Holy Trinity

 

"Batter my heart three-person God"
--John Donne, "Meditation 14"

The Holy Trinity is challenging because the official declaration of God's identity as "three persons one God" appears to contradict 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? Indeed, it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it." 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 the Christ that has dwelt in us since baptism. 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 relationship, and God's "aseity", or uncreated, perfectly actualized being. Wow, that sounded like the beginning of a seminary essay!  Scripture implies not only God's uncreated nature, it also gives us an experience of God as moving away from self into humanity in the form of revelations (the Prophets) and redemptive action (Jesus as Christ), and acting within human nature in such a way to recognize in oneself, and one's neighbor, the Divine.  This three-part structure: God-self, God-revelation, God-within humanity, becomes the basis to reflect our experience of God's relationship to humanity.

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 a long life on the land . . . ."

In Paul's letter to the Romans, he explicitly writes of God in terms of Father, 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 commanded 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 involved 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, that the others couldn't have gotten 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, and the sanctuary lamp all mirror the reality of a living, present God.  Each of us, born like an unlit candle, becomes 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, the light's gift of God.  Too often, diversity is viewed with suspicion by the institutional church and within 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 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 gentleness, 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, and salvation.

The Ascension of Our Lord, Jesus Christ

 

Now What?

Ascension has all the makings of a story’s end.  Jesus, who was crucified and is now resurrected, is once again with his disciples, teaching them to anticipate the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Then, in a moment of great transcendent glory, he departs, “lifted up into the clouds”.  We have been following the story since Christmas. Now it is only fitting that as we watch him ascend, there is a feeling of completion; the drama will certainly end with the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

In truth, the story continues to the Eschaton and the righteous judgment of humanity, culminating in the end of earthly history.

The ascension completes the human ministry cycle of Jesus and begins the reign of Christ within the Church. The Kingdom is more than a representation of Christ to humanity; it continues as God’s presence among us. For Christians, the Holy Spirit gives us communion with God the Father and Son; we now “abide” with God. For non-believers, we become more than simply messengers of a doctrine; we have the potential to be Christ’s presence.

The liturgical cycle reflects this well. Most of our time is spent after Pentecost. This is the time to compare our lives with the life of Christ and his ministry.  In the Advent-Christmas cycle, we revisit God’s incredible love for humanity and the birth of Jesus. Then, in the Lent-Easter cycle, we celebrate the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection, ascension, and the spark of the Holy Spirit, which sets the Earth ablaze with God’s Kingdom once again. The final chapter has not been written, and there is much work yet to be done.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

 

Keeping Our Word

Jesus’ farewell address has the curious phrase, “Whoever loves me will keep my word” (Jn. 14:23).  We all understand how to keep our word, but how is it that Jesus asks us to keep it? In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Word, in Greek, the Logos of God.  The Son in the Trinity is the Word of God; the Son proceeds from the Father as God’s Word, his expression of perfect love for all creation.  Just as words that come from us reveal ourselves to the world, so the Word (Jesus) proceeded from God the Father as a revelation of God’s true nature.

Keeping Jesus’ word is nurturing God’s promise of salvation that Jesus’ life embodied as a sign of grace, God’s great love for His creation in general, and humanity in particular. The world can know God most intimately through Jesus the Christ, though God reveals Himself in many other ways and to many other people; however, our faith tells us God’s preeminent and perfect revelation of Himself is through Jesus.

The second part of today’s gospel anticipates the gift of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate or someone who acts on another’s behalf.  The Spirit, then, is how we can keep Jesus’ word to us and God’s Word to humanity.  Jesus’ reference to peace in declaring, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”  The world offers us a sense of peace that can only be temporary; the peace of Christ is eternal peace, but it isn’t a peace that leaves us in a type of protective spiritual bubble that inoculates us from the difficulties of life.  The Reverend A.J. Muste, a famous American clergyman who preached peace, said, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."  

 We stand upon the foundation of peace that allows us to face the world in all its chaos and turmoil because keeping Christ’s peace means venturing into a violent and broken world with Good News when all around us is falling apart.  William Blake’s famous line from “The Second Coming,” “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” is the bad news of the peace the world gives.  The peace of Christ is the center that holds for eternity and extends out into the world, and draws everyone in like foundlings brought from a storm into a warm, protective, loving home. Alleluia, Christ is risen!

Fifth Sunday of Easter

 

A New Commandment?

Jesus tells his disciples that he will leave them shortly. He doesn't have instructions, an organizational plan, or even inspired writings. He simply gets their attention by declaring he is giving them a new commandment: "Love one another." 

Interestingly, he doesn't repeat an earlier reference to the "greatest commandment" in response to fancy rhetoric from a Pharisee to love God and neighbor.  This commandment is more in line with the needs of the community of the faithful. Because if the community is not animated by love, love of God and love of neighbor grow out of fiction. What Christ is trying to establish is what grounds the community: love. Doctrinally, the Church is founded on Christ, which is all well and good, but it isn't a very practical statement without this "new commandment". Just as the popular phrase "believing in Jesus" doesn't help understand what one must do with this belief, reciting doctrine or dogma can't substitute for love. Christianity is not merely a creed.

In our first reading, we get a sense of the heady times in the early Church. That although "it is necessary to undergo many hardships", people saw the love of Paul and Barnabas that drew them to worship Christ, which is to say, to join them on this "way".  They "opened the door of faith" by inviting them to share a journey animated by love based on sacrifice.

It is easy to get lost in the rhetoric and rituals of Christianity and forget that resurrection is only through crucifixion. Sacrificial love caps God's revelations of prophets and kings, and ultimately of his revelation through Christ. To obey God's final commandment is to love his creation (including oneself) with all the passion we can muster and all the grace we can take.

Fourth Sunday of Easter

 

Sheepish Leaders

If you knew God was speaking to you, you would likely listen. It is even more likely that you would be trembling in fear and, like countless times in the Bible, have to be encouraged not to be afraid. 

In the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus speaking as the Good Shepherd, which makes us sheep. Sheep have the reputation for being rather dull, but I suppose if you look at the course of history from the outside, say the way an alien race might see us, perhaps the sheep would come out ahead.

In the gospel reading, Jesus does not lead with a conditional statement: “If my sheep hear my voice”, he says, “My sheep hear my voice”; it is a declaration. As a matter of fact, real sheep (not metaphorical ones) have been reported to be as good as people in distinguishing others in a crowd (Sheep 101.info). So why use sheep to make his point?

As in most of Jesus’ figurative statements, he uses something familiar to his audience; however, like Paul and Barnabas in the first reading, his audience was divided: some followed, some thought he was a nut.

The Gospel of Christ isn’t a very attractive philosophy. Following is, for us, a becoming, a transformation into someone who recognizes Christ by his “voice”. Where do we hear Christ’s voice?  Most clearly, we hear the voice of Christ in those who are oppressed, who are marginalized and unjustly punished, who are poor in spirit and materially poor (the two often go together).  It is the “least of these”; but to put this phrase in context from the 25th Chapter of Matthew, the “least” are his disciples. Following Christ puts us at the end of the line, so the poor do not always see those outside our community, but those inside our community as well. It is in our poverty, the ordinariness of our daily lives, that Christ speaks, and we respond.  Last week, Christ said to his disciples, “Feed my sheep” we are those sheep; we are those shepherds.

Third Sunday of Easter

 

He Reveals Himself in This Way

This is an incredible story that resonates with an earlier account of Jesus giving fishing advice to fishermen. In Luke chapter 5, Jesus has the disciples “put out for deep water” and fish. The boat was overwhelmed with fish. Also in Luke’s account, Simon Peter was the “voice” of the disciples and “fell down at Jesus’ knees saying ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” In today’s gospel, however, Peter launches himself half-naked into the water and swims ashore ahead of the rest, only to be confronted by one question asked three times: “Do you love me?”. Three times, Peter affirms his loyalty, which some commentators suggest is an undoing of Peter’s denial of Christ three times. Whatever the case, it is significant that Jesus is recognized in the miracle and in serving them. He does not tell them he will make them fishers of men as he did previously, but this time he tells Peter, “Feed my sheep.” As Christ has fed them, literally, he is sending them into a life of serving those whom they “catch.” For us, it isn’t a numbers game; it isn’t simply about how many fish we get, it's about serving those attracted to Christ. How will they recognize the risen Christ who has already risen and ascended into heaven? They will see Christ risen in our lives of service and communion, of mission and faith.

Divine Mercy Sunday (Second Sunday of Easter)

 

Resurrection and Woundedness

It was important to the early Church that the account of Jesus' resurrection did not become a "ghost story."  Some followers of Christ could not reconcile his divinity with his humanity and concluded that Jesus, being divine, could not have truly suffered on the cross; a wounded God is much more difficult to worship. Luke writes in the tradition of Christians who share the conviction, handed down by the Apostles, that Christ's humanity and suffering did not detract from his divinity.

When Jesus invited his Apostles to touch his wounds and then to give him some cooked fish to eat, his intent was clear: "It is I myself."  During Good Friday, we venerated the Cross and meditated on the wounds of Christ, as those wounds were the sins of humanity being put upon Christ. Today, we see Jesus, the resurrected Christ, but we also see his wounds. Jesus was resurrected with his wounds.

Being resurrected doesn't mean we jettison our wounds, or, as Hamlet put it, "shuffle off our mortal coil"; the resurrection has transformed our wounds, not removed them.  We carry our wounds through our baptism into our new life in Christ, and we often take on new wounds.  What is markedly different, though, is as Christians, we live with our wounds visible, proof of our resurrection.  We can share the painful wounds we've received because we live in a new body, the body of Christ.  Love has conquered death, our wounds are no longer harbingers of death: proof we have not died, but that we live.

What being resurrected means for us is living with the confidence that love overcomes death.  That our wounds present in our new life in Christ become a source of great hope for those whose woundedness has led to death.  Like Christ, we can live a life that removes the defensive imperative to cover our wounds and move to dominate, to control, and accumulate wealth.  Our life in Christ shows the world another way: the way of Jesus displaying his wounds to his followers as the beginning of their spiritual journey as people of the Resurrection.

Easter Sunday of the Resurrection

 

He is Risen!

The older I get, the less concerned I am about the historical facts of my faith.  Don't get me wrong, if I could know some historical fact regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I'd jump at the opportunity; it's more a matter of accepting the inherent limitations of living a life of faith regarding the type of knowledge faith reveals.  I see so many folks trading their faith for a type of intellectual dishonesty that makes bizarre claims in an attempt to find empirical backing for what they claim to already believe.  Based on biblical passages, Harold Camping calculated the exact time for Christ’s return. For Harold, this wasn’t faith but empirical truth. He convinced others.  The time came and went.  Nothing.  Another date was set; his calculations were a bit off the first time.  The time came and went.  Nothing.  Finally, Camping admitted he got the whole thing wrong and will no longer make any further predictions.  Humiliated, alone, and pilloried in the press, Harold Camping takes his first step towards resurrection: crucifixion.  

There is no other way to resurrection than through crucifixion.  This is the substance of my faith when I proclaim each Sunday, "He was crucified, died, and buried.  On the third day, he rose again by the scriptures." 

Crucifixion forces our hand to break our plans for an orderly and carefully controlled life and puts us at the feet of the cross or on it.  We will likely never have empirical, historical evidence of Jesus’ bodily resurrection; this is faith. Still, one thing is eminently probable: Jesus was killed on the cross by Roman and religious authorities who were threatened by the instability of challenged metaphors: Jesus said he was a king, and Jesus said he was the Messiah.  The only possible way Jesus could walk to the cross was a faith born not in what would come after but in the sustaining relationship of love he had with the Father.  Jesus' fear and feeling of dejection in murmuring the 22nd Psalm, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me," ends with the 31st Psalm: "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit."  

The Resurrection is what happened after.  The disciples witnessed it according to the accounts of Scripture.  But my faith finds its foundation in the resurrections I've experienced in others and in myself that have their origin in The Resurrection. 

Easter is the "difficult birth" of a faith borne on the cross of one who died two thousand years ago and claimed to be a king and Messiah. Still, the millions of new lives hewn from the roughness of the Cross are witness to a deeper and more profound truth than an historical event, and the Resurrection has lived long after Jesus walked the earth.

Good Friday of the Lord's Passion

 

We Call this Friday Good

Good Friday is when we recall that even Jesus' closest disciples fled into the night and sought refuge away from the Roman and Temple authorities for fear that they too would be arrested. What a spectacular failure of faith.

Today is a day we move deeply into meditating on our need to tell God, like Jesus, hanging on the cross, to pull off another miracle, save yourself, and save us! No? We’re out of here! I’m not going to end up like that!! 

     Peter’s famous denial three times echoes Jesus’ earlier query, also three times: “Do you love me, Peter?” Peter responded then: “You know that I love you!” Now, fearful of his life, he replies, “I know nothing of this man you refer to!” This person is the disciple upon whom the Church is built: Peter, called “Rock” by Jesus, crumbles into sand at the crucifixion. 

     The cross is a spectacle of human folly, failure, and faithlessness. "Yet, in spite of that", as T.S. Eliot wrote, “We call this Friday good.” Its goodness lies in God’s total submission to his love for humanity in the person of Jesus. It is the goodness inherent when we willingly suffer for another person, perhaps a stranger, or even an enemy. Today, we contemplate how we respond to being asked to suffer for another, or whether or not the possibility of suffering sends us scurrying into the night, renouncing God. 

     “How could God allow such suffering ?” many ask and imply this is the cardinal weakness of Christianity. Perhaps the better question is “Why would God be willing to enter into our world of suffering?” The mightiness of God isn’t a lifeboat dropping out of the sky for survivors floating in a tempest; it is God falling into the water next to us to show us the way to dry land. 

     God with us, “Emmanuel”, means God suffering for and with us. God does not want to “save” us as much as he intends to be with us. We want to be “saved”, just as Jesus wanted to escape suffering; it's only natural. No one suggests that to follow Jesus we should seek out pain, but rather, following Jesus, we will enter the suffering of a suffering world with a resounding affirmation: “Yes” to being with the poor and hopeless, the excluded, imprisoned, tortured, and sick. “Yes” to the suffering of the world, and all its messiness and dysfunction. The Cross’s affirmation is entering into the heart of the suffering world and walking with those who suffer to find God calling us into his embrace, arms stretched out on the cross, now embracing us in all of our horror and pain, failure, and humiliation. Today, we come to the cross to be embraced by Christ and to be resurrected with him.

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

 

A Passion for Humanity

Today, we begin Holy Week. We see the Passion from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem to rolling the stone to seal the tomb. On Monday, we rewind to six days before Passover, followed by Tuesday and Wednesday with the Passover meal and Jesus' subsequent betrayal by Judas. Holy Thursday is the day Jesus washed his disciples' feet and told them, "If I, therefore, the Master and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet." Good Friday, we again meditate on the Cross. Today and Friday, we speak of the Lord's passion and God's love for His creation.

Passion.  The word evokes reckless adventure, impulsive romance, gestures too big to fulfill, and the brief but intense relationship of Romeo and Juliet.  This word places Jesus in the tradition of the foolish Romantics—an itinerant preacher from the margins schooled by his radical cousin (John the Baptist) and led to make one final, dramatic gesture to get his message out: die as a martyr.  But Jesus’ death was unlike the death of many of the martyred faithful to come.  His death wasn't for a cause, but for a relationship.  God fell hopelessly in love with humanity and inserted Himself to be with His own creation to deliver this message of healing, love, and forgiveness.  God’s power isn't the power of Zeus with lightning bolts from the heavens, but God’s message is now simply “Return; I love you”.

Throughout Holy Scripture, God has struggled and seemingly failed many times, just as His people have.  It has been an on-and-off-again cosmic love story between the Creator and His creation since humanity was first created and was given a choice not to love God.  This dance between Creator and created culminated in His great and defining act of love: self-sacrifice on the cross.

Today’s gospel reading recounts this journey to the cross with Jesus as God leading the way, experiencing the pain and abandonment of His creation, the physical pain of gruesome, ignominious death, giving into the abyss of his own uncreated end-all for love.  But in this remarkable journey, he found a few responding with courage: Simon of Cyrene shared some in your suffering, the women who gathered at the foot of the cross and stayed there long after the men had scattered for fear of being arrested, the felon who believed because he, of all people, responded to the suffering of an innocent man, and finally the Roman centurion who saw in this suffering man God’s love.  This is pretty intense stuff

Rather than struggling to believe, many struggle to disbelieve because God’s affirmation of his creation, of saying “yes” to the cross, is the ultimate folly for a world seeking safety over communion.  God as Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried.  Stay tuned.

Fifth Sunday in Lent

 

Sin No More?

The speaker in Isaiah is God, trying to redirect His people's attention from the pains of the Babylonian exile toward a new exodus. This return home has echoes of last week's Prodigal Son parable.  God is making a way in the desert, bringing water to barren soil, renewing life from death. Today's Old Testament from Isaiah is almost a response to Psalm 137: "By the rivers of Babylon; there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." God is pleading with His people to "Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago, consider not" to re-establish His relationship with them.

I think it was more than a preoccupation with a sense of loss; it was a sense that God had spoken through the prophets, especially Moses, and that is where they sought comfort and understanding.  The prophetic reality of Isaiah, however, was calling them to abandon defining themselves by their history and look to God now and realize God is calling them to a living relationship.  Like all great prophetic literature, the past is only useful insofar as it points forward.

Today's gospel of the woman and man caught in adultery and Jesus' response is an excellent illustration of being called to the present.  They dragged the woman to the feet of Jesus in an attempt to catch him pronouncing the death penalty that was prescribed under the Holiness Code of Leviticus (20:10), but in so doing, Jesus would have been guilty under Roman Law of carrying out capital punishment, which had been banned for the Jews.  If Jesus pronounced a pardon, he would have been guilty of heresy.  Jesus, however, brilliantly escapes this trap with the legendary reply: "Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone".  This took the steam out of the crowd and foiled the plan of the religious leaders to trap Jesus. Along with the woman, Jesus does not condone the sin of adultery but merely says that since she was not condemned by anyone else, he will not condemn her.  He only admonishes her to "sin no more".

Using the Law as a tool for announcing God's condemnation of a sinner was looking back and missing the reality of God's present love and concern for humanity.  Using tradition and text as a tool of power still has its hold on religious authorities in the Christian church today.  Jesus was sent to fulfill the law in his person; text becomes the Word only when it is faithful to the living and present reality of a relationship with God in the Holy Spirit. Sin is an occasion for communal grief and prayer, not condemnation, for "we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God".  By grieving sin and loving the one who sins, we heal.  We can only love the sinner by loving ourselves first, as God loves us.  Loving means not encouraging sin but supporting the struggle.  The unrepentant sinner separates himself or herself from the community, but the community still longs for a homecoming, still longs for a renewed relationship.  As a community of sinners, the best we can do is keep picking ourselves up and leaning on God's unending grace.  Our response to ourselves is Jesus' response to the woman (and equally pertinent to the man not dragged before Jesus) is go, and sin no more.  We can only hope to begin a righteous life if the journey begins with love and support.  Lent is the ideal time to make this beginning because Easter is a celebration of this resurrection.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

 

The Lost and Found

‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’

These are the words of the Prodigal Son, resonating with us as we journey through Lent, becoming more conscious of our need for God’s abundant grace. Just as the Prodigal Son contemplated the richness of his father’s estate while using scraps of food to feed pigs, we too sense the almost unfathomable richness of God’s goodness from which He pours His grace upon all creation. We cannot exist on scraps meant for pigs! Lent is not only a time to reflect on our sinfulness but also to contemplate how sin can lead us to a life of spiritual poverty, where our souls are famished for lack of nourishment.  

As God’s children, like the Prodigal Son, we are granted all that God possesses, even though we have wandered away from home, mistakenly believing that the true richness of the world is something we create rather than something we experience in communion with God.

Many Christians in their youth leave the church seeking a richer life without God and the sacraments, only to return when tragedy strikes, often bringing back the spiritual maturity they left behind. Some were driven away by the harm done to them by the very community they once called family. Others left because it is inconvenient to rise early on Sunday, preferring to do something else; they believe they can always worship God on their own. Then some never return, dying without their birthright of the sacraments and the comfort of absolution. Regardless of the reason for leaving, during Lent, we, the faithful, must be a sign of God’s search for them and extend an invitation for their return. We must embody the mindset of the father in the parable, who does not wait for his son to reach him but runs out to meet him at first sight.

Where do we find these prodigal Christians? They are all around us in our daily lives. Invite them back. Let them know that God’s love has never abandoned them. Remind them of the parable of The Prodigal Son and the enthusiasm of the father, emphasizing that God’s love extends to them no matter where they are in their spiritual journey. So many feel unworthy and use that as an excuse to stay away. We all cultivate love and gratitude from the soil of humble awareness that our Father has embraced us on the road, clothed us, put a ring on our finger, and invites us to celebrate being found.

Third Sunday of Lent

  

"...whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall."(1Cor. 10:12)

 St.Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians gives us an enticing frame for today's gospel.  Paul is writing to the wealthy and sophisticated church at Corinth, which he founded and nurtured as a spiritual father---the father of a spiritually adolescent community.

Paul admonishes the folks at Corinth to be careful of being spiritually proud.  Many believed that simply by partaking of the sacraments they were being given the fullness of salvation rather than the orthodox teaching that the sacraments are a process of salvation, the "food for the journey".  He alludes to the Jews in the Exodus who "...all drank the spiritual drink . . Yet God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert."  The sacraments must be approached with humility, a sense that they indeed confer grace, not a sense of entitlement.

Jesus's call to repentance likewise uses allusions to the past folly of those who presumed favor with God, but he goes further by using a parable of an unproductive fig tree.  The landowner wants the fruitless fruit tree uprooted, but the gardener intervenes and suggests a little individualized attention---to take a "wait and see" approach in the hopes that the tree will be producing within a year.  Clearly, this allegory positions Christ as the Gardner and God the Father as the landowner; the fig tree is Israel. Though the three gospels contain a story involving fig trees, Matthew and Marks are similar (withering curse of a fig tree by Jesus), the story in Luke---aside from the figure of the fig---is different.  The "fruit" of Luke's fig tree is associated with the expectation that Israel will be righteous before God and that they will live out the covenant; however, they have turned away from righteousness as primarily demonstrated by how they treat the most vulnerable.  Luke's gospel is focused on justice for those ignored and outcasts.

Jesus's deeds in the following chapter after his call to repentance are a wonderful illustration of how Jesus was fulfilling the Covenant: he healed and liberated a woman who was crippled and "incapable of standing erect."  Most telling was his calling "the leader of the synagogue" a hypocrite for objecting that healing cannot be done on the Sabbath.  Jesus replies rather forcefully: "Hypocrites! Does not each one of you and the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering.  This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?" This was the repentance the previous chapter was calling Israel to: Repent to heal and heal to repent; forgive to be forgiven.  Healing was not an option for Jesus, it was the core of his ministry.  Repentance means, literally, to turn 180 degrees. 

The repentance of this Lenten season asks us to become amazed at the injustice in the world, but working for a cause can be just as insidious in leading us away from healing others as becoming obsessed with preserving orthodoxy (Jesus healed on the sabbath!).  Jesus tended to the woman first.  His priority wasn't to make a point; the woman wasn't a visual aid. Jesus responded to the need as it presented itself and then tended to the dried-up fig trees in the synagogue.  

For our Lenten meditation, let's consider ourselves in this scene not as Jesus, and perhaps not even as the crippled woman, but as part of the crowd of orthodox observers who are upset at Jesus' violation of the Sabbath.  If we can sit with this for a few minutes, we can clearly and unequivocally proclaim:  "We're not there yet!" 

Second Sunday in Lent

 

On a Journey, but Not Alone

Jesus and Abraham are on a journey in today’s readings, or rather, at the beginning of a journey. In the case of Abraham (Abram), God’s promise was to begin a new people dedicated to God alone. In the case of Jesus, Jesus’ ministry in Galilee had ended, and he was preparing to begin his journey toward Jerusalem to fulfill his sacrificial calling and redemptive act for humanity.

It is easy to forget that Jesus was also human and had limitations on what he could know and understand. He had perfect communion with God and a firm understanding of his mission, but he still had to choose. In last week’s gospel of Jesus in the desert, there is evidence that Satan did not depart from him permanently but only “for a time.” This suggests that Jesus’ struggle to choose what is right continued, but his communion with God the Father sustained him, although it is plain that he suffered. Likewise, Abraham was only beginning his walk with God. Abraham himself was tested by the call to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, and so began the journey to the Promised Land and the generations of people struggling to maintain their relationship with God.

It is a good time to consider our faithfulness to God. We, too, have been promised much, and we, too, struggle to remain faithful to our relationship with God. This is often associated with responding to a particular call when we hear the voice of God. For the faithful, it is not that God won’t speak, but they don’t like what He says. This dislike is often associated with what seems to be the impossibility or impractical nature of the call. 

One’s call, or vocation, can be tied to a gift, but it can also be tied to a weakness. Think of Moses, who had difficulty in speech, being called to lead his people. Likewise, both Abraham and Jesus were called to what must have seemed an impossibility. Ultimately, it is our degree of faith that allows us to respond accordingly. The “leap,” though, gets us going.

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.