Today we Enter what I sometimes call "the green mile" or the "big green parade."  Through the summer we have weeks upon weeks of Ordinary Time green.

I personally prefer the celebratory white/gold seasons of Easter or Christmas, or even the colorful purple-y penitential/expectant seasons of Advent or Lent, to Ordinary time green.  

But there is something to be said about the slow, steady march of Ordinary Time.  The numbered weeks.

We get to interact, every day, with Jesus in his life and ministry.  The call of the Christian life is to be conformed to the image of Christ.  To become ever more Christ-like.  And people often encourage one another to try to think like Jesus would, sometimes encapsulated in the pithy expression WWJD.  But at times the call to conform to Christ can be derailed by a set of false expectations. We can strive for a kind of inhuman perfection instead of Christlikeness.

Today we have this delightful and curious scene.  Jesus seems to be…pretty… sarcastic.  “If I can heal him?!” he retorts, seeming offended.  “How long must I endure you?” he asks in exasperation.  Jesus is delightfully and recognizably human in his behavior. 

Sometimes I find that very good people set up a standard by which they measure themselves that is not quite what Jesus was like.  Inhuman perfection.  As the saying goes, "the perfect is the enemy of the good."  They judge themselves by a standard that is never sarcastic, or exasperated, or angry—but always nice.

One of the things we learn as we walk with Jesus through Ordinary Time is that while Jesus is always loving, he is not always nice.  But we can confuse the two.

What’s the difference?   Nice means making people feel good about themselves, not matter what decisions they make. Nice avoids conflict at all costs.  Nice can just lead to complacency.

However, Loving means working for the best for others, including challenging them.  Love is transformative.  And moves from permissible, to the good...striving for the best.  Not some inhuman ideal of perfection, but true, honest, fullness.

We are called to be loving, and nice when we are able.  But sometimes the two conflict, and when they do, we are called to be loving over being nice.

Sometimes loving can mean being annoying and sarcastic.

When a friend or family member says that they have come to the conclusion in their own conscience to just outright sin—Love means we might not be nice.

If I say or hear someone use the Lord’s name in vain, I always say, out loud, "blessed be the name of the Lord."  Sometimes people get offended by that, and I’ve been told it’s not very nice, but I’m offended by someone using our lord’s name in vain.

I have a friend who is very sensitive to gossip and will call me out all the time when my tongue gets a little waggy.  It stings at first, when he corrects me.  But in the end I am happy for the correction.

So as we enter the “green mile” the “long green parade” of summer’s Ordinary Time, let’s pay close attention to how Jesus acts—and do our best to imitate him, and not some inhuman standard of perfection that is sometime just a distraction from our real goal--of being loving.