Twentysecond Sunday

Twenty-second Sunday Ordinary
September 3, 2006

“Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe," (Deuteronomy 4:1-8). "... Welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls" (James 1:17-27). "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile." (Mark 7:1-23)

Moses speaks to the people about the commandments of God's law. This version of the story (there are several) emphasizes that the commandments are written on our hearts, not merely “in stone”. The first letter of James makes this very clear: “welcome the word that has been implanted in you”. By the time this tradition became a part of our religious heritage, we had come to realize that God's words and commands are not found outside of us, but rooted in our being from the beginning. We have been offered an intimate relationship with the Spirit which includes the opportunity to be “wise and intelligent” in the application of the law. Leading an authentic spiritual life, then, is not a matter of purity or perfection in the observance of laws and regulations but of adherence to divine presence within and around us.

Jesus builds on Moses' words and corrects misconceptions of religious professionals about the spiritual life in the kingdom of God. He often reserves his most sternly worded warnings to those who might think that a religion based only on perfect obedience to laws and rules (whatever "enters from the outside") has any place in his kingdom. The spiritual life is guided from the inside out One of the most destructive ideas in religious thinking is that there is a "best and purest" way to God. It permeates every religious tradition and destroys whatever was originally good within them. Goodness derives from the Spirit of the one God within us and is found uniquely in every human person.

I recall as a young man looking for a spiritually superior vocational path. I, like many others, believed then that this meant only one thing, to pursue the life of "perfection". We imagine that there is a hierarchy of vocations, some better than others by their very nature. I decided that this meant I should pursue the "best" life in a monastery. It was a painful process to be forced to relinquish this illusion. No one there was perfect and neither was I. Like St. Paul, Martin Luther and so many others, the harder I tried to achieve perfection by observance of the rules, the more anxious, frustrated and unhappy I became and unhappy. I am grateful to those monks who were patient enough to let me discover this. It was there that I took another step toward freedom and discovering the God in my heart.

True religion is a love affair with God and other people in the human heart. The Spirit pursues us and we pursue the Spirit, the source of all freedom and happiness. The Kingdom of Heaven is found in the perfection of the Holy Spirit which makes God present to us every moment of our lives.

Twenty first Sunday

Twentyfirst Sunday Ordinary
August 27, 2006

"Decide today whom you will serve." (Joshua 24) "Be subordinate to one another... husbands, love your wives..." (Ephesians 5:21-32) “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." (John 6: 60-69)

Joshua organizes the tribes of Israel for battle and places before them their choice of which god they will worship. This era of Israel's history, not unlike today, will be filled with fighting over which god and people possess the land. "Gods will" justifies the most brutal violence on innocent and guilty alike from both sides. How often a similar scenario has been played out across the centuries and in many places over the earth. Our American ancestors hungry for land invoked a similar argument (divine and manifest destiny) to justify the deliberate brutal extermination of Native American peoples and cultures. The end justifies the means. Might makes right. God is on our side. In fact, there is no choice. There is only one God and one side. God is on everyone's side, and only desires that we start acting more like this was true.

St. Paul writes about marital relationships from his perspective of ancient ideas and practices. This passage has often been lifted out of context to support preconceived ideas about the proper roles of men and women. It begins with the principle of mutual subordination and love which should apply to all relationships. Nothing justifies domination of one individual by another. In many relationships this spiritual principle was either never learned or lost as conflict and blame escalated. In the most successful relationships partners learn to trust that each will respect the other's freedom and individuality. This is how God loves us.

The disciples are struggling with some of Jesus' more enigmatic and difficult teachings, which seem many times to contradict each other if taken literally. As a result many former disciples went away. He asks the apostles if they are still with him and Peter responds poignantly, "Where else would we go?". This is a marvelous summary of trust in a God when life as it is presents us with ambiguous and puzzling dilemmas. We do not like confusion. We want certain answers to ultimate questions of existence. But there are none if we look to "the flesh". Reason and observation hide as much as they reveal. New scientific and historical discoveries, as important as they are, always lead to more questions. Jesus gives us this principle for making sense of ultimate things: "It is the Spirit which gives life". True religion is less about finding answers and more about trust in the Spirit. I read recently that faith is not so much believing in God as it is believing God. The Spirit is trust, love and hope.

Twentieth Sunday Ordinary

Twentieth Sunday Ordinary
August 20, 2006

"Wisdom... has spread her table... Come, eat of my food... Forsake foolishness... advance in the way of understanding." (Proverbs 9:1-6). "Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish people but as wise...." (Ephesians 5: 15-20). "I am the living bread... whoever eats this bread will live forever." (John 6:51-58).

Divine Wisdom is a personification (a woman in this case) of God, who builds a house and sets out a meal of teachings to sustain us in daily life. The foundation of all wisdom is a God who is both good and all-powerful. We also know from experience that bad and good things happen to the deserving and undeserving alike. No one has ever been able to figure out how or why a good and all-powerful God could allow this. Wisdom tells us that it is foolish to try to understand it with intricate philosophies. Some things are simply beyond our understanding in spite of all we have discovered about our world. Perhaps there is no "theory of everything". A wise person learns how to live contentedly with the ambiguities and uncertainties of life. Ironically the deepest understanding comes from not trying to understand more than this. Wisdom, like a good mother, bypasses philosophical discussions and gives us nourishing practical guidance about living successfully. "Mother said there would be days like this!"

Jesus makes a most outlandish statement which must sound like foolishness to many who hear him. He is claiming that anyone willing to be totally united to him, body and soul, heart and mind, will be given God's own life for eternity. Like the "meal" of Divine Wisdom and the Word of God when we hear it with our hearts, so in the Eucharist we "eat" God whose very self becomes part of us. God completely permeates our entire world and our inner selves. Nevertheless our individual selves are not lost but live forever with God. This is not to say that we can ignore present problems of life. Far from it.

No one is independent of other people, the earth, or the Spirit In our personal lives it is foolish to wait for adversity to strike before starting to develop a spiritual attitude and a community of friends and family. By the time it does, it is too late to begin. This is also true globally. We can no longer afford to foolishly ignore the mounting evidence that the earth's resources are rapidly being depleted. Are we really willing to risk everything on the foolish illusion that success and happiness is measured by the size of our armies, bank accounts, cars, houses or how much stuff we accumulate?

St. Paul cautions us not to get caught up in the foolishness of the world around us. We are willing to appear foolish in holding on to the hope that we have a future with God beyond this life and that it must begin here and now. The Most High may not come out of the heavens to rescue us from our foolishness if we refuse to respond to the invitation to the table of Divine Wisdom. It is

Twentieth Sunday Ordinary

Twentieth Sunday Ordinary
August 20, 2006

"Wisdom... has spread her table... Come, eat of my food... Forsake foolishness... advance in the way of understanding." (Proverbs 9:1-6). "Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish people but as wise...." (Ephesians 5: 15-20). "I am the living bread... whoever eats this bread will live forever." (John 6:51-58).

Divine Wisdom is a personification (a woman in this case) of God, who builds a house and sets out a meal of teachings to sustain us in daily life. The foundation of all wisdom is a God who is both good and all-powerful. We also know from experience that bad and good things happen to the deserving and undeserving alike. No one has ever been able to figure out how or why a good and all-powerful God could allow this. Wisdom tells us that it is foolish to try to understand it with intricate philosophies. Some things are simply beyond our understanding in spite of all we have discovered about our world. Perhaps there is no "theory of everything". A wise person learns how to live contentedly with the ambiguities and uncertainties of life. Ironically the deepest understanding comes from not trying to understand more than this. Wisdom, like a good mother, bypasses philosophical discussions and gives us nourishing practical guidance about living successfully. "Mother said there would be days like this!"

Jesus makes a most outlandish statement which must sound like foolishness to many who hear him. He is claiming that anyone willing to be totally united to him, body and soul, heart and mind, will be given God's own life for eternity. Like the "meal" of Divine Wisdom and the Word of God when we hear it with our hearts, so in the Eucharist we "eat" God whose very self becomes part of us. God completely permeates our entire world and our inner selves. Nevertheless our individual selves are not lost but live forever with God. This is not to say that we can ignore present problems of life. Far from it.

No one is independent of other people, the earth, or the Spirit In our personal lives it is foolish to wait for adversity to strike before starting to develop a spiritual attitude and a community of friends and family. By the time it does, it is too late to begin. This is also true globally. We can no longer afford to foolishly ignore the mounting evidence that the earth's resources are rapidly being depleted. Are we really willing to risk everything on the foolish illusion that success and happiness is measured by the size of our armies, bank accounts, cars, houses or how much stuff we accumulate?

St. Paul cautions us not to get caught up in the foolishness of the world around us. We are willing to appear foolish in holding on to the hope that we have a future with God beyond this life and that it must begin here and now. The Most High may not come out of the heavens to rescue us from our foolishness if we refuse to respond to the invitation to the table of Divine Wisdom. It is

Nineteenth Sunday

Nineteenth Sunday Ordinary
August 13, 2006

"He prayed for death saying: “This is enough, O LORD! Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” (1 Kgs 19:4-8) "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6:41-51)

Elijah holds a special place in Jewish history and lore. He has no known ancestry, something very rare in the Hebrew Scriptures. His name contains the sacred Hebrew letters of God's name. He "stands before God" all by himself with only his faith in the Most High. He opposes Ahab and Jezebel and their foreign God (Ba'al), sending a drought on the land and slaying 450 priests of their cult. This is another good reason not to take everything in the Bible literally. We would certainly not want to return to this primitive stage of religious thought and practice where violence is sanctioned as being the will of God. Tragically it is still happening in our own day. The story is that Elijah did not die but ascended into the heavens on a fiery chariot. In Jesus' time it was widely believed that his return from the sky would be a sign of the coming of the Messiah. Recall that he was seen with Moses when Jesus was revealed to the disciples as God's favored one on the mountain of the Transfiguration.

In our passage Elijah is being chased all over the countryside by Jezebel's henchmen. She wants to kill him for interfering with her plans to hold on to the power and wealth of Ahab's court. Exhausted from the ordeal, he sits down under the shade of a tree and starts to whine and complain to Yahweh to just let him die rather than go on with his miserable life. The angel of God who appears to him in a dream, patiently listens and encourages him persistently to go on.

We, too, love to whine. I am a master of the art. A little bit of it can be very therapeutic, especially when done in fun. We all have a right to complain and feel sorry for ourselves. Sometimes we don't remember that a suffering person needs to be heard before being corrected. But a little of it goes a long way and too much drives a wedge between us and God and between us and other people. God's patience is endless but even our closest friends and family have their limits. Most of us have too much to whine about ourselves to listen to others for very long. Like Elijah's angel, good friends know when to listen to us complain and when to tell us that enough is enough. One of the arts of suffering is to discern when to complain, when to ask for help and when to suck it up.

Elijah, after eating a meal provided by God's angel, was strengthened to continue his life. In the same way God provides food for our journey to sustain us especially when we are weary and hard-pressed to continue by ourselves. The Spirit and the Sacrament is that food which Jesus refers to in the gospel. The people of God are that food when we support each other on the journey.

Transfiguration of Jesus

Transfiguration of Christ
August 6, 2006

"I saw one like a Son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven..." (Daniel 7: 9-14). "He was transfigured before them." (Mark 9:2-10)

The prophet Daniel has a vision of the "Son of Man" (the term Jesus uses most often in the Gospels to refer to himself) coming to lead the people to their final destiny. These mystical visions are not necessarily to be taken literally. They are a promise that the misery of the present life can be transformed.

Jesus again takes his disciples up on a mountain, where their heavenly Father reveals his true identity. We have from the beginning understood this as one of the defining events in Christ's life, a glimpse into our future with God. The disciples' confidence in Jesus allowed them a brief vision of this divine reality. Then Jesus instructs them not to say anything until the "Son of Man has risen from the dead"! Even they could not understand the full significance of what they had seen and heard. How could they have possibly imagined that they had not only experienced Jesus' future but our own?

The Transfiguration story reveals something beyond the obvious fact that God had something very special in store for Jesus. We might be inclined to do as the disciples wanted, and stay gazing, overwhelmed and in awe at Jesus' special relationship with God. It is clear however that we, like Jesus and the disciples, will have to eventually return from this marvelous vision, without forgetting it, to the every day challenges of the life of faith.

There are wonderful transformations, God being revealed to us, daily if we have the eyes to see and ears to hear them. A courageous friend recently wrote a last sermon to her congregation because of advancing Parkinson's disease. She has lost a daughter, been divorced just this year, and daily works her addiction recovery program. She prays: "God of my emptiness, so often you have used my emptiness to draw me to you. Do so again. It is the emptiness that tells me you are there waiting to complete me. I am suspended in this place, not always able to feel your touch, but knowing by my aching that you can embrace me... I am a woman incomplete".

We all have similar transformations occurring in ourselves and those around us. God is as surely present here as on the mountain of Transfiguration. How different our worlds could be if we saw them all. We will all be transformed into the perfect realization of our potential as daughters and sons of the Most High. The second reading today says it beautifully, "You will do well to be attentive...as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts." (II Peter 1: 16 -19)