St Francis of Assisi Church Castle Rock, CO

Exodus 20, 1-7 + Psalm 19 + 1 Corinthians 1, 22-25 + John 2, 13-25

The problem at the Temple was not the money changers and those who sold oxen, sheep and doves. They had to be there for the required sacrifices of the temple to take place. The law that prescribed the offerings and sacrifices. The Jews could not use the Roman currency which had Caesars’s image, so they had to change money into the Temple currency. The issue Jesus has with all of this, and especially with the Scribes and Pharisees who run the place is that in spite of all those offerings and sacrifices, nothing is happening, no change. They bought forgiveness without repentance. They bought sacrifices without every making any.  In spite of all that religious activity, nothing ever changed: the poor will still poor, outcasts stayed out, sinners kept on sinning without every reforming their lives. All they had to do was buy another dove and keep on going. This is repugnant to Jesus who has come to preach repentance, conversion, and change. There was no faith. It was all just a mechanical repetition of the same old thing without ever producing what he and the Baptist before him called for again and again: repentance. Change, repent, be made new, let the glory that belongs to the children of God shine forth.

Christ Jesus is headed to Easter, to glory not just for himself, but for and with all of us. Two weeks ago we heard the Gospel of the Transfiguration, that moment when Jesus came into the presence of God. His mission on this earth is to take us there, to lead us to Easter and to glory. There is a problem however. There is not enough glory in our lives, and most of the time, we are not much of an Easter people, and the problem is something we don’t much like to talk about: sin.

All of us are engaged to one degree or another in a personal, ongoing battle with sin and vice. We are living through an age of serious moral decay. I think that is why Islam looks at us and is inclined to call us “infidels.” Cheating and Lying are a way of life today. Our culture is not about life. It is about pleasure. There is not enough faith, the kind of faith that grows from repentance and change. Although anger doesn’t make most of us murderers, our lust doesn’t make most of us rapists, and our greed and envy do not make most of us outright criminals, together with gluttony, arrogance, and sloth, there isn’t much glory, and those who have to live with us are miserable. Our failure to live up to the glory that is ours is as tragic as the unhappiness our evil causes.

Every deadly sin fuels harmful social phenomena: lust-pornography; gluttony-substance abuse; envy-terrorism; anger-violence; sloth-indifference to the pain and suffering of others; greed-abuse of public trust; and pride-discrimination.” As long as there is any trace of these evils in our lives, we are less that human and less than what God has made us to be. We have in our faith a treasure of wisdom and tradition, teaching and revelation that leads us to a life of virtue and balance, holiness and joy; that is glory! It is not that pleasure is inappropriate, but glory comes from character and virtue, and a right relationship of one’s self to others and to God. That is where we find pleasure, and that pleasure leads to glory.

So, I am inviting you to spend three nights this week reflecting upon “The Seven Deadly Sins”. Unlike our bodies influenced by our genes; our souls, our spirit, and the lives they animate are free to be shaped by our choices. We can choose to be whole. We can choose glory. We can repent and change. There is more and better in us than we have chosen to become. One of the startling facts of life in our times is that no one wants to admit to sin and take any responsibility for its consequences. Too many these days have no sins. They just have issues! So, call it what you want, but it is deadly, and there is an alternative if we choose to change.

We have been given our nature, but we choose our character. When we say someone is a good man or a good woman, we do not suggest that they are people in whom there is no inclination to evil, but rather that they are people who have wrestled and still wrestle with it and never give in because their quality and their goodness comes from the struggle. Those people are truly noble. These are people of virtue, character, and nobility. The work of Jesus and his expectation that we change leads us to glory, to Easter, to virtue and nobility.

“Morality is like art, said G.K. Chesterton, “it consists of drawing a line somewhere.” We live in an age in which no lines seem to be drawn at all, or those that have been drawn are being erased. In my 73rd year of life and almost 50 years as priest I have come to recognize that an unhealed wound, a kind of sinful restlessness, afflicts humanity and robs us of glory.

Bruce Springsteen, “The Boss” wrote a song that describes our age when he sings: “Everybody has a hungry heart.” I think we are hungry for glory, hungry for the life we should have had by God’s will and God’s original plan for us. But we have traded our glory for something else, and sin is the consequence. Our hunger is for God and the glory that comes from being in God’s presence. The glory of Jesus Christ came from his willingness to suffer in obedience to the will of his Father. Calvary was no short – cut to glory. There isn’t one. We will have no glory and no Easter from a short-cut either. We cannot fill ourselves with things that do not satisfy, that do not fill us or lift us or hold us up.

I want to propose to you that while there are seven sins (not issues) that lead us to death there are seven virtues that when taken seriously lead us to life. It means that we learn from today’s Gospel that we have to change and that what we do here cannot be a shallow and mechanical repetition of the same old thing again and again as it had become in the Jerusalem Temple. Nothing there ever changed. That cannot be so with us. We have to change. I invite you to give three evenings this week for the sake of the truth and glory; three evenings in this church for the sake of life itself, your life. Tonight we shall reflect upon Pride and Envy, tomorrow night Anger and Sloth, Tuesday night Greed, Gluttony, and Lust.  I’ve saved the best till last! I hope to see you again for prayer tonight night when we might begin to consider how it is that we satisfy our hungers and our thirst, because “everybody has a hungry heart.” What it will take to satisfy that hunger is found here and nowhere else. 

Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18 + Psalm 116 + Romans 8:31b-34 + Mark 9:2-10

Many have been troubled over the story of Abraham and Isaac wondering how God could ask such a thing, but this is not a story about God. It is a story about Abraham. It is all about Abraham. It is about a man who listens to God. It is Abraham’s willingness to listen and obey that reveals the true nature of God not as a God who asks sacrifice, but a God promises to provide and rain down blessings greater than anyone could imagine or deserve.

The Gospel of Mark today confirms the expectation that we are to listen to the voice of God, and those who do listen will experience first a transformation and then a transfiguration into the glory of God. The transformation is seen in lepers who are cleansed, blind who see, lame who walk. This deeper transformation is their restoration within the community of the faithful, as outcasts are touched, healed, and brought home, as sinners are welcomed and included in banquets and and feasts all in the company of the one who shows us how to listen. Our own best hope as that by listening to the Word of God we too will find ourselves transformed in this life. We call it “conversion”. It is the focus of this season, and the whole purpose of our prayer, fasting, and sacrifices. This experience of transformation brings us healing and forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope.

Finally like all those who have gone before us, Abraham and Moses included, the transformation will find us once and finally transfigured through death into the glory that is God’s gift and promise through Jesus Christ. What those apostles saw on that mountain was what lies in store for those transformed by listening to God’s Son. What they saw was what we may all be if we listen. They did not and could not understand until they saw and experienced what transformation promises. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which they witnessed and then understood by the power of the Holy Spirit would then be their own transfiguration if they would but listen.

There is or ought to be stillness in this season of Lent. These days should offer us time and desire to listen. To be truly fruitful and transformative, our observance of these forty days ought to provide time for listening. Whatever it is that we sacrifice and give up should provide some time for listening. Yet the noisy world in which we find ourselves makes no room for silence. Real listening is becoming a lost art. Double tasking,  the constant noise of children’s games on iPads and phones, Televisions shrieking away in empty rooms, ear phones jammed into ears everywhere are all the evidence we need that no one is listening; at least no one is listening to anything that matters.

This is a season for quiet, and in the stillness we can listen: listen to the longing of our hearts for peace, forgiveness, and healing. We can listen for the voice of God in the silence of God’s presence. We can listen for the cry of the poor whose pleas for justice and hope are muffled by the blare of consumerism’s unending advertisements. We can listen to the Word of God that will lead us to the glory of a final transfiguration that will be our own resurrection from sin and sin’s consequences into mercy and the fullness of life.

There is still time in these Lenten days to obey the command spoken on that mountain. “Listen” God says. Listen, and when you do the promises made to Abraham will be ours.

Genesis 9, 8-15 + Psalm 25 + 1 Peter 3, 18-22 + Mark 1, 12-15

The first followers of Jesus Christ did not follow him because they believed he was God. They followed him and eventually began to imitate long before they began to worship him. They changed their lives and left everything behind following him from town to town, synagogue to synagogue because they saw something valuable in the way he lived. They saw how he paid attention to things and people they had never noticed before, and he showed them how to change the world in which they lived. He did not do this by creating a new religion. He did it by showing them how to bring his new insights into the faith they already had. This is why it is important to understand how central “covenant” is in the faith of Jesus, and how central “covenant” is for us during Lent. Over and over again, we will hear about “covenant” during these Lenten weeks, until finally a “New Covenant” emerges at the end on Holy Thursday.

Today we hear about the first covenant with Noah. It is a little unique among the covenants because in this one God makes all the commitments. In every one that follows, there will be mutual responsibilities, and the covenant will revolve around each side keeping their obligations. Other covenants will follow like the one with Abraham and Sarah and another that Moses mediates on a mountain top. There was always something more to these covenants than the mutual obligations. There was an understanding that the obligations were the bare minimum, and that something more was always expected. Jesus was a man of covenant, and he believed and understood this matter of doing more than was expected.

Think of it this way. Marriage is a covenant. The terms or obligations of the covenant are set out in the vow: “I will be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I love and honor you all the days of my life.” In an older version it says: “to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” Now, if that’s all you do for one another and nothing more, it isn’t going to be much of a relationship. It takes a lot more than that for a covenant to be life-giving and lasting. You can do “little things” and sometimes big things that bring give life and joy into a relationship. There are countless little things that you don’t have to do, but when done out of love bring joy. These things bring freedom into a covenant because while we are not free to break the covenant, we are free to do more than the obligations. This is what Jesus began to show his followers. Just keeping the rules and doing the bare minimum does not allow a covenant to be life-giving and lead the two in the covenant to come closer together and become one.

Here we discover what Jesus was doing and teaching his disciples. Story after story, parable after parable he takes his covenant relationship with God beyond the rules and regulations to which most people adhered somewhat rigidly. Faith for Jesus and his commitment to his Father led him to find commitment with others and experience God working in every situation of his life by always doing more than was required.

The season we have now begun is focused on covenant, but not to examine how well we keep the rules, but to lead us to freedom and into the reign of God. That freedom and the real fulfillment of the covenant is found in doing more than what is required.

So a rule says: no meat on Friday. Is that the best you can do? It says two days of fast every year. Is two days the only time you might fast? Mass once a week on Sunday. Is that all you can manage? A commandment says: “Do not kill.”  Have you done anything to give life? “Do not steal.” Have you given anything away? It isn’t hard to look at our lives this way. This way of life and this way of relationship in covenant is what those disciples learned from Jesus. Our faith and the covenant we have in the Body and Blood of Christ is about being more than average, about doing more than just getting by, about living more deeply, joyfully, and freely by doing little things and big things that are not required, but freely chosen out of love for one another and love for God.

Leviticus 13, 1-2, 44-46 + Psalm 32 + 1 Corinthians 10, 31 – 11, 1 + Mark 1, 40-45

Three weeks ago when Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John, repentance was expected, and the change in their lives that began that day was to put people first and fish second in their lives as they left their nets and boats and began to follow Jesus. During their time with Jesus, they learned day by day how to do that, and what it would mean: people first. It is still the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, and he is emphasizing that expectation still. This is the third miracle. The pattern is significant. First it is Sabbath day in the Synagogue. Jesus insists that the freedom and healing of the possessed man is more important than the day of the week. Then it is Peter’s mother-in-law in her home. A woman is healed. Now it is a leper who calls out in faith, and he is touched. In just forty verses, Jesus is on the move, and you have to be blind and deaf not to get the point that there is urgency, and that no one is going to be left out. People come first. The day of the week does not matter. The gender of a person is totally irrelevant.  The fact that you are, in effect, an excommunicated member of society – the ultimate outcast, a leper, makes no difference. People come first.

The rule says do nothing on the Sabbath. The society puts no value on women. The law says, don’t touch a leper. However with Jesus Christ, people come before rules, customs and laws, and so today he touches that leper. At the moment Jesus touched that man the crowd and the disciples must have gasped in amazement and even in horror. In a sense, by touching the man, Jesus traded places with him. The one who is unclean is cleansed. The one who had been clean is now tainted. The outcast is sent to the priests as a sign of his return to the community. Jesus Christ is now the outcast whose alienation from the Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees will only continue to grow more pronounced. We know how it is going to end, because those who do not put people first will eventually take the life of the one who does put people first.

In reaching out to touch that leper, Jesus made a statement that the man who called out to him had leprosy. He was not a leprous creature. In reaching out to that man Jesus was identified with the victim. He became one with the one who suffers. There is in this simple gesture an act of freedom: freedom on the part of Jesus to do the right thing, and freedom on the part of that man to walk away from his enslaved condition to the freedom of a full human being.

At its deepest meaning this is an incarnational story. The Word is Made Flesh. It is not the flesh of a glowing model of perfect idealistic humanity, but the flesh of a leper, the flesh of someone no one would touch except God! The outcast becomes the one touched by the divine.

The translation chosen by the church for use in the Liturgy says that Jesus was moved with pity for this man. Many other manuscripts of this text say that Jesus was moved by anger. I like this more passionate translation that suggests a stronger reaction of Jesus at the very thought of someone being an outcast avoided by all is repugnant to Jesus, and so his response is not only to challenge the disease, but to end the man’s isolation and restore him to his rightful place in relationship to the community. That is why Jesus sends him to the priests. That act restores his place in the community and his relationship with the people.

This reversal of roles as one who was at first unclean becomes clean by a touch that renders Jesus unclean now continues as the one who at first lived alone in the desert returns to the community while Jesus must find a refuge for himself in the very deserted places where the leper once hid. That reversal of roles continues for us in the mystery of salvation. Jesus continues to take our place and to offer us his place at the Father’s right hand. This is the mystery and wonder of salvation. This is what we celebrate today our freedom, our liberation from helplessness, and our restoration to what we are created to be: children of God, heirs of the Kingdom, whole and holy.

Only response is possible to those who have experienced this saving mystery, and nothing should keep us quiet.

 Good Shepherd, Marietta, OK and Holy Cross, Madill, OK

Job 7, 1-4, 6-7 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 9, 16-19, 22-23 + Mark 1, 29-39

There is an important change of location in this first Chapter of Mark’s Gospel. The first miracle that Jesus performs takes place in the Synagogue. The second miracle takes place in the home of Peter. Our Gospel today begins with words that draw our attention to this shift: “Upon leaving the synagogue…..” Details like this are always significant, and in themselves, there is a message. Four words that point to something new.

For the Jewish people the Synagogue was the center of life and faith. It was there that they prayed, studied, and heard God’s Word. Now suddenly there is a change, something completely new. While Jesus began his ministry in the synagogue, he moves on and he moves out. Mark takes us to Peter’s home. The second miracle in the ministry of Jesus is then outside the synagogue in a home. While the ministry of Jesus begins in a place of prayer and worship, it continues and is completed outside in the world, in the home of Peter. This is important for us to see and understand.

Jesus goes out to meet the lepers, the possessed, the sick, the blind and the lame. He does not wait nor expect them to come to him in the synagogue. The work he came to accomplish is done outside in the world, on the roads, in homes, in market places, in offices, and in classrooms. Mark has no intention of suggesting that what we do here in this church is not part of the work nor important for the work. It is here that we are formed, taught, fed, encouraged, and sent. Here in the Eucharist we become the community in which Christ is found; and filled with the Holy Spirit we are sent out to do the work of Christ, a work of healing and forgiving, feeding and calling the lost to find their way.

This is the beginning in here. Out there is the mission where the reign of God grows. The Gospel does no good if it is read like a story book, carried around in churches, and studied like a text book. The Gospel is power and mission, vision, and the reason for our very lives. There are still sick and lonely people, lame, blind, deaf and broken who wait out there for us to come and treat them with respect, listen to their pain, and show them the face of Christ. There are people possessed by loneliness and fear. There are still people treated like lepers who are ignored and shut out of life and happiness because of the way they look, where they live, or where they work. Their only hope is you and me.

This Gospel begins in a synagogue and notice that it ends in a synagogue because a life of prayer and worship with others gives direction and purpose to what we do during the week. This is the beginning and the end. What we do in the middle in between is what gives purpose and witness to the faith we celebrate here and live out there. In just a few minutes, you will hear familiar words: “Go and Glorify God with your lives, the Mass is ended.” Think of that today and every day you come to this holy place, and what you do until you come back will take on new meaning, bring the Gospel to life, and fulfill our calling as a Holy People and Disciples of Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 18, 15-20 + Psalm 95 + 1 Corinthians 7, 32-35 + Mark 1, 21-28

Last week we heard the first spoken words of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel. This week we hear of the first miracle, and with it Mark introduces the primary issues that will spark conflicts between Jesus and the “authorities.” They are issues that are far from settled. They still cause conflict and challenge today.

The “authorities”, scribes and Pharisees, are upset because the sacredness of the Sabbath has been compromised. Even more so they are upset because their authority has been questioned by a new authority. The Scribes thought and taught that the most important thing in life was following the law. Jesus proposes a new authority. Rather than the ultimate authority of the Law, Jesus proposes Love and Mercy. Even though Mark does not say so, I suspect that those Scribes were also upset because nothing they did ever left the people astonished and wondering: “What does this mean?”

The day of the week is irrelevant as this story goes. What is more important: the sacredness of the Sabbath or the sacredness of Humanity? This is real the issue: what matters most, keeping the rule or taking care of people? In the time of fulfillment that Jesus has proclaimed, in the Reign of God, every day is a Sabbath. In fact, there are no “days” – there is simply the time of fulfillment that Jesus has proclaimed. It is the time when evil is finished, and all its manifestations are gone. So, in the synagogue on that day, because Jesus is there, that man is free, and Jesus is acknowledged. This is something new. It is astonishing not because a man was healed, but because of what it might mean. People really do count? People who are outcasts, weird, possessed really count more than the Sabbath rule? Astonishing! This is something new. What does this mean?

This manifestation of the power of God’s love and mercy left all of those people talking and wondering. Some came to believe. Why only “some”? What would it take for all of them to move from wondering in astonishment to belief? It is a question that turns to us for an answer. The first step toward belief is this astonishment, but when you take a close look at our lives, there is not much to get excited about. We are astonished all the time by the power of evil. Hardly ever does the power of good leave us astonished. Not a day goes by when some terrorist or some deranged person like the man in the synagogue does something horrible that leaves us astonished. It might be time to ask why the power of evil leaves us astonished while the power of love and mercy seem to be so hard to find. The truth is, we are numb. We are anesthetized by all this evil so much so that nothing leaves us astonished anymore. What does this mean?

My own suspicion is that too many of us are concerned with doing things right rather than doing the right thing. They are not often the same. The narcissistic culture we live in cultivates a life style of pleasure and pleasing. We like to please others by doing what they expect and not rocking the boat. Mediocrity is the style of the day. Jesus stood up in the synagogue and did something no one else would do. He told a demon to be quiet. He silenced the voice of evil. He challenged what was wrong in spite of a law that said “Do nothing.” Jesus did not care what day it was. He saw a man in trouble, in the grip of evil, and he did something about it even though the authorities would not approve. What does this mean?

It means that when Jesus Christ is present, evil is going to be challenged. It means that with his coming into this world, there will be no power greater than his. It means that hiding behind rules, laws, and old customs is not the way things go under the reign of God. It means that if we ever take seriously opportunities to do the right thing, to speak up, to act up, to silence the voice of evil with the voice of mercy and love, we will find ourselves right in the middle of the reign of God. We will find ourselves once and for all right in the middle of the Body of Christ, and his authority will be ours not for power or gain, but for mercy and forgiveness, and there is doubt in my mind that this whole world be again be astonished and come to believe because of us. That is the work of discipleship.

Jonah 3, 1-5, 10 + Psalm 25 + 1 Corinthians 7, 29-31 + Mark 1, 14-20

For each of the evangelists; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the first words Jesus says set the theme for that Gospel. Last week we heard the first spoken words according to John: “What are you looking for?” That question weaves its way in and out of all the episodes of John’s Gospel. Today the first spoken words of Mark’s Gospel are set before us: “This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand! Reform your lives and believe in the good news!” Once Mark sets this theme that we are living in the time of fulfillment, that God’s reign is beginning, and that our response to this is believing and therefore reforming our lives, Jesus goes to work.

All four disciples are called at once. There is sense of immediacy and urgency that flows through Mark’s Gospel. Hurry up is the mood. Immediate is the response. They put down everything and knowing nothing about where they were going or what this was all about, they followed Jesus. They did not follow an ideology or program. There was no agenda or plan. There was a person. All of this discipleship is personal and relational.

On the other hand, it is important to understand what Jesus is doing. He is not calling them to be priests or bishops. He is calling them to be disciples and then, as the story unfolds, he will send them out in his place with the same message. So there is no reading or listening to this story as an observer. This is not about Peter, James, Andrew and John. It is about everyone who hears the call of Jesus as an invitation to play a part in establishing the reign of God on this earth. What makes this news that we are living in the final and sacred time of God’s reign believable is the change in their lives; a sign of repentance.

The outward sign that those four men repented or changed their value systems is when they put people instead of fish as the center of their lives. That is unmistakable repentance. People now come first; not their jobs, not their possessions (nets and boats) not the old predictable way of life, people now come first as Jesus will show them along the way.

If it was so then, so it is now. Every single one of us has experienced a call to enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ. We have no idea where it will lead us, and what it will ask of us. We do know that repentance is required of those who will live in this time of fulfillment in the presence of and in the reign of God. We know that nothing else can come first except people because the relationship we have with Jesus Christ is lived and celebrated within the people he has called his own. Discipleship with Jesus Christ which is our call, it demands an immediate response, a willingness to abandon old ways, old values, expectations, and ways of looking even at ourselves.

Peter, Andrew, James, and John left what they knew to live differently. That is the choice facing every one of us God calls. We all have nets. The nets of this world and the things we are used to. They keep us from becoming true followers of Christ. They are the kind of nets in which we are entangled. Sin can be a net; cynicism, self-interest and greed. There are nets of racism, addiction, anger, despair and indifference. We get trapped in nets of mediocrity just getting by. But the call of Christ insists that we look deeply at our own habits and our own hearts. If it looks like too much of a challenge, there is one important detail to remember: we are not alone. When Jesus called those fishermen, they didn’t leave the lives they knew on their own. They went in pairs: Simon and Andrew, James and John.

The beautiful message is this: being a follower of Christ is not a solitary act. Being a Christian involves another, many others, in fact. The early Christians understood that; it was about celebrating Christ’s life, death, and resurrection in community and in communion. They prayed together. They shared the Eucharist together. They traveled together. They preached together. They were persecuted and martyred together too. In community, they found strength during times of great joy and great suffering. It is not different today.

Twenty centuries later, we continue what they began. That first call of the fishermen, two by two, has echoed around the world. Believers gather, in community, to share our love for God, our love for one another, and our passion for the Gospel message. We proclaim what we believe. We lift our eyes to a miracle: God in a piece of elevated bread that when consumed forms a Holy People. The body of Christ is uplifted, and so are we. But it will be meaningless if we just go home and go on with our lives. Like Simon and Andrew and James and John, we are called to leave our old ways of doing things, our familiar and comfortable ways of living. Ultimately, we are called to walk away and follow him. It is a call to sacrifice, to surrender, to trust, and change. The kingdom of God is at hand, Jesus proclaimed. It can be ours. But first, we need to abandon our nets and reform our lives.

1 Samuel 3, 3-10, 19 + Psalm 40 + 1 Corinthians 6, 13-15, 17-20 + John 1, 35-42

Saint Peter the Apostle Parish   Naples, Florida

The first words that Jesus speaks in John’s Gospel are heard today: “What are you looking for?” This question is essential to faith. Three times in John’s Gospel this question is asked. The first time is today. Then in the Garden of Olives after the Last Supper it will be asked again of those who come to arrest him. Finally it is asked one more time on Easter Sunday when Mary Magdalen comes to the tomb. The question frames the whole Gospel and the answer determines discipleship or opposition. There is no other way.

We all answer this question even when there are no words, for what we do always reveals what we are looking for. A person who knows what they are looking for in life has vision and purpose. What we are looking for drives our decisions, shapes our relationships, and reveals our values. Like the disciples in this first chapter of John’s Gospel, we may not have words to answer the question, but what we do says it all. While they did not answer the question, they followed him, and that said it all.

This is a fascinating dialogue. Jesus asks a question, and instead of answering the question, the disciples ask a question. He says: “What are you looking for?” and they say: “Where do you stay?” Now, I don’t know about you, but there have been many times in my life when I have been asked a question for which I had no answer, and one of my tested ways to avoid revealing ignorance is to ask another question. It would sometimes go like this: “Where are you going?” someone asks. I say: “Why do you want to know?”

I suggest that this is what is happening between Jesus and those disciples John the Baptist has sent them to Jesus. They do not know what they are looking for, so rather than admit it, they change the subject. However, it doesn’t work. They ask their question, and Jesus says: “Come and See.” At that moment in John’s Gospel, it is as though the lights come on and the curtain goes up. Keep reading, and you’re going to find an answer to both questions. Watch them become disciples all the way through the Passion, the Resurrection, and Pentecost. It will become obvious what they are looking for. They want to know where Jesus is to be found. He does not give them a street address. He gives them a life-style we call discipleship, and after some time, near the end of his life among them, he sits them down at a table and says: “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in me just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”. What he eventually reveals to them in answer to their question is that he lives in them. This is where he is to be found: in the lives of faithful disciples.

In these days as we prepare for the beginning of Lent, it might be a good time to reflect on and take a close look at how our lives reveal what we are looking for. As a church we do not preach a Gospel of Prosperity that suggests that those who have are somehow more blessed than those who live in want. We do not preach a gospel that suggests that good times are a reward and bad times are a punishment. We preach, live, teach, and profess a Gospel of presence that promises we shall never be alone. It is a Gospel that reveals a God who has been through it all with us from birth, and the terrorism of Herod, to betrayals by trusted and loved friends, through misunderstanding, abandonment, death, and finally the victory of the resurrection.

This is what we must seek: the confidence and hope, the assurance and the peace of mind that comes from knowing that we dwell in God and God dwells in us. When our lives begin to reveal this, others in this world will be at least tempted to reconsider their search for power, prestige, privilege, and wealth, a search that always leaves others in want and in need. So we ponder today the question Jesus asks to determine whether or not we are in opposition or in discipleship. There is probably no other option.

Isaiah 42, 1-4. 6-7 + Psalm 29 + Acts 10, 34-38 + Mark 1, 7-11

MS Westerdam

The only ones who hear anything in Mark’s Gospel are you, me, and Jesus. None of the bystanders hear a thing. They do not hear those words we hear. Do you wonder why? I think it is because at that moment they have not been baptized. It is not to suggest that they are excluded, but it is to say that baptism and hearing the Word of God results in one being claimed by God, becoming a servant of God, and beginning the work that all the baptized are privileged to continue: making known the loving and saving plan of God for all humankind. From that moment on, everything he says and everything he does is God’s. There is no private life. There is no civil life, and no religious life. There is no spiritual life either. There is only the Life of God living within one has been baptized, and heard the Word of God speaking.

We live such compartmentalized lives these days. The life of a wife or husband, the life of a parent, the life of some kind of profession. Somehow I suppose it is one way to keep organized and not fly off in a hundred different directions. We have a faith life, we have the life of a citizen, some have the life in the military, or a life in healthcare, or law. I have had the life of a Pastor. It is all so neat and orderly. Yet, it is also so artificial and so far from what we were called to become on the day of our Baptism.

Living like this leads us to think and say things like: “Sundays are for God, the rest of the week if for business” or pleasure or politics where religion plays no part. This kind of thinking is not in tune with nor worthy of what we have become as sons and daughters of God. By virtue of our Baptism, we have been born into the life of Christ, a life that knew no distinctions or categories. It was and still is for us, a life that is totally and completely integrated and whole meaning that everything we do is directed to and by God. Everything.

Folding laundry, grocery shopping, driving the kids to school, reading with them, calling and checking on your parents or your neighbor, working, or studying: it’s all about God, because of God, and for God. In this thinking and in this life, there are no “have to-s”. Everything is a “get to”. All is gift. All is privilege. All is gratitude. Faith is not excluded from anything. In fact, faith is involved in everything we do and every decision we make.

This is what we learn from Mark’s story of Baptism. That having been claimed by God and having heard as we just did the voice of God claiming us, everything is changed. Now there is a reason and a purpose for everything we do here: the glory of God and the revelation of God’s presence and God’s will.

When people encounter those who are truly baptized, and baptized in the Spirit of God, they always wonder, “What kind of person is this?” at which point, they begin to desire and seek for themselves that loving place in God’s heart. This is the beginning of the “fullness” of life which is what we are offered through Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 60, 1-6 + Psalm 72 + Ephesians 3, 2-3, 5-6 + Matthew 2, 1-12

MS Westerdamm

My seven year old grandnephew sits safely in the back seat of my car on occasions when I am visiting, and he knows the neighborhood better than I do, especially the way home from school and to Target and the Dollar General Store. He knows that I do not always get it right when I am taking them somewhere so he sits back there imitating the voice on the GPS system amazingly well. Problems occur when he does not speak up soon enough for me to make the turns he announces in his mechanical voice. When I miss, he says: “At the next opportunity, make a legal U turn.” I am not sure he knows what a “legal U Turn is, but he does know that we have to go back. In thinking about this familiar and imaginative Gospel story, I wonder if those Magi might have done better to have had a GPS strapped to the back of the camel. It would have at least kept them away from Herod.

That word “Magi” has the same root as our word, “Magic”, and their story is certainly a magic one in which the entire summary of the Gospel message unfolds with Matthew’s skillful story telling. The first two chapters of his Gospel contain the Good News of Salvation and the proclamation of Jesus as savior of the world. In these chapters, Matthew establishes God’s universal concern, the divine origins of Jesus and his authority as Messiah along with the necessity of the worldwide mission of the church. Consequently this is not just a wonderful story to tell again and again, but it is a piece of revelation through which God reveals the plan for salvation, and the one who will be savior. Magicians force us to look at things and to look for things. “How did you do that?” is always the question. While we are wondering about it, we are looking, looking at things in a different way. It has always seemed to me that this three Magicians are still doing that to us, exciting us enough to look at things in a new way. They looked a little child apparently born in poverty, and they say a king. They looked at Jesus in Bethlehem and remembered the prophet’s words about that place, and they saw the Messiah. They looked into the face of Mary and Joseph and saw what they would one day see: the divine presence, Immanuel, in people who heard the Word of God and kept it. By the standards of this world they brought riches far greater than what they found. By divine standards they found wealth beyond imagining.

While Matthew tells the story of a magical star, it is not really the star that leads the Magi. It is faith. Faith is what inspired them, motivated them, and brought them to foot of the Messiah. It was faith and hope that made them look for the star and gave them the courage to follow the star. It was the Love they encountered there that inspired them to return another way diverting the evil of Herod’s power. Matthew says nothing more about a star for their return. Perhaps that is because having seen the Light of the World they needed nothing more to lead them home.