August 22, 2010 at Saint Mark Church in Normal, OK

Isaiah 66: 18-21 + Psalm 117 + Hebrews 12: 5-7, 11-13 + Luke 13: 22-30

Insiders and Outsiders. Who is in and who is out. Who belongs and who does not. This kind of thinking is part of our lives now just as it was when Luke wrote his Gospel exploring the relationship between Gentiles and Jews.
We have our gated communities, our neighborhood covenants, our private schools, our country clubs, and our health clubs. We have our homeland security, border patrol, birth certificates, passports, and government issued ID cards; all to determine who is in and who is out.

We cannot look at this gospel as though it is about the past or wonder what those people were thinking with that question, about who gets to heaven and who does not. There is something else going on here. It seems to me that there is some kind of disconnect in our thinking between how we behave and what we expect here what is to come when this life ends. My first suspicion is that not many people even think about what is to come. Thoughts and concerns about death, judgment, heaven and hell are out of style. So, we just skip merrily along in high denial about a future. Or we so drug ourselves on the image of a merciful and loving God (which we often fail to imitate) and so never think that the future might be like the present. There might actually be a gate; credentials to present in order to get in.

We live in political and social systems today that work like this: you can get whatever you want and whatever you needif you know the right people or have enough cash. Today’s Gospel says: NOT SO.

I believe that the question in this gospel was asked for the sake of reassurance.
“Here I am, Jesus. I am one of your followers listening to you today. Tell me I’m going to get into this Kingdom you are talking about.” The answer was not what that person wanted to hear. I would bet that the person who asked the question was gone the next day. Those following Jesus remind him: “You taught in our streets.” To them Jesus says: “And all you did was listen.” He says: “You never took my teachings to heart and changed anything in your lives. You think that a passing acquaintance with me is enough and being able to quote my words is all it takes.” NOT SO.

The question about how many will be saved is silly. It avoids the first question about whether I will be saved. Jesus rejects the first question and focuses on the question of the struggle. He says: “Forget about how many; put your mind and heart into the disciplined work of striving to enter.”
STRIVING is the issue. It is a life-long project, a discipline, a way of life that must influence everything we do, think, say, and believe. The way to the Kingdom of God is the way of self-discipline. That is the discipline the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of today. There is a set of virtues and values, a style of behavior that must be followed if salvation is to be realized.

They are difficult, and they require a great deal of effort. Patience, persistence, forgiveness, humility and a host of others that do not spring automatically from our personalities. They take practice, over and over, and sometimes painfully. If discipline is to have meaning and be redemptive, it must be self-discipline. The redemptive value of discipline must come from within. Pain and Suffering do nothing outside of us. Suffering is never explained by asking where it comes from or why does God allow this? That is all outside thin king. What we must ask is: “What do I do with this suffering?” At that point it is internalized and becomes a self-discipline that redeems and saves.

So, what do we do with this Gospel? Is coming to Mass today going to get us to heaven? No it isn’t. Is listening to the Word of God, accepting Jesus as my savior, going to confession, receiving communion going to get us through the narrow door? No, it isn’t.
Repentance because we have internalized the Word of God and with reflection and discipline, begun to question everything we do in terms of whether or not it will gain us eternal life will move us toward that narrow door. That is striving.

Breaking our lives like this broken bread and broken body of Christ in service
of someone else is striving toward the narrow door. Entering into the mystery of suffering by asking “What do I do with this” rather than whining and complaining is striving.

The free gift of salvation accepted is realized only by those who have seen it’s beauty and its value and begun to make themselves worthy of it by striving toward the goal, not by sitting around waiting, and then rushing forward at the last minute.

August 15, 2010

Revelation 11: 19; 12 1-6 + Psalm 45 + 1 Corinthians 15: 20-27 + Luke 1: 39-56

In the words of greeting Elizabeth speaks to Mary there are two expressions of praise:
one for the child she carries by God’s graciousness and the other for Mary because of her ability to believe that what God has spoken would be fulfilled.

Later, as an adult, Jesus will praise the same ability when a woman in some crowd calls out, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” To which Jesus replies: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” The greatness of this woman is not simply found in the physical side of her motherhood. Her ability to hear the Word of God and obey it is greater, and in that, she becomes the perfect disciple and model for us all.

The combination of God’s action and human cooperation is what we must see and embrace with this great feast. God acts. The disciple hears and obeys. In Luke’s Gospel both Elizabeth and Jesus praise Mary
because she heard the word of God and kept it. It defines who Mary is, and what we must become. It is our vocation to be hearers and doers of the Word of God.

There is a problem here for us; a great challenge. Hearing the Word of God for Mary is portrayed as a face-to-face encounter. An angel spoke. For us it is not so easy. There are many voices clamoring for our hearing. Which one is the Word of God?

To discern that Word requires first of all a conviction that someone is speaking; and we are in the process of listening. We do not do much of that these days in the lives we lead. Listening is skill many do not practice. It even shows itself in here.
Rather than listen some want to text, some one to read. Reading and Listening are not the same. We are involved and engaged in a profound experience in our faith, because the divine and holy one is trying to communicate to us; and the speaking can be thought of as the divine desire to be one,
to turn all things into love, to right wrongs, establish justice, and to restore beauty to all creation. It is a call to love, to justice, to beauty.

As we seek to discern what God is saying, what is asking of us, we cannot be fighting for our way or imposing our will upon others
or upon situations that are complex and difficult. Our best hope is to pay attention to the woman we honor today; a woman who emerges as a person of openness and humility,

a person who questions with courage, consults, perseveres and looks for justice. The only way God’s plan becomes clear is by living it this way.

Today we Catholic followers of Christ affirm with this feast that the fullness of the human person is destined to live on in God.
That whatever it is that makes up a human person is not lost in death for those who hear the Word of God obey it, live it, and risk it. We are capable of living in communion with divine life. Like Mary, if we choose to listen and obey, we may have human origins, but we have a divine destiny.

Because God has taken the initiative with power and fidelity and mercy, love will triumph and justice will prevail. Not in some far off time or some eternal home;
but here when we seek the beauty of creation in every human life. Nothing is impossible with God.

August 8, 2010

Wisdom 18: 6-9 + Psalm 33 + Hebrews 11: 1, 2, 8-12

I find myself thinking of and listening to this Gospel with two Gospel stories we had last month still in my mind. There was Martha standing there with apron pulled tight and hands on hips saying to Jesus: “Make her help me!”
Then last week someone from the crowd comes up to Jesus and says: “Tell my brother to give me my share.”

I was thinking of those stories with this Gospel passage because here is this community of Luke, 50 or so years after the death and resurrection of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit hanging around expecting Jesus to fix things.
They are standing around wondering what’s going on? And thinking: “Come on Jesus!

Get back here and bring that Kingdom you promised!”

That “Jesus Fix It” mentality seems to be spreading. That idea that someone else should take care of what’s bothering us
is not going away. I suspect that Luke writes these verses to speak to that attitude
and remind us that Jesus did not come to fix anything except our relationships with one another and with his Father. I believe that what Luke would have us see is that our waiting around impatiently and sometimes with doubt about the coming of Christ and the Kingdom is somehow not quite right.

The Kingdom and all it’s glory, peace, and justice does not come because we think that someone else should make it happen. The Jesus of Luke’s Gospel is a Jesus who was a Teacher. He was and perhaps as long as we tell the stories still teaching us how to live: not live in the future, but how to live now in the Kingdom of God. Perhaps if we did so, we would discover that the Kingdom of God is already among us, available and possible at which point all our fears would be in vain.

“Do not fear, little flock.” is advice given to people of faith – to people who have been given the Kingdom of God. Read the text.
Jesus is speaking in the present: “Your Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom of God.” Then the teacher instructs the disciples on how to live in that Kingdom.

“Sell what you have and give alms.” Live today as though it were your last. Live everyday that way, and watch what happens.
All the things you put off doing and resolving will be finished. Those little things, the little touches that make a life beautiful and ought to finish a good life get completed. You express your thanks and your love to the ones you have taken for granted today not thinking I’ll tell them tomorrow. You find healing and forgiveness now because you don’t want to die without making amends to those you have slighted, hurt, and refused. You quit hording all the stuff you have piled up and give it away

not with worry about who deserves it, but to those who need it. Suddenly, Justice and Charity are all you think about and care about.

In other words, if we would simply begin now to live in the Kingdom the way we have been taught by the Rabbi, we would have nothing to wait for and there would be no long delay.
Perhaps we would begin to understand what happened at Pentecost and begin to do what we have

been called and sent to do: bring the kingdom of God and stop waiting for someone else to do what we have been asked and gifted and prepared to do.
Audio Available

August 1, 2010

Ecclesiastes 1: 2; 21-23 + Psalm 90 + Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 + Luke 12: 13-21

Here we are again.
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”

Were you here two weeks ago when Martha came out of the kitchen saying: “Lord, tell her to help me!” This is beginning to look like one of Luke’s literary devices
setting us up for the message to come.
Perhaps it is the voice of Luke

who wants Jesus to speak to the community in which he serves.
Perhaps it is the voice of a pastor who wants the community he serves
to hear and respond to the Gospel.
Either way the parable, found only in Luke, speaks clearly and plainly to us today. It is not the only parable in Luke’s gospel
that reveals a community that included both the rich and the poor.
This disparity was a concern for Luke,
and with love he addresses the issue and its special challenge to the community.

With frightening consistency we all live with a message
playing in the back our minds: “It can’t happen to me.”
Our children take dangerous chances with drugs, sex, and fast cars,
because they think, “It can’t happen to me.”
Where does that thinking come from?
Perhaps a little of it simply comes from being young
and the dream of a long and full life;
but I think a lot of it comes from the adults around them
who live the same way;
perhaps not with drugs, sex, and fast cars,
but in a life style that has separated them from
the reality of death first of all,
and the reality of life around them as well.
That reality can be reduced to a fact that is not refutable:
we are 4.7% of the world’s population
yet we control for ourselves 60% of the world’s resources.
The drug trade alone that continues to destabilize this continent from the south
is for use in this country.
We want the drug traffic stopped,
but never ask who is taking the drugs and who profits from their sale.
All the while we live as though there is never going to be a time to be accountable.
Bernie Madoff was a respectable, admired, white American.
If we do not listen to this parable and let it motivate and guide our judgments, Bernie Madoff is us living as though it’s all ok as long as you don’t get caught,
or in the style of this parable; as long as you don’t die.

But we do die, and we do we get caught.

We are challenged by Jesus in this parable
to consider who is going to get all the stuff
we have piled into our garages, homes, and storage facilities.
He is not suggesting that we get a good lawyer
to write up a Will or Trust document.
He is asking simply how much do really we need,
and when you have more than you need why do you keep it at all? He is asking us to wonder why we have these things,
and what it is we are supposed to do with what we have.

Beneath all of this lies an even bigger question:
are we so badly in denial that we have forgotten that we will, everyone of us, be suddenly separated from this stuff leaving it behind?

There is danger for us followers of Christ in this world today.
The danger is called “denial” and it shows itself in a lifestyle that assumes whoever has the most stuff wins,
anything goes as long as you don’t get caught,
and it can’t happen to me.

The man in this parable is called a “fool” because he is. He talks to himself all the time, did you notice that? We never him talking to his neighbors.
We never him talking to God.

He just talks to himself probably because he is so isolated and so alone.
He is probably so isolated from others that he can’t see them or their needs, and he is so busy building his bigger house and barn that he doesn’t notice.

This must not become our story.
I remember very clearly once when I was a child our pastor said:
“You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.”
My father often repeated that to us at home
and I’ll pass that wisdom on to you
with all the love and hope that Luke, the pastor, wrote this parable to his church. There is no denial that we have a lot, and that we have most of what there is. Only a fool would fail to wonder and ask why and what should we do with it.