Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Is Your Faith a Wall or a Door?

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love"(Gal.5:6).

     Every Christian will likely recount when he or she the made the conscious decision to follow Christ.  Some of the stories are quite dramatic, the classic sinner to saint repentance; these are narratives of great clarity and inspiration.  However, not many of us have had such conversions.  Most conversions can be likened to an extended dating between couples when at some point total commitment becomes imperative.  For us Catholics, that is usually Confirmation.
     The calling of Elisha in 1Kings and Jesus' call in Luke provide a couple of notable differences as outlined by theologian Reginald Fuller. Elisha's call was not the complete abandonment of his life, but rather an added responsibility to serve God as a prophet.  Jesus' call was absolute and urgent.  One had to respond immediately to the desire to follow Christ and completely ("No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God"-Lk.9:62).  Another significant difference noted by Fuller was that Elisha was not called to follow Elijah, but to succeed him as a prophet.  Jesus' disciples were not called to replace him, or even to succeed him, as much as continue to be led by him through the presence of the Spirit. Despite the tendency to set up structures of hierarchy and obedience in the institutional Church, every Christian from Pope to the most despised criminal who hears God's voice is accountable to Christ. We all minister as servants, but possess the baptized nature of priest, prophet and king for the mission.
     As we continue in our reading of St.Paul's letter to the Galatians, he negotiates the concept of the nature of our freedom in Christ in responding to our call.  Paul uses the highly-charged terms flesh and spirit.  In this context, Paul uses the word flesh to mean our human natures---instinctual and rational (lower and higher, respectively), not the carnal appetite alone as so many misreads. Spirit is capitalized and refers to the Holy Spirit.  Paul associates this "flesh nature" as that which seeks to justify oneself before God in following rules and thus meriting justification; rather, Paul speaks of being led by the Spirit.  The Spirit is liberation from law, from the futility of realizing righteousness through observance of rules of spiritual discipline (Law) alone.  As Christ came "not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, so Paul preaches freedom from finding righteousness in the Law in declaring that "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." The Spirit releases us not from practicing the Law, but from the necessity of finding salvation through observance of the Law. 
     Our calling is to a relationship with a living God through Christ.  We don't have to abandon the Law, but it must serve, first and foremost, the chief commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.  Jesus adds the ethical necessity of expressing this love "and your neighbor as yourself."  Paul's "only thing that counts" is our inherent freedom from placing observance before relationship; relationship always comes first, and that is why faith and discernment and connection to a community of professed believers is essential.  In seeking God, we're looking for Him as a community of believers.
     Faith, misunderstood as short-sighted obedience to rules rather than relationship, is a wall to our spiritual life and prevents us from accessing God's love and grace.  As Paul writes in Romans about the futility of this struggle: "For what I want to do I do not, but what I hate I do."  He is speaking of the futility of overcoming our "flesh" without the Spirit---reaching God by rules rather than by responding to a direct overture of God through Christ.  For it is in this relationship in the Spirit that Paul proclaims "...if you are led by the Spirit you are no longer under the Law".  To be "under" the Law means that to be "walled in" by the Law, prevented by the Law--The Wall.  The Spirit is the door Christ opened in his sacrifice, and we are asked to step through it.  Liberation can be a scary thing, though, because it is not possible to always know the nature of this transformation, where it will lead once we are committed. But that is the nature of faith. Consider the words of St. Paul: All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything (1Cor. 13:17).

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

The Heart of Grace: Love

Christian grace is the undeserved favor of God towards us; we don’t deserve God’s love because of what we have achieved, the good we have done.  God loves us because he desires communion with us.  In other words, God’s love exists independent of our actions, or even of our awareness of Him.  As we respond to this love over time, this becomes our story of salvation.  Christ’s death and resurrection was God’s greatest act of love, “for no one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for a friend”(John 15:13).  We are the friends of God when we show our love for one another; this is God’s “command” expressed in Jesus’ great command, but more importantly, revealed in his actions. It's not so much "What would Jesus do", but rather "What did Jesus do?"

In today’s reading from 1 Samuel, Nathan, the prophet who succeeded Samuel, helped David face his great sin of abusing his power by taking his loyal friend’s wife as his secret lover while his friend was away at war fighting for Israel.  How does one tell a king he is a great sinner effectively?  He does it with a story.  Likewise, Jesus in today’s gospel tells a story of the Pharisee, Simon.  In both instances, a painful truth had to be communicated, and because both King David and Simon had a sense of God’s love, Nathan and Jesus used parable rather than condemnation to reveal the need for repentance.

Jack Kavanaugh, a Jesuit scholar aptly observes that “Our resistance to repentance parallels our resistance to love. If we experience ourselves unable to trust fully that God could love us unconditionally, the indirect method of parables sometimes is the most efficient strategy to help us accept the mystery of our redemption.”

Paul, likewise, recounted his salvation in sharing a story, not providing a scholarly treatise on grace. He recounts God’s love revealed to him while he was persecuting the Church,  

"how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it, and progressed in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my race, since I was, even more, a zealot for my ancestral traditions. But when God, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me,  so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles…."

We witness to the truth of God’s love by striving to love one another as God loves us.  This is our liberation from the Law.  It isn’t that we can just disregard the commandments of God as revealed in earlier times (we can’t simply commit adultery by claiming not to be bound by the Law), but rather we fulfill the Law in loving one another as we have been loved by God.

Our confronting the sinners in this world begins not with condemnation, but with the story of our graced lives.  We share our table with sinners because we all have sinned and fallen short of meriting God’s favor. We gather to worship not because we are saints, but because we are sinners striving for sainthood.

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 triumph 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 for a lack of unity; what, in fact, it is is a lack of uniformity.  What living system exhibits uniformity?  When, then, is a 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 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, and 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, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. 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. 


Originally published in May 2013 

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Keeping Our Word

Jesus’ farewell address has the curious phrase “Whoever loves me will keep my word”.  We all understand how to keep our word, but how is it that Jesus is asking us to keep his word. 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 peoples; however, it is our faith that 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 the means by which 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 an 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 Blakes’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 a set of instructions, an organizational plan, or even a set of inspired writings. He simply gets their attention by declaring he is giving them a new commandment: "Love one another". 

It is interesting that 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 to the need of the community of the faithful. Because if the community is not animated by love, love of God and love of neighbor grows 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" isn't helpful in understanding 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 the journey, though difficult, was animated by love.

It is easy to get lost in the rhetoric of Christianity and forget the commandment left us by Jesus to love one another as the very practical way of suggesting that if we are not a model of the Trinitarian love we profess, our faith is a sham. If we don't love one another, and walk together sharing the hardships of being a community of faith, then the mission becomes a philosophy club with weekly rituals and catchy phrases.

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Sheepish Leaders

If you knew God was speaking to you, it is likely you would 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 a 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, and 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 become not always 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.