The Ninth Sunday of Pentecost

 2 Corinthians 5, 20 – 6, 10 & Saint Luke 4, 14-21.

July 10, 2016 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, Oklahoma

These Gospel verses today record for us the very beginning of the mission of Jesus Christ. Jesus has emerged from the shadows of his youth as a man of purpose and direction. He knows who he is. He knows what his life is for and what he should do with his gifts. He is focused, consistent and clear about his life. We never get a sense in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus was self-conscious, doubted what God asked of him, or what direction to take with the choices he faced.

These are not qualities unique to Jesus. They are not qualities he possessed because he was someone special or divine making life easy for him. These are human qualities that Luke proposes should be found in those who would be disciples of Jesus Christ and follow him. Yet we see people all the time, and every one of us knows someone who just does not seem to “get it.” People who simply cannot seem to figure out who they are, where they are going in life, or what to do with their gift’s, and many of them are richly blessed. Some of them think they are here to look good, be attractive, be successful in business, yet all the while they are empty and there is a nagging sense that all is not really right. They go around in shallow circles, lonely and uncomfortable with themselves, lonely and fearful that this might all there is to life.

This cannot be so with disciples of Jesus Christ. They know who they are. They know where they are headed. They know what to do with their lives, their gifts, the opportunities that God’s providence supplies. They find things where Jesus found them: in the faithful observance of their religious tradition. They are in church. They are part of that church’s life so much so that they might be called upon to do something as Jesus was called upon to read that day. He was no stranger there. He was not passing through. Most of all, he knew the scriptures. He didn’t just play scriptural roulette and let the scroll fall open. He knew exactly where to find the prophet, and he knew a passage that focused his life and expressed God’s will for him.

In the grand scope of Luke’s writing there develops a parallel in which he reveals something about Jesus and at the same time something about the church as the community of believers. In other words, if Jesus did it so does the church. If Jesus said it, so says the church.

So today we hear Jesus put forth his agenda which is then the agenda of the church. It must be the agenda of every one of us. The work of Jesus began with the descent of the Holy Spirit at his Baptism. The work of the Church begins with Pentecost. First the Spirit guides and directs the work of Jesus, then the work of the church. What we must discover in Luke’s Gospel is that work of Jesus is not just spiritual, and it is not something for some far-off time in the future. What he does is for the present, and what he comes to do is for now. The liberation and the setting free he came to accomplish was for more than some future Kingdom of God. Those he touched did not have to wait till heaven before they could see, hear, walk, or be clean. Those who came in faith were saved by that faith, not later, not in heaven, but right then, and their joy, their praise, and the gratitude did not wait either.

So the agenda of Jesus is the whole person, and the liberty and release he came to accomplish came to mean the forgiveness of sin and all its consequences and manifestations. If he came to confront the sin of injustice, then the consequences of injustice were eliminated. If he came to release those who were held bound, then everything that held them had to go. Luke makes it clear that this ministry of Salvation effected the liberation of the whole person, body and soul, mind and spirit. If it were so for Jesus, then it must be so for us as well. Sharing the same Spirit we share the same agenda. We the liberated become the liberators. We who are saved share the same message of salvation for all. We the forgiven share forgiveness.

If I were to step down from here and hand any one of you the scriptures, could you find a passage that is for you and expression of God’s will, and a passage that gives your life purpose, meaning and direction? If not? Why not? The desire to imitate Jesus concerns more than morality and doing good. It must also imitate the whole of his life which was about fidelity to his religious traditions. He did not just go to Temple or Synagogue on the High Holy Days. He was there every time the assembly gathered no matter where he was. He had a firm knowledge of the Word of God. This behavior on his part was the source of his goodness as a human being, and that is where he discovered who he was and what his life was all about, and what he should do with his gifts.

Romans 8:1-11& Saint Matthew 12,14-21.

July 3, 2016 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, Oklahoma

Matthew frequently quotes Old Testament texts that his first readers would find familiar. This one from Isaiah 42 is the longest of all his quotations. The great Persian king, Cyrus is the subject of Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 45 Isaiah presents Cyrus as a gentle conqueror as the King marched across the east in conquest. This makes him quite unlike conquerors then and now who lay waste to everything in their path as a show of power and control. Cyrus seems to have known that destruction and oppression would eventually mean the costly rebuilding of the conquered territory and the problem of controlling angry resentful conquered peoples. Isaiah describes this kind of gentleness in a word we might call, “meekness.” Matthew sees in Isaiah’s description of Cyrus the figure of Jesus who is here laying out his plan and his idea about what a Messiah who comes from God must be like. There will be no crushing with power, no violence, but only sacrificial service. There would be no throne, simply a cross.

Among many interesting details in these verses, two ideas emerge for our reflection and then our response this week.

The first is this matter of justice brought by the Messiah. Perhaps then, but certainly now, justice has been turned into revenge which is exactly what Jesus comes to confront in his efforts to change the common expectation of what a Messiah will be like. The ancient Greek world that so shaped the times of Jesus defined Justice as giving to God and to men what is their due. For a people formed by faith in Jesus and living in response to his word, the only thing that is due to God is obedience and respect, gratitude, glory, and praise. The only thing due for us is mercy. The truth of this demands that we be very careful about what we expect in terms of justice. For when we get really honest about how we stand before God, revenge and punishment would be the last thing we would want as justice which is exactly what Jesus reveals in the way he treats sinners. We will not be worthy of his name and hardly able to carry his message and carry on his work if we think that revenge and punishment are appropriate.

The second matter to consider with this Gospel today is something Matthew has already taken up in Chapter Five, something Jesus has already spoken of as a revelation of what God is, of what he is, and of what we must be if we are ever to be counted among the blessed. It is Meekness. There is plenty of meekness in Cyrus, the Persian conqueror; but there is no weakness. In the Beatitudes the word Matthew uses for meekness is the same word used to describe the taming of a wild animal. It means great strength under control. As Isaiah proposes in his prophecy describing a Messiah, there will no barking or yelling, no pressure or threats used on opponents. Jesus refuses to harangue the crowds to whip up support for a political revolution. He is humble, gentle, and meek. There will be the nobility of respect, and the persuasion of love rather than oppression or force. As Isaiah puts it, the bruised reed will not be broken nor a smoldering wick snuffed out. This is a challenge just like the one we face with justice. As the people at the time Jesus spoke these words were challenged to change their ideas and expectations about the Messiah and how he would save, conquer, and find victory so do we. Too many still believe that power and force are what is needed instead of kindness and mercy. Too many still believe that loud and rude accusations, condemnations and insults are the way to get ahead. It is so today from Boardrooms to Classrooms, from School bullies to Politicians engaged in political discourse.

This Gospel says a lot in seven verses about how God will redeem, about how the Messiah will ultimately find victory, and how those of us who carry on his mission will respond to opposition and ultimately win victory for the Kingdom of God.

2 Corinthians 3:1-6 & Luke 10, 1-7

June 26, 2016 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, Oklahoma

Now we pick up Luke’s take on the great mission. There is a shift of focus from Israel and the Jews to the wider mission that bear more resemblance to the mission of the church after the resurrection of Christ. The 72 is our clue to this universality because it reminds those steeped in the Book of Genesis that the descendants of Noah were 72 in number meaning everyone left after the flood. Luke is anticipating the mission to all the nations begun at Pentecost after Easter when people from every nation under heaven (that’s what it says in Acts 2, 5) were gathered in Jerusalem that Pentecost to hear the Apostolic proclamation.

What happens today is that the 72 disciples become apostles. There is a difference between these two as I said two weeks ago. Disciples are students. Apostle are preachers. Luke it making a point with the numbers. The 12 apostles have consistently represented the 12 tribes of Israel. Now to that number Jesus adds the 72 opening up the mission beyond Israel. No longer is this a chosen few who are sent only to the house of Israel. Now everyone is sent to bring in the harvest so that God can fill all of us with good things.

Luke is unfolding for us, the universal vocation of everyone who has come to faith in Jesus Christ. There is work to be done, and we are sent to take up a share in that mission, reaping the harvest. Sent with bare essentials thinking that we don’t have enough, that we’re not ready, that we don’t know enough and can’t do a good jog; but because this is God’s work, God will provide the resources. Success is not the issue, going and doing is.

We cannot be a passive group of stay-at-home people and be part of mission that identifies us as belonging to Christ. We are charged as church to proclaim the Kingdom and offer God’s peace to all. That is the first step of this commission.

Where people long for comfort, you extend the touch of assurance. Where people are afraid, you sit with them and defy the darkness and fear. Where people look for hope, you bring the light of Christ. Where people are bound by ignorance, you set them free with the truth. Where people are anxious and burdened with the things of this world, you share your joy and the freedom with the things that God provides. This is what proclaims the Kingdom. It takes patience, the patience of God. It takes obedience and openness to the will of God. It takes the vision of the long range view and the wisdom to remember that in the long history of creation we haven’t been here very long at all. We are just getting started.

When sent to announce peace as this reading concludes, we touch the heart of the message we have to share, the truth. Peace was the first announcement of Christ’s coming: “Peace on earth and good will toward men” is what the angels sang to the shepherds. In his life among us, Jesus reached across every barrier by the simple gestures of acceptance and speaking the truth. He showed us what divine peace is all about, the healing of all division and the unity of all creation.

The very word, Shalohm describes wholeness. The Hebrew word literally describes the mending of a net. It has to do with putting back together whatever is broken. As Jesus used the word it was a greeting that announced that he was there present in their midst, and that the relationship he had with the apostles was not broken by death. That is what those sent are to say when they enter a home. They are to announce by the greeting of peace that Christ is there. As Jesus will say later in Luke’s Gospel: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” We are to continue the peacemaking of Jesus, but this is not patching things up, arranging a settlement with concessions all around, or trying to find some compromise. This peace, real peace, the peace of Christ has to do with the truth of who we are and who we are in God. It is not something negotiable. It is God’s gift to those who are open in faith to the tranquility of God’s love and God’s presence. It is achieved and accomplished when we enter into the magnetic pull of God unity and God’s love.

All the world’s attempts at peace-making are futile and will eventually break down without finding our peace with God and entering into God’s love and unity. Without peace with God, disciples like us will have no peace to share. But that is our mission, peace – unity with God which inevitably means unity within the human family who call God, Father.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 27-30 & Matthew 10, 16-25

June 19, 2016 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, Oklahoma

After calling, appointing, and authorizing apostles and then giving traveling instructions, there is still more. Now there is instruction about what it means to share in the mission of Jesus, and what consequences can be expected. It is important to notice that in Matthew’s Gospel there is no specific missionary journey recorded as there is in Mark and in Luke where the 72 and the 12 are sent out and return to report what had happened. Those instruction that we heard last week were about how the faithful, the church, should present itself to the world, and so today Matthew continues to direct us on about to expect and how to respond.

As the disciples, the apostles, the church began to fulfill the mission the Jesus sent them on, there was no doubt that they would experience the same reactions experienced by Jesus. If the message is the same, and if his presence is realized within them, there is going to be trouble because vested interests were going to be threatened. For instance, when Paul came to Ephesus where the economy rested upon the making of silver idols, far fewer people bought those idols and the economy collapsed. Paul paid the price. It is estimated by historians that there may have been 60 million slaves in the Roman Empire. It was a terror in the mind of free Romans that those slaves might rise up and revolt. When the message of the Gospel and the life-style of Christ’s followers spread through the empire, there was even greater concern because preaching that in Christ there is neither freeman nor slave was revolutionary talk. It had to be silenced. The church which treated everyone with love, compassion, understanding, and respect was not welcome, and those who believed such things and behaved that way had to go.

As it was then, so it remains. The message of the Gospel and the messengers that proclaim it living by its instructions continue to be a challenge and a threat to those whose would have things remain as they are. Vested interests are still feeling uncomfortable and even threatened by the Gospel. Issues of racism, sexism, justice, and sometimes the economy, just as in Ephesus, are confronted by those sent by Christ with the Gospel as their guide and their mission. When immigrants flee their homes for their very lives, we know what Christ would have us do. His own family fled to Egypt in fear of a violent madman. Yet this threatens some, and they turn on those who speak of justice with ridicule to silence the voices of those who cry out with good news for those in fear.

The mission of justice, of peace, and of forgiveness still finds resistance where ever it threatens those in power whose interests are best served by keeping things the way they are by building walls and locking doors. At first their response is ridicule and petty name calling. When this is not effective, power and force is brought to bear with threats and punitive actions. Then the violence begins. The pattern is there from the beginning. The resistance is no less, while the need for the truth, for justice, and for peace is even greater. The growing power and influence of secularism which dismisses the basic Christian value of life itself cannot go unchallenged no matter what the cost. The growing power and the consequence of greed and a self-serving economy with a denial that we are responsible for one another as children of God cannot go unchallenged no matter how often or how insulting are the reactions of those who are threatened.

Those sent out must have conformed themselves to Christ Jesus, not just to his glory in the resurrection, but to his abandonment, his loneliness, his disappointment, and eventually to his crucifixion. They will face opposition with patient courage. They will face rejection with dignity finding comfort in the mutual support of their brothers and sisters. There is a, and history has shown it to be true, a positive consequence to all of this. It bears witness to others. In the time of Matthew, this persecution bore witness to the Gentiles, and they came to Christ because of it. It shall be so again. The power of love is never overcome for it is the power of the Holy Spirit

Matthew is writing to the Jewish converts. No one people has ever been more persecuted and suffered more than the Jewish people. They understood what he was saying. There is here a paradox and a statement of privilege. To suffer for Christ is to share in the work of Christ. To have to sacrifice for the faith is to share the sacrifice of Christ. There is always a thrill in belonging to noble company, and that’s where we are when we are one with Christ.

When our faith costs something we are closer than ever to Jesus Christ, and when we have a share in his sufferings we shall also have a share in his victory and resurrection.

The Fifth Sunday of Pentecost

Philippians 3:7-14 & Matthew 10, 1-7

June 12, 2016 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, Oklahoma

Matthew is carefully unfolding the story of Jesus. In the story of his baptism, Jesus accepts his task of ushering in the Kingdom of God. Then in the story of the Desert Temptations that follows, Jesus chooses the method he will use to proclaim and realize that Kingdom. The great Sermon on the Mount comes next with which Jesus describes the attitudes that will identify those who live in that Kingdom. They will be called “Blessed.” After the sermon, Jesus begins his mission of teaching, preaching, healing, and forgiving; and he begins to meet opposition from the authorities who have a lot to lose with his message. At that point he chooses helpers to form and prepare carrying on his task or “mission.”

The first thing we can notice about them is that they are very ordinary people. There was about them no remarkable wealth or social position. They were simply common people who did ordinary things with no special advantages. They were just like you and me. Yet, Jesus looks at them just as he looks at us seeing not just what and who we are, but what and who he can make us become. This is what is happening here, not just in the Gospel, but in this room as well. Under the influence and power of Jesus Christ, ordinary people will do ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Matthew calls them “apostles”. If you belong to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, that’s you. This is the first time the word “apostle” is used, and it is only used one more time. He called them. There was no force or fear, but simply an invitation. They were free to say “yes” or “no”. Everyone is called and invited. Some accept and some refuse. The freedom is always respected. Then he appointed them to a task as the story unfolds. They had been “disciples” which means “learners.” Now what they have learned by watching and listening to Jesus, they will put into practice. They will preach and they will heal. The two cannot be separated because the healing is what the preaching is all about. What they do gives credibility to the preaching. They are to say what he says and do what he does: “You are forgiven”, heal, cleanse, and lift up the dead is the task. This is full authority. What Jesus did in earlier verses, they are now authorized to do.

No longer are these people spectators there to watch and just listen to Jesus. They are not eavesdroppers. They are to take nothing for what they do. This ministry is a gift and it must be seen as gift, so they do not compromise themselves or the mission by doing it for any gain or profit. The Kingdom of God is a gift. You can’t buy it or earn it.

Carrying no staff makes these apostles distinct from other travelers because they travel light. To make sure that they never forget who they are and how they are to behave, they are not to wear sandals. Slaves do not wear sandals. This instruction makes clear that they are servants. They put first things first knowing that God will provide what they need if they are fulfilling God’s will.

My friends, the church teaches that when Jesus speaks there is no time or place, no history and no future. The Word of God proclaimed is always for the now, for the moment. Jesus Christ speaks now to you and me. We are in this church today because we have been called. Think of how many others are somewhere else right now sleeping, golfing, watching TV, working their jobs, or just playing around. Many of them have said “no” to the invitation, but many of them have never heard it. The Word of God proclaimed in this church brings the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ into this place and he speaks to us still about what we are to do and how we are to do it. We are servants who have received a gift we are to share, by doing what he has done. This is no place for spectators. If you are going into Communion with Christ in the sacrament of this alter, you are going into the mission of Christ as Lord of the Harvest. The consequences of that are something we will hear of next week, but for now we will have enough to do with simply making sure we have no sandals, no staff, and have put first things first ready to forgive, cleanse, heal, and bring life and joy to those who have no hope and therefore no life.

The Fourth Sunday of Pentecost in the Maronite Rite

1 Corinthians 2, 11-16 & Luke 10, 21-24

June 5, 2016 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, Oklahoma

A couple of years ago my grand-nephews were visiting me, and I took them to the Museum of Osteology just up the road from here. This is not the sort of museum that would normally attract my attention. A building full of bones does not exactly excite my curiosity, but I trusted the recommendation of a friend who had been there a few weeks earlier with her grandchildren. It is not a very imposing or impressive place like the grand Natural History Museum here in Norman. I think the boys were mostly cooperative with my idea because they did not know what Osteology was, and because they had trusted me with a trip to Andy Alligators the day before, they liked it a lot.

I was hesitant trying not to spoil the experience by acting so, but we went in, paid the price of admission, and as soon as we stepped through the door, they went wild. Standing at the entrance was what seemed to me to be a huge pile of bones wired together in a somewhat thoughtful way resembling nothing I could identify. Immediately both boys pointed and shouted out the name of some aquatic creature I don’t think I could name if I saw it live. For more than an hour they raced around the place running back to me now and then insisting that I come and see another arrangement of bones which they insisted with great delight was some other creature about which I had no knowledge much less interest.

Whenever I hear Jesus praising the wisdom of children, I always think of this experience. Those boys and every child take the most simple yet thrilling delight in things I sometimes cannot see, but they can. A simple and pure mind and heart can receive truths that a learned mind cannot take in. It is possible to be too clever. In these few verses of Luke’s Gospel, those of us who think we are so smart, wise, and educated are called to task for our failure to see. What we are invited to do is see what God sees, and perhaps even see as God sees. It’s all about seeing and sight. It teases us out of biological optical impulses into the sight or to the eyes of faith.

In the verses just before these, Luke has the first missionaries, the first ones sent out in the name of Jesus Christ returning and all excited because of what they have seen happen. As they say to Jesus, “Even the demons are subject to us because of your name!” Then Jesus says: “Yes, I have seen Satan fall like lightening from the sky.” Then he warns them that their joy should not be over what they have accomplished, but because of who they are. “Rejoice”, he says, “because your names are written in heaven.” Then Jesus breaks into prayer with these verses of praise to God for what God is revealing to them, and then he turns to those disciples, and pronounces them Blessed because they can see who he is as the presence and the revelation of God himself. They can see what those learned and scholarly, wise and self-perpetuating Scribes and Pharisees cannot see.

As we listen to this Gospel proclaimed, we must hope for and desire that kind of sight. We must open our minds and then our hearts to see the glory of God in all creation and in all God’s children, All God’s children: not just the ones we like are who think or look like us. God could not possibly see any difference between us. We must see as God sees, and we must see what God sees if we are to be counted among the Blessed. From flowers to clouds, from simple acts of kindness to great moments of generosity there is cause for rejoicing.

Feel the joy of Jesus as he breaks into praise of the Father over the fact that these disciples can see with the eyes of faith what is before them. Look today with the eyes of faith at what is placed upon this altar. See with simple eyes of a child what bread and wine are because of what we do in the name of Jesus Christ. Then, see with the eyes of faith what happens to us who receive the Word and the Sacrament of his presence.

Count your blessing. Know your Blessedness. Be a blessing in his name.

The Third Sunday of Pentecost: The Holy Spirit at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, OK

1 Corinthians 2, 1-10 + John 14, 21-27

May 29, 2016

In the mythology of nearly every people there is an account how human creatures fell from a state of peace. It does not matter whether this took place at one moment in history, because for us it takes place all the time. We are always falling out of peace. Something is flawed in our hearts that is a tragic misdirection of freedom which we seem to inherit, reaffirm, and pass on from one generation to the next. Our Genesis story speaks of this. In that story there is first the break with God, and so at the sound of his coming there is fear, hiding, deception, evasion, and shame. Even sadder is the way man and woman turn on each other with anger and blame. He blames the woman, she blames the serpent. Here at the beginning it is the same as the end, division between human beings. The story goes on with anguish and progressive alienation. There is then the murder with Cane and Able. Then treachery in Noah’s family followed by the story of the Tower at Babel. It is all about humans seizing by force what has been offered as a gift: likeness to God. Isn’t that what the serpent offered? “Eat this and you will be like God.” They had already been created in the image and likeness of God! Why eat and apple except to assume control and make it seem that it was something they could do and possess as their own. Bad thinking.

Even so, in the heart of every person and in the collective memory of every society there is a profound nostalgia for paradise, a great longing for peace. The creation and origin myths of every people describe our beginnings as a time when God and humanity dwelled together as one. That is exactly what our Genesis story speaks of, “Eden”. It is more of a condition than a place describing the relationship that existed between the creator and the creature. In those days God spoke to his creature face to face, and there was no fear. In that relationship the longings of the heart were in order and there was peace. The basis of human peace is still the same: peace with God.

Restoring that right order is exactly what the mission of Jesus was to accomplish. Without that right order and relationship there will be no peace. The very word: “SHALOHM” describes wholeness. Literally it is a verb describing the mending of a net. Jesus Christ is himself our peace. His incarnation, his coming to us in human form, mends the break between the creature and created, between the human and the divine. Everything he did among us and everything that continues by the Spirit in these days is the restoration of oneness. The blind and the lame, the lepers, the sinners were all outcasts, broken from the wholeness of life. In the presence of Jesus Christ that brokenness could not last. He restored a dead boy to his mother, a dead daughter to her father, a dead brother to his sisters. He sent lepers back to the priests, and in his human form he returned to his Father. It is all about oneness, and it is always about God.

A peacemaker then is not someone who comes to patch things up, arrange a settlement and find a compromise. There is no compromise with God. Jesus is the only peacemaker. He showed us what peacemaking was all about. It was his “atonement” (at-one-ment) with the Father that enabled him to bring that unity to humans for one purpose: “That they may all be one as we are one.” Only in that oneness is there peace. Having risen from the dead in his complete obedience to the Will of God, he came again and again to his disciples with one greeting: “Peace be with you.” We proclaim and remember his commission to us: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” We are to continue that peacemaking by manifesting the same attitudes of forgiveness and mercy, of acceptance and reconciliation that he showed toward us. This is the only way to peace.

To do this we must be at peace with ourselves. This has little to do with feeling good inside, with assurance of a calm and unruffled life or a successful career. The peace given by a crucified Messiah is not found in trivialities. It has to do with fidelity to the Father, and the awareness that we are loved and accepted by God. Once grounded in this, we are able to reach out to others in peace, because we need not find our center in pleasure, possessions, or power.  We have no conflict with others over those things. Not needing to possess or use others we can freely see them for what they are, God’s children and place ourselves at their service.

There is the only hope for and only one basis for peace. It is the only way we will ever break down the conflicts that tear apart the human family. Without peace with God there will be no peace among us. What is different and what gives us hope now is that we have been given the gift of peace in Jesus Christ.

 Proverbs 8, 22-31 + Psalm 8 + Romans 5, 1-5 + John 16, 12-15 (Roman Rite) or Matthew 28, 16-20 (Maronite Rite)

May 22, 2016

There is always a risk lurking behind our thinking and language about God, and so this feast is a good annual occasion to address that risk and draw us back to the truth that God is One. Even though our experience of God has three dimensions, so to speak, what we profess at the beginning of every Creed is that there is only One God. Because that God has been revealed to us through the Incarnation, it is easy but careless to disconnect Jesus Christ from the Father. Then with the Feast we celebrated last week, the risk is even greater as language about the Holy Spirit can further fracture this Oneness of God that Jesus speaks of so clearly in his prayer at the Last Supper when he prays that we might all be one as He and the Father are one.

That prayer addresses and praises God of all creation as the Father who so wanted to be known by us that He took upon himself our very nature, and by doing so, he reclaimed us as his own. That “reclaiming” we believers often call “redemption.” That prayer also recognizes God who so desires that we share divine life that the Spirit continues to lure us into union with one another and with God. We call this “sanctification.” In most basic terms, this is the feast of God’s love, God’s whole outreach to all of humanity. This then is the feast of God’s self-revelation, celebrating God’s desire to be known by us for having shared in our life we are drawn to share in God’s divine life.

Today the church brings together in a single and solemn feast the creative, redeeming, and sanctifying work that we celebrate all year round. Trinity Sunday reminds us that the God whom we adore is “one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity.” This truth about God invites us to consider how all of our relationships are reflections of that unique and dynamic relationship that exists within God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the great gift for us is that we are constantly being invited to be part of that relationship, to live in the love of God.

Reflecting on this, the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen wrote that he was convinced that “most human suffering comes from broken relationships. Anger, jealousy, resentment, and feelings of rejection all find their source in conflict between people who yearn for unity, community, and a deep sense of belonging.” By rooting our faith in the Holy Trinity we turn all our human relationships into an experience of the Divine. This is why people of love are holy, people in love as in marriage are sacramental signs of God’s presence and action among us. True loving relationships are creative, redeeming, and sanctifying. This is the work and the sign of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In love shared in this life we claim the truth that God gives us what we most desire and offers us the grace to forgive each other for not being perfect in love”. It is this kind of Trinitarian love that Saint Paul spoke of in his Letter to the Romans: “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand … because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”.

In the end, our celebration of the Most Holy Trinity is an invitation for us to continue to move beyond our selves. The feast reminds us of the powerful ways that God remains at work in the world: in the ongoing act of creation, in the ongoing gifts of healing and redemption, and the life-giving Spirit that inspires faith, hope, and love. This is something extraordinary to remember and celebrate each and every day of Ordinary Time.

Pentecost at Our Lady of Lebanon Church in Norman, OK

 Acts 2, 1-11 + Psalm 104 + Romans 8, 8-17 + John 20, 19-23

May 15, 2016

The Holy Spirit will teach us everything says Jesus Christ in John’s Gospel. That is quite a proposal when you stop to think about as I suggest we do today. I have been, and I suppose in some ways, I still am a teacher. We have all been teachers if not professionally we have been personally. Parents are teachers with or without a degree that says so. We all know what it’s like to be with someone who believes that they already know everything there is to know. There are a lot of people in this world in that category. Perhaps that is why this world is in such disarray right now. I’ve discovered that the best teachers are also the best learners. Many times I learned more from students than I knew before preparing a class often making the class preparation useless. Yet there are also teachers who believe that they know it all, and my experience as a student was that they did not teach very well, and if I learned anything in their class it was sometimes in spite of them. Believing that you know it all is an obstacle to the success of the whole project of learning.

This gift of the Holy Spirit which John describes today is a very profound and important gift necessary for life. It is in some sense a power for transformation, and an actual “spirit” or “attitude” with which to face the world. The gifting of the Holy Spirit which we celebrate today is not the “Birthday of the Church”. That idea has annoyed me for decades. In my opinion if there was one moment to mark the beginning of the church, it was at the Last Supper with Jesus on his knees. But having a “Birthday Party” today is a perfect example of how we have sentimentalized and reduced this power of God to trivial ideas that open us up to ridicule and misunderstanding allowing us to be written off by the secular world that looks upon us as silly dreamers who are trapped in some ancient mythology inspired by this “Bible” which gets used to judge, bully, and insult intelligent people. Something is off the mark with that thinking.

The Holy Spirit teaches the teachable. The Holy Spirit animating a living church raises questions as much as it provides answers. The Holy Spirit is what makes our church intellectual as well as spiritual. The two are not opposed. The Holy Spirit makes our church a place where great minds are awakened to the wonder of God and the mystery of creation. The Holy Spirit awakens the sleepy and disturbs the comfortable, especially those who think they know it all. The work of the Holy Spirit has not shaped a church that says “No” to everything new consecrating the past as something sacred; but rather the work of the Spirit shapes a church that continues to ask what something new means, where it comes from, and what good can come of it. Sometimes it is even the source of that “something new” itself. A people who live in the Spirit are people alive, curious, wonder filled, and seeking the truth, knowledge, and wisdom. A people who live in the Spirit have no confusion or doubt about God like too many in this world today who listen to the noise of the new atheists. But who can blame them when all they see and hear is a people who think God is my “invisible friend”, a security blanket, a mythological creature like Big Foot who may or may not exist! People alive with the Spirit are always seeking a greater and deeper knowledge of God who is not an item in this world. God is not the biggest thing that is. God is the reason for things being. Our Catholic faith is intellectual always seeking new and deeper knowledge and understanding. Our faith is not against or opposed to science as some would like to pretend. Science does not trump religion. The Church is against “scientism”, that idea that science is the only reliable source of knowledge and information. Science cannot prove anything about love, beauty, or truth. Yet our church has always been at the heart of science, and it has provided many of the greatest of scientists in history.

A people alive with the Spirit are a people of peace. Yet one hears again and again the cry that religion is the cause of violence and source of evil. It is an observable fact that this outcry begins very quickly after September 2001. The religious wars of the past have all had their roots in a tragic and serious wrong reading of the Sacred Scriptures. Again, the consequence of thinking we know it all because it’s written in the book, when in fact, we have not allowed the Holy Spirit to guide our reading of that book. The Holy Spirit teaches. What the book says is not always what is being taught by the book. The question is sometimes asked: “Do you believe the Bible?” It’s like saying: “Do you believe the Library?” That is what the Bible is, a “library”, a collection of various kinds of literature each of which must be known and studied for what they are and what they teach, not just what they say.

My friends, the Holy Spirit has come to set us free, free from ignorance as much as free from fear. What we see happening to those first believers is that they began to understand what they were being taught. At first, they thought they knew it all. They thought they knew what a messiah was supposed to be like, and as long as they thought they knew it all, nothing could happen. They could not accomplish anything. Wind and Fire destroy things, and what needed to be destroyed was their made-up minds. The wind and fire came; but like a forest after a destructive fire, new life springs up green and full promise. What Jesus gives and what we celebrate today is already more than we could ever imagine, but it stirs our hopes and inspires our dreams for a new age of wisdom and knowledge, patience, peace, and joy.

The Seventh Sunday of the Resurrection

May 8, 2016 at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Ephesians 1, 15-23 + John 13, 31-35

Today in the Maronite Sunday readings, we have stopped telling stories of the risen Christ and Easter. Not because we have run out of them; but Pentecost is near and what is really important is the result of the resurrection in terms of how it changed others. We shall tell that story soon with Pentecost. It is the story of how followers of Christ were changed by the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit. It is the story of how the Easter experience was absorbed and finally changed the very identity of those who followed the risen Christ.

The “glorification” Jesus speaks of and anticipates in John’s Gospel chapter after chapter is that moment or that experience when His oneness with God is unmistakable. It means that his presence can no longer be misunderstood nor seen as anything other than the presence of God. The death and resurrection of Jesus is his glorification. For those who recognize the meaning of his death and resurrection, the love of God is revealed. What seems to the unbeliever to be a disappointment and the violent destruction of a human life and the end of all hope is really the moment of glory.

All that Jesus had is given to the community. It was the heart of his final prayer in that upper room, and it the mission he fulfilled. The love of the Son is revealed as the very essence of divine life being poured out into the community. All that Jesus had was love, and he gave it all. What the Father had given him was what he gave to his disciples. When he proclaimed that He and the Father were one, it was LOVE that they shared. What the Son provided was the mutual indwelling lover of God. What Jesus gave was his flesh, his body, his blood, his will so that the Lord of God would have a dwelling place, be accessible, be available, be ours.

Once we understand this, the commandment to “Love one another” is not simply a moral mandate. It becomes an expression of glory, a revelation of God’s presence and God’s love. This is a new kind of love for this world which only believes in love for the loveable, love for those who deserve it, “love for the lovely”, shall we say. Divine Love to which we are called and which we experience is what we find in Jesus who held nothing back, poured out everything because God does. When stop to remember that Jesus died for Judas just as much as he died for Peter, John, James, Andrew, Martha, Mary and all the rest we might start to see what is Divine and out of the ordinary here. This is glory. This is the glory of God revealed. He died for Judas and every other doubter and betrayer.

This is something new to the world, and this kind of love makes the world new. It is love that means opening doors we may have closed against others. It is a love that means we will respond to appeals that cry out for our help, without concerns about whether or not those who cry are deserving or worthy. It means that oversights or mistakes that someone may have made are forgotten before they apologize or even if they don’t.

We have been raised with Jesus, and no power on earth can really conquer us. We have received the Spirit he promised. We have the gifts it takes to set this world on fire with love. It is no longer the gifts of that Spirit for which we wait, now it is the fruits of those gifts that remain to be manifest: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Goodness, Friendliness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-0control As we look toward Pentecost, it must not be simply a matter of what gifts we receive, but rather how those gifts are manifest in our lives because of Jesus Christ we and the Father are one, and the hour has come for us to be glorified so that God is present wherever we are found.