March 25, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23 +  Ephesians 2:4-10 + John 3:14-21

Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jeremiah are before this Lent because it’s all about covenant. Jeremiah comes next week. Now the pattern is broken this weekend in order to highlight an important moment in Israel’s historic covenantal journey with God. From a covenant with all creation through Noah, to a Covenant with Israel by Abraham, we have moved from a covenant of love without conditions to a covenant expressed in the law of Moses. It’s final expression in the Old Testament will be put before us next week, just as we move toward the Passion of Christ.

This week, we reflect on what happens when the covenant is broken. The first reading tells us of Israel’s stumble in her journey with God. This reading from 2 Chronicles narrates the circumstances that led God to force Israel into Babylonian captivity in the 6th century B.C. Israel had broken the terms of the Mosaic covenant that God established with her ancestors. Israel was no longer a holy and separate nation. All of Israel, the princes, the priests, and the people were “practicing all the abominations of the nations.” Despite God’s compassion and repeated attempts to have his people change their idolatrous ways, Israel refused to listen to God’s call to conversion.

As Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians, Israel had become “dead in our transgressions.” But “God, who is rich in mercy…brought us to

life with Christ.

The covenants that God established with Noah, Abraham and Moses called Israel into a deeper and more committed relationship with God so that Israel could have eternal life. But sin cut the journey short and forced Israel to stumble. Yet God’s response to this infidelity and sin was His Son, Jesus Christ. “That the world might be saved through him.”

The story of Israel’s journey with God is our story. We stumble again and again.

Like Nicodemus, we simply do not “get it. ” We toy around with taking the Word literally while failing to see what God is doing and who is in our midst. There is more here than a message. There is presence. There is more here than something for the brain and the intellect. There is also something for the heart and for the soul.

As the Gospel episode today concludes, we know nothing of how it goes with Nicodemus. But he returns again much later to stand at the cross. He stands before us today in this liturgy to bring us along, to move us to understanding.

At first, it is all about listening to the Word. and then it turns into action as he takes the lead to bury the crucified Jesus and obviously comfort to the grieving disciples.

Rembrandt did an engraving of the gospel scene of removing the body of Jesus from the cross. In that scene, Nicodemus is of course, responsible, having gone to Pilate to ask for the body. He stands there in fine robes looking on. Shafts of light come from the upper right part of the frame onto the body of Christ reflecting brightly onto the face of Nicodemus. The one who came at first in the night uncertain and full questions now stands for all to see in the light of God’s presence.

This is the heart of our liturgy this weekend. The mission of Jesus is not to condemn, but to save. Like Nicodemus we find this hard to understand. The harsh reality of life in this world would harden our hearts with terrorism, torture, corporate downsizing, and ethnic cleansing. It is an open invitation to be the judge, but our faith in Jesus Christ calls us not to be the judge, but to be the witness.

March 19, 2006 At Saint Philip Neri Church in Midwest City, OK

Opening of Parish Mission at Saint Philip Neri Catholic Church

Midwest City, Oklahoma

Exodus 20: 1-17 + 1 Corinthians 1:22-25 + John 2: 13-15

“All of us are engaged to one degree or another in a personal, ongoing battle with sin and vice, although we may not think of the conflicts with our nature in those terms. Although our anger doesn’t make most of us murders, our lust doesn’t make most of us rapists, and our greed and envy don’t make most of us outright criminals, they together with gluttony, arrogance, and sloth, often make us and those who have to live with us miserable. Moreover, when we give in to our low passions we debase our humanity. Our failure to live up to the best we can morally be is as tragic as the unhappiness our evil causes.”[1] There is a social dimension to all of this as well for which we are responsible. It works its way through our commerce our entertainment, and our whole culture. Pride, greed, and anger profoundly influence domestic and foreign policy. If we truly had generous and compassionate leaders who were imbued with the value of social stewardship rather than greed and ambition, we would not have tolerated the corporate scandals we have endured in the last ten years. “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.”[2]

These sins are about what it means to be human and humane, not about what it means to be perfect or “holy.” This is basic stuff. It concerns the core of what we are, of what we can become, and most importantly, of what we should aspire to be.[3] In the end, the question of what we want to be has an answer most of us would quickly give: happy. We want to be happy. What those of us who share a common faith believe is that happiness is not dependent upon physical or material pleasure. In fact it is often hampered by it. “Our culture teaches that pleasure and possessions are happiness with the result that pleasure is often substituted for happiness and meaning in life.”[4] When a crisis comes along that pleasure cannot resolve a secular person runs to the psycho-therapist. It is not so for us. We have a treasure of wisdom and tradition, teaching and revelation that leads us to a life of virtue and balance, holiness and joy. It is not that pleasure is inappropriate, but that it comes from character and virtue, and a right relationship of one’s self to others. That is where we shall find pleasure.

“If we do not take seriously our capacity for evil, we are unable to take seriously our capacity for good.”[5] There will be no taking credit for the good that we do if we fail to accept the blame for the evil. The tradition we shall reflect upon from now until Wednesday, “The Seven Deadly Sins” does not allow us to compartmentalize our lives. It reminds us that our lives are ours to make. Unlike our bodies so 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. There is more and better in us than we have chosen to become. Accepting the fact that we sin is a summons to life. [6]

We are always inventing gods. It seems to be a characteristic of our age and perhaps every age. The god most popular this day is a god who does not demand much of us, is certainly not a god that punishes, although we don’t mind a reward now and then. The sentimental god of most sappy religious pop music is a god that just pats us on the head like grandpa and sends us on our way. With a god like that, there is certainly no need to trouble one’s self about the devil but there’s the trouble. The devil’s best trick is to convince us that there is no devil.

We recognize evil in others, but if we ever want to see the face of sin, we must look in the mirror. All we see in others is it’s reflection from ourselves. The honest among us know that what we always criticize first in another is the very thing we dislike in ourselves. Sin is our secret from others. Only we know where and how deeply it has taken root in us. Saint John says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

The last words of today’s Gospel speak the truth about us. We are sinners. Sin is in our nature, and so John says: He needed no one to give him testimony about human nature. He was well aware of what was in man’s heart.”[7] When we recognize and confess that sin and our inclination toward it is a part of our nature, and that we alone will never wholly eradicate it, there is at least something for us to do in our lives that will not in the end seem just futile and absurd. We can make sense of our lives because the existence of evil presents us with moral choices, and in making those choices, we form our character. 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.

“Morality is like art, said G.K. Chesterton, “it consists of drawing a line somewhere.”[8] We live in an age in which no lines seem to be drawn at all, or those that have been there are being erased. As a result, our humanity is losing much of its real glory and beauty. It is less and less a mirror of the creator. I want to propose to you that if we can take our sinning seriously we might at least find that we can be interesting again, and so can life itself.

I invite you to give four evenings this week for the sake of the truth, four evenings  in this church in front of the mirror for the sake of life itself, your life. Tonight it will be about Pride and Envy. Monday night about Anger and Sloth.  Tuesday night about Greed, Gluttony, and Lust.  That leaves one night left over, Wednesday for the sake of repentance and healing, for the sake of committing ourselves to the virtues with which we may oppose those sins, and in so doing, rise to life again. 7:00 o’clock.

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March 12, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Genesis 22:1-18 + Romans 8:31-34 + Mark 9:2-10

Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jeremiah stand before us in Lent’s first four weeks,

because it’s all about covenant. Last week the first covenant was our source of reflection; a covenant made without conditions with all of creation, a covenant of promise that sustains our hope for creation restored. And now it is Abraham.

This time there are conditions to the covenant.

The story of a father willing to kill his son in a sacrifice and the thought of a God who would as such a thing is so shocking and troublesome that we risk missing the point. It is not about a father nearly killing his son. It is not about a cruel trick from God. It is about obedience in the richest sense of the word.

The point is that Abraham has been thinking that his future lies in Isaac. The culture of the time prizes the first-born above all else. Abraham’s very identity is there in Isaac, and that is what he is really being asked to sacrifice: his plans for the future, his way of doing things, his expectations about how things are supposed to be. What God is really asking is, “Will you do it my way?” “Will you be obedient, to what I say even when you don’t understand, or it seems as unthinkable as killing your own first son?”

The same request is made in the Gospel: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” The voice does not say: “Hear” him, it says: “Listen”. It is an active response that is expected. It is not just a matter of hearing him the way he just “heard” the gospel. It is a matter of doing what he does and doing what he says, “obedience.”

In our power centered world, we do not always get the point about obedience. We confuse obedience with submission, and they are not the same thing, especially when it comes to virtue. “Obedience” for a disciple of the Lord, is a desire and willingness to look for the will of God in decisions, to listen for the voice of God in what is asked of us. Young people here, when you are obedient to your parents, you are practicing being obedient to God. When you do what your parents or your teachers ask, you getting ready for the day when you can begin to discover what God is asking of you with your life. When Saint Paul suggests that spouses should be obedient to each other, it is the same thing; an effort to see the goodness of God, the will of God, and the presence of God in the other.

Obedience is the condition for the covenant with Abraham. It was the bond between the Father and the Son, and so it shall be with us as well. A willingness to set aside one’s own way, a readiness to abandon one’s own expectations of how things ought to be or how we want them to be, and trust that the Lord will provide all that is necessary is the way into Covenant with God.  Seeking what God asks, listening for God’s will in the scriptures, In the teaching of the church,

and in the depths of one’s own conscience is the beginning of Obedience.

“Will you do it My way?” God still asks. Will you make peace by forgiveness rather than violence? Will you live by dying to yourself? Will you give away what you have to discover what I can give you? Will you choose trust over certainty? Will you believe what you cannot see or cannot prove? Will you trust I know what is best for you?

Consider again, what Abraham did. He did not understand at first, but he was obedient, and after that came his understanding. The disciples did not understand what was going on up on the mountain. Yet, once they began to listen, once they entered into the life of Jesus, the understanding came, and they moved into final and lasting covenant For a people of covenant there is no other way.

March 5, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Genesis 9:8-15 + 1 Peter 3:18-22 + Mark 1:12-15

Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jeremiah all stand before us in Lent’s first four weeks,

because it’s all about covenant. Those of us who have marked ourselves with the sign of fire as I spoke of on Wednesday are a people of covenant, and these forty days all lead to the three holy days that establish, confirm, and seal the covenant we have with God, the covenant made with the blood of Christ in the Eucharist. With the wisdom of the church’s readings for the first four week of Lent, we can clarify our sense of this relationship, renew its purpose, and more profoundly realize our identity as God’s chosen ones.

The covenant with Noah is very simple and primitive. It is the first. It is a covenant with all humankind and all creation, everything in the ark, not just Israel. That will not come until next week with Abraham. A flood brings up memories and images of chaos, the kind of chaos we can imagine at the time of creation. In fact, as the flood ends, the story in verses prior to today’s reading reminds us of the third day of creation, when “the dry land appears.” In other words, the goodness of first creation is restored. Creation is repeated. Creation is restored. Along with it, the goodness God proclaims over His creation.

In the simplicity of Mark’s Gospel account today, we get a glimpse of Paradise restored, and with it a hint of what shall come of the life and ministry of Jesus. He lives in harmony with the wild beasts. It is like the beginning of creation before the sin when in that garden, all creation was in harmony and peace.

This is the promise God first makes to this “Settler”, for that is what “Noah” means: “Settler”. He resettles the earth, and then he give thanks. After that, God makes a promise. There is something of a Noah in us all. We are all settlers on this earth, survivors of chaos and sin, called in obedience (Build and Arc) to resettle this earth as God created it.

Forty days and nights for Noah; forty days and nights for Jesus; forty days and nights for us in Lent. We too are a people possessed by the spirit, “driven”, not “led” as Matthew calls it, but “driven” in this life to radical dependence upon God. In that desert, the mission of Jesus awakens in him. His victory over Satan reverses Adam’s defeat and begins the process of restoring paradise. In the desert of this season, a mission must awaken in us as well. We are possessed by the Spirit too. We have just marked ourselves with the sign of it: ashes remaining from the fire of Pentecost!

A people of covenant are possessed by the Spirit, not possessed by Satan, as Mark calls “evil.” That Spirit empowers our deepest, best selves to reach out in warmth, hospitality, healing, hope and deep care for those around us. Like Jesus, our lives in the embrace of God, wrapped in a rainbow reminder, lead us to bring God near to others.

When Noah finally realized what God was doing all he could do was give thanks, and at that moment God made a promise kept for all ages. So it must be for us: obedience, deliverance, gratitude, and a relationship with God in covenant; spirit led, trust in God, living in harmony, sharing in mission. In these forty days, the mission awakens in us, the immediate presence of God changes everything,

and the Spirit drives us into this world on fire with love, armed with forgiveness,

and confident of our identity as God’s Chosen People.

March 1, 2006

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

There are no ashes without fire. What we shall use in a few moments to mark our foreheads comes from fire. Ashes are a startling reminder that fires have lit our age: Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Vietnam, Baghdad, and even New York. The image of ash covered firemen in New York City is set in our minds and memories. We are citizens of a world aflame with hatred and violence that rains down embers upon the innocent and the guilty alike. Yet now and then we experience a miracle through these ashes. New cities arise. People are restored by hope and by faith. Repentance and forgiveness may fan embers of hatred into flames that warm hearts and cast golden light upon the faces of those who dare to gather around to brave darkness together.

We are a people of fire, the fire of the Spirit. The tongues of fire that gave birth to this church leave a mark on our faces. Year after year, we gather around a fire and carry its light into our assemblies to proclaim the Risen Christ and fan into flame again the fire of faith, the fire of the spirit, the fire of love.

Throughout this long winter, the land around us has burned. The smell of smoke irritated our eyes. The news of destruction saddened our evenings. Even the fear of local fires disturbed our security, and as the dry wind blew, we looked anxiously for rain. But I’m told in the pine forests after a fire, something happens to pinecones that pop open in the heat spilling seeds on the bare ground that quickly sprout and in time bring new life. We know how much more quickly our grass greens up through blackened ash when rain comes in the spring. This fire and the ash it leaves is not all bad. With a little water life returns.

We are working here with powerful ancient symbols that have everything to do with the Paschal Mystery celebrating the victory of life over death. We have and we will again stand around the Easter Fire. We have once and often sprinkled and immersed ourselves and our children in the living waters of baptism.

What’s a little ash in between times except a reminder that we are a people of fire,

a people of the Spirit, a people of Pentecost who know, believe, and live in such a way that even though we are dust, we shall rise again if the power of God’s love

leads us to turn away from sin? Even though we are dust, we shall rise again.