April 24, 2005

Acts 6:1-7 + 1 Peter 2:4-9 + John 14:1-12

We have passed through a very significant time that is ripe with opportunities. In the grand scheme of things however, it is a blink in history. It would be prideful on our part to suggest that is “best of times” or the “worst of times.” It is simply the only time we have,

and we did not get here without a lot of good times and bad times. What is most extra ordinary is that at this time there is this globalization unknown before in human history.

We are becoming one human family. The age of media communication, with its images and voices makes it so. While an unprecedented experience unfolds for us in an instant, it brings with it a new level of experience and with it a challenge that is timeless.

In years past, Popes died and were elected over there before people 10,000 miles away every heard about it. What has taken place in Rome this month has taken place in every room where there is a television. Suddenly the clock or the position of the sun means nothing.

There is no time. People were watching a funeral in the morning, the afternoon, and the middle of the night. They were watching a chimney at breakfast, dinner, and bedtime. It was an experience shared in every language and on every continent. It unified and focused the attention of the world for a brief moment on something other than war, natural disaster, and scandal. As I have reflected on my own experience of this, some parts of it in a foreign country,

I think we are getting a sense of what Pentecost was like for the apostles. That language thing with them is even part of our experience. But the biggest issue the events of the past month raises concerns our identity and what it means to be church.

There is risk involved in sitting with the images we have seen this month if we fail to ask what it means. If someone were to simply look at the screen and fail to ask what it means, they would be left to think that all of this commotion, all of these people, all of pageantry and celebrated tradition, with its music and costumes and customs and language is about a man from Bavaria who is now called Benedict.

It’s not about him. It’s about us, because it’s about church.

Luke, in the first reading today reminds us of what it means to be a church. He reminds us that service is an essential constituent of church service to God, service to the word, service to one another,

and in particular, service to the poor and the disadvantaged. We gather here close to the Feast of the Ascension – about to recall that mystery of Christ’s presence and absence. Addressing that experience to his disciples, Jesus promised that they (meaning we would do the works he did and works far greater than his.

He left us an agenda to be accomplished in the interim between his advents Part of that agenda is to continue being a church who fully and truly reflects the loving concerns of Christ for humankind.

The truth that springs from Pentecost and was affirmed by the last Council is that you, lay people do not belong to the church,

nor do you have a role in the church, you are the church.

The risk we face with all the images on television this month is thinking that one man is the church, when in fact, that crowd in Saint Peter’s Square, and every one of us there vicariously through the media are the church, filled with the Holy Spirit and enlivened by God’s gifts of faith, hope, and love.Endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, everyone of you shares in the threefold office of Christ: priestly, prophetic, and royal. The people of God enjoy true equality, genuine freedom, profound dignity, global responsibility, a sense of vocation, and a personal union with Christ and his mission. Everyone one of you has a proper and indispensable share in the mission of the church that no one else can fulfill. “Let someone else do it.” is not an acceptable attitude, because what you fail to do, no one else can do.

On Monday, some of our finest young people will stand around this altar to be CONFIRMED in this faith, in this unique relationship with Jesus Christ as a church. It will be a true and authentic Pentecost in this place, a moment of transformation, of inspiration, and rebirth. They shall become what we have all been called to be: church, ecclesia, holy people whose lives bear witness to presence and power of God. As thousands came to faith and were baptized on that first Pentecost, so it can be again because of the unique and awesome experience of this past month. Millions of people have seen us, become curious, and they are asking questions about us as a church, and we must not miss this opportunity to share what we have, bring them to this place, and open their lives to the Gospel and the fullest relationship with Christ the Risen Lord. There is no one in this church who has not had someone say to them this month: “What do you think of the new Pope?” or “Wasn’t John Paul great?”  Behind that question and the experience that gives to rise to it is an opportunity, because this whole experience has not been about John Paul or Benedict. It is about us. No one should be left uninvited or feel unwelcome in the kingdom of God as we live it in this church.

April 17, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 2:14,36-41 + 1 Peter 2:20-25 + John 10:1-10

On Monday I will begin my thirty-eighth year sharing in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. It is a thought that brings more memories than you can imagine; but I am not much for looking back except to study where I’ve been in case I might be going around in circles. I prefer to look ahead, and these are good days for doing that. Only three of those years have passed here in the community of Saint Mark, but when there are only memories left and nothing ahead, I suspect that these years will be among the best, because in the big picture, things only seem to be getting better and because you have been so kind, so positively responsive, supportive, and encouraging. You have prayed me through serious illness, and been more patient with my recovery than me. You have challenged me to hold more firmly to the Word of God, and to celebrate that Word made flesh in the Liturgy, and you have given me reason every day to get up rejoicing. As I give thanks to God this weekend for the voice I heard calling me here, I also give thanks to you. The church always chooses this Sunday as the Day of Prayer for Vocations. I am always at a loss when it comes to finding the words and the way to speak about Vocation, especially a vocation to priesthood. I think it is because it is so profoundly personal, spiritual, and unique. No one ever really gave me a great talk or perfect argument for being a priest. A sister simply said one day: “You ought to be a priest.” and along the way, a friend once said when I was thinking of changing the direction of my life: “You have to be a priest – you already are one to me.” So, I have never been able to give some convincing insight about this way of life that lately is often so ridiculed and suspect. It just seems best for me to live it out openly, joyfully, sincerely, and personally in the hope that others might see what I perceived in the priests of my past; that it is possible to do this and be this and find yourself again and again standing close to God. That happens, my friends, when I am close to you. So, if God wishes it so, I give you another year of my life freely, gratefully, and joyfully. Thank you for the past 37, and especially I thank those of you who have known me for many of those years. As God said in Genesis, “It is Good.”

I am going to be very brief this morning with one simple insight into this Gospel because I want you to give some time and attention to someone coming after Communion. With an image so powerful, sentimental, and well known, this Gospel is loaded with issues to tease out and ponder. It gets even more profound when it is anticipated as we have with the Twenty-third Psalm. Yet, think of this…………

John is writing his Gospel to a community that is filled with dissenting voices. He describes them as thieves and robbers. They are likely inauthentic leaders, whose voices and directions do not lead to salvation.

This Gospel speaks just as clearly to us as to those second and third generation followers of Christ. There are too many voices. There are too many ways to go in this life; too many gates, too many paths, too many glittering, promising options that lead us no where but deeper into loneliness, emptiness, and need.

One voice, one way, one shepherd leads, protects, supplies our need. It is nothing we can buy or earn. When you start to listen to that voice and silence all the other voices, you begin to ask what God is saying and what God’s wants from you. Young people begin to view their future in terms of what God asks them to do with their gifts and offers with the opportunities that unfold before them. They are no longer interested in how much money they make, what car they can drive, or where they live. They are simply interested in and concerned about how to make a difference in this life and lead others to the gate of this Gospel figure. Those of us who are further along in life have the same concern and focus, but our resources are real, not yet to come; and so we ask, wonder, and pray about what to do best with what we already have, how to use our very real opportunities, time, talent, and money to open the gate of this Gospel wider for ourselves and others.

For all of us, only deliberate, daily attentiveness to the authentic voice of God will keep us clear about which voice is God’s and what will lead us by the Spirit to holiness and everlasting life.

April 9, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 2:14,22-23 + 1 Peter 1:17-21 + Luke 24:13-35

When you tease out all the theological, sacramental, and paschal issues from this Gospel, it settles down to one simple issue,

something even a child can grasp: Recognition. The 31st verse puts it right out there: “Their eyes were opened…..” That by way of observation is the passive voice in grammar. In other words, it was not something they did. Something happened to them.

Then in terms of grammar, the verb changes from passive to active.

“They recognized Him.” Now that is a matter of something they did,

and this is the issue put before us today.

From our reading of the scriptures, we learn that some did not recognize immediately. It took the apostles from the Easter till Pentecost to get it right. They had several opportunities, and yet they did not always get it right. Even after Pentecost, not everyone recognize. Both the first reading and the Gospel show that people

do not always recognize what they see. This is not just because they forget. In the first reading people did not recognize Jesus

because he did not fit their expectations. Peter had to spell it out for them, make connections, and then finally some did get it.

On the road to Emmaus, those disciples did not get it even when Jesus himself spelled it out for them. It was not until the breaking of bread that they could recognize what they were seeing.

So, it is with us today. Something has happened to us: Baptism and Confirmation. It has opened our eyes, and as a result, we can do some recognition. For some of us it takes a while. It takes breaking open the word of God, and it might even take an experience of the Eucharist; but we must come to recognition. We must recognize what it is we see; recognize who it is we see; and where it is that we see. We must not rely on our expectations alone.

Those expectations can easily lead us astray. We must rely on the Word of God and upon the Eucharistic Breaking of Bread. We will never be able to recognize the presence of God unless we do so.

It is impossible to see and recognize God present in a tsunami disaster if our expectation is that God is only a big benevolent source of good feelings and pleasure. It is impossible to see and recognize God if our expectation is that God will do what we want when we want it. People who have opened eyes can see God in disappoint, disaster, and sadness. They can recognize God in sickness because they can see God in the sick. They can recognize God in a tragedy and a disappointment, because they know the story of Jesus and the fulfillment of the Prophets.

They can recognize God in the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill who wander our streets and sleep under our bridges because their eyes have been opened by the Word of God. They can recognize God in the people beside them in these pews, before and behind them in the procession to communion, because with eyes opened,

we can see with recognition the presence of God who answered the one long and great cry of human the human heart: “Stay with us.”

We are never alone when we see with recognition what God has done for us and with us in Jesus Christ. For this we have every reason to give thanks again today, to rejoice together in each other,

and to live in hope, in faith, and in confidence that if we continue to break open the Word of God and Break the Bread of this Eucharist, we shall see and we shall recognize Him who has come to stay with us through every trial, tragedy, and even death itself.