The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

24 June 2018

Isaiah 49, 1-6 + Psalm 139 + Acts 13, 22-26 + Luke 1, 57-66, 80

The shadow of old Sarah and Abraham falls over the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah. Almost like bookends two faithful couples begin and end the story of Israel bearing witness to the power of God’s favor, love, and grace. We should not reflect upon what God does with Zechariah and Elizabeth without recalling how God acted with Sarah and Abraham to begin restoring creation to its glory.

There was an expectation among the Jews that the prophet Elijah would return to earth to prepare God’s chosen people for the coming of the Messiah. Reflecting upon the prophetic witness of John, Jesus declare that John was that Elijah person they were expecting. Like the first Elijah, John was a truth teller. He spoke to the truth to power, which is a sure way to get into trouble when power is a living lie. He disturbed the comfortable and comforted the disturbed. The message of John, whose birth we commemorate today, is as challenging now as it was when his voice cried out in the wilderness. Not everything the powerful do is morally right. Not everything enshrined in the law of the land is right even though it has become the law of the land. Then and now, there are things enshrined in the law by the powerful that are not just or morally right. Abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, are obvious examples, and there are more. Those things may be lawful, but they are not right, and John would speak up about it.

John the Baptist was a finger pointer, and many artists paint him standing tall and wild looking and pointing his finger at Jesus of Nazareth.  In contrast to all of us, John points to Christ. We point too, but usually at one another in a gesture of blame or accusation just as Adam pointed to Eve who pointed to a serpent. We might do well to learn from John something about pointing, because that might be what God wants of us; a people who point the way, who lead others to Jesus Christ by what we say and what we do.

The question asked by the neighbors and relations gathered around as John is born is important. “What will this child turn out to be?” It is a question that could and should be asked of all of us. “What will we turn out to be?” It is another way of wondering what God wants us to be. Is there a divine purpose for our lives? Perhaps it is the same purpose God had for John’s life. Perhaps God would have us speak the truth with courage and speak that truth to power. Perhaps God would also have us point out the Savior and make way for Jesus leading others to him by the example of our lives.

Take note that we celebrate this birth just days after the summer solstice as the daylight now begins to fade and decrease. We will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on this night in exactly six months, a few days after the winter solstice when daylight will begin to increase. We are the bearers of that light through the darkness to come and will be the ones to whom others should look when they fear the darkness and long for hope.

The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

17 June 2018 at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, Oklahoma

Ezekiel 17, 22-24 + Psalm 92 + 2 Corinthians 5: 6-10 + Mark 4, 26-34

It was December 1, 1955. A 42-year-old black woman boarded a bus to go home after a long day working and shopping. She found a seat at the start of the black section. At the next stop some white people got on so the driver ordered her to get up and give her seat to a white man. Tired and worn out from cleaning up after white people all day, she simply said, “No.” The driver called the police. She was arrested. Word got around quickly, and a local preacher called a meeting. They made one simple demand: that passengers be seated on a first-come first-served bases. To achieve this end, they began a boycott of the buses, and people walked to work. We know the rest of this story. It has become part of our national history in the slow and step-by-step movement toward achieving justice for all. Just because some colonists signed a piece of paper that proclaimed “liberty and justice for all” didn’t mean it was going to happen before the ink dried. It took from 1776 until 1955 for this nation to get serious about it making it a reality, and we’re still not there.

In a world growing more and more accustomed to instant everything these parables and the truth they reveal are difficult to hear and incorporate into our faith and life. There is something about us and our culture in this country that leads us to think that bigger is better. We have to have the tallest, the fastest, the biggest of everything. Then we fool ourselves into thinking that these superlatives are the best. We expect everything to be instant from the flipping of a light switch to the opening of a packet for an instant meal. It may be quick and it may easy, but that stuff in the packet is not really healthy, and the truth is, it does not taste as good as something made patiently from scratch.

These two timeless parables speak to us. They speak to the powerful and the control freak in us a disturbing message and reminder. We can’t do everything, and our attempt at it borders on idolatry. We have our role, our mission, and in speaking to his disciples, and with Mark writing to an impatient church, the message is clear. You plant the seed, and that’s all you need to do, but keep planting. We cannot make the seed grow. We can’t make a seedling grow faster by pulling on the top of it. We will just pull it out of the soil and destroy it.

Further, this pair of parables warns us about thinking or trying to do things big. Big is not best, and big does not necessarily produce a great amount or a great harvest when it comes to seeds. Great buildings begin with one brick. A book begins with one word on a page. A lifelong friendship begins with a chance encounter. With everything that lasts, there can be no hurry. Hurry ruins many things. The true savor of life is not gained from big things but from little ones. To sample a wine the taster needs on only a sip. Bad habits and sickness creep up slowly in little steps. Alcoholism begins with one drink and then maybe just one more “little one”. Marriages come apart not from one big fight, but from countless little slights and offenses over a long time.

The Parables that Jesus speaks to us today encourage those who are disappointed over how slowly comes the victory of goodness. They calm those who are in hurry with an invitation to slow down and savor the moment. Learn how to wait and enjoy it. These little parables correct those who want to be in control with a reminder that there is only one God, and it isn’t any of us. We may plant the seeds, but we must resist the temptation to think we know how to make them grow.

The Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

10 June 2018 

Genesis 3, 9-15 + Psalm 130 + 2 Corinthians 4, 13 to 5,1 + Mark 3, 20-35

We see something in these verses today that ought to make us sigh with disappointment and frustration. Disappointment as we realize how long this behavior has been going on, and frustration because it continues and because sometimes we get caught up in it ourselves which is not helping move this world toward peace and justice. This is a kind of behavior that to this day continues to tear apart the fabric of unity that is in the mind of God. It is a behavior that borders on the unforgivable and is a sin against the Holy Spirit. One look at what is happening in this story, and we recognize it. The scribes who have come all the way from Jerusalem are demonizing Jesus. This whole business of demonizing an opponent or someone who does not think, act, or say things we like is still going on today, and looking at it through the lens of this Gospel is important. Demonizing someone dehumanizes that person making it easy to kill them because they are no longer seen as a human being. This demonizing has been used by zealots and tyrants as a tactic to legitimize war atrocities in the past and to this day. Torture and genocide is only possible when the other has been dehumanized. It’s how you get a human being to take the life of another. It is easy when you think your opponent is evil which is what made it so easy for the Scribes and Pharisees to take the life of Jesus. They declared him evil calling him Satan.

Throughout human history, the relationships of individuals and groups as been disrupted by this demonization which results in constant suspicion and blame with a systematic disregard of any positive events. There is pressure to eradicate the demonized person. In the face of this behavior, people of faith should rise up in protest and challenge the demonization others. For people of faith to get caught up in this reveals a serious failure of faith. Yet, this behavior has become the norm in politics with enormous harm done to whole groups of peoples. Families are torn apart because a whole ethnic group has been demonized, and that is just the most frequent example that comes to mind at the moment.

Psychologists believe that when demonization happens, there is “cognitive impairment” meaning simply that people stop thinking and with that they stop talking. When someone has been demonized, anything good they may have done, or still be doing, is ignored or dismissed. Jesus may heal and comfort, but because he touches women, lepers, and comes to the aid of those in need on the Sabbath, he is the enemy of good religious people, and he must go. Is there any thinking or reasoning here in this conflict? No. The scribes are blind to what and who is right in front of them.

Meanwhile, outside the house there is another group, and the way Mark crafts this episode is important. The conflict is going on inside, and there is a group outside who just want to take him away. They do nothing to stop what is really wrong here. They just want to save their own skins because Jesus is bringing a “bad rap” to their name and their town. At which point, Jesus reveals the universal nature of his mission and even though those scribes, those name-callers, those demonizers chose to destroy any relationship with Jesus, he holds out and reveals the new relationship that those will enjoy who choose the Kingdom of God.

That unforgivable sin, that sin against the Holy Spirit, is in evidence here. It is the refusal to be open to new revelation. Assuming the role of God those scribes declared that Jesus could not possibly be revealing the divine because, in spite of the life-giving works he performed, he did not fit their categories or follow their interpretation of the law or agree with their ideology which had long before stopped being theology. Their blasphemy was that they had divinized their ideology. As long as they maintained that position, they kept themselves safe from any disturbance by the Holy Spirit and the possibility of change and forgiveness. We all need to hear and heed this Gospel today, so that our minds and our hearts might be open wide to the work of the Spirit which is calling us over and over again to unity and to peace. It will never be found among people who treat others as though they were Satan.

Corpus Christi

3 June 2018

Exodus 24, 3-8 + Psalm 116 + Hebrews 9, 11-15 + Mark 14, 12-16. 22-26

One of the things I miss most in retirement is being a Pastor in the spring when First Communion comes around. As I learned more and more about being a pastor, I took more and more of a roll in the preparation of the children for this Rite of Initiation. That’s what it is, you know, it is one of the steps in Initiation following Baptism which is why the tradition of wearing white stays with us. That white garment of Baptism gets put on again. When I would visit with the children, I would insist that they not think about Holy Communion as something they come to get lest they begin to think it was prize or a reward. The parents had a hard time with that for a while, but I never gave up. I would insist that they watch their language and stop telling their children they were going to “get communion.” I didn’t really like “receive communion” either. Not because there is something wrong with that language, but because there is something better. I would suggest that it was better to say that their children were going to “enter” communion. I wanted to shift off the object and explore the experience. Communion is something we go into, not simply something we get. Communion is no reward for being good. It is an experience of belonging, a sacrament of Unity that builds up the Body of Christ.

I think of all this today on the Feast of Corpus Christi. A feast that in many cultures and places gets focused on the consecrated host with beautiful processions, hymns, and prayers. I grew up in an Italian Community where this feast day ignited an unbelievable contest to see who could build the most beautiful altar on their front porch because the priest, servers, and other neighbors would process through the neighborhood with incense and bells ringing before the monstrance. Any home with an altar would be a place where the procession stopped for a few moments, Benediction was given, and then the procession continued on to the next home picking up of the faithful as they went. While it was a wonderful and faith filled experience, there was always a risk that it might become more about the consecrated host than the experience of having the Divine visitor at your home along with all the growing numbers of the faithful who joined the procession as it went by. While I can remember that sometimes a little competition would get involved in building the biggest altar or having the most flowers or candles, the whole feast was in the end about community, belonging, and most importantly about Unity. Those people knew who they were, and their identity as Catholics was rooted in this Feast.

There is one word that nearly leaps off the page of this Gospel today. That single word leads us into the mystery and wonder of what the Church celebrates today. That one word sums up the whole of the Gospel and the life of Jesus Christ. “Take”, he says. “Take” is his command. Anyone who thinks that this invitation to take and eat is simply about a consecrated host is missing the point and failing to receive what is offered. There is much more to Christ’s command here than simply taking something to eat. He wants us to take alright, but in taking Communion we take up unity and now take a responsibility for preserving that unity. He wants us to take alright, but this more than taking Holy Communion for in doing so, we take up the work and the mission of Jesus Christ.

Take is the message. Take is the command. We may not just take and eat or grab and run as some seem to think. If we take, we also receive. We receive a place in communion, a place among what we call in the Creed, the “Communion of Saints” for what we enter into through communion is a mystical experience that ties us together with all who have gone before us, with all who are living in the timeless Kingdom of God. So, brothers and sisters, Take today. Receive today. Enter today in the Body of Christ, into the Church, into the Communion of Saints. Take food for the journey of life. Take up the life this gift offers. It is not reward for being good, it is a remedy for what is evil.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

27 May 2018 at St. Peter the Apostle and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

Deuteronomy 4, 32-34, 39-40 + Psalm 33 + Romans 8, 14-17 + Matthew 28, 16-20

There are some unique and important features to Matthew’s Gospel at this point. In this Gospel, after the Resurrection Jesus never appears to anyone except the women. There is nothing about Peter and there is no upper room. The disciples meet Jesus only one time. In Matthew’s Gospel the first appearance is to some women. At the instruction of Jesus, they go to the eleven and tell them what Jesus told them: “Go to Galilee.” Notice that Matthew refers to them as “the eleven” making certain that we remember the failure and betrayal. Now, Galilee is about a 60-mile journey from Jerusalem, no easy walk.  When they arrived, Jesus was there, and Matthew tells us that they worshipped and doubted. Jesus gives them a command which in the original language is quite unique. It is a command that does not easily translate into English.

Matthew uses the noun disciple as a verb. A disciple then is no long a person, place, or thing. It is something you do. They are to “disciple” others. This is more than teach or preach to. This is about entering into a relationship. Jesus does not tell them to start up a study club or a teach a Scripture course. Discipling has to do with a relationship, with a bond between the message and the one who accepts it. Christians after all, are not simply people who listen to teaching, study it, and contemplate it as something outside of themselves. They are people who absorb the message into their lives so much so that it changes their identity, their very makeup. There is a conversion. They become something else. They become a disciple, a person who lives in union with the Divine Persons, and this begins at Baptism for those are “Baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We are Baptized into a relationship with the Divine, which means Baptism makes us a people who share in the life of the Trinity.

This relationship is always and best described as being God’s children, a member of God’s family. Like the children of any loving parent, we inherit everything that parent has to give. We are co-heirs with the Son to the Kingdom of Heaven. It is our inheritance.

It is lonely not knowing God. People seek security in wealth, possessions, connections, and even more, but God is the ultimate refuge. The discipled are secure however, more secure than anyone who seeks security in things. One fire or big storm and it’s all gone. Those who are discipled have the blessed assurance anyone could hope for. Even though disciples are not promised a trouble-free life, or even success, they know that as long as Jesus Christ is with them, they will have the courage and strength to face whatever difficulties lay ahead. Knowing that does not change the world, but it gives us all the courage to face it.

Discipled people and people who are discipling are a people of prayer which nourishes a sense of the presence of God. An old wise man once said: “When you are with everyone but me, you are with no one. When you are with no one but me, you are with everyone.”

Pentecost

20 May 2018 at St. Peter the Apostle and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

Acts 2, 1-11 + Psalm 104 + Galatians 5, 16-25 + John 15, 26-27, & 16, 12-15

Today it all comes to an end, and today it all begins. That’s often the way it is with endings. Most of the time they are really the beginning of something else.  Graduation can feel like an end, but it’s really just the beginning of a new life. A marriage may seem to the parents like the end of parenting, but it’s really the beginning of a whole new life. I have discovered what many of you have discovered. Retirement is no end at all. It is really just a beginning of a new time, a new life, a new sense of self, of purpose, and of mission.

Today the whole story of the Incarnation is revealed. Now we know why a child was born in Bethlehem. Now we know why he did the things and said all the things he did, why he suffered, rose, and ascended. Today we see what comes of all that. It was all for us, and now on this day, our remembrance and celebration of all that is complete. It’s over for the time being. Yet, something new is beginning, and we can see what it is by looking at what has been. A careful look at the story of Jesus Christ is the pattern and the future of a Spirit filled people.

There is often a tendency to think that Pentecost is all about the coming of the Holy Spirit as though it was the first time but think about that for a minute. The Holy Spirit was there at creation, hovering over the chaos, lifting the dry land, and stirring life into human kind. The Holy Spirit was there in the desert as a pillar of fire leading the Israelites to their beginning as God’s People. The Holy Spirit came upon a young woman in Nazareth beginning the new creation. That same spirit descended upon her son at the moment of Baptism, initiating his ministry, and revealing his relationship with the Father and announcing salvation.

Today is about us as much as it is about the Holy Spirit. It is about our salvation, affirming how the providence and the will of God has united us as a people and as a church when sin would have driven us apart. Today we listen to one of those ancient stories that describes the consequence of sin, the disintegration of unity and community. Today celebrates the restoration of our nature as social, communal people who belong to a single family, the human family, humanity. Having created us with free will, God permits us to use that will permitting evil for us to choose or refuse. If we chose to commit evil, we are allowed to. We did, and we were. God permitted the sin of one man – the sin of Adam – to affect all other people. And then, God used that very same feature of our human nature to restore our nature – and more than restore it, to bring it through complete fulfillment to super-fulfillment to the life of glory. One man’s sin affects us all. One man’s love and sacrifice redeems us all. In fact, it makes us better than we were before.

This is what we see happening at Pentecost. The life of the Holy Spirit who, stage by stage, had filled humanity for Christ with all its powers, from the Annunciation through the Baptism to the Resurrection, was at Pentecost extended to the disciples of Jesus, his Church, which from now on was to be his very body, his very presence. Because we were made to be social beings, bound to one another and mutually dependent as described in those people called; Adam and Eve, this is the way God has chosen to restore and redeem us, not as individuals, because that’s not our nature; but as a people, a family, a church. Rejoice today, Church. We have been saved because we have been incorporated into the living Christ – call it Baptism. We gather around this altar now as the people of God, not as private individuals fragmented into Haitians or Cubans or Parthians or Mead, Mexicans or Germans; not right or left, blue or red; but as a Holy People, a Chosen People. The Spirit we acknowledge today has filled all humanity with its power and its gifts among them is the gift of peace which will finally be ours forever when we once embrace the truth of our social and communal nature and stop acting as though we were independent, isolated beings with pumped up Egos who can do what we want without a thought about how those decisions might affect everyone else. Adam and Eve did that, and we still live with the consequences. Yet, God is still creating and breathing that Spirit into us, restoring us, healing us, and enabling us to live with dignity and nobility sharing in God’s very own life through Christ Jesus. This is the Day the Lord has made!

The Seventh Sunday of Easter + Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

The Golden Jubilee of John O’Keefe’ Ordination at St. Patrick Church in White Lake, Michigan

13 May 2018

It was May 16, 1993 and the Sixth Sunday of Easter. It was the celebration of your 25^th ordination anniversary. I was here then too at Saint Pricilla in Livonia, and you were there presiding. We were a lot better looking then and we moved around with a lot more energy, but by the grace of God, the encouragement and support of many friends, plus the skills of a many medical professionals, here we are again. I don’t know about you, John, but I’m not counting on doing this again in 25 years.

We take up the Gospel today as you and I have for 50 years, and it takes us deeper into the Paschal Mystery and a more profound meaning of Easter. The resurrection is the proof. Now we know that Divine Love is more powerful than anything, even death. We know that God’s reign has broken the power of this world’s kingdoms that too often survive on oppression and tyranny, hatred, cruelty, and fear. This Gospel and this day announce once again the exciting news of the Incarnation: heaven and earth have come together. God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus Christ is the meeting of heaven and earth. He is bringing divinity and humanity together, inviting the poor to the table, healing the sick and restoring us all to our intended and original place in God’s heart. In his passion and death which we have recalled for the past six weeks, Christ Jesus brought heaven all the way down – all the way into the darkest places of hatred, suffering, and death itself transforming them. The darkest places and most hopeless conditions are suffused with divine light.

We must not think of the Ascension as though Christ was taken from us, that he has left or gone and now we are on our own. The image the Ascension proposes is that now Christ is reigning over all the earth. Heaven and Earth overlap, intermingle. This is the heart of the great prayer of Jesus, this coming together. Now Christ can be more present to the earth than before when he was confined to a small place on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Now he is present to all creation.

The Key question raised by this Gospel is who we serve. 50 years ago, John O’Keefe and a bunch of his friends listened to the music of Bob Dylan and many others. Dylan wrote a song called: “Gotta Serve Somebody”. He goes through all kinds of identities and work with several verses like this: “You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk, you may be the head of some big TV network. You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame, you may be living in another country under another name. But you’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil or the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody”. It’s a great song in the Dylan style, and I wish there was time for all the verses, but it touches on the key question in the Ascension: Whom do we serve? Who is the king of our lives? The claim of this day is that Christ is King.

An angel speaks to all disciples of Jesus Christ in Luke’s telling of the Ascension. The message is unmistakable. “Get to work.” Then Paul tells us what this look like in the second reading today. “Building up the Body of Christ.” In doing that we discover what we are as disciples, because the single most important thing any of us can discover in life is our vocation. Discerning our job, our spouse, how to help our kids — the most important thing is what am I? Once we do that, we know our unique and particular way of following the command. This feast is about finding our vocation.

The joyful and remarkable assembly here at St Patrick Church is about a vocation. As much as it might be about John O’Keefe’s vocation and his work for 50 years in Building up the Body of Christ in Europe, in Africa, and in the US. I think it is even more about the whole O’Keefe clan in which his vocation and the vocation of his whole family has been realized for the sake of the Kingdom. It was my privilege in life to know John and Patricia, and an even greater privilege to join you in celebrating their lives when they went before us into the fullness of life. I remember well the pride and joy with which John received in the mail the childhood drawings of little Patricia. He would show them to all of us. It must have been the first clues that there is artistic talent in this clan which Tim has eventually pushed to the limit. Bill, Bob, Tim, Maurine, and Patricia stand up. It is the faith received from your parents that we celebrate today. They must still be very proud. This is a faith passed on for two more generations gathered in this church. It is this faith and the rowdy love of this whole family that kept John O’Keefe going for 50years. What is there to say except, Thank you, and Praise God.

6 Easter Sunday

6 May 2018 at St. Peter the Apostle and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 10, 25-26, 34-35, 44-48 + Psalm 98 + 1 John 4, 7-10 + John 15, 9-17

Two weeks ago, the Gospel proclaimed through the words of Jesus that we were being invited into the same relationship Jesus shared with the Father. Last week, with the image of the vine and branches, the Gospel described the relationship we have with one another and with Christ Jesus reminded that alone we can do nothing. Today the Gospel gives both of those relationships a name: “Friend.”

The change from “servant” to “friend” that Jesus announces for us today gives every reason to gather around this altar in joyful thanksgiving. This is a change initiated by God through the words of Jesus Christ: “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” Finally, in human terms we can all understand. We know what our relationship with the Father is all about. We know what was in the mind of God at the moment of creation. The description we have of the relationship between God and those first humans makes sense. They were friends! They walked and talked together in the garden. They knew the sound of each other’s voices. There was loyalty and patience, faithfulness, and a shared joy that comes from love. It isn’t as though God needed friends, and it wasn’t as though God’s friends needed God to give them something. They had it all because they had God. God was God because there was love, and there still is.

As the story we know so well goes, God’s friends decided to go it alone on their own. There was betrayal and blame, hiding and shame; behavior that usually destroys a friendship. However, friendship for God and friendship with God is not broken by those things as God reveals something about friendship we sometimes forget: forgiveness. From our own human experience, we know how friendship works. There are no secrets. There is complete acceptance. In fact, one becomes totally blind when it comes to the flaws and imperfections of the friend. There is time spent together, sometimes exclusively, intimately, words are spoken and thoughts are shared. Friends know what the other is about. Nothing can get in the way when a friend is in need. Jesus, put it simply: we are willing to lay down our lives for our friends figuratively and often literally.

While friends may act as servants to one another because of their love, slaves or servants do not eat with their masters. Yet, here we are, gathered around a table with the one who calls us “friends.” So, it is not just a matter of words spoken with this Gospel, it is also a matter of things done. Coming to this altar affirms our friendship with each other in communion and confirms our friendship with God. The forgiveness we share, the life we enjoy, the way we listen, the patience we give, the loyalty we express by our commitment, and the way we serve each other is all about this friendship.

It has always seemed to me that greatest compliment we can ever offer to another, and the most obvious sign of someone’s grace and holiness is call them a “Friend of God”. May it be so for us all as we near the feast of Pentecost.

 5 Easter Sunday

29 April 2018 at St. Peter the Apostle and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 9, 26-31 + Psalm 22 + 1 John 3, 18-24 + John 15, 1-8

Jesus never wrote, composed, or built anything. What he left behind was a community. His whole life and mission was about relationships, bringing us to share his relationship with the Father. Whenever there was something that kept people apart from one another it had to go. Martha and Mary lost their brother Lazarus. Two women on their own in that culture was a disaster. So, Jesus called Lazarus back. A widow is about to bury her only son. Jesus raises that boy and gives him back to his mother. Over and over again the Gospels give us examples of Jesus restoring and building community.

On the last night he spent with his friends and disciples, after washing their feet and sharing a meal and prayer, he walked with some of them out to a garden knowing that things were falling apart. He knew that they would scatter and run, hide, and deny him. He knew that betrayals would splinter the relationship he has enjoyed with them. He walked in the darkness of that night through a vineyard on the way to an olive garden, stopped and spoke the words we have just repeated. “Without me, you can do nothing.”

Of all the sayings of Jesus, there is probably nothing said that is more challenging and difficult for our age than those six words. A do-it-yourself age, with all the independent individualists of our time must find this very hard to take. A world of isolation politically or spiritually will not fit with this gospel. If we are disciple of Jesus Christ, we are connected, mutually dependent, and responsible. Yet there is evidence everywhere still fresh in our memories that a lot of people think otherwise. They want to go it alone. They want to be “spiritual” but claim no faith community or relationships. Where are all those people who crammed themselves into this place five weeks ago? The truth is, people are leaving. Our young people walk off thinking what? That they can do something that matters without Jesus Christ? That they can make a difference in this world by themselves? I don’t believe they can. They may make a lot of money, but the world they leave behind will be a wreck, dirty, and uninhabitable.

We sit here all too often unmoved by this. We feel sad and wonder why or we blame someone else, and in this behavior, there lies the problem. Too few of us have ever done anything to call them back, to speak of our need for them, or of our feelings about their absence in the spirit of this Gospel. Too few of take very seriously the importance of their presence here. For them, Mass is a matter of convenience not commitment. This Gospel reminds us: “Without me you can do nothing.”

However, this Gospel says nothing to those who are gone; but it says plenty to those of us who are here about why we are here and what we become because of it. In the end, the absence of everyone else must come as a challenge to us about how seriously, personally, and faithfully we have bound ourselves to Jesus Christ in his Church. His work of building community, healing what is broken, and finding the lost continues for us a Church. This is a lonely world filled with people longing for relationships and connections. Facebook, Twitter, and all that electronic stuff is never a substitute for real communion, for the look and the touch of a real loving person standing beside us or behind us ready to pick us up when we fall or forgive us when we offend and fail. By this, the Father will be glorified, and we shall bear much fruit.

4 Easter Sunday

22 April 2018 at St. Peter the Apostle and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

Acts of the Apostles 4, 8-12 + Psalm 118 + 1 John 3, 1-2 + John 10, 11-18

Seven times in John’s Gospel Jesus says: “I am.” Now pay attention. There might be a quiz! I am the Bread of Life. I am the Light of the World. I am the Gate. I am the Resurrection and the Life. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I am the Vine. Now today, I am the Good Shepherd. Each of these rely on an Old Testament image of God, but only one describes a human role. Jesus has just had an altercation with the Pharisees who have objected that he healed a blind man on the Sabbath. This is his response to them:  a commentary on the quality of their leadership. It does not win him any points with the Pharisees, but it certainly tells them how he sees his role. Yet, there is a message here for us as well.

As we proclaim this Gospel today, it could well function as a critique of leadership in the church, but that would leave us out of the picture. That is not what is happening here. Jesus is speaking to you and me right now in the living context of this liturgy. He speaks of his relationship to us and of his relationship with the Father. When he speaks of knowing his sheep, it is about his relationship with us.  As he describes the kind of Shepherd that he is, he is saying that unlike any other Shepherd, he shares the very essence of his life by his willingness to give all on our behalf. It is just four weeks since we commemorated that act of love. For the last three weeks, we have recalled and relived stories from after the resurrection. Now we begin to reflect on what that was all about: a God who calls us by name, who knows us and has let us come to know him and the sound of his voice in Jesus Christ.

After Jesus expresses his relationship to us, he then speaks of his relationship with the Father, and that leads to the heart of these verses today. As he links his role as Shepherd to his relationship to the Father, he shows us that his mission as this good shepherd was not simply to care for the sheep, but to make the sheep like himself by bringing them into his relationship with the Father. This is what he reveals to us today. As we listen to the Word, we may not indulge in romantic and sentimental images of a nice white robed, long haired, fair skinned man patting little woolly lambs. We must ask what it means and move more deeply into what is said, what offered, and what is promised. We can have the same relationship to the Father that Jesus enjoyed. That is what he says to us today. All it takes if for us to know him, to listen to him, and to follow him. He cares for the lost. We care for the lost. He shows mercy. We show mercy. He forgives. We forgive. He feeds. We feed.

We are being offered a relationship with the Father like the relationship that Jesus experienced: a relationship of hope, of promise, and of trust. God will do for us what God has done for Jesus because Jesus shared his very essence with us, his life, his body, his blood, and his Spirit. Obedient and desiring to do the will of the Father and conforming our lives into the life of Jesus Christ restores us to the relationship we had with the Father before there was sin and alienation. That is the mission of Jesus Christ. Today we proclaim by our lives and our faith that it is a mission accomplished. This is really good news.