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.

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

“Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

How long does it take to have faith that God will spare you from the ravages of a storm? What reason did the disciples have to think they would be spared? Jesus had not saved them from such harm before.  What does it take to have faith to face the wind, rain, and choppy seas with serenity?

I have always taken issue with Jesus’ rebuke and wish one of the disciples would have stood up and said, “Hey, we have left everything and followed you. You heal the lame, and feed the thousands with only a few fish and loaves of bread; you are an amazing guy, but who wouldn’t be afraid of being swamped in a small boat in the middle of a storm?”

We have no such comment (at least not one recorded), and should look more deeply to find the truth the gospel writer was trying to reveal in this story of terror and faith.

Mark’s story is in a long tradition of Old Testament stories where prophets still storms. The story's focus is to reveal Jesus’ identity as one “whom even the wind and sea obey”. The story is meant to establish Jesus’ association with God. The disciples’ faith is not yet fully developed and won’t be until Jesus’ crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit.

Yet, we who have the great advantage of hindsight, and the great gift of the Holy Spirit, often are stuck in the boat without the strength of faith. What excuse do we have?

From the Letter to the Hebrews: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, of things unseen”. Trust engenders hope, and hope, faith. Father Henry Nouwen wrote, “The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good…in some way, we cannot see”(Turn My Mourning into Dancing). Nouwen makes this crucial connection between trust and hope in writing that a “person in difficulty can trust because of a belief that something else is possible. To trust is to allow for hope.”

We don’t hope because of what God has done, but what God can do. We live within this relationship made real and present by the Spirit such that whatever happens to us, God is always present, not as a spectator, but as one who is with us, Emmanuel.  He is with us in and through the stormy weather. Our hope is not that every anxiety is assuaged, but that our connection with God is never broken. Our faith may not quell the storm, but it will allow us to see through it.

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Losing Control and Finding the Kingdom

We have a lot of baggage associated with the word "kingdom".  On the positive side, King Arthur comes to mind with all of the associated virtues of chivalry and knighthood; on the negative, we see feudal oppression, paranoid brutality, and hedonism.  For the Jews, kingdom meant one thing:  God's reign on earth in the line of David. The reading from Ezekiel is a prophetic utterance in exile.  As a priest in exile, Ezekiel cannot offer sacrifice at the Temple, which is over a thousand miles to the west, but Ezekiel does become God's voice to his people promising them a return and a vision of the future in which a messianic ruler will unite God's people again and usher in a new age of prosperity. The image of Israel's new life from a cedar branch becomes "a majestic cedar.  Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it, every winged thing in the shade of its boughs."  In Mark's gospel, Jesus picks up on this imagery in describing the mustard "tree"(it is more of a bush) that "'becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade'".  For Ezekiel, cedar grew from a single branch; for Jesus, a tiny seed. 

Jesus' kingdom, though, wasn't to be realized through the establishment of a theocracy (this was a constant source of tension among his disciples).  Jesus' kingdom is a people who are directly animated by God's Spirit and called to a high ethical standard (love your enemies, justice for the poor, etc..).  The branches in Jesus' kingdom go out rather than up, and it would be a mistake to associate (as many have and do) the Church with God's kingdom.  While the institutional Church is part of the kingdom, we still pray "Thy kingdom come".  In John's gospel (unlike Mark, Matthew, and Luke), Jesus announces "My kingdom is not of (from) this world" when questioned by an anxious Pilate about the nature of Jesus' "kingdom".  This is echoed in Luke's gospel when Jesus replies to the Pharisees "the kingdom of heaven is in the midst(among) of you".  Jesus' presence defines kingdom while he walked the earth, and we have inherited this presence at Pentecost with the sending of the Holy Spirit.  The "branches" that have sprung are not royal lineages, but the profound ethic of sacrificial love.  The sacrifice of Christ made real and present at each Mass, becomes the "mustard seed" of our faith that finds roots among ourselves initially, but then branches out to the world.  We also find seeds of faith in prayer and reading of sacred scripture, each seed sprouting and growing in many different and splendid ways.

This image of the sprawling tree/bush can be complemented with what we usually do in response to wild, vegetative growth; we want to manage it.  In a world that has fallen in love with control, this bush breaks out of its fences, defies pruning, knocks down walls and seeks to embrace the world.  I think of women religious who are struggling against Rome's heavy-handed treatment, and the response of a particular sister who was referred to in an essay quoting a lay worker: "The Eucharist will live only if we find a way for it to live outside the Mass."  Spot on. Jesus' parable is one of distributive, expansive justice, of inclusion set prophetically against the "kingdom" of royal lineage, palaces and "trickle-down" justice.  Ezekiel's prophetic vision of a greater, supreme kingdom arrived with the birth of Jesus and continues in its many "royal" lines at every baptism when the candidate is given the powers of priest, prophet, and king by the Holy Spirit.

Corpus Christi

"Behold what you are; become what you eat"--St. Augustine

Today's scriptures make an arc between the understanding of the Jewish people's use of blood in Moses' covenant with God on Mount Sinai and Jesus' using this imagery to position himself in a new covenant between God and his people. Of all that distinguishes Christianity from other religions, the body and blood of Christ is the greatest.

Blood sacrifices have a finality that no other kind of sacrifice can offer.  The sprinkling of blood over the people in Exodus united them with the finality of the sacrificed bull, and the use of blood on the altar gave back to God the life that animates us all.  In a sense, blood was the life-essence that was uniquely God's.  Jewish law prohibited the eating of animal flesh unless all of the blood was drained so as not to appropriate that essence.

In Hebrews, Jesus becomes the new lamb of sacrifice.  This isn't Jesus sacrificing himself to an angry God for appeasement, but rather God's complete and final offering of himself in an act of mind-boggling love for his creation.  As Jesus declares in today's gospel reading "This is my blood of the covenant".  This new covenant ushers in the new and eternal relationship between humanity and God.  It is an agreement that can never be topped or superseded by something more profound or lasting.  God opens the most sacred of places in the Temple at Christ's death on the cross by tearing the curtain that separated this holiest space from the rest of the Temple.  God's submission to Christ as the Lamb of God now embraces all of humanity in the story of Exodus.  We are all now inheritors of the liberation the Jewish people have made real in the celebration of Passover.  The New Passover is the passing over of our unworthiness and the invitation to the liberation Christ offers.

Eucharista is Greek for Thanksgiving and where we get the name of the part of Mass where we unite ourselves to Christ's one, perfect sacrifice.  Our "thanksgiving" is both a response to Christ's perfect offering and participation in the ratification of the covenant God made eternal at Calvary.  Saint Augustine declared "So you are beginning to receive what you have also begun to be."  The body and blood of Christ are transformative, not only in the once-and-for-all historical act two thousand years ago, but continue to transform the faithful at each Mass; the sacrament makes that single act real again every time you receive the body and blood of Christ.  It isn't a "spiritual" communion in which the elements are simply reminders of God's act, they are a participation in Christ's sacrifice the way the Jewish people at Sinai participated in the covenant of Moses and relive that experience at Passover each year. Christ's blood as the Lamb of the New Covenant does more than redefine our relationship with God, we become God's bloodline children (God has no grandchildren).  It is more than checking off the sins we've committed (and continue to commit). We might fail miserably as God's children, but as God's children, we are never outside the home looking in.  Our bloodline is divine, our redemption eternal.

Holy Trinity

"Batter my heart three-person God"
--John Donne, "Meditation 14"

The Holy Trinity is challenging because the official declaration of God's identity as "three persons one God" appears to contradict 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? Indeed, it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it." 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 the Christ that has dwelt in us since baptism. 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 relationship, and God's "aseity", or uncreated, perfectly actualized being. Wow, that sounded like the beginning of a seminary essay!  Scripture implies not only God's uncreated nature, it also gives us an experience of God as moving away from self into humanity in the form of revelations (the Prophets) and redemptive action (Jesus as Christ), and acting within human nature in such a way to recognize in oneself, and one's neighbor, the Divine.  This three-part structure: God-self, God-revelation, God-within humanity, becomes the basis to reflect our experience of God's relationship to humanity.

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 a long life on the land . . . ."

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

In Matthew's gospel, the Trinity is explicit in the triadic baptismal formula with the promise that the role of the disciple is to teach the world "all that I have commanded you".  If you remember, three weeks ago, Jesus 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?

The Ascension

Now What?

Ascension has all the makings of a story’s end.  Jesus, who has been crucified, and is now resurrected, is once again with his disciples teaching them to anticipate the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Then in a moment of great transcendent glory, departs “lifted up into the clouds”.  We have been following the story since Christmas and Jesus’ birth. Now it is only fitting that as we watch him ascend, there is a feeling of completion; the drama will certainly end with the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

In truth, the story continues, though, to the Eschaton and the righteous judgment of humanity and the end of earthly history.

The ascension completes the human ministry cycle of Jesus but begins the reign of Christ within the Church. The Kingdom is more than a representation of Christ to humanity, it continues as God’s presence among us. For Christians, the Holy Spirit gives us communion with God the Father and Son, we now “abide” with God. For non-believers, we become more than simply messengers of a doctrine, we have the potential to be Christ’s presence.

The liturgical cycle reflects this well. Most of our time is spent after Pentecost. This is the time to compare our lives with the life of Christ and his ministry.  In the Advent-Christmas cycle, we revisit God’s incredible love for humanity and the birth of Jesus. Then, in the Lent-Easter cycle, we celebrate the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection, ascension, and the spark of the Holy Spirit which sets the Earth ablaze with God’s Kingdom once again. The final chapter has not been written, and there is much work yet to be done.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

     

Radicalized Christianity

     A few years ago, a Coptic Christian began attending the local Lutheran Church but made it a point to introduce himself to me as our worship service was ritually more familiar to him. He told me of the many persecutions Christians were receiving at the hands of Muslims in Cairo and throughout the region. He had lost friends, been discriminated against and was lucky enough to escape the rising violence for himself and his family. The violence and persecution had left him bitter and very much concerned that Islam in the United States posed a threat, and if allowed to establish itself would eventually dominate the country and subjugate everyone to Islamic law. He wanted to know if I would let my parish know about this danger.  Needless to say, it was a difficult thing to hear, and I didn’t want to encourage his fear though it was perfectly understandable given his experience in Egypt. Although I didn’t try to persuade him that his fears were not founded, I doubted Islamic law would replace the Constitution anytime soon, but I wanted to allow him to share his fears and pray with him. 

     How would I confront such hostility to my faith? So many Christians are being martyred for their faith in the Middle East and the brutality of religious hatred deeply offends me, especially when groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda and others misrepresent Islam to garner political power.  What can we as Christians do?  What countless others before us have done:  listen to the words of Christ: “…love your enemies and pray for those that persecute so that you may become sons of your Father….”

     It is love that brings us into communion with God; specifically, it is a love that goes beyond “love one another”….it is Jesus’ “love one another as I have loved you”.  The “as I have loved you” is the love of enemy. This love is the grace-filled response of Christ to those who hated him, to those whose lack of faith caused them to flee at the hour of his passion.

     Does that mean we simply respond passively in the face of hostile injustice? By no means! The love of           Christ is a love of action that makes us face our enemies without any weapons of harm, but weapons of conviction and faith to penetrate even the darkest of hearts. We act as witnesses to the truth in refusing to be controlled by the hate that fuels our enemies. There are many such examples in our history. In recent times, there is the witness of Maximillian Kolbe, OFM, Conv. who stood up to the Nazi by offering to take the place of one who was to be executed. They accepted his offer.

     Another modern example occurred in March of 1993 when almost the entire monastic community of Notre-Dame l’Atlas in Algeria were executed as political pawns in the Algerian civil war. They decided as a community to stay and continue to serve the local Muslim villagers who benefited from their medical care and counsel. We love our enemies most effectively when we love without distinction. It is a great grace to find in our spiritual life simply love, having discovered the absence of hate in our hearts and the absence of enemies in our lives.