February 29, 2004

Deuteronomy 26 :4-10 + Romans 10 :8-13 + Luke 4 :1-13

Earlier this month, two weeks ago, to be exact, we heard Luke interpret for us the words of Jesus we have come to call “Beatitudes.” We saw in Luke’s gospel a reflection of the difference between the earlier community of Matthew and the community of Luke which many scholars believe had grown to include people of prestige, power, and wealth. In Luke’s gospel it is really the “woes” that were the heart of his message, not the Blessings. No spiritualizing or internalization with Luke! What we get from Luke is a kind of “guidance system” by which we can navigate our way through the attitudes, behaviors, and distorted values of a very “less than perfect” world. Being good people in the absence of a good society is the challenge.

Today it would be easy to think that we have here a story about Jesus in the desert, but I don’t think so. I would propose that we explore this story with what we know about Luke. This is not about the temptations of Jesus. It is a story about the temptations that trouble the powerful, the secure, and the comfortable. This story is about our temptations, and we avoid the challenge Luke gives us if we think it’s all about Jesus.

Heard in this light, the devil taunts and tempts any who are children of God, but especially those who have food, and power, and security. “If you are the Son of God,” the devil says: “Take care of yourself.”  suggesting that no one else will. “If you are the Son of God,” the devil says: “Look at all the stuff you can have! There’s your god — the god of your own making, the god of your greed.” “Worship these things. They will give you pleasure.” “If you are the Son of God,” he continues to taunt from the heights of the Temple. “You can jump.” “You know God will take care of you.” (This last one is really a temptation of God, or at least of our concepts of God – so that if God doesn’t work the way we want, we’ll quit the relationship.)

And so it goes, the story of our temptation. We have the power to turn stones into bread. Or we have the power to guns into food and medicine. It’s the same thing. We have the power to feed the hungry, but we make bombers. But the issue Jesus confronts is one of power, not of hunger. It is the question of how and why and when power is to be used. The Word of God nourishes the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel, not bread, and that’s the food that must nourish us with the truth and give us the strength to rise above power’s seduction.

And so it goes, the story of our temptation. We spend more time shopping in the mall than we do on our knees in a church. The great cathedrals of consumerism replace the great cathedrals of worship and prayer. Television commercials replaces religious education, so our children dream of the latest toy or fashion rather than dream of a just and peaceful world.

And so it goes, the story of our temptation. The last temptation turns the tempted into the tempter. For now, it is God who is tempted by this one who is called: “Son of God.” A temptation to live on the wild side, to trust or fool oneself into false security.

In the end, it is all about identity; the identity of one who is God’s own child.

It is that identity the devil calls into question with his taunts:

“If you are God’s Son……

“If you are God’s Son……

“It you are God’s Son……

 Well, we are God’s Son in the Body of Christ, and those who would learn from Him in the Gospel of Luke will not seek the easy way or the short cut to glory.

They will not turn stones into bread when their neighbor hungers for peace or acceptance or a companion. It is not bread that is needed. Those would learn from Him will never be confused about their true home and where they belong. Nor will they ever think that power and privilege will secure them a place in that home rather than sacrifice and love.

February 25 2004

Joel 2:12-18 + 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 + Matthew 6 :1-6,16-18

Ancient Catechumens, in the rites that moved them to grace and baptism performed a kind of “dance” that acted out in experience what was happening in their hearts. Led to the font of “living” water, they faced the darkness of the western sky and were asked to reject Satan and his empty promises. Then they turned and faced the east, where the sun would soon rise. In this direction they professed their belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life. The turn from west to east, from darkness to light, from Satan to God was all captured in that simple gesture.

We have long ago given up many of those power-filled gestures. We think of ourselves as far too sophisticated to do that sort of thing. Baptism has been speeded up, privatized, and sanitized.  “Living water” has been reduced to a splash that I have seen in some places come from a mason jar off a shelf. Avoiding the public nature of the commitment, Baptism was slipped into “free time” on an afternoon when no one, but family could possibly hear the profound commitment being made.

The Baptistery took on the appearance of a private chapel with a basin to catch the half cup or less of water that spilled from a baby’s head. Gone was the tomb, the grave that provided the visual connection with dying and rising. With some relief in our lifetime, we welcome a change in practice that now leads us deeper into the mystery.

We are people of the grave – we have come up out of the tomb, and today we shall show our origins. We are dead people raised up to life. The ashes of our death will be visible for all to see. Perhaps we miss half the point if we think these ashes are only a sign of our future. They are also a sign of our past. We were dead and we have been raised to life.

In this season, we are a people doing the dance of those early catechumens. We are turning: from west and darkness to the east and coming light. We are turning from old ways to new ways, from ways of living that lead to death toward ways of living that lead to life.

The most ancient traditions of our faith are rooted in this season and the three Holy Days to which it leads. Proven again and again through the centuries, the power of three things is undisputed and universally practiced by anyone who stands before God. Buddhists, Islam, Judaism all know the power of these things. In our Christian faith, we too embrace these ancient customs with the full knowledge at those who practice them cannot possibly fail to turn toward God. Fasting

Prayer Almsgiving ——- lead us onto the path of change. They lift us from the grave and turn us from the west to the east. These are, in some ways, the steps of the dance. When we learn them and use them together, we shall be transformed, and this whole world will be filled with Light and the Presence of Christ. When Fasting and Prayer and Almsgiving become the steps of Life’s great dance, we shall spring up from the grave and brush aside the dust of death refreshed in living water, we shall be stand in the light, and nothing will ever again be the same.

February 22, 2004

1 Samuel 26:2,7-9,12,13,22-23 +1 Corinthians 15:45-49 + Luke 6:27-38

One of the basic assumptions in the economy of the Greek and Roman world was the notion of charis. There whole world turned on this notion that charis was kept in constant motion. They believed that the divine would “grace”, that is to says, provide benefits for humans, and then the humans would in turn respond, or make eucharistia by acknowledging such favors through gifts to the temple worship. Then, these gifts would mean good construction jobs. Better temples would enhance the “glory” of the divine which would in turn effect further gifts from the divine to the human.

It was a cycle, a constant round of gift giving and growth. There was something out there circulating all the time. No one held on or kept this “charis” as their own

because to do so would stop further gifts from the divine.

All of us from time to time have been invited into “Chain Letters” for various gifts — to receive requires that you pass it on, and the only way the system works is for the “letter” to stay in motion. If anyone stops or breaks the chain, it’s over.

Luke builds his image of grace and his most fundamental moral message on this ancient idea. It is the end of the old “tit for tat” idea. It is the beginning of a new age of grace. It is not a “spiritual” plan, but a way of living in the concrete reality of the present What Luke puts before us in this conclusion to the sermon Jesus began last week is the most radical and clearest expression of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

It would have been nice and a lot easier if Jesus had just left it at that. “Love your enemies.” It is a good slogan. It looks nice framed on the wall. Luke’s Gospel however is not a catalogue of slogans; it is a way of life – a way of being – a pattern for relationships. This faith we share is not a list of beliefs about God plus behavior. We are Christians not because of what we believe, but because we have been called to be disciples of Jesus. to become a disciple is not a matter of new or changed self-understanding but rather to become part of a different community with a different set of practices.

So, this Gospel today is just as tough as the one we proclaimed last week. There are no loopholes to avoid this challenge. There is no way to make this teaching a “theory” or an “ideal.” There is no way to lift this challenge out of reality and turn it into a abstract void that would allow us to reason: “Well, I’ll love my enemies but I won’t like them!” That reasoning is evasive. It is a faceless alibi – an excuse for avoiding what is asked of us. To keep us from running in that direction, Jesus closes the door on that thinking with the details of his plan for enemy love.

“Do good to those who hate you.” “Bless them.”  “Pray for them.” Yet something in us reasons that Jesus failed to see what was to come. That evil regimes and terrorist attacks that we have come to know could never have been in his mind. We think he never could have imagined the horrors and evils we have seen. But to think that way is to reveal that we have never stood under the cross and never heard Jesus Christ speak through blood-stained lips: ”Father, forgive them.” We need to go there to get it right. We need to hear those words from that place. Then, the opening words of today’s Gospel will make sense to us:

“To you who hear I  say, Love……”

February 15, 2004

Jeremiah 175-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:12,16-22 + Luke 6:17,20-26

The earliest followers of Jesus were surely poor, powerless, marginal and socially irregular. They were like him, and had the most interest in what he had to say. By the time Luke’s gospel is written, there are others. Most scholars hold the opinion

that this Gospel was written for a very different kind of people: respectable people of influence and means. They were an advantaged group conscious of the power and their prestige.

There is a decided difference between Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount” and these “Beatitudes” of Luke. Matthew spiritualizes his. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” he says. There is nothing spiritualized, internalized or removed for Luke. He simply says: “Blessed are the poor.” No words of warning or woe in Matthew.

No lack of them in Luke. The future of those who seem to have no future is assured. The rest would be advised to discern that this is the way it works with God. Luke does not give suggestions about how to be happy.

Woes are directed toward the privileged, the well-fed, the rich, the carefree precisely because their condition, and status is used to exclude others, keeping them silent, invisible, powerless and marginal. The Jesus of Luke knows that among people of status, power becomes power to abuse. This is tough news for us, and there is no way to stand here and coat it with sugar. People who seem to have everything going for them live in great peril. Security blinds people to the need of surrender and letting go to make room for the ever-surprising presence and  action of God. We are the rich and we are the powerful. Even though many are burdened with debt, it happens because we have credit, and credit allows us to buy more and more. There are some who do not even have the power of plastic. The culture of the consumer and the power of the borrower continues to neglect the really “dirt poor” among us, keeps them silent and invisible. The power of the consumer society criminalizes the hungry and the minority who look for a share in the “good life.”

The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel assures those who seem to have no future that they do in fact have one that is better; while that same Jesus assures those who think they have it made that a surprise is on the way. Guilty feelings in the face of this Gospel is not what is called for. Feeling the plight of the homeless as a moral dilemma is not enough either. The failure arises from the institutions on which our common life and its quality depends. Election year promises of new jobs from politicians offer nothing when one considers that the majority of those jobs are part-time, unskilled, low paying ones in the service sector that will not put food on a table under a roof. In a nation that watches that rich get richer and the poor grow in more desperate numbers, this Gospel is serious business. It confronts us with the difficulty of being a good person in the absence of a good society. I would propose that the Beatitudes offer those who would follow Jesus with Luke’s Gospel a kind of “guidance system” to correct the distortions of attitude, behavior and values of contemporary culture whether it is the affluent culture of Luke’s time or our own.  Luke and the Jesus he proclaims reverses the assumption that blessedness lies in riches, pleasure, comfort and happiness, and asserts that the fulfillment of every need and desire is found in God and in God’s ways.

February 8, 2004

Isaiah 6:1-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 + Luke 5:1-11

There is no doubt after hearing the reading from Isaiah before this Gospelthat the Church will assemble today to reflect upon its call. Paul reinforces the same theme as he summarizes his teaching and his own calling. Peter is the focus, his call, his response, and his mission. What we must remember is that Luke’s use of Peter is not historical or personal; but rather theological and collective. What Luke means when he says something of “Peter” he is saying of the Church. Consequently, there is sitting back and listening to this Gospel as though it was about someone else at some other time. It’s about us: our call, our response, and our mission.

What we come to understand from the Word we share today is what kind of people are called by God to complete the work of Jesus and in the sharing of tradition reveal the saving plan of God. We do not read of saints or scholars today. It is a man of unclean lips, one who has persecuted the church, and a sinful fisherman who are called.

What we also come to understand from the Word we share today is that the call itself comes in the normal circumstances of everyday life. Isaiah was in the Temple, not an unusual place to find a pious Israelite. Paul was running around in the fast lane as he always did. Peter was fishing. These people are inspired in ordinary places doing ordinary things. What is out of the ordinary is what they experience in those ordinary events, and Luke proposes that we might pay attention.

We have put ourselves in this church today because we have been called, because we have received a tradition to share and because the work of Jesus Christ is not yet complete. The world in which we live is not the Kingdom of God. It is barely a human place to live some of the time, and at best, we see the Kingdom of God dimly as though through a veil, but we do see it and know its coming none the less.

What we have come to understand through our tradition and in this place is that the further in-breaking of that Kingdom and its eventual triumph will depend upon our response to the call that has brought us here. For most of us, it is not a very dramatic call. It may simply be the call to be a parent. To shape the mind and the heart of child in the ways of Jesus Christ. It may be simply to be a teacher, a catechists, a priest, deacon, or sister, who is willing and ready to extend their everyday lives, like Peter. Called to do something illogical, like throwing the nets out once more after a long night of fishing without a catch. They were tired, getting the nets wet once again meant more heavy work; but they did it anyway, and what they discovered was more than net full of fish. The risk is that we might overlook the action of God, that we may think that someone else may do what we have been called to do, or that somehow the Kingdom is just going to happen by a miracle.

Luke would have us understand that fish got in that net because Peter and his companions put out the net again when Jesus asked them. The people of Corinth still preach the timeless Gospel to us today because Paul preached it to them. Israel drew near to the Lord because Isaiah was heard that voice in the Temple. All of them rose up from their sinfulness because they did not fail to see and to hear the action and word of God in their midst.

Like Isaiah, today we are in the Temple. Like Paul, many are in the fast lane, in the middle of city life, rushing here and there to make a name for themselves. Like Peter, some of us have been in the boat a long time, and we get tired. Yet we have inherited a tradition that must be handed on if we are to live. It is a tradition filled with promise and hope. It is a tradition of Justice and of Peace. It is a tradition of Forgiveness, tolerance, kindness and mercy.

If you listen very carefully, you will still hear the question: “Who will I send?” If you look very carefully, you will perceive who is in this boat with us, and what he asks of us. “And Jesus said to them: “Do not be afraid……..and they left everything and followed him.”