(Ordinary Time 12)

June 24, 2007 at Saint Mark Norman, OK

Isaiah 49: 1-6 + Acts 13:22-26 + Luke 1:57-66, 80

It is Jesus who gives us cause for our celebration today. It was Jesus who said: “Amen I say to you, there has not been born of woman a greater man than John the Baptist.” Because of that divine praise, we step out of Ordinary time today to remember the greatest prophet, to tell again this story of his birth,  and give thanks for the courage and vision that motivated his self – effacing life.

Ages ago, someone with a great insight into creation placed this feast of John’s birth directly opposite the birth of Christ. A celestial phenomenon occurs today, a solstice. Ancient patristic writings tell us that the birth of Jesus was placed on the calendar when the northern hemisphere experienced the longest night and the sun’s reversal toward longer days.

We are at summer’s solstice today with the shortest night and the longest day. Tomorrow the days shall begin to shorten again leaving people of faith with hope that the darkness which will now begin to grow will not prevail. There is Light eternal that will reverse the power of darkness.

So, as we celebrate the Birth of John the Baptist, it is not simply all about him. He would not have wanted it so anyway judging from what I have always considered his greatest line: “He must become more and more. I must become less and less.”  As with every birthday celebration, there is always reason to think of and rejoice with those who gave birth, and so in John’s story the figures of Elizabeth and Zachariah, his parents are remarkable.

If the childless couple had given up, where would we be? If they had tired of waiting for God, or had because of their childless condition turned angry or perhaps bitter from the scorn and reproach of others, what might have happened?

No one would have preached repentance, and so forgiveness would never have been born. No one would have pointed to the unlikely son of a carpenter and so Immanuel would have never been recognized. Had there been no herald, the message would have never be heard. Had no one remembered the promise, it’s fulfillment would be missed. Without a witness, the Truth would be in vain.

And so today we rejoice, remember, and ponder the need to wait in hope for God to act; the memory of what happens when we become less and Christ become more; and the joy that awaits those who never tire of expecting the message of an angel and the power and presence of God.

June 17, 2007 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

2 Samuel 12: 7-1- + Galatians 2:16-21 + Luke 7:36-8:3

This little love story in the seventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel is troubling and far too complex for the superficial and shallow. This silly Pharisee can’t even see what is going on in his own house. All he can see is that she “touched him.” He is so shallow that he cannot see that Jesus touched her first. These Pharisees are too busy “watching” Jesus. They are so busy “watching” that they cannot see him. The preacher of repentance comes to the home of the Pharisee who refuses to repent. Conflict and controversy are sure to come.

These Pharisees have been busy attacking both John the Baptist and Jesus. Their shallow superficial lives cannot begin to deal with the message John and Jesus have brought: a call to change. Unwilling to address the challenge of that message, they content themselves with name calling and character attacks.

 So obsessed with externals, the Pharisee cannot look into the wonder of what is happening in his home. He thinks Jesus cannot see what kind of woman this is, when in fact, Jesus sees quite well not only what kind of woman she is, but also what kind of man he is.

Compassion and Forgiveness are not for the shallow who can only look at the sins of others. To enter into the mystery of compassion and forgiveness one must venture into the depths of one’s own sin, name it, and then recognize the source of grace and mercy. Her presence there in the house of that Pharisee suggests a powerful tension in this gospel that takes the form of a question: Do we love because we are forgiven, or are we forgiven because we first love? Forgiveness is not something earned. We are not forgiven because we love. We are forgiven because we are loved, and the embrace of that love changes everything. It is called “faith.”

This is the real story being told in this Gospel: a story of love, not the love of the woman, but the love God has for her. She has come to realize it, believe it, hear it in the teaching of Jesus, and it brings her to his feet.

The Pharisees who talk among themselves, but not to Jesus can not grasp the simple connection between love and forgiveness. And so, they stay in their shallow little game-playing world pointing at the sins of others, calling Jesus “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” while they fail to see that Jesus is really a friend of God.

That woman who has no name teaches without words a lesson only those who listen to Jesus can learn. The Pharisee will not listen, he will only watch, But she has listened and heard the news of God’s Love. The gift of that love is forgiveness, and the loving response in her heart leads her to service and sacrifice. What the Pharisee does not do for the divine guest in his home, she does because she has heard the news of God’s love for her and risks the scorn and judgment of the Pharisee to enjoy the presence of mercy.

The observers think Jesus is forgiving her sins when he is actually confirming her love. This places the emphasis not on divine forgiveness but on the human openness and courage to respond to that love. It is her faith that saves her in contrast to the Pharisee whose lack of faith keeps him from love.

A holy woman in our own times described sin as the “Ice Age:” a slow advance of cold, a freezing process which we experience and try to forget; the absence of warmth, love, caring, trust and the destruction of our capacity for relatedness. It means being separated from the ground of life, having disturbed relationship to ourselves, our neighbor, the creation and the human family. The end of sin then will mean the warming of our hearts, the reunion of the human family, an age of compassion led by those who haves suffered, and ultimately, the victory of love found in sacrifice and service.

June 10, 2007 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Genesis 14: 18-20 + 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 + Luke 9: 11-17

The fastest growing section of any bookstore these days is Cookbooks. There is even a 24-hour cable channel about food. At the same time, the diet and exercise industry is booming, and as a nation we face the terrible fact of child obesity, A visit to any of our schools makes it an undeniable and troubling fact. At the same time a greater proportion of our world starves. A disproportionate number of our own grandparents suffer from mal nourishment and diabetes often caused and complicated by issues of diet and food. We spend more in this nation on pet food than anyone would admit. It shames us.

On the second Sunday after celebrating the Church’s beginnings with Pentecost, we take another look at what we are as a church. Last week it was about relationships. The Trinity does not just tell us something about God. It is also about us, the church: living every moment of our lives in relationships of love. This Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is not just about God either. It is about us, the church,

continuing to live as the Body and Blood of Christ.

There are more than Ten Commandments. I heard another in today’s Gospel: “Give them some food yourselves.” Remember, our God is God who feeds. Over and over again the scriptures are filled with stories of food. The Last Supper isn’t the only food story in the Gospels. A people who believe in and make themselves obedient to that God, a people who pray daily for the will of that God to be done might be ready for a big question at judgment time: “Did you feed them?”

This Sunday set aside to honor and remember the presence of Christ and his body and blood demands that we reflect upon ourselves and what we become because of that symbol. Symbols are effective, not static signs pointing to something else. To recognize a symbol is to be changed.

This church which we are is both called to give and become food for others, because we are the presence and life of Christ who gave and became food for others. This Eucharistic gift we have is not just something to look at. It is food for us: food to nourish our growth and strengthen our resolve to be food for others. That Body was broken for us to bring forgiveness. How many more bodies have to be broken before we give it?

That Blood poured out for us was to bring us peace. How much more blood must be spilled before we choose it? Jesus believed that his body and blood would be enough.

We live in a world starved for peace and thirsty for justice. We live in a society broken and fractured by divorce and racism. A big helping of forgiveness and compassion would ease the hunger of loneliness, but it must be the forgiveness we give. Feeding as Christ commands is not a matter of countless sandwiches in brown bags. While we make the sandwiches, we must be changing the system that makes it necessary to fill the bags for people who come again and again. It is a matter of a changed heart and a changed life.

Until then we might ponder the fact that Gluttony, a deadly sin with food is a sin committed alone. Gluttons eat with their face in the plate, eating as though there would never be another meal; or as though consuming is all they are about. I remember as a child my mother and father saying time and time again at the table: “Stop talking and eat your food.” With a little Gospel wisdom, I now realize what I was learning at that family table: look into the face of another, not at your plate; talk a little more and take a little less, pass the food before you take some for yourself.

It was Eucharistic wisdom in that house. We would probably take a little less if we listened and talked with others a little more. And we would probably come to understand that in doing so we will discover the face of the God who feeds us and says again: “Give them some food yourselves.”

June 3, 2007 at Saint March Church in Norman, OK

Proverbs 8: 22-31 + Romans 5: 1-5 + John 16:12-15

As long as we continue to think that the Holy Trinity is only about God, we will probably never get it, live it, nor understand all that is revealed by and through a God who is present and revealed to us as a creative and loving parent, who poured out love for us enough to take on the human condition even to the point of death, and continues to live in our midst by forming a community of beloved disciples who live in imitation of the One who created and brought them to life.

What I propose to you is that The Holy Trinity is about us too. I think that is why the Church celebrates this Feast on the Sunday after Pentecost. This is not just about doctrine. It is also about experience of living in love as a people of faith. In as much as we are made in the image of God, then we are an integrated community of love that is inspired, sustained, and enlightened by the spirit of truth.

The deepest meaning of the Trinity is not “God beyond us.” Rather, it is “God for us.” Simply put, Trinity expresses ‘the essential truth that the God who saves through Christ by the power of the Spirit lives eternally in the community of persons in love.

Relationship!  That is the key to the Christian understanding of God. A God in relationship is the Father Jesus revealed. Living in that relationship of love is consequence of the Spirit making love the surest sign of the Spirit. This is why breaking the relationship is the experience of sin, and the restoration of relationship is salvation by forgiveness. The examples of sin in the stories Jesus used are always about relationships broken. Sin and Death its consequence are confronted again and again by Jesus who raises up people in order to restore them to relationships: the mother-in-law of Peter, the child of a Roman Centurion, a little girl, and his friend Lazarus.

The one who comes to save us from death restores us to one another. A people living in faith live in love, and in order to sustain and preserve that love, they forgive. Without forgiveness, we experience in deep personal and sad ways the absence of God. What we do when we act together in love is the work of God in this world. When we respond to brothers and sisters whose lives are up ended by natural disasters is the work of God.

When we share our faith with others, with our children, when we invite and bring the unchurched to worship with us or introduce someone to the RCIA or a Bible Study, it is Jesus Christ still teaching and revealing the Father because he told us to do that. When we Baptize, Confirm, Forgive, Anoint, Ordain, and bless the covenant of Marriage it is the work of God who is present, active and alive in those sacramental moments. This is the meaning of the Trinity: a living God found in relationships formed by love and fulfilling the Will of God. Anything we do, by and through love is the work of God, and our understanding of this draws us deeper into the awesome truth of God’s love and God’s life.

This Feast then is not intended for a clear articulation of some doctrine. It is meant to give us an opportunity to commit ourselves to this God who, though beyond our comprehension is not beyond our experience because that God is present and active at the very core of our being.

If we concentrate merely on the doctrine, we might be awed by an intellectual concept. But if we concentrate as the scripture texts of this day suggest we do on all the ways our triune God has blessed us, we may be more inclined to cry out with the psalmist who cry we have taken up already today: “O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!”