Isaiah 35, 1-6,10 + Psalm 146 + James 5, 7-10 + Matthew 11, 2-11

Matthew, the “Gospel of Beatitudes” adds another to the list begun in Chapter Five: “Blessed are those who take no offense at me.”

It may seem a little difficult at first to imagine taking offence at Jesus. How could anyone take offence at someone who gives sight to the blind, cleanses lepers, and raises up the dead? Yet, Matthew would not have repeated that response to John’s question had it not been so. People did take offense, and people still do. Our challenge is to make sure we do not, and open our hearts wide enough to the presence of Jesus and his message to reach out to those who have. I believe that in this episode, John the Baptist was at the threshold of taking offense.

In my imagination, I have always pictured John trapped in Herod’s prison being sustained and comforted by some of his followers brave enough to maintain their relationship with him. Think of it. There he is in prison: John, the one who Baptized Jesus, who called Jesus to his mission, recognized him as the Lamb of God, who insisted he was not worthy to loosen the straps of his sandals obviously being ignored and abandoned by the very one he first acclaimed. Where is Jesus when you need him? Why does he do all these great things for others, even those outside the family of Judaism, and leave John suffering in that miserable place? John has been preparing the way for the Messiah who would set everything right!! Now look at what he gets: a longer wait. Maybe time to rethink his ideas about this Messiah and how it is all going to work out.

We have all been there, dangerously close to taking offence at Jesus, and we all know some who have. The consequence of their offence is discouragement, disbelief, anger, hurt, and even disinterest. Yet the words of Jesus call all of this into question, and reflecting upon them once again in this Advent Season might move us more safely among the Blessed.

It is not just a matter of “taking offence” at the historical Jesus whose nice story of healing and forgiving is easy to take. It is also a matter of listening to what he says and what he demands of his followers in terms of compassion, forgiveness, and generosity. It is a matter of caring for the poor at the cost of one’s own convenience, comfort, and security. It is a matter of welcoming strangers and organizing one’s priorities in such a way that God’s will comes before self-will. It is a matter of making repentance and conversion a way of life, not just a single event. Suddenly, it is possible to take offence at Jesus because his teaching and his demands are offensive to our way of thinking and acting.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a video clip of Rush Limbaugh announcing with more pomposity and certitude than any Roman Pontiff in history could ever have managed that Pope Francis was a Maxsist! To prove his point, he then proceed to quote from the most recent Encyclical. Now that is taking offence in your face! The Pope is not offended; but there seem to be some who take offence at his teaching rooted in and proclaiming the teachings of Jesus Christ. Any threat or question raised about the justice of some economic systems seems to cause offense. Taking the teaching of the church, again rooted in Jesus Christ’s, to insist that not killing means more than being opposed to abortion causes some to take offence when their support of capital punishment is challenged. The examples could go on and on, but it is sometimes a much more personal matter that causes offense.

When prayers are not answered with the expected outcome, offense if taken. When God asserts the control over this earth and life leaving us “out of control” offense is taken. If  sickness comes and death before we think it should, sometimes offense is taken. When relationships collapse that we thought might last a life-time, when someone betrays or even when someone trusted sins and fails to live up to expectations we set for them, offense is taken.

“Blessed are those who take no offense at me.” Is a challenge and a comfort just as much as “Blessed are the Poor. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the peacemakers in Chapter Five.

Hope is what they are blessed with.

Hope is what is promised.

Hope is the heart of this Season.

Hope that all will be well.

Hope that because of God’s love for us

those who have chosen a life of repentance and conversion

will reach out to those have taken offense with love and understanding.

There is Hope that God will make all things right for those who seek to know and do the Will of God.

There is Hope when things go wrong, and Hope when we are called to let go of ideas, systems, and old ways of doing things and thinking.

Most of all there is Hope when we open ourselves up to the power of God to accomplish what we cannot,

to fulfill what was begun long ago,

and to dry our tears,

lift up the fallen,

and welcome those who have strayed, embracing again those who have taken offense.

Isaiah 11, 1-10 + Psalm 72 + Romans 15, 4-9 + Matthew 3, 1-12

On Board the MS Eurodam

There is a cartoon you may have seen that gives me a smile every time I think of it. There is a tall man bearded and wearing a long robe that is dragging behind him. He carries a sign that says, “The end is near.” The next frame shows a short man also bearded and robed. He has a sign that says: “The End.” And so it is The End for us, on the night before we disembark in Fort Lauderdale and head back to homes all over this country. The end is near for us in lots of ways, and that is the message John the Baptist is proclaiming. His preaching ends, and then the preaching of Jesus begins.

Human experience tells us that there are lots of endings. This cruise ends, and our stories and memories begin. Childhood ends and Adolescence begins. Sadly, marriages end, but just as joyfully engagements often end with holy marriages. Schooling ends, and we go to work if we are clever enough.  Employment ends, and for some of us retirement begins in some way or another. Endings are always followed by beginnings. Something stops, but something else begins. Someone said to me a few weeks ago: “When God takes something from us, it is never to punish us; but rather to give us something new.” There are no endings without beginnings.

Now when the Israelites were in exile, prophets rose up to console and encourage them with the hope that their captivity would end, and they would make their way home for a new beginning. In that same way, John speaks in the desert to all of us who are in exile, living outside of paradise, far from the place we must know as home. He calls for an end to the way things are in this exile, and for a new beginning proposing that “repentance” is what will make that change and give us that new beginning.

Authentic repentance for which John cries out is not a matter of piety, or prayers, or penance. Repentance is not simply saying: “I’m sorry.” Repentance means that we turn around; turn toward heaven, toward God and away from anything that keeps our focus off God. Authentic repentance will be obvious by its fruits: the first of which will be Justice and Peace. As long as there is no justice and no peace, we have not managed any real repentance because once we have turned toward God and have the Kingdom of Heaven in our sights, we will know what it must like to live in God’s presence and how citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are to live. We will begin to do what is right and what is good. This is what Jesus Christ will come to preach and how he will form his disciples.

When we have turned toward God and away from success and power, influence, and privilege, we will begin to straighten our crooked ways that leave most of this world’s people poor, ignorant, and sick. We will have begun to level the playing field which John calls smoothing out the rough ways. Turning toward God will mean turning toward the poor where we shall see the face of God. Turning toward God will mean looking squarely into the face of immigrants and refugees not seeing them as a strain on our economy but as an opportunity to level every valley and hill. Turning toward God will, in the end, mean a complete change of heart, of values, and of behavior. It will also mean a change in our expectations. It will mean that instead of sitting around and hoping that God will do something or send someone to bring us into justice and show us the way to peace, we will come to understand that it is by our repentance that these things will come to pass, and they will.

This kind of conversion is much more than a human decision. It is a response to what God has already done by becoming flesh and dwelling among us. As believers, as people ready to once again celebrate Christmas, we can be nothing less than heralds of the Good News, bringers of peace, and examples of true justice. This kind of repentance heals what is broken and mends all that divides. It will allow for no distinctions even between the human and the divine. After all, isn’t that what the Incarnation is all about? As Paul proclaims today to the Romans, all are one in Christ Jesus, whether strong or weak, Gentile or Jew, servant or free, woman or man, rich or poor.

Another man is in Rome today named Francis who comes with the same message. It is time for a change, a change in this church and a change in where we look and how we look. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and we need to begin to look like it. When we do, we shall have come home to a new beginning.

Isaiah 2, 1-5 + Psalm 122 + Roman 13, 11-14 + Matthew 24, 37-44

On Board the MS Eurodam

There is a danger with this word “Advent” made all the more so by the customs that have grown up around the idea that comes to mind when someone says: “Advent”. The fact that we observe “Advent” just before the feast of Christmas does not help. The risk is that we begin to think that Advent is a “Season”; a time of prayerful preparation and readiness for Christmas, a time for confession and Penance Rites in some places, a time for lighting candles and wearing purple or violet vestments. Really traditional Catholics would be uncomfortable with Christmas decorations before the end of Advent. All of this keeps us trapped in an unfortunate state of mind that then leaves us to think that Advent is simply about the four weeks before Christmas.

There is a lot more to Advent than this however, and today’s readings raise that issue. For those who might want to take their faith more seriously, Advent is a way of life, not a season. It is a way of living with a kind of readiness, openness, and joyful anticipation that Christ has come and that Christ will come again today. In the present moment.

This life style is in sharp contrast to the fast-lane life of our culture where everything must happen fast, where there is no waiting, and every wish and desire, pleasure and plan must be accessible and granted without delay. People who have not begun to live the Advent life-style are always impatient, always at the edge of anger and sometimes over the edge. This impatience can make nice people rude, and they become poor witnesses to their faith.

While old age is rarely considered a blessing with all its aches and pains, there is often a wisdom found with age. It is a wisdom manifested in an ability to wait, to make time for others, to find time to wait, to watch, to listen, and to grow ready without any rushing or stomping around or growing anger. These are the people who will pause in the grocery store check-out line for a compliment or kind word to the checker who has been standing there for six or seven hours. These are people who do not even know where the horn is on their car. They wait and wave pedestrians safely across. They hold the door for others. They smile, and are always the first to say, “Thank you.”

This is a life-style lived in readiness for the coming of Christ. Those who choose to live a life of Advent are always looking for and always looking at the face of Christ. Advent for them has little to do with Christmas presents, Carols, Shopping, Cards, and Parties. It has to do with living every minute in the expectation that Christ is here; next door, behind us, ahead of us, in the poor, the dirty, the old, the sick, the Republican, the Democrat, the homeless, the child whose crying annoys us on an airplane or in the parent who cannot calm the child. You see, this life style is full of life, and adventure, readiness, and surprises. It is a life-style that looks a lot like the life of Christ.

I wonder sometimes how this culture in which we live, that idolizes youthfulness and worships children could handle it if God had decided to set the Incarnation up and have Christ come as an old man, feeble, forgetful, and ugly. I wish some artist would someday paint or draw a nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and Angels gathered around a bed in a nursing home. That artist would have begun to understand Advent, and through that understanding lead us to a more profound understanding of what the Incarnation of God in human flesh is all about.

Jesus is speaking to you and to me today about Advent as a life-style for disciples. His instruction does not propose that living an Advent life-style is a passive or lazy kind of sitting around waiting for something to happen. Real Advent people get impatient, but never for themselves. They get impatient for others who have been used and abused, shut out and left out of a share in this world’s bounty and denied the respect and the dignity that is theirs because they are God’s own. Real Advent people might get angry but never for themselves. They get angry for the week and the frail, the poor and the helpless being pushed around and used for profit by those who expect and wait for nothing but the improvement of their own privileged lives. So there is a difference between people who live with the expectation of Christ’s presence and those who may think it is time to eat drink and be merry because the second coming is a long way off.

In the end, this is about simply living in the present. Active waiting means being fully present to the moment convinced that this moment is THE moment. Living that way makes certain that when that final moment comes, we will be ready and be living it to the fullest, joyfully, and faithfully, confidently and peacefully. So today, my friends, our response to God’s call and to the urging of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel is to become Advent people not just for four weeks before Christmas, but a lifetime.

2 Samuel 5, 1-3 + Psalm 122 + Colossians 1, 12-20 + Luke 23, 35-43

 Today we look back and we look forward. We look back into the Journey of Jesus that brought him to this day described by Luke and back further into this entire Year of Faith concluded this week. At the same time though we look forward to what begins with Advent and to what the future holds for us who have and who are making our journey to Jerusalem. In a way, all of this is visually there in the image Luke paints for us with words: three crosses on a hill outside of Jerusalem: one is the past, one is the present, and one is the future. Countless artists have painted it on canvas. Three crosses on a hill, weeping women, a group of men standing around busy talking about the events of the day as though the scene is so ordinary they cannot be bothered. That image is the present.

 Hanging on one cross is a sinner trapped in his past, unrepentant, angry, and hopeless. This cross is the throne of sin. It is our past. On the other side is a second cross on which hangs the future. Hope and comfort, forgiveness and repentance. This cross is the throne of repentance. On a third cross hangs the present. It is the throne of grace, the throne of forgiveness and mercy. It is the throne of hope which puts sin into the past, and hope for the Kingdom into the present. That cross is a throne that reveals who and what Jesus Christ is still today. It has nothing to do with the past except that by his presence now, there is a past, and a future for us full of hope.

 To those who have heard the call of Jesus to follow him, there is a place in this scene for us, because this scene is not an old snap-shot from the past. What we see through Luke’s words is the present. This is the time in which we live, for there are still people living in the dreadful agony of their past, trapped in sin, angry, and unrepentant. There are still believers and followers of Christ who weep in sadness at the suffering of the innocent consoled and desolate. They still cry out and weep unheard and unheeded by others who stand around ignoring the truth, just standing around doing business as usual. It is not because they are helpless either. They are simply uninterested and too busy with their little live to see what is going on around them and hear the conversation at the crosses. There are also some who are absent, whose presence might have brought some comfort, some encouragement, or relief into the chaos of that scene, but they, in spite of the fact that they had been privileged to hear the master speak, are too afraid. What a difference there is between those apostles and that one has nothing to lose now hanging there on his cross. In his suffering, he finds hope and hears words of comfort from that throne of grace and forgiveness because he acknowledges and confesses his sin. To him come those words so longed for by this world, a promise, hope, and forgiveness.

 At the center of it all is that third cross, the throne of grace and hope from which comes that message so full of power and so full of hope. One word of that message is all we need. “Today.” It is the affirmation of the present. Today is the day. Today is the time. Now salvation has come. Now there is hope. Now there is forgiveness and freedom. There is no waiting. There is no sense that something more must be done or anything else said. Today is the day. When repentance is embraced, forgiveness is given. The good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand is fulfilled in that scene. It’s over. The past with its death and sin is finished today.

 The King rules over death and sin today. The past and the future meet at the cross in the center. That throne from which he reigns is not covered in gold and jewels, but in the crimson color of his blood. This is a King of victory who subdues the final enemy to celebrate the eternal peace. The weapon of his battle that secures the peace is mercy and forgiveness. All that Jesus accomplished is revealed at this moment in this scene. The death of Jesus on the cross reveals a God who stands with us when we are afraid and is at our side while we are suffering. He did this simply so that we could know God today and love him more. Our repentance, our giving over of our lives to God, will assure us today that God’s presence is never closer than when we suffer, and that now through Christ we have already brought the past and the future into the presence where by the power of mercy and forgiveness we shall and always will know peace.

Malachi 3, 19-20 + Psalm 98 + 2 Thessalonians 3, 7-12 + Luke 21, 5-19

Three levels of Gospel hearing are at play today, and you have heard me insist on them for years:

1)      What did Jesus say? The historical situation

2)      What is Luke saying? The historical gospel situation

3)      What are they both saying to us right now

Taking the first steps keeps us on track. Skipping either one or two, and you might miss three.

This temple Jesus speaks of was built by Herod, a non-believer. It was not built out of faith as God’s dwelling place. Herod was in league with the Romans and so were the priests who ran the place. It was a very important income producer for Herod, the priests, and the Romans who took a share of the offering income. It was as much a market place as it was a holy place. Judging from the behavior of Jesus reported to us, it was not much of a holy place at all no matter what he did to clean it up. The temple was to have been, from the time of Solomon and David who built the first one, a sign of God’s presence, a place of thanksgiving, offering, and praise. It was a sign of unity, and a place that drew people together providing their identity. Jesus has something else to offer given what the temple has become.

When Luke writes and has Jesus speaking, those who receive this Gospel know that the temple is already down. The zealots schemed an uprising, a violent revolt against the Romans. They lost, and the price they paid was the total destruction of Jerusalem including the temple. Even secular historians say that there was not one stone left upon another. Easy targets for blame were the followers of Jesus. When disasters happen and someone commits an act of violent terrorism, there must always be someone to blame, and nearly all the time it is the most innocent, indefensible, and helpless. Being a small group who were “different”, gentle, peacefully non-violent, we know who got the blame and paid a great price: those new followers of the “Way”: the followers of that crucified criminal, that insurrectionist, that blasphemer. Persecution began big time.

There have been some in our tradition over the years who interpret all of this violence, especially the destruction of Jerusalem as God’s punishment for the rejection of Christ. This assumes of course, that God is in the punishment business. There is an odd human behavior that likes to invoke authority to give credibility to their wishes. When I was a pastor, now and then I would question how something happened, and too frequently I would hear that so-and-so said Father wanted it this way when in fact Father had never given it a thought; but to get their way with a minimum of trouble, invoking an authority figure would often work. Sometimes this behavior is also a kind of wish-fulfillment. Wishing that God would punish (because they would like to do the punishing) they decide that God did it thereby excusing themselves from the whole thing to begin with.

The fact of the matter is that Jerusalem was destroyed not because anyone rejected Jesus or because his followers started trouble; but because the peaceful, loving, non-violent way of Jesus was not followed. The zealots rejected a behavior that would have kept the peace. Here is the point of proclaiming this Gospel today in this place not because it is a threat that says if you reject Christ, God will punish you;  but because the Gospel always reveals something of God’s love for us. The Gospel is GOOD NEWS for everyone. It is not BAD NEWS for the bad.

The temple could come down because it was no longer the physical sign of God’s presence. It could come down and mean nothing except a mess to clean up because there was a new source of identity, and something else to draw people together in which they could offer praise, thanks, and fulfill the law and will of God. That new temple is Jesus Christ, the temple raised up again in three days after being torn down.

Luke’s comforting and encouraging words to those early followers of Christ was that their suffering was a way of bearing witness to God’s presence. Their suffering was their hymn of praise, and living through those times with hope was testimony to their belief in the victory of love over hate, peace over violence, and life over death.

Proclaiming this Gospel today needs few words. For true believers, Jesus Christ is still the best and clearest sign of God’s presence. The presence of God and of God’s Son is the people who have inherited his name and learned from him how to live in obedience to the Will of God and in love for one another. For true believers, Jesus Christ is still where we find our identity. It will not be found in ethnic groups, behind flags, ideologies, or political parties. Our identity in Christ transcends all of those things and makes them irrelevant, inconvenient, and sometimes even an obstacle to our real identity as the living presence of God on this earth. Jesus Christ becomes the center, the gathering place, the one to whom all people will come in the pilgrimage of life as the Jews came to Jerusalem and its Temple again and again.

What we proclaim today is a new Temple not made by human hands and stones, but made by human lives sanctified and purified by the courage of sacrifice, service, non-violence, and love. What we proclaim today as we are the ones gifted and called to give flesh to the Word of God, a people whose actions and behavior, attitudes and hopes reveal God’s plan for this earth and people God has loved so much. What we proclaim is what we live. What we say to this world is simply: “If you want to find God come among us. If you want healing and forgiveness, stay with us. If you want to find life and joy, we have it abundantly. If you are hungry, we will feed you. If you are thirsty, we will give you a drink – a drink that will not leave you thirsty again. If you are afraid, we will calm your fears. If you are alone, we will stay with you. If you are in the dark, we will share the light.”

As we come to the conclusion of a full year in the Gospel of Luke, his message of hope cannot leave us unchanged. His gentleness and the beauty of his message must soften hardened hearts. His vision and his experience of the Holy Spirit from the Baptism of Jesus through the Transfiguration and on to Pentecost cannot leave us thinking for one moment that we are alone here. By that Spirit, we can live without fear, and know that we have among us whatever it takes to awaken this world to God’s presence and the joy of knowing God’s love with the promise of forgiveness and peace where God’s people are found together as one.

Ordinary Time 13  November 10, 2013

Maccabees 7, 1-2, 9, 14 + Psalm 17 + 2 Thessalonians 2, 16-3, 5 + Luke 20,

The journey of Jesus that began weeks and weeks ago with Luke Chapter 9 is now concluded. He made through Jericho last week where he invited Nicodemus and us to “Come down.” He is now in Jerusalem where he will fulfill his Father’s will, where all that he had promised would come to pass, where the temple of his body would be torn down only to rise again on the third day. Now Luke fine tunes his Gospel and begins to focus on life and the promise of Jesus. Who better to cast in this scene than the Sadducees whose position on death was that it was final. There are some who describe the Sadducees as a group who refused to believe in the resurrection. I think that description of them comes out of the negative. All that tells us is what they are NOT. The other way to think of them is that they believed in death. For the Sadducees, death was the end. There was no more. Not surprising then that when they come up against Life in the presence of Jesus Christ, there is going to be some conflict and surprises.

This ideology of the Sadducees is hardly a thing of the past. Judging from the way much of this world lives and behaves, it would be difficult to assume that many believe in or give much thought to the anything at all after death. We have an odd arrangement with death these days, a sort of denial that death will come, and with that comes a denial that there is anything after it. Denying death leaves us locked in the present going on and on as though there will be nothing more than what is right now. In refusing to believe in another life, which followers of Christ called, “The Resurrection,” death is refused. But is exactly what Jesus accepts and does in Jerusalem. He will not, he does not deny death. In this conversation with the Sadducees, he teases them with thoughts about a “Living God”, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the prophets.

Without the resurrection, followers of Christ have nothing to say to this world. Like Jesus Christ, we stand in a relationship with the Living God, and that relationship will not reconcile with a culture of death, an ideology that refuses death, and the denial of death’s power.

Once the reality and inevitability of death is accepted there is something more to do, and something more to become. Our energy and our focus can be spent on something else, life; rather than on the denial of death. What happens, what we are, and what we do after death becomes a concern, an interest, even a motive for what we are doing here and now. We are a people of life, in life, and for life. Knowing that we shall continue to live even in the face of death changes everything. Knowing that we shall continue to live gives hope, and confidence, courage and joy. There is something to look forward to – something more than just the same old thing. This knowledge is not just some hunch or wish, or some way of hanging on in the face of death’s certainty. This knowledge is a relationship.

This is where Jesus steps in with his profound wisdom challenging the Sadducees and those like them in every age. He speaks of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the prophets and patriarchs. What do these people have in common? One thing: a relationship with Living God. What Jesus proposes is that when God has a relationship with someone, nothing, not even death, can destroy that relationship! A relationship with God is not like the relationships we have from time to time that come and go, that are broken and wounded, incomplete and fragile.

Here is the message of this Gospel. Here is where we can enter into the mystery of resurrected life. Here is where life everlasting becomes not only possible but a reality. This is the way to eternal life, the way to face death today and be around tomorrow; a relationship with the living God. I have seen people face the most impossible and terrifying things. I have seen people come through horrible and heart breaking experiences and rise up tall and strong full of life and free of resentment and anger. I have also seen it go the other way, and every time the difference between them is one thing: their relationship with the living God.

What will come for Jesus in Jerusalem is devastating and a disaster for his followers. In the midst of it, at the worst of it, he maintained his relationship with the Father. He rose from that death, and he lives. For the apostles, his death was something to be denied. It couldn’t happen. It won’t happen. They ran and they hid in denial of what did happen. Their relationship with the Father was not yet strong enough and not yet sealed. For Jesus of Nazareth, the Spirit came upon him in the Jordan. For the Apostles, there was denial, fear, and nothing but the grief of death until Pentecost, and then their relationship with the Father was sealed, and the denial was over. They preached Jesus crucified!

We are a Baptized people, Confirmed with the power and the gifts of the Spirit. We are people of life, living now and living forever because God has called us his own. With death completely tamed by this truth and this promise, there is only a life of joy and of peace for us to live. What gives us those precious gifts is not so much death, but that relationship with living God, the God who loves us. What Jesus says to those Sadducees and to anyone who lives as though death is the end of everything, there is simply one question raised: “How could God allow someone God loves to die?” In response we are simply but profoundly left to say, “He does not.” “Death is not what the Sadducees think it is. There is more, and Paul suggests that it is better. With this hope and with this promise, we might move deeply into the mystery of this Love and with the days we have work more consistently and sincerely for the sake of that love and life itself.

Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church Norman, OK

Wisdom 11, 22-12, 2 + Psalm 145 + 2 Thessalonians 1,11 -2,2 + Luke 19, 1-10

“Come down.” says Jesus to Zacchaeus. “Come down” says Jesus to you and me when we pick up this piece of Luke’s Gospel. “Come down, down from our arrogance and smug ways, down from your hoarding of this earth’s bounty, down from your power, down from your privilege and prestige.  Come down from your pride and from your grudges. Come down from jealousies and ambitions, superiority and judgments. Come down from everything and anything that keeps us from Joy.

Look at what happens to Zacchaeus when he comes down. He is filled with Joy. All that stuff he had accumulated had never brought him anything lasting. Maybe a moment or two of fleeting happiness, but never a hint of Joy, and it certainly never let him hear those words: “I must stay at your house today.”

This joyless world too busy pursing happiness never finds Joy. A life dedicated to the pursuit of happiness never tastes the salvation offered by Christ. This story of Joy and salvation reveals to us the path to joy and the way of salvation. Look at the movements in the life of Zacchaeus. First there is attraction. He wants to see Jesus. Without that attraction, there is nothing left to do but “pursue happiness”. So, all of life becomes one big pursuit, one big chase after an illusion. Zacchaeus however was finished with that pursuit of wealth and power and riches. He wanted to see Jesus: attraction.

The attraction then leads to a dialogue. Jesus speaks to him and Zacchaeus responds not just with words, but with action. He came down, and he came down quickly. The dialogue between them leads to conversion. Zacchaeus turns away from that pursuit, and that conversion leads to his repentance with his more than amble restitution four times over. The consequence of that Joyful attraction, dialogue, conversion, and repentance is a proclamation we all long to hear: “Today Salvation has come to this house.”

The welcome offered by Zacchaeus is more than a welcome to his home. It is at first a welcome into his heart. This is what brings Salvation, a heart attracted to and in prayer (dialogue) with Christ; and a life of continual conversion and repentance. These are the steps to Joy and to Salvation. The courage of Zacchaeus is remarkable. The strength of his attraction and his desire just to see Jesus brings him into sharp conflict with the whispering and grumbling crowd. It is the challenge still faced by those who are still really attracted to Jesus and the life Jesus invites us to share. The challenge to do something different, to be something different, the challenge to run ahead and climb a tree, to ignore the pressure and the grumbling of others is a challenge faced by anyone who awakens to that attraction that starts it all.

How tragic it might have been if Zacchaeus would have done what the crowd expected, if their grumbling would have kept him on the ground out of sight and out of hearing the invitation to “Come Down.”

I would like to image that had he stayed on the ground, had he bent to the opinion and the grumbling of the crowd, he would have spent the rest of his life saying the words that have marked with sadness far too many lives: “If only I had…..” I’ve come to believe that those words are the most and sad and tragic words we ever hear. “If only I had said something.”  “If only I had done something.”  “If only……If only….. Tragic regret over missed opportunities scars human history, and has led far too many a long way from Joy and from the Joyful One, Christ Jesus.

So we tell the story of Zacchaeus again precisely because it is not a story of regret and missed opportunity. It is the story of a Joyful life full of the promise of Salvation. “Come down.” says Jesus once again. “I must stay in your house today.”

Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church Norman, OK

Sirach 35,12-14 + Psalm 34 + 2 Timothy 4, 6-8, 16-18 + Luke 18, 9-14

For several Sundays we have listened in to Jesus instructing his disciples through various stories and parables in response to their request: “Lord, Teach us to Pray.” Of course, the instruction is for all disciples, and still is. Today is the final instruction, and he places the examples in the Temple. The location itself has something to say. The Pharisee belonged there which is probably why he was up front. That tax collector, because he was working for the Romans and considered a traitor, was not exactly “in” the Temple. He would have had to stay outside in some other courtyard, at some distance. So the set-up invites us to begin thinking about these polar opposites, and then join in the surprise at the end when the justification of one is affirmed and the other is left out. It’s all backwards, and to “get” the story, we have to set aside our prejudice against Pharisees, and our tendency to champion the under-dog. What Jesus says about the two of them does not make sense at all, and it should not make sense to any of us who are here, in church, with our tithe, with our long record of being faithful, and true, prayerful, and sincere. In fact, we need to put ourselves in that Pharisees’ shoes. If there were Pharisees in the crowd that day listening they would have had every reason to shout: “What?”  “What are you saying?” “We have done everything you asked of us! We kept the rules! We  listened to what you said! What do you mean that guy went home justified?” With that reaction, they have revealed a lot about themselves and even more about their relationship with God.

At this point, it is time to connect the dots, so to speak. It’s time to look more deeply into what justification consists of, where is comes from, and then wonder about whether or not it’s even worth it to pray: at least pray as we may have been praying.

If all you consider here is the words of their prayers, there is nothing better or worse about either one of the prayers these men are offering to God. Both have a relationship with God which is ultimately what prayer is all about. Both of them are honest and sincere. What’s different about them is their frame of mind. The mind, the thinking, the perception of reality in which the Pharisee functions is the problem. He does not have the mind of God. He does not connect with God or relate to God in the way God wants us to. His claim on “justification” comes from what he has done, it does not come from his relationship with God. His whole relationship with God is based on obligations and rules. In contrast, the Tax Collector has a totally different relationship with God. It is his relationship that is preferred. Prayer is all about relationship.

What we are all invited to learn from this instruction of Jesus is that our dialogue with God must be about what is on our minds and where we are in our lives. The way we live our lives day in and day out reveals the truth about us. Our failures, our sins, our imperfections are always with us. Can you hear that in the prayer of the tax gatherer? God loves us just the way we are. Yet we often think that what we do or what say will change the way God sees us. It does not. It cannot because God already has loved us. We can’t get more. So doing good things to get God’s favor or earn some heavenly points betrays something very fundamental: a deep doubt that God loves us. The good things we do, how we pray, and how we live with one another must spring from a real and personal conviction, or from faith, the belief that we are loved by God.

We come to prayer in faith with different motivations and different needs, but the highest motivation is pure love. Without that, our prayer is shallow and self-serving. All our actions and decisions, all that we say and do must come from our love of God. Otherwise, our actions are just self-serving and useless. What this parable teaches us about prayer is that is far better to simply come before God just as we are and simply ask for understanding and mercy. Our past as a church is full of great and noble men and women who were the most broken and the most vulnerable who found divine favor through their simple humility and honesty.

These people do not look upon others. Hear that in the prayer of the Pharisee. These humble and honest people of love, in their relationship with God, become the best channel of God’s love, God’s Justice, and God’s mercy because they share what they have found, they imitate what they have seen, and they give back to God the love they have discovered in their faith. These are people of Joy and people of Hope. These are the people who go home justified not because of what they have done or for that matter how they have prayed, but because of how they lived and how they have loved.

Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church Norman, OK

Exodus 17, 8-13 + Psalm 121 + 2 Timothy 3, 14-4,2 + Luke 18, 1-8

Luke’s Gospel is easily recognized because of his sensitive and gentle focus on widows. In a bigger picture, the women of Luke’s Gospel are given much more of a place in the work and ministry of Jesus than in the other accounts. This parable is one of nine parables found only in the Gospel of Luke It is perfect example of the way Luke shows the concern of Jesus of widows. He raises the widow’s son from the dead. He complains about the way Scribes take advantage of widows, and he holds widows as models because of their generosity toward others in need.

In the context of what Jesus has been saying to the Disciples during this part of the journey to Jerusalem, this text is certainly about prayer. However, it is not some abstract theory about prayer. It is a look into the way Jesus prays. A few verses earlier, and for us, a few weeks back, the Disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. As I said then, they did not want a formula or set of words. They wanted to know the secret or have some access to the real prayer of Jesus. What he gave them was a relationship, not a formula. He gave them the “Father.” He drew them into an intimate relationship with His Father that restructured their relationship to one another. Since that incident and dialogue, Jesus has been refining this kind of prayer with each conversation.

What unfolds for us at this point is one more piece of how it is that Jesus prays; why it is that he prays, and what it is that he prays about inviting us to enter into that prayer with him. This is much more than a proposal that we pray with persistence. In some ways that can end up being a mindless kind of stubbornness that in some way might be heroic,  yet also senseless, repetitive, and maybe destructive.

What inspires the persistence of Jesus, and what he would pass on to us, is a vision of the Reign of God. He has a clear vision of what that must be like, a clear sense of his Father’s Will, and because of what he believes that future will hold, he remains persistent and constant, committed and undistracted by anything else or anything less.

My own opinion is that a lack of imagination, a lack of vision, more often causes people to get discouraged, give up, and quit than any real obstacle. When the cry goes up: “Why am I doing this?” it’s all over. I sometimes think that this is what gives parents such extraordinary patience and sustains them through the “terrible twos” and the “tween years”: a vision, a hope, of what that child may and can become. When that vision is clear and always inspiring, no one gives up.

This is the role of faith which Luke invites us to explore with that cry of Jesus at the end of the parable. It is faith that provides the vision and the hope. If there is no faith, there will be no reason to persevere and persist. More interesting and more specific is the issue that this widow raises in the face of a judge who is too much like the “justice” of our day and time.  Justice is what she wants. Justice is the dream and vision of Jesus: justice for widows, justice for the poor, justice for the outcasts, helpless, and powerless of his time and ours!

There is another way of looking at this parable that I find disturbingly powerful and motivating. It is a vision that Pope Francis has begun stir in many people throughout this world. In this way of thinking, the Church is the widow. Her plea and her persistence in that plea is exactly what the church must be about in this world: a consistent and never ending insistence for justice in a world too accustomed to injustice and too comfortable to address and respond to the cry of those who wait for justice.  The Gospel suggests to the church that Justice is our mission, and only by persistent demands will justice come. The Gospel suggests to us all that a vision, a dream, of what the Reign of God will be like can keep us from becoming discouraged at it’s slow realization. That vision is a time of Justice and Peace consistent with the teaching and preaching of Jesus Christ and his Church. With that vision, we could hardly ever give up or keep quiet.

2 Kings 5, 14-17 + Psalm 98 + 2 Timothy 2, 8-13 + Luke 17, 11-19

An easy lesson on gratitude here; but way more besides. None the less, it’s probably a lesson worth a review now and then in an age when the art of writing a “Thank You” note seems to have passed. An age of privilege rarely expresses thanks except when there the hope of getting more. However, somehow this leprosy has made companions of Jews and a Samaritan. How odd and unexpected. Suffering can often bring together folks who have nothing more in common or folks who are actually (as in this example) quite at odds with one another. But this terrible sickness is not all they have in common: they are outcasts and they all turn to Jesus of Nazareth in hope.

They get sent to the priest. That’s an odd command for a Samaritan to follow. There would be every reason to suspect that the Priest should refuse to see him, refuse anything to do with him. After all, he’s two-time loser: a Leper and a Samaritan. We don’t know what happened when he went to the priest, but I like to think that the priest did what was expected and threw the Samaritan out. In sense, this story has as much to do with being “in” and being “out” as it does with being grateful. The nine get back “in” when they go to the priest. That’s what the visit was all about, being restored to the “fold” so to speak ,or to the tribe. Leprosy had expelled them. The priests recognition restored them. But restored them to what or to whom?

The Samaritan has no where to go, so he returns to the one who accepted him in the first place, and in this act expresses his gratitude; and then, by that gesture, he is gathered in, restored and confirmed to be among the “saved.” The nine never hear that good news. They are content to be restored to the tribe, back into the normal life-style of the day, and as far as we can tell, they never hear those wonderful words announcing and confirming their salvation.

There is something admirable about this Samaritan just like the other one who picks up  a man left at the side of a road by robbers. He not only does what is right, he goes a little further. The nine did what they were told, and no more. The Samaritan did the same but more. Somehow that little extra makes a difference and makes a story to share about salvation, what it means, and what happens to someone who does more than just ask Jesus for something they want.

Luke writes to a church with a reminder that being included is good and brings wholeness; but we might want to consider just what group we want to be part of. Those nine seem more interested in being part of a group that is just like them; exclusive and probably considering themselves privileged. The Samaritan sought to be counted among the grateful saved.

Luke writes to a church with a reminder that just doing what you are told to do is not quite enough. That stuff makes Jesus sad. Doing a little more than is expected seems to draw one closer to the one who saves.

Luke also writes to a church with a reminder that real prayer is not just about begging for mercy and coming to Jesus just when you need or want something. It is the prayer of gratitude that shows real character, faith, and goodness. This is the prayer of the Church that we call “Eucharistic.” Absence from the Eucharistic assembly raises some serious questions then about one’s faith, one’s relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, and about just where and to whom one belongs.

It’s a good story to think about, and we probably all ought to reflect a bit on just how it is and when it is that we pray, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to think about how much more we can do than simply what is commanded of us. And finally, a little reflection on just what group we would like to and long to be a part of might not hurt either. God is Good.