St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church (Norman, OK)

Acts of the Apostles 2, 1-11 + Psalm 104 + Romans 8, 8-17 + John 14, 15-16; 23-26

All the Old Testament signs of God’s presence are there: a thundering noise like the one heard at Sinai; a whirlwind like the one from which God spoke to Job; flames of fire like Moses saw at Mount Horeb, and then there is that breath bringing them back. Their leader, teacher, and friend is gone; and with him all their hopes and dreams, vision and expectations about what could be. Dead is their courage and joy. The power that called Lazarus to life, gave sight to the blind, lifted the lame, sought the lost, included those left out of life, and spoke of peace has gone. Then comes that noise, the wind, the fire, and his breath was suddenly in them, in that room, and then everywhere they went.

As always it is easy to sit with the story of Pentecost and look backward thinking as though it was something that happened on the 50th day after the resurrection, something that happened to a group of followers sitting around and waiting for something because he told them to. If that is the best we can do with this Gospel, we should have all stayed home.

This is not a story from the past. This is a revelation of the church. It is our belief and our understanding of who we are and what we are. It speaks best and maybe only to people who have broken hearts, who have been blind to the presence of Christ in others, who have been shamefully ambitious, selfish, and people who have experienced the death of hope or the death of someone they relied on, loved, and trusted. That is who was in that room, and that is the people in this room.

Because we are here and because of God’s promise, those who remain here will have life breathed into them. The key to this messsage, the key that unlocks it’s power and revelation is that word and that experience of remaining. It is the unity. It is the communion. It is the bond of faith and hope that makes a dwelling place for the Spirit. Like those people in John’s gospel, we are in another period of the Lord’s absence: the time between the Lord’s Ascension and his final coming in glory. During this time, we remain as he asked, and while we remain the Holy Spirit is our advocate, comforter, ally, guide, and inspiration. This is no time for fear, disappointment, or sadness. We are not a people without hope and a vision of what is to come. The Spirit he has sent is our advisor in times of decision and our comfort in times of illness and tragedy. The Spirit he has sent is our guide leading us to forgiveness, justice, love and peace. The Spirit is fuel that feeds the fire of our passion for service, the salve that heals. The Spirit is the reason for victorious living rather than defeated life.

Yet, the times in which we live are spirit starved times. Impatient and unwilling to remain too many have gone off on their own and rather than wait for the glory of God’s Kingdom to be revealed. They are satisfied, but only for a moment, with the glory of a passing world. Everywhere we see the unity for which Christ prayed collapsing into the fog of individualism and privitized lives. “One nation under God” has become “whoever has the most wins.” Ideological warfare is breaking us into factions. Remaining in love is too hard. It’s easier to quit rather than work at healing and forgiving. “On demand” entertainment has driven us further apart even in our leasure. Families and friends who once sat together to watch a game or some favorite show now stare at screeens alone watching “on demand”. The technology even affects us as a church. Mass “on demand”, Mass when I want it, or when it fits into my schedule arranged around the things that really matter means no parish unity, identity or loyalty. It’s all private, and it’s all mine.

In John’s Gospel today, Christ breathes on those who remained in that room infusing them with his Spirit. He unleashes in them the power of the Spirit, who alone can bring peace and joy in the wake of terrifying woundedness. He asks them to open themselves to the gift of the Spirit that allows them to receive and give forgiveness which is the only thing that can clear the air from the smoke of hatred and violence so that all can breathe in peace for which we long and which the risen One desires to give. Let me suggest to you that this breath means an intimacy with God that is as close as our every breath taken deeply into our lungs thousands of times a day. Just as breath must be exhaled, and cannot be kept within, so to does the Spirit’s power direct us outward to mission, exuding the love, peace, and forgiveness we have inhaled from the Living One.

MAY 12, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 1, 1-11 + Psalm 47 + Hebrews 9: 24-28; 10, 19-23- + Luke 24, 46-53

Probably set up by various artists who painted their vision of the Ascension, I would wonder about this scene so simply described as “he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.” I’m not sure why that line got my attention except that I’m a “visual” person and that sort of thing gets my imagination going. When my brain catches up to my imagination, I realize that there is a line just a little earlier that is a lot more interesting: “but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

“Clothed with power from on high!” Now there is something to think about: power. We like it. We use. We abuse it. We encourage it. We want it. It is good when we have it. It is bad when someone else has more. From our earliest days as children we fantasize about power. There are, after all, Power Rangers, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man 1, 2, and now 3.

Perhaps this fascination with power begins early because we are so powerless. Consequently power becomes all consuming. Trouble comes because we never seem to grow up. About the time we get finished with the action figures, we discover another power that can be physical, political, social, or economic all leading us around in circles manipulating, using, abusing, oppressing those who do not have as much. Sometimes we use our power to liberate others, but by the time we are finished liberating them they begin to wonder if it was worth it when they look at the death and devastation their liberation cost. Meanwhile I don’t think there is much evidence that we have begun to  discover much less explore what it means to be “clothed with power from on high.”

I watch our young people all the time, and I wonder all that time what we are teaching them about power; what kind of power we are handing on to them, and how are we teaching them to use that power. If you have not begun to wonder about that, I wish you would. I am going to leave you in a little while, and I would like to leave you wondering about a few things, thinking seriously and deeply about them, and asking more questions. I do not want to leave you smug and confident thinking you have all the answers.

In studying this text, I came across a book entitled: “Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey” by Maya Angelou telling the story of her grandmother who raised her in the little town of Stamps, Arkansas. Maya describes her grandmother as “a tall cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice,” whose difficult life caused her to rely utterly on the power of God. Get that: “whose difficult life caused her to rely utterly on the power of God. Difficult life? Look at us! I know some of you have difficult days; but most of us don’t have a clue about difficult days. I open the refrigerator to figure out what to eat, not whether or not there is anything to eat. I open my closet to select what to wear, not see if there is anything to wear. So, lacking difficult days, we don’t much rely on the power of God, we would rather rely on our own power: political, economic, social, or military.

Angelou envisioned her Mama “standing thousands of feet up in the air on nothing visible,” when she would draw herself up to her full six feet, clasp her hands behind her back, look up into a distant sky, and declare, “I will step out on the word of God.” “Immediately,” Angelou recalls, “I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her. Naturally it wasn’t difficult for me to have faith. I grew up knowing that the word of God has power.” Don’t you wonder if any of our children grow up thinking that the Word of God has power?

So here we are with images of Jesus being “taken up” into the sky after spending a life time stepping out on the word of God. The disciples want to know if now is the time he will restore the kingdom to Israel.  Jesus does not answer their questions, but points to the power of the Holy Spirit with which they will be clothed.

They stand there looking up and see nothing. Then they look at each other clothed with the power from on high to turn away from anything that stands between them and the divine one who calls them to glory. Their work is to teach others that same trust in the power of the word to uphold them, fill them with joy, and lead them to glory. This is power; the Word of God. This is the future. This is the way peace, and our only hope for glory and for joy.

MAY 5, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 15, 1-2, 22-29 + Psalm 67 + Revelation 21, 10-14, 22-23- + John 14, 23-29

Pease was a dangerous idea and goal for the early Christians living in the Roman Empire. It still is, even though the Roman Empire is gone, and lots of other Empires with and after it. There was a time called the “Pax Romana”; the Roman Peace; but that kind of peace was maintained by occupational forces that raped, looted, taxed, and enslaved all opposition. It was sustained by crucifying rebels, and worshiping Roman gods. That kind of peace was not a good fit for the gift of Christ and mission of his disciples. Those disciples followed a man who preached that peace came from healing, forgiving, and serving others especially those in need and marginalized by others. To make it worse, these followers worshiped a God who opposed violence: a God whose Son said: “Put up your sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”

Times change, but it seems that empires do not, but neither does the heart and the soul of those who follow Jesus of Nazareth. Impatience with diplomacy is all to obvious. Readiness to choose military solutions to complex global problems is everywhere. Those who advocate the wisdom of talk and patience are looked upon as weak, indecisive, or naive. From playgrounds to neighborhoods, from Board Rooms to Bedrooms many seek peace by ignoring conflict, and some think they can have peace by shouting down people who disagree with them. It’s an odd kind of peace. Just as odd as the Pax Romana was an odd and very temporary kind of peace that was not peace at all.

More than the absence of overt conflict, the peace that Christ proclaims, the peace that binds together and motivates the Christian community is a living relationship rooted in love and the passionate desire for the good of all resting upon justice, respect, forgiveness, and patience. The willingness, readiness, and desire for true justice is the first step to Peace. This justice has nothing to do with punishment or revenge. In fact, there is little liklihood of justice being done when any hint of anger or revenge or desire to punish is involved. The justice modeled by Jesus and motivating his disciples is never about rights. It is always about the duty that comes from having rights. The true Christian understanding of Justice is not some abstract thing concerned with weighing arguments and enforcing legislative decisions. It is action directed toward the well-being of the other and the common good. It is never about power. It is always about service.

The exercise of Justice rests upon respect, a respect that begins with respect for life itself and the sourse of all life. It is a respect that sees in every human face the face of God. When this virtue takes hold of us, there is no longer an enemy there is only someone to love, for in doing so, as I said last week, we come to love God and know God’s love for us which is the consequence of our love for one another.For me after 45 years of listening to this Gospel and digging deeper and deeper into it, I am beginning to realize that this Peace which Jesus would leave us begins to blossom when we respond rather than react, when we are willing to listen rather than talk, when we choose to whisper rather than shout, when we are willing to wait and to hope, to forgive and forget, to laugh at ourselves and dry the tears of another, and most of all to wait and to watch, to welcome without fear, and to wonder in awe at the diversity and beauty of God’s creation. As we begin to do so, I think we are suddenly going to find ourselves back where we started in paradise, in the Kingdom of God, a heavenly peace.

April 28, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 13, 26-33 + Psalm 145 + Revelation 21, 1-5 + John 13, 31-35

There is one thing important to understand in these verses from John’s Gospel that escapes the quick reader and the shallow interpretation. Love is not just the commandment. It is the result of keeping the commandment.  In other words, you get what you give. Or, you can’t have love until you give love. What Jesus reveals to us by his life and what John passes on to us in his account of the life of Jesus is that there is only one source of love; God. Anything else is a cheap imitation, and like all other cheap imitations, it will not hold up to the test of time and trial.

You buy a cheap imitation watch, and it will fall apart before you know it. You buy the real thing, and it will long outlast your expectations. Any love that does not in some way connect us to God’s love is suspicious and doubtful. 

Over 45 years I’ve sat with countless engaged couples with starry eyes gazing with affection upon each other. I’ve seen teen agers helplessly clinging to another totally swept away by the power of emotion and infatuation convinced that they were captured by love and ready surrender every shred of human dignity to prove it. And so, every time I get the chance I ask them, “Has this experience led you closer to God or revealed anything of God to you?” When they say, “Yes” and I see them in prayer and more faithful to the church, I suspect that they truly have experienced love. When a relationship leads someone away from God, away from the community of faith, away from goodness and leads them to sin, it is a fraud. It is a cheap imitation of love. When they say, “No” I know It isn’t going to last. It is not going to hold up to the test of time or the test of pain, loss, suffering, or sacrifice.

Injustice and violence leave deep scars on the soul that justice itself cannot heal. People who seek and demand the death penalty believing that it will bring justice and heal the pain when they have suffered at the hands of some evildoer know that revenge heals nothing. Justice can create order and punish those who do wrong, but justice alone cannot restore a soul to love. Only love can heal the wounds of injustice. Paul, Barnabas, and those early Christians discovered in the midst of their hardships was that the only way to love is to experience it.

Sin and evil are irrational. Poverty and Violence make angry people, and we all know from our own irratonal moments that anger makes us do crazy things. This world is full of poverty and violence, and consequently there are angry people everywhere doing crazy things. Sin and evil leave behind them hatred, anger, and a desire for revenge. We are helpless in the face of this unless we grasp truth of this Gospel and reach deeply into the wisdom of Jesus Christ. Only love in the flesh, Jesus Christ can “wipe away every tear from their eyes.” We are the presence and the flesh of that Christ today.

Love is the very core of God’s very being. Love is the heart of Christ’s incarnation. Love is the comfort of the Holy Spirit and the only purpose of Christian life for disciples of Jesus.

When the Book of Revelation says: “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race.” The power of evil, anger, and the insanity of violence is broken. The new order God has established is love, and that is the only tool with which we may combat the old order. Revenge and violence are useless. They only produce more of the same. When love motivates us to change what is unjust, and love lifts people from the helplessness of poverty restoring their dignity, the insane behavior of those driven mad by their anger will be overcome. We shall not possess and know God’s love until we have begun to love one another without condtions or exclusions since that is the way of God’s love. Then all things will be made new.

April 21, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 13, 14, 43-52 + Psalm 100 + Revelation 7, 9,14-17 + John 10, 27-30

That powerful and imaginitive view of heaven that springs out of John’s Book of Revelation almost overshadows the quiet and gentle three verses of John’s Gospel we just heard. The reading from Acts of the Apostles describes the growth and diversity of the young church which Paul and Barnabas moved into the realm of the Gentiles where many converts were made. Bringing those gentiles into the embrace of the community of believers was not easy and it brought many challenges and opposition. Some of the Jews resented the success of Paul and Barnabas and their resentment became a difficlty for these apostles. Yet these two were not distracted from their goal. It probably only made them more focused and determined. The result was the spread of the gospel and an increase in the membership of the Christian community.

As I said, the Book of Revelation teases our imagination and proposes an image of this community growing in diversity among its membership. That multitude from every nation, race, people, and tongue is us still living with the same challenge and with some opposition just as before. It is not just the overt and “in your face” kind of racism we hear and feel with the present arguments over immigration. It more subtle and more diguised as we see our society more and more segragating itself. Marketing experts have been the first to recognize it developing stratagies for advertisement focused on the little special interest groups in which we find ourselves. It is clearly obvious that we are rapidly arranging and chosing our housing in order to live with people who think like we do, talk like we do, sharing the same political, cultural, economic and religious values we hold. Even in the work place it is becoming increasingly difficult to find places where this is any diversity of thought.  Unity in Diversity has become nothing but a cliche and cheap slogan as the difficulty of holding that blance is just too much trouble for many who are unwilling to bend, listen, compromise, and discover in someone different anything that is good, valuable, and helpful. This can only produce a new low level of ignorance and intolerance, that is already evident at the highest levels of governance. Blind and deaf to any voice but our own, we are left to talk to ourselves and exclude anyone who does not look like us, think like us, and talk like us. This kind of world bears no resemblance at all to the community that Paul and Baranabas embraced and John could envision in the Book of Revelation. What we Catholics can teach the society in which we live is that the genuine and very real differences among us mark us as unique not as seperaations that push us apart. The differences actually add to the color and the texture of the communitiy of believers rather than alienate and marginalize us. We are all God’s people, the flock he tends, there are no dominant or superior groups within us. I always like to think of like music. Two, Three, Four, or Five part harmony is always a lot richer and more fun than unison singing; and when the choir blends the parts into one, the consequence is a harmony that is very pleasing to the ear and soothing to the spirit.

So today, still in Easter Season, the risen Lord is before us again both as the Shepherd and as the Lamb that was slain. He is the Good Shepherd precisely because he is the victorious Lamb who paid for the undiputed right to lead by the shedding of his blood for the flock. If we hear his voice and follow him, he will lead us to springs of living water and wipe away every tear from our eyes. If we hear his voice, we shall certainly be among the white robed multitude that have been washed in the blood of this Lamb. White robes! Get the image. White is the result of the perfect combination of all the colors of light in perfect balance. The truth and the reality is that we are all indeed, a diverse and great multitude all sheep of the same good shepherd. The very thought of it ought to draw us even closer to each other and to the shepherd. It ought to motivate us to protect each other and respect each other more than we might ever consider until we look around as see what we have become through the blood of the Lamb. It ought to give us every good reason to stand and sing, shout and proclaim: “ Alleluia! This is the day the Lord has made. (let us rejoice and be glad.)”

April 7, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 5, 12-16 + Psalm 118 + Revelation 1, 9-11, 12-13, 17-19 + John 20, 19-31

Sadly, the world in which we live does not believe in miracles. The way we live today and the way we examine and process information is for the most part completely closed. I am here. You are there. God is somewhere else. Everything has a place. Science can and must explain everything. If it does not, it will, sooner or later, given enough research explain everything to our satisfaction. This kind of thinking raises lots of problems with the New Testament, and especially with the miracle stories. Those stories, all of them, too often find us wondering: “How did he do that?” or “What really happened?” Then some begin wondering about the people who reported those miracles. You know how that thinking goes. They were simple people living primitive lives a long time ago. Lacking the technology of our sophisticated times, they were easily impressed by magic tricks. Think how they would have been astonished over a lightbulb! They would have called that miraculous!

Nowhere in this thinking is there any place for God. Our compartmentalized lives have isolated God to heaven, and left us very much in charge of things, and this makes openness to the meaning of miracles a challenge. The miracles performed by Jesus Christ, and in his name by his disciples were not magic tricks to attract and entertain a crowd of simple people who did not have the entertainment opportunities we enjoy. They did not experience these miracles and report them as just ordinary events that happened all the time. They were astonished. They were stunned enough to drag the sick out into the streets hoping that Peter’s shadow might pass over them. They knew something that we in all our sophistication can’t quite seem to grasp. Something is different here with these disciples of that man Jesus. Something has happened in this life on this earth. Something has changed.

Now this is what we see in the story of Thomas. Something kept him from believing. I think he could not believe because he could not imagine that God would act this way: that in the death of Jesus Christ God could accomplish something. Thomas wanted evidence. It was not enough that the boundaries or the distinction between matter and spirit were broken as Jesus passed again and again through locked doors. Thomas had to have more proof. He wanted scientific proof: touch. But he didn’t touch. It never says that he did. He was invited to do more than touch. He was invited to believe. He was invited to believe that God could do more than Thomas could imagine. The limits that Thomas had placed on what God could do as well as where God was had to go before Thomas could believe.

This all started with a young girl who said “Yes” to a messenger who invited her to believe that God could do something unheard of and unimagined. That incident, called the Incarnation, challenges to this day minds closed to God’s intervention, involvement, and presence in this physical and real world. The Incarnation is the first miracle, the first unmistakable evidence that something new is breaking into humanity. To think of it shakes open closed minds and hearts that live in the absence of God or indifferent to God’s presence and action.

Miracles are signs of God’s care for us. That is what they mean, and that is why the stories of them have been passed down to us for so long. What happened to Thomas that day when he spoke those memorable words: “My Lord and My God” was that the boundaries of his limited expectations of how God works and where God is to be found broke open. God was present in that nail-pierced man with an opening in his side. God was acting and saving, raising up, and healing in a way no one ever thought of. The old expectations of how God would save his people collapsed in a moment. Old ideas about those categories of spirit and matter, heaven and earth, could no longer be sustained, because something new has happened and something new has begun.

Easter is still a challenge to boundaries we imagine and the expectations we have about how God works and where God is to be found. Easter is also a challenge to our ideas about life and death, power and weakness, suffering and strength. Easter can also awaken our expectations about miracles, and stir again some honest astonishment over things science does explain which for those who are invited to believe suddenly become once again signs of God’s love for us.

The final word from these readings today is that God is still expressing God’s love for us in the forgiving and healing ways of real disciples, and believers are still astonished at the discovery of God’s presence and action in the most unexpected and unimagined ways.

March 31, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Acts of the Apostles 10, 34, 37-43 + Psalm 118 + Colossians 3, 103 + Luke 24, 13–35

I don’t believe there is anyone in this church who does not understand and has not experienced part of what Luke is describing in this Gospel. Everyone of us has had our faith in Jesus Christ shaken. Those two men walking along were leaving Jerusalem. I believe they had given up. They were turning their back on that place where their hopes had been raised. They left the apostles behind. They were walking away from Jesus Christ turning their backs to him.

How could God let this happen? How could God have abandoned Jesus leaving him to die at the hands of those fanatics? How could all that he had promised and the hope he raised be so quickly destroyed? We’ve all been there. How could God let me lose my job with a family to feed and shelter? How could my child, so full of life and promise be so sick and die so young? How could that doctor tell me there is no hope? I’ve always been so faithful to prayer, and now this happens.

This world is full of people who have struggled against evil and sadness, disappointment and broken promises. Some of you are here today barely hanging on, and some have already turned their backs in disappointment and discouragement. Some of us bear the scars and memories of our own trouble but have managed to hang on just a little while longer.

These two men in Luke’s Gospel are all of us, and their story is ours. The whole story: we all know the first part really well, but today we must hear the second part which can stir our hope and soften our hearts. This is a message of hope. We don’t need to hear the story of Christ’s resurrection today. We know it very well. We do not need to hear about the women coming first and then Peter and John on the run to look in wonder and dare to believe.

What you have just heard proclaimed today is also a resurrection story. It is also the story of life’s victory over death, of hope’s triumph over disappointment. This story reaches into our experience. We’ve never seen an empty tomb. We’ve never heard angels talking or seen men dressed in white announcing that “He is not here.” At least I hope you haven’t . That would complicate things. But we have known our share of disappointments when probably more than once things in our lives have not turned out the way we expected.

Yet for many people like the men of this story, and those in John’s Gospel, Matthew’s or Mark’s, there is the promise made by Christ to all who follow him and listen to his word: the promise that he would not leave us, that he would remain with us, and all the healing, the forgiveness, the new life he granted to lepers, the blind, the lame, and the possessed in the Gospels would be ours as well. It is a promise that people of faith celebrate week after week, year after year. Those who have tragedies, disappointment, and brokenness without turning their back on Christ or running away from their fellow believers stand as witness to the resurrection: their own.

We live in the hope that Christ will find us, walk with us, and be revealed to us in the unity we share as Church. We rejoice in the resurrection today for more than Christ’s resurrection. I rejoice when I look at so many of you whose lives are a story of the resurrection, whose lives haves not turned out the way you thought they might, who had hoped that one thing or another would have been different. I rejoice because you have found the grace, the courage, and the spirit to rise up and be made new. To dry the tears of others who weep, and to strengthen the faith of those whose faith may be shaken from time to time and make them want to run away.

We do not run. We do not turn our back on Jerusalem, Luke’s symbol of the church. We continue to break open the Word of God, and let that word open our hearts and eyes to see the presence of Christ in the faces of those around us. We cling to these great truths because we know them to be true. We have risen again from every little death that would put us down. All our lives are in this story. We are either running toward Emmaus or we are running back to Jerusalem. Where ever you are in this story today here in this church, take hope, risk believing, you are never alone, we are, all of us rising again and again proclaiming with Joy that THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE. This is the day of our salvation.

March 30, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Luke 24, 1-12

“And they remembered his words” Luke writes. At that moment everything changed; the fear was gone, downcast faces lifted to the light, an empty tomb made sense, the death was understood, their purpose and role in this puzzling mess made sense. They ran to the others and announced all these things to the eleven and the others. They are the first, these women, the first evangelists, and all that set this in motion, all that took away their fear, lifted their downcast hearts, was that they remembered.

It struck me in sitting with this Gospel a few weeks back that there are two sets of “others”: the “others” who are with the eleven and the “others” who are with Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James. Who are these “others” except you, me, and the others in the rest of this world?

We must be the ones who remember, and tonight, my dear friends who are so newly welcomed into communion with Christ and His church, you must always remember.Remember this night. Remember the Joy, the excitment, the sence of oneness, and the peace we hope you find in this church and in our company. In remembering, you will be like those women whose fear vanished, whose confusion and doubt is wiped away by the news we have shared with you. No longer should you be in darkness. No longer should you doubt where you belong and who it is that has calleld you to this place. There is nothing else you need to seek but the fellowship of this table where you will discover week after week the risen Lord in the breaking of bread.

There are others in this world, like those “others” who were hiding in that upper room. To them you must go. With them you must share what you have found in this darkned empty church tonight: the Light of Christ! With us now you can lift up your hearts. With us now you can give thanks. You who have this night been anointed with the Spirit standing before the rest of us reminding us, and helping us remember what a gift we have, what privilege it is to be here one with a church that is ever new because you are here and ever old founded and rooted on the faith of those first witnesses who found not an empty tomb, but the risen Christ who called them by name, filled them with a measure of his spirit, and sent them out to baptize, to heal, to forgive, and to exend the mercy of God and the love of God to those no one else would love.

“Peace be with you” is the first greeting of Christ to those who were coming to believe what he had promised. “Peace be with you” is what we say to you tonight and everytime we gather in this holy place so that you may bear the peace of Christ where ever it is needed, to whomever is troubled and alone wanting and hoping to believe. Remember, my friends. This is the day the Lord has made!

March 29, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 52, 13-53 + Psalm 31 + Hebrews 4, 14-16; 5, 7-9  + John 18, 1; 19,42

It all began with a breath, that moment of human awakening. Adam breathes in, and there is life, and it is good. Then in a moment it is finished. Paradise is lost by one decision. Yet while it may be finishsed, it is not over. Then a new Adam breathes out, and says: “It is finished.” But, it is not over. Both of them breathe love. What began in Genesis is not finished. What began there was that love should give birth to love. So it was that through the Word, the first Adam came to be; but because he did not love, the Word became the second Adam who bore the fruits of all the Adams and Eves who have not loved. Here at the cross, the great work is finished. Here is the one person who did and who was through the centuries what the rest of us failed to do and be. Quite simply and wonderfully, he loved the Father, and the Father loved him.

It all began with a breath, and it ends with a breath. It is finished, but it is not over. He who breathes his last still breathes once more upon us. At the moment of salvation when love is at its best, he breathes out, so that we may breathe in that love, that life, that Spirit he “hands over”, as John says it in his Passion narrative: “He handed over his spirit.”

Creation begins again. Those who have not loved receive the breath of love. It is as though we take a deep breath to sing out the hymn of creation in praise and honor of the very God whose love is never withheld even from the countless Adams and Eves who have failed to love and to live. It is never a love that is earned or give like a reward. It is a love that is pure and simple, granted as grace to every Adam and every Eve who have stepped foot in this garden God has entrusted to us.

A story is told of Peter who is finally in heaven looking around. Suddenly he sees Judas walking toward the gates. Judas has a box. In the box is rooster. Peter says, “You have no business here.” Judas opens the box, and the two look at one another and both begin to weep. Their tears however are tears of joy, not shame or sadness, and two sinners embrace. Because the Spirit has breathed upon Peter the breath of life and life-giving grace, Peter can breathe upon Judas and everyother Judas and find what is sometimes simply too much to imagine: total forgiveness and mercy.

So, as I said, it all began with a breath. One breathes in, and the other breaths out. When Jesus breathes his last and says: “It is finished” he does not mean it is over. It simply means he has given over his spirit to the rest of us who shall in a moment stand at the foot of the cross. We have courage to do it now, when we might not have had the courage to do it then because we have inhaled the breath of His Spirit.

This age in which we live does not see what we see in the cross, and so it looks the other way. The cheap and popular Gospel of these days proclaims a life of leasure, pleasure, and wealth, of comfort and satisfaction. It runs from and hides the cross turing it into a piece of jewlery. Suffering is to be avoided all costs, like the flu. The Passion and death of Christ is romanticized with pastel colors, Easter Bunnies, colored eggs, and sentimental tunes with all the depth of a country/western balad.

It cannot be so for us. He died, a bloody, terrible death innocent and without sin. As Paul says, “It is Christ crucified that we preach.” He suffered becasue we will not. He died because we pretent that there is no death, while making idols of youthfulness and youthful beauty never seeing the face of God in an old man or woman whose life has been spent in loving sacrifice. This world still needs the cross and what it says about love and commitment, service and obedience to God’s will. We cannot run from the cross We may not hide in churches that will not display nor sit beneath a crucifix it humbled by its message.

The last breath of Jesus is not the last beath of life because you and I have inhaled once again the breath of his spirit. It is not over. The Passion of Christ began with a kiss from Judas, a sinner. This liturgy will end a few minutes with a kiss at the foot of a cross: a kiss from sinners who live with the hope that the cross offers all whole will repent, take up their cross and follow the one who has handed over to us his spirit.“Come, follow me.” is how discipleship begins, and this Good Day reveals where he is leading us…….into the mystery of God’s love where God will once again breathe life into us.

March 28, 2013 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Exodus 12, 1-8, 11-14 + Psalm 116 + 1 Corinthians 11, 23-26 + John 13, 1-15

We are about to enter into the experience of dying and rising. It is what Jesus has spoken of again and again in his ministry among us. It is what Jesus continues to do in and through us. It is what being “born again” really means. It is what “being lifted up” means. It is what we do in this place around this sacred altar. In his instruction to Nicodemus in the 13th chapter of John’s Gospel he speaks of being “born again:”, and Nicodemus, cannot figure out how that is possible stuck as he is in the material and physical world. As Jesus leads him to understand and desire this re-birth, Jesus suggests that the only way this can happen is by a kind of self-oblation. There can’t be anything left. It’s like the sacrifices in the old Temple, the sacrifice (and that is the key word here) had to be wiped out, obliterated, chopped up, burned up, poured out, broken up, or eaten up. It was “sacrificed”. That is what Jesus puts before us as the method by which a person is born again.

Everyone of us who has any hope of eternal life must be born again. The language we have used for centuries to describe this is “die and rise”; and the desire to do that is what brings us to this place around this altar. Our dying and rising, began on the day of our Baptism. That was the beginning. It was far from the end. It was an initiation into a life-style of dying and rising, a life of self-sacrifice, a life that reaches it’s perfection in being “lifted up” in the language of Jesus.

The mistake too many make is that Baptism’s dying and rising is a one-time event, thinking that it somehow gives you a ticket or a free-pass into eternal life. Such thinking is shallow, silly, and far from the truth. When asked how many would be saved Jesus responded suggesting that many would be lost and only a “few” would be saved. The lost may well be those who though initiated were never lifted up sharing in the sacrifice of Christ. The truth is, by Baptism we are initiated into a mystery that is alive and on-going. We die and rise, we are lifted up again and again in the sacrifices we make in love for those in need whom we serve. 

Tomorrow we shall stand and kneel before another body on a cross, used up, broken, and finished; “lifted up” as John puts it. Before that happened in the order of things, another oblation took place in an upper room. In a few moments that oblation will take place on this altar. I want you to hang on to that word “oblation” so often used in the new missal. Think of “obliterate” when you hear it, because that is what is happening here. Before Christ was lifted to that cross, he was lifted at a Table in an oblation  like the Lamb sacrificed at the Passover. Here another lamb, the Lamb of God as the Prophet John called him. Here another body is broken up, destroyed, eaten up, obliterated only to rise again in us because of our oneness with the one who calls us to be lifted up through him, with him, and in him.

Through us, with us, and in us, Christ rises from the dead again, and his life and his work continues. We enter into the same intimate relationship with the Father he knew and by the their Holy Spirit, we are sealed and gifted with what takes to become children of God. 

This, my friends is what we do here, and it is what we can become here. Christ is in the place. The risen Christ is in us because of what we consume, eat, and drink at this altar. Because of this oblation, we become an oblation breaking our lives for others, wearing our selves out, offering our gifts, washing the feet of the weary and tired. “Do this in memory of me.” means more than repeat his words and share consecrated bread and wine. It means make yourself an oblation, a sacrifice for others.

We do this today keeping the memory of what happened in that upper room leading us to tomorrow and the next day. We do this bearing witness for our children and all who are yet to come with the hope that by the witness of our sacrifices and love they may led deeper into this mystery and find meaning in life oneness with Christ and a share in his eternal divine life.