Homily for Holy Thursday, Christ the King, 2006

Holy Thursday, 2006

Tonight we begin the longest Liturgy of the church year.
It begins tonight and continues through tomorrow and concludes with the Easter Vigil.
This is the Easter Triduum -the holy three days.
In this three day Liturgy, measured sundown to sundown,
we celebrate one great event, our salvation,
One Christ, through suffering and joy,
through cross and glory,
through life and death and life again.

One great event – the Paschal Mystery.

As this Liturgy began, the season of Lent ended.

We approach the hour of his glory.
We place our humanity, with all its mortal weaknesses
confidently before the mercy of God.

Yes, confidently!
For look what kind of God we see in this Gospel.
This scene of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples
at the Last Supper stands out as one of the most significant and extraordinary events in his life.
Until that moment the whole point of things
had been for someone to get to the top, and once they’d gotten to the top, to stay on top or go even higher.
But here was Jesus, a man already on top,
rabbi, teacher master and what did he do?
He took off his outer garments
and bent down to wash the feet of his followers.
In that one act of humility,
Jesus symbolically overturned the whole social order.

His disciples were horrified.
It was a shocking thing to do.
They didn’t understand it. They wanted no part of it.
You see in the Holy Land the environment is dry and dusty.
In Jesus’ time, people wore sandals.
The streets were mostly unpaved
and heavily traveled by beasts of burden.
There were no street cleaners or garbage pickups.
Feet were most often covered with dust and filth.
When it rained, feet and toes were caked with who knows what.
It was a common sense thing to keep a pitcher of water by the door of every house to wash the feet of those who entered.
It was the task of a slave or a servant to do this and always before one reclined to eat.

There was no servant in the upper room that night – except Jesus.
The disciples certainly weren’t going to wash each other’s feet.

So Jesus did what needed to be done,
and in that one decisive act
he taught us that Christian greatness is not determined by position, or prerogatives or education or title…

Christian greatness is measured by a willingness to meet the need of the moment with a deed of service.
The Lord, Jesus showed us the true nature of glory by washing the mud off the feet of common, ordinary, laboring people.
He did it out of love.
He was telling his disciples how much he loved them
cherished them
cared for them.
He washed their feet gently, tenderly
as a loving mother would wash the feet of her children.

We must not forget the occasion.
It was the Last Supper,
the first Eucharist,
which speaks volumes about what our Liturgy is
and is not.

We are not here just to remember,
for if the love of God is not somehow manifested to the world by what we do here then it is not an authentic Eucharist.
The food we receive here is food for action;
not just contemplation or adoration.

We get Jesus
and we get to BE Jesus for others.

We get his body
and get to become his body and his church.
We get to be bread for the world’s hunger.

This evening, as we consume the Eucharist, let us pray that it consumes us as well.

5th Sunday of Lent, Christ the King

5th Lent, Year B 2006

“Where is your heart, there is your treasure.” To paraphrase the great theologian Paul Tillich; what is in your heart is that which you treasure most, and what we treasure most is what we are destined to become.

It is absolutely the case that those things to which we give priority, those things for which we strive, those things we put in the center and arrange our lives around – are the things that determine who we are now, and what kind of people we will become over time.

What is that thing for us? What is it that which we treasure? What is it that seems to grab our focus at the start of each new day?

If you are anything like me, the start of each day can present more things to focus on than we can really deal with, but here I am talking about something deeper: Where is your heart, there is your treasure, and what we treasure, we become.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us what he wants us to become. He wants us to be his servants, his followers. “If anyone serves me he must follow me, and where I am, there shall my servant be also.” And where is he when he says this? Where is he going? What is he about to do? He, like a grain of wheat, is about to fall to the earth and die.

How do we do that? How do we even begin to be the kind of people that lay down their lives for others? One way is in our worship, but are we truly worshipping what we treasure?

The good news is that at some level- as confused and distracted as we may be, whether God is central to our present lives or whether we are keeping Him out on the periphery with ourselves at the center – even so, if that is the case we have done at least something right. We have come here today to worship, to worship this crucified God.

For it is here, in our worship, that we are fulfilling Jesus’ words when he said, “…I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will call all people to myself.” During our liturgies, when we can get out of ourselves, and put ourselves in a place where we can be drawn to him, when our hearts are stirred to acknowledge that there is something beautiful and real and compelling about this God on the cross, then bit by bit we are being changed, our attitudes are being transformed, our minds are being renewed and that which we treasure is being brought ever more in line with what God wants for us.

Thru our Lenten practices of the stations of the cross and Benediction, we engage in “losing our lives,” as Jesus asks us to do in our gospel, we re-center our lives around the Lord, making him the object of our devotion, indeed, our treasure.

Our gospel this morning began with some anonymous Greeks approaching Philip and saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Hopefully this is the desire that brought us all here today as well, the desire in some way, to see Jesus, to come in contact with that which we must treasure above all.

As we come ever closer to Holy Week, let us keep that attitude and expectation. Come here to see Jesus, to follow him, to worship him. For if in this season you focus on the actions by which Christ has secured our salvation, if you let these things be as a bright light that draws you in, how will your heart and mind and soul not be effected? How could they not be moved? How could we not be changed? Indeed, by walking with Jesus, by our faithfulness in worship this holy season, we will be falling to the ground and dying with him. And in this, we will all be taken-up as well.

In these important days ahead, let Christ move to our center and fill our hearts till there is room for little else; for where is your heart, there is your treasure, and that which we treasure, we become.

Sorry, I’ve been away for a while.

Ash Wednesday Homily at Belmont University

I don’t believe that I truly understood Lent until my late 20’s.

I was raised in the catholic church of the 1960’s and 70’s. A time of severe schizophrenia for the Church. In the immediate wake of the Second Vatican Council, I was educated in a completely different way than my parents and grandparents had been, even though I attended the very same catholic schools.

I remember the first nun that was to teach me catechism; she wore bell-bottom jeans and a t-shirt with a smiley face. Religion class consisted of listening to Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar on the record player. By the time I finished grade school, I was completely sure of one undeniable truth: God loved me; absolutely and completely, but any concept of sin or failure, had been deemed too depressing to burden upon a child.

From there I continued on to catholic high school and eventually made the choice to enter the seminary, another four years of theological studies further convinced me of the absolute love that God had for me, and engendered in me a comfortable disdain for those who talked about sin and death. Jesus Christ had risen from the dead! Why even discuss sin, or pain.

During those years, lent always puzzled me… Why would the church place so much emphasis on sin and failure, when it was so clear to me that those were obsolete concepts ever since the resurrection.

These precepts of mine came to a final and crushing halt when I was a graduate student living in Europe. I had been sent to University there as a seminarian, but after a year I had decided to leave the seminary, mostly because of a certain graduate student from southern California. She and I fell immediately and hopelessly in love, and I left the seminary.

Over the following years we lived the life of romantics; we both were studying theology at a marvelous university, and traveling Europe whenever the mood struck us. And then it happened. For reasons completely beyond my ability to comprehend; she left, her love for me had simply come to an end, no betrayal, no fight, it had just faded away. She left, and for the first time in my life, I truly, and deeply, entered Lent. For the first time in my life, the simple fact of the resurrection was not enough to sustain me.

If you have ever experienced a broken heart you know that it is a grief so intimate, so deeply inside of us that its anguish seems to spread out to every cell of our being. Someone who has grown impatient with our “broken heartedness” might say ‘snap out of it.’ It is meaningless advice. For this pain goes wherever we go. We can’t set it on a table and be done with it. It follows us like a hungry dog. You go to bed and it is there. You wake up and it is there. It seems to crawl inside your skin just to let you know it is still there.
A broken heart reminds us, and it does so with a fierceness that is both strange and insistent, that we have a heart. It even seems to suggest that we may be all heart. Over what can be an unbearable amount of time, a strange thing can happen. It is a thing that can happen only uniquely to each person, in its own time and place. One day we wake up and we realize that this heart sickness may have been a blessing, harsh and even cruel, but a blessing nonetheless. We not only came out of it alive, we came out of it more alive and with a depth previously unknown to us.
This can sound trite, and some folks hurt so deeply that it seems they can never get to this place. But, where body and spirit are not brutalized past the remembrance of anything human, when the heart is broken, this brokenness, through the grace of God, can lead to a heart that is more compassionate, more sensitive, more open, less full of regret, less judgmental, and finally, able to share in the brokenness of others.
Let me say that a broken heart is part and parcel of what it means to be human. This is why the church in Lent proclaims these words from the Psalmist: “Create in me a clean heart.” Or, we could say, create in me a whole heart, a human heart, a healed heart.
I am still not sure that I understand Lent, and I am still completely overpowered by the resurrection; but now I have been with Jesus in the desert, and I have wept with him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I have arrived at the other side. Lent allows us to make this journey each year, to experience in some small way the pain that comes with life and sin.
In Lent, we are reminded that sin and pain are indeed part of life. Parts not to be ignored and protected from, but parts thru which we can come to the Father.

On Ash Wednesday we are reminded that we are dust, but as Karl Rahner reminds us; “In these words we are told everything that we are: nothingness that is filled with eternity; death that teems with life; futility that redeems and dust that is God’s life forever.”

1st Sunday of Advent 2005

1st Advent, Year B

Today we sing a prayer that Emanuel will come to ransom us who live in lonely exile. With this song we plunge into the darkness of Advent, a time of restless longing, hopeful waiting, and joyous preparation described in our three readings. It is a time of vigil, for the Gospel of Mark reminds us: “WATCH”.

It is a profoundly human endeavor to keep the vigil, to watch through the night. Many of us have pulled “all-nighters” to prepare for an exam. Many of us have tossed and turned through the night, worrying about a loved one, or wondering about what might befall us the next day.

Ancient people kept watch through the night, shepherds with their sheep and desert nomads waiting to begin the day’s journey. Early poets wrote psalms to mark the hours of the nighttime vigil. And the writer of today’s Gospel tells of an eventful night in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The Palestine of Mark’s time was besieged by three hostile forces, all of which claimed and demanded loyalty from the followers of Jesus. The Romans controlled it through military might and local alliances. The high priests and their minions collaborated with the Romans and imposed their own oppressive burden of regulations and taxes. Armed Jewish nationalists had seized the temple by force and wanted to expel the Romans thru bloody revolt.

At the time of the Gospel Roman legions were poised to destroy the temple and all of Jerusalem to stamp out the rebellion, and end the nation as it had existed before.

Today’s Gospel tells the disciples and us to keep vigil through the gathering darkness, to learn from Jesus how to respond to oppressive power.

In today’s reading we are instructed to stay awake through the four hours of the nightwatch: evening, midnight, cockcrow, and dawn.
• In the evening Jesus will pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, pledging himself to God’s will.
• At midnight he will refuse to take up arms against those who have come to arrest him.
• At cockcrow Peter will break faith.
• At dawn Jesus will face down his accusers armed with truth rather than weapons.

Today Mark concludes “a sermon on revolutionary patience” in the midst of violence and oppression. We are instructed to follow the example of Jesus who will break the system of domination rather than perpetuate it through violent resistance. We must prepare for a new way that will be revealed. Rather than replace one form of violence with another God will uproot every form of oppression which plagues our world. To prepare the way of our God we must, like Jesus, be willing to suffer violence rather than inflict violence on others. We must, as Martin Luther King said, meet physical force with the force of the soul.

As followers of Jesus we keep another kind of vigil today. Our country wages a war and occupation of another sovereign nation. We are told once again that we must make war in order to preserve peace. Yet most wars we wage lead not to peace but to the rise of another tyrant who must be dispelled through even greater force.

Martin Luther King once said, “If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of chaos.”

In the days of Isaiah of Jerusalem the people were rallying for war against the great empire of Assyria, modern day Iraq. Isaiah warned his people that this would only bring more misery. He said that the birth of Emanuel, the king’s son, would be a sign of God’s peace. By the time that child reached maturity the threat would evaporate if the people would trust in God rather than military might. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is described as Emanuel, a prince of peace whose reign would eclipse sword and spear.

Today we continue the vigil of the ages. At the close of the most violent century in human history, in the midst of another war, we may wonder “How long is the night”. We pray for peace and look toward the dawn of God’s justice in the midnight of despair. And together we sing for Emanuel.

“O Come, Desire of Nations, bind in one the hearts of all humankind. Bid thou our sad divisions cease and be thyself our prince of peace.”

Fifth Sunday of Lent, 2005

Lent 5A John 11:1-45
Few things in life hurt as deeply as the loss of a best friend. When your best friend dies too soon. Cancer, Heart attack, Car accident, many of us have lost a best friend and it can leave us devastated.
The gospel story for today is that kind of story. One of Jesus’ best friends had died. Feelings were very strong.
There are four main characters in this story: Jesus, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Martha, Mary and Lazarus were good friends of Jesus; the Bible says that he “loved” them, and Jesus seemed to visit their home often.
We know the Martha and Mary story. Jesus came to visit their home one day and Martha, the home owner and perhaps the oldest sister, was very busy. She was scurrying about, getting the meal ready for Jesus while Mary sat relaxed at Jesus’ feet, wanting to listen to him teach. Martha reprimanded her younger sister for not helping her with the work. Jesus suggested that quiet Mary had chosen the better part, and scolded busy Martha for being too busy being busy. So we pick up on the dynamics of their relationship, an honest and clear friendship.
Lazarus, the sister’s brother, was also Jesus’ close friend, the only close friend that is reported in the Bible, other than John. Jesus was about thirty years old, and my guess is that Lazarus was about the same age, maybe they knew each other growing-up.
So, here is our Gospel. Lazarus had become very ill and the two sisters sent word to Jesus, who had just healed a man born blind, that their brother Lazarus was gravely ill, possibly near death. Jesus got the message and waited two days. Why would Jesus wait two days? The Gospel says simply so that the will of God may be done. Whatever the reason, Jesus began his way to the home of Lazarus, knowing that his friend had died.
On the way, a hurt and mournful Martha came out to meet Jesus and began to vent her anger. “Jesus, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus said: “He will rise again.” And Martha testily responded: “I know he will rise again at the resurrection of the dead, but what good does that do us now?” Then Jesus made an astounding statement, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die!” It is possibly the most important statement in the Gospel. He followed this statement with a simple question, “Do you believe this, Martha?” Do you believe that whoever lives and believes in me will never die? Martha answered, “I believe. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God and that whoever lives and believes in you will never die.” A remarkable conversation.
Martha went back home to find her younger sister and told her that Jesus wanted to talk with her. Mary left immediately, surrounded by her grieving friends, to find Jesus. She too approached Jesus with an reproach, “Jesus, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died.” But before Jesus could say anything, Mary burst into tears and so did all her grieving friends. What was Jesus’ response to these tears? The Gospel says that he was “perturbed,” but the Greek word underlying this says that Jesus “shuddered with sadness,” that his body shook with emotion. The word in ancient Greek is mostly used, unglamorously enough, to refer to a horse when it snorts, the horse’s whole body shakes, and so Jesus’ whole body shook or shuddered with emotion. You and I have experienced this in life, where a person is so grieved and saddened, that their whole body shakes with sorrow. Then came an oft-quoted line, the shortest verse in the Bible. “Jesus wept.” In our antiseptic way, we imagine a single tear running down his face. Rather, the Greek suggests, Jesus “burst into tears.” So here, in this episode with sensitive Mary, there is no didactic, eloquent teaching about eternal life. In fact, there are no words at all, simply strong emotion and bursting tears that shake Jesus’ entire body.
Within that Greek word for “shudders with sadness,” there is also connotation of anger, that Jesus was angry about something; mighty scholars in great universities have pondered what Jesus was angry about. I know what Jesus was angry about: he was angry that his friend had died; too soon & too young. We know these feelings. Many of us have been present at these moments, where the pain is so great; that all you can do is shudder with sadness.
Some well-meaning person will say, “Oh, you shouldn’t feel that way if you believe in God and believe in the resurrection. Our loved one is going to a better place, to be with Jesus where there is no pain, so don’t cry so hard or feel so badly.” Well, it clearly wasn’t that way with Jesus. He believed in the resurrection, in eternal life, but he also shuddered with sadness at the loss of his friend. In his sorrow, Jesus was not only the Son of God, but also the son of man, fully human, sharing our grief and our pain. He becomes the model of grief, fully human, fully sorrowful.
“Blessed are those who mourn, who grieve, for they shall be comforted.”
The story continues. Jesus finally reached the little village of Bethany and then approached the burial vault of his friend Lazarus. The Bible says that he was again “deeply moved” as he approached the grave. His body again shuddered with sadness. He said, “Remove the stone.” And Martha, as always, having her own mind, contradicted Jesus and said, “Why? The body has been in the grave for four days already and it smells.” Jesus ignored her and the gravestone was rolled away. Then Jesus said a prayer and cried out with a loud voice: “Lazarus, arise.” Lazarus came out of the grave vault, covered with linen wrappings. Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go.”
You will know that the Messiah has come when the blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news preached to them. In the Gospel of John, this is the seventh and final sign that the Messiah has come, for he has raised the dead. Jesus has raised his friend Lazarus from the dead who had been in the grave for four days.
One last thought; Mary was accompanied by her friends who grieved with her. There is something supportive and therapeutic about having friends around you who love you enough to grieve with you. That is what the church often is: a community of compassion and consolation to one another. In our modern world, we attempt to minimize death, to distract ourselves. But not in the church. We know love; we know grief; and we share it with one another.
And so, we might ask ourselves a question this morning, the same question Jesus asked Martha. “do we believe? Do we believe that Jesus is the Son of the living God and that whoever lives and believes in him will never die? Do we believe? How we answer that question affects everything we say and do.
Do you believe that you will never die?
It is my prayer that God will give you that quality of faith that was in the heart of busy Martha. So that we all might answer …“Yes Lord, I believe that I will never die.”

4th Sunday of Lent (Year A)

4th Lent “A” #2
A mother whose son was dying of AIDS asked me, “What did we do that God would do this to us?” The father of a 16-year-old mortally wounded in a drive by shooting in Chicago remarked, as his son lay dying on a bed in the hospital emergency room, “He just wouldn’t listen, I told him that God would make him pay if he didn’t reform his life.” The elderly husband of a woman who had lived her life as a good wife and mother, remarked as she entered into the last days of long months of suffering from cancer, “I know that all this is God’s will, I just do not understand why.” The mother of a stillborn child turned to me and said, “This is what I must pay for the terrible sins that I have committed in life. I had an abortion once. Now God has taken this child from me to teach me a lesson.” A solid churchgoer said to a relative, who was not so “religious” and who was facing serious financial and personal difficulties, “if you were a better Christian, such things would not happen to you.”
Pain, suffering and loss are so common. Situations such as these and many more that I know you can think of, many that may be touching your own lives, often make us wonder about things. The mother’s grief at her son dying from a terrible illness, the senseless death of a young boy, the long suffering of a woman who had lived her life the best she knew how, the terrible guilt and grief of the mother of the stillborn child, the insensitive responses of the self-righteous to our suffering, such things may cause us to wonder about the God who made us.
The image of God as the source of suffering and death only makes our situations worse. It is tragic for it tells us that God has a side that is vindictive, cruel and vengeful. Yet many do carry such an image of God with them in their everyday lives. This is tragic for that image tends to cut us off from God as He really is. It replaces the truth of who God is with a lie. It places responsibility for the darkness of our lives in the wrong place.
This is not a new thing in our perception of God. Jesus’ disciples asked him when they encountered the man born blind, “Rabbi, was it his sin or his parents’ that caused him to be born blind?” Jesus’ disciples were Jews. They were heirs to an understanding of the universe that said that God’s hand was in everything. To the Jews that meant that God caused all the events of life. He sent prosperity. He sent suffering. He was the source of life. He was the cause of sickness and death. Thus God would do such things as cause a man to be born blind or a child to die to exact payment for their sins or for the sins of others. They believed that a person, because of who they were, for example a Samaritan, could be born with physical defects, suffer, or be relegated to a life of begging because they were full of sin from the womb simply because of who they were. God caused it all. Hence they asked, “Was it his sin or his parents’ that caused him to be born blind.”
I know that many of you have heard this said in many ways. I suspect that there might be some here who are wondering about what I am saying because you have been taught that God does cause such things. I know that there are those who profess Christian faith, including the Catholic faith, who will assert that God sent AIDS as a scourge to make sinners pay, or that God would cause the drive by shooting death of a member of a street gang as payment for his crimes. Some of us may have been told or said to others that our suffering and sickness must be the result of some sin that we have committed. We may have been told that the death of a loved one is the will of God. I have seen such words cause people to leave the Church. I have seen such words bring people to a point at which they do not stop believing in God, rather they just want nothing to do with him because their image of him is as a cruel and vengeful deity, worthy only of fear.
God does not cause sickness. It is the result of our being in a state apart from God, a state that began when we turned away from him in the Garden. The darkness of the world is our collective heritage, collectively maintained by us, not by God. It derives from our choices for selfishness, disharmony, chaos and greed. Sadly there are many in our Church and in other denominations that continue to insist that God directly punishes us with sickness, suffering and death. They hold that if you suffer it is because of sin or because there is something wrong with you. That was also the understanding of the Jews at the time of Jesus.
Jesus said of the man born blind, “It was no sin, either of this man or his parents.” The disciples must have been stunned. With that sentence he denied all that they had been taught. Can it really be that in God there is no darkness? Can it really be that in God there is only light and life and healing?
Jesus answers that clearly. He continued, “Rather, it was to let God’s works show forth in him.” God’s work was not the blindness. Indeed, there may well have been no reason for the man’s blindness at all. It just was. The same is true for the sickness, the suffering and the death that we encounter. There may be no reason for it at all. It just is.
God’s work is the bringing of light. It is driving back the darkness. It is healing and peace. Jesus touched the man who lived in darkness and light entered into his life. Jesus is the bearer not of sickness, suffering and death, nor is he the bearer of vengeance because we have made mistakes. He is the source and the bearer only of healing and light.
There is a maxim in our faith that comes to us from a theologian of the middle Ages. I believe it was St. Anselm, however I could be wrong, if I am, I’m sure Fr. Mallett will let me know. In any case, it is this: “God cannot do that which is contrary to His nature.”
That statement may surprise some of us. Does the Church really teach that there are things that God cannot do? The answer is yes. God cannot do that which is contrary to His nature. In this sense God is not paradox. He is not both life and death. He is not both light and darkness. He is not both healing and suffering. Jesus made that clear. He said, “We must do the deeds of Him who sent me while it is still day. I am the Light of the world.” The deeds of God are the deeds of light. Darkness and the deeds of darkness are apart from God. They are not of Him. They are contrary to God’s nature. God does not do bad things. The insurance companies are wrong. The chaos and destruction of nature are not Acts of God.
The blind man accepted the light. You and I are given the same choice. We can continue to be blind to the true nature of God. On the other hand, we can turn away from darkness. By opening ourselves the light of Christ, we move beyond the understanding of the Old Testament and come to see God as he really is, perfect Love and Peace. Then from the seeing we can also be light for this world.
It begins with our willingness to accept God as He is and when we stop blaming him for things that he is not. Then we can become, once more, what God intended for us in the first place; the objects of his perfect love, loving in return with all our being. With that there will be no more darkness. The universe and everything and everyone in it will be illuminated fully with Love in accord with what is truly the will of God.

3rd Sunday of Lent (Year A)

3rd Lent “A”

I usually try to keep my homilies to just under five minutes, but the gospel today is about four times the normal length, in other words … I hope you are all comfortable.
It is high noon when Jesus stops to rest by the well of Jacob. His revelation about life-giving water will soon provide a light that challenges the known world. When he asks the Samaritan woman for a drink, she is amazed that he seems so unaware of how things really are. Does he not know about the human conventions that have condemned her to social invisibility? After all, women were supposed to be ignored in public and she was also a despised Samaritan. How can Jesus be so out of touch?

When Jesus answers her, we discover that it is she who is out of touch. For she does not know about the “gift” that Jesus offers–a gift as refreshing and enlivening as bubbling, cool spring water, and thus much better than the stale, stagnant well water on which she has been trying to survive. The woman’s eyes must have sparkled as Jesus awakened in her the dream of a life of freedom and dignity. She can only say, “Sir, give me this water.”

We learn about the nature of this “living water” a bit later when the woman asks Jesus whether it is better to worship in Jerusalem or on the Samaritan Mountain. Jesus defers to Jerusalem but adds immediately that such considerations are no longer important. What counts now is to welcome the Spirit who can transform the hearts of people by enabling them to experience the ultimate truth of God’s love. Religious places and rituals remain important, but only insofar as they lead to this experience of God’s love.
It is all too easy for most of us to identify with the Samaritan woman when she experienced life as often unfair and unjust, that is, as stale water. Many powerful human institutions conceal systemic injustice, in the sense that opportunities and rewards are too often provided on the basis of connections rather than of ability or merit. Even those who benefit from such arrangements will sense the lack of the joy that comes from a life where love is more important then security.
To shrug off injustice as simply “the way things are” is to be condemned to the half-life of stagnant water.

Today’s gospel invites us to dream about the possibility of a world where opportunity and hope replace fear and despair. God really does not want us to live a life of quiet desperation.
In order to avoid a cynical attitude toward life, we need to realize that the Holy Spirit wants us to redeem our own little corner of the world. We do not need to be a Messiah, but we do need to inject some messianic hope into the areas of life that we can influence.
The conversion of the world begins with the conversion of a kitchen or a backyard or a workplace.
Jesus has come to reveal the Father’s love and the Spirit is ready to convince us of that fact. The Spirit of Jesus whispers constantly to us: “If you only knew the gift of God” Our eyes too can sparkle as we dare to imagine a world, at least within our hearts, where the experience of God’s love becomes a source of refreshing, life-giving water to quench our thirst for goodness and justice.

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

3rd Sunday, year A

There is a fairly obvious link between the Gospel and the first reading today, one quotes the other. Jesus deliberately chooses to go to Capernaum to start his ministry and call his first disciples in order to fulfill this prophesy of Isaiah. He clearly identifies himself with the one foretold who would enable the people to walk in the light. He will be the one who makes their gladness greater, who will make their joy increase.

Matthew tells us that Jesus begins his ministry with the words: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’ This word ‘repent’ bears some examination. The Greek word which we translate as repent is the word Metanoia. It comes from the word ‘noeo’ to perceive and ‘meta’ which means after. The main idea is that having changed our minds we look back and see things differently. It implies that there is a real turning round and looking at things from a new perspective.

This is beautifully picked up in the first reading where ‘the people that lived in darkness have seen a great light’. When we repent, we turn around and see things from a completely new perspective. It is as if a light has been shone on our actions and we see them in a totally new way, it is a real revelation to us.

Later in our gospel reading we see the same Greek root in the responses of the disciples to Jesus’ call. The uninspiring translation in English is “to turn.” (insert text) But the Greek “Metanoia” is a much more telling response. The disciples do not simply perform the physical motion of changing direction, they turn their whole selves, they change, completely. Everything about their lives up to that point comes to a full stop, they begin their lives anew, by accepting a simple call to “follow me.”

This is true repentance, a true turn. It is not what the old catechism called ‘firm purpose of amendment’, wanting to do better. It is a transformation of the whole person so much so that we do not see things in the old way any more.

How does this come about? Such a transformation does not come by itself. It does not come through trying harder; it does not come through just wanting to be better. It comes only through an encounter with the Lord.

This can take many forms. It could be that we go to reconciliation and through talking to the priest and being truly open with him we receive a totally new insight into our lives, so much so that we don’t see things in the same way any more. It could be through prolonged prayer and study that we open our lives to the Lord.

It could be through a personal struggle, where on the horns of a dilemma we are forced to make a decision which will affect our whole lives. It could be through some crisis in our family life or in a relationship. There might be suffering involved, when we have to come to terms with the illness or circumstances which cause us a great deal of pain.

The main point is that repentance, metanoia, does not generally occur by itself, nor is it brought about by straightforward desire on our part. Most often, if not always, it comes about through an encounter with the Lord. He disguises himself as another person, or works through circumstances in such a way that we are forced to come to terms with him, or there may be suffering which enables us to see things through the eyes of his Son. There are as many ways he chooses to deal with us as there are people in the world. The main thing to realize is that he is behind it all.

And what he wants of us is repentance. And as we have said, what this means is not so much saying sorry and promising not to hurt my brother again as making that complete turnaround in my own life, which enables me now to see things in a completely different way. As if before I was in a darkened room and suddenly the light has been turned on, I now see clearly things which before were only shadows.

This is revelation, this is walking in the light, this is repentance, this is seeing the kingdom of God close at hand, this is being a Christian.

All of this is fine, and if you are anything like me, you hear these words and you think to yourself that this year I am really going to commit to a renewal of my spiritual life; I will find time for prayer, I will read my bible, maybe I will even attend some 7:00am communion services. You will have the best of intentions, and yet (again, if you are like me), you will probably fail.

Let me pose a possible solution. Lent begins in just a few short weeks, plenty of time to get prepared. You may allready have found in your pews the information sheets about our Basic Communities. One observation about why new years resolutions fail, is that we often attempt to accomplish them on our own, this is often the reason for our spiritual failings as well. Membership in a Basic Community may be just the support you need to really promote your own personal spirituality.

The best personal fitness trainers all agree that having a work-out partner is the best way to stick to your exercises. What we are suggesting with our Basic Communities is the same thing. Gathering a small group of folks to share faith and mutual support. In the ancient church, small gatherings of believers in individual homes were the principle way that the faith was lived and passed on. If these gatherings helped the first Christians thru the trials of Roman persecution and martydom, they can probably help to sustain us thru our modern day tribulations.

Generally these groups would meet weekly in one of the members homes over the period of Lent. The groups would work out all specifics, but in most cases the session would include some reflection on the Lenten scripture readings, followed by faith sharing, all of this possibly surrounded by a communal meal and drinks.

The disciples were not called individually, they were called to community, a community that would journey together with Jesus, and then spread his message thru out the world. Think of yourself as one of the disciples standing by the sea in today’s gospel, Jesus is calling you, calling you to repent and turn away from all those things keeping you from accepting God’s love.

Please give serious thought to accepting this invitation, by joining, or forming, a Basic Community. If you have any questions, feel free to ask Fr. Mallett or myself after mass, or by giving us a call at the rectory.

In order to turn away from sin, sometimes it is best to turn toward another; in them we can see something of Jesus and something of ourselves. In sharing our faith, we can renew our faith, and in so doing, renew our lives.

Midnight Mass 2004

Midnight Mass, 2004

Caesar Augustus issued a decree and set the whole world moving. What power there is in Imperial decree. Caesar speaks and everyone is uprooted. They all return to their native homes. Caesar’s word calls people back to their roots.

Caesar has a purpose. He wants the whole world to be numbered. He is counting his people. He needs their money. These people are not named, they are numbered. Their stories are not important. Who they are does not matter. What they can provide does. They represent an economic resource. A decree from Caesar. Word comes from Rome. An order comes from the centre of power to the margins, and the whole world moves. Caesar sees himself as the immoveable centre of a turning world.

Mary and Joseph move as well. They return to the city of David because that is where Joseph’s family began. King David was a shepherd, just like those in tonight’s gospel. The Lord took him from the obscurity of minding sheep and placed him at the centre of his people. David built a new city for his God, Jerusalem. It was the centre of every pious Jew’s life, for it was there that God dwelt in the midst of his people. David, the marginal character, became the cornerstone.

But, David also had an interest in numbering his people. In the 24th chapter of the 2nd Book of Samuel, we read that he decided to count the people of Israel. His generals and advisers warned him against this. The people belonged to God, the land belonged to God, neither belonged to David. The people were instruments of God’s purpose, they were neither economic units, nor chattel to be sent hither and yon by an earthly king.

David learned his lesson when a plague fell on Israel as a result of his presumption. David, much like Caesar, thought that he was the centre, the still point of a world upon which his policies turned.

St Luke is telling us that Caesar, secure in his palace, does not realize that he is now replaced as centre of the world. With the Incarnation, the world spins off its axis, as He through whom all things are made is born in the City of David and laid in a manger. The feast of Christmas calls us all back to our origins.

The first to see this wonder are the shepherds. Mary, Joseph and the child have nowhere to lay their heads. There was no room for them in the inn. The Son of Man can find no lodging. He came to his own and his own received him not. The shepherds too have no permanent place to lay their heads. They were literally ‘passing the night in the open’. They were outsiders. Central to their lives was their job. There was nowhere else to go for failed shepherds. Yet the shepherds, those who keep their eyes peeled, who live out in the open, who are outsiders, see the angel and the glory of the Lord before all others. Their masters are sound asleep in their beds, having turned the Lord of Glory from their doors. The shepherds see, and in seeing understand. The outsiders are brought within.

They do a strange thing. They say, “Let us go and see this wonder.” They went in haste. They forgot their flocks. They forgot their jobs. The fragile security of their profession was left behind them. The centre of their lives changed. It was no longer focused on vulnerable flocks of sheep, on a wind-swept hillside in the dark of night, depending on the patronage of wealthier men. The new centre of their lives was not their job, it was not Jerusalem, it was not Rome, it was a manger at which beasts were fed, which was transformed into the throne of the Lord. And they went back praising and glorifying God for all that they had seen. The marginal had become the centre.

To live in faith seems difficult in a world, which no longer resonates, to the songs and symbols of heavenly glory. Christians, as they make their way to church Sunday by Sunday, festival by festival, when their neighbors are sleeping, doing their shopping or heading to the game, can feel that they are on the margin, the odd ones out.

The Christmas gospel shows us that it was ever thus.

For the shepherds, it was easier to recognize what had happened, they were unencumbered by membership in society, they had no earthly king, they were not to be counted. We, here, now are almost continually counted … and tracked and polled, our society holds-up many kings for us to worship. Can we, like the shepherds, see through those who pretend to power to the real King of Glory.

The shepherds went back glorifying God for all that they had heard and seen. For the Angel had said to them “…Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy… For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord.”

Epiphany Homily

Epiphany, 2004

Our Gospel reading today is from one of only two of the gospels that contain the Christmas stories; Matthew and Luke. These stories are broken-up and distributed over the church’s various Christmas liturgies. Today’s reading from Matthew tells the story of the Magi; the wise men of the east. In this specific text, Matthew is telling us that Christ came for everyone of the world, even pagans from far-off lands. The other gospel to contain the Christmas story is Luke. Luke tells the story that we heard at midnight mass, it focuses on the shepherd’s, and makes no mention of the Magi. Luke seems to be telling us that Christ came for the poor and outcast as much as for anyone else.

Why is the Christmas story only included in two of the gospels? Why are there so many differences in the two stories themselves? These are complex questions of exegetics and theology, ones that I would happily address on some Wednesday evening.

What’s important for us today is that we appreciate these stories as epic drama, filled with image and meaning. They are a densely woven tapestry whose mysteries we can enter at any location, any one of which will lead us into the whole story.

The whole story, of course, is not just about the birth of Jesus. It is a story about what the world is like. It is a story about how God relates to this world. It is a story about our response to God’s presence and action in the world. In fact, we Christians claim that it is a revelation of God in story form, a primary revelation about the world, about God, and about us.

So what is the world like? If we look for revelation in the Christmas story, we are reminded that life is filled with light, miracles, glory, angels and stars. The world is a beautiful place, incredibly varied and wondrous. Creation reflects the infinite manifestations of an infinite God. Like those in the Christmas story, we’re all connected, we all have a role to play in the drama of life: the poor, the wise, the families, and the kings.

But, the Christmas story also reminds us that the world is a dangerous place filled with the darkness of Herod. The horrors of war, terrorism, and the ravages of natural disaster, as in the incomprehensible tsunami of recent days; the scourges of addiction, abuse, poverty, crime, homelessness; the evils of greed, prejudice, economic exploitation, and cruel indifference: we still allow and perpetuate all this. After all these years, we continue to ignore God’s call to live in peace, compassion and harmony as brothers and sisters of a common Creator.

This is what the world is like; complex, beautiful, sinful, dark and light. It is no different than 1st-century Bethlehem; a glorious mess, struggling forward and sliding back.

And to this world, how does God relate? What does the Christmas story tell us? God still comes to us and says peace and good will be among you. God still enters into this world in love and forgiveness, guiding us and helping us to move forward. God is still the light of the world, revealing what is true, exposing what is false, connecting all reality with energy and meaning.

How are we to respond to God’s action in the world? What is our side of the relationship? If we look for revelation in the Christmas story, we are told to hope and search. Like the shepherds watching the skies, like the Magi following the star through the desert, like the prophets in the temple who believed in the coming Messiah, like Mary and Joseph waiting for voices and dreams, we must call upon the faith that is planted within each one of us.

Finally, the Christmas story tells us that part of our response to God’s loving presence in the world is action; Mary accepting the overwhelming message of the angel, Joseph listening to his dreams, taking Mary as his wife, and later moving his family to safety in Egypt and then back again, and the Magi, who packed up and trekked across the desert, and later ignore Herod’s command and return to their homeland.

God asks more of us than worship. God asks us to act. The guidance and inspiration and vision of hope that God gives to us mean nothing if we are not willing, at some point, to act on it. “Right belief means nothing without right practice.” God seems unwilling to change us, or the world, without our active participation. We are not passive recipients of a magical divinity; we are co-creators, determining the future together with God. Our will power, our effort and our determination are just as important as our spiritual listening. It is only through our actions that God can bring peace, harmony, and compassion for the vulnerable of this world.

In this divine/human alchemy of God’s inspiration and our determined action, the Christmas story becomes fulfilled in our life, in our time. We move out of addiction and brokenness and idolatry into a more harmonious, centered, and healthy existence. We love, forgive, make amends, and reconcile. We demand peace from our leaders; we feed the hungry, we house the homeless, we heal the sick, and we bring justice to the alienated and forgotten.

These wonderfully complex and richly told stories of Christmas are not just about the birth of Jesus. They are stories about what the world is like. They are stories about how God relates to this world. And they must become the story of our response to God’s presence and action in the world.

So as we move forward into a new year, let us take-up our part of God’s work, not only by praying for the coming of the kingdom, but in our works and deeds attempt to make that kingdom a reality.