I had all the presents back at my apartment, I was halfway through wrapping them, and I realized, “Damn, I used the wrong wrapping paper.” The paper I used said, “Happy Birthday.” I didn’t want to waste it, so I just wrote “Jesus” on it. ~Demetri Martin
Last week’s chat focused on professional and personal boundaries in social media. I mentioned how when I left a congregation as vicar, I would “unfriend” parishioners on my Facebook page. “When you leave, you leave,” I tweeted. Not everyone agrees.
He knew that joy flowed from honesty, rather than around it—sound familiar? In a similar way, Christians, whose identity is found apart from our ever-changing and often hopeless abilities and attributes, are free to laugh at ourselves. This is part and parcel of Christian joy.
It would be odd, therefore, not to acknowledge some sadness over the passing of something so central to Catholic life as what will soon be called the “old” Sacramentary. Even if you are eagerly anticipating the new translations, something significant is moving into the past, and is being lost.
Traditionally, when commentaries discuss this story, the tree is described as being barren. But in that flip-flop way of the Hebrew tradition, is this a story less about the barrenness of the fig tree, and more about it covering absolutely nothing with its showy leaves?