Baxter made a scene the other day. I have never seen him so agitated and upset. Another cat set foot on the deck outside the glass doors in the bedroom. Baxter spotted it, and there was no calming him down. He hissed, spit, hissed, pawed at the glass, hissed, bared his teeth, hissed and wouldn’t stop until the intruder ran from the area. Even afterwards, Baxter was huffing and puffing for a while, starring at the empty space and intent on preventing any return of the stranger. It was a threat to Baxter’s claim on his kingdom, and there was no way he would tolerate it.
Although we hate to admit it, we sometimes act like Baxter. We throw a fit because some stranger comes into our world. It may not always be a new person. It may be a new idea, a new way of doing things, a new attitude to the situation, or a different style in the way we operate. The new is strange to us at first, and we don’t like the feelings of strange. We prefer the familiar, the tried and true. Those things are comfortable, reassuring, and allow us to be who we are used to being. When that comfort zone is disturbed, we get upset and try to get rid of what threatens our secure space.
So is it any wonder that they tried to get rid of Jesus when He challenged their religious space? He drove the money changers from the temple. He argued about the application of the Law with the religious authorities. He stretched the limits of forgiveness and mercy to seventy times seven and the prodigal son. He brought new judgment to bear on familiar situations when He said that Mary chose the better part and the one without sin should cast the first stone. He did things differently when He ate with tax collectors and sinners and asked the Samaritan woman for a drink. Finally, He invaded everyone’s comfort zone when His resurrection released the Spirit to announce the Gospel to all peoples and invite them into the mystery of new life in baptism.
We may wish it didn’t have to be this way, but we can’t stay in place and think we can grow in the new life of grace. The Spirit of the Risen Lord brings new people, new thoughts, new attitudes and new ways into the Church of the Acts of the Apostles. If we reject everything new and different, we don’t give the Lord a chance to bring new life. Not that everything new is the best. Some strangers have sinister motives. Some new ways aren’t better than the old ones. Some new ideas are not an improvement, but foolish. But to know what brings new life and what just brings novelty, we have to be open to giving the new and different a chance to see what it is made of. If it is of God, we will see it in ways similar to Saint Luke’s description in the Acts of the Apostles:
They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved (Acts 2:42, 44-45, 47b).
What are we doing to add to our number those seeking God’s salvation? If we won’t admit the stranger, we are limited to the familiar and the comfortable, and we won’t know new growth. But resurrection provokes growth, and to know this mystery of our salvation, we have to want to embrace it.
Baxter is purrfectly content with his space, his routine, and his life style. He is a cat. We are God’s children and disciples of the risen Lord Jesus. If we act like cats in a fight for our familiar territory, we are less than who we are called to be.
