other than grades in school, my first encounter with feedback came in the seminary. At the end of every year, students received an evaluation from faculty and other students. I remember my first faculty evaluation. One of their observations was that I was an introvert. For me, it wasn’t exactly a revolutionary insight. When I looked at the names of the three members evaluating me, I saw that they were priests who weren’t exactly extroverts themselves. One hardly looked at people when they passed them in the halls. Their observation, however, did help me recognize something I should work to overcome, and I began trying to be more outgoing. I still struggle with it.

We all need feedback because it is impossible to know what it is like on the other side of you. We can’t understand how we come across to others unless we ask and listen to them. We might act and speak with good intentions but have the opposite effect. If we aren’t open to feedback, the people around us learn to be silent, and the gap between who we are and who we think we are grows deeper and wider. Our resistance to feedback prevents us from growing as a person and finding success in life.  

Ironically, it is the areas of life we value the most that we resist feedback. Today’s gospel exhibits that point. John wrote how Jesus went up to Jerusalem at Passover. The law required every Jewish man within fifteen miles of Jerusalem to go to the Temple to celebrate Passover. Still, many people from the Diaspora, who lived greater distances from Jerusalem, also came. Jerusalem at the Passover was like Chatham on the Fourth of July. There were thousands more in the city than usual.

There was a need to provide all these pilgrims with animals for the sacrifice and an opportunity to exchange their unclean coinage with images of the Emperor or a pagan god for a Temple coin used as an offering to God. This activity had been going on for years outside the Temple, but only recently, the religious authorities sanctioned it coming into the Temple proper.

Caiaphas, the chief priest, allowed this commercial activity into the Porch of Solomon and the Court of the Gentiles. This area of the Temple, open to non-Jews and the only place Gentiles had to pray, was turned into a loud, smelly, and bustling marketplace unconducive to prayer and reflection. In return, many religious authorities received a kickback from those conducting this commercial activity. The sellers of sacrificial animals and the money changers also often charged inflated prices to the pilgrims.

The gospels often tell us Jesus took offense when He observed hypocrisy, especially on the part of the religious authorities. He took offense in today’s gospel and exercised some obvious righteous anger. He drove out the sellers of animals and upturned the money changers’ tables. In response, they and the religious authorities took offense and asked Jesus in a rough translation, “Who the hell do you think you are!” Which is also sometimes our favorite feedback too.

Jesus took offense to this response because, of all people, the religious authorities should have recognized Him. They cherished the role of scholars of the scriptures and should have been on the lookout for the Messiah. Many of the Old Testament prophets had predicted that the sign of the coming of the Messiah would be His cleansing of the Temple of unholy activities. Instead, they offered Jesus only pushback.

When Jesus responded, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They took him seriously and scoffed at the idea that the Temple, still under construction after forty-six years, could be rebuilt in three days.

By the way, renovations to Holy Redeemer Church are progressing well and shouldn’t take forty-six years. The framing, plumbing, and fire suppression systems are mostly done, and drywall and ceiling tiles are ready for installation. We are on target for a completion date of early June. I’m only concerned because we don’t have a date for them to install the elevator. So, start praying for that to begin soon.

I’m sorry I digressed, and to get back on track, Jesus was telling people point blank that He is the Messiah, but they didn’t understand him. The people who were expected to recognize the Messiah are blind to Him. They are so offended by Jesus’ words and actions they begin a long scheme to eliminate Jesus. The offense they feel blinds them. When we are offended even by the truth, we miss a great deal of life around us.

I want to suggest three steps to help prevent us from taking offense from feedback. We need to receive it as a gift and not a punishment. Honest feedback helps us to grow as individuals. It is an excellent tool to help us grow personally. If we allow ourselves to grow in our appreciation of good feedback, we begin to crave it. Feedback is not a comment on who we are but what we do, so we must separate feedback from our identity.

Remember, no insight from other people can change our identity in Christ. God loves us for who we are. Every one of us is a work in progress. To paraphrase St. Paul, “we can recall we are not yet the people God intends us to be.” God is still shaping and reshaping us. Feedback is being offered to us so we can grow into the image of God.

Our second step is to lean into feedback. When an observer offers it to us, ask them questions to help clarify what they mean and ask about the context of their views about us. Realize people don’t always offer feedback well. It can come in awkward situations, and we can’t control how they present it. We can ask them questions that help them elaborate in such a way their feedback can be helpful.

It is also crucial that we solicit honest feedback from reliable sources. Give a few trusted people permission to sit you down at times to offer you insights about your personality and actions. Doing that makes it easier to accept their input consistently without taking offense. As a priest, I do that regularly with a Spiritual Director. Lay people can have them, too.

The parish is in the process of establishing small faith-sharing groups. We held a day to encourage small groups a couple of weeks ago, and eighty parishioners attended. Half of them signed up to become a member of a small group. We will begin them soon. There is still time if you participated in the day and want to join a group. If you weren’t able to come, don’t feel excluded. You can still join. Call the parish office and let us know. Small groups are a good place to ask for feedback.

Soliciting feedback from a trusted person at a prearranged time and place can be helpful. There, we are prepared to both give and receive constructive feedback. Identifying ways to grow into the person God wants us to be can be humbling but helpful. I haven’t advertised it enough lately, but I try to block off time on Monday afternoons for people who want to meet with me. It is an appropriate time to offer me some needed feedback. Since I haven’t had many people come in lately, it would be good to give me a call to let me know to expect you.

Accepting the opportunity for feedback is an act of humility that opens the doors of our souls to God’s grace and the chance to grow spiritually. God’s grace helps us to overcome those unpleasant truths that block us from being the person God created us to be, the image of His Son Jesus Christ.