May 25, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Deuteronomy 8: 2-3, 14-16 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 10: 16-1 + John 6: 51-58

The Corinthians had a problem which Paul addresses today. They were great at receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, but a little short of becoming the Body and Blood of Christ. Two thousand years later that problem remains a challenge for us all. Whether we eat, adore, receive, and worship the Body of Christ is of no avail if we do not become the Body of Christ. The meaning of Eucharistic Spirituality must center on what we become because of what we do. Sitting in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament must make us more like the one whose presence is the focus of our gaze.  Receiving the Body of Christ must make us more like the one whose body and blood we consume. A few weeks back at First Communion, I said to the children: “You become what you touch.” The becoming is what communion is all about: becoming one with others, becoming Christ’s presence in this world. That is the motive, the consequence, and the reality of what we are doing here.

The struggle of the church in Corinth is no different from the struggle of the Apostles to understand what it was they were being called to become

by this one who told them he would be betrayed, broken, beaten, and killed. They wanted nothing to do with that idea. They wanted power, authority, and privilege. They quarreled among themselves who would be in charge after Christ had gone, all the while ignoring the life into which he wanted to initiate them.

The Corinthians too failed to get the point. Self satisfied, comfortable in their ways, attentive to their friends and those who could do something for them, they gathered easily for Eucharist, looking around for those they knew, and of course, hoping they would be noticed by others. All the while ignoring the poor and the hungry while they passed the plate among themselves for more than a second helping. For them the assembly had become a time to get something; for them the Eucharist was something to receive. This must not happen to us. We have more than Paul to remind us that have not come here to get something whether it’s a good feeling or a good time. We cannot arrive with our hands out ready to take. First Jesus, then Paul, then two thousand years of tradition says to us that we are here to become something or someone; and this day called: “Corpus Christi” for a time in our history and then the “Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ” is our reminder.

We can best understand this truth by paying attention to what we are given: something that has been broken. We do not receive the whole thing. We do not get something that is perfect. Broken is the point here. Broken is the life there (pointing to the crucifix). Broken to broken; a broken piece for broken lives; a broken Christ for broken people. Our brokenness becomes His brokenness so that his wholeness can become ours. It is not until we have broken or lives in service, in love, or even in sin that this Eucharistic miracle can truly and wonderfully happen. It is not until we have nothing left, until we cling to nothing more, until we have surrendered all our pomp, power, and pride that the one most humiliated and most broken of all can transform us into a Eucharistic people.

That is what Paul would have the Corinthians become, and so it must be for us. The wholeness, the unity, the oneness that the Eucharist symbolizes is not just unity with Christ, nor just unity among us, but a wholeness within that comes from healing and forgiveness. It establishes a unity that is greater than this church. The Corinthians did not seem to understand that until Paul spoke to them. This is a unity we must have with the poor and the helpless, those left behind, those who have no power, influence, no voice, or no home; refugees and immigrants included. We may not assume that the unity established by this sacrament is with those who are like us. We would need no sacramental challenge or grace for that accomplishment. The sacrament calls us to unity with those who are NOT like us, with those who have broken away, or feel left behind.

On a Saturday in April I said to the seven-year-olds here for their First Communion: “You become what you touch.” The children understood that, and we can go deeper with that thought. In the Incarnation, God touched human nature and the Word become Flesh; and we began to reflect the Divine Image by which we have been touched. Jesus spent his life touching people who were blind, lame, deaf, bleeding, dead, lost, sinful, alone, and sick, and by that touch, they became whole and were restored to the human family. We are a broken people who shall reach out and touch and be touched by love broken for us. It is the miracle of the Eucharist, the Body of Christ. This miracle is as much about what we are becoming here as it is about bread becoming body and wine becoming blood. The Real Presence then is not simply here in a tabernacle if we are truly becoming………….

May 18, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Exodus 34: 4-6, 8-9 + Daniel 2: 52-55 + 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13 + John 3: 16-18

Last week I drove to Tulsa to give a talk, and Brian, a seminary student from the parish went along to do some driving since I wanted to come back late in the evening after the talk. It was a nice ride and conversation, and I questioned him about what he learning and studying in school. Since it is nearly five decades since I was at that level of education, I had some curiosity. To my surprise, things have changed, but at the same time, not much!

A contemporary of mine was recently reflecting on our theological studies which Brian will soon begin, and I was wondering earlier this week what that part of his education will be like as I tried desperately to remember what I learned in the seminary about the Holy Trinity. I remember all the things that don’t help. I remember that that class met at 7:30 am. It was dark most of the year at that hour. Try to imagine a room full of 22-year-olds sitting together at that hour through a lecture on the Holy Trinity. Courage was not the least of that professor’s gifts. I remember how bored I was or how boring the professor was, I’m not sure which was the cause; but I can you this much, at the risk of casing scandal, at age 22 I wasn’t very interested. The treatise on the Trinity was the Rubik’s cube of theology, summarized this way (I actually still have my notes): four relations, three Persons, two processions, one God, and no proof; and I would add, little relevance to my spiritual life at the time.

There is not much information on the Trinity from the Bible, and especially in the readings assigned to this day. John 3:16 is an important text which many Christians, stick on the bumpers, hold up on cards at football games, and quote by memory. I know this since a person who sideswiped my car this past week while talking on a cell phone had John 3:16 on the bumper of their car. I just a few words, John 3:16 sums it all up as far as we are concerned who live in the post-resurrection era remembering and deepening our understanding of what has happened to us because of God’s Love. But it isn’t going to provide much information about the central mystery of Christian Faith.

What these reading do is point to the experience that will lead us into the mystery of the Trinity because the Trinity is not about equations or Metaphysical expressions. It is about love: God-love, Divine Love. The Gospel of John does not present a theology of non-Christian religions but is written both for fence-sitters like Nicodemus (who is being addressed in the third chapter) and for John’s persecuted community. This text is abused when used to condemn nonbelievers. It is a gift of hope for us who are believers; hope that we are loved by a distant God but by one whose Son offered up the very life of God for our sake.

It is love that leads us into the mystery of the Trinity and what it reveals to us about God. We proclaim, we worship, we believe in a God who is love, and because of that love, there is a relationship in which we believe in a God with whom there is trust, confidence, and strangest of all, of affection. Our God acts toward us with affection asking for a response, and the only word describe that response if “love.”

Suddenly then we are not God’s creatures, we are God’s children. We share in God’s life. That means that it is not only God’s nature to know and to love creatively, but also our nature as well. If we are ever to become what we have been created to be, fully what God intended, then we live out our lives in likeness to God. We must become a true community, in which each member both creates and is created by the others, a community in which each member sees in others the perfection of God, so perfectly reflected that love is the only possible bond.

The more this revelation sinks into our hearts and our minds and our souls, the more powerfully the Spirit will have filled us, and the more we shall be led into the light in profound unity and reconciliation.

Yesterday afternoon I held the son of young woman I have known since she was about 12 years old. Her husband was standing behind her. I looked into the eyes of that 8-month-old beautiful child, and I said, he has his father’s eyes. When we find ourselves looking into each other’s eyes and able to see the eyes of God and see with the eyes of God, we shall have entered into the mystery of the Trinity; the mystery of God’s love which is not a closed circle. It has been broken open by the Incarnation in order to draw us into a new creation in which we shall have eternal life.

This is what we believe: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

May 11, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Acts 2: 1-11 + Psalm 104 + 1 Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-14 + John 20: 19-23

There always seems to be some level of fascination with the images and details that Luke provides in Acts of the Apostles and the story of what happened that day in Jerusalem. Any discussion about this event and the Holy Spirit inevitably begins to address the detail that describes the communication – the speaking in tongues that occurred and brought so many to the point of conversion that day.

While it is only natural to be fascinated by the curious, it gets us no where near understanding and experiencing the Holy Spirit to think that somehow the Spirit’s presence is confirmed by the ability of people to speak foreign languages. To sit and wonder: “How did they do that?” is to my mind a little off the mark. Scholars seem to be of the opinion that Luke is indicating some miraculous event, but I am not convinced that the miracle is simply found with the apostles suddenly able to speak several languages. In itself the ability to suddenly be able to speak a different language could only cause admiration or fascination. This miracle caused more than that.

The miracle here is not only about the Apostles. There was a miracle; but it was as much a miracle of hearing as it was of speaking, and that makes a difference. Had the crowd not heard; had they not understood; the speaking miracle would have simply been something odd and curious. This manifestation of the Holy Spirit then, it seems to me, is not found in something the apostles did, or simply in something that happened to them; but also and more so in a change that happened in the hearts and the minds of those who heard those apostles. The shift from curiosity on their part to faith is the work of the Holy Spirit. As with all of the miracles though, the exact nature of it is less important than the meaning. “How did they do that?” is a silly question if you never ask: “What does it mean?”

At the point of asking the real question, we are face to face with the meaning of the Spirit’s presence. It has more to do with understanding than with speaking in tongues. I don’t think we should view Pentecost as a magical event. To keep us from doing so, the church puts before us today two stories of the Spirit’s coming: one with a mighty wind, the other with a gentle breath. There are times when we experience the Spirit in sudden and surprising ways that may change our lives in a moment; but more often the Spirit is that quiet breath that gradually and eventually leads us to understand because we’ve been listening.

Most of our lives are spent struggling to find and discern where and what God is calling us toward. Many of us are not so much burning with the Holy Spirit, but burn-out by the demands of our times. Like disciples locked in rooms of fear or depression we cannot imagine that we might ever live differently. Or we are like the crowds running from one thrill to the next hardly ever stopping long enough to listen, to hear what God might be saying to us or calling us to become.

The miracle of Pentecost is not found in wind or tongues. It is found in lives set free from fear and in people who can hear God’s call and because of that call think outside the self-imposed limits we place on ourselves. These are people who do things, think things, and dream things greater than they have known in the past. These Spirit-filled ones become the church, the people of God rather than people of this world. These are people who are wise and see the world as God sees it. They know their opinion is not necessarily the best angle on the whole truth. This wisdom is not always practical, but it is possible. These people have understanding. They are turned upside down, so they see the world as God sees it. These are people free of confusion and dissension because they can stand under others thinking what they think and feeling what they feel.

These are people of knowledge free of ignorance and narrow mindedness.

They have the gift of counsel. They do not suffer the loneliness of personal decisions. They give comfort, hope, and direction to others. They have holy and wholesome advice. The Spirit filled are steadfast and consistent. With this gift of fortitude, they choose the good no matter what. These people, filled with wonder are pushed to be more like God who continually amazes us.

This day, Pentecost reminds us of the power and possibilities of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our world. It allows to go far beyond what human beings can do on their own. The Spirit has been given we proclaim today. That Spirit works wonders wherever human hearts are open to its movement. The earth is renewed each time rivalries are resolved; distinctions are recognized as merely expressions of diversity; peace is restored; comfort and solace are offered, forgiveness is granted. We are full of that Spirit. When we open ourselves to that Spirit, it will be like the opening of the doors of that upper room. We will never be the same.