Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Feast of the Ascension, May 20, 2012

Mark 16: 15-20

Signs are all over the place.
There are so many, that it is impossible to count how many we may encounter in a given day.
And that doesn't even include all the other signs along the way-billboards, realty signs, store and business identifiers-signs with words and without, most of which I see, but which only tease at the edge of my awareness.

Paying attention to traffic signs is important.
After all, those signs could just save my life.
But so many of the other signs that I see day after day barely register in my consciousness.

We see construction on our roads as a big inconvenience.
However, I once took a different route driving up to Richmond.
Remembering all the construction on I64 around Mercury Blvd in Hampton, I took highway 10.
It was beautiful Spring day.
The ride was relaxing and I took in all kinds of new sights


The signs that at first seemed to portend a construction season of inconvenience, actually pointed me in a beneficial new direction!

In the Gospel for the Ascension, Jesus speaks of the signs that will accompany those who believe.
Like all of our journeys, there may be a thousand signs that we see each day, most of which we ignore, taking in only those most important "Stop" signs.
But those other signs along the road of life may have a meaning that we've not yet uncovered, even pointing to a new direction.
In the days from Ascension to Pentecost, it would be good for us to ask ourselves,
 "What signs of the Spirit could we be neglecting because we think the road is already mapped?"
Maybe these days up to Pentecost could be filled with fervent prayer for an awareness of the fullness of the Spirit's gifts and the signs that help us know them!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 13, 2012



John 15: 9-17

 The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit should have been poured out upon the Gentiles. 

Every time the verb Aastound@ or the noun Aastonishment@ shows up in scripture, pay close attention, because chances are there is an example of God acting in our lives as God wants, not as we want God to act.

The Church is but a few days old, yet the congregants are already complaining among themselves, conspiring to send a letter to their equivalent of the bishop and standing committee, complaining that even the gentiles B yes the gentiles, can you believe such a thing? B have accepted the word of God.
We can almost hear them saying, "Who is that person sitting in my pew?"
And "I am all for inclusion, as long as we don't lower our standards."
And "We shouldn't have to print the worship aid just because it's easier for people who don't know how to use the hymnal!"

We are not the hosts at God's table; we are guests ourselves.
We aren't called to welcome as much as to act like we have been welcomed ourselves into the grace of God.
We don't forgive the sins of others; we testify that our sins have been forgiven.
We are all beggars hungry for the bread of God, telling the other beggars where the bread may be found.

Jesus made it all quite simple: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."
Too many Christians believe that we are called simply to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and that when we achieve that belief, it somehow separates us from those who don't.
We fall into the sin of believing that we are clean, and those who don't believe are unclean.

But as the philosopher Kierkegaard observed, "Christianity is not a doctrine to be taught, but a life to be lived."
Are we called to believe in resurrection, and teach it as doctrine, or are we called to practice resurrection in the life that we live?   
Jesus instructs that we are to practice resurrection when he says, "Love one another as I have loved you."

We go astray when the Risen Christ is worshiped but not followed.
To love one another is a call to action, modeled on Jesus' love for the disciples.
For the people with whom we are called to share the Good News of the resurrection, their future in the faith is often dependent on our ability to practice resurrection and not just preach it.
To practice resurrection with the very substance of our lives will be a constant expansion of our capacity to love.
 Jesus said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for his friends."

Take a moment and look around.
Who is not here?
There are so many, but they will not come to us.
We must go to them, not in arrogance, but in humility.
We must go with a love that shows resurrection to be substantive and life‑giving, not as a doctrine.
We must show a love so sacrificial, charitable, welcoming, and abundant that it reveals that we would give our very life so that they would receive that transforming love imparted by the resurrection.

Many will say, "I can't go so far as giving my life."
Let us then say, "We believe in the resurrection," and testify to that belief with what our earthly lives reveal about our faith in God.
When the worship ends, the service begins.
Jesus said, "You did not choose me, but I chose you.
And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name."

So let us ask God for what we need and go, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.


Fifth Sunday of Easter

John 15: 1-8


Three months ago, Paul was killing the followers of Jesus, and today he wants to preach the gospel.
No wonder they don't trust him!
So he is introduced to the Good Old Boys Club, who give him the seal of approval.
Church certification was simple in those days.
To be an apostle you had to be a personal friend of Jesus.
For a wannabe apostle like Paul you had to be approved by FOJs.
To be an ordinary parishioner you had to belong to a household of faith.

It's more difficult today to know which is Catholic.
Oh, we have a pope and creed and catechism; but after 2000 years things get complicated.
A majority of Catholics do not accept the church's teaching on birth control; many ignore the teaching on marriage;
the average parish council would reject the church's view on capital punishment;
  many finance committees (but not ours) would veto the pope's proposal to forgive the debt of developing nations.

There are different opinions on an issue because the same reality looks different from different sides.
The economy looks good or bad depending on whether you are rich or poor.
The job market looks different to those who do or don't have a job. C Marriage is understood differently by singles, married, widowed, divorced or re-marrieds.
Sex is experienced differently by heterosexuals and homosexuals.
War feels different to victors and vanquished.
The law seems very different to judge and criminal.

Does this mean that there is no objective truth, that every opinion is equally valid; that a good intention makes everything right?
No. Jesus did not say, "Love me and do what you want."
He said, "If you love me you will keep my commandments."
The problem is the application of 10 commandments to 6 billion people in 50 trillion situations.

That is why there are different images of the church because different people accentuate some values more than others.
There are also different church models because the church is a mystery too great to be defined by one image.
So, Scripture offers several: the People of God, the Communion of Saints, the Body of Christ, the Temple of God, the Sheepfold, the Vine and Branches.
It is not that one of these is true and the others false.
Nor is one necessarily better than the other.
They are given to complement and fill out each other so we can appreciate the fullness of the church and experience all its possibilities.
So we are free to live out of one model more than another now and then.
  But we are in danger if we focus too much on any one aspect of the church.
And we actually mutilate the Body of Christ when we obsess on one image of the church to the total exclusion of the others.
Even the moral model.

The churches founded by Paul were structured;
while the churches founded by John depended solely on the Holy Spirit and mutual love.
We are direct descendants of Paul's churches, while all of John's churches fell apart by the third century.
Not for lack of the Spirit; but because love alone does not keep the rain out.

That is why we maintain the church model of Paul to judge our moral conduct.
Some do better than others; some feel uncomfortable in the family;
some may be thrown out of the house.
But there is more to life than right and wrong.
And our church is not God.

So, we gather our battered, confused, guilty selves and go to John's church for a final verdict
We always want the church to give us the right answer
Surprise!
John refuses to get involved in our merely human justice.
He says: " We simply cannot know how you stand with God.
But I do know this: 'No matter how your conscience accuses you,
  God is greater than your heart.'"

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Fourth Sunday of Easter


April 29, 2012

John 10: 11-18


What do you think of when you hear Jesus saying “I am the good shepherd”?
If you’re like most people, you visualize Jesus the way he’s shown in paintings, surrounded by a flock of adoring sheep, with one small lamb on his shoulders, and he’s smiling that easy smile that painters always give him, as if he’s saying, “He’s ain’t heavy; he’s my brother.”
We think of him as talking to the sheep, maybe singing to them, maybe giving them bits from his lunch, petting them, and being oh so gentle and sweet.
That mental picture is so sweet it makes me sick.
This is not what Jesus meant when he said “I am the good shepherd.”
Not even close.
When Jesus said that he is the good shepherd, he did not mean that he’s like those sweet paintings.
Remember, this is the same Jesus who went into the temple and saw all those merchants ripping off people by exchanging money at unscrupulous rates,
 and Jesus flew into a rage and made a whip and thrashed them, shouting at them and flogging them unmercifully until they howled and took off running.
 Now, wait a second.
Is Jesus that kind, gentle, good shepherd of our imagination, or an angry young man who violently attacked people in church?
Which is it: Jesus is the gentle Good Shepherd, or Jesus is the aggressive Warrior of God?
 Look. If there are good shepherds, then there must be bad shepherds.
 When Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd,” he knew that the Pharisees and synagogue officials were listening, and he was contrasting himself with them.
It was his very clever way of saying, “You are bad shepherds.
I will lay down my life for my sheep, but you are just hired hands who run away at the first sign of a wolf or a thief.
You are bad shepherds.”
 How would that have made his listeners feel?
I doubt that they got the same mental image of a Good Shepherd as we do.
And let’s get real.
Our mental image is pointless.
You can’t tell whether somebody is a good shepherd by watching how he treats the sheep.
It takes no brains or virtue to be nice to sheep.
The test of a good shepherd isn’t how he treats the sheep, but what he does to the thief or the wolf when they attack.
How he treats them is what matters.
Imagine a picture like this:
there’s a thief attacking.
The shepherd has pounced on the thief and is holding his shepherd’s staff across the thief’s throat, pinning him to the ground and slowly choking off his air,
but the gasping thief is reaching up to grab the shepherd.
It’s a horrifying, violent sight, and yet, the whole time, there in the background, blissfully oblivious to the whole thing, the sheep continue to safely graze.
 I hope the point of the painting is clear:
the sheep may safely graze not in spite of the struggle but because of the struggle.
The shepherd is fighting to keep them safe.
Why doesn’t anybody paint The Good Shepherd like this?
I’ll tell you why.
It’s because it would make us uncomfortable.
But religion is not supposed to be comfortable!
When Jesus said that he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, he meant it! Literally!
He did lay down his life for us, his flock... and tell me, did it make him comfortable?
If you remember just one thing from this homily today, make it this: the painting of The Good Shepherd.
Remember that brutal conflict between thief and the brave shepherd, while the sheep graze safely.
You see, my dear friends, a painting of a sweet and gentle shepherd might make us feel all warm and comfortable, but we were not saved by Jesus’ sweetness and gentleness.
We were saved by a man torn and bleeding and very uncomfortable.
We were saved by a strong man, a courageous man, a man who proved when he laid down his life for us that he is The Good Shepherd

Third Sunday of Easter

April 22, 2012


Luke 24: 35-48                                                          


The disciples had a personal experience of Christ.

But what are our chances?

One of our greatest Catholic spiritual writers, Karl Rahner, wrote: "Very soon, all Christians will be mystics — or they will not believe at all."
This is not some bumper-sticker threat.
It is a profound theological insight that requires some serious thought on our part.

By being a mystic, Fr. Rahner does not mean that we must have visions or ecstatic experiences.
People are differently wired, so their emotional responses differ.
But God is always the same, so what do we experience when we experience God?
It is necessarily like no other experience because God is like nothing else.
God is bigger than our brains, so we cannot fit God into our minds.
God is larger than our hearts, so we cannot embrace God in our arms.
God is beyond anything we can know or love.
God is Holy Mystery, so we can experience God only as a mystery, in a mysterious way.              

We have to arrive at God sideways, glancing off things, seeing through events, loving different beings.
Absolutely everything we know, we know in some context, against a larger background.
We know a tree within a forest within a world within a universe.
And there we are stymied, because we cannot know beyond what we know.
We cannot even imagine it.
All of our knowledge ends in mystery.
Some call it God.

This means that we know God by knowing other things; we love God by loving other things.
That feels like a letdown.
But the upside is that we actually know and love God every time we know or love any thing.
We experience God at the same time, within, on the deeper level of every experience.       

Which means that we must pay attention, we must be on the lookout for God.
 God is a background presence that is easily overlooked as we pursue superficial activities.
God is something like the air we breathe without noticing air as a real thing in itself.
God is something like the sun we ignore while looking at the things illuminated by the sun.
God is something like the horizon against which we see everything without being able to see the horizon itself.

God feels so absent because God is so very present.
We can easily miss God because God is everywhere, unobtrusively.
Someone said that God graciously reduces Godself to make room for other things.
 That's a clever image, but not quite correct.
God does not make room for things,
God is the room where everything fits.

God is equally present in a sunset or earthquake whether we pay attention or not
God is there in a depression or inflation no matter what the market thinks.
God is there during a birth or an abortion even if we don't notice.
God is present in every joy and sorrow and utter boredom, not in addition to them, but inside them.

God is hard to miss because God is everywhere all the time.
But God is also missed because God is hidden in every thing and event.
We must learn to experience God in everyday life or we will not experience God at all.
We will be mystics or we will be unbelievers.
As the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: "Every bush is afire with God. Those who see it, take off their shoes;
the rest sit round and eat blackberries."
More prosaically: "The cosmos is aglow with the glory of God.
Those who see it bask in the sunlight; those who don't, slather on sunscreen."