June 29, 2003

Acts 12:1-11 + 2 Timothy 4:6-8 + Matthew 16:13-19

Heroes and heroines tell us more about the society that recognizes them than about the individuals themselves. They tell us about the likes and dislikes, the prejudices and principles, and the values and priorities of the society in which we find them. In one society, someone may be hailed as a martyr, while another society may look at the same life and call that person a terrorist. A hero or heroine could be a public servant, an athlete, a spiritual figure, rock star, or a criminal on the run. They are often the result of a crisis or tragedy, and no authentic hero or heroine ever set out to be one.

That is the difference between a hero and a celebrity. The celebrity or “star” becomes so by will or by plan. The hero and heroine becomes so involuntarily.

Someone asked John F. Kennedy once how he became a World War II hero, and he said: “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.”

I read a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson who suggested that a hero is no braver than ordinary people, but they are simply braver for five minutes longer.” When boats sink and danger looms and five minutes seems like an eternity, heroes are born.

As a church we assemble today honoring two of our heroes. They were unlikely candidates early in their lives; and neither of them made any voluntary choice to become heroes. A fisherman and a tent maker do not seem to be the stuff from which heroes are made, but that is the point. They were very common, ordinary people made extra ordinary by grace. The faith that focused their lives, motivated their decisions, finally gave them an identity as Apostles of Jesus Christ was not born of reason or logic but of grace.

We have the same two elements: we are unlikely candidates for heroism or sanctity, and an honest look at our lives would leave the conclusion that few of us have the stuff that makes heroes heroines.

Yet we have that second element that changes it all. We have grace, pure gift of God who has called us and made us His own. It is grace that sustains a father or a mother in the face of a child

who does not return their love. It is grace that brings a man and woman into a holy union that may have as much challenge and disappointment, as it has joy and peace. It is grace that brings hope when a doctor says there is none. It is grace that sets one free from addiction when all denial has finally failed to hide the truth.

At the heart of this Gospel today lies the question that affirms this grace. “Who do you say that I am?” “Who do you say that I am? asks the homeless, the immigrant, the addict, the prisoner, the neighbor. The answer to that question confirms the presence of grace, and that’s all God can do for us. Then when someone sinks our boat we’ll have to see what happens. Or when we think we can’t go on for one more minute, we go for five.

June 22, 2003

Exodus 24:3-8 + Hebrews 9:11-15 + Mark 14:12-16,22-26

The Old Testament gives us the source of our reflections today as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. With the reading from Exodus we are drawn deeper into the mystery and wonder of Covenant with God. With the images and memory of Exodus fresh in our minds, we move into the heart of this Feast to acknowledge that the Body and Blood of Christ is about Covenant first and foremost. The constant risk and challenge this annual feast puts before us is the risk of stopping short of what is revealed and failing to move through the symbols toward the truth to which they lead.

Exodus focuses on the ritual of blood and word. It is familiar to us. We do it in the place. This ritual is not about the Last Supper, Consecrated Bread and Wine, Transubstantiation, or any of those related things. The ritual of blood and word that we follow here is for the same purpose as the ritual Moses and the people of Exodus followed. It is for the sake of Covenant with God. Consecration of the Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is for the sake of Covenant, not for the sake of taking Holy Communion. We take Holy Communion because we are a people of the Covenant. To focus on the symbol and not go where it points is to trivialize or neglect the real revelation found in the symbols. This is a present reality. We are not re-enacting something that happened in the past. This is not an instant replay. Every year in certain historical locations, people dress up in costume and re-enact battles of the Civil war or the War of Independence. This is not like that. This is the real thing for today and for this hour.

Our times and culture day in and day out bear witness to covenants broken and disposed of. As a consequence, it is a good thing to celebrate this Feast and acknowledge what it proclaims. Unlike the oaths we take only to perjure ourselves, and the treaties we sign only to ignore when the powerful partner finds it unprofitable or inconvenient, this is Covenant, not contract, nor oath, nor treaty.

This is about relationships and identity. It is more about being than doing. Ancient peoples used a ritual of sacrifice that involved blood because of its once and for all nature. The finality of death for the victim sacrificed, and the mutual sharing of its blood made the covenant a “once and for all” – “no going back” kind of statement. Those ancient people split the victim of their sacrifice and walked together between the halves – agreeing that a similar consequence should befall the one who breaches the covenant. Those ancient ones understood “blood” as the essence of life. The blood of the victim bound them together in life and for life. Then those ancient peoples shared a meal in the belief that those who ate together were bound as partners and protectors of one another for life.

When the Church assembles for the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, it assembles for more than an affirmation of the symbols. We are not here simply to affirm our belief in the presence of Christ in Bread and Wine. We are not here to casually stroll up the aisle and take a piece of consecrated unleavened bread. We are here for the sake of Covenant, the Covenant that this Body and Blood establishes. There is nothing casual or informal about what happens here. It is awesome and profound. It is divine. This is the essential, distinct Catholic experience of the Eucharist. We are not re-enacting the Last Supper. We are not “taking” communion, nor are we having a private and intimate personal experience with the historical Jesus. We are being swept up into divine life, transformed in the very depths of our being into a relationship that is blood – like family. God makes a binding pact with us. It makes us partners and companions assuring us of a place at the table and a share in the everlasting banquet of heaven. It is a costly, painful, and lonely covenant, but its consequences are greater than its demands. This is a covenant in our flesh because of what we eat in this place. It is a covenant in our lives because of what we become in this place. The Body and Blood of Christ do not simply appear to be bread and wine. They also appear to be the flesh and blood of those who eat. This feast leads us through the symbol to the reality. Those who make that passage can never kneel before the Blessed Sacrament and then turn their back on the hungry, the poor, or the homeless. To do so disconnects the symbol from that to which it points: the transforming Covenant into which we are invited by a God who chooses to be with us, in us, and for us, for always and forever.

June 15, 2003

Deuteronomy 4:32-3,39-40 +Romans 8:14-17 + Matthew 28:16-20

Any way you look at it, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, as a theologian or as a philosopher, thinking about the Trinity inevitably leads to reflections about relationships. It is more than a theological concept. It is more than a metaphysical exercise. It is the core of our creed over which blood has been spilled, and countless hours of study, rhetoric, and deliberation mark our history with councils in far off places looking again and again at this wonder of God’s self giving and self revelation.

I avoid the word: “Mystery.” It leads us to suspect that we cannot understand, and then we excuse ourselves from the wonder and awe it can stir in us. Understanding is not the issue. Experience is. This is the experience that marks the Christian. Just as touching a door post and reciting the shema marks the Identity of Jews, and facing the direction of the holy shrines with one’s forehead on the ground marks Islam, the Sign of the Cross marks the Christian. In gesture and in word, the Creed is proclaimed, the bond is renewed, and the experience is acknowledged.

The experience of the Trinity is the ultimate acknowledgement of God’s Loving presence. The three most essential questions that lurk in the depth of the human soul are stilled by the experience we call Trinity. Do you love me? How much do you love me? Will you be here tomorrow? The God of the Christian tradition speaks to the human soul and quiets the fear and anxiety that these questions sustain. “Do you love me?” “As much as I love myself”, says the God in whose image we are made. “How much do you love me?”

“Enough to send my only Son to be with you in your darkest hours.” “Will you be here tomorrow?” “My Spirit will be you everywhere and forever.” No mystery here except the mystery of unconditional love which with our best efforts, we just can’t quite master.

No mystery here except the mystery of love’s power to forgive and to heal. This day calls us to wonder and stand in awe before the God-gift we have received. This day calls us to raise our hands again more confident than ever that we who are signed in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are a people embraced in love. More than chosen, we claimed as God’s own and exist in the intimacy of the divine family: because “God so loved the world.”

We celebrate this feast after Easter and after Pentecost. The risen Christ and the Spirit complete for us the experience of God we have been given. The God we acknowledge and have come to know day in and day out is a God locked in with humankind. We believe in One God we are about to say: a God who is one with us, a God who knows no distinction between heaven and earth. a God who by the power of the Spirit wills to be known, to be seen, to be heard, to be loved. Our life in the Trinity expresses our own identity and our mission in these days following Pentecost. We are sent, now as was Jesus to reveal this God we have come to know

and to let others see what we have seen, that they too may become children of God and share in our inheritance. All they will see, all they will hear, all they will know is you and me. To see the children is to see the Father.

June 8, 2003

Acts 2:1-11 + Galatians 5:16-25 + John 15:26-27, 16:12-15

Most of us take the account of Pentecost as Luke tells it as the central text of this day. Visual and sensate as we are, tongues of fire, descending doves, and a mighty wind is easy to deal with. Artists through the ages have made it so. There isn’t anyone among us, I suspect who could not close their eyes and visualize what Luke speaks of. We have also come to expect that spirit filled assemblies are highly animated, demonstrative, and enthusiastic. We have rallies before contests to build up the “spirit”. The louder they are, the more energetic they become leads us to judge them to be “spirit-filled”. Yet, an American lynch mob or an urban gang rally could be pretty spirit filled too. A rock concert in Lloyd Noble Center is too.

At the same time, a lone person kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, or a devout parent lighting a candle with prayer for a troubled child is without doubt filled with the spirit. A community of monks or nuns filing quietly into a monastery church raising their voices in song is just as much a vehicle of the spirit as turning up the decibels with electric thumping that you can here five blocks away. The test of the Spirit’s presence is not fire, wind, doves, noise, wild enthusiasm, physical animation, or high-pitched emotions. The test of the Spirit’s presence among us is whether Jesus Christ is made known. That does not require extra ordinary phenomena like speaking in tongues or courageous missionary zeal. The people most filled with the Holy Spirit in my life, the people who have most clearly and convincingly borne evidence to the presence of Jesus Christ have been anything but loud, pushy, zealous enthusiasts. On the contrary, they have been people who forgive and bring peace; who mere presence or hospitality brings comfort; whose words are filled with compassion never reproach. They are people who suffer various disappointments and tragedies with confident courage, whose prayer is steady and unselfish. Their compliments replace the complaints and criticism of others.

The central text on Pentecost Day is not Acts of the Apostles. It is the Gospel. The words of Jesus about the Spirit, about what this “Advocate”, whom the Father sends will do is what matters today. “HE WILL TESTIFY ON MY BEHALF”, says Jesus. In other words, more plainly, he STAND IN for Jesus. That is what an Advocate is – someone who knows the part, who speaks and acts in the place of someone else.

This Gospel comes from the Farewell Discourse. He is leaving, but only to send this world a greater presence, one not limited to a single body present in one place at one time. Luke’s testimony is to the fulfillment of that promise. It is not a description of the event. Luke’s testimony is that bumbling, doubt-filled, slow to believe, very common fishermen, tax collectors, and sinners can make known the presence of Christ and realize the promised signs of the Kingdom of God. It does not mean they speak in tongues or can give great orations to huge crowds. It means that when anyone as been around them they will know they have been touched by Jesus.

In this assembly today, there is Spirit, plenty of it, and we don’t need to make a spectacle of our selves to know it. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control: signs of the Spirit. I’ll take those over tongues of fire and a mighty wind any day. As Paul says: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.”

June 1, 2003

Acts 1:1-11 + Ephesians 4:1-13 + Mark 16:15-20

A contemporary spiritual writer has suggested that in this age of time we have three classes of Christian people. The first are the “aristocrats” of sort. They live with solitude and contemplation. They have a special relationship with God. Many live in convents and monasteries. Some are hermits. They most often live apart from us, and some are sought for their wisdom. They are genuine their gift benefits us all.

The second are the “bourgeoisie”, to continue using that vocabulary. They are a kind of high society – upper middle class. They have aspirations, goals, hopes, and plans.  They can retire to their private rooms to think about God because they have private rooms. They can go on retreats, by and read spiritual books. They can go to Bible Study classes and Adult Education classes about religion because in general they have something they often take for granted. They have a wonderful gift too. It is called: “Time.”

The third group includes most of the other people on this earth. They live day in and day out in a world that shoves them, pulls them, and sometimes crushes them. It simply seems to drag them from birth to death. Now and then they get a glimpse of Christ, but more often than not they end up feeling dissatisfied. They do not have “time” like the aristocrats and bourgeoisie. Their waking hours are spent seeking enough to eat – not just for themselves, but for their children, since if they do not eat something, their children will suffer even more. For this group, time is not a gift for seeking God,

but an extension of their struggle to survive. Now I have come to believe that the Ascension of the Lord has more to do with TIME than with where Jesus went or what happened on Easter to the Apostles and to the Risen Christ. It’s about TIME: how we use it, and where it takes us.

It is about this time, not the past when Jesus of Nazareth was here, but about June in two-thousand and three. It is about today and tomorrow and the time we have to complete our mission as it has been preserved for us in our ancient writings.

The rebuke of the first reading still sounds clear to those who stand around looking at the sky. However tempting it might be, a “wait and see” attitude is not the attitude of disciples. The consequence of the Ascension is that the goodness of this world is affirmed; that the way to God is the way of Jesus Christ, obedience, service, love, and forgiveness. The consequence of the Ascension is that mission of Jesus Christ has become our own. And so, the bind will see……see the glory of God in a people filled with Joy and with Hope. And the lame will walk…..walk upright and free from injustice and poverty, from prejudice and racism. And the lepers will be cleansed…..and all those pushed to the edges of life will be restored to their place in the heart of God. And the poor will have the Good News preached to them…. the poor who have no hope and no choices, no opportunities, and no time.

It would appear that most of us in St. Mark Parish are, in Michael Quoist’s analysis, the bourgeoisie. We have time either because money has purchased this kind of leisure or our birth-right has left us here. In this assembly today, the Word we proclaim stuns us with the expectations God seems to have of us. In the glorification of Christ, in his being taken up into heaven away from us, the plan, the will, and the intention of God becomes perfectly clear.

An English Hymn writer (Fred Pratt Green) put it this way:

“The Church of Christ in every age,

Beset by change, but spirit led,

Must claim and test its heritage,

And keep on rising from the dead.

Across the world, across the street

the victims of injustice cry

For shelter and for bread to eat

And never live before the die.

Then let the servant church arise,

A caring Church that longs to be

A partner in Christ’s sacrifice,

And clothed in Christ’s humility.

For he alone, whose blood was shed,

Can cure the fever in our blood,

And teach us how to share our bread

and feed the starving multitude.

For we have no mission but to serve

In full obedience to our Lord;

To care for all, without reserve,

And spread his liberating Word