Advent 3 C

Luke 3:1-6

December 9, 2012

I ask you to join me in a few moments of silent prayer for all those impacted by the tragic shootings in Connecticut and Oregon this week.

SILENCE

It must stop.

Violence rips us apart.

 It is time for us to say No to a world in which assault weapons can be casually obtained to massacre little children in a classroom and their teachers and principles or people out for a stroll in a local mall or people at a movie or at worship.

While John the Baptist’s confrontation of his listeners may make us squirm, he is the image we need today.

A clear voice crying in the wildnerness.

NO. STOP. NOT ON MY WATCH.

This weekend, amid all our other feelings, we are outraged.

Outraged that families dropped children off for school never to see them alive again.

Outraged that one person could rob so many lives so utterly.

 We are outraged. And that is as it should be.

Yet, in times like these, our most demanding task is not to come together in outrage

Of course, outrage is a natural response.

But the less obvious, more difficult challenge is to try to understand the connections between such horrific violence and our own lives.

What is our connection, if any, to the evils of this world?

What ought we be doing to bear Christ in our communities?

Addressing mental illness early and providing interventions before a crisis? Noticing and mentoring at risk youth before their paths become irrevocably destructive?

Ridding our culture of easy access to assault weapons that no citizen could possibly need for hunting or self defense?

What are the connections between our lives and the evils we face?

I think this is the question John the Baptist is really asking today in the gospel.

To address that question, you and I must be willing to examine our lives with both the unconditional love of the shepherd and the razor sharp critique of the prophet.

Every one of us has sinned

Every one of us bears the glory of God.

Both are true.

Knowing this gives us empathy as well as insight about how to make change.

It’s easy to call people who commit heinous crimes evil.

Not so easy to focus, instead, on understanding the anatomy of evil and the fabric out of which it grows

Not so easy to make connections between our lives and these events--connections that both challenge us and truly enable us to do something about it.

Within each of us there are radically divergent forces at work.

The world is not made up of good people and bad people

The world is a place where good and evil are constantly at play in all of human life.

We all bear responsibility for understanding both forces and learning to address this mix effectively.

A few weeks ago I went to themovies and saw The Life of Pi

It addresses in some way this idea of holding together different parts of human nature.

tame and wild, heroic and fearful, saintly and sinful.

The Life of Pi deals with two stories explaining one event.

a relationship develops between a tiger named Richard Parker and a young Indian man named Pi.

There is a scene in which the Richard Parker and Pi are together on a boat under desperate conditions

Pi had the upper hand and could have let the tiger Richard Parker die.

But their eyes fix on each other.

They understand their connection.

In that moment, the viewer sees that the wild beast and the civilized man are inextricably linked and must make peace with each other in order to survive.

The viewer takes the lesson: peace is not obtained by one person demonizing another.

Peace is hammered out in relationships that are not optional to us.

The NRA member and the pacifist must work together to create a way to stop gun violence.

To create a safe world, we must value the life of someone else enough to risk ourselves for that person.

The people we do not value can either be harmed or can harm us because they have become cut off from us

We need to create a fabric of support so that no one lives in isolation, in fear, in shame, in unnamed grief, or with a lack of the accountability that true connections foster.

I think this is a first step in the repentance John calls for.

 Every time you see things about yourself or the world that you cannot easily reconcile, you are glimpsing something God needs to heal.

God’s work is reconciliation”which means, literally, to bring back together into one whole the creation that has been ripped apart by our sin, our violence, our blindness to the needs of others.

When I re-read today’s well known story of John preaching repentance, I noticed something that had never before caught my attention.

Just after John calls his hearers a bunch of snakes, just about the time we’d expect them to be trying to get away from John, the writer says this: “the people were filled with expectation.”

They were drawn toward this wild, strange man ,compelled by his challenge.

The word we translate “expectation” means literally to watch towards something or someone.

It involves being awake, alert.

The people listening to John heard in all his harsh words a wake up call.

We love comfort be it the comfort of our homes or of our known personality traits and habits.

We are used to what we know.

Few of us like being challenged to look at the opposite of what is familiar to us, at least not initially.

Yet, that’s precisely what John is asking us to prepare for

He sounds an alarm, a wake up call.

 Like Pi we have the potential to wake up sleeping parts of ourselves when God’s adventure calls.

John’s words are an invitation to adventure.

Try hearing them this way, “Listen to me

God doesn’t care about your status in life, the money you make, the job you have or don’t have.

Some day, the playing field will be leveled for all of us

Wake up; what you should do is fairly simple.

Share your extra coats with the homeless

Work to set up more humane and effective ways to heal your sisters and brothers with mental illnesses.

Don’t ignore family violence; speak honestly about it and address it.

Use your power to bring justice.

Ask how you can help prevent another massacre--advocate, serve, question, learn. Your life matters

Everything God wants to do begins with people like you.”

The problem is, adventures by nature offer no guarantees.

We don’t take them because they are a sure bet.

Far from it

We take them because we sense they might wake up heroes within us.

We take them wondering if we they will lead us to stare into the eyes of a tiger and there find our souls.

We take them because we sense they are the only things that can heal us and put the torn up pieces back together again.

The violence we saw this week must stop.

Our world is torn apart.

And you and I, John proclaims, are not separate from it all, sitting by our hearth at home.

No. We are hereby summoned to be in the company of adventurers, called to stare down the tigers, called to change the world.

So, the question is, are you in?

Advent 2 C

Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

December 2, 2012

Physicians find that a major part of their practice is medicating symptoms of illnesses.

Many times patients are reluctant to address the causes behind a sickness,

especially if it might suggest a need for some major shift in lifestyle.

Easier to take Mylanta, for example, than explore the underlying reasons of a stressful life.

Likewise, mental health professionals often discover that working with a client is little more than "bandaging up" a hurting personality.

When the client feels better, he or she usually terminates therapy.

A real "cure" would necessitate delving beyond the symptoms of a particular disorder into its roots;

not simply learning better control of one's temper, for instance,

but discovering what inside is generating so much anger in the first place.

But this is something many clients have neither desire nor patience to do.

Better a prescription for a tranquilizer than a probe into one's inner soul.

The second Sunday of Advent encourages digging at the roots.

All the readings today propose fundamental change.

The reading from Baruch senses a radical shift in current events about to unfold, and exhorts the people of Israel to "take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction," and "put on forever the beauty of the glory from God."

Paul's letter to the Philippians encourages them to be "pure and blameless" in order that they may fully experience the "day of Christ."

An old way of life is to be put aside in order to enjoy the "fruits of righteousness."

John the Baptist appears in the gospel of Luke preaching a "baptism of repentance."

Preparation for the coming of Christ would require a major change of heart.

Improvement always means change.

If we hope for a more productive and happy life, some changes in our life patterns will have to occur.

Generally, the deeper the change the better.

According to today's readings, growing in the way of the Lord does not discount developing a better prayer life, or performing works of charity,

but points to something more radical:

a fundamental change of heart.

This means going beyond correcting petty faults and bothersome idiosyncrasies, and looking deeply at what drives us.

Not only taking measure of bad language, but of bad attitudes.

Not only examining problems, but our priorities.

Not only evaluating behavior, but our hearts.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe Cycle B

John 18, 33b-37

November 25, 2012

The throne of Christ our King was a crude, wooden cross.

But that sacred cross we solemnly venerate has become a popular piece of costume jewelry.

Everybody seems to wear one.

Even people who couldn't pick Jesus out of a lineup — they him dangling from a cross on their necks.

Jesus must be thinking, “I died for this?!”

Yes, you did.

You wanted to tell people how to live, how to deal with God, how to be fully human.

Maybe you thought they would be grateful, maybe even give you a Nobel Prize or at least the Humanitarian Award.

But being new to humankind, perhaps you hadn't yet learned its limits:

Humankind can stand only a little bit of reality.

Other people have tried to succeed where Jesus failed.

There is a priest who rises early to pray, labors in the vineyard until late, falls into bed exhausted and twists through the sleepless night.

For all his effort, the parish still has members complaining about schedules and programs, people still come late and leave early from mass,

still has over half of them are riding on the coattails of the others when it comes being good stewards, and parents grab their children when he walks by because of suspicions about priests.

Through a hole in his stomach he groans, “I gave up a family of my own and money for this?!”               

Yes, you did.

You wanted to help people, be part of their intimate lives, be close to them in their crises, support them in trouble.

You expected to be thanked, or at least quietly appreciated.

But, very often, all they notice is what you don’t or can’t do for them.

during those years in the seminary, you forgot that people prefer to be loners.

They want closeness –  but not too close,

help –  but not too much,

guidance – but as little as possible and especially not to be made aware that their lives might need to change if they are to be disciples of Jesus Christ

There are mothers and fathers who wanted to raise the best children who ever lived: kind, compassionate, Catholic.

They expected them to learn from their mistakes and successes, hoped they would be active ministers of the church and responsible citizens.

And these parents were devastated when their children turned their backs on their faith, burned the flag, became addicted to various substances and generally despised everything the parents held dear. the parents sigh,

“I wore out my only life for them?

Yes, you did.

You were so convinced you had found the secret of the good life that you forgot everyone has to find their own way,

 formulate their own values, carve out an individual existence.

The unbearable thing about the cross is that it is often not the one we expected.

Jesus must have expected people would show some resistance to God’s will — but surely not actual crucifixion.

Every priest expects a little reluctance from others — but not hostility.

All parents must know that children need their own space — but not to the point of hatred and rejection.

When the cross becomes too heavy, we think, “I could manage any cross but this particular one.”

And that’s another bad thing about crosses.

The one we piously carve for ourselves is always bearable.

Because no matter how awkward or cruel it is, we shape it to our own personality, so it always fits, if painfully.

The cross we take up is bearable.

It is the cross that falls on us that crushes us.

Some of us were in Haiti this past summer.

All around us, in the orphanage, in the streets of Port-au-Prince and Hinche and along the roads between, we witnessed the cross of poverty that threatens to crush the people of that great nations.

We witnessed what the cross of cruelty has done when leaders cannot or will not listen to the needs of their people.

We witnessed what the cross of ignorance and blindness can do when others with more  who were fortunate to be born in a nation with much

turn their backs on those in need, not because of what they have done or not done, but because of where they were born.

And we also witnessed what the miracle of care can do to help lift at least part of that cross fot a few helpless children

For them the cross that threatens to slam them to the ground seems to come from nowhere.          

It doesn’t fit well; it chafes them, because it is not of their own doing.

But it is shaping them.

They are a strong people;

a joyful people, perhaps, because they have so little, they can rejoice in what little they do have.

Perhaps they believe in resurrection, and a new Haiti, because it is the only thing they have left to hope in.

No matter!

It is plain as day to anyone who looks into their eyes that they have taken up their cross and believe in Christ as savior and redeemer,

one who has not turned his back on them.

None of us can plan the perfect scenario that would fulfill us.

We have no way of discovering on our own what makes for our happiness, because we cannot ever know our deepest self.

That is hidden in the mind of God, who created us as this unique person.

Only that God knows precisely the cross that can shape us into our true self.

And only we can take it up, no matter how painfully, and help shape it into our resurrection.

People often ask me why I keep returning to Haiti.

I say I love the children, the land.

I hate the heat and the sweat and the dust, but I keep returning.

The truth is, I return because it gives me hope.

It strengthens my faith.

I look into the faces of the children and the people on the streets and roads, and I gain strength to bear my own crosses.

I return home each time renewed in my determination to do all that I can to convince everyone here to give even more so that we can help those children, make their crosses less heavy.       

So, take some time today to stop in the Social Hall and look at the pictures we have returned with.

Look into the faces of those who have taken up their cross and still can laugh and smile and play,

all the time believing in a God who has not abandoned them.

Thanksgiving 2012

Luke 17:11-19

November 22, 2012

I am thankful for... 

* the mess to clean up after a party because it means I have been surrounded by friends.

* the taxes I pay because it means that I'm employed.

* the clothes that fit a little too snug because it means I have enough to eat.

* my shadow who watches me work because it means I am out in the sunshine.

* a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning and gutters that need fixing because it means that I have a home.

* the spot I find at the far end of the parking lot because it means that I am capable of walking.

* all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have freedom of speech.

* my huge heating bill because it means I am warm.

* the lady behind me at church who sings off key because it means that I can hear.

* the piles of laundry and ironing because it means my loved ones are nearby.

* weariness and aching muscles at the end of the day because it means that I have been productive.

* the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours because it means that I am alive.

One thing I would add to this list.

I am thankful today for my faith that has led me to this wonderful, aring community

33rd Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle B

Mark 13:24-32

November 18, 2012

 There was a mother mouse who was scurrying across the kitchen floor with her brood of six little mice in tow.

All of a sudden she came eyeball‑to‑ eyeball with a very large and very mean‑looking cat.

The mother mouse was terrified!

But she pulled herself up to full height, squared her shoulders, and roared at the top of her lungs, "Bow‑wow!"

The cat nearly jumped out of his skin, and in the blink of an eye was scrambling up a tree two blocks away.

Meanwhile, the mother mouse gathered her little ones around her and explained, ANow, my dears, you see what I've always told you about the importance of learning a second language!@

Sooner or later we all come face to face with our own version of that monster cat ‑ face to face with an event or circumstance that tells us that our world and life as we have known it has come to an end.

The ugly possibilities are endless; an irreversible illness, death of a spouse or child, rejection by our loved ones, abandonment by our friends, total loss of our fortune, utter failure in our life's work, the final triumph of all our enemies.

That's just the short list, but the possibilities are endless and we've all had a taste of them.

We all know what the gospel means when it talks about the sun being darkened and the stars falling out of the sky.

We know!

So it's important for us to learn how we are to survive when, inevitably, those moments do come.

The gospel gives us the key: "When all these things happen," it says, "you will see the Son of Man coming with great power and glory."

The promise of today=s scripture is that, when our personal world falls apart, and the bottom drops out of our lives, we'll be able to see past the ugliness and see through the pain to the ultimate reality of things ‑

which is: despite all appearances,

God is still in charge, still cares, still has the power to make all things right,

and still intends to do just that ‑ in good time!

Now what is it that enables us to see all that so clearly when disaster has struck so hard?

Faith! Only faith!

Not some eleventh‑hour grasping at straws, but a deeply ingrained habit of the heart that we've built a piece at a time over many years.

So what have our hearts been saying all these years?

I hope something like this, "Lord, I know from living that you love me even more than I love myself.

So, Lord, I entrust myself to you, and no matter what comes, I won't be afraid."

If that is what our hearts have been saying

we have nothing to fear from the future because we're ready for it on the inside.

God never promised to insulate us from pain or sadness.

But he does guarantee that, whatever comes, we will not be destroyed so long as we stay connected to him.

Whatever comes, he will see us through and we will, in the end, prevail, so long as we stay connected to him.

So now is the time to speak our word of faith deeply from the heart.

Now is the time to entrust our whole selves to him and never, ever look back.

And when at last the lights grow dim and our world fades away, we shall see him coming in power and glory!

We shall see him face to face!

32nd Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle B

Mark 12:38-44

November 11, 2012

How do you and I fit into this liturgy of two widows?

At bottom, the widows symbolize the Christlife, where the key words are "gift" and "risk."

If Jesus is the perfect human, the prototype of what a Christian should be, then our lives are Christian in the measure that they are shaped to his risk-laden self-giving.

Let me make an uncommonly frank confession.

When I look at myself, I find that in my giving I am very much part of an American syndrome.

We have a long tradition of giving—giving out of our surplus.

Surplus cheese for the hungry, surplus clothes for Goodwill, surplus books for the missions, surplus money for United Way, surplus time for friends, a surplus cup of cold water.

A good thing, mind you; I am not talking it down.

Without it, life would be a jungle, survival of the fittest, "dog eat dog."

Good indeed, this giving out of our surplus; but it raises a problem for Christians.

 Could not our Lord at once applaud this and still ask: Do not the pagans do as much (cf. Mt 5:46—47)?

Where, then, is our Christianness?

Only in a different motivation, only because we give in the name of Christ?

The story of the widow, and even more the deed of Christ, suggest strongly that the new thing he brought into the world is summed up in his phrase "out of her poverty" (Mk 12:44).

I mean, we are most Christian, most Christlike, when our giving affects our existence, when it threatens our security, when it is ultimately ourselves we are giving away.

How could it be otherwise?

Like it or not, it is the crucified Christ who is the supreme pattern, the paradigm, the model for Christian living, for Christian giving.

And the crucified Christ gives...himself.

I dare not suggest how or where or when this touches any given one of you.

Christ speaks to you not in an e-mail, impersonal, addressed to "all Christians everywhere."

He speaks to you where you're at.

You—and me—know who we are, where our gifts lie, what restrains us from risking, why we keep giving out of our surplus.

Christ alone can tell us at what point, and in what way, we have to surrender what lends us security, and go out to our brothers and sisters with trust only in the power of a loving God.

Christ alone...Aye, there's the rub.

Has Jesus Christ really gotten under my skin?

How dearly do I love him?

 Isn't it appalling how little he moves most of us, how rarely he excites us?

We watch E.T. and we go bonkers.

A lovably strange character comes to earth from somewhere out there, shares awhile our human joys and griefs, dies and is resurrected, returns to wherever he came from—and we cannot forget him (or her, or it).

E.T. dominates our Halloween, reshapes our pumpkins, may well displace old Santa.

But the God-man who really came to our earth, really died and rose again, really returned to his Father "now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf" (Heb 9:24), why doesn't he turn more of us on?

Perhaps he will...if we take that little fellow from outer space seriously.

30th Sunday Ordinary Time B

Mark 10:46-52

October 28, 2012

Every three years Bartimaeus' story is proclaimed in church.

Preachers all over the Christian world tell how he, the blind beggar of Jericho, was cured by Jesus as he made his way to Jerusalem.

They will say all sorts of nice things about him• about how he had real faith and recognized the Savior on the road. About how he, even though he was blind, he had more vision than the disciples.

He is called a model of Christian discipleship

But think about how difficult his life must have been.

He suffered many indignities in his lifetime; people probably laughed at him when he would fall over something, looked the other way when they passed him by,

 even said the reason he was blind was because of some sin his parents had committed.

People can be so cruel when they have a mind to be.

But of all the indignities he had to bear in life, the one that really got to him was that nobody ever knew his name.

They called him Bartimaeus, which means "son of Timaeus."

It was like when some kids are called Junior or Sis instead of their real name.

Or when you get a nickname when you are little, or at school, and that becomes your name.

After all, who wants to wake up at sixty and still find themselves being called Sonny?

To make matters worse, when Matthew and Luke borrowed his story from Mark, they dropped even the name Bartimaeus from their telling of the story.

In Matthew, he became "two blind men," and in Luke he was simply called "a blind man."

So, you see, he knew what it meant to be not only blind but nameless, a nobody.

He must have become very sensitive to how he referred to people.

So, when he heard a great commotion one day about Jesus of Nazareth passing by, he, who had no name of his own, called Jesus by an ancient and royal name: "Jesus, son of David."

That bothered many in the crowd.

Even good people, even pilgrims, don't like to hear the truth; they don't like to hear truth named in detail.

That's why they tried to shut him up.

Jesus stopped not just because he called out to him but because he dared to call him "son of David."

He dared to remind him that even though he was heading to Jerusalem where he would suffer and die on the cross, he was not alone, he was somebody, he was the Messiah, he was not just the carpenter's son, he was God's Son.

Bartimaeus must have known it's not always easy for anyone to speak the truth.

Some things never change; people still try to stifle those who dare to speak the truth.

Many times people tell us not to tell the truth under the guise of "keeping it a secret."

There can be times when there is a real value in secrets.

But there are times when the truth is also twisted under the cloak of secrecy.

It takes a lot of courage for all of us to talk about topics that have been cloaked over for years: racism, sexual harassment, child abuse, economic injustice.

When we do, we face the same humiliation Bartimaeus faced in the crowd that day.

Like back then, people will mumble things like: "Shut up!"

"How dare you speak out?"

"You are a nameless little nobody in the crowd."

"What right do you have to tell me what I should and should not do?"

We don't have to spend our lives constantly telling people off.

That's not telling the truth.

That's living out of anger.

But, when those special moments happen in our lives, like the one for him that day at the gate of Jericho,

those special moments when we know we have to make a choice,

when we have to speak the truth,

when we can't worry about what people will say,

but only worry about what we know God wants us to do.

It's those moments when we, like Bartimaeus, need to have the courage to name the evil, or the injustice, or the truth, and speak out in the name of God.

28th Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle B

Mark 10: 17-30

October 14, 2012

Prudent preachers tend to avoid today's Gospel.

The wise will preach on wisdom: "I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. . . . I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her" (Wis 7:7-8).

Or they will leave the last half of the Gospel passage alone, and focus on the rich fellow whom our Lord looked on and loved.

But a homily on "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" ?

That's difficult!

But the issue has to be faced.

But to face it intelligently, I suggest we do three things:

(1) recapture some biblical background, to put the passage in context;

(2) uncover what Jesus himself had in mind when he spoke this way about riches;

(3) ask what all this might say to us today.

First, some biblical background.' Little wonder that "the disciples were amazed" at Jesus' words, were "exceedingly astonished" (vv. 24, 26).

Not only because it seemed from his words that no one could enter the kingdom. What complicated their effort to understand was a powerful Jewish tradition, part of the air they breathed:

Wealth was a mark, a sign, of God's favor.

Remember how "the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning"? God gave him "fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen those He loved.

Wealth was part of life's peace, life's fulness.

Now what did Jesus say to that revered tradition?

He reversed it rudely, brutally.

"You cannot serve both God and mammon".

Jesus also said: "Anyone of you who does not bid farewell to all he has cannot be a disciple of mine" . This is raw language indeed.

It's hard to nuance that.

There is another side to it—a side to Jesus that makes us hesitate about his harsher words.

As far as we know, he never told Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, or Zacchaeus, or Joseph of Arimathea to give up all they had.

Well now, will the real Jesus please stand up?

Which is it to be, no riches or some?

I'm afraid the real Jesus, especially in Luke, is more complex than the TV preachers suspect.

On riches, there is the radical Jesus and there is the moderate Jesus.

There is the Jesus for whom wealth is "totally linked with evil," and there is the Jesus who counsels a prudent use of possessions to help the less fortunate.

There is the Jesus who tells some people to give it all away, and there is the Jesus who advises others to share what they have.

There is the Jesus who stresses how selfish and godless the rich become, and there is the Jesus who experiences how generous and God-fearing his well-to-do friends can be.

There is the Jesus who forces us to choose between money and God, and there is the Jesus who loves a rich man who keeps both his wealth and God's commandments.

What might all this say to us today?

The radical Jesus poses a perennial question: What rules my life—the camel or the kingdom?

On the other hand, the moderate Jesus fixes my eye on something splendidly positive. I mean the gift I have in anything I possess, anything I "own."

Ultimately, whatever is mine (save for sin) is God's gift.

Even if it stems from my own fantastic talent, that talent itself owes its origin to God. But a gift of God is not given to be clutched; it is given to be given.

And there lies its glory, there its Christian possibilities.

The theology I have amassed through fifty-nine years is not just my theology, packed away in my personal gray matter for my private delight.

It is meant to be shared—at times even refuted!

Each of us is a gifted man or woman—gifted in more ways perhaps than your modesty will admit.

It doesn't matter what your specific possessions are: millions or the widow's mite, intelligence or power, beauty or wisdom.

What the moderate Jesus tells us is to use your gifts as he invites or commands us to use them. To some he may say: Give all you have to the poor and come, follow me naked.

To others: Share what you possess; use it for your brothers and sisters.

Use your power for peace, your wisdom to reconcile, your knowledge to open horizons, your compassion to heal, your hope to destroy despair, your very weakness to give strength.

Remember, your most precious possession is yourself

Give it away ... lavishly.

To do that, we cannot stare at the eye of the needle; we have to stare at our Lord.

If we look too long at the needle's eye, trying to get our personal camel through it, we may despair.

How can we ever reconcile our riches with God's kingdom, our possessions with Christ's command to let go? " I don't have an answer for you.

It's hard enough for me and I constantly struggle with it.

Each person has to struggle.

What I do know about me — and my faith tells me it's the same for all of us — is that we cannot do it alone. But Jesus offers hope for all of us.

With men and women," Jesus noted, "it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God"