April 29, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 13:14,43-52 + Revelation 7:9, 14-17 + John 10:27-30

“Search for signs of intelligent life in the Universe” is the name of a play by JaneWagoner published in 1986. In it we find Trudy, a bag lady. She is a creative consultant for some alien visitors who are on an expedition searching for intelligent life in the universe. They are looking at us wondering if they have found any. Now Trudy used to be a creative consultant with Nabisco. Her job was simple: increase cracker sales. She says: “I got this idea to give Cracker consciousness to the world.I said, “Mr Nabisco, sir! You could be the first to sell the concept of munching to the Third World. We got an untapped market here! These countries got millions and millions of people don’t even know where their next mal is coming from. So, the idea of eatin’ between meals is something’ just never occurred to them!”

Before long she recognizes the evil of her plan, and her mind snaps. She describes then the problem she has with reality: “I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. After all, what is reality anyway?  Nothin’ but a collective hunch. My space chums think reality was once a primitive method of crowd control that got out of hand. In my view, it’s absurdity dressed up in a three-piece business suit. I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”

The problem with “reality” as this world sees it, is that it is always there, insisting that we get with the program, face the facts, be practical, use common sense and be reconciled with this world’s power. This “reality” is the “Great Ordeal” which the saints endure as we just heard it in the second reading today. There is a great struggle, a struggle of loyalties that poses a bigger threat than death. It is a grim conflict of loyalties that leaves a follower of Christ in genuine doubt wondering where duty lies. How do we see the world: from what it seems to be or from the point of view of what God intends for the world?

The Book of Revelation is a case study in how the early church audaciously confronted the world through its worship. John’s communities are bold enough to set their worship head-to-head with the worship of the mighty Roman Empire. They do this in spite of what might be called; “common sense.” This “common sense” would say that the real superpower in the world is Babylon, or Rome, or if written today, the United States. Revelation insists that the true superpower in the world is the Lamb of God whose power is made manifest, not in weapons of violence but in the sword of truth that proceeds from his mouth.

The problem we face today is the same: how do we not cave in to a common sense that defines reality as the power of wealth, violence, and exploitation of the environment, rather than as the Lamb of God who is before the throne? The Book of Revelation is about Worship and getting worship right. What is it followers of Christ worship: prestige, power, wealth, success, national security? I guess any of us could answer that by looking at our check stubs. Then we’re back to “reality”.

In John’s Revelation followers of Christ call this “reality” into question. Their “common sense” calls them to get with a different program, one proposed by Jesus of Nazareth. Despite what some fundamentalists may try to tell you, Revelation is about the end of the world, but not about creation ending in some cataclysm that will transport the faithful into some spiritual “other world” distinct from this one. God does not intend escape, God intends victory. Revelation is about the end of this world as we know it…….. violent, cruel, selfish, unjust, hungry, lonely, and broken. Revelation is about the coming world, transformed not destroyed. It is about the world as God intends: a world where those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb will hunger no more, will have shelter, suffer no more, and have their tears wiped away.

Seeing the world as God intends it to be is empowering. It gives us the courage to be angry at suffering not reconciled to it. It gives us the courage to be angry at injustice, not shrug and say that it’s just the way it is. It gives the church boldness when facing natural disasters like hurricanes or the smaller more intimate pain of human grief.

John’s vision can transform our understanding of the present. We can see God at work wherever captives are freed, the hungry fed, the homeless wrapped in the warmth of human love, or those fleeing poverty and oppression being welcomed with joy and respect not looked upon as a threat to jobs we won’t take anyway or as a drain on our “system”.

The white-robed: that’s us those Baptized and washed in the blood of the Lamb must not be intimidated by “reality” but rather begin to see this world as God sees it, and let that vision transform us, open our eyes, and make bold our witness. John’s vision of the future is proclaimed here to give us courage, to give us strength, to give us something more than life without end. It can give us the “fullness of life” which is what Jesus offers us, not unending life. It is a full life we are promised, not just one that goes on and on or starts up after death. John’s Gospel describes eternal life not in terms of duration but in terms of fullness. It is life with and for God which Jesus reveals, and it begins when people through faith and love commit themselves to the kind and quality of life that Jesus embodies.

Today the culture of death seems to envelop our lives at the very center of American life, and from the killing fields of political, ethnic, and religious wars, the plagues of pandemics, and even to schoolyards. The promise of present and future eternal life seems fragile. Yet the Good Shepherd promises his flock and those not of his fold that no human life is meaningless or forgotten by God. Love, joy, and life await even those whose lives, barely unfolding, were snatched away, when “God will wipe away every tear form their eyes.”

April 8, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 10:343-43 + 1 Corinthians 5: 6-8 + John 20: 1-9

With some amusement I was entertained this past winter with news reports that an ancient ossuary had been found with inscriptions that led some to speculate that it contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth. My amusement at the enthusiasm of the reporters and the speculation of many was short-lived when I began to realize how poorly we have communicated our faith and our experience: the purpose of our assembly here today.

The faith of Christians does not rest upon an empty tomb, nor upon the absence of a body or bones. Our faith rests upon the continuing experience of the Risen One: upon our experience of Christ living among us. Somehow we have failed to make that clear, failed to realize and make it obvious that Resurrection Faith is more than curiosity about an empty tomb. It is a summons to return to the words and deeds of Jesus. When we get that right, a box of bones isn’t going to make any difference.

If we fail to get that right, fail to remember that the Resurrection is about experience, then faith degenerates into intellectual assent, dogmas, and tenets of faith over which people can and do argue, debate, accuse, blame and criticize and to our shame, sometimes even go to war! Those who address the Resurrection as though it were an idea become world-weary, and the cynicism of prosperity leaves them with no way to resist much less recognize death here and now. They are left with a pitiable hope for the next world as f death were an enemy awaiting us at the end of this life; something off in the future.

But it isn’t. Death is not something yet to come, private and personal. Death is everywhere every day. It is a power here and now that strangles the life out of people. There is economic death of those we allow to die of famine. There is political death for the countless who live under oppression. There is social death for the handicapped, gay people, the lonely, abused, and any who seem to be “different.” There is the noisy death that comes from bombs and missiles, torture and violence. There is the quiet death of the apathetic and those who decide to remain ignorant and live in denial. There is plenty of death, and you don’t have to wait for it to come later. Whatever threatens to diminish or destroy life is near at hand.

Catholics today are summoned to live, proclaim, and celebrate the victory of life by resisting every form of death and violence that saturates our culture.  It is our privilege first, and then our duty to bring faith to bear upon death and revolt and protest against it while preserving every form of life.

The raising of Jesus is God’s protest against death and against all who work for death.  We are here to affirm and recognize God’s passion for life and for all those threatened and burdened by death. It means rising above apathy and misery and climbing out of cynicism and denial.

We have to get it straight about what went into that tomb before we can understand what was left and what came out. More went into that tomb than a dead body. Hatred went in there. Envy and Lies were put in that tomb. Power, Violence, Abuse, Betrayal, and Jealousy:  that is what was buried in that tomb along with the body of one victim of all those things.

There was also something else. Love was buried in there, a love that knew no limits or boundaries; a love that embraced and included everyone. Forgiveness was buried in there: forgiveness for those who asked for it, and for those who didn’t.  Mercy was in there; the kind of mercy that tempers judgment and condemnation. What came out? Does love die? I don’t think so. The love of my parents isn’t dead. Anyone of you who have buried a loved one knows that love does not die even when a body is buried. Does Forgiveness die?  I don’t think so. The forgiveness to which Jesus bore witness lives on every time we embrace another with understanding patience. So what are we doing here? What’s this all about? All of this is not about a box with or without bones. It is about Life. It is about Love. It is about Mercy and Forgiveness, and it is about our faith, and our duty celebrate, live, and rejoice in what came out of that tomb and what God has chosen to leave buried in there.

April 7, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Luke 24: 1-12

It seemed so immovable. Rolled in place and set with a seal, that stone was there to stay. So, they thought, but not everyone thought so. Therein lies the news we share tonight. Those women did not think it was there to stay.  Heading off to the tomb, they are wondering who would help roll it away.

We have our own versions of that stone in our lives. Every one of us here has felt what it’s like to be in a tomb: what it’s like to have a big stone in our way, what it’s like to be trapped, blocked, or held back from something we want, need or have dreamed of.

We have stones of resentment, long nurtured injuries that keep us entombed in bitterness or anger and rob us of Joy. We have stones of the past, mistakes we’ve made, failures, disappointments, and broken dreams that rob us of Joy. We have stones of self-doubt and depression, stones of old memories and shadows of a past that haunt us and steal our Joy. We have the stones of ignorance and prejudice, unbelief and doubt, stones of fear and timidity, stones of independence and stubbornness that have been in our way, blocked our growth, and stifled the work of the Spirit.

But we are here, all of us because those stones have not been as permanent as we thought. A glimmer of light as dim as a candle shines into the darkness of all that stuff with a flicker of hope that gives us reason to think like the women of this Gospel that someone will roll back those stones.

We are in this holy place, priests and deacon, sponsors, baptized and confirmed, children and grandparents, friends and neighbors all because someone has rolled back the stones that have kept us apart, kept us in the dark, and kept us from the light of a resurrection day.

The story of these women is our best news, and they are great teachers,

for they came to that tomb in hope and certain that someone would roll back the stone that kept them from Jesus. Little did they know along the way what it might all mean and what would happen when they found the stone rolled back and what they would become because of it.It shall not be different for us. The stones have to go. Expect that they will, be confident that by your hope and by the power of Life itself in Jesus Christ all the stones will roll away.

This is the news we share this night.  This is the way we walk to the tombs that darkness, sin, and Satan may have prepared for us: singing the Alleluia of Life itself. Walk together, stay together, preserve the oneness of this holy night. I believe that they found that empty tomb and then found the Risen Lord because of their oneness, because the sin and sadness of death, the violence, hatred, anger, power, and envy of the days before did not break them apart, scatter them in weakness, nor destroy the bond and unity for which Jesus had prayed just before his death.

It shall be so for us. Stay together – that is the essence of “church.” Look at the ministers at this altar. It is a vision of the church. Three continents, cultures, colors, and people all one in Christ’s church. In that unity, no stone stays put, not stone is too heavy, no stone can keep us from the risen Christ.

Be Joyful, Be confident, Be grateful. Be faithful. Christ is risen, and we shall rise again with him by the power of His Spirit.

April 6, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 + Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 + John 18:1-19:42

When I stood in downtown Oklahoma City at the corner of Harvey and Northwest 5th street on April 19, 1996, everyone around me was asking one question: “Why?” For several days following, I was down inside the parking garage of that bombed building with rescue workers. I was there for hours with time to pray and time to wonder.

On April 20th, there was a different focus to it all, and something came over me that I know recognize was a gift of insight that could have come from nowhere else but the Holy Spirit who was very much present in that scene of horror. I stopped wondering “Why” and have never done so since.  Only two questions make sense in the face of such a tragedy. “What does this mean?” and “What am I going to become because of this?”

When I read, pray, and proclaim the Passion of Christ, those two questions rise up in me again, and I have found some intriguing insight into the suffering and death of Jesus from the Letter to the Hebrews which we just heard. It is often overshadowed by the powerful reading from Isaiah and the Proclamation of the Passion itself, but this year, I want to draw your attention back to that Epistle.

The author of Hebrews speaks of Jesus as the “Great High Priest” who learned obedience from what he suffered, being made perfect in his suffering.  To begin to understand this and move toward some answer to the two big questions in the face of this tragic death, it is necessary to understand the traditional role of the High Priest in Judaism.

Once a year, in the Temple at Jerusalem, the High Priest offered sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people. Before he could do that, he offered a sacrifice for his own sins committed that year, so that he would be pure and holy making the communal sacrifice perfect. It was on the level of sin that the High Priest could relate to the people. This is what the people and the High Priest had in common; sin.

But Christ “The High Priest” had no sin, and so could not relate to us. There is nothing in common.  Here is where the author of Hebrews saw the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. By suffering and by dying, Christ now can relate to us. He shares something with us. We have something in common. The sacrifice he offered was so perfect that the need for an annual repetition was finished. I have begun to believe that this is what Jesus meant when he said: “It is finished.”

His obedience to the will of His Father was complete. It was not that God wished him to suffer, but that God wanted Christ to identify with us completely even to the point of suffering and death. Even more so, Christ was obedient because God wanted forgiveness to be made perfect, and so we find the obedient servant even forgiving his executioners, those who denied him, and those who betrayed him. Obedience is what led Christ the High Priest to accept even death in order to relate to the suffering in our lives.

Through the Letter to the Hebrews then, we know the answer to the questions; all of them.

What does the Passion and Death of Christ mean?

It means God knows from experience our suffering, loneliness, and pain.

And it means that those who experience suffering are close to God.

What do we become because of it?

Holy and Redeemed, forgiven, chosen, and loved by God

who has reached out to us in the person of Christ and called us His own.

There is in this Biblical Wisdom even a hint about “Why” this happened.

But only those who love and understand how sacrifice works,

how easy it is to make a sacrifice,

to give up something or even one’s life for those who are loved.

What at first sounds like a tragedy, a horrible, cruel, and senseless death is really a love story that leads us deep into the mystery and wonder of a God who wills not that we suffer, but that we love enough to sacrifice and forgive one another and so come to perfection.

April 15, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 15:12-16 + Psalm 118 + Revelation 1:9-11, 12-13, 17-19 + John 20: 19-31

What John’s Gospel explores in the experience of Thomas is not about doubt, but about faith and how one comes to it. Thomas has been absent for whatever reason. Who can judge or explain what grief will cause and how someone filled with grief will behave? They were all grief stricken. Who can judge or explain what fear will cause and how someone willed with fear will behave? They were all frightened. For some reason which I suspect is rooted in grief and fear, Thomas has not been there with the others on the first day of the week.

Those who have been together on the first day of the week believe and are filled with faith in the presence of Christ. Their faith has come from an experience of understanding. Together they have begun to understand and grasp the meaning of the death of Jesus. How did they do that? From being there together and from their pouring over those ancient scriptures that was always a part of their gatherings.  Consequently, for them, “Seeing the Lord” was not a matter of physical sighting. It was an awareness expressed as we so often do when we reflect with wonder and memory and finally something dawns on us and becomes obvious. We still say: “I see what you mean.”

This “seeing” in John’s Gospel is code language for knowing the revelation of Christ at such a depth that life is changed.

Thomas was not there, and so he did not come to see until he arrived. At which time, a struggle takes place: is faith a matter of the brain, intellect, or is it a matter of experience? It would seem from what went on between them that no amount of conversation, talking or convincing was going to matter or bring Thomas to faith. It had to be a matter of experience. What did he experience there; a vision, an apparition, or a revelation? Which would you prefer? Which would lead you to faith? We see things all the time, but we do not always know what they mean.

The assembled disciples had come to read the signs of the open wounds in the hands and side of Christ. Those wounds were openings through which they could perceive or see into the interior life of Jesus Christ. They were and still are a way in. That wound in his side was like a birth channel from which in nature blood and water flow at the time of birth. That wound in his side is a birth passage into his heart, into the inner reality that he is; and they came to understand. They “got it.” They were finally able to “see” what he was and what they were because of it.

Thomas you notice never does really touch anything. What he experiences there in the company of his believing friends leads him to see the channel available to an inner life with God. That coming of Christ in their midst seems to be a regular happening. Every first day of the week Jesus is with them. When they gather, he gathers with them. The doors are locked. He emerges from within them, and when Thomas is with them, He is present to Thomas.

What Jesus encourages Thomas to do is not touch flesh, but to reach for the divine; to look at wounds, at suffering, at the scars of violence and the evil of hatred and see into them something of God. It did not start in his brain or with his intellect. It started with his desire to be in the assembly and with his willingness to look at the wounds and brokenness his own lack of faith and courage had allowed. He had spoken with such bravado and macho courage when Jesus spoke of his coming agony. But he did nothing to stop it, and in fact, during the whole time of agony, trial and persecution, we never even hear that was on the scene.

Thomas came to believe by spiritually grasping the meaning of the death and suffering of Jesus. Through that understanding and his experience among fellow believers, he received the divine life that is stronger than death. So maybe it be for all of us here on this first day of the week, and may the transformation of our lives make others at least a little curious.

April 5, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Exodus 12: 1-8,11-14 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + John 13:1-15

Before we can get to Communion we must get to the point that this day is also about food. It may not be politically correct to say it, but while much of the world is starving, Americans are eating themselves to death.  Latest statistics record that 60% of us are overweight. The chronic obesity of children is an alarming public health issue. Meanwhile there is a multi-million-dollar diet industry in place. It is also a fact that other than the Bible, Cookbooks are the largest selling items in our book stores. The supermarket has become a temple of excess with music, lighting, deli counters, sushi bars, coffee bars, and all kinds of visual seductions designed to prompt us to buy more than we need and especially things we should not eat. Just this week I read an article about how junk food ads are scheduled at times children watch television.

Living to eat has become the focus of much of our culture.

While eating to live is what we are about as a church.

We live in a fast-food world with a microwave beeping, grabbing a sandwich or chips on the run and eating in our cars! This is a long way from Sacramental living which is what we are called to. Sacramental living requires something else. The Table is the center of life TV tables, card table or stools that face no one or a television will not do. In Sacramental living, no one eats in a hurry. No one eats and runs. For believers, there is no running from communion. There is too little of it anyway. There is a question to be asked about a society that builds homes with huge home theaters and recreation rooms and no dining rooms.

There is no mistaking that the largest piece of furniture in this room is a table. It is in the center, and everything and everyone faces the table.

While through the passage of time it has taken on the language of sacrifice and been called an altar; from our very beginnings, it was a table around which followers of Christ gathered to eat and be nourished. The heart of our identity is this table and food we share gathered around it. It shapes us, and it forms our values and our lives. We are a people of communion. We do not eat alone, or in a rush. We do not grab a bite and run.

It is no wonder our children and young people have no respect, interest in, nor hunger for the Sacrament of the Eucharist when they know nothing of communal and family dining. The dress, the behavior, the pace all betray a collapse of Sacramental life to which this night and what it recalls puts before us.

We are in communion, with one another, with the whole church and with God through, with, and in the Body of Christ which we share in this place.

Consequently, world hunger is not a political or economic issue to be solved by diplomats or politicians. It is a moral issue to be solved by believers. We don’t gorge ourselves with our faces in the plate unaware or uninterested in those around us. That is what gluttons do. We don’t grab and run, nor do stroll in at any hour as though it were drive through or take away.

In a world that continues to hammer away at us to take more and more, this gift from God teaches a different lesson: Less is more. Anyone who looks at the banquet on this altar would have reason to think: “There is not enough.” But there always is. Here the issue the glutton cannot ever address between quality and quantity is finally settled. Eating here is more than a refueling operation. Here, we eat to live, not live to eat. So the opposite of a glutton is not someone on a diet who counts out calories and carbohydrates, nor is it someone who fasts. The opposite of a glutton is someone for whom food is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a person who uses food and loves people, instead of loving food and using people.

Decide tonight why are eating here? Who are you eating with? Who is hungry while you are satisfied, and why are they hungry? Communion gives life. Take. Eat. This is my Body broken for you. Take. Drink. This is the cup of my blood poured out for you. It isn’t much; but to those who live in the mystery of sacrament, it is more than enough. Inside this awesome reality we never find ourselves alone or lonely; for we will have discovered the mystery of Holy Communion.

April 1, 2007 At Saint Mark Church Norman, OK

Isaiah 50:4-7 + Philippians 2: 6-11 + Luke 22: 14-23:56

One more time this week, the Passion of Christ will be proclaimed in our churches. It is long, ponderous, and painful to hear if you really listen. Like the Stations of the Cross, it is story of brutality, savage and cruel. It is the story of a society that has become comfortable with execution, and a society capable of executing the innocent, and afterward congratulating itself for having done what had to be done. It is the story of a society that entertains itself with violence; a society that cheers at fights, dismisses the death of the innocent with a shrug and goes about its grim business as though it never happened.

While our humanity may have grown some, it can at least recognize Christ as the Son of God in history. We are at least not proud of what we did in the past on Calvary. But on the whole, we are today only a little less comfortable with the evil of violence than were the crowds in Pilate’s court. We are barely outraged by brutality, and it still sells big time, and it flows through cables into our homes. We have only become a little more sensitive than was Pilate to the presence of God in the people we hurt physically, emotionally or economically. And those who oppose it are not much more numerous today than they were in Pilate’s time, and certainly no more effective.

So, we tell the story again as we have for centuries. It becomes hauntingly familiar, and the more we realize that we are not proclaiming a historical event, the more it might really bring about our conversion. For this is not the story of something that happened a long time ago when there were Romans and Herod lived. It has happened today and may happen again tomorrow if we just stand and watch, or cheer and clap.

Christ did not choose to be crucified. He chose to be faithful. It was his fidelity that saves us, not the suffering to which that fidelity led him. The crucifixion was pure and simple human violence at its most brutal and most mindless. Christ was really only one among hundreds of millions over the centuries who have fallen victim to human violence. The fact that we begin to recognize that is our first clue and our first hope to asking why it should continue, and by asking that question, the first movement of salvation begins.

The palms we have held in our hands are ancient signs of peace. We have taken them, blessed them, and now will carry them home. Where they end up and where they are seen must be a place of peace. Those who hold them must be people of peace, for the cry that goes up from palm holders is a cry for peace.

My dear friends, make the meaning of the palms stronger in your life today. If we do not begin to greet one another with the palm, we shall continue to greet one another with the cross. Which shall it be in our lifetime, the palm or the cross?