First Sunday of Lent

 

 Follow Me.  I Know the Way Out.

Hunger, powerlessness, and inadequacy are the weak spots Jesus struggled with.  We often focus on the battle and Jesus’s subsequent victory and overlook the temptation of the desert itself.

For us, going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food and an ample supply of water. Jesus had no such store of supplies. He was alone and fasting.  Fasting allowed him to experience need.  On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people and that centering one’s life around physical desires is a great deprivation (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Bread is a figure for the communion of friendship and community. This deprivation of human contact is a crucial part of his “desert experience”. He could turn those rocks to bread, but he would eat alone. Notice Satan does not want to give Jesus bread (communion) he simply is tempting Jesus to assuage his physical hunger.

 Jesus’s next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness.  Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries in exchange for devotion.  Look at what being submissive to God had gotten him: hunger pangs and loneliness. Milton’s Satan would have whispered into Jesus’ ear: “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven”.  He replies to Satan, quoting again from Deuteronomy: “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”   How often our fear of being powerless leads us to believe that getting power is the answer rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God. Too often, even “good causes” can become soiled with the ego of creating a utopia.

 The final temptation came in a form quite unlike all the others.  It was the showdown.  In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation becomes Jesus’ greatest vulnerability.  Just give me a sign of your love!  Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well.  Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test.  Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:

“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Satan quotes from Psalm 91, and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy: You shall not put your Lord God to the test”.  The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him.  How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon? 

This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat.  Being holy and being hounded has a long tradition of being paired. But like Jesus, we may be for a time in the desert; however, simply because the journey gets tough doesn’t mean we walk it alone.  At every turn, the community, animated by the Spirit, joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert. Consider the well-known story among those in recovery from addiction:

A man had fallen into a pit and could not escape. The first person who passes by offers him comforting words and moves on. The second person writes a prayer for the man, drops it into the pit, and also leaves. The third person jumps into the pit with the man. Astonished, the man in the pit yells, “How is this supposed to help?! Now we are both stuck here.” The man replies, “Yes. But I have been down here before, and I know the way out”.  

Ash Wednesday

 

Ash Wednesday: What We are Given

It has always fascinated me that Ash Wednesday is so popular. In some places, the act of imposing ashes on the forehead of the faithful has become separated from the Mass of which the ashes are a part. Some churches use the distribution of ashes as a kind of outreach ministry to the public, complete with “drive through” ash distribution where you can get a cross of ashes on the forehead without ever having to leave your car. Who has time to attend Mass these days, especially on Wednesday?

As well-intentioned as these outreach methods are, they miss a fundamental point; convenience and accessibility have little to do with true evangelization. Good news that does not require conversion isn’t “good.” 

Simon Tugwell, in his book The Way of Imperfection, discusses why popularity isn’t as fundamental as conversion in our faith. He writes,

“Christianity has to be disappointing, precisely because it is not a mechanism for accomplishing all our human ambitions and aspirations, it is a mechanism for subjecting all things to the will of God. . . .When people turn away from the church, because they find more satisfaction elsewhere, it is important not to assume that we, as christians [sic], ought to be providing such satisfaction ourselves; it is much more urgent that we take yet another look at what is it that we have genuinely been given in the church.”

What have we been given? On Ash Wednesday, we are given the gift of remembering that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But wait, aren’t we essentially body and soul, and isn’t it the body that returns to ashes while the soul ascends to heaven? This is a popular understanding of our soul and body, but we often forget the body after death, which contradicts what we affirm every Sunday in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”. Our bodies are part of our resurrection. How that will happen is anyone’s guess, but I imagine God, who created us, will not find it particularly difficult to restore our bodies. While our bodies do “return to dust”, it is the dust of our creation. We return to the essential matter from which God created us. Ash Wednesday asks us to remember where we came from and from whom we came. Christ’s death and resurrection from the dead are integral to the imposition of ashes, and his sacrifice to reveal this “resurrection of the body” (Apostle’s Creed) is made real at all Masses. The resurrection is given to us even as the ashes are traced on our forehead as a cross. To focus on the ash without discerning the nature of the cross is to forget the gift given to us by Christ.

So, for those who go to Mass on Ash Wednesday:  Come for the ashes, but stay for the resurrection.

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

 

The Re-Presentation of Our Lord

     Today’s blessing of the candles is linked to the verse from the Song of Simeon which declares Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.”  This canticle is also said/sung daily in the office of Compline, the final prayer before bed for monastics and those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours.  There is a second part, though, to Simeon’s declaration which follows after the canticle.  In it is the substance of his prophecy:

“Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign of contradiction---and you yourself a sword will pierce—so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

     What a shift in tone from a moment of exaltation and celebration proclaiming revelation to the Gentiles and joy to the Jewish people.  Talk about a mixed message!  But, indeed, the revelation of God in Jesus as a Christ is full of these “contradictions”.  Let’s look at a few:

1.       God, all-powerful, comes to His creation as a servant and willfully sacrifices Himself in the name of love.

2.      Jesus, the Messiah, who comes to deliver Israel, comes as a healer and shows his strength in acts of compassion rather than military action against the Romans.

3.      Though a Jew, Jesus’ message spreads primarily in the non-Jewish world, primarily through Jewish disciples.

4.      Paul, formerly known as Saul, was one of the great persecutors of the early Church, whose conversion to Christianity did more to spread the gospel than any other disciple.

     It is the contradiction embodied in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1:18-25):

¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
    the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”^[c]

²⁰ Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

      How, then, to we re-present Christ to the world, the same Christ Mary presented to the Temple in Jerusalem?  The message of Christ is a message of love, full of all the contradictions and irrational behavior, sorrows and joys that come in establishing and maintaining relationships.  We find human relationships messy; what makes us think our relationship with God will be any less so?  God, the lover of humanity, whose overtures are awkward and self-revealing speak of a vulnerability and sincerity embodied in the contradictions of Christ and the gospel.

     Our true mission isn’t to spread the knowledge of God, because God has formed each human in His likeness, and planted this knowledge deep in every human heart.  What awakens the Spirit in each human is the great, contradictory gospel of Christ, the unconditional love of God for humanity. Our lights today are a symbol of that love.  I ask you to take your candles home, blessed to remind us that the best way to show God to the world, to re-present Christ, is to not avoid the darkness of despair, of poverty, of injustice or those living in darkness, but to bring with you the light of the Spirit, Christ’s love, that illuminates the love of God in every heart.

The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

 

All things are possible for God

 

           I grew up with this Bible story of the Rich Young Man's entreaty for eternal life. Sadly, the Young Man cannot part with his possessions.  Jesus then uses this as a teaching moment, not to excoriate the rich, per se, but to show how powerful we cling to that which impedes us from entering the Kingdom.
           There is a popular story that attempts to deflate the hyperbole of a camel struggling to go through the eye of a needle. Without any historical evidence, some claim that there was a lesser gate in the wall surrounding Jerusalem that was opened at night, and to be able to move a camel through it, the camel had to crouch and kneel; it becomes inconvenient, but far from impossible. The rich feel better.
            Both the Jerome Biblical Commentary (Catholic commentary) and the Interpreter's Bible (Protestant) dismiss this "urban legend". What is telling isn't that this myth of the "eye of a needle" has had so much traction. This parable, however, isn't a story about the rich, but a story about the nature of faith.

The power of hyperbole is essential for this parable. It is more comfortable to believe that God rewards Christians who "do their duty", who obey the ordinances of the institution; however, Jesus is asking us to live this impossibility of dispossession---to get rid of anything that stands in the way of living the gospel.

Sometimes this can be rather a spectacular grace, but often, it is "whispering grace", grace that comes through a "chance encounter" with a stranger, or a growing sense of being loved by others who have experienced God's grace.  We then enter the Kingdom. We breach the impossibly narrow gates we've constructed to keep God's riches out.

Later in this gospel passage, Jesus declares to his disciples: "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God".  The nature of the Kingdom isn't an earthly institution we can control or enter through our wits to gain an advantage.  The Kingdom is ubiquitous.  It is all around us.  The Kingdom is revealed when we open our eyes to the grace of our poverty in Christ.  There is no greater act of downsizing than committing oneself to following the way of Christ rather than the commands of the Church. 

The wealth we need to jettison is the wealth of the false faith that is too often the false security of the institutional Church rather than the will of God.  When the institution doesn't reveal the Good News, we must live the Good News, not by fighting the church, but by modeling to the church what the Good News looks like.  We must live for the sake of Christ and the gospel, not the institutional grace of following rules and spending time trying to enter the Kingdom with what we mistakenly believe is essential. 

 

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

 

“Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

How long does it take to have faith that God will spare you from the ravages of a storm? What reason did the disciples have to think they would be spared? Jesus had not saved them from such harm before.  What does it take to have faith to face the wind, rain, and choppy seas with serenity?

I have always taken issue with Jesus’ rebuke and wish one of the disciples would have stood up and said, “Hey, we have left everything and followed you. You heal the lame, and feed the thousands with only a few fish and loaves of bread; you are an amazing guy, but who wouldn’t be afraid of being swamped in a small boat in the middle of a storm?”

We have no such comment (at least not one recorded), and should look more deeply to find the truth the gospel writer was trying to reveal in this story of terror and faith.

Mark’s story is in a long tradition of Old Testament stories where prophets still storms. The story's focus is to reveal Jesus’ identity as one “whom even the wind and sea obey”. The story is meant to establish Jesus’ association with God. The disciples’ faith is not yet fully developed and won’t be until Jesus’ crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit.

Yet, we who have the great advantage of hindsight, and the great gift of the Holy Spirit, often are stuck in the boat without the strength of faith. What excuse do we have?

From the Letter to the Hebrews: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, of things unseen”. Trust engenders hope, and hope, faith. Father Henry Nouwen wrote, “The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good…in some way, we cannot see”(Turn My Mourning into Dancing). Nouwen makes this crucial connection between trust and hope in writing that a “person in difficulty can trust because of a belief that something else is possible. To trust is to allow for hope.”

We don’t hope because of what God has done, but what God can do. We live within this relationship made real and present by the Spirit such that whatever happens to us, God is always present, not as a spectator, but as one who is with us, Emmanuel.  He is with us in and through the stormy weather. Our hope is not that every anxiety is assuaged, but that our connection with God is never broken. Our faith may not quell the storm, but it will allow us to see through it.

Second Sunday of Lent

 

"No Cross, No Crown"

We Catholics seem to love suffering, or so my Protestant friend is fond of saying.  I often retort, "No cross, no crown," which brings a raised eyebrow and suggestion to change the topic.  But, I must admit that it is as easy for Catholics to mistakenly evolve a spirituality of suffering for suffering's sake as it is for Protestants to evolve a "gospel of prosperity" where financial gain and material wealth are the goals of being a Christian.  Both views are distortions of Jesus' mission.
     In the first reading is Abraham's almost-sacrifice of Isaac.  Of this parable, early Judaism focused on the element of God testing Abraham, but with time, shifted focus to see the sacrifice in light of Isaac's willingness to submit to the will of his father and offer himself as a type of sacrificial lamb, a theme later picked up by the early Church's understanding of Jesus' Christhood.  The Pascal Lamb, as you recall, was the sacrifice for the deliverance of the Jews in captivity from  Egyptian oppression; where the blood of the lamb was sprinkled across the lintel of the door as a sign for the Angel of Death to pass over and spare the household.  What began as an understanding of Isaac's sacrifice simply as an act of blind compliance evolved into a deeper, more mature meaning of giving of oneself for the sake of others.
     This notion was picked up in Isaiah's Suffering Servant and is the character Jesus most closely aligned himself and his ministry around.  This understanding of Christ's mission as a servant who suffers for humanity is the foundation of Mark's gospel, which sought to counter the tendency of the early Gnostic-Christian communities' focus on Jesus' divinity revealed in the Transfiguration as the pinnacle revelation of God to humanity, not the suffering on the cross and resurrection; for the Gnostics, Jesus' divinity eclipsed his humanity and made the cross a distraction on the way to the crown.  That is why in Mark's gospel, Jesus continually cautions his believers not to reveal his Christhood because it is only in light of his suffering and resurrection that his mission is significant; he is the Suffering Servant Messiah, not the Warrior King messiah portrayed in Isaiah.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, 
he was bruised for our iniquities; 
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes, we are healed."

Christ's suffering was in the service of reconciling us to God, of bringing everyone into communion.  Jesus didn't seek out this suffering; he prayed, "Let this cup pass from me," while his disciples slept in the Garden of Gethsemane.  But Jesus also added to his prayer, "Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done."  To some extent, suffering is always a mystery; however, some suffering is beyond our comprehension.  If we suffer and cannot discern its origin, or it is out of our hands, we should pray for the trial to pass and include our willingness to submit to God's will.  We must, however, also not shy away from suffering in the pursuit of justice and love.  In the face of injustice, ours is not a retreat into Quietism, into a passive acceptance of the suffering of ourselves and our neighbor, but to face the suffering that will come when we face the oppressor and the rejection that will come when we give our hearts away to the love of our enemies.  The Crown only has ultimate significance in light of the love from the Cross.

First Sunday of Lent

 

Follow Me.  I Know the Way Out.

Hunger, Powerlessness, and Inadequacy:  These are the weak spots Jesus struggled with.  We often consider the battle and Jesus’ victory and overlook how the desert affected him.  Going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food; it would be suicide to make such a journey without sufficient food and water; however, we can survive without food for forty days if we are in good health and have adequate water.  Jesus was hungry.  Fasting allowed Jesus to experience the temptation to be independent of needing others to bake his bread and understand that life is more than the sum total of our physical desires and needs.  On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people and that centering one’s life around physical desires is an error (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Ultimately, we cannot rely completely on human communion but on God our creator.

            Jesus’ next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness.  Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries if he would worship Satan.  Look at what being submissive to God the Father had gotten him: hunger pangs and feelings of worthlessness.  There is that famous line from Paradise Lost where Satan says, “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven.”  This was a test of Jesus’ resolve for the mission; success wasn't on Jesus’ terms but on God the Father’s.  He replies to Satan by quoting again from Deuteronomy, “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”   How often does our fear of being powerless lead us to believe getting power is the answer, that realigning our priorities to become powerful is our ultimate goal rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God?

            The final temptation came in a form quite unlike all the others.  It was the ultimate showdown.  In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation becomes Jesus’ greatest vulnerability.  Just give me a sign of your love!  Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well.  Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test.  Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:

“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and: “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Satan quotes Psalm 91, and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy: “You shall not put your Lord God to the test.”  The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him.  How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon?  This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time,” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat.  Being holy and being hounded has a long tradition of being paired, but like Jesus, we may be paired for a time in the desert; simply because the journey gets tough doesn't mean we walk it alone.  At every turn, the Community, animated by the Spirit, joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert.  As the man standing at the bottom of a deep pit asks the other man who came to help him why he jumped in to be with him, that now they both were stuck.  The man who jumped in to rescue him said, “Don’t worry. I've been here before, and I know the way out”.