Epiphany

God in Humanity Made Manifest

     Epiphany means "manifestation", a revealing, an illumination, which is precisely how we experience the jubilation of Israel experiencing the fulfillment of Isaiah 40.  Today’s passage of Isaiah is the joyful song of those who have returned from exile and whose reinvigorated relationship with God serves as a beacon for "the nations" which signifies the non-Jewish peoples.  The God who has delivered Israel in an act of great salvation becomes, for Christians, the sign of God's supreme act of salvation that saves not only the people of Israel but the world.  Paul's epistle picks up this theme in "the mystery made manifest" and the notion of the Gentiles being "coheirs, members of the same body".  In the Gospel, we have the ultimate revelation of God's salvation in the form of Jesus' birth, being announced to Gentiles, who then come to worship the Christ child; again mirroring the idea expressed in Isaiah that "Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance."  This king has qualities of the Davidic kingship of justice and concern for the poor contrasted with the megalomaniac paranoia of King Herod.  These are a few important ideas developed in today's readings, I think.

     It strikes me that God's revelation over time has been expansive, with first the Jewish people, and then to the Gentiles.  Rather than simply lavishing all His attention on his "chosen", we come to see that his chosen play an essential role in salvation history. It is a God of great inclusion rather than exclusion, yet so much of what we see in Christianity today seeks to privatize God, sets up laws of access, decides who's "in communion" and who isn't, and in doing so goes against God's essential movement to embrace all of humanity, all of humanity.  Too often we Christians promulgate doctrines that attempt to put a legal tabernacle around God and deny anyone access except through priests who have the stamp of approval from the corporate office; perhaps chaos isn't so much a sign of evil in the world as the facade of unity that is really uniformity. 

     When we make decisions as a faith community that defines ourselves over and against those who are not-like-us, we attempt feebly to limit the Spirit.  When we reach across denominational and even religious boundaries to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit, and of Christ, in those not-like-us, we act most in concert with God whose saving act in Christ is for "the nations", not "the nation." It is shameful that those who most need God's love and salvation are often handed literature rather than a hug, a dismissive tone rather than a place at the table.  In a modification of St. Francis's admonition, we need to go out and preach the Good News by being good news.

Holy Family

What makes a family holy?

In today's readings, we have two "holy" families: Hannah's son, Samuel, is a blessing that ends her infertility, whom she returns to God by dedicating him to the priesthood.  Our second holy family is the holy family of Mary and Joseph.  What can these families possibly teach us about the nature of what makes a family holy?

Hannah's dedication of Samuel to God seems odd and completely counter-intuitive. Just when her prayers had been answered, and she had given birth, she gives the child to Eli, the local priest, to raise him dedicated to the priesthood. Hannah's prayer was answered not in her having a life with Samuel, but in simply being able to bear Samuel. Her gratitude to God was in letting go of her most precious gift to become a gift to her people.  Samuel goes on to become chosen of God to be both a priest and prophet of his people.

A woman's sterility in those times was a serious problem that many regarded as a sign of God's disfavor.  Even today, among couples trying to conceive a child, being childless is disheartening. Mary and Joseph's experience of Jesus, who "increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men” might seem ideal, but consider the growing awareness of the burden of letting such a child face the eventual scorn, rejection, and crucifixion as Messiah.  Mary "keeping all these things in her heart", patiently enduring the death of John, and likely foreseeing the road to the crucifixion her son was traveling must have been a test of faith few would readily embrace.

Even without the heroic sacrifice of Hannah and Mary, facing the initial distancing of adolescence, and later the "empty nest", couples can find family life too stressful to be considered “holy”.

The quality of holiness is built around a life dedicated to serving God through the family.  A holy family, then, is a family whose dedication moves beyond the typical familial ties to a sense of serving as a family the God whom they worship.  In such a family, children are regarded as a gift whose ultimate purpose is not service to the family itself, but to God.  Likewise, a couple's love, when animated by holiness, is ordered not only to mutual fulfillment but is itself a gift from God that reaches beyond family, tribe or national boundaries.  

When, like the holy family, Christ is at the center of the family made holy by God's gift of the couple's love, the love of God becomes embodied in the life of the children.  Family constitutes a great sacred potential for revealing God's love to humanity.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

“Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

Mary believed the words of the angel.  She didn’t demand proof, sign a contract to cover all reasonable contingencies in case the whole mother-of-the-Messiah thing didn’t work out.  Her response to the word: “May it be it done to me according to your word.” In our faith, we have Jesus as the Word--the embodiment of God as human—Emmanuel, “God with us”. 

We also have the word of holy scripture that is our link to the living tradition of our brothers and sisters in faith, used by the Church as a tool of furthering the inspiration of the original community of believers. Unlike Mary’s time, we are overwhelmed with words.  It is estimated that nearly 300 million books will have been published this year alone!  That doesn’t include the words of advertising spoken on television, splashed across computer screens, covering bus shelters, billboards, and car bumpers.  It is hard to set your eyes on an object that doesn’t ask you to read something.  We are awash in more words than at any other time in history, yet we seem to have less and less to say. 

Cutting through this clutter is one righteous quest to enter the Christmas season that begins Tuesday (Christmas, for us, begins on Tuesday). In today’s gospel, John the Baptist as an infant still inside Elizabeth, responds to Elizabeth’s hearing of Mary’s greeting.  This chain of events reveals something important about how we exist in relationship to God and to one another.  

 Since baptism, each of us has been comforted, protected, educated by, and imbued with the presence of the Holy Spirit residing within us.  Like Mary and Elizabeth, pregnant with promise and God’s Spirit, our bond with God and one another is powerful. Our spiritual journey of Advent, distinct from Lent, is essentially communal—we prepare as a community, much the way both Elizabeth and Mary were in a strong bond of having received and believed God’s promise.  Each gave birth to the fulfillment of that promise, but also had to be sustained by it because of the difficulty to remain faithful during the rough times ahead for each woman.

We receive the Word if we are open to its life within us as a community who listens, who is attentive to God's promises.  Holy scripture can only become Word through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and our willingness to, like Mary, have it transform our lives.  With Mary, our faith-filled response is "May it be done to me according to your Word".

Third Sunday of Advent

"Stay Awake!"

 Today begins Advent, a time of preparation to receive Christ at Christmas, but it is more than referencing the past, it also connects with our sure hope of Christ’s return and the inauguration of God’s reign. Jesus proclaims in Matthew: "Therefore, stay awake!" What are we watching for? Are our heads turned heavenward searching the skies for Jesus returning in glory? Remember the angel's advice after Christ’s ascension?

And as they [his disciples] were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. They also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven (Acts 1:11).

     Our mission as watchers involves looking for the dwelling of Christ among us now by the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to be alert because it is often difficult to see Christ through the layers of sin that surround others that are unappealing. Perhaps we may have difficulty seeing Christ in others because we first must acknowledge Christ within ourselves as the lowly beggar, the control freak, or other undesirable.

     Let that be our beginning, then. Let us look for Christ where he is least likely to be found, both in others and those places in our lives that need healing from sin. Let us not be afraid of venturing out into the dark, or inwardly into the dark places in ourselves.  Let Holy Scripture be a place to start, and let your prayer proclaim “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (Ps.110:105). On this path we will encounter Christ in the most unexpected ways as we journey in Advent for Christ’s appearance over two thousand years ago was equally hidden and unlikely. Who would expect God among us in a backwater town, among farm animals, shepherds, and pagans in the middle of the night?

The Solemnity of Christ, the King of the Universe

"My kingdom does not belong to this world"  --Jesus, The Gospel of John

There is that famous line from Mel Brooks's movie History of the World: Part I, "It's good to be king!"  Being king brings up beautiful imagery of elaborate court ritual, absolute authority, and feasting; sounds a lot like the institutional church!   But Jesus' words to Pilate betray this image of opulence.  When asked about his kingdom, Jesus replies, "My kingdom does not belong to this world" (New American Bible).  Another translation has it as "My kingdom is not of this world"(New International Version).  The sense of Jesus' reply is that his kingdom is neither the kingdom of Rome nor the kingdom envisioned by the religious authorities; both groups lose.

The Solemnity of Christ the King that embraces Jesus as king is relatively new.  It was established in 1925 to counter what the Church saw as an increasing tendency to worship human wisdom and power, which was loosely defined as modernism.  By later positioning the solemnity at the end of the Church's liturgical year in 1969, it further enhanced its standing as the summit of Christ's rule, and, implicitly, the Church as Christ's kingdom.

The songs and imagery associated with this celebration, however, often blunt the irony of Christ as king.  The usual image is of a resurrected, non-bloody, Jesus hovering (rather than being nailed) on the cross.  The image of Christ as king is ironic because he is the king with a crown of thorns with a procession of humiliation and a knightly court of cowards.  It seems, as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians  "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."

The image of Jesus as king nailed to the cross speaks of a different kind of power than the power of earthly kingdoms.  In a general audience at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI suggests ". .the Cross reveals ‘the power of God’ which is different from human power; it reveals, in fact, His love.” 

The power of God's kingdom as embodied by Jesus' death isn't exclusively revealed by the resurrection, although the saving power of God is most apparent here. It is the magnitude of God's love for His creation in self-sacrifice that shows Christ's true power as king.  

The ultimate love is the love that sacrifices self for another. This is the true power that defines Christ's kingdom.  This is why evil can never ultimately triumph over good; evil avoids self-sacrifice.  Evil always seeks what is best for the self over and against the other.  It destroys community and ultimately destroys itself.

Self-sacrificing love, on the other hand,  is the ultimate Christian act where one falls into the opened arms of Christ on the cross, trusting in the power of God's ability to bring life from death.  Christ's kingdom, indeed, is not of this world, but it is for this world.  Nothing is of more importance than conforming ourselves to this likeness of Christ as King.

Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost

The End is Near

The list of “apocalyptic” world-ending prophecies is a storied history of disappointment beginning with Simon Bar Girora, an Essene, around 70 C.E. to Warren Jeffs in 2012.  It is probably not unreasonable to suggest that humanity has been predicting the “end times” since we could conceive of such a thing.as revealing something hidden (the meaning of apocalypse). Declaring an apocalypse seems to be a way of expressing an ending one can control, a way of assuring the suffering that someday “every tear will be wiped away”.  Far from gloom and doom, the “end times” seem to suggest a great reconciling; good for the insiders, but bad for the ones who aren’t part of the “in-crowd”. That’s the problem with much of how we understand modern apocalyptic predictions: we’re always saved.  Malachi’s vision of the apocalypse, however, brings judgment on his own people as many of the Old Testament prophets did.  The difficulty of remaining faithful is the history of salvation.

It is easy to condemn “the other” whoever the “other” may be. Less comfortable is it to find unity with the outsider by accepting that when it comes to righteousness, we all stand condemned equally.  Salvation has less to do with being saved from the fires of Hell, and more to do with being saved from the hell of our egoism.

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

From Barrenness to Blessedness: Giving from One's Poverty

Today's gospel is a couple of stories sewn together by Mark.  The first story is about the victimizing of the poor by the religious authorities of Jesus' time, the scribes.  The poor were represented by the widows who had no social standing and were even less reputable if not associated with a man (husband, older brother, or father).  They were truly "the least and the last".  The focus of this story is the ostentatious behavior of the religious elite whose worship was more show than substance in their grand robes and places of honor at worship (as a priest, this part of the gospel always gets a little uncomfortable).  As is written: "They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation".

Juxtaposed with this narrative is the account of the widow who gives what little she has, but is accorded greater praise than those who give much more but give from their abundance. The widow's gift is truly a sacrifice; the gift of the rich is simply for show.  These two elements of the narratives complement one another: sacrifice versus show.

Unfortunately, the deeper meaning of this gospel is often lost in how it is used to elicit more money from congregations--"Give till it hurts, like the widow."  But what Jesus is getting at is more profound than being generous with one's money. 

As our lives are gifts, it is incredible to realize that our blessedness lies not only in our talents and riches but also in our sheer incompetence.  I'm not suggesting that our gifts are worthless, but too often our gifts are where we find gratification for our egos.  We can easily lose our gratitude by hiding our incompetence and displaying our gifts, so that communities take on a competitive nature for a type of ego-gratifying perfection, whereas Gospel perfection comes in our vulnerability to one another---our willingness to share our weaknesses as well as our strengths.  God's great love of humanity resulted in his self-sacrifice in Christ.  Love compelled this.  We, too, when we are living from our love for one another don't hide behind our strengths and make a show of our competencies, but allow others to see our in-competencies as well; giftedness embraces both our strengths and weaknesses.  Paul's famously paradoxical statement now is a bit less paradoxical: "That's why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2Cor. 12:10).