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 blessing 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 and 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.

The Solemnity of 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 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. God must experience us quite often like a petulant child who 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. God sees what we could be because he has blessed us with his grace to share in His glory.

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 commanded 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 involved the paradox of a single group 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, that the others couldn't have gotten 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, and the sanctuary lamp all mirror the reality of a living, present God.  Each of us, born like an unlit candle, becomes 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, the light's gift of God.  Too often, diversity is viewed with suspicion by the institutional church and within 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 disunity; what, in fact, 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 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. 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, the sure sign of God’s dwelling, and the source of our comfort, instruction, and salvation.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

  

 

Keeping Our Word

Jesus’ farewell address has the curious phrase, “Whoever loves me will keep my word” (Jn. 14:23).  We all understand how to keep our word, but how is it that Jesus asks us to keep it? In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the Word, in Greek, the Logos of God.  The Son in the Trinity is the Word of God; the Son proceeds from the Father as God’s Word, his expression of perfect love for all creation.  Just as words that come from us reveal ourselves to the world, so the Word (Jesus) proceeded from God the Father as a revelation of God’s true nature.

Keeping Jesus’ word is nurturing God’s promise of salvation that Jesus’ life embodied as a sign of grace, God’s great love for His creation in general, and humanity in particular. The world can know God most intimately through Jesus the Christ, though God reveals Himself in many other ways and to many other people; however, our faith tells us God’s preeminent and perfect revelation of Himself is through Jesus.

The second part of today’s gospel anticipates the gift of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Advocate or someone who acts on another’s behalf.  The Spirit, then, is how we can keep Jesus’ word to us and God’s Word to humanity.  Jesus’ reference to peace in declaring, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”  The world offers us a sense of peace that can only be temporary; the peace of Christ is eternal peace, but it isn’t a peace that leaves us in a type of protective spiritual bubble that inoculates us from the difficulties of life.  The Reverend A.J. Muste, a famous American clergyman who preached peace, said, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."  

 We stand upon the foundation of peace that allows us to face the world in all its chaos and turmoil because keeping Christ’s peace means venturing into a violent and broken world with Good News when all around us is falling apart.  William Blake’s famous line from “The Second Coming,” “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” is the bad news of the peace the world gives.  The peace of Christ is the center that holds for eternity and extends out into the world, and draws everyone in like foundlings brought from a storm into a warm, protective, loving home. Alleluia, Christ is risen!

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.

The Resurrection of the Lord

 
He is Risen!

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 for what they claim to already believe.  Based on biblical passages, Harold Camping calculated the exact time for Christ’s return. For Harold, this wasn’t faith but empirical truth. He convinced others.  The time came and went.  Nothing.  Another date was set; 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; this is faith. 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. 

Easter is the "difficult birth" of a faith borne on the cross of one who died two thousand years ago and 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 of the Lord's Passion

 

We Call this Friday Good

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. What a spectacular failure of faith.

Today is a day we move deeply into meditating on our need to tell God, like 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 echoes 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 person is the disciple upon whom the Church is built: Peter, called “Rock” by Jesus, crumbles into sand at the crucifixion. 

     The cross is a spectacle of human folly, failure, and faithlessness. "Yet, in spite of that", as T.S. Eliot wrote, “We call this Friday good.” Its goodness lies in God’s total submission to 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 respond to being asked to suffer for another, or whether or not the possibility of suffering sends us scurrying into the night, renouncing God. 

     “How could God allow such suffering ?” many ask and imply that 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 falling 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 intends to be with us. We want to be “saved”, just as Jesus wanted to escape suffering; it's only natural. No one suggests that to follow Jesus we should seek out pain, 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’s affirmation is entering into the heart of the suffering world and walking with those who suffer to find God calling us into his embrace, arms stretched out on 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 Christ and to be resurrected with him.

First Sunday of Lent

 

Follow Me.  I Know the Way Out.

Hunger, Powerlessness, and Inadequacy:  These are the weak spots Jesus struggled with.  We often consider the battle and Jesus’ victory and overlook how the desert affected him.  Going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food; it would be suicide to make such a journey without sufficient food and water; however, we can survive without food for forty days if we are in good health and have adequate water.  Jesus was hungry.  Fasting allowed Jesus to experience the temptation to be independent of needing others to bake his bread and understand that life is more than the sum total of our physical desires and needs.  On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people and that centering one’s life around physical desires is an error (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Ultimately, we cannot rely completely on human communion but on God our creator.

            Jesus’ next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness.  Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries if he would worship Satan.  Look at what being submissive to God the Father had gotten him: hunger pangs and feelings of worthlessness.  There is that famous line from Paradise Lost where Satan says, “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven.”  This was a test of Jesus’ resolve for the mission; success wasn't on Jesus’ terms but on God the Father’s.  He replies to Satan by quoting again from Deuteronomy, “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”   How often does our fear of being powerless lead us to believe that getting power is the answer, that realigning our priorities to become powerful is our ultimate goal, rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God?

            The final temptation came in a form quite unlike all the others.  It was the ultimate showdown.  In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation becomes Jesus’ greatest vulnerability.  Just give me a sign of your love!  Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well.  Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test.  Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:

“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and: “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Satan quotes Psalm 91, and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy: “You shall not put your Lord God to the test.”  The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him.  How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon?  This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time,” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat.  Being holy and being hounded has a long tradition of being paired, but like Jesus, we may be paired for a time in the desert; simply because the journey gets tough doesn't mean we walk it alone.  At every turn, the Community, animated by the Spirit, joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert.  As the man standing at the bottom of a deep pit asks the other man who came to help him why he jumped in to be with him, they both were stuck.  The man who jumped in to rescue him said, “Don’t worry. I've been here before, and I know the way out”.

Ash Wednesday

 

Pray in Secret


The gospel admonition to seek out a type of secret piety rather than a public one isn't a rejection of public worship for an eremitical life; it is the cautionary tale of one who looks for the wrong thing in their worship.   Jesus notes that those who make a grand show of their piety receive what it is they are longing for: public adoration and acceptance.  I suppose there is nothing inherently wrong with public adoration and acceptance if this is one's goal, but it is not the goal of true worship.  True worship makes God the focus, not oneself.  The concept of the word "worship" in English suggests ascribing worth due to someone or something.  In a sense, our worship should express what we believe God is entitled to.  What is God entitled to, if not the entirety of our being? 

If we seek approval from others in our worship, Jesus says this is what we gain.  God can only be honored in true worship in the secret of our hearts.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

 

Where is the light in this darkness?

I would like you to picture a scene.  It is dark.  I mean, hand-isn’t-visible-in-front-of-your-face darkness.  The darkness is profoundly isolating.  Everyone assumes they are alone because they cannot see one another. Then, in the distance, is a single, fragile flame coming from a lit candle. It dips to one side, then to another, seems to multiply, and the number of flames increases, revealing hands, then arms, then faces, and finally entire bodies.  A deep sense of relief comes at not being alone, people immediately begin speaking, and finally, your candle is lit.  The person with the first candle comes among us, bringing us closer together.  Our light intensifies as a group and attracts the notice of those farther away, and they join.  Some in the group decide to leave and search for others; sometimes they return, and sometimes they are never seen again. The original bearer of the candle leaves us, but leaves behind his candle; this candle can never go out. He tells us he will return someday, and we have been lighting more candles each day and re-lighting the ones that get blown out.

Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death, light has
arisen. From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew’s gospel quoting Isaiah)

Jesus was the Light John preached. Jesus is the “light in the darkness” and the “light of the nations” that gathers those in darkness together.  The Holy Spirit is an eternal flame left for us as a source of comfort, illumination, and power.

As Church, each of us with our individual flame has the power of the collective---the nature of “church”, from the Greek ecclesia meaning “a gathering”—suggests a unified body.  What we have realized, though, is far from the unified idea.  Divisions abound among Christian communities and among members within each community. Divisions don’t simply follow denominational lines. The lines of division occur within each faith community much as they did at the time of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. And if you look deeply into the hearts of those set apart from one another, the faultline is a divided heart.

This divided heart was most evident in the Corinthian community when Paul writes

For it has been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters,
by Chloe’s people, that there are rivalries among you.
I mean that each of you is saying,
“I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,”
or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.”
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

Did you notice among the list of “belonging” statements the correct answer: “I belong to Christ”? So why did Paul lump those replies in with the rest?  He did it to make an important point. Simply claiming to belong to Christ while refusing communion with one’s neighbor is disingenuous.  From the third chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus broadens the concept of family:

Many people were sitting around Jesus. They said to him, "Your mother and brothers are waiting for you outside." Jesus asked, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" Then Jesus looked at those people sitting around him. He said, "These people are my mother and my brothers! My true brother and sister and mother are those people that do the things God wants."

One can’t love Christ and despise one’s brother(or sister!). Communities that are lights don’t define themselves based upon propositions but upon devotion.  If we claim to worship Christ, we accept the differences among us not as challenges but as a sign that the Holy Spirit is stirring things up. Of course, not all that manifests itself in a community is the working of the Holy Spirit; that is why it is so important that everyone looks to themselves and humbly submits to the discernment of the larger community. It isn’t perfect, and sin and imperfections will always exist, but there is “light” if each of us recognizes a higher power other than simply strong opinions that must be defended at the expense of unity. How do we reverse division?

We break down barriers by moving away from our well-defined groups to seek communion with those who share our ideals and devotion but with whom there is disagreement. We also break down barriers by listening more attentively to one another within our denominational community.  Most fundamental of all, though, is the devotion of each member to prayer, listening to the voice of God, and seeking out that voice in one another.

The kingdom of heaven isn’t built by asking others to give up their lights to one among you who claims to be “light the way”, but by drawing closer to one another, and sharing the lights that were given to each of you at baptism and continue to burn this very day.

Christmas

 

Expect the Unexpected

"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."

 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), 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 that 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 reminds 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 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, 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.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

 

It's All in the Family

            Today’s Old Testament short reading needs a bit of background:

 So, the Jewish world is divided during the time referred to by Isaiah; the northern and southern kingdoms.  The northern kingdom is Israel, and the southern one is Judah (of which Jerusalem is a part and where the Temple is located).  To make a long story (a few thousand years) shorter, Israel’s king was in cahoots with the king of Aram to lay siege to Jerusalem.  Judah’s king (Ahaz), against the advice of the prophet Isaiah, makes an alliance with Assyria saying, “I am your servant and vassal. Come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Aram and of the king of Israel, who are attacking me.”  Ahaz gives the Assyrian king treasure from the Temple (and palace) as an incentive to help.  Ahaz knows this is wrong to rely on outside help, and Isaiah counsels unconditional faith and reliance on God; Ahaz piously refuses. Ahaz’s son Hezekiah became the “savior” of his people, likely the child referred to by Isaiah in his prophecy to Ahaz:” …the young woman [also translated virgin] shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.”  Hezekiah restores the righteousness of Judah and defeats the king of Assyria.  He re-centralizes the Passover worship and invites all tribes to Jerusalem for Passover, restoring righteous rule in Jerusalem.

            Both Matthew and Luke pick up on this narrative framework in their account of Jesus’ birth. God’s help for Judah was of great comfort to the early Christians who, like Judah, were under “siege”.  Jesus’ birth under the Davidic line assures Matthew’s audience of a savior who is the final fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation, the ultimate Emmanuel.

            Although Jesus did not make much of his ancestry---probably to de-emphasize the nature of his reign as spiritual rather than temporal---the post-Easter Christian community re-emphasized this as a source of authority and claim on messiahship.  The Davidic emphasis in the New Testament emphasizes Jesus’ lowly, earthly life when contrasted with the risen savior of the Resurrection (Reginald Fuller).

            The remarkable birth of Jesus as a convergence between the earthly lineage and the divine is a great symbol of the genesis of our restoration with God through Christ’s earthly ministry and the subsequent indwelling of the Holy Spirit; God with us, after the Resurrection, becomes God within us. Christmas is the promise realized to its fulfillment in the post-Easter community.  We have become part now of the Davidic line, through Christ, and by God’s adoption of us as co-heirs (not heirs!) with Christ of God’s promise of salvation. As the saying goes, God has no grandchildren; Jesus is our brother. We are family by God’s choice.

Third Sunday of Advent

 

Should we look for another?”

 The most striking part of today’s gospel is John’s disillusionment with Jesus, embodied in his question sent by messenger to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  Jesus’ reply, however, is even more striking.  Instead of simply saying, “Yes, I am he,” he asks the messenger to report back to John what he has seen:

“…the blind regain their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.”

            Notice Jesus isn’t saying, “I give the blind their sight, I heal the lame,” but is directing the attention to the acts themselves as evidence of God’s presence surrounding his ministry.  The messenger is asked to witness the Kingdom of God that Jesus has begun. Jesus isn’t trying to prove his divinity; he is announcing God being in their midst, calling for practice before doctrine.

            Above all other things, the Kingdom of Heaven/God is built upon acts of healing and justice as signs of God’s presence.  To find the Messiah, you need to look where the Messiah hangs out: with those who are outcasts, sick, and poor.  God’s kingdom, as Jesus proclaimed to Pilate, “is not of this world,” but what he didn’t explain was that it can be found in this world. He knew that the hardness of Pilate’s heart would prevent him from seeing God’s grace in action because, like so many, Pilate would have looked for the Messiah as a group of devoted Jews looking to establish a new political order.
            Like many of us, John finds it difficult to believe that God’s justice does not involve some new political order, a new way of organizing society, yet another manifesto that, if we interpret it correctly and follow it faithfully, is guaranteed “heaven on earth”; that is not the kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom is built around a way of being in this world but not being of this world. 
            It is telling the reaction of the crowd who encountered Jesus in John’s place.  In the next section of the gospel, after Jesus declares, “…blessed is the one who takes no offense at me,” we see the crowd leaving and Jesus calling out to them:

“What did you expect to see?  A reed swayed by the wind?  Then what did you expect to see?  Someone dressed in fine clothing?  Those who wear fine clothing are in royal palaces.  Then why did you go out? To see a prophet?”

            Jesus then affirms John’s role as the preparer of the way while proclaiming, “The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” It is time to begin our journey on the way rather than stay prepared.  It is time to follow God’s trail that leads to the poor, the diseased, and the discarded humanity, who are beacons for God’s presence in our world today. When we are in the presence of these people, away from power and influence, we find the Christ Child.

Second Sunday of Advent

 

Ready the Way of the Lord

"His winnowing fan is in his hand; he will clear his threshing floor"(John the Baptist)

Today, we shift from focusing on the “end times” to the other end of our journey, preparing for the coming of the Messiah!  It is a preparation that harkens back to John the Baptist, who prepared the way by preaching repentance in the wilderness. Still, the preparation we live in today anticipates the revelation of God’s kingdom more perfectly.

            We begin our story as Christians often do, with our Jewish brothers and sisters, who first heard and responded to God’s revelation.  Isaiah’s text celebrates the arrival of the perfect king with three sets of distinguishing virtues: deep wisdom and understanding, might and counsel, and knowledge and fear of God—virtues of intelligence, practical ability, and piety.  What more could one ask of a leader?  Alas, this hope faded over time. 

            With the birth of Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Emmanuel—God-With-Us —the kingdom was not fully realized, but Jesus’ coming set in motion the building of the kingdom.  Just as John pointed the way to the Messiah, Jesus pointed the way to God’s Kingdom, and the Holy Spirit continues to guide us and provide us with hope.  John’s “preparing the way” now is transformed into our mandate to “walk the way” made by Jesus for people who were originally known as “People of the Way.”

            John’s preparation of repentance for the coming of Jesus the first time is still valid today for us who set out on the way of Christ.  Before we plot a course, we have to know where we are in relation to our destination; that is why repentance is part of Advent.  Repentance, as the word suggests, orients us a hundred and eighty degrees from our present course; it turns us around and gets us going in the right direction. John uses the image of the winnowing fan separating the valuable wheat from the waste of the chaff.  The chaff is the lighter and unusable part of the wheat and must be separated from the valuable kernel of the wheat itself.  Often this is preached as a metaphor for God punishing the unrighteous as “chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  While this may be valid, it is also an opportunity to see a more personal dimension to repentance. The chaff is all those things that accumulate in our lives that obscure the true wheat of Christ, the Good News.  Through the ministration of the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, we can let go of all that is not Good News for ourselves and others. Advent is a time for looking at what we cling to that keeps us from paying attention to our destination, dulling our sense of direction and the destination.

First Sunday of Advent

 

Where will you find Christ? Keep watching.

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

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

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

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

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

Meister Eckhart, one of the church's great mystics, famously wrote that if you only had a single prayer to pray, "Thank you" would suffice.  

     This week, we continue with the general theme of prayer with the righteous Pharisee as an exemplar of how not to pray and the sinful "publican," or tax collector, as an exemplar of how to pray.  As usual, the unexpected is central to this parable.

      Jesus famously told his disciples what to pray for with the gift of the Our Father; however, he didn't answer the question directly as to how to pray.  Today’s gospel is all about how to pray.

     The Pharisee's prayer was more horizontal than vertical; his prayer was self-congratulatory for not being like his sinful neighbors. His prayer was from an island of self-righteousness. 

O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity --
greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector.
I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income. 

    His gratitude springs from "not being like the rest of humanity," it begins in separation, focusing on his side-view of a sinner.  And the tax collector was a sinner.  Let's not make him into some noble hero.  Tax collectors were famous sellouts in Jesus' time.  They were Jews who profited from their association with the occupying Romans and were allowed to keep whatever they could collect above what was required from their fellow Jews. They even had the power to have non-compliant Jews arrested.  As with most people invested with such power, the power was abused, and these folks were famously despised. 

    The Pharisees were a group of religious scholars trying to bring the average person hope by helping them live righteous lives by putting the Law into practice.  The Pharisee's pride grew from being socially, educationally, and religiously set apart from the people he was called to lead.  There is a lesson in it for me as a priest and anyone with temporal authority within the Church.  I can imagine such pride was incremental and crept in as he appropriated each compliment and praise received from the people he helped, growing like a wildfire until it consumed him in the deception that what they adored was him rather than God's gift to him.  The tax collector had no such delusions.

     The tax collector's prayer was vertical; off at a distance and prostrated, he couldn't even see or hear the Pharisee.  The tax collector's sins were too painful for him to list.  He simply prays, "Have mercy on me, a sinner!" Scripture says he went away justified; God forgave his sins not because he was righteous but because he prayed from his poverty of spirit.  The Pharisee prayed from what he considered his great possessions: his righteousness. Like the widow only putting in a mite for the Temple collection, she gives all she has.  She isn't donating a small portion of her wealth; Jesus observes in that parable that "she gave from her poverty."  We must pray from our poverty because this is our state in relation to God.  We have nothing to stand on but clay feet, but it is the same clay God formed; it is human clay, and it is the source of true humility and genuine gratitude because God has redeemed it in Christ.  

     When we pray from our poverty, we tap into the riches that God has given us.  Time and time again, God's grace seeks out the humble, the lowly, and the dispossessed.  Throughout salvation history, God visits the least regarded and comes to visit and give great comfort.  There is something in the nature of God that desires such intimacy as that of a mother caring for her sick child. We don't need to be great and notorious sinners to attract God's love; it is there before we ask. God is in love with humanity, and the less we stand human before God, the more distorted our understanding of the image of God within us.

          The Oscar Wilde quotation, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars," comes to mind. Our prayer is always a cry for mercy when we begin with being grateful for having the vision of the stars from the gutter. 

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

 

"Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances"  1Thessalonians 5:16-17

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” Meister Eckhart

One of the greatest acts of faith is prayer. Prayer acknowledges God explicitly and is done with the hope that God is listening.  To surround one's daily life in prayer, to strive to "pray without ceasing" is to hold on to the tail of a tiger and not let go.

      Today's gospel has a widow holding on to the tail of a tiger in the form of a judge who refuses to hear her case, but she prevails in the end because she refuses to let the matter drop.  Out of sheer fatigue, boredom, or a desire to simply get on with it, the judge finally relents, and she is afforded justice because of her perseverance.  Jesus uses this story to suggest that his disciples will soon find themselves like the widow, alone and in need of help, and that the only way to proceed is to pray and not lose faith.  Jesus links faith with the endurance of prayer by asking, "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

     How much more, Jesus reasons, will God who loves you hear your prayer and act decisively to render judgment? The word "quickly" in the scripture does not indicate a short time from asking, but rather the speed of God's action once God acts, His decisiveness.  As we read a couple of weeks ago, faith the size of a mustard seed is all that is required because faith is not measured in degrees; it is experienced by its presence or absence. 

     Faith is not something that is mainly feeling but is an action guided by the will and sustained by the strength of hope.  Though we tire, and at times fail to pray formally, our fatigue and desire for prayer itself is a prayer.   Reciting to oneself, "Oh God, I wish I could pray," is a prayer.  Constant prayer is living with this awareness.

    The strong tradition of the "Jesus Prayer" in the Orthodox Church ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner") is the mantra-like prayer that infuses one's being so that prayer is made constant in the awareness of one's beating heart or breathing.   The practice of stillness, or waiting upon God as prayer, has a long and honored tradition within Christianity. Lighting a candle, paying attention to one's breath, and only finding oneself in God's presence is also prayer.  Today, we might say that books on all manner of praying abound, and sell very well; whether or not anyone is praying is another matter.

     Prayer may not satisfy us that we are praying, but this need not distract us.  Lifting our hearts to God, desiring to be seen by God in our hesitation, our fear, and our inability to form words, allows the Spirit to pray in us and through us.  Being involved in praying can be as simple as sitting quietly and listening for God's "quiet, whispering voice."  We don't have faith because we pray.  We pray because we already have faith. It is God, through the Holy Spirit, who ultimately makes prayer possible.  We have this great stream of prayer running directly through our hearts like a great torrent.  We have only to jump in and let it carry us for God's "quickness" to be realized.

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

 

Ten had Faith; One had Gratitude.

            Today's reading from The Book of Kings and the Gospel of Luke highlights healing and the outsider.  In Kings, Naaman, a Syrian, is healed by Elisha as a sign of God's blessing to those outside Israel.  In Luke, of the ten healed of leprosy, it is only the Samaritan who returns to give thanks.  The Samaritan and Syrian have the dubious distinction of being the least favored, not part of the "Chosen Ones," yet God's blessing rests on them.

            In the gospel story, the ten lepers are outside the city and cry to Jesus not directly for healing but for mercy.  Such a cry reveals the connection between illness and a loss of favor with God; if you were sick, you had lost favor with God.  Jesus doesn't pray for them but simply commands them to journey to a priest to be certified as being healed.  They had to begin the journey still uncured.  It was on their way that they were healed; it was their faith that got them to move.

            Faith requires us to act as if what we proclaim has already been brought about.  This is why there is always an element of the absurd in living a life of faith.  St. Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians, chapter 1:

 Jews demand signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

What, then, is the point of returning to give thanks if everyone was healed?  The other nine didn’t return to a leprous state because gratitude can only be a gift, not a requirement.  The gratitude of the Samaritan was rewarded by a relationship with Christ, a personal encounter one-on-one, which the other nine did not establish.  The Samaritan’s gift was a relationship — the ongoing and direct connection to God.

            This story also serves to highlight another reality of the Christian life.  While a Christian may have faith, faith enough even to heal, that doesn’t mean she or he has that intimacy and closeness that those whose faith is sustained by gratitude enjoy.  Gratitude is what sustains us when we are not healed, for whatever reason, when our prayers seem to go unanswered.  Gratitude is what allows us to pass the blessings of our faith to others.  The other nine were healed, but how many lived that restoration and “returned glorifying God in a loud voice”? One.

            We are called to “Glorify God in a loud voice” by displaying our gratitude, living our life as a gift from God that we can share with the world, with the “foreigners,” the outsiders who cannot lay claim to any blessing other than the one we can give that comes from God.