Thursday, June 27, 2013

Cannonballs!





Any cannonballs in your life lately???
More often than not we usually recognize them in retrospect.
God is always communicating with us.
Sometimes we can hear and choose to listen in the moment.
At other times the 'white noise' of our lives gets in the way.
Then there are those occasions when the light bulb goes off and we say 'Remember when...I think that may have been God saying..."
Listen...Discern...Act!


Sunday 12 C



Luke 9: 18-24
June 23, 2013
Click here for readings


 The  question to the disciples is one that every reader of the Gospel must answer sooner or later: “Who do you say that I am?” 
Repeatedly the disciples and others around Jesus had asked one another who Jesus was. 
Jesus now turns the question back on the disciples. 
He did not ask who he was but who they believed him to be. 
Beyond the question of identity is the issue of confession.

Peter gave the best answer he knew, the highest confession he could imagine, (“ The Christ of God”)but it wasn’t enough. 
On the one hand, it failed to see the struggle and sacrifice that lay before Jesus; 
on the other hand, it wasn’t enough because it failed to recognize the sacrifice and demand that would be required of any who confessed Jesus to be the Christ.

The questions that mean most in life may be the questions of identity and relationship. 
“Who are you?” 
“Who is God?” 
“What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?” 
And, maybe even more important: “What do our answers to these questions mean for our values, priorities, and commitments?” 

The answers to these questions usually emerge from experience and require a commitment of life. 
We answer these questions by the way we live. 
Peter may have been partially right about who Jesus was, 
but he was completely wrong about what following Jesus would mean for him. 
Jesus was on his way to a cross, not a throne, 
and those who follow him must be ready to follow him on this road of obedience to God’s redemptive will and sacrifice for the salvation of others.

I sometimes hear that my homilies are too harsh.
But, those who preach a cheap grace or a gospel of health and wealth not only offer false promises, but also they preach a false gospel. 
Discipleship and lordship are always interrelated. 
When we offer false assurances and teach a cross-less discipleship, we proclaim a distorted christology. 
On the other hand, when we preach a crucified Christ, 
the only authentic response is for us to give up all other pursuits that might compromise our commitment and devote ourselves completely to the fulfillment of the kingdom tasks for which Jesus gave his own life. 
The nature of our discipleship always reflects our understanding of Jesus’ lordship.

Discipleship is also a continuing process. 
That means first that however lofty our understanding or obedient our discipleship, 
most of us are probably not far from Peter—confessing but failing to grasp the implications of our confession; 
understanding, but only in part; 
following Jesus, but maintaining our own aspirations and ambitions also. 

The present tense verbs of the sayings on discipleship should, therefore, not be overlooked. 
We might paraphrase: “If you want to continue following me, deny yourself now and take up the cross every day, and keep on following me.” 
What net profit is there if having gained everything you lose your own life?

There are only two impulses in life. 
One is the impulse to acquire, take, hoard, own, and protect. 
The other is the impulse to give and to serve. 
One assumes that each of us can be the Lord of our own lives 
and that our security and fulfillment depend on our ability to provide for ourselves. 
The other confesses the sovereignty of God and devotes life to the fulfillment of God’s redemptive will in delivering and empowering others, 
establishing justice and peace, tearing down barriers, reconciling persons, and creating communities. 
Those who devote themselves to these tasks confess that the true fulfillment of life is to be found in the service of Christ and that our only security is in him.


There is a further truth hidden in the contrasts between the present and the future in the coming Son of Man sayings. 
In the context of teachings on discipleship, the emphasis is not on the coming Son of Man 
but on the truth that the way we live in the present determines our relationship to the Lord in the future. 
We are becoming who we shall be. 
Who we say Jesus is now determines what he will say of us in the future. 
How we answer the question “Who do you say that I am?” through our day-to-day discipleship is the only answer that matters

—but everything depends on that answer.

Sunday 11 C



Luke 7: 36-50

At a major spot in St. Anselm's classic theological treatise Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man?), the teacher reminds the student, "You have not yet considered the seriousness of sin."
It is the seriousness of sin that lurks in the background of the story of the woman, Simon, and Jesus.
David Steindl-Rast thinks the word "sin" no longer communicates a serious negative condition with disastrous consequences.
He suggests the word "alienation." "Alienation is our contemporary word that makes sense to us today. . . . We all know what that is. We know what it feels like; being cut off from everything.

Other thinkers like the word "separateness."
 It carries the connotations of being cut off, isolated, radically alone. Dorothy Soelle liked the image of freezing.
[Sin] . . . is the Ice Age—this slow advance of cold, a freezing process which we experience and try to forget . . . [it is] the absence of warmth, love, caring, trust . . . [it is] the destruction of our capacity for related¬ness. . . . [It] means being separated from the ground of life, having a disturbed relationship to ourselves, our neighbor, the creation and the human family. .

Each word—alienation, separateness, freezing—expresses with its own nuances what Augustine said about sin.
 A person in sin was "incurvatus a se" (bent over on top of himself or herself).

Christian faith thinks this alienated condition is so pervasive that it is original.
Although it does not destroy the good creation, it is coextensive with it.
It afflicts everyone.
The fact that sin is pervasive is part of its camouflage.
It is taken as normal life, just the way things are.
Since it is present everywhere, it is difficult to focus on it.
As the saying goes, what is everywhere is nowhere.
This is why the Pharisees do not see their alienation, their separateness, their frozen life.
Although Simon is "bent over" in conversation with himself and the other Pharisees talk only among themselves, their relational poverty never dawns on them.
They have learned how to adapt to the small space that their mind has made into a barricaded home.

However, when a flowing, belonging person who is in communion with God and neighbor breaks into human life, sin's cover is blown.
In the free life of this one person the prisons of others are exposed. Theologically put, it is in the presence of grace that sin is clearly seen. In this sense, Jesus did not badger people to repent.
Repenting was simply what other people found themselves doing in order to participate in the flow of life he was offering.
 It is also in this sense that Jesus held up the overflowing life of the woman as a mirror to Simon.
He wanted him to see himself as he was and himself as he could be. He wanted to lead him to decision's edge.
Jesus is not a sad or angry prophet.
He is an invitation to fullness.

The seriousness of sin is that it teaches us to believe a lie about our¬selves and to defend that lie against the revelation of truth.
 It tells us we are isolated individuals with scarce resources and meager means who need to oppress others in order to live.
But when we turn from this lie, we find ourselves extravagant lovers of God and our neighbor.
People uncontrollably burst into glorifying God and the Samaritan leper praises God in a loud voice
The Good Samaritan finds himself extending unstinting care to the wounded man
Zachaeus finds himself giving half his goods to the poor and paying back anyone he has defrauded fourfold.
Since we have traded communion for separateness, belonging for alienation, and flow for frozen, we are living by a greater life, a life not our own.
The alabaster jar is broken and the perfume pouring out.
It is even possible if we take a piece of bread and break it we can become food for others.

Sunday 10 C




Luke 7: 11-17

he glory of God is bigger than just this resurrection.
As hard as it might seem to imagine, the glory of God that was revealed that day at Nain was more than bringing a dead man to life.
The widow is also brought back from death to life.
The story begins with the widow.
Jesus has compassion on the widow, tells her not to weep.
After the man comes back to life, he gives him back to his mother.
By doing so, he brings her back to life. Jesus heals more than a dead man, he heals a woman broken by a society that could not see her as fully human without a man.

The crowd may have been more afraid of this than anything else.
The social order had been altered.
A woman who didn’t count suddenly counted again.
This may have been as awesome, as fearsome, as the resurrection itself.

The crowd would immediately have known what happened.
They knew they were in the presence of a prophet because they had read their scripture.
They knew God cared for widows,
God insisted on the care of widows.
hey knew that God sent prophets like Elijah to heal widows, they remembered the widow at Zarepath who was near death and who was brought back to life by God’s gift of a jar of meal and a jug of oil that never ran out.
Caring for the ones that society wants to leave behind is what God does. Having no edges, no boundaries to the scope of care, is God.
God’s very being has no limits to love.

We still live in a world of social divisions.
Our society, our now-global society, is full of divisions.
Indeed, it feels like we have found many more ways to divide ourselves than could have been imagined by the people of Nain.
We can be divided by religion, by ethnicity, by nation, by age, by the kind of music we like, by wealth and poverty.
Sadly, we can still be divided by gender.

But amid all this division, God gives us life.
God is the source of all being.
And God doesn’t just give us biological life, God gives us a full life, a life where our divisions are healed.
That is the action that Jesus undertook at Nain – he restored biological life so that a full life could be had by all.
That is what Jesus showed the people of Nain, that life means more than simply existing, it means living fully within the web of life.
It means being loved by all and loving all.

This is the reign of God. It is a reign of well being, a reign of justice, a reign of abundance, a reign of joyous harmony.
It is a reign we recognize when we are fully in God’s presence, and when God’s presence encompasses all of creation.
God’s presence has no social boundaries.
The crowd at Nain rejoiced because God had looked favorably upon them with a sign of God’s reign.

This is the action of our God.
Restoring to the social community, bringing people we push out of society back into love because we need each other.
This is also our action.
We too are called to be healers. The mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”
We do this by refusing to draw boundaries, by refusing to exclude people from the fullness of life that God promises.
We do it when we welcome all people into our churches.
We do it when we work to ensure that all are fed, and clothed, and housed, and cared for when sick.
We do it when we work to transform unjust social structures.
We do it when we fix any system or practice that treats anyone as undeserving of a full life.
We still make people of all races and genders powerless.
 We still try to make human souls into non-people. Our mission is to be people who draw no distinctions.
Our mission is to be a people who recognize the dignity of every human being.

After Jesus left Nain, the people went back to their homes and chores, but things didn’t go back to normal.
And thanks be to God for that!
Normal doesn’t always mean right.
Normal can be unjust.
The people of Nain weren’t normal anymore.
The people were transformed. They had moved beyond what they thought were limitations.
They had seen a new world.
Let us open our eyes to this new world and glorify God.
Let us be a people without boundaries.


Monday, June 3, 2013

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)



Luke 9: 11b-17

He loves to tinker with gadgets.
He is fascinated by the inner workings of machines, how the gears and levers of mechanisms connect and work together to make things happen.

While thumbing through one of his technology magazines, he finds the schematic for a clock that operates not by batteries or electric current but by a complex series of weights and pulleys.
A new project!
So begins many hours of constructing the clock's cabinet, fashioning and fitting the necessary gears and wheels, devising and measuring the weights and chains.

When he has finally finished, the clock works well for a while, but stops within a few hours.
So he carefully takes apart every piece and refits them.
Again the clock works well for some time, but, again, stops.
He spends what seems like an eternity studying every piece of wood and metal, but still the clock will not run consistently

His loving wife, who is usually very understanding of his projects, urges him to give it up.
When she finds the pieces of the clock in a box under his workbench after a few weeks, she thinks that he has finally admitted defeat, so she hauls the carton of clock remnants out to the trash.
 But he quickly realizes the box is missing and immediately rescues the broken timepiece.

He hasn't given up.
He had discovered that one of the gear wheels was not ground properly - it did not fit as tightly with the other gears as it should to run evenly and consistently.
With the help of a machinist friend, he fashions, by hand, a new metal wheel that fits the clock's mechanism perfectly.

The clock, re-created from its brokenness, redeemed from the trash heap, now hangs in their living room, keeping perfect time
C under the watchful eye of its creator.

Like the tinkerer, God refuses to give up on his creation.
God does not seek our destruction but our redemption;
God finds no satisfaction in sufferings we inflict upon ourselves,
but rejoices in our making things right.
Despite our ignorance of God,
despite our displacement of God with more immediately comforting and less mysterious concepts,
despite our outright rejection of God,
God continues to call us back, always making the first move to being reconciled with us and his creation.

This Sunday of the Trinity (on this first week after the Great Fifty Days of Easter) focuses our attention on the great, profound love of God for his creation
a love too deep, too limitless for us to fully grasp and understand.
May we realize the presence and availability of hope, purpose and healing from the God who creates,
the God who redeems,
the God who breathes life and love into every molecule of creation.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit



The Most Holy Trinity



John 16: 12-15
May 26, 2013

He loves to tinker with gadgets.
He is fascinated by the inner workings of machines, how the gears and levers of mechanisms connect and work together to make things happen.

While thumbing through one of his technology magazines, he finds the schematic for a clock that operates not by batteries or electric current but by a complex series of weights and pulleys.
A new project!
So begins many hours of constructing the clock's cabinet, fashioning and fitting the necessary gears and wheels, devising and measuring the weights and chains.

When he has finally finished, the clock works well for a while, but stops within a few hours.
So he carefully takes apart every piece and refits them.
Again the clock works well for some time, but, again, stops.
He spends what seems like an eternity studying every piece of wood and metal, but still the clock will not run consistently

His loving wife, who is usually very understanding of his projects, urges him to give it up.
When she finds the pieces of the clock in a box under his workbench after a few weeks, she thinks that he has finally admitted defeat, so she hauls the carton of clock remnants out to the trash.
 But he quickly realizes the box is missing and immediately rescues the broken timepiece.

He hasn't given up.
He had discovered that one of the gear wheels was not ground properly - it did not fit as tightly with the other gears as it should to run evenly and consistently.
With the help of a machinist friend, he fashions, by hand, a new metal wheel that fits the clock's mechanism perfectly.

The clock, re-created from its brokenness, redeemed from the trash heap, now hangs in their living room, keeping perfect time
C under the watchful eye of its creator.

Like the tinkerer, God refuses to give up on his creation.
God does not seek our destruction but our redemption;
God finds no satisfaction in sufferings we inflict upon ourselves,
but rejoices in our making things right.
Despite our ignorance of God,
despite our displacement of God with more immediately comforting and less mysterious concepts,
despite our outright rejection of God,
God continues to call us back, always making the first move to being reconciled with us and his creation.

This Sunday of the Trinity (on this first week after the Great Fifty Days of Easter) focuses our attention on the great, profound love of God for his creation
a love too deep, too limitless for us to fully grasp and understand.
May we realize the presence and availability of hope, purpose and healing from the God who creates,
the God who redeems,
the God who breathes life and love into every molecule of creation.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Pentecost







John 20: 19-23
May 19, 2013

If you had to name one of the most quoted speeches of the 20th century, one near the top of any list would be the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
On a cold and blustery Washington day, a young man stood before the world, coatless and hatless, and while the wind blew, he challenged all who heard and saw him to Aask not.@
AAsk not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do
for your country.@
The phrase has become emblematic of Kennedy.
 It may well be the one great quote by which he will be forever remembered.

But earlier in that same speech, he alerted the world that Athe torch had been passed to a new generation.@
And he began that statement with a grand declaration:
ALet the word go forth.@
There is a missionary zeal in that phrase C and a kind of dignity and grace that you don=t hear much in political speeches anymore.
Let the word go forth.

It occurs to me, on this particular Sunday, that those five words could also summon up the true meaning of this feast, Pentecost.
For in the dramatic events of that dramatic day, when the bewildered disciples poured into the streets, their purpose was exactly that: to let the Word go forth.

Let the Word go forth...beyond the streets and alleys of Jerusalem, into the hill country of Judea and beyond.
Let the Word go forth...across the blue waters
of the Mediterranean, to Greece and Rome, to Africa and Spain.
Let the Word go forth...into every continent,to be heard in every home, to be lived in every heart.
And it all began on this day we celebrate, Pentecost.

The wind blew, flames flickered, and the disciples could not contain themselves any longer.
They needed to spread the Word.
They needed to tell what they knew, and who they knew...and let the Word go forth.

It is astonishing to consider where Christ=s Gospel has gone, and how far and wide it is preached.
What began with a few frightened people in a darkened room in Jerusalem has spilled out and touched every corner of the globe.
You=ll find it in great, stained-glass cathedrals in Europe...in thatched huts in Asia...in hotel ballrooms and cruise ship dining rooms and hospital chapels from Bangkok to Brooklyn.
 It is spread in storefront churches and tiny private chapels, and even brought alive without any kind of church at all, in the daily actions of believers everywhere. You=ll find the Word preached in dozens of tongues C just as on that very first Pentecost C and understood in billions of hearts.

Our challenge today is to keep the Word going, to remind ourselves of the rugged beginnings of this rugged faith... and to carry it on.
To follow the mandate of those very first believers.
To throw open the windows of our fear and uncertainty...to let in the light... and to let the Word go forth.

It is a daunting prospect.
And, maybe, dangerous.
I don=t think any of us is eager to be measured for the martyr=s crown.
(Personally, if that=s a gift God has in mind for me, I=d rather he give me a nice sweater.)
But there are many ways, large and small, that we can keep the flames of that first Pentecost aglow.
We do it every time we whisper a prayer for peace.
We do it if we volunteer at a soup kitchen, or give to a clothing drive, or donate to missionaries overseas.
We do it every time we choose to spend our Sunday mornings praising God, instead of finishing the sports pages.
We do it when a nurse holds the hand of a dying patient, or a wife holds the hand of a worried husband, or a stranger bends down to help an elderly woman collect a bag of groceries she=s dropped.

We do it when we support policies and politicians who embrace and nurture life, both the born and the unborn.
We do it when we strive to love, to give, to guide, and to hope.
We do it when we surrender our will to God=s... and trust that it is the better way.
We keep the flame of Pentecost burning when our greatest ambition is simply to be like Christ.           
Or, to borrow that famous phrase from President Kennedy: we do it when we ask not what God can do for us, but what we can do for God.

Two millennia ago, men and women who had followed Jesus asked themselves that question on the first Pentecost.
And we are the beneficiaries of their answer.
All of us who gather to pray and remember on this Pentecost are part of their legacy.
They cleared the path, and often died trying, so that we could walk in their
footsteps today.
Where will those footsteps take us?
Who will be the beneficiaries of our choices?
Who will carry the flame, the torch of faith, as it is passed?
It is up to each of us.
Let the Spirit touch your heart this Pentecost, as she touched the hearts of the disciples on the first Pentecost.
Let the fire burn over you, so the flame can spread.

Let the great work begin.
And let the Word go forth.

Feast of the Ascension



Luke 24:46-53
May 12, 2013

Preaching on the ascension is not easy.
Part of the problem may be in our imagination.
At Christmas we have a baby, secure in a manger.
 On Holy Thursday we have a supper, something tangible like bread and wine and people sitting around a table with Jesus.
On Good Friday we have a cross and suffering.
There is betrayal and lying and deceit, something with which we can all identify. Finally there is death, something we experience around us every day.
Then at the resurrection we meet a person, Jesus, along with many others running around confused and frightened and bewildered.
Many of us have probably had "resurrection" experiences.

At the ascension Jesus just says "goodbye," and leaves a short message for the apostles.
But how many of us have had "ascension" experiences, just floating up into the sky?

In the heyday of liturgical experimentation in the '70s, a campus congregation sang "Up, Up and Away," and "Leaving on a Jet Plane."
In the congregation was a student who later became a priest and a bishop.
He saw no humor in this campus ministry's understanding of sacred events!

Well, Jesus did go "up and away."
It's one way of saying what Acts says.
Maybe a French priest who lived in the seventeenth century still gives us a way to approach the ascension.
He wrote that the ascension was his favorite mystery among all the mysteries of Christ's life because it was the only one which made you think how nice it was for the Lord instead of thinking how nice it is for us.
What did he mean?
Well, Christmas is a day of joy for us but not for Jesus, who was in a cold stable.
The passion and crucifixion are events we cannot think of without some sense of gratitude, but they brought nothing but anguish and misery to the Lord.
The resurrection, though a day of joy for Jesus, was still more a day of joy for us--our sins were forgiven and the fear of death dispelled.
But the ascension gives us the opportunity of unselfish rejoicing, that of being glad that Jesus was able to go home to his Father.
We might want to say to him, "I wish you had stayed with us so that we could see and touch you, to hear your voice and sit at your feet.
But still, we're glad that you could return to your origin and live in glory.
Even though I'll miss you, I don't begrudge you one moment of your exaltation."

So let's rejoice that Christ returns to the origin of his love.
We know that, even though away from us in one sense, he promises us that he is still "Emmanuel," and will be "with us" for all time.
The challenge for us is to make him present in so many different ways through the faith we profess and act on.
If we want to come face-to-face with him now, we will have to see him in the oppressed and the outcast of our society.
In our actions we shall declare that he is to be found in places and situations where others would not have thought to look.
Like the angels told the disciples: What are you looking up into the skies for?
Get out of here and start working.
His work is now ours.