Saints Peter and Paul

One thing I like about these two apostles is their unlikelihood as leaders:  Peter: brash, compulsive and often glib, who denied knowing Jesus shortly after his crucifixion, and Paul’s zeal for persecuting the early Christian community seem to create a perfect storm of apostolic inadequacy . But then again, the way God seems to reveal His purpose, all of this seems familiar. David, the first King, was chosen by God, and anointed by the prophet Samuel reluctantly when David’s older brothers would have made a much more reasonable choice. Also, there is Jacob’s call, just as late in life as his grandfather Abraham’s and after a life of deceit is given a new name by God: Israel. Moses, the one who leads his people out of Egypt replies to God’s call: “I am nobody. How can I go to the king and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” If God chose the next president from a list of ten highly qualified candidates, He probably would choose the overworked but loyal 60-something secretary in the outer office who has been passed over for promotion numerous times for her eccentric behavior and who is not a “team player.” What can we learn, then, through Peter and Paul that suggests God continues to work in the all too human institutional Church?

Peter and Paul’s lives were defined by passion, and a type of stubbornness that often led them afoul of the community, but it was this weakness that God transformed into strength. Peter’s glibness led him to speak what he felt to identify Jesus as the Messiah; Paul’s zeal at persecution was transformed to a zealous apostle. God took these weaknesses and transformed them into strength. Paul, in particular, writes about his sense of inadequacy in numerous places in his letters. Here is an excellent example in writing to the Corinthians where he describes himself as “…the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”(1 Cor. 15:9). But Paul’s humility wasn’t simply a moment of hopeless debasement, but one keenly tailored to the problems in Corinth with ego abounding and divisions rife throughout the well-heeled community. Paul uses his weakness as a source of his evangelization because his life was a display of God’s grace. Following this verse, Paul writes “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”

Our failings and weaknesses, keenly known and felt, too often are the proverbial “light under the bushel”.  Paul writes about one’s weaknesses being sources of great grace—good news! For it is often in our weaknesses that we are most vulnerable—open to God and to others. The great faith of the saints is often exemplified in their woundedness. Paul writes about God’s message to him through his weaknesses: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.  Both Peter and Paul continued to struggle with their personalities, but they lived lives keenly aware of God’s grace.

It is not despite our weaknesses that God’s grace is revealed to humanity, but through them, when our weaknesses are not hidden but shared as a source of God’s great love and grace.

The Body and Blood of Christ

Become What You Receive

St. Augustine’s famous admonition on the Eucharist, “Behold what you are; become what you receive”, reveals the dynamic between the taking and becoming the dynamic of the Eucharist. 

In the Eucharistic celebration, the priest’s actions are taking, blessing, breaking, and giving; the part that is often left out of the discussion is the taking and becoming of all who receive. But we who receive are also taking, and rather than blessing the bread, the bread becomes a source of blessing for ourselves so that we might be a blessing to the world—the world yet to be transformed by Christ. Also, rather than breaking the bread, we become broken in our blessing. In Augustine’s saying, “Behold what you are” comes before “Become what you receive”. Approaching the Body and Blood of Christ sacrificed for us, we behold our great need for God’s grace because we experience blessing. The image of brokenness works on two levels: to be shared, the substance must be divided, broken. In the sharing of ourselves, we freely distribute the blessing we have been given and have become. Broken also suggests the suffering of Christ’s sacrifice, the “way of the cross”. We must become true flesh, accept we are not gods, break our egoism to bless and celebrate our humanity.

We then, in our common priesthood, in our lives, do what the priest does at the altar: We take, bless, break and give, stripped of our false humanity, and reveal a great blessing that God has sanctified, what He has created and found very good.

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 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, 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,^[b] 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 

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Jesus: The Way to the Father

                Today’s gospel is part of Jesus’ “farewell discourse”, that is, he is trying to help his disciples come to terms with no longer being present to them physically, as he has always been, but challenges them to realize that what they have witnessed is the Father’s work, since Jesus as the Son shares the essence of the Father; two persons, one life-force. Jesus’ statement “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” refers not to the bodily aspect of personhood, but refers to the works of God. Indeed, Jesus’ resurrected body seems to have been somewhat different since the disciplines on the road to Emmaus didn’t at first recognize him, but only later recognized him “in the breaking of the bread” and later realized as “they asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’"(Luke 24:32) Jesus then is the way to the Father.  This is Jesus’ great revelation, that as the Christ, the works of the Father have been in their midst in the person of the Son.

            What is equally puzzling is the statement by Jesus that his disciples will “do the works I do, and will do greater ones than these.”  What a remarkable statement.  What were the works of Jesus? Healing and resurrection.  But Jesus’ life was more than an extended magic show.  He healed both as sign of God’s presence, but also out of great compassion. The mission of the Church is to extend this healing presence, the work of God, in the body of Christ, the faithful. Anticipating the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, Jesus’ discourse moves into this gift that he will send to them from the Father.

            At Pentecost, then, the body of Christ, the Church, becomes the dwelling place of God, a new temple for the Good News and the works that will extend beyond the people of Israel to the four corners of the earth, not simply within institutional boundaries, but within those faithful ones who follow Christ as the way to God.

            The Holy Spirit’s presence is among the faithful wherever they be with regard to the institutional and denominational borders Nicodemus, the consummate outsider of Jesus’ time is told by Jesus: "Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."(John 3:8) Time and time again, throughout the Old and New Testaments, God has worked outside the institution to reveal his presence. Why be surprised that the institutional church cannot restrict the movement of the Spirit? We find the birth of the Spirit wherever the faithful are on the way of Christ.

            It is this birth to which Jesus is the midwife. It is this relationship with God through Christ to which every human is called; those who respond in faith are the Church, and where the Church is, you will find the Spirit dwelling and the work of God continuing its healing mission.

Fourth Sunday of Easter

I Am the Good Shepherd

             Being compared to sheep seems rather insulting; it is not a flattering comparison certainly in 21st Century in the U.S It suggests radical dependence due to incompetence. But Jesus is using the analogy not so much to suggest the characteristics of those who follow him, but the relationship between sheep and their shepherd as a relationship between ourselves and Christ.

Sheep recognize faces and voices remarkably well. Some suggest that facial and voice recognition are nearly as advanced as humans and that a herd can remember up to fifty faces for up to two years (Dr Keith Kendrick, neuroscientist, Babraham Research Institute, Cambridge). This relational aspect is key. Christ protects and guides us, but he also asks us as sheep to shepherd one another. The relationship we have with Christ, we are asked to develop with one another. In John 13, Jesus gives his “little children” the commandment:

"Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' 34"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35"By this, all men will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another."

Our relationship with Christ is to be broadened to include the trust, and vulnerability of sheep to their shepherd as hallmarks of our relationship with one another, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples”.  The life of the shepherd spent feeding and protecting his sheep is the life of the disciple, guiding and protecting one another.

The key here is, then, to first allow Christ to teach us shepherding skills; this is why he says  “I am the gate”.   Christ is the way because he has walked the pathway before us, led “like a lamb to slaughter” (Isaiah 53), and “perfectly obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Hebrews 5). 

In 1st Peter, the spiritual elder (perhaps Peter) reminds his “flock”

“For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps.”

We can follow the Shepherd, because Christ is the Good Shepherd, leading us to become good shepherds so that the world will come to hear the voice of the One we follow.

Easter Sunday: The Resurrection of the Lord

From Death to Life

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 an empirical backing to what they claim to already believe.  Harold Camping comes to mind, as do the like-minded who, based on this man's "mathematical" calculations, predicted the end of the world and the Parousia on a specific date.  The time came and went.  Nothing.  Another date was set; it seems 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 is no longer going to make any further predictions.  Humiliated, alone, 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 in accordance with the scriptures."

Crucifixion forces our hand breaks 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, but 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 what my faith finds its foundation upon are the resurrections I've experienced in others and in myself that have their origin in The Resurrection. This yoking of death with birth is an incredibly rich source of imaginative literature and art. Easter is the "difficult birth" of a faith borne on the cross of a two-thousand-year-old man who claimed to be a king and Messiah; but the millions of new lives hewn from the roughness of the Cross is 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

Faith: FAIL. God Punished.

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; faith: FAIL. Today is a day we move deeply into meditating on our need to tell God, as 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 echoing 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 is the disciple the Church was founded on. Peter, the so-called “Rock” by Jesus, crumbles into sand at the crucifixion.

The cross is a spectacle of human folly, failure, and faithlessness. Yet, despite this, as T.S. Eliot wrote: “We call this Friday good.”

Its goodness lies in God’s total submission of 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 might respond when being asked to suffer for another, or whether or not 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 dropping 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 wants to be with us. We want to be “saved”, just as Jesus wanted to escape suffering; its only natural. No one suggests that to follow Jesus we should seek out suffering, 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’ affirmation is entering into the heart of the suffering world and walking with those who suffer to find God calling us into his arms stretched out onto 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 Jesus’ crucifixion in order to be resurrected with the Christ.

Posted originally in March, 2013