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All posts for the month June, 2001

The Nativity of John the Baptist

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 24, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

June 24, 2001 Isaiah 49:1-6 + Acts 13:22-26 + Luke 1:57-66,80

I have often thought of Elizabeth and Zechariah as being metaphors for the church. I suspect people in those days had pretty well dismissed them as not being very important. They were old, probably old of touch with things, not particularly productive, and probably all that was expected was they might offer a prayer or two now and then. Many look at the church today just the way people may have looked at Elizabeth and Zechariah. They judge thechurch to be quaint, out of touch, and not productive enough to contribute much to society and the human community other than a few prayers now and then. They simply don’t expect much.

Yet, faithful in prayer, non productive on their own, that old couple in the hill country of Judea are a lot like us, the church, going through rituals faithfully, sometimes puzzled by what is asked of us, and silent when we ought not to be. Most of all, we are like them in as much as we are barren if left to ourselves.

The Second Servant Song of Isaiah which we have just heard speaks of being called while still in his mother’s womb. In spite of his early call, the Servant is discouraged about doing God’s will.But God confronts the prophet and promises divine protection and guidance to complete the mission. We see this pattern again and again in the prophets including John and Jesus himself.

What I would like for you to consider in your prayer and reflection on these texts today is that we are the prophetic people called in a church that often looks, feels, and acts like Elizabeth and Zechariah. Yet, we remain faithful in prayer and open to the will and voice of God, even if we don’t quite understand it. In the midst of our prayerful offering, these readings speak like the angel spoke to Zechariah.

We’ve been born here – brought to life here, named here, and no matter how old the church may seem to some, no matter what its critics may say, it is never unproductive when God wishes for a servant, a prophet, or a herald. They always come from here, for that is what we are. I believe that what we proclaim today is not the story of John the Baptist so much as it is the story of any one of us  called to be prophetic and servant. If you can imagine the Church as Zechariah and Elizabeth, then imagine yourself as John. the consequence of prayerful fidelity and openness to God’s plan. For that is, in the end what we are. As a Church, we are not left to ourselves to be productive and fruitful. God works with us just as God worked with that old couple in the hill country What the world might judge to be useless except for a prayer now and then is hardly incapable of producing. We are the result of the God who still visits a people at prayer.

When God called prophets to their mission, they were equipped with what they needed to serve as ambassadors of a divine message. The prophetic Servant is endowed with the cutting and invasive power of the two-edged sword and also protected by God’s arm until that time when he is expected to cany out his mission.

Surely John had moments of reflection on his prophetic call. We must reflect on our call as post resurrection proclaimers of God’s word.And for all of us there is the challenge to look into our lives to see how we can more faithfully follow the exampleof that Servant, John:Making ready the way of the Lord,Stirring up anyone who will listenwith hopes and dreams for a Kingdom not far from us,Recognizing the presence of God in human flesh and blood,and remaining ready to get out of the way because we know and believe that this life is not about us, but about the victory of God’s Love.We are the prophet / servant now,we are the ones who must emerge from the desert of our timid faith to stand boldly in this world and proclaim in word and in deedthat Justice has come, that Peace is at hand, and that Forgiveness sets us free.

The Body and Blood of Christ

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 17, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

June 17 2001 Genesis 14:18-20 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + Luke 9:11-17

Anyone of us who has ever engaged in a conversation about religion that eventually moves toward Mass and the Eucharist gets asked the question. If it isn’t asked, someone in the conversation has been holding back. If it isn’t asked, it is certainly thought; and the question. “Do you really believe that?”

A few weeks ago, I asked that question of the children making their first communion. They all insisted that they did believe that the communion they would share was the Body and Blood of Christ, but they have also believed in Santa Clause, Easter Bunny’s and Tooth Fairies. So, I wasn’t too impressed with their response. What I suspect really matters, is whether or not you believe that; and the annual celebration of this Feast brings me to ask myself the same question.

An important aspect of the Catholic imagination, that is to say, the way Catholic Culture views and interprets human experience, events, and memories is its ability to hold many meanings of an event in creative tension instead of isolating a single interpretation. Let me give you an example that is very much to the point: there is the belief and the authentic tradition that the Eucharist is an act of praise and thanksgiving to God expressed in ritual and song. There is an equally authentic tradition that the Eucharist is the “Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” There is also an equally authentic tradition that says Eucharist is a meal shared in ritual. Any of these traditions can be distorted by exaggeration. Our faith says that the Eucharist is truly a banquet for the multitudes, a memorial of the last meal of a condemned Christ, and the covenant that binds those who share that meal into the relationship which the Incarnation initiates. Any distortion or exaggeration of these equally valid traditions leads to a private appropriation by individuals, and that is contrary to belief.

So, when I ask: “Do you really believe this?” You’ve got to think about and know about what there is to believe.Do you really believe that in touching this food you are in immediate, physical contact with the divine, and that by this food you are freed from sin, redeemed, and made worthy to be God’s own child?Do you really believe that by sharing in this meal, you share in the

Trinity Sunday

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 10, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

June 10, 2001

Proverbs 8:22-31 + Romans 5: 1-5 + John 16:12-15

Four of Five centuries before Christ’s birth, the people of Israel had returned to their homeland from the exile. A great poem was composed from which our first reading comes today. It reveals a most significant transition in the expectations of the Israelites.Their hope for an earthly messiah is gone with their earthly king. Returning from exile, they no longer look to a descendant of David to fulfill their hopes. They now tum to God, and the poem reflects their hopes and expectations. But there is a problem with this change, even though it ultimately proves to be the right one. The problem is. this God, their God has no name. What those Israelites seemed to do is name their God after the place where they have encountered the divine presence. The ancient poem which provides the verses of our first reading today is all part of the great search for the name of God. The poet believes that Wisdom is the highest of all virtues, that Wisdom is the source of peace and harmony, of justice and goodness, and so in the poem, Wisdom is the attribute of the Divine, and so poetically the virtue is personified and spoken of as the name of God.

Father, Son, Spirit, are, in a sense like “Wisdom”  human efforts  to hold onto, express in words, and cherish in memory experiences  of God and our greatest hopes for God. When those ancient “Fathers” of the church met in Council to wrestle with and resolve the controversies surrounding the experiences, names, and implications of those names, their efforts focused upon relationships in a more inclusive way than simply virtues. For them, now caught up in the divine self-revelation in the Christian experience, the names have something to do with persons like apparent and child. Even the idea of “Spirit” is directly associated with the companionship of fellow believers, for that experience is always spoken of within the context of the “church” or the assembled believers.

This early summer feast falling year after year on the Sunday after Pentecost is no observance of an event’s anniversary Unlike Pentecost or Easter or Christmas, Trinity is not something that happened. It is something that continues to happen as long as God continues to be revealed among us, and as long as God’s people continue to search for way to express that experience and call that  God by name.

The parents of this baby, and every parent who has ever stood here before us are caught up in an experience of God they could only barely imagine a year ago. Their experience of their love expressed for one another in a relationship that is pure gift from gift now has a name, and they have spoken it among us. They will never be ableto speak that name again without invoking the presence of God who is now, more than ever before, the source of life and love.

Father, Son, Spirit, Wisdom and any other words we use are all our feeble human attempts can manage to express and to hold on to the presence of our God living and moving among us. We may know this God by other experiences we call forgiveness, healing, hope, laughter, peace, or freedom. Whatever it is and however we name it, it will not be enough, and the effort will not stop there.

This early summer feast called “Trinity” is a wake-up call to all who have become complacent in their relationship to God. It is an invitation to continue the search for a new name, a better name, an other name by more deeply reflecting upon what God continues to do for us. These parents will never celebrate Trinity Sunday the same way again, because of what God has done in their lives. God has a new name, God’s presence in their lives is more obvious than ever before; and it must be the same for us all. Perhaps not nearly as public and as dramatic as it has been in the birth of this child, but none the less real.

It’s about God’s names. It’s about the experience of God day in and day out. It’s about our relationship to God and to one another, and our effort to capture that experience and express it in a word.It’s the Feast of the Holy Trinity

Pentecost

Posted by Father Tom Boyer on June 3, 2001

Posted in: Homily.

June 3, 2001

Acts 2:1-11 + 1 Corinthians 12:3-7 12-13 + John 20:19-23

The trouble with the way Luke compresses things in his writing is that we end up thinking that something happened in an instant, that results which is what he’s really telling us about are the consequence of the event he uses to describe the results. In other words, wind and tongues of frre are not the point. What happens to that motley crew of frightened, disheartened and disparate disciples is the point. It’s not a matter of “how”, but a matter of “what” and it is the same for us all.

The trouble is that Luke’s images and version of this event play into our modern day expectations of instant success, instant pleasure, instant everything. Fast food, internet connections, one hour glasses at the Mall, and digital cameras all play into this “thing” that has happened to us with the result that we can’t and don’t want to wait. We get impatient with things that just take time, and begin to miss out on the opportunities that are there for people willing to put in time at practice, study, and reflection.

Personally, I like John’s version of Pentecost (that coming of the Spirit) much better than Luke’s. At least with John, the relationship with Jesus is in tact. Matthew and Mark don’t even attempt to deal with it. Maybe because their writing is so much earlier that the results or “consequences” of the Spirit’s presence are not yet so obvious that they have begun to wonder how it happened. They simply deal with the great commissioning that gets lost in the pyrotechnics of Luke’s version.

What has happened to these people is the issue here – and the only reason to tell the story again is to try and make sense of what has happened to us, if anything.

In a word, they became a church, a united, praying, preaching, serving assembly of believers witnessing to the person and mission of Jesus Christ. The point of celebrating Pentecost and telling again the stocy from Luke and from John is to ask ourselves what’s happening to us. Is there any similarity? Forget about the wind (which is hard to do in Oklahoma), forget about what “seem tobe tongues of fire” and pay attention to the results – unity, prayer, service, witness through a life style and values rooted in the Life

and Values of Jesus Christ. To whatever extent we can measure ourselves and growth in that direction, then there’s been a Pentecost for us too. In fact, it has nothing to do with language, but everything to do with unity and an ability to cut through the externals that often defme and divide us and discover what we have in common as children of God. It has nothing to do with wind or breath, but everything to do with Life and Creation as we hear of it in Genesis. It has nothing to do with fire, but everything to do with purification, illumination, and the passion to live as Jesus lived.

We celebrate this Feast because it is ours, not because of something that happened to the group freightened and barely loyal disciples a long time ago. We celebrate this Feast because of what is happening to us, slowly but surely, patiently, and progressively as we become more and more Church, a people living by grace, filledwith blessings and gifts too numerous to count. In a world suddenly conscious of ethnic origins and identities made clear by language difference fiercely possessed, we run the risk of losing the real identity that matters, our identity in Jesus Christ.

The hope this Feast and its readings stir within us is that we shall not become impatient and give up the effort, that we shall not tire of the struggle to grow stronger in faith and more clear of purpose, that we shall not grow weary of the long struggle for justice and for peace. What those disciples became, we are becoming, but not in an instant. Although we are countless generations removed from those first disciples who were spirited and dispatched for duty by Jesus, we are nonetheless sharers in the same Spirit and participants in creations eternal encore.

As we assemble to celebrate the abiding gift of the Spirit today, I give you the words of the John Chrysostom, a bishop in the fourth century “You are not only free, but also holy, not only holy but also just; not only just, but also sons and daughters; not only sons and daughters, but also heir; not only heirs, but also brothers and sisters of Christ, but also join heirs, not only join heirs, but also members, not only members, but also temples, not only temples, but also the instruments of the Spirit.”