December 26, 2010

Sirach 3: 2-7,12-14 + Psalm 128 + Colossians 3:12-21 + Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

There is little in our imagination or experience that would allow us to grasp what physical, emotional, and political risk was involved in what these verses from Matthew’s Gospel tell for these young parents. In fact, it is probably only about 200 miles from Bethlehem to border of Egypt. While it was outside the jurisdiction of Herod, even Egypt was under the Roman Empire. Which means that the journey might have been a comparitivly safe journey except that it began at night, and the territory between Bethlehem and Cairo crosses the desert: cold at night, barren, and empty. It makes me wonder how many of you might manage a trip to Dallas on foot with an infant.

While sound Biblical Scholarship would be anxious for us not to take this story literally, Matthew has some serious business he is concerned to accomplish with this episode. All through Matthew’s Gospel as we shall proclaim it this coming year, you will hear time and again echoes of Old Testament Prophets which Matthew will use to establish the identity of Jesus. So Matthew moves the family to Egypt so that the Hosea’s prophecy can be fulfilled which says: “….and out of Egypt I called my Son.” So already in the second chapter of Matthew’s Gosple the identity of Jesus is revealed: “God’s Son.” Even more so we shall see and hear Matthew develop the character of Jesus as a new Moses who leads God’s people to the promised land, and how better to do so than to start with Egypt. Matthew wants us to see in Jesus the whole story of Israel. So just as Israel came out of Egypt, so does Jesus come out of Egypt, and here begins the story that becomes our own as the new Israel.

It is a story that begins in a family as do all our stories. Everything we know and see, hear and understand about Jesus tells us about his family. The German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that “One act of obedience is better than 100 sermons.” And how better to understand how Jesus became obedient to the Father’s Will than be remembering the man Joseph in whose house and under whose protection Jesus grew up. Joseph’s obedince as told by Matthew is a whole sermon in itseld. He obeys when told to Mary into his home. He obeys when told to get up in the night and take the child and Mary on a long journey. Again he obeys when he’s told that it is time to go back.

The human qualities of this man called out of Egypt are things he learned at home. That Old Testament Wisdom we heard today at the beginning of this Liturgy is exactly the kind of wisdom that would have shaped the values of any Holy Family: honor, kindness, reverence, obedience, and prayer. These are not virtues that wear out my friends. They are the essential buidling blocks of any good and lasting relationship. Failure to inherit and integrate these virtues is the reason for failed, fractured, and ruined relationships.

What made this young family holy was not their child, but their obedince to God’s Will, their willingness to honor their tradition and each other, their reverence, and their prayer which we see revealed in the careful practice of their faith. When you begin to look at this young family in this light, I hope you will realize that there is not just one “Holy Family”. This church is filled with Holy Families. It doesn’t mean that there is a father, a mother conceived without sin, and a divine child. Anyone in here have one of those? It means that a Holy Family is an environment of relationships where honor, kindness, reverenve, obedience, and prayer come before anything else. Or as Saint Paul just said to the Colossians: where every word and every deed is is done in the name of the Lord Jesus. Imagine how many injuries and offenses would be avoided if that were the norm in our homes.

This family that Matthew puts before us as the model of holiness was guided by their openness to God and God’s will. In their willingness to endure personal sacrifice and inconveniene for the sake of their child, Mary and Joseph continue to teach every mother and father everywhere. Because they were attuned to God, they were will willing to undertake impractical and seemingly impossible measures not to see their son wearing the finest clothes or the latest style of shoes, or going to the most prestigious schools or driving the latest model car. They wanted one thing. They wanted to keep him aware of the guiding influence of God in his life.

May it be so for you my dear friends at Saint Mark. May you truly become more and more holy families; not because you are perfect, but because you make real and reveal day after day the presence of God in your lives and in each other; and because you long for and desire above all things to fulflill and become obedient to the Will of God. When you do, it will make no difference what your childen look like on the outside, where they go to school, what they wear, drive, or how much money they make. They will be children of God, full of grace, and so will be your home.

The following PDF file contains my homily texts from June 23, 2002 to December 25, 2010. Download Homilies from June 23, 2002 to December 25, 2010 in PDF format now»

December 25, 2010

Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Psalm 96 + Titus 2: 11-14 + Luke 2: 1-20

Everyone in this story from Luke’s Gospel is going somewhere. As it begins in an earlier chapter, Gabriel has come to Nazareth, then Mary has goes to the “Hill Country” to visit Elizabeth. Then Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem. Shepherds make a journey to find a child. Then they return glorifying and praising God. Matthew has visitors coming from the East, and eventually, the Holy Family are headed to Egypt. Everyone involved, experiencing the Incarnation is on the move.

The older I get, the more times I celebrate this day,

I become more and more convinced that the Incarnation

is etiher an idea with a theological explanation

or an experience rooted deeply in this life.

Now of course, it can be both, but without moving from idea to experience,

the divine purpose of this night is nothing more than an idea, a dream, a hope.

For those people who become characters in Luke and Matthew’s story,

that movement from idea, from dream, from hope to reality is taking place.

Their dream and their hope for a Messiah is moving from a hope and a promise

to an experience and a promise fulfilled.

“It’s really happening!” is their experience in Bethlehem.

Everything God promised, everything we hoped for, everything our prophets foretold

is unfolding right now!

And so, they begin glorifying and praising God.

Mary started the whole running off to Elizabeth with her great hymn: “My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord.

Elizabeth joined in with her response of priase with a leaping baby in her womb!

Now it’s not happening exactly the way they had imagined.

It is not exactly what they expected.

In the past angel messengers came to Moses, Abraham, Elijah, not to young women in Nazareth. In the past all the great things happened in Jerusalem not in “back-water” villages that no one who was anyone would claim or acknowledge as their own.

Yet because these people, all these marvelous characters in the Gospels were willing to get into the action, into the journey, the Incarnation was real and immediate.

In other words, spectators and speculators were left out:

left to think about it rather than celebrate it.

Some were angry about it like Herod because God’s plan threatened his way of life, his position, his privilege, his power.

Some were stubborn about it like Scribes and Pharasees risisting everything that did not match their expectations about how God should work and how the Messiah would be revealed, and what the Kingdom of God would look like and who would be inlcuded.

The fact of the matter according to the Gospel writers is that God’s ways would be gentle and peaceful, so Herod’s swords and violence were useless and only ended up exlucding him. The fact of the matter according to the Gospel writers is that the new Kingdom of God would include the tax collectors, sinners, street people, theives, and Gentiles: anyone who  would repent and make the Journey to the New Jerusalem Jesus leads.

It was journey to service and sacrifice, not to privilege and comfort.

We must tell this story of Christ’s birth not because it is sweet and romantic made so by centuries of artists and musiscians, but because it is a story that includes us as well.

We can tell this story becasue we live it

because we have searched and searched for light, wisdom, and peace and find Christ.

We can tell this story because we have felt like outsiders, doing the jobs no one else wants to do, like shepherds, and we have suddenly become aware that messengers have come to us that did not come to Kings and Rulers like Herrod or Pilate.

We can tell this story because we have no home, no place to rest, and flee violence.

We can tell this story because we have gifts and are willing to go to any length to give them away to a poor child born in a manger.

We can tell this story because we can look at things that do not turn out the way we thought they would, and imagine that God can work wonders in surprising ways.

Yet those who chose to live as spectators in life will have no experience of the Incarnation. They will just tell this story year after year as though it were fairy tale.

Those who limit their knowlege of God’s Word to heresay or make it a study guide

without ever letting God’s Word guide their lives will always remain sitting on the outside looking in.

This day is about a journey that involves searching and discovery, looking and asking, seeking, and imagining. It is about a kind of openness that allows shepherds to look at a baby and see a King; about a dying thief who says: “Remember me in your Kingdom.” It is about seeing swadling chothes that will soon become a shroud. There is no way to understand and experience the Incarnation without embracing the fact that we have to get up and move, get up and risk, get up and ask, go looking. We have to be as wise as old Herrod and even consult the wisdom of the sriputres. We cannot be threatened or angry, disappointed or feel betrayed because God’s surprise and God’s plan might not match our own.

There is plenty of evidence in history that our plans for a Kingdom of Peace do not produce that Kingdom of Peace. We repress, we are violent, we are exlusive and protective. It isn’t working becasue it is not God’s way. Look again at the scene Luke proposes. Find yourself in the story becasue you have begun to live it, and you’ll go home glorifying and praising God like never before becasue this is real, and it is happening right now in our lives.

December 12, 2010

Isaiah 35: 1-6,10 + Psalm 146 + James 5: -10 + Matthew 11: 2-11

Whenever I hear this Gospel passage, I can never help but think that John is sitting there in Herod’s prison a little disappointed. He has preached and preached about the coming Messiah insisting that he would put the ax to those who opposed him, separate the wheat from the chaff, and once and for all settle the questions of justice. He is the one who pointed out the Messiah one glorious day in the midst of a throng coming to him for baptism. Now after all he has done to make ready the way of the Lord, look where he ends up. And so, he sends some of his friends to Jesus. Personally, I think he sent them simply to remind Jesus that he was sitting over there in that prison. I don’t the questions were the least bit important. I think he was really saying: “Excuse me! While you are running around curing the sick, the lame, the blind, and the deaf. I’m over here in jail. While you’re dining with tax collectors others of questionable repute, I’m over here eating this jail food. John’s confidence is beginning to sag, and so the question: “Are you the one?”

If the questions are not really the point of the visit, neither are the answers, because all Jesus does is tell them what they already know if they’ve been paying attention. What Jesus says at the end is what matters; his ultimate and extraordinary compliment and affirmation of John’s role and place in the Father’s plan. With that affirmation, the disciples of John are comforted and affirmed about the importance and the character of their mentor and prophet. He compares John the great Elijah and in doing so affirms his own identity as Messiah since the return of Elijah was to signal the arrival of the Messiah.

We never know if those disciples even went back to John, because Matthew has Jesus begin to complain and speak harshly about those who will not see what is right before them, who will not recognize that God is working, and that the reign of God is at hand. And why do they not? Because they had other ideas; other expectations; or perhaps our plans for God to do things their way and on their time.

Matthew puts before us the image of one who had expectations about how things were to be when the Messiah came, and because they were his expectations and not God’s disappointment, frustration, and disillusionment set it. And there is nothing new about that. We do it all the time, and we know plenty of people who have had expectations about how God is supposed to fix things, settle things in their favor, and punish evil. About how God is supposed to answer prayers, especially certain kinds of prayers and from certain kinds of people. And when it doesn’t happen that way, a great chill settles upon their hearts and souls.

A culture of privilege sets us up to think that we deserve something from God, that God’s whose whole purpose in being is to give us more and more of what we want. So when we have to learn how to live with evil because God does not wipe it out, we don’t always do too well. When we know that injustice and sin seem to be getting bigger and bigger, we think God us supposed to sweep in and wipe out the bad guys while we sit and cheer safely from the sidelines. When we go to Mass without fail every week, and sacrifice with our tithe, we get knocked off balance when a test comes back and confirms that we have a disease and we’re going to die sooner than we thought. One of two things can happen: I know how to handle this, I’ll watch the Messiah, or how could God let this happen to me after all I’ve done for God? That person dissolves into self-pity and alienation while the other goes on living with Joy.

On Advent’s third Sunday, the Gospel gives us no answers any more than Jesus answered the question of John. It does give us questions. We all have dreams and ideas, visions and expectations about how thing are supposed to be here in this Kingdom of God. If there is any hint in those expectations that God is going to sweep in and settle our conflicts, reward us with something we want, or pat us on the head and say how nice we are; we’ve have failed to ask the question this Gospel proposes. “Are you the one?” is the question.

Are you the one who is going to bring peace? Are you the one who is going to seek justice for the poor? Are you the one who is going to make the first move to heal a broken relationship? Are you the one who is going to speak up when someone is lying, cheating, or hurting someone else? Are you the one who is going to make the Kingdom of God more of a reality today? Are you the one? Or do we wait for another? That’s the question this Gospel proposes. If we wait for someone else, it’s going to be a long wait.

Genesis 3: 1-15-,20 + Psalm 98 + Ephesus 3: 1-6,11-12 + Luke 1: 26-38

Just briefly today I want to draw your attention to a parallel found in the Gospel of Luke. Two different people experience a message from the Angel Gabriel. They both have very different responses to the message of the angel, and it is their responses I invite you to examine and ponder.

The Angel’s news to both of them was basically good news, but there is no doubt that the news was a surprise, an interruption of their plans, and demanded a complete change of life and direction. Neither understand, but without understanding, one doubts while the other accepts and moves on.

The first to receive a message from Gabriel was Zachariah. He was old, very old. His wife had born no children. He was a member of the priestly tribe, and so his life was full of ritual, consistent, regular, scheduled, and dependable. Add to that, as I said his age, and you have a fairly rigid, old man who had every reason to be set his ways. The will of God is revealed to him by the Angel, and his response to the message was doubt; and why not? Who at his age would have wanted a child? Who at his age would have wanted to start life over again as a father with all the responsibilities. I mean who was going to teach the boy to drive? Zachariah was old enough to have his license suspended! And with a wife as old as Elizabeth? How as that going to work? The whole idea is not only preposterous, it’s impossible, and so in the face of the impossible and the unexpected, Zachariah doubts, and as a result, he is silenced by God: “Struck Dumb” as most translations put it.

The next one to receive a message from Gabriel was a Virgin betrothed to man named Joseph in the town of Nazareth. The will of God again revealed by this busy angel is no less surprising, unexpected, impossible to imagine, and it posed just as many problems for her as the Will of God posed for Zachariah. When it comes to how they respond, their stories differ. Unlike Zachariah who doubts, she simply accepts the sudden and unexpected change that is announced to her, and she decides to make something of what some might think of as an unwelcome turn of events. And so, rather being struck dumb or silent, she heads for the hill country to tell it all.

Basically what Luke gives us is examples of behavior options that come when God’s plans do not match our own plans. One option is the Zachariah option: doubt. The other option is a creative acceptance that suggests that working with or doing God’s Will is an opportunity to share in God’s plan for creation and redemption.

I can’t count how many people I have seen in my life time who have faced sudden surprises, changes, tragedies, the unexpected and unplanned and ended up doubting God, angry with God, and in the end losing their faith and all their hope. At the same time, there are some people I can think of who have faced the unplanned, unexpected, and sometimes unwelcome surprises like the loss of a job, a medical crises, or a death; and rather than doubt God, give up on God, or get angry, they simply take what they can best perceive as part of God’s plan and make something of it that is life giving, hopeful, and even joyful. Two options with the wonder of which we shall choose.

We might think of that today as we honor this woman who holds the promise of what we can all become by her example of trust in God and willingness to work with God’s plan even when it is different from our own.

December 05, 2010 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 11: 1.10 + Psalm 72 + Romans 15: 4-9 + Matthew 3: 1.12

It is easy with this Gospel passage to pay more attention to the messenger than to the message, but Matthew does not want that. He tells us nothing about John except what he wears, what he eats, and where he is. Stark details that for John’s immediate audience made them think more about Elijah than the son of Zecharia and Elizabeth. It is his message that matters, not who he is.

And then it is easy to sit here and think John is talking back in those old days to crowds of people who came out to the desert to see and hear him. With that kind of thinking, we disconnect from the message, and we become spectators in a sort of Biblical drama that has a wild man ranting and raving at a crowd of locals who with nothing better to do walk out to the desert to what all the fuss is about. Let’s be real about this. In those days, there was no cable TV, no WII, no golf course, no entertainment what so ever. Of course they went out there, what else did they have to do? But this isn’t about them nor about him. There is a message here and it is about us.

The message is still relevant and proclaimed every time we open the third chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. The message is timeless and appropriate for anyone who might be living with some anticipation that Christ will come again. To begin their renewal, to begin Israel’s rebirth conversion, John takes them away from the power of the city with its Temple and Palace. He takes them to the desert, that desert where it all began for them.

There he spoke about lives of integrity of relationships rooted in honesty and respect. He spoke up against presumption arrogant reliance upon one’s presumed sense of privilege, against complacency, the shirking of responsibility and disinterest in the welfare of others. What’s old about that message?

John’s voice and his message still cry out to all of us who are tempted to compromise our principals in favor of looking good or being popular, where we are taught to get what we want with the least amount of effort, where we are encouraged to disregard the needs of others while we take care of number One, and where getting caught is a bigger shame than what we are caught doing.

The message of John proposes that authentic seekers of what is to come will bear good fruit, fruit that comes from repentance. The prophet Isaiah put before us examples of that good fruit today: wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. But what is the fruit of our age? It isn’t hard to recognize: anger and pride, resentment and jealousy, ambition and greed; and an arrogant disregard for human life. Look at this half empty church, and don’t tell me it’s half full. Some of you were not here last week and some will find an excuse for not being here next week. Bearing witness to faith and giving public praise and thanks to God has become in this age a matter of convenience.  We resent obligation and duty and pretend that some kind of private spirituality is as good, fruitful, and worthy of us as religious faith practiced proudly and openly.

The call to repentance has serious and immediate consequences. A little cleansing with water (John’s Baptism) is not enough. It’s time for more than that. It’s time for real purification by Fire. No shallow and superficial change of face will do. There must be a change of heart, and that will mean a change of life in which one’s values and vision, hopes and dreams are completely altered. No more dreams of a rich and comfortable life free of demands and worry. Now there will be a dream of sacrifice and service in which the only question is not what am I going to get out of this, but what more can I do for God and my neighbor. Gone will be a sense of privilege that suggests that we deserve anything replaced by the truth of obligation and duty with the conviction that everything we have is ours to give away like God and everything we have brings a responsibility for others.

This is something new. This begins to suggest that the Gospel is not merely an ideal to which we should like to aspire, but a practical, even though difficult, way of life that witnesses to the Prince of Peace – the one who is to come.

This day, this week of Advent, this season and it’s great prophet propose that we take a serious look at ourselves and the fruit of our lives here. Only when we shall we have begun to hear and heed the message of the prophet who has spoken to us this day and in this place.