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 returns to the spiritual center where her prayers were answered and gives the child to Eli, the local priest, to raise him dedicated to the priesthood.  Of course, 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.  Hannah's prayer was answered not in the life with Samuel, but in simply being able to bear Samuel.  A difficult idea for us today, but understandable for a woman of her time.  Her gratitude to God was in letting go of her most precious gift to become a gift to her people.

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 holy.

The quality of holiness is built around setting something aside for the purpose of worshiping God.  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, but a gift not only to the family, but a gift their care 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. 

The Nativity of the Lord

"Do not be afraid;  for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."

Who Woulda Thought? 


I want to begin this Christmas season by focusing on the call of the shepherds rather than moving right to the Nativity.  In fact, if you follow the various gospel readings that the Church offers, you would find the vigil Mass (afternoon of the 24th) through the daytime Mass (Sunday mid-morning) you would find the Christmas story and the theology of the Christ across three of the four gospels--quite a rich fare which few, unfortunately, experience.

Back to the shepherds, then.  Shepherds were a despised lot in Jesus' time. You can lump them in with tax collectors, prostitutes, and Samaritans.  Of course, as we have seen throughout God's interaction with humanity, this makes them prime candidates for a special grace.  So, it was to them the invitation was extended.  The much discussed "wise men" or magi, come later (probably didn't arrive until a year or so after the birth).  

So, as the story goes, as with all angelic visitations, it begins with fear.  It takes a lot to scare a shepherd who defends his flock from any number of hazards; they are a grizzly lot.

  

But, as the gospel records, "...they were struck with great fear".  The appeal of the angel not to fear is based upon the message of a savior that will "be for all the people."  This is followed by a "multitude of the heavenly host" singing "Glory to God in the highest."  Quite a night for the shepherds, and some essential truths about the nature of God and salvation for us tonight.

Like God's appointing David as king (the least likely candidate), God's favor rests on Mary, Joseph, outsiders like the Magi and shepherds.  Notice the absence of anyone really important like Temple priests, scribes, Pharisees, important legates or even the chief priest.  God's dealing once again with the complete outsiders, widely believed to be outside of salvation history.  How ironic, then, that these were the people most intimately associated with God's arrival as the Christ.

If Advent has sharpened our senses for seeking justice and finding a place with the poor to be in the right place; this visitation of the shepherds remind us that we are now in the right place at the right time---with the poor, alone, late in the night. Dismal.

But it is with the outcast, far from the comfort of daylight, deep in the night, that God's greeting arrives proclaiming joy and salvation.  Like so much of what God has done in his relationship with humanity: "Who woulda thought?"

In your deepest moment of darkness and doubt,  when your prayers are bouncing back off of the ceiling, ridiculing your attempt to reconnect with God after seemingly failing every time, I want to remind you that those prayers that you think mock your devotion made it through.  They were in God's heart before they ever left your lips. Like the shepherds, the most unlikely folks in the most unlikely place, God finds us.  Search no further than your need, your loneliness, your feelings of being left out. For the still small voice of God speaks to you here, now, in this blog, inviting you to come home and find the sign of God being with you in the most humble of circumstances.  Join with Christians worldwide to not give up following the light until it rests over the manger where Christ is to be found---in the most unlikely place, at the most unlikely time. 

Third Sunday in Advent

"Thy Kingdom Come", but we're not done!

Fire and water: two compelling, dynamic images linked to communion with God and the salvation of Christ.  In today's gospel, John the Baptist famously denies he is Messiah, but rather preaches repentance and conversion to high ethical standards as preparation for Messiah.  The two pericopes in Luke fit well into the theme of Advent, as we focus on preparing for God to touch humanity in a new way.

John exhortation to ethical integrity is in response to a disciple asking, "Teacher, what should we do?"  It seems the fitting question to John's earlier (outside today's reading) proclamation that "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."  When faced with such destructive wrath, the disciples needed to know what to do, because they needed to get started.

What is interesting is John's focus on doing before becoming; he is the quintessential existentialist---existence before essence.  You want justice? Become just.  You want peace? Become peaceful.  You want salvation from the wrath of God? Welcome God into your midst.

The great line from Matthew 25:41-45 resonates with these leading questions:

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
⁴⁴ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Christ the King

"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-fourth 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).

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Unworthiness is not Worthlessness: "Go your way; your faith has saved you."

Faith is a gift, freely given, immeasurably valuable, but rarely embraced.  Why?  Consider Bartimaeus in today’s gospel.  He is blind and wants to see.  In his blindness, he yells out in his darkness at the passing healer, Jesus, whom he knows will save him.  The folks around him probably wondered what he had done to displease God such that he was blind; and what does Bartimaeus do?  He makes a scene—a very annoying distraction for those trying to get a glimpse of Jesus.  Bartimaeus seems also to attribute his blindness with sinfulness because he doesn’t yell out “Make me better!  Over here, Jesus.  I’m blind.  Make me better”.  Bartimaeus gets Jesus’ attention by yelling "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me."  He yells this out twice.  By addressing Jesus as son of David, he implicitly acknowledges Jesus as successor to David and Messiah. Jesus’ reply is intriguing: “"Go your way; your faith has saved you."  Jesus didn’t say “I have healed you”, but rather focuses on the power of Bartimaeus’ faith. There is no recording of Bartimaeus even having been touched by Jesus.  Jesus simply declares him healed by Bartimaeus' faith and to “Go your way….”

Bartimaeus’ healing is a wonderful instruction in faith, healing and mission.  In leading with the phrase “Have mercy on me”, he understands healing begins establishing the correct relationship between himself and Jesus.  He, perhaps more than anyone else in the crowd, knows he is the least entitled; but his faith in the nature of Jesus’ compassion gives him the courage to call out. If our sense of unworthiness doesn’t compel us to call out, our real need isn’t healing, but faith. Realizing our unworthiness isn’t the same as worthlessness.  God’s love gives us our worth; we cannot generate it ourselves.  William Sloane Coffin, a famous preacher, wrote of this dynamic eloquently:

“Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value.  It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value.  Our value is a gift, not an achievement.” 

Bartimaeus understood the source of his worth by faith, and this is what gave him the courage to call out for healing from Jesus.  Approaching God in a humility that is based upon establishing this right-relationship is essential.  Too often a sense of worthlessness keeps our prayers silent or redirected towards a favorite saint.  We might be unworthy, but we are far from worthless.  God’s love establishes our worth for all time, independent of our actions.  Recognizing God’s love can allow us to cry out to God “Have mercy on me, a sinner….unworthy, but not worthless, because you love me, God!”  Faith, then, at its essence is letting God know you’ve received the gift and want to claim it despite all the negative voices telling you to “be silent.”

Originally published October 28, 2012

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

To Be a Servant

              Mark’s community faced many struggles.  This community was likely made up of Jews living outside Palestine, and Romans. It is this reason that many have suggested that “Mark’s” community was in or near Rome. More important, though, is this community faced persecution from outside and division from within; it was a community under siege. One source of internal division seems to be over positions of prestige and honor within the community as reflected in James and John jostling for position. It is interesting to note that in Matthew, it isn’t the disciples seeking position and prestige, bur rather their mother interceding on their behalf! Although such concern for ranking was not exclusive to Gentiles, Jesus’ response suggests the Kingdom will not be about the exercise of authority, but about the exercise of humility. Jesus’ identification with the Suffering Servant Messiah of Isaiah was difficult to accept, and the motif of the journey to Jesus’ death on the cross is central to following him both in a figurative and literal sense.

             How, then, do we regard the admonition to be servants? How far do we take this? Once again, Jesus gives us a standard of living that seems absurdly idealistic. And, once again, we see how far we are from that ideal. Following Jesus, the greatest cross for many is the cross of failure when one comes to understand the demands of love and sacrifice asked of us. Rather than become disheartened, however, it should remind us of the need for God’s grace, and our humble response of humility and gratitude.

             If we could but picture ourselves in a long retinue of followers, tripping constantly and falling farther and farther behind on this journey to Jerusalem, only to discover at the end of the line Jesus, offering us water and encouragement by telling us we were not the last after all; Jesus will be just behind us all the way.

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

A Little Lower than Angels 

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees in the gospel of Mark is a harsh commentary on divorce. He replies to the question about divorce by saying: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." In Matthew 19, Jesus leave the possibility of divorce for a woman who is unchaste in her marriage. Luke’s gospel aligns with Mark, but St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:10 accommodates the law of the Romans to allow a woman to divorce her husband, which was not permitted under Jewish law.

              If this seems a bit unclear, consider the context of Jesus’ pronouncement in Mark. In Jesus’ time, divorce was common, and depending on the interpretive school you favored, you would get either a more or less restrictive set of exceptions. For example, in the Hillel school divorce was granted for a man whose wife served him a “spoiled dish” or if he found a woman more attractive than his wife. Clearly this was an abuse of the language of the Torah, which is a bit vague. A man may divorce if he finds “something objectionable” about her. Obviously, this invites a great spectrum of interpretation, and Jesus was taking the Pharisees to task for failing to appreciate the intent of marriage: to join two into one flesh. Such a high water-mark for marriage is sustainable only within the Kingdom Jesus is ushering into existence. Where love and self-sacrifice are the norms, divorce is an anomaly for those only whose hearts have “hardened”. Jesus uses this image of the “hardened heart” to suggest that the standard he is setting is the fulfillment of the Law.

              Pastorally, though, as in countless examples, Jesus encounters sin with compassion and access to himself. Unfortunately, not all Christian churches are so welcoming. Because we set a high standard for marriage should not mean that we exclude those who fail to meet the ideal by refusing communion, according them second-class stature if they remarry. Indeed, the accommodation made by Jesus in Matthew, and by Paul suggests that divorce, while not ideal, is in some circumstances a concession because we are not yet perfect.

              Jesus’ entire ministry, focused on healing, mercy and sacrificial love itself is an accommodation to our fallen world, which offers glimpses of who we can become in our journey with Christ. Rather than focus on the punishment of those whose marriages fail and who remarry when they find someone who better exemplifies the perfection of one flesh, the Church should strive to exemplify the perfection of Christ who did not deny himself to anyone. Welcoming divorced and remarried Catholics to communion is one way we, as Old Catholics, exemplify the healing touch of Christ.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will not lose his reward."---Jesus  The Gospel of Mark

Thirst Slakers,  Children, and Prophets

The gospel reading in Mark unites two completely different events and renders a fascinating connection.  The first excerpt, or pericope, is Jesus reproving John for preventing a man who is not Jesus' disciple from casting out demons by declaring "...whoever is not against us is for us."  The second pericope is taken from the context of warning his disciples not to scandalize children (the pais), or "little ones."  By linking these two passages together, Mark gives the moral force of punishment for those who lead astray the least and last (those in need of healing) with the "outsider" exorcist.  Remember last week when I told you that the word for child and servant was the same?  Today, we get an explicit linking between the two.

The Old Testament scripture is also about cautioning against limiting God's work to only "approved" sources.  Moses remonstrates Joshua of Nun for complaining that there were two outside of God's chosen seventy elders who were prophesying (Eldad and Medad).  Moses asks, "Are you jealous for my sake?  Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets.  Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!"

These readings suggest quite clearly that the true authority does not reside in human institutions as such, but in what is done in God's name.  Gospel authority is doing the will of God.  Period.

How does one, then, discern who is working in God's name?

Paul helps us with recognizing the "fruits of the Spirit" in " "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."(Gal.5:22-23).  In a sense, when you recognize goodness, there God's Spirit is at work.  The other element besides the work is time.  Are these works true and good over time.  The ruse never lasts; the wolf must eventually shed its sheep's clothing to breathe.

At the conclusion of all the Eucharistic prayers, the priest declares "...from whom all good things come." God is not only the source of all that is good, but God is also perfect goodness in essence.  Much of what is good is apparent, but finding the Resurrection looking at the Cross can be a bit more difficult.  Again, time reveals all.  Given enough time, the Cross becomes the Resurrection.  How long do we wait?  How deep is your faith?

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

"Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me,

receives not me but the One who sent me."

The Spirituality of Imperfection

We continue this week with the second of three passages where Jesus describes his fate of persecution and suffering that awaits him.  Last week we took a look at the cross from a different angle, the "Tao" of the cross emphasizing sticking it out until the end with Jesus as being the cross of discipleship.  This week we look at the cross of servanthood and humility.

Mark's gospel resonates with the Suffering Servant of Second Isiah where biblical scholar Reginald Fuller notes that in verse 13 (not included in the reading), God's suffering servant is called pais, a term used to denote both servant and child; both were at the very bottom of power in society.  So then Jesus uses children as an example of the types of people whom the disciples must embrace (Jesus embraces the child).  For us, who exalt children, this may not seem unusual, but in Jesus' time such an act of concern for the least and last was profound. 

After being told to get in line last week, Jesus address the rest of the herd as they vie to be " the first disciple".  Jesus tells them to become servants (pais).  In a sense, they should compete to become last and least.

In Matthew, this discourse about humility and greatness occurs in chapter 18 and more fully develops the concept of "receiving these pais".  Jesus declares that beyond "receiving", the disciples, one must become as pais to enter the Kingdom.  Clearly Jesus' words speak as much against the triumphalism rampant in the church today as it did for Jesus' disciples in the First Century C.E.

Simon Tugwell writes eloquently about the need to not count the success of the church with the world's standards of power and domination.  In his book Ways of Imperfection, Tugwell writes 

"There is a kind of unsatisfactoriness written into her [the church’s] very constitution, because she is only a transitional organization, keeping people and preparing them for a new creation . . . .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"(1)

 Inevitably, our human ambitions always creep into our communities, and into the church as a whole, but today's gospel reminds us how Jesus regarded such attitudes of a triumphalist church.  We need to become like pais, servant/children, who, as Tugwell has written, are not valued by Jesus for their innocence, but for their vulnerability.  They receive everything as gift.

Imagine the transformation from a church of control and power to church as vulnerable as the wounded Christ; the vulnerability that grows gratitude becomes the mechanism for being Good News.  When people turn away from the church because they can't abide such a powerless institution unable to be an extension of their need for power and control, we shouldn't change to accommodate that sinful need.  The church's real gift is its witness of the Suffering Servant of Christ---vulnerable and committed to distributing God's grace to the least and last, and inviting transformation into that life of vulnerability, compassion and gratitude.

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the gospel will save it."

The "Tao" of Christianity

A former Jesuit friend of mine recently drew my attention to the idea that when Jesus spoke about taking up one's cross, he probably wasn't referring to the cross of crucifixion, but about the more common cruciform image of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, tao. He combined this with another observation: Jesus' reference to Peter being evil was better understood in the Hebrew understanding of "obstacle" rather than "source of malicious intent".  The result was a fascinating homily.

The significance of the the letter tao for the Jews of Jesus' time was its symbolic suggestion of the end, the completeness of something. Taking up one's cross, then, could broadly suggest following Jesus completely, from alef (the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet) to tao.

Jesus' rebuke of Peter as being an obstacle, rather than evil incarnate, gives us a clearer picture of what Jesus was trying to teach.  After Peter drew Jesus aside, Jesus looked back to see the disciples to notice Peter standing in front of him, an out of place position for a disciple, a "follower".  Jesus then rebukes Peter by saying, in essence, "Get out of my way and follow me.  To be a true disciple is the commitment to follow me completely and not presume to lead me."

Most Christians will not die for their faith, but in some parts of the world, such martyrdom is very real and not a remote possibility.  For us, blessed with the safety of our nation to worship God as we see fit, we "lose" our life in the daily sacrifices to love.  The journey to the cross is always love, sacrificial love.  The tao cross reminds us that the nature of our love is being a disciple completely, following where the Spirit takes us.  Ours, then, is a sacrifice of our time, our ego, our comfort, for another.  Shouldering the Cross, is taking our commitment to its logical extreme of offering ourselves for others.

Jesus begins the gospel with the question: "Who do people say that I am ?" and quickly asks "Who do you say that I am ?"  The second question is our question.  We answer, as James suggests today, more in what we do than what we say.  Our faith is not an intellectual proposition, but a living faith, a faith of sacrificial love. 

To “believe” in Christ is not a propositional statement but an existential one. We, like Jesus’ disciples, must choose a way of life that follows Christ in imitation of how he engaged the world he found. We, like Jesus, must challenge hatred cloaked in pious orthodoxy, offer refuge for those the world has given up on, and treat our human brothers and sisters as a sacrament of God’s presence. We cannot, in good conscience, genuflect in front of the host as the body of Christ and continue to disrespect our brother and sister made in His image

At our confirmation, we publicly proclaimed our  faith.  Today, Jesus calls us to see this through to its completion in our answer to his question by living the answer to his question: "Who do you say to the world that I am ?"

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

"Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;
but the things that come out from within are what defile."

Purity is a word that few would consider pejorative; it sits alongside other words we associate with virtue such as honesty, courage, etc.  It is even more effective as a marketing tool to entice the consumer that you are getting 100% of what you are expecting.  The other word associated with this one is perfection. In a sense, purity is a type of perfection, and when you begin an endeavor, it common to hope for perfection.

It is this struggle to be perfect before God that the Jews turned to Torah (the first five books of the Bible).  These books contain a little over six-hundred laws that were composed between 600 and 400 BCE.  These laws were extended to interpretive texts that were designed to help people apply these laws to everyday life to keep better the original six-hundred or so laws in Torah.  By Jesus' time, some of these laws became impediments to the spirit that informed them.  Like so many good ideas, when people who have lost sight of why the law exists simply follow the law "because it is the law", the spirit suffers the ignorance of the law-abiding.

In today's gospel, those whose job it was to interpret and admonish adherence to the Law (Pharisees and scribes) were incensed that Jesus seemed oblivious to the demands of the Law.  He did not seem to chastise those among his disciples that did not wash before meals in violation, not of the law, per se (Leviticus 15:11), but explicitly from the Talmud, a group of interpretive statements to apply the Law.  When questioned as to why Jesus seemed such a scoff-law we get a two part answer:  You are like the hypocrites of whom Isaiah speaks "They honor me with their lips; but their hearts are far from me", and the spiritual insight that "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile."

Jesus' statement in the fifth chapter of Matthew intends not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and now he seems clear as to how the Law is fulfilled: intention.

The other day, I had a rather distressing conversation with a man who insisted that undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to receive any public services such as education and a driver's license. He said this about the poor entering our southern border.  He felt quite confident that his view wasn't obstructed by racism, but that "it was the law".  He insisted that being acting unlawfully was the fundamental transgression that could only be remedied by these people returning to their native country, and following the procedure for properly entering the United States. He was so focused on the violation of the law that the broader question of justice seemed to him as a distraction from the core issue of these folks breaking the law.

The law serves justice, but so many today have it reversed thinking that if it is law it presupposes being just.  Needless to say, in recent memory laws that kept blacks segregated from society, women from voting, and prohibiting consenting adults who are gay from marrying are examples of laws most would find difficult to reconcile with concepts of justice.

Jesus understood this insidious tendency to focus on law rather than justice.This focus provides a false sense of comfort to those who don't want to deal with the messiness of justice and opt for the simplistic purity of law. For many Christians, the Bible has become the modern equivalent to the religious law--studied to discover transgression rather than compassion in the false promise that by doing so one may become perfect.  But perfection does not lie in the observance of the law, but in its fulfillment as Christ fulfilled it: love of God and love of neighbor--the two most important commandments according to Jesus. 

The standard of civil justice for us as Americans is the Constitution, and the standard for Christian justice is love.  The Good News must be received and dispensed from the heart.  Reading the scripture to discover "what to do" is ignorant. We read scripture to become more like Christ.  It isn't so much searching the Scriptures to see "what would Jesus do" as much as it is searching scripture to see "what Jesus did".  Holy scripture doesn't interpret itself, but only comes to life in the circumcised heart of someone who loves aided by the Spirit.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him"

This line taken from John's gospel is the core of what Catholics believe about unity.  However, this unity of which John speaks is sometimes confused with uniformity by the institutional Church..  Case in point: last year's doctrinal investigation by Rome of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious assessing how well the organization is aligned with Church teaching on matters of "feminist issues"(op. cit. NCR).  Specifically, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is concerned that the LCWR is silent in matters of birth control/abortion and marriage norms set by the institutional Church, and that it gives dissenting voices from Church teaching, some of them quite radical (i.e. espousing a post-Church spirituality, post-Jesus, spirituality [op. cit. Bishop Leonard P. Blair]). The name of this investigation is formally called a "doctrinal assessment".  The goal is to have the LCWR align what they say (or what they allow their members to say publicly)  with official Church teaching; for Rome, having holy people saying different things about what it means to be an ecclesiastical community undermines the Faith for all believers.  However, it is this mistaken notion of uniformity for unity that I believe is a threat to the Faith.  Pope Benedict wrote

"We cannot keep to ourselves the words of eternal life given to us in our encounter with Jesus Christ: they are meant for everyone, for every man and woman. ... It is our responsibility to pass on what, by God's grace, we ourselves have received."
- Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 2010

This is precisely what the sisters of the LCWR are attempting.  In their mission statement, they declare that bringing the Good News, "to further the mission of the Gospel" to the "world today"is the animating nexus of their community.  The Good News is often messy, because everyone who has been transformed by this "encounter" with Christ has, as part of her or his story, the uniqueness of the encounter.  Different that these encounters may be, we seek community to share our stories, and listen to the stories of others from the founding of the Church in the first century down to the present.  It should not be surprising, then, that the meanings attached to these personal experiences diverge in many places--good for spiritual health, bad for institutional uniformity.

Jesus said I am the "living bread" because he established a relationship with his disciples that continues as "living bread", a nourishing relationship through the Holy Spirit.  The unity, of which the Church speaks so much about, is borne from this living and dynamic relationship, and yields poorly to the box-building structures of institutional rule-making; unity is full of dissent, divergent understandings and practices, and embraces everyone who claims a relationship with Christ within and without the institutional Church. The keeper of uniformity is doctrine; the keeper of unity is dialogue.  It takes greater faith to live working with unity than simply abandoning the responsibility of communion by blind obedience to institutional decrees; one's conscience must be given the ability to speak truth to authority.

Dialogue is communion, because it presupposes sharing rather than declaring.  That isn't to say that there can be no doctrine or statements of definition, provided they are a product of this dialogue, something the Church increasingly is seeing as a threat to its centralized authority.  To be a living church, is to allow the messiness of relationship and espouse the humility to seek a new direction when the old one no longer speaks Good News to the world.  If we seek the eternal in human institutions, we worship a false God.

Jesus' admonition in today's gospel to "stop murmuring among yourselves" because "no one can come to me unless the Father, who sent me-draw[sic] him."  He then goes on to cite Isaiah 54 "They shall all be taught by God."  Our first and primary teacher in our spiritual journey is not the decrees of church, per se, but God, or more specifically, our living and dynamic relationship with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit that is tested not against a rigid authority, but against a sensus fidelium--honoring the experiences of the faith-filled as a foundation of expressing what we believe and understand to be true. When Church doctrine no longer speaks to the faithful, it becomes bread with bleached flour, void of sustaining nutrition, not the Bread of Life from which one may eat and never go hungry.

Ninth Sunday after Pentacost

Bread of Life & Leftovers

For the next five Sundays, including today, in our reading from the Gospel of John, we will explore what Jesus means by declaring that he is the “Bread of Life”.

We begin with Jesus feeding the five thousand in John 6:1-15 and end with John 6:60-69 and some of Jesus’ followers leaving because they could not accept his teachings about who he was. Today, and in the four succeeding Sundays, we are asked to reflect on our hunger for righteousness and how it is unlike any other longing we have; in fact, it is the only longing we cannot satisfy ourselves.

We begin this series with hungry people, a lot of hungry people—-five thousand according to the gospel, but, of course, that is only counting the men! 

Our reading from Elisha also involves feeding a hungry crowd though only two percent of the crowd Jesus faced. Two very important elements connect the two stories: signs and abundance.  In both stories, the events were considered “signs”, or markers that pointed towards a new existence. For Elisha, the sign wasn’t entirely clear: amidst famine, God provides—-God as a refuge in times of trouble. Samira, the place of Elisha’s “sign” was currently experiencing a famine, and the barley loaves set before the prophet Elisha became the blessing not only to be sufficient but to be a sign of God’s abundance in the face of famine.

Likewise in today’s gospel, Jesus is faced with the doubt of his claim that what was brought before him would be sufficient to feed the hungry crowd (this time, five thousand—at least). Again, what was considered insufficient was not only sufficient but an abundance as evidenced by leftovers. In fact, there were more leftovers than the original number of loaves and fishes: “twelve wicker baskets of fragments”. The leftovers symbolized the twelve as Jesus’ core disciple retinue, but also the link to the twelve “remnant” tribes of Israel, ten of whom have been lost.

The people of Israel themselves are signs of God’s abundance, and though small in the scale of the people of the world, more than sufficient for “feeding” the world and announcing God in their midst.

But, like so many times in Jesus’ ministry, he is mistaken as the Messiah/king who will drive out the Romans and usher in a new kingdom of righteousness with Israel’s greatness once again established and God’s blessing upon them. Today’s gospel ends with Jesus retreating into solitude. He needed time to regroup and realized that a great deal of further instruction was necessary because his “sign” was woefully misinterpreted.

The expectation of God’s abundance often translates into earthly wealth and power. Entire “prosperity gospel” themes are broadcast to hundreds of thousands of hungry people. But the sad truth of these distortions of Jesus’ message is that the food of material wealth and power has no spiritual nutrition; it's all empty calories. If you are hungry for power and money, then Christianity offers you nothing. If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, then pull up a seat at the table.

God’s bread feeds the truly hungry with food that will satisfy humanity’s deepest longing. As we will see as we progress through the sixth chapter of John, Jesus returns and opens us this mystery of being the Bread of Life.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

The Good Shepherd

As the metaphor goes, we are the sheep, Christ is our shepherd.  Since the resurrection and ascension, those following in the tradition of the Apostles are the appointed shepherds and are supposed to be "good".  What we find, however, is corruption of every kind, with islands of hope; in short, we are not so much focused today on "separating the sheep from the goats" as the good shepherds from the malevolent ones.  We should also be challenged to move beyond our hierarchical concept of the shepherd as found in the Church and look for shepherds among the sheep.  Sheep make excellent shepherds.

Jesus calling to be a shepherd was in response to his "pity", but the translation loses the deeper sense of empathy Jesus feels for the crowd's need. The crowds of Jesus' time, like ours, represent people hungry for hope.  They hope for healing, hope for inclusion into God's kingdom, for the Shepherd who is there Lord who will provide for their needs, "from nothing I shall want".  In short, the expectation is that Jesus is the possibility of a better life.

The Gospel of Prosperity is a perversion of Jesus' good news, but people fill congregations to hope for a better life.  In our culture, a better life usually implies a life filled with more things and greater power.  Jesus' good news wasn't that you would get rich following him, or that one would become more powerful in society, but that there was a pathway to God's kingdom that he was walking and invited others to experience in his response to "come and see".

In Mark's gospel, this section serves as a transition between the return of the 12 from having been sent forth (last week's gospel reading) and the next section of Jesus feeding the 5,000.  It is plausible that some in the crowd had followed the disciples who had returned from their mission, people who wanted to meet Jesus and see, first hand, who this person was.  But the crowds were vast, the disciples tired from the mission, so Jesus invited them to "rest a while".  But people followed the progress of the boat and crowded the shore ahead of them.

Unlike the popular "Gospel of Prosperity", Jesus' call wasn't material empowerment, but his good news was that the Kingdom of God/Heaven was possible now, among those who seek it.  This was the core of Jesus' message.  Making Jesus relevant to the crowds who come to Christianity out of desperation (is there really any other way?) isn't a matter of telling them how wealthy and great everything is going to be, how powerful they all will become, how their stock investments will be fruitful after prayer; Jesus' relevancy is hidden in finding community and telling our stories, in sharing graces and, as Paul says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn."  Salvation is here among us.  It isn't a beam of light from the cosmos; it is a journey of vulnerability and celebration.

Jesus' shepherding led people to shepherd; the sheep became shepherds.  Following the Good Shepherd gives us value not because we are excellent sheep, but because we are loved by our shepherd who is good.  From this love, we are called to shepherd one another, to respond to the need in our brother and sister, and to open the Kingdom to everyone.  The Good News is that you are loved; you count.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Companions for the Journey

Many scholars believe Jesus' sending of the twelve was a post-Easter addition to the gospel.  Frankly, it doesn't matter much, I suppose because we have inherited that tradition of mission from Jesus' ministry and vision of God breaking into our lives on earth as a healing presence.  The missioner facilitates this "inbreaking" (to use a phrase I have always disliked, but use anyway).

An acquaintance from a former career whom I had not spoken with in years telephoned me the other day.  Since we talked last, she had endured two bad marriages and cancer.  She felt that God was punishing her, and she wanted to know if God could forgive her.  I went over God's single-mindedness to reach out and heal and forgive though this often rocky relationship He has had with humanity.  Essentially, God is all about healing and forgiveness, of moving as close to us as our free will allow; that the phrase "the Kingdom of God" isn't a posthumous reality, but something we can help build today, in our daily life.  I recalled the verse from Jeremiah "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." She didn't need me to find God because he desire was sufficient; she has already been found.  I helped her with a confession and assured her of God's love.  In short, my mission was to heal, because of God's great grace poured out on the Cross.

The disciples were sent out in pairs.  This was genius, having suffered the loss last year of our pastor and my friend.  We offered each other support and encouragement when it seemed our small mission church was a failure.  This last year, we ordained a deacon for our small parish, and I have a new companion in the ministry.  I think God knows me well enough that I could never do this on my own--this is a great grace I am thankful for each and every day.  The point is, God heals, he forgives and works incredibly hard to offer this to everyone.  The detail from "Creation" by Michelangelo shows two arms: one God's one man's  I have this detail hanging above my bed.

For years, I reflected on man's hand reaching out to touch God's half-hearted reach, until one day I recognized that it was man's half-hearted reach, not God's.  So much of the mission is stretching to reach.  At some point, leaving and "shaking the dust from your feet" isn't resignation, but rather allowing someone else to pick up where you left off.  Very often, working alone it is much more difficult to know when to leave, but with a companion, God's voice is made an audible, if not visible, reality.  This is why the person who refuses both the blessing and burden of community is much more likely to have every whim validated by one's desire.

Our mission, then, is the delivery of God's graceful presence; we are all missioners who can do this if we can first find the grace that has been given us to share.