June 28, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Wisdom 1: 13-15,  2:23-24 + Psalm 30  + 2 Corinthians 8: 7,9, 13-15 + Mark 5: 21-43

Two hopeless situations are met by Jesus today: a girl everyone had given up for dead, and a woman who had exhausted her savings seeking a cure. Last week and next week the church gives us stories of faith tested and challenged. This week, framed on either side by those stories of faith, hope is revealed as the response people of faith have in the face of trial. Look at the two unlikely people Mark puts before us today: a synagogue official and an unclean woman. Synagogue officials do not believe anything about Jesus. They do not ask for anything. They stand back and criticize a man who does work on the Sabbath and touches the unclean. The woman has been sick for so long she has nothing left, not even her dignity. But what they both have is hope which Jesus recognizes as evidence of faith; and with that, he springs into action with an intensity that is unusual.

Jarius is desperate. He risks the disapproval of his peers turning to Jesus.  It is his love for his daughter that drives him to take that risk when everything else says: give up. Jesus knows that love and its power, and he uses the power of God’s love knowing that God’s love turns death into sleep. Sleepers can be awakened. But that wailing crowd has no faith, and so there is in them no hope. Jesus puts that out, and he takes the hope-filled and loving parents into that room where he reveals not his power, but the power of God’s love. For people of faith, for people of hope, and for people of love, something, someone stronger than death has come. The power of God’s love is not an exclusive possession of Jesus. He is not the only one who rises from that sleep. A touch and an expression of tender love is all that is required. Yet the proof of this power is still to come in the resurrection of Jesus, so the observes are told not to talk of this event until the full revelation of divine love is given on Easter.

Now lest we think that all this is about Jesus touching people, Mark is quick to have someone else do some touching. Before heading off the home of Jarius, someone touches Jesus and the whole episode begins to raise some question about whether or not “touching” is really about physical touch. I suspect that Jesus is “touched” all right; but not by a hand. I think he is “touched” by her courage in desperation, “touched” by her hope that God can do something doctors have failed to do. The one who does the touching ends up being the one who is touched by God’s love. What goes out of Jesus is divine love – that is the only power he has. The two of them know that “it” has happened: that divine love has gone out and divine love has been received.

She has been touched by God, and because of that touch she may now be touched by others. She is clean. She is a woman of faith, and the healing that comes from faith is more than physical. More happens here then than simply stopping a flow of blood. A relationship is restored. She can enter back into the community. Without words, Jesus says to her what he says to the little girl as he restores her to her family: “Get up.”

“Stand up.”  “Get up.”  “Wake up.” However, you say it, or however you hear it, it is what God is saying to us in Jesus Christ. You are a child of God, and the love of God is always with God’s children. Divine Love is not just about restoring people to good health. It is about turning death into sleep and fear into hope. In Jesus Christ, God reaches out to touch us with love, to lift us up, to set us free from death, and to restore us to one another so that we who have been touched may reach out to touch, to heal, to embrace, to kiss, and to hold up each other when ever fear or doubt, death or sickness threaten us.

This is the news Mark gives us today. It is news that will sustain us through this week. It is a story that ends with Jesus saying: “Give her something to eat.” There is no better place to remember this story and remember God’s Love than gathered in this place where we are given something to eat; and while we shall in a few minutes think that we are reaching out to touch God, do not fail to recognize that it is really God who is touching us every time we gather in this holy place. We cannot really believe this and rush out early or abruptly and continue to live this week as though nothing has happened to us. The people in this story were utterly astounded and the woman fell down before Jesus. The rest of their week must have been something to behold.

June 14, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Exodus 24: 3-8 + Psalm 116 + Hebrews 9: 11-15 + Mark 14: 12-16, 22-26

On Holy Thursday I was in Shawnee spending a few precious Holy Week hours in prayer at the Monastery. On my return I passed through the center of town to stop and say hello to Father Wolf at St Benedict parish, when one of those electric signs at a local church caught my attention as it flashed the words:

“Holy Thursday!

Holy Communion!

4:30 to 6:00

Come and Go!”

I nearly hit the curb in surprise and wonder at the implication of this message. In fact, I circled back to make sure I had seen correctly. Now I have no intention of becoming the sign police or of suggesting that the practice of that church is any of my business. But the fact that I have not forgotten that sign and that it stands out in my mind on this Feast of The Body and Blood of Christ does tell me that there was something important about that sighting worth recalling. I wondered at the time: “If you come and go, like fast-food or a grabbing a snack, with whom or with what are you in Communion, since it is possible that no one else might be there at the time. Then there was also the implication that Holy Thursday was the only time you could drop in for Holy Communion: very puzzling yet very much to the point of what we are doing here.

Sometimes I don’t think we get it right either. We have to stop thinking that Communion is something you get, take, or receive. It is something you enter into something you become. Because this sacrament is about Covenant, it is not a personal, private matter. God makes Covenants with a people, a nation. The very nature of Covenant is collective, not private. God does not make private deals with each of us. God calls us into the communion of saints, into the saved people of God. There is a trap you can slip into when you start talking about accepting Jesus as your “personal Savior”. While each of us must come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that relationship must take us somewhere and give us a new identity. In other words, it can’t stop there: that relationship must awaken us to the reality of the risen Christ, who lives in Communion with us as church, as Christ’s Body. It is always about covenant. In the words Jesus spoke at the Supper, he was establishing a new and eternal covenant with us renewed again and again when we gather together to re-member what has been dismembered; and celebrate the promise that he would remain with us forever.

Covenant is the major theological idea of the Old Testament with roots in agreements made in the ancient near east by peoples creating peace through an exchange of promises of shared obligations and respect. The Old Testament is woven together by stories of Covenant always ratified with a sacrifice that was so profound that it symbolized the radical commitment of the partners concluding with a meal during which the offering was consumed. In the action of Christ, he made himself both a partner in the new covenant and the offering to be consumed. Eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ is a commitment to be nurtured by the kind and quality of life led by Jesus of Nazareth. Eating and drinking this offering, this sacrifice makes us one in Christ. It is what establishes us as Church which is why it is not a snack, it is not fast – food, nor can it be private. It is about what we are becoming here and about becoming one with all in every age and every place who stand in this tradition.

This feast leads us to reflect upon all the Sacraments of the Church which in some ways are all covenants shaping our lives and relationships. In every case, the initiative comes from God and our celebration of the sacraments is our commitment and becomes our response. Marriage is a perfect example. As I said to a couple who stood before this altar yesterday, “It’s not about you. You did not choose one another. The first choice was made by God. Celebrate that choice today.” People who live in mutual love give each other their whole lives, their whole selves as Jesus gave us his body and blood out of love. It is the sacrament and covenant I have found in Holy Orders. You can’t do this halfway. It is the covenant we embrace at Baptism, and the covenant that binds the sick to us with the promise of eternal life. It is the covenant promise and gift of forgiveness we celebrate in Reconciliation.

If, as I said last week, the Feast of the Trinity brings us into the mystery of who we are made in the image and likeness of God. Then so does this feast bring us into Communion. This Communion is the source of our holiness and the reason for which we were created: to be in union with God and all creation. Instead of a reluctant minimal, occasional and convenient presence, we ought to be awestruck at what God has begun here and called us to become. If we really understand and believed, what happens here would not be casual or occasional. If we got it, we would never be late, never think of leaving early, and never think of anything more important. It is God who reaches out to us here sometimes while we’re headed to the restroom. It is God who looks for us at this table when we stay in bed or find every puny excuse for our absence.

Love without sacrifice is a shallow emotion of sentimentality. Faith without lived commitment is an idea, not a way of life. Communion without the reality of belonging and living in unity is a snack from which we can come and go when we’re in the neighborhood. We have to get beyond the matter of bread and wine and immerse ourselves in the real life of flesh and blood. God’s commitment to us was not convenient, occasional, nor simply symbolic. It was total, lasting, and forever. This covenant is about mutual sacrifice and mutual love among those who accept and affirm the agreement and the promise. It cannot be one sided and be true. The reality of this is breath taking, the power of this is beyond imagination, the consequence of this covenant destroys death itself and gives what this world and all its science cannot give: Life everlasting, Joy eternal. Peace forever.

June 7, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Deuteronomy 4:32-34,39-40 + Psalm 33 + Romans 8: 14-17 + Matthew 28: 16-20

Over the forty-one years of my priesthood, I acknowledge a lot of growth and am always grateful for the patience, endurance, and good humor of countless people who have stood, sat, and knelt in front of me. I have looked at faces glazed over with boredom, deep concern, and into the eyes of holy people deep in prayer. I have recognized the critic, who like Scribes and Pharisees sit and wait to trap or trip me up. I have also seen a few backsides as some have stalked out or pinched their baby into crying so that they might make a hasty escape.

All of this comes to mind on the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity as this book calls this day. I am always amused at the title some have now applied to this Feast. The superlative adjective, “most” might imply that there was a comparative “More Holy Trinity” suggesting two, or simply a “Holy Trinity” when there are no other Trinities to compare. Personally, I am content with one: “The Holy Trinity.” One is enough to wrap your mind around. One of the remarkable signs of growth in my life other than size is the fact that I am now content with just one, and that I no longer schedule my retreat, my vacation, or an illness to coincide with the Sunday after Pentecost. There was a time in my life when I did everything possible to avoid preaching on the Feast of the Holy Trinity. That phase followed an earlier first phase when I loved to preach about the Holy Trinity. When in the vigor of my youth I provided barely breathing congregations long expositions of this theological truth and reasoning to support and affirm our faith. I think that came about from the childhood memory of being told by countless well meaning religious sisters that the Trinity was a “Mystery” I couldn’t understand. Of course, that’s all I needed as a child was to be told I couldn’t do something or that something was a mystery. It’s like giving a child a beautifully wrapped box and saying you can’t open it.

Finally I got over my early enthusiasm as a priest and wore out all the theological jargon I had learned and decided to take a vacation after Pentecost leaving this feast to some poor substitute who probably said, “yes” when asked to take my place without looking at the calendar of feasts! Which brings us to today: Here I am. For several years now, I have been over it. You get no graduate level lecture on the scholastic idea of the Trinity, and I have already taken some vacation time after Easter. I’m in my third developmental phase, and I hope for both of us that it will be the last. I have no desire to neither convince you nor explain to you the mystery of the Holy Trinity. I am not interested in giving a talk on dogma. As you know I have a passion to talk about the Word of God, so fear not. I shall not bore you with technical theology. But I do want to tell you about and bear witness to a God who does not dwell in outer space nor hide in the mind of scholastic theologians who love to speak of one in three, three in one, undivided unity. To my mind that language always sounds like algebra which is not an experience but rather a way of thinking.

You can have it either way, I suppose: a God who is something to think about or a God with whom you live day in and day out. I have come to believe that the challenge of this Feast is to bring the right brain and the left brain together, or to touch the mind and the heart lest we go through life with ideas about God and no experience; with thoughts and no memories. Our God is not an idea. Our Trinity, God, three in one, is a God for us. In Jesus, God has become not only “for us” but “with us” and through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, a God “within us.” There is some language to wrap your mind around: for us, with us, within us — — — that is language of Trinity out of experience not from a textbook. The dogmas of the church from experience it’s not the other way around.

To get it, we simply pick up the Word of God today. In the Book of Deuteronomy, the writer celebrates a God “FOR US” awakening our memories of the moments when God’s involvement in human history was clearly evident. The writer moves us into a way of recalling events that have happened to us that only God could have accomplished, and because of it we respond by living in a grateful relationship with that God who is so obviously for us.

To get it, we simply listen to Paul’s letter to the Romans today. Paul celebrates the “for us” character of God and affirms the intimacy of relationship to which we are invited by God. Not slaves or simply creatures, but loved, chosen, and adopted children who can call God, Abba resting in the assurance that God is not only for us, but is also with us.

To get it one last time, listen to Matthew’s Gospel today. A people who know that God is for them and with them, will suddenly begin to understand the truth that God is within them, and if within them, God is within everyone one of them; that every human being is made in God’s image which means that Father, Son, and Spirit are experiences not just ideas. We know the Divine as Father comes when we share in God’s creative life with creative moments in art and beauty and in bringing life into this world. We know the Divine as Son when we embrace the unwashed and unwanted, the hungry and the poor, and confront hypocrisy, greed, and violence continuing the work and life of Christ Jesus. We know the Divine as Spirit with every burst of inspiration and imagination, in wisdom, and in every word and work of love. The God whose image we reflect does not remain distant, but chooses to be near making this feast ours as well as God’s because it is you and me that God has chosen to be involved and invested. It is in you and me that God chooses to dwell. In love we are scooped up into that embrace that has given us life and purpose and meaning. On a hot summer Sunday that truth is enough to celebrate, to remember, and to enjoy.