Third Sunday after Pentecost

Who is afraid of good news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Holy Trinity

"Batter my heart three-person God"

--John Donne, "Meditation 14"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pentecost

The Language of the Holy Spirit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fourth Sunday of Easter

I Am the Good Shepherd

             Being compared to sheep seems rather insulting; it is not a flattering comparison, certainly in the 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 Christ and us.

    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.' "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. "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 of the Resurrection

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 empirical backing to what they claim to already believe.  Harold Camping, 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, comes to mind.  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 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 in accordance with 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. 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. This yoking of death with birth is an incredibly rich imaginative literature and art source. 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. 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

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.

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

Sunday 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 Tuesday and Wednesday with the Passover meal and Jesus' subsequent betrayal by Judas. Holy Thursday is Jesus washing his disciple's feet and telling them "If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet." Good Friday, we, once again, meditate on The Cross.

So Sunday and Friday, we speak of the Lord's passion, of God's love of 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 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 a 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.