January 28, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Jeremiah 1:2-5, 17-19 + Psalm 71 + 1 Corinthians 12: 31-13:13 + Luke 4:21-30

We heard the first half of this Lukan story last week, and from the way things were going, it’s hard to imagine why they turned out so badly. Or is it? For all of us, this story, and the experience it narrates are all too familiar. Parents know this experience. You give your children all they ask for and more. They are cheerful and full of joy. Then they want more, but you want their room cleaned up. The door slams and the pout begins.

This Jesus of Luke’s Gospel in just four chapters has been through a lot, and he’s learned a lot. He’s been out to the desert after sensing or hearing his call. Out there, he has refused the temptation to use his call, his place, his gifts for himself. He would not make bread out of rocks. He would not take risks to enjoy God’s rescue. He would not use his gifts for his own popularity and enjoy the perks the tempter wanted him to think he had coming. Fresh from that desert and that growing self-understanding, he comes home to Nazareth, to the synagogue as was his custom, and he confronts the community with the same temptation.

They are the people of God. They like that. They like the notion of being chosen. It’s good for their ego, especially when they are an occupied nation. They like this man with his talk of divine favor and human liberation. They speak favorably of him. Their sense of privilege is growing, and he confronts it head-on. He thinks, if he is not exempt for duty and sacrifice, service and love, why not them? So, he reminds them of an unpopular strand of their tradition. They were not chosen by God to form a closed society and become the sole beneficiaries of divine blessings and abundance. They were chosen to bring the benefits of that God to all people. The focus is not on them, but on what they can do for others.

Their sense of privilege suddenly is challenged with a sense of duty. Their blessings now come with expectations of generosity. Their freedom now has some responsibility. They can’t keep what they have. They can’t use it all for themselves. They can’t claim any right to more. And they suddenly get the point, and they don’t like it.

We are, in a sense, sitting in the synagogue again, as is our custom. He is still among us, and he has taken up the scroll of the Prophet. He looks us square in the eye and raises the question us he raised once before.

It’s a simple one, but it’s a tough one. Can you and will you do good things when you don’t get anything out of it? Only those who have faced the responsibility and truth of what it means to be chosen can say “Yes” to this question. Only those who look at everything they have and realize that it’s not about them nor do they have it all because of anything they have done can say “Yes.”

These are people who feel no resentment when others get ahead. These are people who are willing to stand back and let someone else go first.

These are people who realize that being number one is not as good as being best. So, he holds up Naaman a Syran and a widow at Zarephath is Sidon, and wonders can we rejoice that these people who have no privilege like us, who have no “rights” to these opportunities get ahead?

If we can rejoice in the well-being and progress of those judged as undeserving, then the Good News and the Promise of this Gospel is being fulfilled in our own hearing.  The message here is: this stuff we have is not for us or because we deserve it, but because God expects us to do something with it for someone else.

January 21, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Nehemiah 8:2-10 + Psalm 19 + 1 Corinthians 12: 12-30 + Luke 1:1-21

The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel who emerges from the shadows of his youth is a man of purpose and direction. He knows who he is. He knows what his life is for and what he should do with his gifts. He is focused, consistent and clear about his life. We never get a sense in Luke’s Gospel that he was self-conscious, doubted what God asked of him, or what direction to take with the choices he faced.

These are not divine qualities, and they ought not be dismissed by some silly Christology that suggests that his Divine Nature made life easy for him. These are human qualities that Luke proposes should be found in those who would be his disciples and follow him. Now Luke does not just suggest that we must be like Jesus as his disciples. He shows us how to become like Jesus. He proposes where these qualities are developed and how to nurture them. This is part of the purpose for this Gospel event today. Jesus of Nazareth defined himself, set his goals, and found his courage to be faithful to his mission he believed God had called him to from his faithful observance of his traditions in the synagogue and his knowledge of the Word of God.

How could it possibly be different for us? We see people all the time, and everyone of us knows someone who just does not seem to “get it”; who simply can’t seem to figure out who they are, where they are going in life, or what to do with their gifts, and many of them are richly blessed. Some of them think they’re here to look good, be attractive be successful in business, yet all the while they are empty and there is a nagging sense that all is not really right. They go around in shallow circles, lonely and uncomfortable with themselves, lonely and fearful that this might be all there is to life.

This cannot so with disciples of Jesus Christ. They know who they are. They know where they are headed. They know what to do with their lives, their gifts, the opportunities that God’s providence supplies. They find things where Jesus found them: in the faithful observance of their religious tradition. They are in church. They are part of that church’s life so much so that they might be called upon to do something as Jesus was called upon to read that day. He was no stranger there. He was not passing through. Most of all, he knew the scriptures. He didn’t just play scriptural roulette and let the scroll fall open. He knew exactly where to find the prophet, and he knew a passage that focused his life and expressed God’s will for him.

I want you to leave here today thinking about that scene with yourself in it. If I walked down into this assembly and handed anyone of you these scriptures, could you find a passage that is for you an expression of God’s will, and a passage that gives your life purpose, meaning, and direction?

If not? Why not? The desire to imitate Jesus is not just a moral imperative

that concerns doing good and showing mercy. It is must also include imitating the whole of his life which also was about fidelity to religious tradition and a firm knowledge of the Word of God. This behavior on his part was the source of his goodness as a human being. It has been so for me, and I hope it shall be so for all of you, especially the young among us who still are discovering who they are and what they shall become.

January 20, 2008 At Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Isaiah 49:3, 5-6 + Psalm 40 + 1 Corinthians 1:1-3 + John 1:29-34

“I did not know him.” John says twice today. “I did not know him.”

As I was sitting with this Gospel text this past week, I remembered those words of Peter in the courtyard of the High Priest. “I do not know him.” Peter said three times that day. That man, Peter will emerge in next Sunday’s Gospel. The two of them will lead us this year toward Lent soon to begin. John and Peter: one who saw the spirit, and one who received the spirit. Both of them by the power of that Spirit become the ultimate model of “Witness”.

One of the major themes of John’s Gospel is that of a “trial”. Jesus is in a literary sense always on trial in John’s Gospel, and this culminates in the long trail narrative before Pilat which is the heart of John’s Gospel. The witnesses come and go. Some lie and some bear witness to the truth. In John’s Gospel, sin is a power arrayed against Jesus, and “world” is often used negatively to depict the organized power of evil. A contemporary parallel would be structural or social sin.

Notice that in the testimony of John, Jesus came to take away sin: Singular, not plural. John’s testimony is that Jesus came to take away the power of sin, to take away this “system” which John calls “the world.” Followers of Jesus should take courage and find confidence because this one we come to know because of John, Peter, and other witnesses will conquer the world.

This Gospel today is both a preview of the theology of John’s Gospel and a summons to faithful witness. True witness is not a matter of pointing out someone’s faults, but a practice of virtue openly, clearly, obviously. Faith without witness is empty and hypocritical.

This world is full of that; full of people who cover their tracks by pointing out the shortcomings and sins of others. This world is full of simple piety that mistakes timid religiosity for fidelity and real virtue They would silence the voices of true witnesses complaining and objecting that religion has no place confronting systems of social sin in this world.

Whatever is in conflict to the teaching of Christ must be confronted with and by the power of the Spirit that has come upon us all. That Spirit is not a “come and go” relationship. If you will allow the expression: “It was not a fly-by” over Jesus or over His Assembled Apostolic Church on Pentecost. What we hear John say today is that the spirit “REMAINED” upon him………… exactly as it does upon Peter and those who are church gathered together in faith.

The Spirit is upon us. It remains upon us so that we may bear witness to the truth. We cannot say: “I did not know him.” any longer. Our witness if it is truly prophetic will not simply be voices raised in judgment of evil, which by itself does no good: but rather voices raised, example given in clear affirmation and practice of good. We must do good, not just be good. Being good is only half a life Doing good is the rest – the fullness of life: the life of the Spirit, the life of those who can and do bear witness by the power of a Spirit-filled life. This is the Life and the Spirit into which we too have been Baptized.

January 1, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Numbers 6: 22-27 + Psalm 8 + Galatians 4:4-7 + Luke 2: 15-21

So often the Motherhood of Mary gets lost in all the other dogmas and theological issues rooted in our Christian tradition of Mariology. Annunciations, Assumptions, Coronations, Conceptions all center around one essential reality, motherhood. Even in Koran Islam recognizes this motherhood. Mary is mentioned there by name more often than in the New Testament. I suppose it’s because it seems so common and ordinary

that the great minds of the church find it more challenging to explore all those other things. Personally, the older I get, and the more wisdom I gain from life and relationships leads me to think this is the premier feast of Mary.

Recent theology entertains the idea that Mary is the ideal disciple of Jesus as one who hears God’s word and acts upon it while treasuring God’s mysteries in her heart. But that recent theology also ought to entertain the idea that before she became the ideal disciple of Jesus, he learned from her. She nurtured and taught him the traditions of his people and guided him through childhood to maturity. She presented him to the Lord in fulfillment of the Law. She took him to the temple where he is first revealed as “Teacher”. As such, she stands in our tradition first as Mother and model of that exalted vocation: “Motherhood.” It’s not then about car seats, diapers, baby food, and soccer. Motherhood is about leading, teaching, and planting seeds of faith.

For us all, men and women, she becomes the inspiration of contemplation and reflection. She inspires us to consider deeply the significance of events rather than live a bland and shallow life. What Luke suggests is that she stood before life as a participant, not a victim.

When things happened, she did not understand, she could never have stood back and shook her head and wondered, “Why?”. She would have looked at things and wondered, “What does it mean?” and then “What am I going to become because of it.” This is the way people formed in the deepest tradition of our faith stand before tragedy and pain. They see violence but do not become violent. They experience loss and tragedy but do not become bitter and angry, because they ponder these things in their hearts asking the right questions: “What does this mean?” and “What shall I become because of it?” A life by this model is not shallow or easily upset.

Mary inspires us to constant reflection on the truths of our faith, which continue to be made real in life’s experience. She inspires us to fidelity in practicing our faith, practices that are disciplines of soul that lead a community to a clear focus on the presence of God in human affairs.

And so, on this first day of the new calendar year, we can hardly do better than gather in this holy place and invoke the memory of one whose life in human history ushered in a new age. The message of the Church this day is that new beginnings are always possible. We are never condemned to repeat over and over again our past failures or past weaknesses. This is the hope that faith stirs in us for the days to come, and in that hope our Joy is sustained.

Long ago Saint Ambrose stood in the Cathedral of Milan and said this to the assembly: “Let Mary’s soul be in each of you to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. Let her spirit be in each to rejoice in the Lord. Christ has only one mother in the flesh, but we all bring forth Christ in faith.” My dear friends, one week ago at this hour, the Christmas Feast was still being celebrated in the day. Today we may pray in gratitude for God-bearing women, and we reflect that they, too, have conceived Christ in their hearts and are called to bring him forth to a suffering world longing for peace.