June 19, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Jeremiah 20:10-13 + Romans 5:12-15 + Matthew 10:17-33

“Life is difficult.” says Scott Peck

in the opening line of his famous book: The Road Less Traveled.”

He claims that there are two kinds of people in the world:

those who know life is difficult and come to terms with it and

those who never understand that life is difficult and are drowned in its waters.

The healthy know that life is difficult.

Jeremiah is healthy, and Jesus would have his disciples be healthy as well.

In these verses from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus continues his formation program for those he has just called and is sending on mission.

He would have them be healthy.

The story of Jeremiah and the story of the one whose Psalm we have sung today

bear witness not simply to the difficulty of life,

but to the presence of God in the midst of their distress,

and that is the point of Matthew’s instruction.

Those of you who read along or who have looked ahead at the text have noticed that I chose to add several verses and proclaim the entire section of Matthew’s instruction, because in it, the only mention of the work of the Spirit in the life of disciples that occurs in Matthew’s entire Gospel.

Since it is the only time Matthew writes of the Holy Spirit this way, it is extremely significant, and it casts a light on this matter that is essential.

It is this gift that will tell them what to say.

It is this gift that will give them courage.

It is this gift that will take away all fear.

What is truly remarkable and tragic about the persecutions

that both Jeremiah and Jesus’ disciples experienced

is that the persecution did not originate from an outside source.

It came from within the community of faith!

Jeremiah was persecuted by his fellow countrymen of Judah.

The disciples of Jesus were persecuted by their fellow Jews.

These readings offer a look at what happens when a community of faith

turns on itself and refuses to listen to the prophetic voices in their midst.

It is what happens when fear gains control:

fear of change, fear of growth, fear of what is different, unknown, unexpected.

Fearless then is the disciple of Jesus, and because of it, they are free.

In the spirit of that freedom a virtue emerges

that gives a disciple a focus and a future.

When Jesus says to his disciples that he has “Come to set the world on fire.” He knows what he is about. Anyone who speaks that way knows who they are and what their purpose in life may be. I call that: “ZEAL”.

It does not mean becoming a fanatical zealot.

It means that the disciple is one whose life has meaning, purpose, and destiny.

It is a virtue rooted in an expectation that something is asked of us,

that there is purpose to our lives, and a destiny to which we are called.

The zealous are focused on the direction of their lives, their future,

their purpose and their goal.

For a disciple of Jesus Christ, for anyone Baptized into his Life,

that destiny is the Kingdom of God, and nothing else is a substitute.

They are headed that way with a sense of urgency and purpose.

They know how to get there, and they know what gets in the way.

The purpose of their life is not a six figure salary, a particular model of car,

or house in any certain neighborhood.

It is the Kingdom of God, and there is about these people a certain kind of vibrant vitality that is eager and expectant for the Lord’s return.

They are joyful, prayerful, focused people who know what matters and what does not.

What they do is consistent with Jesus Christ, His life, His mission, His teaching, and most of all, His relationship with God.

In short, it the “Godly Life.”

I think it is best learned from the Life of Moses,

who in Matthew’s Gospel is the model for the life of Jesus,

and therefore for his disciples.

The story of Moses in the Old Testament is the story of Discouragement and Depression, of being Misunderstood and Misrepresented, of temptation to Resentment and Revenge, yet he rose over all of that.

What he learned, Jesus learned, and so must we.

The Godly life is never easy. Rewarding, Yes. Fulfilling? Yes, Worthwhile? A thousand times yes, but never easy. Those with thin skin should beware. Those with hard hearts are a danger. A spiritual director once told me that maturity was evident when then skin and a hard heart were replaced by tough skin and a soft heart.

The invitation we have in Matthew’s gospel is an invitation to grow up

and life it up. The life we are promised is a life of excitement and promise.

It is a life of ups and downs, but a life in which the ups gradually and steadily outnumber the downs.

We are invited to lose our lives, but you can’t lose your life if you do not live it.

Finding is losing.

Lose yourself, find God.

That is what a real disciple does who has no fear.

Moses traded all the perks, power, and pleasure of this world for a reward in an invisible realm. He traded it all for a relationship with the living God.

It was the best trade anyone could have made, and Jesus did the same.

What they lost, they could not have kept anyway.

What they gained they could never lose.

Thus it shall always be in the kingdom of the Crucified and Risen One.

June 12, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Exodus 19:2-6 + Romans 5:6-11 + Matthew 9:39-10:8

“Compassion” is the only word we have in English to translate a Greek word that has far more power than we can imagine with the translation. “Empathy” might get closer, and yet that does not quite have the strength and the depth of pity that is there. It describes a kind a movement at the very deepest part of our being. Perhaps the closest we might get to imagining what Matthew is really describing is the depth of emotion and passion that a parent might have at the sight of one of their children in unimaginable pain or agony. The sight of such a terror would wrench the deepest part of a parent in anguish and sorry. There comes with it the strongest of desires to remove the offence, to take away the pain, to heal the wound, and if that were not possible, to take the agony upon themselves and free the child from the terrible experience. That is getting close to the Greek word that Matthew chooses for this experience. The word is used a couple of times in parables, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke use it only of Jesus, and there are five conditions that move Jesus that powerfully.

Jesus was moved to this compassion by the world’s pain. He could not ever see someone suffering and not ease the pain.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s sorrow. The mere sight of the woman who had lost her only son moved his heart to dry her tears and return the son to her living.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s hunger. The sight of a hungry crowd moved him to search for food and feed. No Christian can be content to have too much while others have too little.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s loneliness. The sight of a leper banished from his own people called forth his power every time he saw it.

Jesus was moved to compassion by the world’s bewilderment. Common people longing for God with the scribes and Pharisees everywhere having nothing to offer led him to every synagogue he could find to offer guidance, and comfort, and strength, and the hope of God’s Word.

This “compassion” that we find in Jesus is not a sentiment, but a tool by which Jesus enters into the very experience that moves him so deeply. He knows pain. He knows sorrow. He knows hunger, loneliness and bewilderment, and with God-like compassion his whole life becomes focused on easing the pain, drying the tears, sharing the food, embracing the outcast, and revealing the presence and power of God’s love.  This is what he would have for his apostles.

Take note that while he calls the apostles from among others, the commission they received is not reserved to a select few. Matthew makes the point that there are twelve of them. For those who receive his Gospel, that number twelve evokes a sense of totality because every Israelite belonged to one of the twelve tribes. The whole nation is called to the mission, and as Matthew prefigures the church as the new Israel, it is you and me whose passions must be stirred at the deepest level by the conditions of life that cause pain and sorrow; hunger, loneliness, and bewilderment.

We are not sent on this mission that gives purpose and focus to our lives just as much as it did to the life of Jesus without the gifts that empower us. That reminder closes this Gospel proclamation today. “Without cost you have received, without cost you are to give.” says this translation today. “What you have received as a gift, give as a gift.” says another more clearly. “What you have received as a gift, give as a gift.” I don’t think there is a more powerful, more clear, nor more precise statement in all the New Testament that expresses who we are and why we are here.

But our Christian history is littered with grave and disappointing examples of failure because of our possessiveness and sense of entitlement. Religious people must be reminded of this truth constantly, that what we have, everything, is nothing but a gift; and that gift has been given for one reason only, to be given away in the same spirit with which it was given. This is the grounding of Christian ministry. Everything we do rests upon a rich sense of gratitude.

Grateful here in this church, we are compassionate there, outside these walls where the sorrowful, the suffering, the lonely, the hungry, and the confused wait for divine mercy. We have the gifts. We have the tools. We have the power to do for them everything Jesus did for those he met day in and day out. What is keeping us from great performing the same great signs and wonders that the Kingdom of God is near? Maybe we have hear what He said again in the face of our possessiveness:

“What you have received as gift, give as gift.”

June 5, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Hosea 6:3-6 + Romans 4:18-25 + Matthew 9:9-13

Through the month of June, Matthew’s Gospel will have Jesus assembling and instructing his apostolic church. This week and next we get the Matthew version of his selection process, and then we finish the month with some initial instructions so that we do not get it wrong about what we are called to do and to become as members of the apostolic church.

The Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel invites us into his home. It is a wonderful tiny detail that makes a great difference. Luke has Matthew or “Levi”, as he calls him throw a dinner to which Jesus is invited, but the Jesus of Mark and Matthew’s Gospel is the divine host who invites the sinner into his home. This revelation of divine hospitality, of God as gracious host who invites and includes everyone is the cause for our joy this day as we sit and wonder at this wonderful turn of events. How unlike us is this great God who has no list of those included and those excluded! How wonderful it is to think that for once in our lives, we need not wonder nor worry about whether or not we are wanted or included, for deep inside us all is that lurking doubt that we will not be chosen, invited, or wanted. All that is wiped away by this Jesus who more than once in Matthew’s Gospel invites the unexpected into his home.

It prefigures the church, this assembly where only one thing is asked of us, mercy. That’s all he asks: “It is mercy I desire, not sacrifice.”

Sacrifice is a complex term in religious vocabulary. Authentic sacrifice reflects what is best about humanity, and the paradigm of Christian love is Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It is crucial though, to discern between a sacrifice freely made out of authentic love which is an act of mercy, and a sacrifice made out of fear or some twisted belief that we have to pay back God for what we’ve been given or make up for our sins. The truth is, nothing can make up for our sins; and if we have to pay back God for what we have been given, then it would never have been a gift.

That kind of sacrifice threatens to make us hard resentful and self-righteous rather than trusting more deeply in the goodness of God as the source of our well-being and salvation. It can also make us very hard on those we love. It is this kind of sacrifice that Jesus would have none of.

It is mercy he desires, and the lived experience of mercy is the generous and loving gift of one’s whole self out of love for another. That is true sacrifice as we see it expressed in the love of Jesus for his Father, and the love of the Father in the sending of his only son to share the totality of the human experience, even helpless, violent death.

The trouble with the Pharisees was that their scrupulous concern to live exactly by the law drew distinctions between people, like the righteous and the sinners. Paul comes along and insists that Abraham was righteous because of his faith in God’s promise rather than by following a Law that had not been give yet. If Abraham could be righteous before there was a law, then the law is not the “be all and end all” of what makes someone righteous.

The graciousness of Jesus is our comfort, our joy, and our challenge today. His call for mercy, his inclusive behavior, and his invitation extended to us is what we celebrate around this altar. Your graciousness to each other, your welcome, your openness, your patience, and the hospitality of this parish is our living of this gospel. The Jesus who looked for people to invite and include lives now in us, and we are unworthy of his presence if we fail to live with that same spirit.

What must make us similar to Jesus is not that we attract people like ourselves, but that we reach across barriers to do so. Jesus reached out to Matthew a tax collector, then to a woman who was bleeding, then to a girl thought to be dead, and all of them bring their friends to meet the one who reached out to them. Out of this process rooted in the ministry of Jesus and practiced in the mission of the church, a new humanity is emerging, and the Lord’s table will be finally filled, for many will come from east and west and north and south to eat at the feast of salvation.

May 29, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14-16 + 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 + John 6:51-58

The feasts of Pentecost, Trinity, and the Body and Blood of Christ belong together. The wisdom of our church in grouping them peals back layers of wonder about God’s Love and God’s presence. As I said on the Feast of Pentecost, what we celebrate these weeks before we settle into Ordinary Time is the wonder of three gifts: each unique yet part of God’s self gift to us. Reflection on them individually and collectively leads us deeper in the mystery of God’s presence and plan for our salvation.

That first gift of the Spirit awaked us to a world outside our expectations, outside the boundaries of our culture and language; outside our locked up rooms, gates, and fears.

The second from last week’s Feast of the Trinity is the Gift of Relationship. Healthy, human growth, physical, emotional, and spiritual is impossible without human contact. Our joy on the feast of the Trinity is that God has invited us in, into the dynamic life-giving relationship of a family where accepted as we are in love, we may grow to become what we are called to be: children of God, heirs of the heaven, and brothers and sisters of Jesus.

The third of these great gifts is ours to ponder today: The Gift of Nourishment.

At the end of the Second World War, young boys recruited as children into the Gestapo were without and food and shelter, lost from their families, and totally helpless when the war suddenly ended and the institution that fed them collapsed. In tent cities and bombed out buildings, doctors and nurses worked with them to restore their mental, emotional, and physical health.

In that image, think of the gift of Spirit, of Relationship, and Nourishment.

It seems that many of the boys would awaken several times during the night screaming in terror. One doctor had an idea for handling their fears. After serving the boys a hearty meal, he would tuck them into bed with a piece of bread in their hands that they were told to save until morning. The boys began to sleep soundly after that because, after so many years of hunger and uncertainty about their next meal, they finally had the assurance of food for the next day.

In a few moments, you will put out your hand and receive bread

that you know is more than the answer to your prayers for “daily bread.”

You will put out your hands to receive a gift that can keep you from worry and fear about tomorrow, a gift that can quiet restless nights and quiet fearful dreams.

It is a gift that holds at bay the demons of fear and want, and lets you live serenely each day and sleep soundly through each night.

The gift of this bread however does not come without challenge. The offer of this bread or “flesh for the life of the world” caused consternation, dissent and divisions among his contemporaries. They questioned and quarreled over it and some parted company. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke the reference is always to “food and drink”. In John it is “flesh and blood”, a startling and troubling difference for the Jews of his time. Eating flesh and drinking blood were as abhorrent to Jews as the notion of cannibalism would be to us. Yet in the Jewish writings, flesh and blood were the way of describing human life, meaning the real person. And so we must hear this gospel with all the intended meaning of the scriptures,

and not be tempted to distance ourselves from the reality of what Jesus says

by sacramentalizing or turning this into something that is just a sign or a symbol.

This is where we meet the Jesus of the cross, the risen Christ and the exalted Lord for all eternity. We meet and we commune with one another in the hallowed presence of God. We are lost in the Spirit of that God, commune in the relationship of Love that is the Trinity, and in our own flesh in our own blood, and in our own lives, that God takes flesh again. This is the Eucharist, the continual, on going, incarnation of God’s human presence, the church.

In a few moment, you will put out your hand to receive this gift.

If you believe what you accept, you will not be the same.

This Eucharist does not invite us to “imitate” Christ.

It is not a proposal that we copy the actions of Jesus – it does not suggest that we ask “What would Jesus do?”, but rather it proposes that we imitate his relationship with God and then because of that relationship we will do the right thing, the Will of God.

Jesus proclaimed a new way of life based upon a new relationship with the Father.

He did not propose a new set rules. He gave a new relationship out of which we might begin to live. In that relationship we shall discern the will of God and act upon it, because that is true righteousness. Saying, “Lord, Lord” will get us no where. Even doing mighty works is not the point, no matter how good they are. Only doing the will of God is what matters, and that is only possible for those who live an intimate relationship with God: as intimate as flesh and blood.

In this Year of the Eucharist, proclaimed by our late Holy Father John Paul,

our challenge is not so much to do something

as it is to become something; and that is a lot more difficult.

So, put out your hands and say, “Amen.”

But not for a piece of bread or a sip of wine.

Say it for a new life; a new way of life.

May 15, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 2:1-11 + 1 Corinthians 12:3-7&12-13 + John 20:19-23

In the next three weeks, we shall celebrate three gifts:

The Gift of the Spirit The Gift of Relationship The Gift of Food

The Church calls these: Pentecost

Holy Trinity Corpus Christi in the old language, and Body and Blood of Christ in today’s.

It is Paul in that first letter to the Corinthians who makes this week’s gift most obvious. He insists that the Spirit is given to each member of the community not just a few leaders or gifted prodigies.   

All are gifted not for their own personal enjoyment or enlightenment,

but for the good of all.  Yet somehow in our competitive driven world, it is always the gifts of other that get our attention

either by way of admiration or by way of envy.

Knowledge of the gifts of others may enrich our lives from time to time, especially when their gifts are used for the good of all.

But ignoring our own gifts because we have our eye on the gifts of others is not just foolish. It is wrong. It robs us of life, and it diminishes the glory and generosity of God. The opportunity we have this week from the Word we proclaim is not to sit here and imagine what happened in Jerusalem a long time ago; nor guess what tongues of fire look like, or how that language thing worked.

This day is about gifts, our gifts, and not just those seven we memorized at the time of our Confirmation. It is about the gifts we often take for granted, or wrongly assume are just for us for our comfort, entertainment, or security.

The Corinth Paul writes to could just as well be Norman, Oklahoma.

It was a wealthy place. It was full of pretty people who looked good, had a lot of stuff, and were very, very comfortable and secure when they were not worried about how to keep it all.

They were a people who were smart, educated, had options, and used them. Paul was writing to you and me. He writes to any people who have come to faith; to people who say: “Jesus is Lord.”

But for his contemporaries saying those three words amounted to treason. To publicly proclaim Jesus as “Lord” is to declare that Caesar is NOT! So, we are left to wonder what it means for us,

for people who put those words on bumper stickers, banners, and bracelets.

That proclamation is not about an idea, it announces a way of life.

It does not describe Jesus nearly as much as it says who we are,

how we live our lives, define our values, and inform our decisions.

Just as much today as it was then, saying that “Jesus is Lord”

may cost us our jobs, some relationships, some prestige in the eyes of others. It will mean we see things differently than others,

value different things, and use our time and all our gifts first of all for others since we know they have not been given to us for anything other than the good of all.

We will begin to get the point when the teachings of Jesus Christ show up in our lives not as ideals to strive for but as principles and values by which we live now. To think of them as ideals is to build ourselves an excuse for not embracing them now. We have no excuse. We have no reason for settling for less or pretending that what Jesus has given us, taught us, and shown us is beyond human reach.

If we dare to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, then we know and acknowledge that what we have in faith makes all things possible:

Justice, Peace, Charity, Forgiveness,.. it’s all there. It is not beyond our reach. These things are all the consequence of living as if Jesus was Lord. They are the consequence of living with the wisdom and the knowledge that all we have is pure gift, and not one of those gifts is our own. What a difference it shall make when we all get that right! On that day, we shall truly be able to say:

Christ has died. Christ is Risen.Christ HAS come again.

May 8, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 1:1-11 + Ephesians 1:17-23 + Matthew 28:16-20

In spite of our privacy fences and gated communities, security codes and monitored security systems, boundaries of geography or politics mean less and less these days. The world is shrinking. While we tighten our boarders to keep some out, we wave others through with a wink and glance the other way to fill low paying jobs. For anyone who has traveled abroad in the last ten years, the boarders between ancient countries in Europe are now simply signs on “auto routes” and “auto bhans” like signs to our north that say: “Welcome to Kansas.” Boundaries mean little. They are in flux all the time.

What separates us is artificial and sometimes it is imposed by incomplete understanding. This fact sunk into my mind this month as I have read an interesting book about the Versailles Treaty and the consequences of the First World War. Most of our political and national strife in the past fifty years finds its origins in the lines the western allies drew on maps in 1919. They just didn’t get it.

With incomplete understanding, worn out from the violence and killing of that war, they rushed to settle things with boundaries that failed to take into consideration many factors of history, language, ethnic and tribal communities. Iraq is just one of the consequences of boundaries they made up in 1919. Boundaries between people are in flux. What separates us is totally artificial.

The Ascension of the Lord is about what unites us and tells the story of how God feels about boundaries. While told in Biblical language and with biblical images, what is really going on here is the breaking of a boundary. Christ’s ascension is the dissolution of the last boundary that keeps us from what we are called to be and from where we are called to be. What that early church discovered after the resurrection was that where God was concerned, there were no more boundaries. As Paul put it after he caught on: “no more Jew, no more Greek, no more male nor female.”

The communities themselves discovered this when the boundaries between Jews and Gentiles began to collapse as the inclusive nature of the Lord’s Table and the Gospel message was appreciated.

It all began as the biggest of all boundaries came down on the day of the Annunciation when young Mary in Nazareth said yes to the divine visitor who came to announce the end of the boundary.

“The Word was Made Flesh”. The boundary between heaven and earth was ended with the Incarnation when God crossed the boundary between heaven and earth. When the perfect obedience of His Son was complete, the last remnant of that boundary came down in a moment more powerful than the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the “Iron Curtain”. A human being crossed the boundary of death to life and of earth to heaven. With that, it was all over for walls, boundaries, fences, and anything else that keeps people apart and people from God.

This is what we celebrate today in our Christian tradition,

the crossing of the boundary, the end of the limits, the collapse of anything that keeps us from the presence of God.

And so, what matters today, in our lifetime, in this age of history

is not what separates us, but what unites us: our life in God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. We cannot be faithful to Christ and this plan of God and willingly settle for boundaries that divide and separate.

As he crossed the last boundary, the risen Christ who had already left behind the boundaries of human flesh and blood gave a final instruction and mandate to those who would follow him across the divide. They were to translate words into works, decisions into deeds,

and goals into achievements. Cheap talk was to become precious action. There were walls to take down, fences to remove, bridges to mend, and a divine plan for creation to complete. It is our mission,

our purpose in life, and it becomes more than our vision,

it becomes our very identity, who we are and what we are:

healers, forgivers, builders, disciples – regardless of the name or what we are called, the mission is the same.

As we stand between the two advents of God, we are not called to stand back and critique the world. We are sent into it to prepare

for the final perfection of this world as the Paradise, Heaven, the Kingdom of God.

May 1, 2005

At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 8:5-8,14-17 + 1 Peter 3:15-18 + John 14:15-21

“Notebook” is the name of a movie released this past year that drifted through my mind as I sat with these verses of John’s Gospel through the past week. Sometimes the complexity, the developing theology,  the profound and unique Christology of John’s Gospel

allows us all to slip past the simplicity and sheer poetry of the verses. Had I not watched that film one evening with these verses of John’s Gospel fresh in my mind, I probably would have missed it altogether. These verses are really a poem for lovers.

They reflect a unique style of love rooted in intimacy and profound care. Those whose only experience of love is fleeting infatuation or sexual attraction will never get it; but those who have discovered in love the bonding of companionship and union recognize that these verses literally sing of union and peace of love and joy. This kind of love the poet John is writing about possess four qualities:

obedience, companionship, revelation and union.

Unfortunately in our culture and language, the word Obedience carries far too many meanings, because having lost our knowledge of the root of words we often fail to rediscover their authentic meaning.

In the context of Love, and religion for that matter, “Obedience” is not about following orders nearly as much as it is about listening, about the ability to be open to listen to the authentic invitations for life and respond in a way that is consistent with our own identity.

The root meaning, and so virtue of Obedience is about listening and responding.

Companionship heralds the authentic commitment of love. When there is love, there is commitment, and in this commitment, the focus is the other, their well-being, the desire to help them grow.

The miracle of this love is that two individuals who have first cared only for themselves and have seen themselves as individuals begin to protect, touch, and think only of another. Then in this authentic gospel love, there is revelation that means transparency and vulnerability based on trust. When someone discovers that they are cared for, they risk revealing more of themselves.

This love that Jesus speaks of to those who choose a life style fit for the Kingdom of God is inclusive. It is not experienced and expressed in the same depth by everyone, but it is seen in people joined together in obedience, companionship. They care for one another, and in that caring, God is revealed.

The love our poet writes of today is the love we find at the heart of our lives. Our knowledge of God and God’s love comes to us through our experience of love in creation; in the experience of loving and being loved by the other. Husbands and wives know this best of all, and for that reason, their experience of love is a Sacrament that reveals God’s love and makes them one with God.

Children know this love from their experience of loving parents

who give them the freedom to grow without fear because they are cared for, protected with a love that is truly sacrificial.

The wonder of God’s love is that it does not ask us to choose between God and the other. It asks us to choose God through the other. Our very ability to live in obedience, companionship, revelation and union with ourselves and others is founded on and strengthened by God’s love.

In the film, Notebook, a wife of many years suffers from dementia,

and she has lost all recognition of her loved ones except for brief moments when her memories are ignited by a loving spouse

who reads to her every day from his journal. There are brief and fleeting moments of recognition that give him reason to live in the nursing home with her, treasuring those memories and moments of “obedience” and companionship. This is a metaphor of God’s love for us, the story of God’s patient willingness to live with us,

to retell and to remember the story of our love over and over;

because from time to time we wake up and remember, restore and celebrate the covenant we have made and share.

The poem of this day’s Gospel speaks of that love, of the promise of presence in a relationship of obedience, companionship, revelation, and unity. For this love we have reason to rejoice today,to give thanks,because we are cared for and protected with a love that is truly sacrificial.

April 24, 2005

Acts 6:1-7 + 1 Peter 2:4-9 + John 14:1-12

We have passed through a very significant time that is ripe with opportunities. In the grand scheme of things however, it is a blink in history. It would be prideful on our part to suggest that is “best of times” or the “worst of times.” It is simply the only time we have,

and we did not get here without a lot of good times and bad times. What is most extra ordinary is that at this time there is this globalization unknown before in human history.

We are becoming one human family. The age of media communication, with its images and voices makes it so. While an unprecedented experience unfolds for us in an instant, it brings with it a new level of experience and with it a challenge that is timeless.

In years past, Popes died and were elected over there before people 10,000 miles away every heard about it. What has taken place in Rome this month has taken place in every room where there is a television. Suddenly the clock or the position of the sun means nothing.

There is no time. People were watching a funeral in the morning, the afternoon, and the middle of the night. They were watching a chimney at breakfast, dinner, and bedtime. It was an experience shared in every language and on every continent. It unified and focused the attention of the world for a brief moment on something other than war, natural disaster, and scandal. As I have reflected on my own experience of this, some parts of it in a foreign country,

I think we are getting a sense of what Pentecost was like for the apostles. That language thing with them is even part of our experience. But the biggest issue the events of the past month raises concerns our identity and what it means to be church.

There is risk involved in sitting with the images we have seen this month if we fail to ask what it means. If someone were to simply look at the screen and fail to ask what it means, they would be left to think that all of this commotion, all of these people, all of pageantry and celebrated tradition, with its music and costumes and customs and language is about a man from Bavaria who is now called Benedict.

It’s not about him. It’s about us, because it’s about church.

Luke, in the first reading today reminds us of what it means to be a church. He reminds us that service is an essential constituent of church service to God, service to the word, service to one another,

and in particular, service to the poor and the disadvantaged. We gather here close to the Feast of the Ascension – about to recall that mystery of Christ’s presence and absence. Addressing that experience to his disciples, Jesus promised that they (meaning we would do the works he did and works far greater than his.

He left us an agenda to be accomplished in the interim between his advents Part of that agenda is to continue being a church who fully and truly reflects the loving concerns of Christ for humankind.

The truth that springs from Pentecost and was affirmed by the last Council is that you, lay people do not belong to the church,

nor do you have a role in the church, you are the church.

The risk we face with all the images on television this month is thinking that one man is the church, when in fact, that crowd in Saint Peter’s Square, and every one of us there vicariously through the media are the church, filled with the Holy Spirit and enlivened by God’s gifts of faith, hope, and love.Endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, everyone of you shares in the threefold office of Christ: priestly, prophetic, and royal. The people of God enjoy true equality, genuine freedom, profound dignity, global responsibility, a sense of vocation, and a personal union with Christ and his mission. Everyone one of you has a proper and indispensable share in the mission of the church that no one else can fulfill. “Let someone else do it.” is not an acceptable attitude, because what you fail to do, no one else can do.

On Monday, some of our finest young people will stand around this altar to be CONFIRMED in this faith, in this unique relationship with Jesus Christ as a church. It will be a true and authentic Pentecost in this place, a moment of transformation, of inspiration, and rebirth. They shall become what we have all been called to be: church, ecclesia, holy people whose lives bear witness to presence and power of God. As thousands came to faith and were baptized on that first Pentecost, so it can be again because of the unique and awesome experience of this past month. Millions of people have seen us, become curious, and they are asking questions about us as a church, and we must not miss this opportunity to share what we have, bring them to this place, and open their lives to the Gospel and the fullest relationship with Christ the Risen Lord. There is no one in this church who has not had someone say to them this month: “What do you think of the new Pope?” or “Wasn’t John Paul great?”  Behind that question and the experience that gives to rise to it is an opportunity, because this whole experience has not been about John Paul or Benedict. It is about us. No one should be left uninvited or feel unwelcome in the kingdom of God as we live it in this church.

April 17, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 2:14,36-41 + 1 Peter 2:20-25 + John 10:1-10

On Monday I will begin my thirty-eighth year sharing in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. It is a thought that brings more memories than you can imagine; but I am not much for looking back except to study where I’ve been in case I might be going around in circles. I prefer to look ahead, and these are good days for doing that. Only three of those years have passed here in the community of Saint Mark, but when there are only memories left and nothing ahead, I suspect that these years will be among the best, because in the big picture, things only seem to be getting better and because you have been so kind, so positively responsive, supportive, and encouraging. You have prayed me through serious illness, and been more patient with my recovery than me. You have challenged me to hold more firmly to the Word of God, and to celebrate that Word made flesh in the Liturgy, and you have given me reason every day to get up rejoicing. As I give thanks to God this weekend for the voice I heard calling me here, I also give thanks to you. The church always chooses this Sunday as the Day of Prayer for Vocations. I am always at a loss when it comes to finding the words and the way to speak about Vocation, especially a vocation to priesthood. I think it is because it is so profoundly personal, spiritual, and unique. No one ever really gave me a great talk or perfect argument for being a priest. A sister simply said one day: “You ought to be a priest.” and along the way, a friend once said when I was thinking of changing the direction of my life: “You have to be a priest – you already are one to me.” So, I have never been able to give some convincing insight about this way of life that lately is often so ridiculed and suspect. It just seems best for me to live it out openly, joyfully, sincerely, and personally in the hope that others might see what I perceived in the priests of my past; that it is possible to do this and be this and find yourself again and again standing close to God. That happens, my friends, when I am close to you. So, if God wishes it so, I give you another year of my life freely, gratefully, and joyfully. Thank you for the past 37, and especially I thank those of you who have known me for many of those years. As God said in Genesis, “It is Good.”

I am going to be very brief this morning with one simple insight into this Gospel because I want you to give some time and attention to someone coming after Communion. With an image so powerful, sentimental, and well known, this Gospel is loaded with issues to tease out and ponder. It gets even more profound when it is anticipated as we have with the Twenty-third Psalm. Yet, think of this…………

John is writing his Gospel to a community that is filled with dissenting voices. He describes them as thieves and robbers. They are likely inauthentic leaders, whose voices and directions do not lead to salvation.

This Gospel speaks just as clearly to us as to those second and third generation followers of Christ. There are too many voices. There are too many ways to go in this life; too many gates, too many paths, too many glittering, promising options that lead us no where but deeper into loneliness, emptiness, and need.

One voice, one way, one shepherd leads, protects, supplies our need. It is nothing we can buy or earn. When you start to listen to that voice and silence all the other voices, you begin to ask what God is saying and what God’s wants from you. Young people begin to view their future in terms of what God asks them to do with their gifts and offers with the opportunities that unfold before them. They are no longer interested in how much money they make, what car they can drive, or where they live. They are simply interested in and concerned about how to make a difference in this life and lead others to the gate of this Gospel figure. Those of us who are further along in life have the same concern and focus, but our resources are real, not yet to come; and so we ask, wonder, and pray about what to do best with what we already have, how to use our very real opportunities, time, talent, and money to open the gate of this Gospel wider for ourselves and others.

For all of us, only deliberate, daily attentiveness to the authentic voice of God will keep us clear about which voice is God’s and what will lead us by the Spirit to holiness and everlasting life.

April 9, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 2:14,22-23 + 1 Peter 1:17-21 + Luke 24:13-35

When you tease out all the theological, sacramental, and paschal issues from this Gospel, it settles down to one simple issue,

something even a child can grasp: Recognition. The 31st verse puts it right out there: “Their eyes were opened…..” That by way of observation is the passive voice in grammar. In other words, it was not something they did. Something happened to them.

Then in terms of grammar, the verb changes from passive to active.

“They recognized Him.” Now that is a matter of something they did,

and this is the issue put before us today.

From our reading of the scriptures, we learn that some did not recognize immediately. It took the apostles from the Easter till Pentecost to get it right. They had several opportunities, and yet they did not always get it right. Even after Pentecost, not everyone recognize. Both the first reading and the Gospel show that people

do not always recognize what they see. This is not just because they forget. In the first reading people did not recognize Jesus

because he did not fit their expectations. Peter had to spell it out for them, make connections, and then finally some did get it.

On the road to Emmaus, those disciples did not get it even when Jesus himself spelled it out for them. It was not until the breaking of bread that they could recognize what they were seeing.

So, it is with us today. Something has happened to us: Baptism and Confirmation. It has opened our eyes, and as a result, we can do some recognition. For some of us it takes a while. It takes breaking open the word of God, and it might even take an experience of the Eucharist; but we must come to recognition. We must recognize what it is we see; recognize who it is we see; and where it is that we see. We must not rely on our expectations alone.

Those expectations can easily lead us astray. We must rely on the Word of God and upon the Eucharistic Breaking of Bread. We will never be able to recognize the presence of God unless we do so.

It is impossible to see and recognize God present in a tsunami disaster if our expectation is that God is only a big benevolent source of good feelings and pleasure. It is impossible to see and recognize God if our expectation is that God will do what we want when we want it. People who have opened eyes can see God in disappoint, disaster, and sadness. They can recognize God in sickness because they can see God in the sick. They can recognize God in a tragedy and a disappointment, because they know the story of Jesus and the fulfillment of the Prophets.

They can recognize God in the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill who wander our streets and sleep under our bridges because their eyes have been opened by the Word of God. They can recognize God in the people beside them in these pews, before and behind them in the procession to communion, because with eyes opened,

we can see with recognition the presence of God who answered the one long and great cry of human the human heart: “Stay with us.”

We are never alone when we see with recognition what God has done for us and with us in Jesus Christ. For this we have every reason to give thanks again today, to rejoice together in each other,

and to live in hope, in faith, and in confidence that if we continue to break open the Word of God and Break the Bread of this Eucharist, we shall see and we shall recognize Him who has come to stay with us through every trial, tragedy, and even death itself.