October 26, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Exodus 20: 20-26 + Psalm 18 + 1 Thessalonians 1: 5-10 + Matthew 22: 34-40

Two words leap from the Epistle of Paul today to describe what is characteristic of the Christian life: serve and await. These are things that run contrary to twenty-first century life.We are accustomed to being served, and we don’t wait well.Suddenly Paul’s letter might just as well address the church of Norman as well as the church of Thessalonica.I believe that keeping these two characteristics together is important if we are to get into the thinking of Saint Paul.We must remember that this wise and passionate apostlewas first of all a pastor who was writing and addressing real experiences and issues in the lives of his friends.

So, I don’t think he is proposing service as a novel idea to those he addresses. He has already praised their goodness. Through out the letter he acknowledges the good things they have been doing. It is because of those things that he must encourage them since they are so good and so faithful, that they have been drawing attention to themselves. He acknowledges that they have turned from idols and that they have become imitators of himself and the Lord so much so that they are becoming models of faithful life as stewards of God’s gifts.

The problem arises with the second characteristic: waiting. They don’t like it. They tire of it. They want results, and they want them now. They want their reward, and when it does not come on their time, Paul knows it’s time to write a letter to remind them that you can’t just serve expecting gratitude, rewards, or results, you also have to wait.

Loyal service and patient waiting are the marks of faithful disciples.

Without the second part of this experience, the first part is often undone. Too often we give up or quit when there is no recognition of our service. Too often when we do the right thing and nothing gets better, we try something else rather than wait. What Paul would have us understand is that glory must be awaited with confidence, and it is slow in coming. You see, those Thessalonians expected Christ to come and acknowledge the risks they were taking by their willingness to abandon the idols and serve others rather than themselves. They wanted it now. They expected Christ to come and reward their loyalty and their service with glory and honor, and they thought was going to happen soon. The risk that Paul sees is that they might give up on service and sacrifice when rewards, gratitude, glory and honor were not forthcoming. Instead of being honored by fellow Thessalonians, these followers of Christ were ridiculed, abused, imprisoned, and scorned. It would be enough to make anyone return to the old ways of “taking care of number one”, the old ways of only doing things that provided instant gratification, or of only doing things people would admire and praise.

It cannot be so suggests Paul. We keep on serving, keep on loving, keep on giving even when things do not happen fast or exactly as we expected because we keep on waiting.

Parents, you know how that works. You continue to love, serve, give, protect and provide for your children even when they never say thank you and continually ask, “Is that all?” You wait. You wait until they grow up, and if you make it long enough, you watch them as parents, and you smile. Waiting is the mark of fidelity, the mark of a true follower of Christ. It means you don’t quit. Your children may leave you, reject your faith, question your values and judgments; but you keep on waiting. They may run away, but you wait like the father of the two sons who waits and watches.

Young people, hear what Paul teaches us. If you do things for glory and recognition now, you’ll have none later. If you keep your eyes fixed on later, on anther time, another age, or another life, you get closer to what Paul suggests is the way real followers of Christ live. He never gave up on those twelve. He waited for the Holy Spirit to come and finish in their hearts what he began, and in a sense he wasn’t there to see it; but he was willing to wait for God’s promise to be fulfilled. Serve and wait. It’s what we do. It’s how we live. It’s how we are faithful. This world doesn’t get it, but Paul would has

October 19, 2008 at Saint Mark Norman, OK

Isaiah 45: 1, 4-6 + Psalm 96 + 1 Thessalonians1: 1-5 + Matthew 22:15-21

There is a profound distinction to be made when pondering Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, and it is one that easily escapes us in our choice laden world; in a society that prizes “choice” above justice and too often above life itself.

Throughout this letter, Paul reminds his readers that they have been chosen by God, but somehow that never seems to sink in.

We like the privilege of choosing, but no matter how hard we try convincing ourselves, our presence here, our very existence is not intentional. We did not choose to be born, we do not choose life, God does, and thinking otherwise is the root of great evil.

I did not choose to wake up this morning. Nothing I did brought the dawn, and there is nothing I can do to bring another. Paul wants us to understand that the first choice is God’s, and other choices come from God’s first choice.

We might like to think that we made a choice to be Catholic, that we decided to get here for Mass today; but that’s not the way it is.

Our faith is no more intentional than our birth or our life. It is a gift from a God who has chosen us: chosen to feed us, to speak with us through His Word, chosen to be present to us in a sacramental life, listen to us, and be tolerantly patient with us while we pretend that it’s our choice. The more I am around people who come to us in the RCIA program, the more I realize who is doing the choosing. God is choosing those people for faith and this sacramental life. If God chose them, God chose me as well.

I think back sometimes to the feelings I had when as a child we would be choosing up sides for games, and how it felt to finally be chosen for one team or another and then how hard I would play to make sure they believed they had made the right choice and would chose me tomorrow. I remember what it was like when I pretended that I was choosing to be a priest only to wake up suddenly one day and realize that if the faculty and the bishop did not choose me for ordination all those years of study had taken me no where – except maybe to bring me to that realization and profound understanding that it was not I who chose the Lord, but the Lord who chose me.

You think about your lives and remember what it was like when you asked someone to be your husband or your wife. You may have thought you did the choosing, but in the end you had to wait to be chosen, and when you were, you were different. It’s the same with jobs isn’t it? You wait to be chosen for promotions or some new position, and when you get chosen, you work and perform to prove and be worthy of the choice another made in order to keep that position.

It is not much different for us when it comes to faith. We all meet people day in and day out who do not have faith or who do not share our faith. I see them often and wonder how they face and live with the trials and tragedies of life, and sometimes they do not, and then make bad choices which makes things worse.

The fact is, Paul reminds us, we have been chosen. We are by faith and by Baptism a chosen people. When we stop thinking that we’ve made the choice, we shall begin to act and live with humility and gratitude befitting a chosen and holy people. When we stop thinking that we have made the choices we shall have embraced the very heart of Christian morality, and holiness will be ours because God has chosen to make it so.

God has called us to this place. We must be here because we have heard the call and are overwhelmed by the wonder and mystery of it. We would do well to ask “why me?” but not at times of pain or disappointment, but rather at times of goodness and joy. It is the right way to stand before God, not with the pride of pretending we have chosen God; but with the humility of knowing that God has chosen us, called us, asked so little of us. Getting that right changes everything about being here, about being faithful, prayerful, present at Eucharist, just, and merciful. Paul thinks it’s time for us to get over ourselves – and get into the mystery of having been chosen and what it will mean for us and how we shall live together because of it.

October 5, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 5: 1-7 + Psalm 80 + Philippians 4: 6-9 + Matthew 21:33-43

Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell this parable. Only Matthew concludes with the proposal that the Kingdom might be taken away and given to a people who will produce fruit. It is a twist on the parable that ought to hit us all between the eyes. We have grown up in this culture with the assumption that the Kingdom of God, Heaven like everything else is always available to us if we just work hard enough and long enough. “On demand” television is just the latest toy that continues to suggest to us the false truth that we can have anything we want whenever we want it. The consequence of this thinking is our sense of entitlement. It is rampant in our nation and our generations, and even in our church. So, we tramp through the Earth’s resources, claiming its juiciest fruits for ourselves. We take the largest portion of everything there is, and if we’re not number one we sink into depression and set out to change it at all cost. It’s always struck me that there is nothing wrong with being number one unless you can’t stand being number two. At that point you have and you are a problem.

In Native American culture, people come into their own and into respect not by what they own or amass in wealth, but by what they give. Keeping wealth moving is the way gifts remain sacred. A free-market society reverses the picture: getting rather than giving is the mark of a substantial person; at that point Entitlement reigns.

Entitlement is the problem in this parable, and there is a stern warning in the Matthew version that Entitlement leads to disaster.

The chief priests and elders are asked to judge what the owner should do, and you know what they say. Their problem is they think like owners. Not for a minute do they think like tenants,

and with that they go wrong.

Saint Paul was learning to live as a tenant in the vineyard, and his relationship and his letter to the Philippians comes out of that lifestyle. When he suggests to them that they should “keep in doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me” he is not saying: “Look at me.” Look how good I am.”

He is proposing that they must become what he has become: an example. They must set example of what it means to be a steward in the vineyard of the Lord. This is the heavy burden, the weighty responsibility we have as followers of Christ. We are to provide an example for others. Parents, it is what you must become for your children: examples of what is true, what is honorable, what is just, what is pure, what is lovely, what is gracious, and what is excellent. What you learned and received is what you must pass on. This is what produces good fruit.

You may not be more concerned about your child’s career than you are about their soul. You may not be more concerned about their ability to play sports than you are about their ability to pray. You may not be more concerned about their friends than you are about their friendship with Christ. You may not be more concerned about their attendance at school than their attendance at this feast. Example is what we must provide. We must give example to each other by the charity of our talk and our judgments. We must give example to each other by how we give not by what we keep.

Paul singles out for the Philippians and for us the qualities that are the fruits of this vineyard. They are not the stuff we buy or want. They are not found at the Mall or on line. They are not what we wear, what we drive, or how we look. They are not prestige, power, influence, or success measured by wealth. They are gentleness, peace, concern for justice and an absence of worry.

A people who wish for the peace of God can only find it and live in it when they have embraced the life of stewardship and see themselves as tenants in this vineyard: tenants from whom the master expects some fruits. We have no reason to expect anything except the master’s return and a time to give an account of our stewardship here. The fruit will come from the example we have given, and the example we have led.