July 31, 2011

Isaiah 55: 1-3 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8: 35, 27-39 + Matthew 14: 13-21

The last of the virtues we have reflected upon this weekend is the very focus of this familiar story in Matthew’s Gospel, Justice. It is no incidental detail that brings Matthew to mention that the number 5,000 did not include women and children because they didn’t count. In that society if you didn’t produce something, you did not count. Not much has changed since then in the values of this world; and those values are still seriously challenged by Jesus and His Gospel.

Then just as now, food equals power. It’s always about power. The rich who had control of the land and the distribution of its production were a tiny percent of the population, and those with the power always ate well. The rest got what was left over if there was any. It is the same today. A tiny percent of this world’s population controls the distribution and production of food. Obesity is a pandemic among us. It is a reminder that we have the power; and it raises some questions about what we are doing with it. The virtue of Justice and the three other great virtues will not allow us avoid, water down, or spiritualize the force and message of Matthew’s gospel.

It is too easy for all of us to play the role of the disciples in this incident. If we do, Jesus will not let us off the hook. The apostles think that the hunger of these people is not their problem. They assume that there is plenty of food somewhere and that those people should just go and get some, and Jesus says: “Wait a minute.” Jesus will not allow us to think that this hunger is someone else’s responsibility. Instead of dispersing the crowd letting everyone take care of themselves, he draws them together into community to pool their resources and redistribute them.

This is a new kind of power. I call it, “Eucharistic power.” This power is unlike the power  of this world that uses food to control and manipulate people. This power that Jesus reveals is the power of a grateful people who do not think that the needs of others are someone’s responsibility. In a church living and led by people of Virtue, we will hear the challenge of this as a call to conversion and a call to reexamine the gifts we have and how we use them. The action of Jesus which we remember today is not just an act of compassion. In that time just as in our time, this kind of behavior is looked upon by the powerful as being subversive, and the opening verses of today’s Gospel remind us that such subversive actions provoke opposition from the powerful who always have the most to benefit from the unequal distribution of this earth’s produce.

The power that Jesus exercises in this story is not some kind of Divine intervention, some trick he pulled with a few loaves and some fish. He shows a new kind of power, the power of Justice exercised with and in the strength of a community. There are overtones of Eucharist in the story to remind us and root us in the mystery and wonder of what we become when we are fed at this table. It was not just bread and fish he gave to those disciples and therefore gives to us. It was the power of Justice lived and exercised by an apostolic community that hears the message: “Give them something to eat.”

Hunger is our reminder that there is work to do and Justice to be lived. Gently, but clearly Matthew closes the story with the reminder that there were women and children there to be fed too — people who did not count, who did matter to others, who did not produce anything. Contrary to this world’s values and systems, we will count them. They do matter. Their value, their life, their presence in this world does not depend on whether or not they produce. For years of my life I never produced a thing except dirty laundry, a lot of trash, and a heap of bills for my parents to pay, but they fed me anyway. Not because of what I might be or what I might do for them later; but simply because they loved me.

It is a powerful message spoken to us today by Matthew’s Gospel. It is a powerful mandate we given by Jesus as his disciples today. The prudent will not shy away, the temperate will not allow women and children be dismissed as though they are nothing and do not count in this world unless they produce. And as I said yesterday in my talk on the Virtue of Fortitude, “I believe that a lot of people spend their lives hoping that Jesus did not mean exactly what he said. Fortitude is living as if he did.” So Fortitude inspires Justice and moves us to responsibility because Jesus said: “Give them something to eat yourselves.” When we get that right, everyone will have their fill, because there really is always enough of everything we when stay together and bless, break, and give.

July 24, 2011

1 Kings 3: 5, 7-12 + Psalm 119 + Romans 8: 28-30 + Matthew 13: 44-52

There is a problem with the language in this part of Matthew’s Gospel, and the longer it goes un addressed, the longer we shall miss the point. Speaking and thinking of the “Kingdom of Heaven” sets a trap that leads us to think of a place, and that gets us talking about “getting to heaven” as though we were going some place. That is never a proposal found in the Gospels. These parables are not about a kingdom which is a place called “Heaven.” The term: “Kingdom of Heaven” is just Matthew’s preferred expression for what Luke and Mark call: “The Kingdom or Reign of God.” What this refers to is a relationship, not a place. We ought best to think about being in not going to…

Outside of this flesh, outside of this earthly existence life is better imagined as a relationship. Living In God, living with God, being in the perfect, unending, fullest relationship or “life” with God is our calling. This is what God invites us to experience, and when Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is at hand, he means that we can do this now. We can live the “Reign” of God now. We do not have to wait until we’re dead.

To get deeper into the meaning of these parables, I found it helpful to pay attention to the verbs. Line them up and think with me about what is being said:In the first parable:“buried, find, hide, sell, and buy.Then in the second parable:search, find, sells and buy.

The two parables in a way summarize the experience of all of us when it comes to our faith and life in the reign of God, that is to say, in an intimate, loving relationship with God. Some of us just suddenly find the faith that God has buried, while some of us have to search for it. Either way, the first action on our part is to FIND. It is the first act from us. God has already done what God is going to do: “bury” or “give” or “plant” however you want to think about it or whatever word you want to use. Jesus uses them all.

However we discover God’s gift of what Jesus called “friendship” requires a response from us: sell and buy are the verbs in both parables. For some this discovery comes by surprise, some sudden awakening or realization; for others it comes after long searching. Either way, upon discovering a relationship with God, which is a gift we can do nothing to earn, we act to possess and maintain that gift above all else.

Think and remember what it was like when you found the love of your life. Nothing and no one could get between you two. Nothing anyone said or anyone did could have or would have been more important than the person you loved most. When we experience that kind of human love with another human being we would sacrifice anything to hold and maintain that realionship. It is romance at it’s finest! It is also, I believe, part of the way God has made us to begin to move deeper into the mystery of why we are here and what it is God asks of us. That experience of human love and the heroic sacrifices it can stir in us is the first awakening of what these parables address: our relationship with God.

I think the passion and depth of human love is the first awakening of our ability to be embraced and enter into Divine love which is what Jesus would call: “The Reign of God.”  Our thirst and our desire for love is never satisfied with human love – there is always more, and the best of human love becomes the doorway into Divine Love: a love that is best found when two are together as one in perfect love and unitiy of heart and soul.Listen then to these parables as love stories. FIND love of God in your life.SELL or get rid of anything that keeps you from owning that love and possessing that fullnes of life with God.

As this portion of Matthew’s Gospel and these parables come to a close, the last counsel he gives is a reminder that we shall be judged not by one another but by our use of the gifts we have been given. If we have found the treasure and the pearl of God’s love and if we have been caught by Jesus the fisher of people we will be judged by how we have continued this revelation.

Understanding this means we shall be wise in putting together the new and the old. It is way of going and growing deeper in faith. When you buy into this, you are going to sell off anything that is contrary and useless for moving forward and deeper into the mystery of God’s presence and powerful love. I believe that this is what the Kingdom of Heaven is all about: an ongoing process in this life of putting together the new and the old, of finding, of selling, of buying our lives, of reinventing ourselselves in the light of God’s ongoing self revelation. There is a treasure in this field called “life”. Finding it, possessing it, owning it, claiming it, keeping it will always mean selling off and giving up something else that is not as worthy.

Jesus asks: “Do you understand this?”

My own response is: “Yes, I am beginning to understand.”

I hope and I pray that your response is the same: Search, Find, Sell, Buy, and then Live forever in God’s Love. That is the Kingdom of Heaven.

July 17, 2011

Wisdom 12: 13, 16-19 + Psalm 86 + Romans 8: 26-27 + Matthew 13: 24-33

The good people of Matthew’s Gospel have a problem. Gentiles are infiltrating their communities with their strange ideas and ways that these loyal and faithful first followers of Christ have suffered to maintain. These converts do not want to keep the rules and respect the customs carried over from Judaism. They are like that weed: “Mustard” that spreads so invasively and uncontrollably into the neat and pristine wheat fields of those old farmers who fed that nation. The temptation to take matters into their own hands and clean things up is very great. With what can only be described as divine wisdom, Matthew reflects upon the words of Jesus in light of what happened to Jesus, and Matthew he says: “Wait just a minute. I don’t think this is how things are supposed to go.”  The Scribes and the Pharisees took matters into their own hands with that man from Nazareth who disrupted the Temple, cured on the Sabbath, touched lepers and other sick people, talked to Samaritans, ate and drank with tax collectors and known sinners! He had to go, so they killed him and cleaned things up. But God didn’t buy their judgment. What they thought was a weed was really the wheat God had sown to feed us, so it fell to the ground and died, but there sprang up a rich harvest.

We gather in this church week after week, sinners and saints. It’s hard to tell the difference isn’t it? Sometimes we feel like one and the next week the other. Maybe we’re both. I hear confessions here, and I can’t tell the difference. A lot of the so-called “sinners” who come to pray with me I think are the real saints because of the faith and the hope they have in the face of their failures and their confidence in the prayer of the church. Some of the so-called “saints” who say all their prayers and never miss an “Amen” never do anything else either and never sincerely recognize their need to say: “Bless me Father, I have sinned.”

So we can look around and admit that we might not know what is wheat and what is weed, who are sinners and who are saints. The honest among us know that they don’t even know that for sure about themselves. Sometimes we feel one way and act it, and then turn right around and feel and act the other way as well. The good news is, it is not time for the harvest, and as long as we can keep from taking charge and assuming that we know weed from wheat, we’ll have a chance here to get it right.

The trouble is, times change, but they always remain the same. The good people of Matthew’s Gospel had a problem and so do we. The problem was not the weeds and the wheat, the problem they had and we have is that there is a temptation to take charge and assume the power, the authority, or the right to clean things up, straighten up this place, this church, or this world. The temptation is always lurking there (that is the work of the evildoer) to judge and name the sinner, to refuse them a place in a community because their ideas or lifestyle or behavior or politics do not agree with what we expect. So then having been cut off, they are then denied the chance to grow, mature, or change. Where would any of us be if at some arbitrary moment in time someone looked at us, assumed the role of the judge and said: “I saw what you did. I heard what you said. Get out of here.” Matthew is saying to us again today: “Wait a minute. This is not how things are supposed to be.”

My friends, failing to learn a lesson from the Scribes and Pharisees by repeating their behavior as we clean things up and straighten up this place runs the risk of destroying again God’s finest gift, and we might end up destroying ourselves. Hear again and listen carefully to those ancient words from the Book of Wisdom just proclaimed in this place: “leniency, clemency, and kindness” are the best we can hope for as sinners and saints. The book says: “Those who are just must be kind” which gives us all hope for our own repentance.

Twentieth Anniversary Celebration

July 16, 2011

Wisdom 12: 13, 16-19 + Psalm 86 + Romans 8: 26-27 + Matthew 13: 24-43

Lucy is at her office dispensing advice for a modest fee, and Charlie Brown walks up. Lucy says to him: “Physicians can learn a lot about a patient by asking what may even sound like a very simple question… which do you prefer, a sunrise or a sunset?” To which Charlie Brown says after a pause: “Well, a sunset, I guess!” Immediately Lucy responds:

“I thought so! You’re just the type ! I might have have known that! What a disappointment! People who prefer sunsets are dreamers! They always give up! They always look back instead of forward! I just might have known you weren’t a sunrise person! Sunrisers are go-getters! They have ambition and drive! Give me a person who likes a sunrise every time! Yes, sir! I’m sorry Charlie Brown. If you prefer sunsets to sunrises, I can’t take your case. You’re hopeless!” At which Lucy leaves. Charlie Brown looks out at us and says: “Actually, I’ve always sort of preferred noon!”

In your presence, Father John, there are certain traditions worthy of respect and repetition. What I want you all to know is that finding that quote was hard. I spent an unreasonable amount of time reading cartoons which is why some phone calls this week were slow in getting a response. I believe that the sunrise days are over, and we are nowhere near the sunset. The ambition and drive of the sunrisers brought us to this day. Now I believe it is the noontime for this community. The first planting has been done. God’s many gracious gifts described to us in last week’s liturgy are generously sown. It isn’t time for harvest; but the fruits of that harvest are already obvious. What has been sown is up and growing. Your leadership in this community and among the parishes of this Archdiocese is extra ordinary. You lead in generosity with Catholic Charities, with the Archdiocesan Development Fund, with Saint Vincent de Paul, in food and clothing and shelter for the poor. You care deeply and know children in Haiti to be our children because they are God’s. You lead with ministry to men and to women, with a school and religious formation programs that set the pace in central Oklahoma. You pray and worship with commitment and dignity. You respond to calls for help and for prayer, and you seek to grow in a deeper knowledge Jesus Christ in His Word and His Church, you are impatient with mediocrity and by your faith you draw people into the Covenant of this Table by great numbers year after year at Easter. Our children and our young people grow more attentive to God’s call, and already two are open to formation for a life time of service as priests. More will come. It is part of the harvest and fruit of faithful living.

Some day there will be a harvest from all of this, and then only God will judge what is His suggests Matthew’s Gospel today. It is not our business to root around and judge today what will bear fruit and what will not: what is a weed and what is wheat. In this place and in this community from the very beginning the hospitality of the Kingdom of God has marked our identity.

August 14, 2011

Isaiah 56: 1, 6-7 + Psalm 67 + Romans 11: 13-15, 29-32 + Matthew 15: 21-28

Just a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the narthext with a group of people after some meeting, and there was some reference to this Gospel text in our conversation. The one who brought up the text expressed considerable surprise and shock over the way Jesus is portrayed by Matthew, and I sent a little prayer of thanks to Matthew saying: “You did it! After all these years it still works!”

This Gospel is not simply about that woman. If it were, she would have a name, but she is nameless. It is just as much about the disciples as it is about her. The real confrontation here is not between Jesus and the woman. It is between Jesus and his disciples. He is confronting their attitude. He knows them. They are a product of their age and their culture. Their prejudice and racism toward this Canaanite woman is inconsistent and at odds with the Reign of God Jesus has come to announce. He will not tolerate their attitude and their behavior. He is an obsticle to that Reign of God.

So what he does is show them what they look like. He imitates their behavior back to them. He becomes like a mirror to them and shows them what they look like and what they sound like. He plays into their disgusting racism and prejudice. It’s as though he says: “Come on guys. Show me how much disgust and loaving you have in you. Show me how you think you are so special and so privileged.” It works, they do it! “Get rid of her.” “Send her away! Send her back home where she came from!” (Forgetting that they are in her home, in the region of Tyre and Sidon, and not getting the point that Jesus is at home everywhere and pays no attention to boundarys and boarders.)

As soon as he gets them to say what they really think and feel about her revealing how far they are from faith and embracing the Reign of God into their lives, he drops the Good News on them: praises her faith (not theirs), grants her request (not theirs), and leaves them standing there probably with their hands over their mouths and eyes wide open thinking: “Ooops! Something is wrong here, and it is not her.”

Time and time again, I have said to you from this ambo: three layers to the Gospel.

We may not stop until we get to the third layer.

The first is the historical incident that Matthew recalls. Since it also occurs in the Gospel of Mark, we can be fairly certain that something like this actually happened.

The second is the layer of Matthew’s time when the Jewish Christians were having a hard time embracing Gentile converts, with the thought that they were special and the Reign of God was all theirs: an attitude that finally boils over when Peter and Paul get into it over how “Jewish” the Gentile converts must become.

The third layer is how we hear and how we tell this Gospel. In the telling today, Jesus still speaks, and we must take the couage to both admit we are these disciples and look at how he mirrors our attitude and embarrassses us with our prejudice and privilege. There are social and political implications at every level of this gospel. They are undeniable and unavoidable. A Jew crossing that border is a social and spiritual transgression and a political issue. A woman from that side confronting a man from the other side in her territory is unimaginable at that time. It is socially and politically outrageous! It more than rocks the boat. It shakes up everything: politically, socially, economically, and spiritually. For you see, Faith has something to do with all of those things.

Where ever this Gospel is proclaimed today, disicples of Jesus Christ must hear themselves again both in the attitude and the words of the apostles, and see themselves again mirrored in the words and attitude of Jesus. There is no avoiding or denying the reality that this Gospel scene is being lived today everywhere in this world. London burns last week, and people die from the heat here in Oklahoma without air condition while the privileged build walls and close briges and gates to keep those Canaanites from having what the priviledged think is their own. We are living this Gospel scene. We tax the poor and the growing nearly poor so that the privileged can entertain themselves. Tax money builds stadiums and arenas for games that most of those taxed cannot afford to attend. Of course they are tricked into voting for these projects with the promise of jobs which turn out to mean sweeping up the arena floor in the middle of the night at minimum wage which is below the poverty level. Meanwhile we have no money for education and no money to loan to our young people who want and need that education. We avoid addressing immigration issues because it may mean a change in our attitude and behavior toward those who are differenct from us just like these apostles in the Gospel; and so we say: “Send them home.” This is not what Jesus says. This not how it works in the Reign of God. That woman, that foreignor, that poor person who had to ask someone from outside to help her got what she needed right then. Jesus did not say: “Just wait till after the end of the world. Then everything will be alright.”

This is a hard Gospel to hear and even harder to preach. The easy way would be to go all pius and tell you it’s about perservering in prayer and send you home with a prayer book; or turn it into some kind of sermon on her faith never questioning ours. Well, I do not think we cannot afford to take the easy way out or look for the least difficult meaning as a way of avoiding what the Gospel asks of us: change, conversion, justice, openness to the Reigh of God today. If we refuse this real meaning of this story, we may very well end up being in the role of that woman one day, and then instead of mercy, we’ll get a taste of and hear the sound of our own words spoken then to us: “Send them away.”

Great faith in great people is the sound of voices crying aloud again and again and again and shouting loudly for justice. The priviledged can either get defensive and hold tighter to what they have for the time being, or they can pay attention to Jesus who was also privileged with great gifts and great power.

July 3, 2011

Zachariah 9: 9-10 + Psalm 145  + Romans 8: 9, 11-13 + Matthew 11: 25-30

This Gospel speaks about burdens and rest, and it seems to me that there is a kind of paradox here, almost a contradiction. Jesus has been a hard on those who put burdens on others, and to those who are burdened, he speaks about rest, which by my opinion is something in short supply today.

T0o many people in our country bear a huge burdens making life easier for too many others. It is one thing to do so willingly. It is quite another to have the burden imposed upon you. On this weekend of “Independence” we might do well to wonder about the implications of that ideology, and grow more careful about how we think about “independence”. Personally, I think independence is an ideology a little at odds with the Gospel. Left un challenged, it implies that we are NOT “our brother’s keeper” which the Gospel clearly insists that we are. The only really independent people I know are dead. They don’t need anyone and they don’t need anything. That is independent. What the rest of us do does not affect them in the least. The truth is we are very dependent. What happens to the economy in Greece affects us, what we do with and charge for oil affects South America. When we burn food to fuel our cars, it affects the food costs in Africa. More simply, I need you as friends and companions. I need you to carry on the work of the church. I am dependent upon you, and I don’t feel any less because of it. I hope you need me. As the world shrinks because of media and economies, we are beginning to discover that we are very dependent upon one another. It may not seem very patriotic, but it’s real and it’s true; and efforts in these days to act independently or unilaterally are never productive. We must pay attention to the burdens we place upon others, especially upon the poor. We must be suspicious and watchful of programs and policies that continue to insulate, isolate, and protect the wealthy leaving the poor or the nearly poor to subsidize their comforts, security, retirement, and health care.

The longer I live in this community, the more I wonder about this matter of rest. I don’t think you people do much of it. Too many in this community get no rest because they work two or three jobs, and those who do not get no rest because we are all caught up in being productive, being busy, and in doing things that are efficient. In fact, quite honestly, we worship efficiency.

The pagan society in which we find ourselves suddenly is real, and the signs of it are everywhere. There was a time in history when this country could call itself a “Christian Country”. Whether or not that was or is a good thing is a separate matter for conversation. Nonetheless increasingly there are unmistakable signs that it is no long possible to claim that identity. The idol called: “Profit” now drives every decision and shapes every value. Jobs and lives are sacrificed at that idol’s altar every day.

The Christian idea of “Sabbath” and within that concept, “rest” is looked upon as a silly old idea that doesn’t produce anything; and so stores are open 24/7 and people must work in them 24/7 or be unemployed. The consequence for both the shopper and the clerk is: no rest.

Bill Gates, one of the great prophets of this post-christian era says that “In terms of time and allocation of resources, religion is not very efficient. We could do a lot more on Sunday morning rather than sit in a church.” The Communists who sacked churches and turned them into something useful thought the same way. Both are kindred spirits to the one who complained about Mary’s waste of resources by saying: Could not this ointment be sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor?” as she anointed the feet of Christ. We all know good and well it never would have gotten to the poor had her critics been in charge.

Time itself is a gift. It was something created by God just as much as the sea and the stars. There are not just holy places on this earth, but there is holy time. Just as we set aside space and build up holy places, we must set aside some time as well. Israel built a Temple, and Israel observed the Sabbath. Wondering what might be our connection to this is important if you listen to and get deeper into this Gospel.

We have the Old Testament concept of creation week and its Sabbath as the primal sign of the covenant. The Seventh Day becomes a hallowed space in time that marks off a place devoted to Israel’s relationship with God, just as the Temple becomes a hallowed space in space for the same purpose. If this is so for God’s chosen people, how is it not so for us?

The point of the Sabbath is in earthly terms to waste time just as the point of the Temple or even our church is to waste space. I can remember when wheat was growing on the soil under this building. It was producing something then. Now it is in  a sense “out of production.” It stands here as a contradiction to the worship of production and efficiency. There is nothing efficient about what we do in here. Those of you who sit here looking at your watches because you have something else or better to do today simply don’t get it.

Jesus Christ, Lord of the Sabbath proclaims himself today to be our “rest.” In Him and Through Him, and With Him, we find and we make and we experience rest. That’s what we are doing here, resting. The habit of celebrating sacred play time points to something else: the fact that vast amounts of time are spent waiting, and doing nothing while we wait. But the waiting is the point. It is what the church does, waiting in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord and Savior in glory. We gather here and set aside waiting time so that we might not be distracted or tempted, or led to believe that there is something better to do. I want you to think of this place as a giant “waiting room”. Here we wait in hope, not in fear like the rest of the world. We wait against all odds and common sense, in a world filled with economic doom, war, cultural meltdown, social chaos, terrorism, ecological fears, and all the rest, “we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”