The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time September 3, 2017

Jeremiah 20, 7-9 + Psalm 63 + Romans 12, 1-2 + Matthew 16, 21-27

at St. Peter and St. William Churches in Naples, FL

I am, and no matter where I live, I will always be an Oklahoma priest. Twenty days from today something will happen in Oklahoma City that has only happened once before in the United States. The ceremony of Beatification will take place in my home town. It will be the first time a person born in America will be declared a martyr in the process of being canonized a Saint. There are other American born Saints, but none of them died as a martyr for the faith. The holiness of their lives was witnessed by their service. In the case of this priest, his service and presence among the poorest of the poor in Guatemala brought the ultimate witness of his murder. I knew Stanly Rother. He was one of our men. He went down to the mission we had in Santiago the year I was ordained, 1968. In 1981, he was killed by those who opposed the work he did because of his faith and the power of his love.

I will be going back home for that ceremony in a couple of weeks, so it is in my mind these days, and never more so than during the time I spent with this Gospel and those readings from Isaiah and Paul. As Isaiah, whined and complained to God trying to get out of what God asked of him, I think of Stan and of myself. I want you to do the same. Think of Father Rother and then think of yourselves. When he was informed that he was on the “Death List” everyone urged him to get out and go home. Other priests, people in the parish, his parents, our Bishop were relieved when he did. But, as Holy Week approached during those months in Oklahoma, he was uneasy and very anxious feeling that he had abandoned the people there who were also being killed with nowhere to go. He told our Bishop, “The Shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.” With that, he returned to Santiago. Within months, a group of soldiers broke into the rectory in the night and killed him.

If a farm boy from Okarche, Oklahoma can understand and accept what God asks of him, so can we. His holiness did not come from some divinely inspired insight in the Will of God. It came from simply knowing and trusting that where he was corresponded to where God wanted him to be because he never did anything remarkable in an ambitious way to get there. He simply lived every day open to the will and the call of Christ Jesus. Some will call this “surrender.” It doesn’t need a name. It’s just the path to holiness.

The losing of one’s life does not mean martyrdom. Stan lost his long before he went to that mission in Guatemala. At some point in his earlier life, he discovered that living for God was better than living for one’s self. That’s what it means to die to one’s self. It does not mean you stop breathing, it just means you breath for some other reason that what you can get out of it.

The problem St Peter had with Jesus at this point of formation for the disciples was that he kept trying to take the easy way and avoid all risk. Jesus would have none of that for Peter, and I don’t think Jesus will put up with that from us either. Trying to take control is what Peter was up to, and we do that all the time. It will not work. It will not lead us anywhere except to misery, resentment, depression, and sad frustration. That is a large part of what ails our culture and our society. Too many ambitious, self-centered people want to take control and enjoy the easy life; no matter what the consequence are for someone else. They want to plan their lives without a thought about what God wants for that life God created and brought into being. Thinking as God thinks is what this Gospel proposes. Asking what God might want, and putting that before what I want is the only way. In other words, we may not want to be sick or be old, but maybe God wants us to be sick or old for some divine reason. We may not want to be out of work, but maybe God has a plan for that.

Now, when we proclaim Paul’s words in this assembly, it is God who speaks. You affirmed that yourselves when you said: “Thanks be to God” after the reader said: “The Word of the Lord.” So, God says to us today: “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

It is not easy to accept ourselves as we are when this world urges us to take more, to buy more, to use and keep more of everything. But, my friends, we don’t take the easy way. When some voices these days cry out for the supremacy of one person over another, we remember that we cannot be conformed to this age. If you are getting older and everything aches and nothing works right when you want it to, lose your life and discern what is the will of God. Unless you’ve made some bad selfish choices, you are probably right where God wants you. If you’re not as good looking as you want to be and can’t quite keep up with people who seem to always get a break in life, it’s time to discern what is the will of God. Most likely, the will of God is for us to be who we are and where we are able and willing to find joy in the discovery that we might be actually sharing in God’s dream for peace. When we reach that wisdom, our own sins will be a lot less of a problem and we will be free to turn our attention toward the consequences of the greater sin of poverty and injustice. It’s not likely that there will be some ceremony to recognize our lives as there will be later this month for Stan; but it is likely that we too will have become Blessed and Holy eventually taking our place among all the saints.

The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time August 27, 2017

Isaiah 22, 19-23 + Psalm 138 + Romans 11, 33-36 + Matthew 16, 13-20

St. Peter and St William Churches, Naples, FL

Many of you may identify with this memory I still have. I recall very clearly the day my retirement arrived. I reached into my pocket and handed over the keys to the church of St Mark in Norman, Oklahoma. I remember handing them to the deacon not knowing what to say except, “Thank you.” The only key left in my pocket was my car key, and believe me, I used it immediately. When I eventually wound up here at St Peter and Father “G” gave me some keys, I was very reluctant to accept them. Something about those little pieces of metal carries a sense of duty and obligation far more than the privilege of having them. While “keys” may capture the imagination of artists who give us images of this Gospel passage, they are not the focus, and for that matter, neither is Peter. Jesus is. It is the place that tells us this fact.

This town called “Caesarea Philippi” is not really called that through its history. It is actually called: “Panion.” Civic leaders at that particular time renamed it after the two “top-dogs” of those days: The Roman Emperor and the local kinglet of Galilee, Philip the Tetrarch. It was a way of getting favors and possibly some money out of the rulers. It would be like calling Naples: “Trump-Scot”! The very name suggests ambition, power, and prestige. Built on top of a huge rock cliff it was an ancient sacred place set aside for the god, “Pan”. The name “pan” suggests everything. It is also worth thinking too about the fact that springs came out of that cliff, and they were the beginnings of the Jordan River. Having this incident take place there at the bottom of that big rock with the waters flowing out to form the Jordan says almost as much as the words. Picture it in your mind. Imagine it.

There is a confrontation going on here, and Peter is being asked to make a choice, a choice between Jesus and all this worldly power symbolized by Caesarea Philippi and any other god that might be tempting or alluring. We proclaim this Gospel today because Peter is not the only person who must make this choice. If Peter was the only one upon whom this church was being built, it would have died with him. Anyone who claims Jesus as their Messiah and the Son of the Living God becomes part of that rock upon which this church is built. It is built upon the faith of all the Apostles, the ancient Fathers of the Church who succeeded them, the martyrs of every age, the quiet little people who have passed on their faith to countless generations. People like Francis from Assisi, Ignatius, Elizabeth Seeton, countless missionaries, Mother Theresa, the men and women who brought the faith to this continent, and you and me. The church is still being built upon the rock of our faith. It’s not just about Peter. This Gospel and these powerful words of Jesus today are spoken to you and me. We have the keys. We have the power to bind and loose. With that power, we can set people free, restore what is broken, and bring the peace of forgiveness.

It’s only possible however after we make the choice that Peter is asked to make. Pan is not confined to that ancient shrine. Pan is still around this world in all manner of disguises with all sorts of names: Ambition, Power, Supremacy, Privilege, Wealth, Sex are just a few of the names that can describe this pagan god that still tempts and teases us. Jesus suggests that the time of the rock of Pan is over, and we must proclaim that today.

I always find it consoling that Jesus chose Peter from among the twelve for this moment. From this impulsive, unschooled, self-preserving fisherman, God raises up the rafters of a church that will see twenty centuries and more. It is not because Peter is great, but because God is. That is what this is about: what God can do with us. Not much can be built on flesh, as frail and uncertain as human beings are. But through the Holy Spirit, which gives the church its breath, the reign of God keeps on coming on earth as it is in heaven.

The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time August 20, 2017

Isaiah 56, 1, 6-7 + Psalm 67 + Romans 11, 13-15, 29-32 + Matthew 15, 21-28

St Peter and St William Parishes in Naples, FL

This episode when taken in a shallow way could make us uncomfortable with a Jesus who is not compassionate toward this Gentile woman. At first, he ignores her, then he reacts in a way that seems harsh and insensitive. Some scholars suggest that this image of Jesus was made up by conservative Jewish Christians opposed to Gentile converts. So, to give their attitude of exceptionalism credibility, they made up these verses because they thought they were chosen and special. Another set of scholars believe that what is being proposed is a version of our old saying: “Charity begins at home”. A third group suggests that it is what it is; the historical Jesus is just the man of his days with a chauvinistic attitude toward women and all non-Jews. He is being corrected by this bold woman who convinces him that women and Gentiles are also to have share in God’s bounty. In the end, it probably doesn’t make any difference which of these ideas or any combination of them is close to the truth, because it seems to me that before we figure that out we ought to wonder what Jesus was doing there in that Gentile territory to begin with.

He has insisted that he has come to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is known that there was a large population of Jews found north of the Galilean territory in Tyre and Sidon. Remembering that Matthew is writing this Gospel for a church that is primarily Jewish-Christians, he may well be challenging or correcting an attitude among them that is reflected in the words of Jesus. It is likely that some remnants of their old way of separation and self-importance were at work disturbing the community excluding those who were different. We may never know which of those three proposals is right, but we do know that the attitude of exceptionalism and privilege he is addressing to that early church is not a thing of the past. It is alive and well among us still.

Events in the last week have unsettled us all with the realization that the message of Jesus Christ and his inclusive vision of the loving Reign of God has not taken root in the hearts of too many across this nation. The conversion of heart, conformity to Christ and obedience to God’s will has obviously not been accepted in many lives. What is being corrected by this episode of the Gospel is an attitude of exceptionalism that is incompatible with companions of Jesus Christ. There is no “them” in our live. There is no “them” in the Kingdom of God. If we think there is, it may well end up being us. If we have conformed ourselves to Christ, there is no race, no religion, no ethnic group, and no nation more favored by God than another. No one has an exclusive claim on God’s favor and the healing, loving, blessed work of Jesus Christ. To claim some superiority or some privilege position is a complete rejection of the Gospel that reveals to us the will of God. Angry and hateful blaming of others who are not like for any evil is a way of escaping responsibility for our own sin.

We live with conflicting opposites all the time. The message of Jesus Christ offers a way to bring two distinct realties together in a central, healing, and harmonious meeting place. We are called to live in the tensions of this world regardless of the cost and asked to love as God loves. It is not our task to get everyone on the same page, to create some uniform and consistent way of thinking. It is, however, our call to be open to God’s surprises, to be a source of healing, and to challenge by our action and speech ways of thinking and attitudes that are evil. Disciples of Jesus Christ will take risks. Their thoughts and actions must catch people’s attention and cause them to think. It means we forget about what people may think of us or stop being concerned about looking silly or radical. The Gospel is radical. It is inclusive. It is powerful, and it is alive. The primary task of disciples and of our Church is learning how to discern and cooperate with God’s life-giving, loving, and all unifying plan of salvation.

Those who march in the darkness with their torches are like those who came to the Garden of Olives in the night to silence the voice of Jesus. Our presence here gives witness that the truth of God’s love will not be silenced even by the death of Jesus Christ. Real life comes after death. Light comes after darkness. Love comes after the hatred. Peace comes after violence all because we believe and hold as true that in God’s eyes we are all the same, gifted with a place in the Kingdom, worthy of respect, and never forgetting our brothers and sisters who live in fear because of the hatred of others are God’s children too.

The Assumption of the Virgin Mary – August 15, 2017

Revelation 11, 19, 12, 1-6 + Psalm 45, + 1 Corinthians 15, 20-27 + Luke 1, 39-56

St Peter and St William Parishes in Naples, FL

This is a feast of Hope for those of us who would reach deeply into the meaning of the Assumption and draw from the Virgin we honor today one of the lessons she teaches us. One of the ancient symbols of hope for artists is the anchor; that saving instrument of ships tossed around by the wind and waves on a stormy sea. When sailors throw the anchor and it grabs the solid sea floor it promises safety to the endangered crew.

This contrast of images between the stable sea floor and the wind and waves above is a creative way of exploring the hope that we are invited to celebrate and enjoy today. As fragile human beings, we are always being tossed about and threatened by the events of this life from politics to economics, from personal emotional turmoil to international threats across the globe. One look at what we know of the Virgin Mary’s life would quickly lead us to recognize the strength of her hope. While often she is cast a woman of great humility, I’ve always believed that her hope was her greatest virtue. What else would sustain her through the experience of her son’s horrible death, and lead her to remain steadfast among those he had formed and prepared for his resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit?

Hope is the answer. Hope, a way of living in a state of expectation about the future while remaining in the present realizing that the present and the future are really one. Like the Virgin, we are creatures of the future already living in the Reign of God right here today. Our whole being is directed toward what is to come. We carry the future in our hearts because of our Faith, and that Faith calling us to gather on a weekday in mid-August inspires that Hope which is expressed in the Charity with which we live together. Three virtues we call, “Theological”: Faith, Hope, and Charity are Godly, revealing something of the Divine Life within us. Call it Grace!

People of Hope are people of Faith and they are a bit different from optimists. The optimist looks at this world only from below with no eye to the future because for worldly people the ultimate end in this world is death. There is no escaping it. It’s a dust to dust kind of existence. The optimist is always fighting against the inevitable pessimism that a life without God offers. So, the optimist comes along believing that this world can be made perfect here and now, and they alone can do it. There have been a lot of these kind of people in human history.  Karl Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao were all optimists believing that humans could make things perfect here below. When you think that way, you will do anything and go to any extreme to make it so. They did. They were men without hope. They had no thought, no dream, no desire for a future that crossed into the Divine. In the end, optimists are dangerous people who believe that science, money, psychology, and power can make all things well. Believers see this as naïve at best.

This is not to say that we ignore this world and its injustice and inequality. What it does say is that people of Faith know that it takes Hope to make a difference because hope brings God and the wisdom of Jesus Christ into the effort. Think about the people of hope who believed and had a vision shaped by Faith achieving real reform: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, John Paul II, Thomas Merton, the Little Flower, and countless other courageous people of faith whose lives were marked by great pain, tragedies, and sadness, yet with a vision of God’s Reign, with courage from the Holy Spirit, they lived with purpose, with joy, and with great peace.

The Virgin we honor by our prayer today is the great Lady of Hope who without a word spoken teaches us about what we can expect for our future not just here, but in the days to come: a place at the right hand of God.

The Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time August 13, 2017

1 Kings 19, 9-13 + Psalm 85 + Romans 9, 1-5 + Matthew 14, 22-33

St Peter and St William Parishes in Naples, FL

Last week we were told by a voice to “Listen”. In the transfiguration as told by Matthew, it is not enough for those apostles to “see” Jesus, they must also “listen.” In these verses today, Matthew reinforces that demand if you follow the details carefully. Notice that when they see Jesus, they are terrified. When they hear his voice, they calm down. They need to hear his voice. Then, as if we might not get the point, Matthew says it again with Peter. Until he hears the voice that commands him to get out of the boat, he stays where he is. Only when Jesus gives the order does he step out to do something he thought he could never do. He fulfills his vocation. Then, at the moment he acknowledges another power, the wind, there is trouble. He has a divided heart, or a divided faith. Two powers are there for him to choose between, and until he makes the right choice, the saving choice, he’s sunk, so to speak.

When Peter does make his choice affirming that Jesus is his Lord, when he reaches out to grasp the hand that is offered, he too walks on water. With that, we see that doing something that seems impossible is not a sign of divinity, (because Peter does it too) but rather a sign that Peter is empowered to do what Jesus does. The apostles are being empowered with their faith to do what Jesus does. Just a few verses earlier, we saw that happening when the multitude were fed. The apostles did what they thought impossible because Jesus told them to it. When Jesus walks on that troubled water toward a boat in distress, Matthew reveals not just what Jesus is, but why Jesus is. This miracle story is about the function of Jesus, not his nature.

So today, God speaks to us about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, a disciple caught between faith and doubt. Today God puts before us this man, Peter who, like all of us is torn between two powers, this world and the Kingdom of Heaven. Today God puts before us this man who takes a risk, but then looks around or looks back and gets into trouble. There can be no looking back for us, my friends. We learn from Matthew to live with uncertainties yet with the knowledge and faith that when we respond to the command and call of the Lord, an outstretched hand is there to pull us along.

I have always found it fascinating and empowering to know that in John’s Gospel, the word “Faith” is always a verb. It is never a “noun.” Remember that. Faith is not about something we have or possess. Faith is an activity, or a way of doing things. It is like a song that disappears when we stop singing. Sometimes I remind myself of that truth with a wonderful old hymn we sometimes sing here. “My life goes on in endless song above earth’s lamentations. I hear the real though far off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear its music ringing, it sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing? While though the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth, it liveth, and though the darkness round me close, songs in the night it giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I’m clinging. Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Transfiguration August 6, 2017

Isaiah 55, 1-3 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8, 35, 37-39 + Matthew 14, 13-21

St Joseph Parish, Norman, OK

It would be a mistake causing us to miss the point to think that what Matthew is giving us in these verses is a manifestation of the divinity of Christ. The experience of those apostles on that high mountain was an experience of Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus is presented as a transformed human, not as a human transformed into God. The description of this event is totally passive. Jesus says nothing and does nothing. If this was a revelation of Jesus as God, Jesus would have said something or done something godly. As it is, there is another voice speaking about him. If Jesus were being presented as God, the apostles would have been totally terrified. Instead, Peter starts talking to Jesus as he would in perfectly normal circumstances. His idea of building some booths for them suggests that he is in the presence of heavenly human beings. What we might need to remember here is that both Elijah and Moses according to Jewish tradition were carried into heaven before suffering human death. By associating Jesus with them, a connection is being made to the resurrection.

This event in Matthew’s Gospel follows the first prediction by Jesus regarding his passion and death. Peter and his companions want nothing to do with that. Matthew’s plan here is to correct that reaction by taking them to this high mountain where a voice speaking from the cloud affirms what Peter has declared him to be, the Messiah. The voice declares that God is well pleased with the obedience of Jesus in accepting his suffering role which further challenges the objection of Peter and his companions to the predicted suffering and death. How can they oppose what pleases God is the challenge? At the Baptism of Jesus in chapter three, a similar event takes place, but this time the voice adds the command: “Listen to him.”

The conflict between what Peter, James, and John see and what they had just heard from Jesus about his suffering and death comes to the surface as the voice says: “Listen.” In a sense, what the voice says is: “Do not think that what you see can happen without what you have heard.” The suffering and death, the obedience of Jesus to the will of the Father is what lifts Jesus up to this glory. Human life is transfigured to this glory by obedience to the Father, by service, suffering, and death. Matthew acknowledges the conflict or this lingering refusal to accept the suffering and death by placing these same three apostles in the garden with Jesus on the night of betrayal. It is Peter, James and John who are invited to witness the surrender and obedience of Jesus, and in one last act of denial, they sleep. Only after the death and resurrection of Jesus will they come out of their denial, and so he instructs them to keep quiet about what they had seen until then.

The favor of God comes not just from a violent death, but from obedience to the Father’s will whatever it may be. Our only hope of being transfigured into what God has called us to be is by obedience, which as word in English comes from a Latin word that means “give ear to” or “Listen.” On a high mountain, God reveals through Matthew what we are called to become and how we shall finally pass into or be transfigured into what God first intended before we stopped listening and became disobedient. Our transfiguration will happen when we begin again to listen to the words Jesus has spoken among us: words of forgiveness, words of mercy, words of healing, words of peace. Probably when we begin to embrace these words and live by them, we shall also experience some suffering, betrayal, and in some cases, even death because of them. None the less, when we do listen and ascend that final high mountain of life, we will hear the words: “This is my beloved with whom I am well pleased” spoken over us, and then we shall shine like the sun.

The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 30, 2017

1 Kings 3, 5, 7-12 + Psalm 119 + Romans 8, 28-30 + Matthew 13, 44-52

St Joseph Parish, Norman, OK

“Have you understood all of this?” It’s a good question. If this Gospel is the living Word of God spoken in every age, it is being addressed to us today. “Have you understood all of this?” Matthew says that the apostles said, “Yes.” I don’t believe them. I can remember my father standing over me the first time I drove off in his car at age 16. There had been some serious instructions, warnings, and disguised threats. “Do you understand me?” he concluded. I wouldn’t be standing here today if I had said, “No.” In all honesty, when it comes to that example, I’ll never really understand because I’ve never had a 16-year-old son, but I am beginning to understand a few things about the Kingdom of Heaven, and with that understanding has come some changes in my life.

In the parable about the field and the pearl, those two people find something that is already there right in front of them but hidden. They find it because they were looking. Imagine how many others may have walked by and never noticed, or seen that pearl and ignored it or maybe after looking it over decided that it was just a rock land tossed it aside! It seems to me that these two “finders” are pretty much like the inhabitants of this world. There are some who are just living day by day as if this is all there is not particularly looking for more, and then there are those who are searching all the time hoping that there is more to this life than work and sleep in order to get up and work again. Everyone in here falls into one of those two categories.

The Gospel insists that the Kingdom of Heaven is right here in front of us. It is not something we have to earn or work for. It is not something we build either in spite of a popular hymn that suggests we are building the Kingdom of God, a proud and preposterous thought! The reign of God is already established. Jesus came to lead us into that Kingdom, to teach how to recognize and then live in that Kingdom; and he shapes the behavior of those who discover it. It is a gift: the gift of God’s presence which is right in front of us. The parable proposes that those who are looking will find it, and it describes their response to the discovery of this gracious gift.

Those whose eyes have been opened to see what God is doing in Jesus commit themselves whole heartedly in faith and obedience. They will be people of Joy. Anything that gets in the way, or keeps them from the life of service, joy, and peace that marks that Kingdom must go, be sold, or sacrificed. There is no substitute for what is found in the Kingdom of God. It is the discovery of what we were made for, what we live for, and who we are as God’s loved ones for whom all creation was made and to whom all creation has been entrusted so that God’s beauty, God’s peace, God’s love can be known and shared for all eternity.

My friends we have come here today seeking “the pearl of great price.” We find it on this altar not just in bread and wine, but in the communion of the forgiven that this sacrament establishes among us. Our joyful, hope-filled, and blessed unity here is a sign of the Kingdom of Heaven, and what we do and what we say when we leave here renewed and strengthened by another taste of the Kingdom can strengthen all others who are seeking and looking for what we have found. “Wisdom” says Pope Francis, “is the grace of being able to see everything with the eyes of God.” It is the curious look of a man in a field, or a merchant who knows a fine pearl when he sees it. It is the look of a volunteer who sees their brother in a homeless man. It is the child who embraces with excitement the grandparent who has become a burden to the rest of the family.

Jesus asks again today: ‘Have you understood all of this?”

The Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 23, 2017

Wisdom 12, 13, 16-19 + Psalm 86 + Romans 8, 26-27 + Matthew 13, 24-43

St Joseph Parish, Norman, OK

One of the punishments I suffered as a child was pulling weeds out of the garden at our home. Mom had roses. Dad had vegetables. They both of their gardens had weeds.  While down on my hands and knees in anything but a prayerful mood, I would wonder if there weeds in the Garden of Eden.  I would think: if everything God made was good, what are these weeds, and why am I doing this? Then I would remember the offence that put there, and I would get all confused and just jerk off the tops leaving the roots. Fifty years later, I would still pull weeds out of Mom’s rose garden as age made it more difficult for her to keep it just the way she liked it. It was no punishment then. It was a privilege; but still I still wondered about weeds just the way this gospel invites us to do.

Who decides what is a weed and what is not a weed? A lot of people look at dandelions and think: “Weed”. It’s got to go. People who make and enjoy Dandelion Wine would disagree and hardly be motived to pull it up, and how many of us have the big grin on a child’s face who picks those yellow booms and makes a bouquet for Mom? So, the question remains, “Who decides which plant is undesirable?” When Jesus tells this parable and then discusses it with his disciples, he talks about the world with good and evil people. When Matthew retells the parable, it is to reflect upon the church with good and evil people to make the same point. The task of weeding questionable people or the task of deciding what is a weed is not part of the disciples’ job description. The landowner insists that there is to be no weeding. Everything gets a chance to grow until the harvest time, and the disciple is not the reaper.

This world, and even our church, has a lot of people who think they know just how things should be. Those “weeds” upset what they think is the way God has planned the order of things. These people are more like the Pharisees of the Gospels than those people Jesus is forming with parables like this. To them, Jesus was a problem. He ate with sinners, worked on the Sabbath, and did a lot things that to them were like blowing dandelion seeds over the perfectly lawn. I suspect that with a smile on his face, he went on to talk about a mustard seed that grows up and shelters the birds of the air. The people of his time considered the mustard plant invasive. It tended to take over everything around it. It was to them, a weed! Image them standing there shaking their heads at these images just as we might well shake our heads over our own inconsistent behavior and attitudes. Here is Jesus confusing us suggesting that there might be something good about this mustard weed.

These parables must make us wonder first about our own lives. If there are weeds to pull, let them be attitudes and behaviors within us. We all have plenty of weeds to pull, and perhaps the first is the weed of judgement about others; our quick decisions about who is good and who is bad, who belongs here and who does not, who is an alien and who is not. The Gospel today asks us to reassess all of this with the reminder that we are called to plant not to weed or reap. If there are weeds in God’s garden, there is always the chance that we planted them. Our best hope is that we are something like the mustard plant that grows to provide shelter and comfort for others in God’s creation even if some might think we are weeds because we do so. Sometimes our failures and our sins would merit us being pulled up, but the good news here is that the owner is willing to wait for us to get it right before the harvest. I have an idea that in the Garden of Eden when all was perfect there was just a lot of diversity and refreshing variety; and a “weed” was just a name for something waiting for someone to discover wine.

The Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 16, 2017

Isaiah 55, 10-11 + Psalm 65 + Romans 8, 18-23 + Matthew 13, 1-23

St Joseph Parish, Norman, OK

Jesus told this parable to reveal something about the Father’s extravagant generosity since his mission was ultimately about the revelation of God. Matthew probably included this parable urging the church of his time to examine how they had received the seed or the “Word” of God. Moving around within the parable to examine each of the elements is a good way to open our hearts to the power of God’s Word in the scriptures. We could examine what kind of ground we are like the church of Saint Matthew. In other words, how receptive we have been to what has been sown in us. We might examine the seeds reflecting on how God has scattered us through this world with the expectation that we would bear fruit and flourish no matter where we are. We might even wonder if we have been like the birds who have become the cause of no harvest grabbing up God’s gifts, and then simply taking off to look elsewhere for more.

There is still another position with which we can open our hearts to the challenge and message of this parable, and that position is the sower. As a people made in the image of God there is something here to reflect upon, something that might bring us to more perfectly reflect that image to this world just as Jesus did.

This extravagant and generous sower becomes for us the very model of what we must be as images of our creator. Generous with forgiveness, extravagant with our gifts and resources, we spread the joy and the peace of the Kingdom everywhere and anywhere. There is no concern about whether or not it will do any good, or whether or not anyone deserves it. Our concern is not that it bears fruit. Our concern is that we mirror the likeness and behavior of God revealed to us by the Word. We do not pick and choose, we not hold back, and we do not worry about the harvest. It will come in due time in proportion to the nature of the one who receives it. We can sow seeds of kindness and mercy, and God will bring it to the harvest. We can sow seeds of compassion and understanding, of patience and joy to everyone everywhere even to the hardest of hearts and to the most dry and closed minds.

A seed is a marvelous thing, but it is weak and vulnerable. It is the same with words. They are powerful. One unkind word spoken in anger can destroy a lifetime of friendship and affection. Whispers of gossip and suspicion can sow seeds of doubt and ruin the reputations and dreams of the innocent never to be repaired. Yet for us, silence cannot be possible for we are a people filled with God’s Word which must be spoken. We sow the seeds of hospitality and welcome with words of encouragement and affirmation, advice and guidance, comfort and consolation because someone has sown those seeds in us. Those seeds bear fruit because of our faith and the attitude of openness that faith requires. Someone once spoke to us, and revealed the God who has called us. Like the one in whose image we are made, we must do the same.

My friends, what we say and how we speak to each other is a seed that holds the promise of a rich harvest of peace, reconciliation, understanding, compassion, and encouragement. Let us resolve that from our reflection upon this parable, we might become more like our creator who has sown the seeds of promise and hope everywhere throughout creation by what say and how we say every day and everywhere.

The Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time July 9, 2017

Zechariah 9, 9-10 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8, 9, 11-13 + Matthew 11, 25-30

St Joseph Parish, Norman, OK

It’s time for a little Greek lesson today, because there is a word in this Gospel passage that Matthew uses only twice. It was used earlier in the Beatitudes, and now it comes up again. The word in Greek is Praus. It is a strong word that is used to describe the taming or the domesticating of a powerful animal. Horses or oxen had to be “meeked”, and so it means strength under control, and so when Jesus says that he is “meek and humble of heart” he is really talking about his strength and his power. The Greek speaking Jews at the time Matthew wrote this Gospel got the point. There is no weakness in meekness. In fact, it quite the opposite: there is disciplined strength under control.

When Jesus says, “Come to me when you get tired, worn down, discouraged, or feel like you can’t go on any more”, he wants to share his strength. When Jesus talks then about a “yoke” you can understand the image he uses. That yoke is made and fitted on the neck and shoulders of strong animals to distribute and share a load evenly. This is a teaching from Jesus about power and what to do with it.

In the verses just before this text today, Jesus has scolded the towns that welcomed the signs and wonders he worked, but resisted his teaching. Those leaders he speaks to again and again have power, and they like it. Nothing much has changed since that time. This world still has its own idea about power. It belongs to those who seize it, and they use it for domination, oppression, and exploitation. In that thinking, the only limits to freedom are the limits imposed by my appetites. In this world, arrogance and a lack of care are signs of strength. “Be tough,” says this world, “go after what you want, and let anyone who gets in the way or who objects get lost! The weak and the vulnerable are just in the way. Too bad for them. They can take care of themselves.”

To that world and to those who think that way the Gospel seems naïve and senseless. They are so full of their ideas and opinions, that they can see nothing or think nothing about any other way or anyone but themselves. Along comes Jesus who turns away from them and reaches out to those who have been left behind, to those who feel as though they can never get ahead, to those who are like the children, dependent, and unable to make it on their own.

Power is among the greatest of temptations. Thomas Aquinas warns against it. “Learn from me” says Jesus, “For I am meek and humble of heart.” We have to become students, and learn from the master Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, he said: “The meek will inherit the earth.” From God’s viewpoint, the meek can be trusted with the goods of this world, because they are not going to exploit or abuse. Their relationship with the world and created things is not about power, but about wonder and awe. The meek have been invited to enter into the intimate loving relationship that Jesus shares with the Father; a relationship that promises life and gives hope because the master shares the load with us. So, the meek become the source of hope and optimism in the face of helplessness.