Third Sunday after Pentecost

Who is afraid of good news?

As Christians living in 21st century America, we have little to fear from society. 70.6 percent identify themselves as Christian. Unlike Jesus’ disciples, we are not likely to be persecuted for our faith, and we can shout from rooftops or street corners until we are out of breath and will likely not receive anything more than disapproving stares or neighbors yelling at us to be quiet. So how do the words of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel apply to us? A little context might help.

This part of Matthew’s gospel was part of Jesus’ commissioning his disciples to go into the world and assuring them that things will go rough, but that eventually the truth will be revealed and they will stand in favor with God. What has been revealed in secret is not to be proclaimed from “rooftops”. Considering the persecution of the followers of Jesus in Matthew’s time, it isn’t surprising that he incorporated Jesus’ admonition to not be fearful in today’s gospel. We, too, are often hesitant to evangelize, perhaps less out of fear than out of discomfort at what the popular notion of evangelization entails.

Most people when they hear evangelization picture people acting irrationally on the streets shouting the same Bible verse over and over again and handing out tracts; however, evangelization is nothing more (or less) than delivering good news. In fact, it is more than good news—though it must be at least this—- it is the Good News of Christ.  A good question to ask yourself at this point is how is this Good News, good news?

Today’s reading from Romans captures an essential truth that is certainly good news: What was created, through sin, by Adam has been destroyed by Christ. Adam’s sin led to the alienation of humanity from God, not through some genetic predisposition, but through the building of our human traditions and goals outside of living in daily communion with our Creator. In Christ, “all things are made new”. 

This newness is the restoration of communion with God. How, then, do people who are happily going about their daily lives, consider this good news? It seems their lives are good news already.  Here comes the essential part of biblical evangelization patterned after Jesus’ ministry.

As Christians, we bring the good news as healing for those whose lives are weeping wounds. These are those who long for human communion, let alone Divine communion; we can offer them both! Often these lives are messy, full of unreasonable demands on our time, and burden our sense of duty. Who the world has abandoned we come delivering the Good News of communion, first with ourselves, and through this healing relationship, communion with God.  And we don’t need to venture far to find those longing for the good news of the Good News.

                We begin our missionary journey in our own hearts. Before we can share God’s healing, we must allow God working in us to heal our woundedness, our chaotic dysfunctions—the messiness in our lives first. Before we can be Christ to the world, we need to allow our fellow Christians to be Christ for us. That is why the notion of “I can be a Christian alone” is deceptive. As a monk, I am not disparaging the very special vocation of the hermit; what I am suggesting is that all Christians are first and foremost called to witness to the Gospel in in their lives. The Gospel proclaimed on the lips must first come from the Gospel proclaimed in the heart of the believer.

                Now the “fear” becomes apparent. For many, allowing others to heal us means we must first acknowledge our need for others, to let the wounds of Christ be visible in us so that the healing of Christ can begin.  We must learn to be docile to the good intention of others, and in allowing others to see our woundedness, allow them to love us from our faith that God has loved us into being first. It is only then we will have a story of healing to bring to the world, and the good news of the Good News to share.

The Holy Trinity

"Batter my heart three-person God"

--John Donne, "Meditation 14"

Preaching on theological-theme-Sundays is particularly challenging because it invites abstraction and can quickly turn into a lecture; even in a seminary, seminarians want to hear a homily rather than a lecture at Mass.

The Holy Trinity is difficult because the official declaration of God's identity as "three persons one God" seems to run contrary to our understanding of what it means to be a person. For many, such language brings up popular images of "multiple personalities" in a single person suffering from a mental disorder. There is a quotation from the spiritual masterpiece The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis that gives us a great place to start:

What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? ( Book 1, Chapter 1)

The first thing we should recognize is that any theological understanding finds its ultimate meaning in the goal of all Christian life: to allow God to transform us daily into becoming more like Christ. With that in mind (and heart), let's consider today's readings, how the Blessed Trinity is revealed in them, and the implications for our life in Christ.

One of the essential characteristics of the Trinity is God's nature revealed through relationships not only among the persons of the Trinity but also with us. God's revelation is an invitation to join this relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God has become known to us through revelations (the Prophets), redemptive action (Jesus as Christ), and acting within us (The Holy Spirit) in such a way as to recognize in oneself and one's neighbor, the Divine. This three-part structure: God-self, God-revelation, and God-within, is the basis of how we know God.

Deuteronomy speaks of God's existence in both heaven and earth, acting in both revelation and redemption.

...fix in your heart, that the LORD is God in the heavens above and on the earth below, and that there is no other . . . . that you and your children after you may prosper, and that you may have long life on the land . . . ."

In Paul's letter to the Romans, he explicitly writes of God in terms of Father and Spirit and of being "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ" The text takes an interesting turn, then, and suggests that this relationship is only fully recognized (The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit) "if only we suffer with him." Paul is suggesting that we will be led by the Spirit into the sufferings of Christ to enter into the glory of the Father. How often do we regard God as aloof and incapable of suffering because of the attribution of "perfect". Something perfect does not suffer, but God as the Christ did suffer (contrary to the rather insipid claim of the Gnostics) and does suffer. The reason God suffers, for Paul, is clear: we are all God's children. God suffers because of His great love for his creation and his perfect love expressed in our free will to walk away from our inheritance like a petulant child walks away from Disneyland to play in the backyard on a dry, brown lawn with broken toys in the summer heat to spite his parents.

In Matthew's gospel, the Trinity is explicit in the triadic baptismal formula with the promise that the role of the disciple is to teach the world "all that I have commanded you". If you remember three weeks ago, Jesus commands his disciples: "love one another". The mission, then, of both the Church and the individual, is one of "going out" into the world, as Christ and the Father "went out" of themselves---God in creation, revelation, and redemption, Christ in perfect obedience to the Father. This centrifugal force of the Spirit, though, is only possible as a fruit of loving one another--the centripetal force of the inwardness of God's presence within us and Christ's presence in the community of the faithful. What draws us together, leads us to the mission. 

The mission will "batter" us, to quote the epigraph from Donne, but we live because we are embraced by God's Spirit in following the battered Christ resurrected. Donne's pleading seems masochistic until one realizes that to join in this family of God's children, the way of life and glory is also the way of suffering and death for love of the other, embodying the practice of the Trinity. Who could ever understand such love? 

Pentecost

The Language of the Holy Spirit

". . . they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language."

The first action at Pentecost had to do with the paradox of a single group of men from a particular region speaking so that others who spoke many other languages heard them in their own language.  Perhaps the message was one of universal salvation.  Scripture simply says the Spirit ". . . enabled them to proclaim. . . .  the mighty acts of God." What could be mightier than the gathering of all nations to the loving call of God?

Too often, the call one hears in one's own language can lead one to assume God's call is exclusive to him or herself; that the others couldn't have got it right because God is speaking so personally to me! But the language of the Holy Spirit, which is heard in all languages, is the language of the Cross and the Empty Tomb.  The language of the Holy Spirit is loving-sacrifice and triumphing-over-death.

The Spirit's long embrace of love is "as a flame of fire."  This simile suggests it is a passionate, dynamic, and living presence.  Candles, "eternal flames" of remembrance, the sanctuary lamp, all mirror this reality of a living, present God.  Each of us, born like an unlit candle, becomes a light with God's touch at baptism and is the sustaining presence that burns brightly in dark places where light is sorely needed.  As Jesus proclaimed, "I am the light of the world"(John. 8:12), so too we are called to live as "Children of the light"(Ephesians 5:8-19). This light, as St. Paul reminds us takes the form of the many and various gifts of the Holy Spirit; yet, 

As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. (1Cor.12:12-13)

And in "this one body," we work out our salvation light's gift of God.  Too often, diversity is looked upon with suspicion by the institutional church and among Christian denominations.  Instead of looking at one another with a sense of mystery and awe at the diverse workings of the Holy Spirit, we assume error because of the difference.  Very often, this difference is mistaken as disunity; what, in fact, it is is a lack of uniformity.  What living system exhibits uniformity?  When, then, is the difference error?  The Spirit is also our teacher, and what is not of God will always manifest itself as a force pulling people away from the peace, love, and hope of Christ.  St. Paul writing to the Galatians (Gal.5:22) declares: "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentlenesses and self-control. Against such things, there is no law.”  

 In 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, after discussing the “many gifts, one Spirit,” Paul writes elegantly of the primacy of love as evidence of the Spirit’s presence:

If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge. If I have a faith that can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing....Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Love is the language of the Holy Spirit and the sure sign of God’s dwelling and the source of our comfort, instruction, healing light, and salvation